Shattered Horizon: First game that drops Windows XP support

[Bounty]

What are you talking about ?

You say:

Now every game that uses DX10 is going to run only on vista and later.

Despite the fact that this very thread confirms that non-XP games are a rarity and support is only now being dialled back, even when XP has become so obsolete that it's had two successor OS'es.

You've had three years to upgrade. You choose not to, and instead demand that Microsoft somehow automagically continues to support and obsolete technology in an obsolete OS - and when it's pointed out that this is impractical and irrational, you stamp your feet and declare it a conspiracy to "force" you to upgrade.

[charlemagne]

What are you talking about ?

DX10 exclusivity to windows vista and later is a bad thing as developers flock to it they automatically malign gamers without vista.

Is that too difficult to understand for that pea brain of yours ?

Are you also angry that games don't support WinME or 2000 any longer? Also, where are all those DX10-only games? Other than Halo 2? Where?

This is ridiculous, really. Vista is three years old now, and there's not even a handful of games that are DX10-only, and there won't be a lot for the foreseeable future. And even if every developer switched to DX10 or 11 next year, hey, that's what happens with PC gaming. You can't seriously expect older technology or operating systems to be supported forever.

[Sarevok]

You've had three years to upgrade. You choose not to, and instead demand that Microsoft somehow automagically continues to support and obsolete technology in an obsolete OS - and when it's pointed out that this is impractical and irrational, you stamp your feet and declare it a conspiracy to "force" you to upgrade.

Now you finally come to the point ! To which I will say :

What if people are happy with XP and don't need to upgrade ? XP has not reached the point of Windows 98 or NT 4.0. XP still gets patches, updates and support . It will continue to do so until 2014. Why can not XP receive directx 10 as well then ? That is the crux of the matter. If microsith bothered to provide xp users with directx 10 this fiasco would exist in the first place. Intentionally leaving crippling XP by choosing not to release directx 10 leaves no choice but upgrade to vista/win7.

[Netko]

Actually, Windows XP left mainstream support back in April (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223), which means that new features (like DX10+ support) are no longer possible since then. That was already an extension of the original mainstream support date. XP is now in extended support, meaning security patching. Not that it was ever even remotely likely that DX10 would be available to XP since it requires the architectural restructuring of the video stack that Vista had done. Or are you suggesting that Microsoft should have not released any new OS after XP, but rather patched it with new features in perpetuity (for free, even!)?
EDIT: just for comparison sakes, 2000, is currently in exactly the same status - the extended support phase, which it will leave next year. So, if we were to take your argument seriously, DX10 should be backported to 2000. Surely you can see the madness in that suggestion?

[Sarevok]

Why would microsoft make a version of directx that would not work on most computers out there ? Do they have some incredible fantastic features in directx 10 to justify this ?

[Xon]

It is called an entire OS version which DirectX depends on.

[loomer]

Will you go do some fucking research of your own instead of arguing from an uneducated standpoint, Sarevok? And how about getting me those sources regarding your alarmist bullshit already, or are you going to concede?

[Sarevok]

Will you go do some fucking research of your own instead of arguing from an uneducated standpoint, Sarevok? And how about getting me those sources regarding your alarmist bullshit already, or are you going to concede?

Don't try to start an irrelevant tangent.

Why dont you tell me instead why M$ made a version of directx that don't work on most computers ? And does it have super duper features to justify this ?

Its as simple as that. If DX10 was present in XP there would be no problems and everyone would be happy.

[loomer]

Will you go do some fucking research of your own instead of arguing from an uneducated standpoint, Sarevok? And how about getting me those sources regarding your alarmist bullshit already, or are you going to concede?

Don't try to start an irrelevant tangent.

Why dont you tell me instead why M$ made a version of directx that don't work on most computers ? And does it have super duper features to justify this ?

Its as simple as that. If DX10 was present in XP there would be no problems and everyone would be happy.

I believe it was you who started this tangent, motherfucker, when you made the following statement:

That was then. Now every game that uses DX10 is going to run only on vista and later. It is this insidious move to suddenly force an unnecessary upgrade that I don't like.

Now address the question instead of acting like a broken record.

[Sarevok]

Look loomer I am not interested in "winning" some debate or anything. I asked an honest question and want an honest answer. If you do not know the answer you should either say so or remain quiet,

[charlemagne]

10 seconds of googling brings you here where you can read the following:

Direct3D 10: Designed around the new driver model in Windows Vista and featuring a number of improvements to rendering capabilities and flexibility, including Shader Model 4.

and

Direct3D 10 runtime in Windows Vista cannot run on older hardware drivers due to the significantly updated DDI, which requires a unified feature set and abandons the use of "cap bits".

Now explain why MS would bother to update the very way drivers behave in XP when it was a completely new feature of the new OS, Vista. I don't say that it wouldn't have been nice of MS to update that core part of their older OS XP when they developed Vista, but it's also completely understandable that a company wants selling points for their new products.

[phongn]

Look loomer I am not interested in "winning" some debate or anything. I asked an honest question and want an honest answer. If you do not know the answer you should either say so or remain quiet,

Why don't you do your homework?

Why would microsoft make a version of directx that would not work on most computers out there ? Do they have some incredible fantastic features in directx 10 to justify this ?

Because DX10 went hand-in-hand with a complete rewrite of the Windows display system. Backporting that to Windows XP would be a tremendous task - and one likely to cause serious issues.

EDIT: The display rewrite was done to expose new features like compositing and also remove most of the driver code from kernel space and put it into user space. That resolves one of the longstanding stability issues dating to NT4; it is much more difficult to bring down the OS from a bad driver now than it was before.

[charlemagne]

I also don't get the hate towards that whole issue. Sure, when Vista and DX10 was announced and they told us that XP won't support DX10, I thought "shitcrap fuck those fuckheads", too, but yeah, there's real reasons why there's no DX10 in XP. It's not just "hurr hurr let's write some pointless new thing and force everyone to use it so people have to buy our new thing". And besides that, no one has been forcing anyone to upgrade. One game isn't exactly "forcing everybody". Microsoft did not pull DX9 from the market or forbid people to develop games using it.

And ultimately, no one's forcing anyone to buy those new DX10 games. Just like no one forced anyone to buy games that demanded 3D-acceleration for the first time, or a DVD-ROM-drive.

[Marcus Aurelius]

You can't write ignorance like this. For your next trick, will you whine that Office has dropped Windows 3.11 support?

Since you brought it up, it actually is stupid that Office 2007 does not support Windows 2000. The same goes for all productivity apps that support XP but not 2k. Technically it is an easy task to support both (after all, XP is NT 5.1 and 2k is NT 5.0 and the internal differences are minor especially with regard to 2k SP4), but of course since it would probably cost a little more money for support departments, most major software houses dropped Windows 2000 support after Vista was released.

[Edi]

That was then. Now every game that uses DX10 is going to run only on vista and later. It is this insidious move to suddenly force an unnecessary upgrade that I don't like.

Why don't you go find me a source to back that up, friend? I'll accept just a few - announcements from major studios like Bethesda or Blizzard that they'll no longer have DX9 support in any form, for instance.

DX9 is old. Developers will move onto DX10. Just like they have from DX8 to DX9 and so on. The trend is slow now but it will pick up eventually. And as more and more DX10 games come out people will be forced to buy upgrades to play games their computer should already be able to play.

You're fucking retarded.

A software developer has fuckall obligation to support old shit to infinity. If you want new games, yes, you will have to upgrade your equipment to match the system specifications for those games and it's entirely your responsibility. It's not the responsibility of the software developers to mollycoddle you.

You can't play certain Linux games on Windows or Mac for example, unless you go the Illwinter Games route of making a multiplatform game that runs on Linux, Windows, Mac and Solaris equally, but no company is required to offer that kind of support.

Just fuck off already if this tangent is the only one you can harp on.

[Ace Pace]

Have you read the title of this thread? The one that says the very first game to drop XP support was released just now, three years after the launch of Vista, and concurrent with the launch of 7, Vista's replacement?

What are you talking about ?

DX10 exclusivity to windows vista and later is a bad thing as developers flock to it they automatically malign gamers without vista.

Is that too difficult to understand for that pea brain of yours ?

Jesus, Saverok, i thought you were a programmer and understood this shit.

It was near impossible to backport DX10 to XP. It would require a rewrite of the kernel end of graphics in ways that would basically be XP+Vista. This is simply not doable.

So we're left with DX10 on Vista and up. You know what? This is what happened with DX9 and XP. Except people forget because XP has been around for half the computing lifetime of most people here.

It's called upgrading your codebase and trying to make your clients (game developers) lives easier so they stop fleeing to consoles.


As a random techie note, the amount of Vista API updates that would be nice for games to have and do not exist for XP is also rather large, I can think of several things I'd use Vista-only APIs to help the game experience.

[Ace Pace]

You can't write ignorance like this. For your next trick, will you whine that Office has dropped Windows 3.11 support?

Since you brought it up, it actually is stupid that Office 2007 does not support Windows 2000. The same goes for all productivity apps that support XP but not 2k. Technically it is an easy task to support both (after all, XP is NT 5.1 and 2k is NT 5.0 and the internal differences are minor especially with regard to 2k SP4), but of course since it would probably cost a little more money for support departments, most major software houses dropped Windows 2000 support after Vista was released.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong and even more wrong.
The amount of user mode changes from 2000 to XP in what you could do with display technology is stunning. The difference between XP to Vista, or Vista to Windows 7 is just as large.

What you are talking about is kernel changes, I.E what version of the kernel is packaged into the operating system. This really doesn't matter to a program such as office which deals with very different things than whether the kernel can support things like priority managed I/O (though that is a very nice feature in Vista).

Deploying say, windows 7 to Windows 2000 would be a royal pain and would require implementing things like XPs Visual Styles (or Themes as the properties tab is known).

[Dooey Jo]

In this thread we were, of course, talking about graphically high-end platforms, as is obvious from the OP and all the responses. If you want to develop a game for even a Wii, not to mention the handhelds, you're going to have to develop a whole new game, so the API/engine choice for the PC/PS3/XBOX360 version of the game doesn't impact that choice. In that high-end space, DirectX is a very sensible choice for the ease of portability between two of the platforms, as seen by a huge amount of XBOX360 games being ported to Windows, far more then earlier console generations.

Well, the amount of porting you'd have to do really depends on what you're doing. The advantage of OpenGL is that you wouldn't have to use a different API for every other platform except Windows and the 360.
But anyway, since companies are so keen on porting, they are ensuring that DX9 will live as long as the 360, since that's the closest thing to what it runs.

You're right, it could use DX, but it was definitely a second-class renderer. With Tech5, they're claiming first-class parity between OGL and DX.

Was it really? Jedi Knight II looked pretty good in its days, I think, and it required DX8. I suppose it's possible it used GL for the rendering and used DirectX for sound and networking and whatnot, though. Still, it doesn't really make sense that either would look better or worse with a sane rendering system; both D3D and OGL lets you do whatever your graphics card is capable of.

[Mad]

Why can't DirectX 10 be released for Windows XP?

It would be a lot of work since Direct3d uses features that first appeared in Vista. The new graphics driver model is one of the reasons people did not want to move to Vista, and porting these breaking changes back to XP would have made XP buggier and less stable. And then there would be whining about that.

Maybe DirectX 10 for XP could emulate those API calls!

In theory, I'm sure it would be possible (there's already progress on wrappers to map DX10 to OpenGL for Wine and VMs). But then there would be performance, stability, and maintenance issues. And then there would be whining about that.

So the games should support both DX9 and DX10!

Only for so long. At some point, the extra time (money) required for design, testing, and maintenance simply isn't economically feasible: not enough customers using Windows XP will purchase the game. So time will eventually be better spent implementing, testing, and debugging other features. (That's why we don't see as many games that support both Direct3d and OpenGL as we used to.)

At some point, developers have to cut their losses and abandon certain aspects of backwards compatibility. It isn't always some evil "force users to buy a new operating system" conspiracy; it's just the reality of software development. (Yes, Microsoft has made plenty of poor and questionable decisions throughout its history; that doesn't mean this is automatically one of them.)

I'll let you in on a well-known (to anyone who is or knows a programmer) secret: programmers tend to love playing with new technologies. That includes new APIs that let them do fancier things with less code.

[Sephirius]

Seeing as there's hardly any discussion of the game in here, I guess I'll start. I bought it, I love it, cause my rig can max it at 1920x1080.
If you want to know WHY you need DX10 etc, just take a look at this trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd-2dZMDAGw&fmt=22

Yes, that is ingame.

I also like the Hard-scifi setting too: Computer systems 'simulate' audio for situational awareness, newtonian physics, etc.

It's fantastic fun for multiplayer and a great 'first big effort' from futuremark.

[CaptHawkeye]

While we're on the subject of the game itself, can anyone tell me what's in the game other than the fancy physics? Don't get me wrong, it looks like a good idea. But what else can anyone tell me about it's gameplay? Does it use tried and true FPS mechanisms like the "sniper/SMG/assault rifle/rawket" weapon setup? Does it limit you to two guns at once? Just how "FPS" is the FPS aspect of it?

[Marcus Aurelius]

[
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong and even more wrong.
The amount of user mode changes from 2000 to XP in what you could do with display technology is stunning. The difference between XP to Vista, or Vista to Windows 7 is just as large.

What you are talking about is kernel changes, I.E what version of the kernel is packaged into the operating system. This really doesn't matter to a program such as office which deals with very different things than whether the kernel can support things like priority managed I/O (though that is a very nice feature in Vista).

Deploying say, windows 7 to Windows 2000 would be a royal pain and would require implementing things like XPs Visual Styles (or Themes as the properties tab is known).

I suppose that you meant "deploying Office 2007 to Windows 2000", since otherwise that sentence does not make sense to me. The next question is that does the actual functionality require Visual Styles or just the UI? If it's just the UI, like I suppose it is, then perhaps Microsoft should have skipped the whole Ribbon interface. I guess they needed something to try and sell a new version with.

In any case, after investigating the issue more thoroughly I concede the point: as it is, making Office 2007 compatible with Windows 2000 would have required significant backporting of XP features to 2k. However, I still think that the same probably does not apply to many other productivity applications which dropped W2k support around 2007, since most of them do not have the amount of UI changes Office 2007 had compared to 2003.

[Marcus Aurelius]

So we're left with DX10 on Vista and up. You know what? This is what happened with DX9 and XP. Except people forget because XP has been around for half the computing lifetime of most people here.

Nope. DX9 runtimes are available for Windows 2000, ME and 98 (including SE of course). In case you didn't know, Microsoft also backported GDI+ to the same operating systems (this in reference to my earlier post, since I think it is relevant).

[Ariphaos]

Some of my sites still get Windows 98/ME hits.

Granted, they're almost all zombies trying to fill my forums with spam, but they are genuine computers.

Edit: That is to say, XP not going anywhere for a very long time.

[Sephirius]

While we're on the subject of the game itself, can anyone tell me what's in the game other than the fancy physics? Don't get me wrong, it looks like a good idea. But what else can anyone tell me about it's gameplay? Does it use tried and true FPS mechanisms like the "sniper/SMG/assault rifle/rawket" weapon setup? Does it limit you to two guns at once? Just how "FPS" is the FPS aspect of it?

Nope, as you probably would in space, you only get one gun.
50 round magazine, 900+rpm. Has a 'sniper' mode where it fires 10 rounds quickly (much like the real life AN-94 does with 2 rounds) and delays the recoil while scoped.

You can also shoot rifle grenades from the underslung launcher, in one of three modes: ICE, which is basically a smokescreen, EMP, which disables suit electrics within a radius temporarily, and HE, which actually doesn't do much damage if at all, but it can push other players off surfaces or out of nooks and crannies to where you want them to be.

Health is of the regenerating variety, but only to a certain point, i.e. if you take hits until your health ("Suit Integrity") is 60%, it'll only repair itself up to 75% or so, and that number decreases the more damage you take over a period of time.
Basically, taking a lot of damage at once is worse than the same amount over time, as your suit will not repair as much.

You can turn off suit systems to go 'dark' and be stealthy at the expense of recoil compensation, sound, and sticking to surfaces, but melee attacks are 1 hit kills.


And also: STOP FUCKING CRYING YOU CHEAP BASTARDS AND GO BUY VISTA OR 7. XP IS DEAD.