Free Hat
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Posted - 2007.07.26 18:42:00 -
[1]
wow wow wow, so many clueless newbies in this thread.
1) World of Warcraft uses the OpenGL graphics API, which is cross-platform and supported by Mac, Linux and Windows. This is the same API that is used by id Software for their engines (and hence can run on multiple platforms) and other companies who wish to develop cross-platform games. However, the OpenGL API usually lags behind DirectX when it comes to getting the brand spanking new features, as chances are ratified by a review board.
EVE, and pretty much every single game designed only to run on Windows uses Direct3D for graphics. This can be emulated on other systems, but as it is native to Windows there won't be any official support for Mac and Linux versions, expecially with Microsoft pushing DX10 as Vista only. Direct3D is extremely well supported by both major graphics card vendors (ATI and nVidia), where-as ATI has a history of absolute **** OpenGL drivers (something which *hopefully* will be fixed soon).
Finally, there are a hell of a lot more resources and programs that work with Direct3D that don't work with OpenGL, and if the company cannot afford the time or resources to develop their own then this becomes a very important point.
2) The current graphics engine is very old, and was built at a time when hardware support for OpenGL was virtually non-existant. Hence, D3D was the way to go.
3) The old graphics engine will still be supported and updated when the new one comes along (because not everyone has shiny graphics cards), and it is a hell of a lot easier to support 2 versions of the same API than it is to develop two completely different APIs (and you really can't get much more different than OpenGL and Direct3D).
4) The EVE material/shader files are all built around Direct3D. Changing this over to OGL would be a massive undertaking that would either require the devs making a 100% perfect convertor and then updating their entire toolchain or recombining the assets from scratch, something that no serious developer would ever do.
5) What operating system is used on the server has absolutely nothing to do with what operating system(s) the client is running on, so please STFU about that.
6) The "new version" of OpenGL won't be out for months and months and months. And what will be the difference? A slightly different way of creating objects. Please don't preach OpenGL at me - I use it exclusively for all my work and love it to bits, but I know what's coming. It takes ******* ages for any major new features to be added to OpenGL - what ever happened to the SuperBuffers spec? :P
7) CCP's Client Programming Team has been built around knowledge of the APIs the client uses. Changing over to a different API would require not only a massive code rewrite (something that never turns out well in the industry) but also a massive investment with staff retraining, and then you lose the years of experience gained from having a stable platform to develop, test and tweak.
If CCP were a brand new company and decided they wanted to make EVE today, then cross-platform support with OpenGL would be a very attractive option. However, CCP is an estabilished compary, with one game already launched and being maintained with their existing technology and another game currently being built on top of it, and if anyone in the company things it should be a good idea to throw-out their client and write it from scratch then they need to be shot, fired, or both.
Linux and Mac users are currently a (very) vocal minority when it comes to gaming platforms. CCP have stated that they are commited to supporting the various Windows emulation efforts for Mac and Linux, and you should praise them for this as it's a damn sight more than most MMO companies would do for their playerbase.
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