Future Plans For a GW2 DirectX12on7 ?

[hugeboss.5432]

Recently, while doing some Win7 dx9/12 mod research, I came across some DLL packages "Direct3D 12 For Windows 7" (Signed by Microsoft SHA256). Some recent article referred to an MS announcement (regarding another popular MMO game dx12on7 project):

Microsoft said: “We have received warm welcome from the gaming community, and we continued to work with several game studios to further evaluate this work. To better support game developers at larger scales, we are publishing the following resources to allow game developers to run their DirectX 12 games on Windows 7."

So, now they are making it easier to do this kind of thing, and you can find some DX12on7 packages & code examples etc. There are a few things that won't work in the same way as it does on win10/11 dx12 though (OS limitations). So, the question is, does Anet have any plans/interest to implement dx12on7 for gw2 at some later stage?

[I did read the somewhat long & detailed Anet DirectX11 dev post when it was posted, but I forgot if it mentioned anything about Dx12. I'm sure others have asked about this before too, but now it seems much more relevant, due to Microsoft being much more open & supportive to win7 software dx12 upgrade migrations.]

[Still A Win7 Fan]

[mythical.6315]

They should stabilize things on DX11 first before even thinking about upgrading. That’s assuming the shift from DX11 to DX12 would even be worth it. 

Edited December 29, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Mungo Zen.9364]

DX11 had a clear path from DX9 which GW2 launched with. There were comments about the path from DX11 to DX12 being a bigger technological challenge and perhaps insurmountable for GW2 engine. 
 

Yet, with Windows 7 being end of life, I am surprised MS would invest any resources into making DX12 work on Win7.

EDIT

After some reading it seems that Blizzard paid Microsoft to develop the stuff to make DX12 work on Win7 by baking a lot of the components into the game itself.  The logic here is due to Windows 7 being the predominant OS for gamers in China and WoW having a massive player base in China that Blizzard would pay to update the game to help those players (and keep them as happy subscribers). 
 

It appears that Microsoft has offered this to other companies as a service but when it comes to GW2 how many players use Win7 and how much revenue do they generate to offset the cost of Anet paying Microsoft for the upgrade.  It’s probably not how they want to spend money even if they are able to get DX12 to work with GW2.  

Edited December 29, 2022 by Mungo Zen.9364

[Khisanth.2948]

Looking at the Steam survey, I doubt ANet is going to be spending any resources to address less than 2% of the market.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

There's no need, DXVK superceeds any further work the devs could do. The only reason to switch to DirectX 11 at all was because DX9 isn't properly threaded, and was causing major issues.

 

Also Windows is quickly becoming a dead platform that isn't worth exclusively targetting anymore.

 

Windows 11 is bad, and it isn't even the first time Microsoft has messed up.. Windows Me, Vista and 8 were bad too, and each time this happens Microsoft loses massive amounts of market share, to the point where they're barely competitive anymore especially with the decline of desktop computers in favor of portable devices, all of which run an Apple, Android or Linux OS.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[mythical.6315]

6 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Also Windows is quickly becoming a dead platform that isn't worth exclusively targetting anymore.

 

Source?

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Also Windows is quickly becoming a dead platform that isn't worth exclusively targetting anymore.

 

Windows 11 is bad, and it isn't even the first time Microsoft has messed up.. Windows Me, Vista and 8 were bad too, and each time this happens Microsoft loses massive amounts of market share, to the point where they're barely competitive anymore especially with the decline of desktop computers in favor of portable devices, all of which run an Apple, Android or Linux OS.

I'm not a fan of Microsoft myself either, but we can't let our preconceptions cloud our perception of reality. So, let's address the points you have made:

1. " Windows Me, Vista and 8 were bad too, and each time this happens Microsoft loses massive amounts of market share".

Sure, there were a lot of problematic (well, more problematic than usual) systems coming from Microsoft. They do not really cause MS to lose the market share however - people that refuse to move to such bad system just keep using the previous one (98, xp and 7 respectively). They don't suddenly move to linux (or abandon desktop computers altogether). And then they alll eventually move to the following system that comes after that bad one (so, again, xp, 7, and now 10, although that last process is not completely finished yet). So, yeah, if Win 11 turns out to be bad (and so far it does nto look very promising), people will just stay with Win10. And likely if that happens, MS will work harder to make win 12 more appealing. Like they always did before when they failed an OS release.

2. "especially with the decline of desktop computers in favor of portable devices, all of which run an Apple, Android or Linux OS"

What decline of desktop computers? If anything, last few years have seen a resurgence of the desktop market (well, desktop and laptop one, but that distinction is not relevant in this context). If you think the market share for desktops is shrinking, it's because you forget that people can have more than one device, and that (Blizzard memes notwithstanding) people with desktops do also have their phones - sometimes more than one. Having phones does not mean they will suddenly chuck out their desktops out of the window however. Or that they will change their Windows desktop into a Linux one.

 

[Bakeneko.5826]

12 hours ago, hugeboss.5432 said:

Recently, while doing some Win7 dx9/12 mod research, I came across some DLL packages "Direct3D 12 For Windows 7" (Signed by Microsoft SHA256). Some recent article referred to an MS announcement (regarding another popular MMO game dx12on7 project):

Microsoft said: “We have received warm welcome from the gaming community, and we continued to work with several game studios to further evaluate this work. To better support game developers at larger scales, we are publishing the following resources to allow game developers to run their DirectX 12 games on Windows 7."

So, now they are making it easier to do this kind of thing, and you can find some DX12on7 packages & code examples etc. There are a few things that won't work in the same way as it does on win10/11 dx12 though (OS limitations). So, the question is, does Anet have any plans/interest to implement dx12on7 for gw2 at some later stage?

[I did read the somewhat long & detailed Anet DirectX11 dev post when it was posted, but I forgot if it mentioned anything about Dx12. I'm sure others have asked about this before too, but now it seems much more relevant, due to Microsoft being much more open & supportive to win7 software dx12 upgrade migrations.]

[Still A Win7 Fan]

How about Anet supports actually usable, good, still supported by MS OSes?

Edited December 30, 2022 by Bakeneko.5826

[Sindust.7059]

6 hours ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

good

>create online account or you're not allowed to use your PC

I think we have different definitions of what constitutes "good".

[Astralporing.1957]

36 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

>create online account or you're not allowed to use your PC

You don't have to create MS account for Win 10. And while  you theoretically need to do it for win 11, the workarounds that let you skip that requirement are really easy to do.

Notice: the latter does not mean i'd call win 11 a "good" system.

 

[Sindust.7059]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You don't have to create MS account for Win 10. And while  you theoretically need to do it for win 11, the workarounds that let you skip that requirement are really easy to do.

Notice: the latter does not mean i'd call win 11 a "good" system.

 

Win 10 is over 7 years old at this point, and in little over 2 years will be in the same category as win 7 (i.e. it reaches EoL in 2025), which will make it ineligible for support soon according to the guy I quoted. And there you already have to jump through hoops to get it running without an online account.

 

And the only "workaround" that worked when my colleague tried to install win 11 on a laptop at work was to create a throwaway account, and then when the system was already up, creating a new offline account and deleting the online one. That's hardly a workaround, because you still need to create an online account to be able to use your PC. The number of hoops you have to jump through to get it to run is frankly insulting at this point.

[Infusion.7149]

Not sure why people giving Mariyuuna a confused emote. DXVK works on Windows 7.

Maybe they weren't clear about how to use it.
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/wiki/Windows

See also

 

[Astralporing.1957]

16 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

And the only "workaround" that worked when my colleague tried to install win 11 on a laptop at work was to create a throwaway account, and then when the system was already up, creating a new offline account and deleting the online one. That's hardly a workaround, because you still need to create an online account to be able to use your PC. The number of hoops you have to jump through to get it to run is frankly insulting at this point.

You just need to kill the network connection during the account creation, and it will then let you make a local account.

[Sindust.7059]

46 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You just need to kill the network connection during the account creation, and it will then let you make a local account.

That doesn't work.

[Astralporing.1957]

16 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

That doesn't work.

It does, have done this many times already. You just need to know when to cut the connection.

Edit: like i said, it must be done during account creation, not before. Setup will try to create an MS account, fail to get a connection, and go for a backup option.

Edit: and it seems it's actually much easier than that, because you don;t even have to mess up with connections. All you need to do is to fail the initial account creation for any reason and you will then be redirected to local creation, and it seems just putting nonsensical info in login/passford for MS account works as well.:

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[Sindust.7059]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It does, have done this many times already. You just need to know when to cut the connection.

Edit: like i said, it must be done during account creation, not before. Setup will try to create an MS account, fail to get a connection, and go for a backup option.

Edit: and it seems it's actually much easier than that, because you don;t even have to mess up with connections. All you need to do is to fail the initial account creation for any reason and you will then be redirected to local creation, and it seems just putting nonsensical info in login/passford for MS account works as well.:

 

You know, you absolutely changed my mind! This totally sounds like a reasonable approach! Windows 11 is great, and has absolutley no flaws, and not a single thing about the approaches you've shown contains even the slightest hint of anti-consumer practices! This is totally something that you'd expect in a "good" user friendly OS!

 

/s

 

With all the data that they are collecting the fact that they still expect anyone to pay for that piece of garbage is an insult on top of injury. They should be paying their users for the data that they are collecting, and not the other way around.

[Linken.6345]

37 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

You know, you absolutely changed my mind! This totally sounds like a reasonable approach! Windows 11 is great, and has absolutley no flaws, and not a single thing about the approaches you've shown contains even the slightest hint of anti-consumer practices! This is totally something that you'd expect in a "good" user friendly OS!

 

/s

 

With all the data that they are collecting the fact that they still expect anyone to pay for that piece of garbage is an insult on top of injury. They should be paying their users for the data that they are collecting, and not the other way around.

Good that they never said windows 11 was good just that one of your major problem with it was not a problem at all.

[mythical.6315]

19 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Not sure why people giving Mariyuuna a confused emote. DXVK works on Windows 7.

It's because parts of what they have said are false/unsubstantiated.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

21 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

Win 10 is over 7 years old at this point, and in little over 2 years will be in the same category as win 7 (i.e. it reaches EoL in 2025), which will make it ineligible for support soon according to the guy I quoted. And there you already have to jump through hoops to get it running without an online account.

There will always be a way to bypass the User Account portion of the OS.  With a little work, you can find ways to strip out parts of the OS after install.  Things like all the MS products and advertising being pushed on you (such as OneDrive, Office, Store) can be removed, the Telemetry and Heuristics can be removed.  Even Cortana can be removed.

I have been modifying and stripping back my OS since XP with an effort to make the OS as streamlined as possible.  The modern OS is tying up system resources and bandwidth with the nonsense I listed above and more.  By getting rid of the junk I can run games or music software very efficiently with no interruptions.

Modifying your OS is really easy and there are some good Reddit posts about what tools to use and how to use them, alongside some decent Discord communities.  However, always use caution when modifying your OS, reinstalls take time and if you don't plan out what you are doing you could lose your saved data and files (hint always store them off your PC).  And if you modify your OS, don't sign in with your account first!!!!

[cgx.8962]

On 12/30/2022 at 2:35 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Also Windows is quickly becoming a dead platform that isn't worth exclusively targetting anymore.

What's everyone using Mac and Linux? ROFL 

[Sindust.7059]

5 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Good that they never said windows 11 was good just that one of your major problem with it was not a problem at all.

Except the guy that I quoted initially, which started this conversation, literally does:

On 12/30/2022 at 9:48 AM, Bakeneko.5826 said:

How about Anet supports actually usable, good, still supported by MS OSes?

And just because with enough expertise you can change anything about your OS doesn't make it a good OS. A good OS is where you don't have to change much, or one where there are no artificial roadblocks put in your way to make these changes. With enough expertise you could write your own OS after all.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

You know, you absolutely changed my mind! This totally sounds like a reasonable approach! Windows 11 is great, and has absolutley no flaws, and not a single thing about the approaches you've shown contains even the slightest hint of anti-consumer practices! This is totally something that you'd expect in a "good" user friendly OS!

You might want to reread my post again, this time with understanding. Because if you did that, you'd see that i specifically wrote:

On 12/30/2022 at 5:01 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice: the latter does not mean i'd call win 11 a "good" system.

And no, Win 11 not being good does not mean you haven't been mistaken in that claim of yours about online account being absolutely required to use that system. It's still as untrue as when you wrote it for the first time.

[Sindust.7059]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You might want to reread my post again, this time with understanding. Because if you did that, you'd see that i specifically wrote:

And no, Win 11 not being good does not mean you haven't been mistaken in that claim of yours about online account being absolutely required to use that system. It's still as untrue as when you wrote it for the first time.

That's like saying you don't have to pay for any kind of software because you can modify it in such a way that you can use it for free. Just because you can hack the system, doesn't mean your actions are permitted by the design of the system.

[Linken.6345]

24 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

That's like saying you don't have to pay for any kind of software because you can modify it in such a way that you can use it for free. Just because you can hack the system, doesn't mean your actions are permitted by the design of the system.

Using the system as intended is not hacking the system.

[Sindust.7059]

56 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Using the system as intended is not hacking the system.

If it was "as intended", you wouldn't have to perform LAN cable jiu jitsu.