Arcania - Short Technical Q&A @ PCGH

skavenhorde

skavenhorde

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PCGamesHardware asked Andreas Speer, the CEO of Spellbound, a few technical questions about the Trinigy Engine running Arcania. The engine is capable of running DirectX 11, but for Arcania it will not intergrate this feature:
PCGH: We were informed by AMD and Trinigy that Vision Engine 7 will be enhanced with a support for the new Windows 7 API Direct X 11. Will you take part in this development step and integrate DX11 support in the Renderer of ArcaniA: A Gothic Tale too?
Andreas Speer, Spellbound: We will not integrate DX11 support into ArcaniA for a number of reasons.
Firstly, and most importantly, our product will release too early. the number of players who have DX11 systems today is too small. Releasing ArcaniA as a DX11 game would prevent too many players from playing.
Secondly, our rendering technology has been designed to perform well on DX9 systems. The gains that we would get from re-implementing this technology using DX11 features would be insignificant.
For the future DX11 will allow us to develop new rendering technologies that would not be so well adapted to DX9 so we will be happy to embrace it when that time comes.
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More information.
 
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Oh great, a FEATURE to take away development time.
 
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I don't understand how integrating DX11 would prevent people from playing? If the game supports DX10, DX10.2 or DX11 it would still support DX9.
 
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Sergius64 said:
I don't understand how integrating DX11 would prevent people from playing? If the game supports DX10, DX10.2 or DX11 it would still support DX9.
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Yeah sounds like there's some confusion there. She seems to mixing together extra development time to implement the new features available with DX11 and concerns about backward compatibility (which isn't a concern... I wouldn't think).
 
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Sergius64 said:
I don't understand how integrating DX11 would prevent people from playing? If the game supports DX10, DX10.2 or DX11 it would still support DX9.
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I also don't understand why they don't mention DX10 at all. They talk about the reasons they're not going to use DX11 features, and say nothing about DX10.
 
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Sergius64 said:
I don't understand how integrating DX11 would prevent people from playing? If the game supports DX10, DX10.2 or DX11 it would still support DX9.
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Well, remember Halo 2 *required* DX 10, and therefore Vista ...
 
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It means a hell of a lot more QA resources are needed on a project.
 
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I'm getting a bad feeling about this game. Hope I'm wrong.
 
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TheMadGamer said:
I'm getting a bad feeling about this game. Hope I'm wrong.
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There are certainly enough reasons for concern, but their decision to stick to DX9 is not one of them. It's a good practical choice to stick to the most common platform if resources are tight.
 
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Gorath said:
There are certainly enough reasons for concern, but their decision to stick to DX9 is not one of them. It's a good practical choice to stick to the most common platform if resources are tight.
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My feelings aren't really in response to the game being in DX9 (I still think Gothic 1 looks great). My feelings come from a lot of things I've been reading about the game and stuff from the official Arcania forums. This interview here seems to show some confusion on the subject of DirectX which doesn't help alleviate my overall concerns about the game. I'm really hoping the game is good so that we can have the gothic series continue as well as a new breed of games by PB which was launched by Risen.
 
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The Gothic series ended with G3 afaic. I don't even plan on buying this game, unless a lot of people claim it's better than expected.
 
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I am very concerned about the "locked regions" much more than i am about the DX game uses.
In comparison to some games from late 90's some of us play the screenshots look next to perfect .

*Very interesting comment on host's forum :)
 
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They are not saying the game will not work on DX 11, I am sure it will work... what they are saying is, they are not using DX 11 exclusive feature which would make it incompatible with DX 9... since windows XP is still the most common operating system that makes a lot of sense. Until the majority of people run windows 7/ vista we'll not see any games using full capability of DX 11.
 
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GothicGothicness said:
what they are saying is, they are not using DX 11 exclusive feature which would make it incompatible with DX 9….
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That doesn't make any sense. Why would having DX 11 features make it incompatible with DX 9?

If you don't have a DX 11 compatible OS/graphics card then those features would simply be grayed out in the options menu.
 
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Andreas is a CEO and like any senior manager probably a bit confused by the details. What is clear is that Spellbound doesn't want to waste time catering to DX11 (or even DX10) specific features. Really, all this drama over some graphic details?
 
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The same way that some games (Halo 2) made DX10 a requirement.
 
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ToddMcF2002 said:
That was a strong arm tactic by Microsoft who owns the Halo property.
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I understand that, and since win7 is selling unlike a certain worst-os-in-history then MS doesn't have to play that game ... they can just continue screwing with DRM to get folks to quit PC and move to X360. ;)
 
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