Do you use OpenGL or DirectX?

edited in General
I've just been watching an interesting talk from Valve on why they decided to move to OpenGL . I thought this might be an interesting discussion to have then in this forum. Who use's DirectX and who use's OpenGL? And I guess additionally who relies on the game engine of their choice and what does that force you to do?

I personally am an avid Linux user and so I preference OpenGL but I thought it would be interesting to find out the reasons others have chosen DirectX.

So maybe just give this format to your post:
What you use
Your reasons for using it
What pros have you experienced
What cons have you experienced
Thanked by 1edg3

Comments

  • You will never finish your game if you use those low level SDK's unless you want to learn about their usage but not trying to do a final product with them. My favorite books on directX were Frank Lunas Series. As you can see example in those books are very minimal and you cannot use them to make a finished product. But the books themselves are very good on teaching skills like shader programming and fundamentals of Computer Graphics. The other book which shows how to develop a very small engine with directX is "Game Coding Complete, Fourth Edition by Mike McShaffry" . After reading the book, you will still feel like you still have never reached 10% towards finishing the game and there are lot of gaps you still have to fill and once you finish your engine you fill extremely tired and you cant even start a single line of code for your game.

    So while it is good to have knowledge of this low level sdks, it is not recommended to use them for a commercial product unless you wanna spend 10 years making a clone of mario.
  • edited
    Neither... Unity. I'm guessing it uses DirectX or OpenGL depending on how it deploys, or it just uses OpenGL. End of the day I don't care which.

    Seems fairly obvious that DirectX usage limits your export options to Windows. Which is, I think, why I can't play Overwatch on my Mac :/

    Would like to know how many people in either boat or my third boat :)
  • Karuji said:
    Vulkan
    Aaaaand we have four boats :)
    Thanked by 1Ross
  • edited
    I can add to this because it is something I had to relearn.

    I use to use DirectX and DirectX using API to make games in lots of ways. I liked making PC and mobile games (not all mobile phone systems). It was what I learned at the start so that made me use it.

    The pros I have experienced is it was so easy to make things I chose to make with (used to be that way). I got lots done in lots of ways (I have tons of game code I made in the past still in DirectX left over but read below why it is a pro and a con). The other pro is that it has made me learn game maker and unity more, I also have tried looking into other places to go and that is a pro of this - using it helps you want to learn other things.

    The cons I have experienced is that old code which I have compiled exe files for I have the code and project but cant compile (it throws errors which it never used to), so I have to write them from scratch. Similarly my code that can be used on phone cant compile (like I just shared) - I can for windows PCs only compile at the moment with it. The engines with DirectX are falling apart or changing badly. Using another one of the options would help since it can be used for multiple platforms and they have working usage on DirectX capable devices. OpenGL is currently better than DirectX because it opens up the platforms you can dev on (like Tuism said: sometimes its better to use OpenGL over DirectX so people can play the game).

    Can ask anything you want to of this of course! :D

    Edit: Oh and I forgot to do this - I'm looking for the new way Im going to be developing games (from scratch) so I will be checking this up.
  • It's awesome to see a Vulcan user here!

    I've seriously been wondering why so many people work with DirectX instead of OpenGL. I'm not sure if it's just because Microsoft has such a strong holding over the game industry. I really haven't experienced any negative side effects besides some truly weird naming conventions (I'm looking at you VAOs).

    @SkinnyBoy I haven't really noticed much of a performance decrease since I switched from using game engine's to just using OpenGL.
  • We're using Atomic Game Engine, which by default on Windows uses DX.

    We've discussed switching to OGL though, for the sake of future portability (not having to rewrite shaders, or keep multiple versions around, and other such issues).

    Other than the lack of portability, which isn't an issue for us right now no cons really, and we don't deal directly with the DX API much, so I can't say we're really addected either way there.
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