Question about Windows XP support

General Feedback & Requests
1

I have a question about Windows XP support.

So I when patch 4.2 gets released for Unreal Engine 4 Windows XP will be supported and it will use OpenGL.

My question is why not also add support for DirectX 9? I know Unreal Engine 4 uses DirectX 11 render but why not add support for DirectX 9 as well? What about Windows XP 64-bit?

The PC version of Metro 2033 supports DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11.

The PC version of Red Faction: Armageddon supports DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11.

The PC version of Saints Row: The Third supports DirectX9, DirectX 10, and DrrectX 11.

The PC version of Metro: Last Light supports DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11. It is one of the best looking PC versions of video games that releases for sale in 2013.

Here is a list of all the PC versions of video games that support Directx 9 to DirectX 11. The PC version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat supports DirectX 8, DirectX 9.oc, DirectX 10, DirectX 10.1, and DirectX 11.

I asked this question in March and to some people in a Private Message (PM).

I don’t want to be annoying but just want to know why a bunch of PC versions of video games have DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11 support?

I don’t have much experience with OpenGL only DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11.

I use Unreal Engine 3 (unreal Development Kit (UDK), CryEngine 2, CryEngine 3, and CryEngine every week. I will be paying a subscription for Unreal Engine 4 at the end of 2014 and since Windows XP is supported I am going to add support for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 for my video game and it would be nice to add support and work with DirectX 9.

I know some people will say it will limit Epic Games for what they can do with Unreal Engine 4 but I don’t believe it I use DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11 every week and as I said a bunch of PC versions of video games use DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11. The PC version of Metro: Last Light is one of the best looking PC versions of video games released for sale in 2013 as I said above.

2

DirectX 9 and 11 have very different API’s. DirectX11 now works off the idea of feature levels, so you can target specific features from D3D9, D3D10, D3D11, etc. But its not supported on Windows XP. So they would have to write a new rendering branch just for DX9 and most likely rewrite a lot of their shaders to work with DX9 and DX11 or have different shaders for both, which means additional support, more time, etc. As far as I am concerned, DX9 and Windows XP both need to go the way of the dinosaurs, I am glad that DX9 is not supported in UE4.

3

Yes I know this but why not take the time to add support for DirectX 9?

I mean I take my time with all 3. The Metro video game developers 4A Games took their time with it.

I don’t have much OpenGL experience and would like to develop video games for Windows XP with Unreal Engine 4.

4

Because that would be time taken away from more beneficial things. It’s not 2006 anymore, its time to let DirectX9 go into retirement.

5

Well Epic Games has 300 people working on Unreal Engine 4 from what I heard.

Why not have lets say 10? Work on it?

6

Or you could grab the source code and implement and share with the community and even submit a pull request to have it merged. Since you work with DirectX9, 10, and 11. You would be a good candidate for this as you have experience across the board.

7

I guess I can do that. The problem though is I am working by myself I have been doing this by myself for 3 years now I am very busy with other stuff I only had help once in 2011.

I started in 2011 working on developing my own video game engine. It’s not so good like Unreal Engine 4 and I am still not done developing a video game I developed to run on it.

Since Unreal Engine 4 is open source maybe some other PC gamer will make it happen.

I guess that is the only way Unreal Engine 4 might get DirectX 9 support is if someone writes DirectX 9 render support for it.

8

I remember Tim using the 64 bit version of Windows XP when it first came out, and my recollection of it and its driver support was that it was experimental at best :wink: That was a long long time ago and maybe things have changed, however AFAICT the vast majority of people still using Windows XP are using the 32 bit version.

With regard to DX9 support – we’re keeping the option open to add it down the road if absolutely needed on Windows XP, however only supporting OpenGL on Windows XP for now allows us to focus resources on more forward looking features and platforms.

I believe the version of OpenGL supported on Windows XP exposes more features than DirectX 9 does (I’m not a rendering guy), so that’s a nice side benefit. The main reason we would want to add support for DirectX 9 for is in case there are a ton of of driver compatibility issues with OpenGL and Windows XP.

9

So I am a bit curious. I see 4.3 will be out this month.

Is Epic Games exploring adding DirectX 9 to Unreal Engine 4? Preferably DirectX 9.0c February 9th, 2005 version. Also explore adding Windows XP 64-bit? I tried Windows XP 64-bit back in 2007 and remember it had something like 128GB of RAM limit or something like that. I know there are 2 PC versions of video games that support Windows XP 64-bit the PC version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Assassin’s Creed II.

There are still PC gamers who have Windows XP only and some of them don’t know anything about OpenGL or know very little about OpenGL and would like to develop video games for Windows XP. Myself included.

I am seeing a lot of indie video games released for sale on Steam every day that have Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

DirectX 9 doesn’t have to be added today or this moth or 3 months from now. Take your time.

10

I’m not even sure why you would want to support XP? Even the Steam hardware survey indicates that less than 5% of their user base is still using XP, and that number is only going to keep getting smaller as time goes forwards. What would that number look like in the time taken to actually build a game?

11

Building games for ATMs …or for villages in Tibet.

12

Unlike DirectX, OpenGL is a standard implemented in driver, so OpenGL comes with GPU driver. But it really does not matter if DirectX or OpenGL is used, that something you should not need to think about as you use 3rd party engine, its Epic job to both renderes render the same thing. UE4 is made to be very portable, it even got its own standard API layer so you dont need to think on what OS you target in, only situation you need to care if you want to work on mobile, you need to lower down the graphics.

13

I would advice Epic to not take so much time on Window XP, it’s 2014 and in 2015 window 9 will be released with directx12.

People who are requesting directx9 don’t even know the benefit of API.

If Epic keep working on old stuff they’ll lose their best game engine award…

99% of gamers have window7/8 in future 9.
And only 1% window xp.

Stop requesting things that’s not even what gamers are looking for.

If gamers can’t afford window7/8, how can they afford you game ?

Bf4, cod, titanfall, GTA… they all don’t support directx9 and win xp.

If want directx9, you have source code available build it yourself.

14

Build your own game engine…
There’s no such AAA game engine support this.

15

Epic Games added Windows XP support in like May.

I don’t have much knowledge with OpenGL and I would like to develop video games with Unreal Engine 4 on Windows XP with DirectX 9.

I did develop my own video game engine since 2011 which has support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11. I have not gotten to adding DirectX 11.1 and DirectX 11.2 support yet.

Also the video game engine I developed is not as good as Unreal Engine 4 because Epic Games has been developing Unreal Engine 4 since 2003 and developed Unreal Engine 4 to be highly portable to a lot of hardware and Operating Systems (OS’).

16

The question is why do you want to develop with DX9? The beauty with UE4 is you dont need to know about the underlying graphics system. OpenGL on WinXP has more features than DX9. But saying that you won’t be coding for a specific API anyways. If you need to do any underlying graphics development you will be using RHI commands not specific OpenGL or DX commands.

17

Why you so obsessed over DirectX9? :stuck_out_tongue: it’s a rendering libery, something that you wont have any interaction with in UE4 (or else you gonna play around with custom node in materials or go deeply in to engine source code) regardless if you use DirectX9, DirectX11 or OpenGL. And as said above OpenGL is a lot better DirectX 9 on XP

18

dx9 is a lot faster than opengl on XP this is why

19

That depends on how renderer is coded, lot of games use DX to GL wrappers that can be slower, i’m note sure how GL RHI is constructed in UE4 thru. Either way this is a lot cheper solution investing on something that is dying

20

Unity 3d has 40% amount of Windows XP gamers in mid of 2014, and now it has “only” 25% because of microsoft’s stopping support for xp and anti-advertising. Users stops using windows xp because game/software developers stops it, not vice versa. Unity “still” supports dx9 too, and those of us, who would like to use UE4, but cannot, because of its: big system requirements, drop dx9 and xp support, forced to use unity.
if unreal engine is aimed on big companies, why they set it free? are big companies doesn’t have enough money to buy it as they always did? if they are concerned about small companies and individuals, they need to listen to their requirements, shouldn’t they?