Horde3D

I would appreciate a DirectX renderer for Horde3D too, but as long as we have limited man power we don't focus on that at the moment.

I concur

So the consensus is: a D3D port would be nice (and should be straightforward), but no-one has the time to do it at the moment?

I think it would be nice to see a DirectX renderer for horde3D but, should it be DirectX 10 or DirectX 9? This is an important question since DirectX 10 will surely be more used in the near future but a lot of people still have non-compatible card.

In the other hand, OpenGL is here to stay. Source engine and Steam is being ported to Linux and some says that Linux will become à gaming platform, check here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... inux&num=1
( phoronix announced that ATI drivers was becoming open source before the official announcement. )

If Linux gaming is becoming stronger, this mean that OpenGL will surely be more used for game development, and more supported. I don't worry about the future of OpenGL, and I don't think that a DirectX renderer would be that necessary for PC development. Maybe it's better to concentrate our efforts into a single renderer to be the best as possible? Ive used Ogre, and it had some compatibility issues between the openGL renderer and the DirectX one...

as the most of the problems about opengl seems to be on vista, dx10 would be more useful.
the other is probably ati drivers but those run fine nowadays.

I think I could take a look at DirectX for Horde, I've been a lurker for sometime and think it's about time I contribute something. Wouldn't be able to write in stone when I would have it done, but I will certainly try my best.

Which DirectX version will you try to implement?

I'll start with 10 / 10.1

I will see how that works out and will put 9 and 8 in if I can get it done correctly. I really need to look into the design of HORDE more to see how I can implement this in a way where it's robust as DirectX API is one that will change (every 3 months) and thus I wouldn't want to be reworking the implementation for every release.

Maybe it would be better if you start with DX 9, since then you'll have more testers.

Cool, that's great! Of course it is up to you but I would rather tend to DX9 since the engine feature set is based on DX9 functionality. Furthermore, it would be easier to port Horde to the XBOX 360 one day. Having such a console port is something I'm dreaming of

Do you have access to a full devkit? The C/C++ compiler and libraries aren't public as far as I am aware.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

I have a 360, PS3, PSP and Wii DevKit sitting in work. I can stay back after work and get some things running.

Personally I would rather go all at DX and use a decent design structure to ensure I'm not writing the same code 50 times.

i have added dx10 renderer to horde but i cutted out all the opengl part to add better the dx10 part...so i changed also some objects and now is not retrocompatible to opengl.
i don't used the ogre project but created another and used also fx files instead of horde shader + cg or glsl i don't know what it use.So also some resource file changed a lot...i wanted to go fast in dx10 so i think that one can do a proper implementation compatible with opengl renderer. and using same files and don't changing classes.To go fast i used a lot some dx10 helper lib so the code is also smaller than original horde.i don't have texture cube resource because i treath all texture the same,also resource for shaders is only one and only load fx files but in future i think to add another xml file to explain what variable update for a tecnique and what vertex format it require to work. It taked me 2 weeks in spare time so is relative easy to add dx10 but in the way i done it a good implementatio i think that require more time. now is able to create render targets pipeline works but i not implemented mesh rendeing so i don't know about coordinate problems now i only render full screen quads so in future i can say more details. i'll go slow with render because i want to implement game entity scripting physic and network before to implement all the rendering because render techniques can change over that time i want to implement the latest possible.SO for a long time i'll have only simple textured boxes without lights or any advanced rendering tecnique.I also implemented multiple viewports to do splitscreen.but is all in early development do i don't tested it a lot.when i finish a good release i'll make the source available.But repeat is not the best implementation i changed a lot of code but can help to do a better implementation more inline with original horde.

Is anyone working on DX9 port?
Will it be hard to use Ogre DX9 RenderSystem in Horde3D?

Thanks

Don't even consider that route - Ogre's render systems bear no relation to Horde in an architectural sense. A DX9 render system will not be hard to implement, but we will have to wait until there is sufficient interest coupled to the required talent

I don't quite understand the sudden need for Dx though - sure it will be nice to have, a few people with full XBox devkits may need it, and some may want it for easier support, but for anyone starting out it makes absolutely no difference. there isn't anything you could do with a DX renderer that you can't do with the OpenGL renderer.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

Dx not need!