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Have a net said anything about rework of engine or official dx12 work for the Expansion?


zipain.5276

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Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Those libraries are so different it would probably require rewriting the entire code base. It is not like you can just download a new version of directX and install it. DX9 and DX12 have almost nothing in common. They don’t work the same on a fundamental level. One does all the shading and effects itself, and the other requires the programmers to do it all. The entire graphics engine would have to be thrown away and rewritten.

If the code is completely modular and not tightly coupled at all, it might theoretically be possible, but considering the age of the code, I sincerely doubt that it is. The longer people mess with a code base, the more new features get added, the more tightly coupled junk code gets added by people in a hurry, or trying to fix unforeseen bugs.

I don’t know anything about the GW2 code, but I’ve coded using both DX9 and DX12, and I don’t think people realize how ridiculous they sound asking for an upgrade to be done. It isn’t going to happen. They might as well make GW3 if they are going to switch graphics libraries.

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@"Cleopatra.4068" said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Those libraries are so different it would probably require rewriting the entire code base. It is not like you can just download a new version of directX and install it. DX9 and DX12 have almost nothing in common. They don’t work the same on a fundamental level. One does all the shading and effects itself, and the other requires the programmers to do it all. The entire graphics engine would have to be thrown away and rewritten.

If the code is completely modular and not tightly coupled at all, it might theoretically be possible, but considering the age of the code, I sincerely doubt that it is. The longer people mess with a code base, the more new features get added, the more tightly coupled junk code gets added by people in a hurry, or trying to fix unforeseen bugs.

I don’t know anything about the GW2 code, but I’ve coded using both DX9 and DX12, and I don’t think people realize how ridiculous they sound asking for an upgrade to be done. It isn’t going to happen. They might as well make GW3 if they are going to switch graphics libraries.

I agree. DX12 isn't going to magically fix the performance problems. Those stem from something else because there's tons of DX9 games that still work perfectly fine on any hardware and just "somehow changing to DX12" isn't going to do anything except alienate people with lower hardware specs.There's lots to be done to the engine without fundamentally changing it, and it CAN run smoothly, i've seen it even on my half potato when they do optimisation updates (that inevitabely revert back after a while sadly).Something is definitely "wrong" with the engine, but it's not the directX version.

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@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Because games have been using multiple rendering solution since the mid 90s, when switching your rendering solution is as easy as selecting it in a dropdown menu. Plus unofficial mods porting old games to newer versions of DirectX (complete re-writes, not like the GW2 addon).

@Veprovina.4876 said:DX12 isn't going to magically fix the performance problems.

It won't fix specific performance problems, but it will fix other performance problems. This is very easily seen when using the dx2py mod.

isn't going to do anything except alienate people with lower hardware specs

Because for some reason we can't have toggles right? Most directx 12 games out there are also supporting directx 11, when directx 11 was new, games supported both it and directx 10, same with 9 and 10.

Not sure why having multiple rendering pipelines is such an alien concept on these forums. It has been done since the early days of 3D computer graphics. Those that have the hardware will take adventage of it, those who don't, will see no difference. Most of the work for the content creators, 3D models, textures, animations, music, sound, gameplay is not gonna be affected in any meaningful way.

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@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Those libraries are so different it would probably require rewriting the entire code base. It is not like you can just download a new version of directX and install it. DX9 and DX12 have almost nothing in common. They don’t work the same on a fundamental level. One does all the shading and effects itself, and the other requires the programmers to do it all. The entire graphics engine would have to be thrown away and rewritten.

If the code is completely modular and not tightly coupled at all, it might theoretically be possible, but considering the age of the code, I sincerely doubt that it is. The longer people mess with a code base, the more new features get added, the more tightly coupled junk code gets added by people in a hurry, or trying to fix unforeseen bugs.

I don’t know anything about the GW2 code, but I’ve coded using both DX9 and DX12, and I don’t think people realize how ridiculous they sound asking for an upgrade to be done. It isn’t going to happen. They might as well make GW3 if they are going to switch graphics libraries.

If they can actually pull it off I would be thrilled, but I'm not going to complain about it if it does not happen either.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Because games have been using multiple rendering solution since the mid 90s, when switching your rendering solution is as easy as selecting it in a dropdown menu. Plus unofficial mods porting old games to newer versions of DirectX (complete re-writes, not like the GW2 addon).

@Veprovina.4876 said:DX12 isn't going to magically fix the performance problems.

It won't fix specific performance problems, but it will fix other performance problems. This is very easily seen when using the dx2py mod.

isn't going to do anything except alienate people with lower hardware specs

Because for some reason we can't have toggles right? Most directx 12 games out there are also supporting directx 11, when directx 11 was new, games supported both it and directx 10, same with 9 and 10.

Not sure why having multiple rendering pipelines is such an alien concept on these forums. It has been done since the early days of 3D computer graphics. Those that have the hardware will take adventage of it, those who don't, will see no difference. Most of the work for the content creators, 3D models, textures, animations, music, sound, gameplay is not gonna be affected in any meaningful way.

Yes but... dx2py doesn't work for everyone. So not everyone will have a performance boost. I tried it, didn't do anything for me. That mod is only for extreme high end graphics cards as it uses those best.

Also, you kinda proved my point? If the game also needs to support dx11 and down up to 9 as if to not alienate people with lower system specs - we already have dx9 - just optimise that one which will in turn also help people with stronger systems. If they can optimise it for a potato and make it work there, then it'll work on anything stronger. But it won't look good if such an old game suddenly stops working for lower system specs because it's dx12 optimised, but dx9 still doesn't work. And if they make both optimised that's just double the work when the argument is - if the dx9 version gets optimised and works for every system what benefit does dx12 have?

I mean, if you could get 60+ stable fps in dx9 without dropping in heavily populated areas what benefit does dx12 bring to the table then?And evidence of other games running dx9 suggests that it's totally possible to have a dx9 game not be optimised like garbage and run fully stable on recommended specs and up. So why can't Guild Wars 2? Why does GW2 need a completely different renderer (like people suggested it is compared to 9) that will require a completely different engine rework and system to be stable?

And yeah, i get it, the code might be really bad but what you're suggesting is have both DX9 and DX12 versions. As stated in this thread and others DX12 can't work on this version because the renderer and how it handles stuff is incompatible meaning the game engine would need a complete rework. So you're suggesting both a complete rework with DX12 and DX9 optimisation that would bring it up to par with DX12 (so that it's not different).

Sooo.... I don't get why that's better than just keeping DX9 and making it work? Because it CAN work...

And no, DX12 doesn't work with older systems, so it's either DX12 capable hardware or no game for you if they switch to DX12. DX12 capable hardware does support older versions, but a DX9 graphics card won't be able to run a DX12 game. (unless they changed how this works recently - in which case, someone correct me)

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Because games have been using multiple rendering solution since the mid 90s, when switching your rendering solution is as easy as selecting it in a dropdown menu. Plus unofficial mods porting old games to newer versions of DirectX (complete re-writes, not like the GW2 addon).

This game already has multiple rendering solutions, as it also used OpenGL to support Mac machines. That isn’t necessarily relevant. Just because other games could upgrade doesn’t mean this one can.

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@"Veprovina.4876" said:That mod is only for extreme high end graphics cards as it uses those best.

No it's not. It works fine on a (not high end) graphics card from 2015, the requirements of the mod are very low

And evidence of other games running dx9 suggests that it's totally possible to have a dx9 game not be optimised like garbage and run fully stable on recommended specs and up. So why can't Guild Wars 2?

Can you tell me which dx9 mmorpg (released after 2012) actually runs well? Just to see your "evidence". And please don't tell me about dx9 single player games.

And no, DX12 doesn't work with older systems, so it's either DX12 capable hardware or no game for you if they switch to DX12. DX12 capable hardware does support older versions, but a DX9 graphics card won't be able to run a DX12 game. (unless they changed how this works recently - in which case, someone correct me)

Depends on what you call "older system".On the AMD side, DirectX 12 is available starting with the 7xxx series released back in 2012, so anyone with an AMD GPU from 2012 onwards will have DirectX 12 capability. NVIDIA support for DirectX 12 goes as far back as 2010 with the GeForce 400 series. Intel integrated GPUs support DirectX 12 since Haswell back in 2013 (3xxx)So really it depends what you call "older system", an Intel CPU before 2013 (for iGPU), and NVIDIA GPU before 2010, and an AMD GPU before 2012.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:DX12 isn't going to magically fix the performance problems.

It won't fix specific performance problems, but it will fix other performance problems. This is very easily seen when using the dx2py mod.

isn't going to do anything except alienate people with lower hardware specs

Because for some reason we can't have toggles right? Most directx 12 games out there are also supporting directx 11, when directx 11 was new, games supported both it and directx 10, same with 9 and 10.

Not sure why having multiple rendering pipelines is such an alien concept on these forums. It has been done since the early days of 3D computer graphics. Those that have the hardware will take adventage of it, those who don't, will see no difference. Most of the work for the content creators, 3D models, textures, animations, music, sound, gameplay is not gonna be affected in any meaningful way.

adding to this, majority of end-users (your typical person who uses a computer for work/gaming/school) tend to not care for their machines -- software+hardware -- as much as a power user would do, so eventually stuff would break or stop working and many people just opt to replace their hardware/computer with a newer one.

eventually as time passes there will be less and less machines that are dx12 incompatible.

also, it's not as if releasing a client with dx12 support would mean the old dx9 client would suddenly not work or stop being supported. of course they'd keep it for legacy purposes either temporary or permanently. many games such as wow/ff14/etc. allow (or used to allow, since iirc ff14 dropped 32bit and dx9 but other games still kept the option for older rendering) you to switch back in-case you play on older hardware. there will be no alienating based on hardware specification.

personally i'd rather if they released a client with better multi-threading support and using dx11 render for rendering (instead of dx12) for gw2 as it's been out longer so in theory there will be more documentation and experience with regards to coding for it - plus most drivers and gpus out now are already well optimised for it.

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@Astyrah.4015 said:eventually as time passes there will be less and less machines that are dx12 incompatible.

91.63% of users on Steam have a DirectX 12 enabled GPU, which isn't surprising given how old a GPU must be (pre-2010 for NVIDIA, pre-2012 for AMD) to not support DirectX 12. Maybe a great percentage of Guild Wars 2 players have machines from before 2010 and can't use DirectX 12, who knows.

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@Cleopatra.4068 said:

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Because games have been using multiple rendering solution since the mid 90s, when switching your rendering solution is as easy as selecting it in a dropdown menu. Plus unofficial mods porting old games to newer versions of DirectX (complete re-writes, not like the GW2 addon).

This game already has multiple rendering solutions, as it also used OpenGL to support Mac machines. That isn’t necessarily relevant. Just because other games could upgrade doesn’t mean this one can.

This game already has rendering solution but that doesn't mean that this one can have multiple rendering solutions...You first say that this game used to have multiple rendering solutions and then you say that this game can't.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Because games have been using multiple rendering solution since the mid 90s, when switching your rendering solution is as easy as selecting it in a dropdown menu. Plus unofficial mods porting old games to newer versions of DirectX (complete re-writes, not like the GW2 addon).

This game already has multiple rendering solutions, as it also used OpenGL to support Mac machines. That isn’t necessarily relevant. Just because other games could upgrade doesn’t mean this one can.

This game already has rendering solution but that doesn't mean that this one can have multiple rendering solutions...You first say that this game used to have multiple rendering solutions and then you say that this game can't.

Just because it had multiple rendering solutions already doesn’t mean it can add a NEW one.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astyrah.4015 said:eventually as time passes there will be less and less machines that are dx12 incompatible.

91.63% of users on Steam have a DirectX 12 enabled GPU, which isn't surprising given how old a GPU must be (pre-2010 for NVIDIA, pre-2012 for AMD) to not support DirectX 12. Maybe a great percentage of Guild Wars 2 players have machines from before 2010 and can't use DirectX 12, who knows.

i mean if you're using a pre-2010 computer for gw2 you're really making it hard for yourself and probably play with less than ideal fps unless it's a top of the line i5 or i7 (1st gen) but even then i'd see instances these cpus would struggle. core tyria, pvp and pve instances (fractals/dungeons) might be possible but PoF, wvw and open world metas would probably be very unpleasant.

but yeah exactly what i was saying, as seen on steam hardware surveys (sample size of a million or more), time will come everyone will have a dx12 compatible machine, even if it's a simple iGPU from intel -- which by the way has a performance line now, under Intel Iris XE -- so future-proofing your game to optimise and make use of newer hardware can also be considered a QoL update for the playerbase.

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Well this went side ways. Played with dx12 and it seems to give me a big boost in multiple games. Wow which is older than gw2, have amazing performance today. I can run it with 200fps+ even in main citys, when running dx12.

All I'm saying is, I wish us with beefy systems, also will be able to play the game with beefy settings or in some way let us play the game with decent fps without having to dumb down graphics big time. To avoid 30fps dips...

Game is just very clunky atm and I just see performance update as one of the most important things for this expansion

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I think that they're always working on the engine and performance, and lawd, the game needs that and more. I'd expect the expansion will contain plenty of performance work, which may or may not be countered completely by new content and features.

A big part of the problem is that ANet cater to huge zerg events and metas, because people like those (which is great and all) but those are the places that the game becomes a ridiculous migraine slide show. You'd think that performance might be higher up the list of priorities given their fervor for such events and how, as good as they sometimes are, show the game in the worst light possible. Which makes me think we're pretty much at peak performance for what this game can handle without substantial rebuild or something new.

And that degree of effort (read: cost) is almost certainly reserved for sequels.

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Something interesting to bring into the topic aimed at those talking about "directx 9 GPUs". The minimum requirements for Guild Wars 2 are: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800GTS or ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT. Both of them are Directx 10 capable cards, meaning players with "directx 9 GPUs" should not even be able to play the game. Maybe a change to DirectX 10 (which btw supports multi threading much better than DirectX 9) could fix a lot of the game's problems, without "alienating" anyone with potato hardware.

Worth noting that the lowest/minimum spec for an iGPU (the Intel Iris 5100) supports DirectX 12, meaning anyone playing this game with an iGPU is ALREADY DirectX 12 capable. Meaning those running GW2 on a laptop or low end desktop without a discreet video card, are already able to use DirectX 12.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:Depends on what you call "older system".On the AMD side, DirectX 12 is available starting with the 7xxx series released back in 2012, so anyone with an AMD GPU from 2012 onwards will have DirectX 12 capability. NVIDIA support for DirectX 12 goes as far back as 2010 with the GeForce 400 series. Intel integrated GPUs support DirectX 12 since Haswell back in 2013 (3xxx)So really it depends what you call "older system", an Intel CPU before 2013 (for iGPU), and NVIDIA GPU before 2010, and an AMD GPU before 2012.Fun slightly related fact:

The last x86 desktop CPU released in 2002, but in 2012 GW2 still didnt have an x64 client. It wasnt until 2016 that they released that.

So yeah... "obsolete" tech is rarely going away fast.

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@Chrysaliss.8720 said:

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Why do people think switching from DX9 to DX12 is something that even can be done?

Because it has been done before by other games like WoW.

And yes it does improve performance massively. Only using the unofficial dx12 addon increased my fps by 20%

You mean the mod that work for only a part of the community and either crash the game for others, decrease the fps or just render black void ? sorry but an halfbaked solution like what this mod do will not work for a company standard, it's really fine for a mod since you either use it or not you can still play the game without but not for the official game.

There is no real way to rewrite to update ithe dx version except to redo the whole render code base, even the sader of all models if it's not modular (which is surely the case with a mmo like gw2).And all of that for what ? dx12 will not magicly fix your fps, it's just different and better for new hardware that it without speaking about all the issue that gonna happend if they update it to dx12 because a change like that will implement so many bug for years, there is so many others way to optimise game.

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Depends on what you call "older system".On the AMD side, DirectX 12 is available starting with the 7xxx series released back in 2012, so anyone with an AMD GPU from 2012 onwards will have DirectX 12 capability. NVIDIA support for DirectX 12 goes as far back as 2010 with the GeForce 400 series. Intel integrated GPUs support DirectX 12 since Haswell back in 2013 (3xxx)So really it depends what you call "older system", an Intel CPU before 2013 (for iGPU), and NVIDIA GPU before 2010, and an AMD GPU before 2012.Fun slightly related fact:

The last x86 desktop CPU released in 2002, but in 2012 GW2 still didnt have an x64 client. It wasnt until 2016 that they released that.

So yeah... "obsolete" tech is rarely going away fast.

Although desktop CPUs are all x64, there are still CPUs that are either 32 bit only, or need specific motherboard combinations to activate 64 bit instructions. For example Intel's Atom, with latest release around 2012. Also, the main "problem" with that is the operating system, not the CPU, as Microsoft still releases 32 bit OS, so someone might have a perfectly capable x64 CPU but cannot run a native x64 application because they use 32 bit Windows 8

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