Shattered Horizon: First game that drops Windows XP support

[Dominus Atheos]

I was browsing the Steam Store and noticed a newly released Indie game that has a warning in large orange text:

Shattered Horizon requires DirectX 10, a DirectX 10 compatible video card, and Windows Vista or Windows 7. There is no support for Windows XP or DirectX 9.

It's just a $20 game released by a small Indie studio and it's probably going to be a while before the big name publishers like EA and Activision start making games that don't support XP, but I just thought I'd mark this moment in history.

Note: I didn't buy this game so don't ask me what it's about. There's also Halo 2 that was called a "Vista Exclusive" but that was just deliberately crippled, and modders released a patch about a week after it was released that made it work fine on XP.

[Oskuro]

Well, the transition is bound to happen sooner or later (hopefully later), and indie studios don't usually have the resources to develop games with backwards compatibility. Hopefully Windows 7 won't be such a clusterfuck as Vista was, and by the time it has been properly tested, the transition will go on smoothly, the problem with the whole DX10 affair was how MS tried to use it to force games into Vista, and it seems that failed already and they've kind of given up on that.

[Stark]

You're misinformed.

Anyway, this is great stuff. Fucking XP. Hopefully a landslide starts at some point and it's dropped; but I'm not sure exactly what code-wise is relevant to 'breaking' XP compat (since there's little reason to do it deliberately).

[Shinova]

Bound to happen and fine with me. Vista, outside of its rocky early days and its lingering issues, is a genuine improvement over XP and Windows 7 cements the obsolescence of XP.

[Mr Bean]

It's Futuremark. This does not count because it's a benchmark company that's always made brand new shinny demos which could be mistaken for games that are built for graphical pretty.

Also this is not the first game. Unlamented Shadowrun multiplayer was Vista only.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

but I'm not sure exactly what code-wise is relevant to 'breaking' XP compat (since there's little reason to do it deliberately).

I have not poked around much with DX10, but from what I understand it's a fair bit easier to use than DX9 (which isn't hard to accomplish, mind). All it takes is writing something from scratch using a DX10/Vista+ environment, rather than writing it in DX9 with DX10 compatibility (DX10 emulates DX9 poorly).

[Stark]

True, I hadn't considered the instant-win of DX10. I bet nobody will be happier to see the whole XP codebase ignored than developers.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I don't know about that. I doubt too many people are eager to dive out of an environment they have a lot of experience with and a lot of people still use, just in the hopes of a slightly more straightforward API.

[Stark]

Since they're going to be working with Vista/Win7 anyway, it can't be avoided. Hopefully XP doesn't totter along for as long as 95 did (although I guess after the Vista fiasco XP has already trucked along after being totally redundant for a few years). Working with 1 OS has to be better than working with 2, especially for teams that probably make console games too.

[Sarevok]

Sounds like dx10 forced the issue not xp. It is a pretty insidious and clever way by microsith to force people to upgrade. Everyone making a dx10 game will be forcing their players to upgrade.

[phongn]

I don't know about that. I doubt too many people are eager to dive out of an environment they have a lot of experience with and a lot of people still use, just in the hopes of a slightly more straightforward API.

They will go for the new API for the improved features, though.

Since they're going to be working with Vista/Win7 anyway, it can't be avoided. Hopefully XP doesn't totter along for as long as 95 did (although I guess after the Vista fiasco XP has already trucked along after being totally redundant for a few years). Working with 1 OS has to be better than working with 2, especially for teams that probably make console games too.

XP will never die (even past its 2014 end-of-support date).

Sounds like dx10 forced the issue not xp. It is a pretty insidious and clever way by microsith to force people to upgrade. Everyone making a dx10 game will be forcing their players to upgrade.

Microsoft didn't backport DX10 (or DX11) to Windows XP because it would involve rewriting the entire display system.

[Vympel]

I still use XP.

Not bothering with Vista cost me exactly nothing.

I see no reason to upgrade until I get a new PC that will come with Win 7 preloaded. Why go to the trouble?

[Stark]

Because it's AWESOME?

Most normal people never buy OSes anyway, just buying a new box every few years. It's the 'enthusiast' crowd that make their own and can't be assed springing for a new key because they need more water cooling on their north bridge. Hell, my dad had vista before me, because every time he gets jack of his computer he just buys a new one. By contrast I doubt I'll upgrade my PC before it breaks (possibly never) so I needed to actually buy Win7.

If someone calls me with a computer problem and they use XP, I refuse to help them because it's self-inflicted. I'll be pleased to see it leave the desktop market. Stupid embedded systems!

[loomer]

I still use XP.

Not bothering with Vista cost me exactly nothing.

I see no reason to upgrade until I get a new PC that will come with Win 7 preloaded. Why go to the trouble?

I did the same thing until my CPU blew and I figured I may as well nab a preload of the RC. It didn't come preloaded and a RAM stick was corrupt, but I'm actually quite enjoying 7 now those issues are resolves. Besides, it's just about the quickest Windows install I've seen yet. Grab the RC and give it a shot - it's virtually no fuss to set up, and since you don't have to pay a damn cent if you can grab it from a friend or other sources...

[Mr Bean]

Because it's AWESOME?


Most normal people never buy OSes anyway, just buying a new box every few years. It's the 'enthusiast' crowd that make their own and can't be assed springing for a new key because they need more water cooling on their north bridge. Hell, my dad had vista before me, because every time he gets jack of his computer he just buys a new one. By contrast I doubt I'll upgrade my PC before it breaks (possibly never) so I needed to actually buy Win7.

If someone calls me with a computer problem and they use XP, I refuse to help them because it's self-inflicted. I'll be pleased to see it leave the desktop market. Stupid embedded systems!

Best you never get sick Stark all those shitty Doctor's computers are windows machines which run Windows XP. Heck they just phased out of NT machines in most hospitals less than three years ago. How quick you forget few if any business could be arsed to upgrade to Vista because from a business prospective it was all downsides and still is to this day. But I know your not the type of person to understand that's there's still a billion with a B market out there for Windows XP machines because tons of business applications were written for XP and when Vista failed so terribly the companies producing code for the business various custom programs did not switch to Vista either which had a nice down-stream effect that XP has gotten an addition six years of life with the plug now set to be finally pulled in 2014. Think about that Stark, there's enough demand in the XP market for support all the way to 2014 and Microsoft has releneted three times now in allowing OEM's to sell XP packed system because business still want them.

XP has been around for over eight years now. It's pretty damn stable, it's requirements are low and it can easily be made anything from a dumb terminal for tens of thousands of users to highly specific roaming profiles for a dozen researchers. Not as easily or as pretty as Windows XP but it was the first OS aside from 2000 where company's had to be forced to upgrade. They were happy with what they had and still are.

Which is again why we are still going to be talking about XP for another four years.

[Stofsk]

All I've ever heard of Windows7 is good, good, and more good. Mind you, I don't see why XP is so bad other than the fact its getting pretty old, while Vista was a tremendous memory hog and I never bothered with it.

[Stark]

The commercial space isn't what anyone cares about when they're talking about game compatibility. I'm glad you decided to try amateur psychology because I think XP is a piece of shit though; I mean it's not like the OP is about game compatibility and not industrial, embedded or other uses. Next you'll tell me some implementations still use ASCII displays, that'll really blow my mind. I'm glad 'I'll be pleased to see it leave the desktop market' can pull a response like 'I hope you never get sick'.

[Stark]

All I've ever heard of Windows7 is good, good, and more good. Mind you, I don't see why XP is so bad other than the fact its getting pretty old, while Vista was a tremendous memory hog and I never bothered with it.

In AU Win7 is a few hundred bucks; for most people, they're clearly better off just buying a new box with it pre-installed. People who lined up for Win98 aside, the change generally takes ages; working with Win9x systems in 2004 was fun... oh wait, no, I meant 'shit'.

[charlemagne]

Hell, when I did compulsory civilian service after school in 1999/2000 in the local university hospital, their machines were still running Windows 3.11. Doesn't mean anyone was still gaming on 3.11. Last time I was seeing my doctor I also didn't notice his flashy DX9 interface to manage patient records I think it's funny that people don't bat an eyelid on new console versions but get all riled up when there's a similar development on the PC that forces an upgrade - and it's not even that bad yet, I'm not aware of any top titles that won't run on XP. Right now, it's more as if new PS3 games would run on the PS2, too, just not giving all the graphical goodies that way.

I never really got the Vista hatred either. Vista was not great before SP1, but hey, it's not as if XP was really usable before SP2 if I remember correctly. Win7 is great, but it's not the second coming of Christ and could just have been SP2 or SP3 for Vista instead of an all-new version.

Regarding the OS change: I think most computer users don't even fully realize they could go out and buy a new Windows. The rationale of "buy new computer, get newest MS OS" sits so deep, it never would've occured to me some years back either to upgrade on my own. It's a bit different now with Win7, though, because everyone loathes Vista so much.

[Stark]

Yeah, when I left the industry a few years ago, most small business clients were still in the 2000/XP zone and I doubt that's changed much. The makers of terrible niche software for accountants/solicitors/steel fabricators etc tend to only bother 'upgrading' (ie, putting a shiny new java frontend on their 20 year old software) when enough people nag them, and small businesses are so budget-limited IT-wise that they're often bizarre mazes of hodge-podge setup. XP will probably always have advantages over Vista/Win7; they're just generally not advantages relevant to games or home users (beyond the 'will work on my computer from 2001' factor).

It's a good point WRT to Vista; since they pushed it so heavily onto new laptops (to the point many laptops came with 'free downgrades' to XP) there is a large population of people actively seeking to change their OS. Since Ultimate is like $480 in AU, I can't imagine many people wanting to buy it separately anyway given how expensive that is relevant to a complete computer.

[Oskuro]

The issue with the whole Vista fiasco is not that XP is some god given OS that will last forever, it also isn't that Vista was no better than DOS, it's more an issue of how they tried to force the transition.

I'm personally looking forward to Win 7, but I'll wait for a while (maybe a year or two) to see how the OS performs, and to avoid major problems that might crop up while it is still new. It brushes me the wrong way to have MS try to prevent me from being a smart customer by forcing the issue, just as it brushes bussinesses the wrong way to have MS try to force them unto an OS designed more as Media Center for home users, full of extra bells and whistles they don't really need.

The problem with MS is not their software, it isn't bad, the problem is and has always been how they use their market position to push consumers around, and DX10 was a transparent way of attempting such a thing.

As for developers, I agree it's better for them to stick to a single OS and DX distribution, but then again MS rubs them the wrong way too, since by trying to force the market early, they are forcing developers to either invest more resources in dual OS/DX games, or sacrifice a significant market share. All this wouldn have not been had DX10 been developed with XP compatibility in mind, because say all you want about the display structure being different, I really doubt there was no way to develop a backwards compatible wrapper for XP.

Of course this keeps begging the question of why don't more developers just switch to OpenGL, but what the hell.

[Bounty]

It brushes me the wrong way to have MS try to prevent me from being a smart customer by forcing the issue

How unfair. Microsoft never bothered to send a man round to my house to hold a gun against my head so I'd upgrade. Over here they just bundled their new OS with new computers while still supporting their old one (and, now that 7's out, their old one and their hella-old one). They were even such bastards that they added compatibility modes which let pretty much all old software I have run flawlessly.

But yeah, sitting on my thumbms for two years probably is the wise decision. Who can trust the thousands of people who have been using 7 daily for the better part of a year now? Hell, I've used it for months now with precisely zero issues, but that won't convince me Microsoft hasn't embedded a stealth discwiping program that's just waiting to corrupt all my system files so they can savour my tears. Because they are evil like that.

[Sarevok]

Personally I think OpenGL is way better. It is much easier to learn and use. Problem is OpenGL has not seen much updates in last 5 years. Even though OpenGL can almost match best capabilities of Directx graphics it has fallen out of favor for some reason. Hopefully arrival of OpenGL 3 will change that.

[Genii Lodus]

The display driver model changes from XP to Vista were partly concerned with virtualising graphics memory which is a fairly important change from directly addressing the physical stuff. DX10's a lot tighter as a specification than DX9 - there's less optional features that a graphics card can implement so it's a lot easier to write stuff and be confident that it'll actually run on whatever random crap someone's using.

OpenGL's a bit of a nightmare to work with because until recently the core spec was years out of date. The extensions model has implemented modern features like geometry shaders,multiple render targets etc but using these extensions is a bitch because there's no guarantee of what'll be supported on any graphics card. For example you can do geometry shaders on Windows XP using nVidia cards but not ATi. And most of these extensions are implemented slightly differently so each of nVidia and ATi will have added their own wonderful and slightly incompatible features/quirks. Vast chunks of the old API have been purged for the new OpenGL 3.1 spec and some of the extensions have been promoted to core features but it's still a major pain to have to write so many code paths.

[Oskuro]

How unfair. Microsoft never bothered to send a man round to my house to hold a gun against my head so I'd upgrade.<snip>

Oh, so you deny Microsoft's abuse of their dominant market position? What are you, and idiot or just a MS fanwhore? Probably both, really.

As for sitting on my thumbs, tell me, why is it so imperative that I switch right now? My system is working perfectly, and meets my needs, I have no hurry, and thus have the luxury of waiting and see what's happening. Microsoft's metaphorical gun to the public's head is the mass hype campaign they've put out to convince as many people as possible that life will end if they don't upgrade, not to mention roadblocks such as the DX10 issue, but that's rather minor. From a professional standpoint I feel more strongly about how Microsoft has used its partnership with bussinesses to demand that they upgrade to Vista, and this is no fucking second hand information, mind you, I was sitting a the fucking meeting where the higher ups said "Fuck MS's partnership, we won't be upgrading to Vista."

But hey, since these practises are not documented at all, I guess you can keep bitching and moaning.

Even though OpenGL can almost match best capabilities of Directx graphics it has fallen out of favor for some reason.

It was a historical reason. At the beggining of both API's, DirectX was a bit better and easier to use, so it was favored, and many gaming companies have followed suit out of a sort of inertia.

I certainly agree that OpenGL needs to get it's collective shit together to keep up, and can't blame hardware vendors for not devoting resources to what is perceived as a second-rate API. I just have a faint glimmer of hope that with all the shit that is going on with propietary platforms, DX, and the like, more developers (Specially start ups) start considering alternatives, and thus allow for more diversity in the market. Time will tell.