[MUD-Dev] [bus][des] Anarchy Online and the free MMORPG...

[ceo]

Douglas Goodall wrote:
> Adam martin wrote:

>> That's irrelevant: if your game is properly written, the graphics
>> card will be used. Hardware acceleration is automatic if you're
>> doing 3D and has been around for more than 10 years as the
>> "default" for games development.

> Only if you're doing everything via DirectX or OpenGL (and doing
> it correctly), which AO obviously is not. DirectX wasn't around 10

Find a mainstream computer game that uses neither of these? There
are a few, sure, but very few...

> years ago (1.0 came out in mid-1996, IIRC) and didn't do 3D well
> until DX7 (1999?). Only a few years before that, I was working on
> a

Yeah, my bad. I should have said that it was only hw-accelerated by
default for the last 7 years. There were plenty of software-rendered
games out 10 years ago (quake!) which got GL support retro-added.

> DOS game with optional Glide support... I can't fault Funcom for
> not doing everything via DX7 when AO was released (2001). Nor can
> I

2001 was pretty late to be using neither DX nor OGL. For reference,
Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament were both out already, and Quake 2 had
been OGL. What were they doing releasing software-only renderers TWO
YEARS after the GeForce came out with on-board T&L?

What have they been doing since?

All I can guess is "AO Purgatory": they knew perfectly well they
desperately needed to move to "modern" game dev techniques but
simply didn't have the spare budget / manpower to do that when they
had 1 million + 1 other problems to deal with?

> fault them for not using OpenGL instead when only a few video
> cards even had mini-GL support. I can, however, fault them for not
> fixing

By 2001, GeForce had already ripped its massive great hole through
the market (more than 30% IIRC?)...

Adam M
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