PC version of Syndicate won't support DX10/11; multi-core CPUs will be better supported

DSOGaming writes: "According to Starbreeze, Syndicate uses an advanced and evolved in-house engine, that comes with a global illumination solution and an optimized postprocessing pipeline. Sadly though, Syndicate won't support the DX10 or DX11 API's. And before pointing your gun to Starbreeze, this is quite what we've expected. Syndicate is a multi-platform game and as we've said in the past, a proper DX11 needs to be built from the get-go with that API in mind."

[h311rais3r]

Hmmmm then explain why multi platforms games such as crysis 2. Bf3 and even da2 have dx11 support? God I'm tired of these excuses. Just say it as it is. We designed it for consoles first.

[Fishy Fingers]

Reads more to me like when development began, it was a choice between Dx9 and Dx10. Dx10 being a rather under used and honestly, not a great API, which was never fully realised. They went with Dx9. By the time Dx11 hit the scenes it was considered more hassle than its worth.

It's getting to the point where a dev must ask, why put the majority of the effort into what will likely be our worst performing platform? I'm a PC gamer and even I'd struggle to justify that.

[closnyc]

the real graphical leap is going from dx9 to dx10. Why dx10 was discontinued, still baffles my mind. DX11 is nothing but tessellation and some other minor features that dont really give a graphical leap like crysis did with dx10 back in 2007.

[Fishy Fingers]

Dx10 brought many of the advancements but was poorly used, poorly optimized in many cases and there for, put to very little use in most games. Dx11 on the other hand, actually works and does so far more efficiently, and effectively than Dx10 ever did.

Your example of Crysis is pretty much the be all, end all of Dx10, and even on todays hardware, its terribly optimized.

[Pjuice]

@ closnyc dx10 was the the biggest rebuild of the api since the beginning of the api and they thought it had to be done to make it more efficient and work better with new and upcoming software/hardware features it was basically redone from the ground up and now all future upgrades/updates to dx will be based off dx10 until the next total rebuild of it so dx10 was a very important step for the api, dx11 is basically an optimized version of dx10 with some new features the one most talked about is obviously tessellation it also allot more efficient at multi core/threaded rendering, if you would really like to know more about this read this and all the table of contents
http://www.tomshardware.com...

[ProjectVulcan]

They are poor excuses to be honest, even games with semi implemented DX11 benefit because the API is built to actually improve efficiency on the CPU side as well. DX11 means that your game engine is less likely to be CPU bound. A typical problem of a DX9 only code path is that the game scales poorly across different CPU performance.

This is partly why i imagine they have chosen to highlight how they are working on multicore enhancements for their game- but it isn't the same. Unless they have carefully built the game for PC which i doubt, it'll never work as well as even if they had shoehorned in DX11.

I am not one for wanting devs to shoehorn in the codepath, much prefer it being written properly for the game in the first place. However When we still have DX9 only games in 2012, it is disappointing to see developers not even taking the DX11 enhancements on board.

[zag]

or to have it on consoles which don't support Dx11 you need to use Dx9.

Though that would only cover the PC and 360 side it wouldn't cover the PS3 as well.

I think this whole game is a trade off, they have gone for a FPS because they think people want to play as the people on the ground even though the game is based on a remote controller forcing people on the ground to do what they want.

They have also dropped all the addon you could do in the original games and gone for a timed use and slight upgrades, like a bullet time that is on a timer before you can use it you also have persuade type thing as well that you can use any time.

it's more like a Deus Ex than a syndicate game

To be honest I think if this games doesn't get pan I'd be shocked.

From a preview the reviewer wasn't overally

[papashango]

Too much focus on directx. Regardless of what it uses its going to be the same old tired cinematic shooter that has a weak story and characters that annoy you.

Remember when shooters didn't have stories and instead focused on gameplay and fun factor like cs, unreal, and battlefield.

I miss fun shooters

[john2]

So you want some 'rounder' objects here and there? Because this is what we get these days with DX11 and that's nowhere what a proper DX11 game should be like. Don't get me wrong, I want a nice DX11 game but when the best visually game to date is DX9 (Crysis), then what's the point of asking for some gimmick-y DX11 features?

All those exclusive DX11 features are not exclusive at all, they are simply locked by most developers. HDAO is supported by DX9, as are soft-shadows,soft-particles, Global Illumination and reflections, motion-blur and DoF. Same goes for the higher-quality HDR. Apart from the tessellated objects, there is nothing to write home about in most DX11 versions of our PC games

[gillri]

so why bother upgrading? I havent for 3 years now and plays all recent games fine

I will upgrade majorly when the next gen of ocnsole comes out and developer really start building games using lastest hardware form the ground up

[Voxelman]

actually there is one DX11 feature that should make it standard issue in all PC games. And that is multi-threaded draw calls, which allows a game engine to use more than one CPU core to issue draw calls to the GPU. It could basically eliminate the CPU limitations on framerate in most games, but no one bothers to just implement performance features, they always just throw a bunch of tessellation around and maybe high quality HDR etc and call it a day rather than just optimising their current effects to run much faster in DX11.

Also the reason that high quality HDAO, HDR etc are locked to DX11 is because DX11 supports better compression methods on textures etc in working memory so they can be implemented at a higher quality with a smaller impact on GPU memory footprint and less of a performance hit. The fact that most games have pretty low res textures and most people are running GPUs with 1GB+ of VRAM anyway and being CPU bound in many cases anyway means that it is possible to do basically the same effects in DX9 without major issues on most systems.

[h311rais3r]

U don't know dx11 can do do you? It allows higher texture rendering with less impact aswell as tessellation

[john2]

@h311rais3r: Simply LOL. What's the point of a higher texture rendering when you'll be getting the same blurry, low-res textures. Or did you think that if - let's say - they included a DX11 path (like in all other games), you'd get and better textures? No, you wouldn't. And that goes for all DX11 games. Well, apart from Crysis 2 but MaLDo put Crytek to shame with his high-resolution texture pack that its first versions worked fine in DX9. Surprise surprise.

You failed to realize that I didn't say that 'DX11 is awful' but that 'current DX11 games are awful'. It's sad but we haven't got any true DX11 game (and BF3 could run just fine in DX9. If you think otherwise when the very same engine works great on DX9 consoles then... DICE did really trick you). There is a HUGE difference between these two sentences

[empireblood]

A lot of games uses dx9 like Skyrim or LA Noire, and they looks ok

[byeGollum]

yup.. too busy playing to notice technical details in my opinion..

but hey, I can understand if you paid hundreds to thousands for a gaming machine, you might wanna justify your purchase with a few more polygons..

[Fishy Fingers]

Lets not be naive, theres a little more to it than a few polygons, although I'll concede, to many the difference wouldnt exactly be night and day.

[byeGollum]

@Fishy .. lol.

[NYC_Gamer]

i'm not surprised just another game that won't make full use of the hardware many of us brought.well,at least my upgraded hardware helps make work a lot more easy.