Directx 11 Project

[SoulRider]

I was just wondering what the progress was so far of the DirectX11 project mentioned here on the site?

I am planning to use cafu, initially for prototyping, but possibly for full games, and I was just wondering how the progress was going for DirectX11. It is not a life or death feature, but with depreciation of Windows XP, and the fact that DX9 is not a true part of the DX11 pipeline, it is becoming a little bit more important in general for continued windows development.

[Carsten]

Hi SoulRider,
welcome to the Cafu forums!

I was just wondering what the progress was so far of the DirectX11 project mentioned here on the site?

At this time, to the best of my knowledge, no one is working on a DirectX 11 renderer.

But don't worry: There are always the OpenGL renderers, which have always worked and always will, and we will always support them uncompromisingly.

Technically, OpenGL is easily on par with DirectX (of course one must compare the proper versions of each, and also of course, a thorough update would also suit our OpenGL renderers well). OpenGL also runs on a lot more platforms than DirectX, and is also the key to port Cafu to mobile devices in the future, e.g. devices based on iOS or Android, or other ARM systems like Raspberry Pi computers. (Also see this FAQ for a very short list of reasons why we prefer OpenGL over DirectX in general.)

[...] with depreciation of Windows XP, and the fact that DX9 is not a true part of the DX11 pipeline, it is becoming a little bit more important in general for continued windows development.

Uhhh, sorry, i cannot quite see what Windows XP and DirectX 9 have to do with our future support for Windows. Current editions of Cafu all use OpenGL on all platforms, and run on the latest Windows 8.1 quite happily.

[SoulRider]

I find a lot of game implementations of OpenGL to be a bit buggy on windows 8.1, my own platform. Of course I can't really say if that is because of Windows or the implemenation of the developers.

I am looking forward to getting to play with the engine. I am currently moving across from developing mods in lua. I am looking to extend my programming knowledge, by tackling an engine that gets me to use both.

[Carsten]

I find a lot of game implementations of OpenGL to be a bit buggy on windows 8.1, my own platform. Of course I can't really say if that is because of Windows or the implemenation of the developers.

Well, it's possible that the game/application has bugs, and/or the graphics driver (in my experience, NVidia's drivers a of a lot better quality than AMD's). But these problems can affect DirectX as well, or rather, are not related to OpenGL at all, which is still a perfectly good graphics API.

I am looking forward to getting to play with the engine. I am currently moving across from developing mods in lua. I am looking to extend my programming knowledge, by tackling an engine that gets me to use both.

That sounds very good! Depending on your already existing skills and your intentions, you may wish to look into the current "entity-component-system" branch (which you already seem to know about if I understood your other posts correctly). This branch is currently under development and "unstable" (in the sense of: undergoing frequent and large changes), but also has all the new code that we will use in the future.