pouët.net

well of course common sense and agreeance would have to be used for choosing the included libraries. If the majority of intro coders are ok with the unreal engine being bundled, why not (i strongly doubt they will, tho.. also it would blow up the pakage quite a bit id assume).
I was just thinking about the directx-dlls that dont come with vista+ but are widely used and maybe some other microsoft-runtimes used by intros/demos.

this is not only a demoscene problem btw, almost every steam game installs its directx upon first launch no matter if its necessary or not. gabe newell himself said that the solution is far from perfect but they havent found a better one yet.

@xoofx
oh great, i guess we will see almost as many metro demos as ios ones, then =).

Well, look at it this way: if there was a compo where unreal engine was the platform and everyone used it, we could still see who made the coolest stuff in 4k. I'd actually like to see something like that, variety is good, but only as a one-time-only kind of event ;)

There's no harm in changing the platform if we agree to do that, but I don't think anyone really wants to go beyond windows (and possibly mac / linux as alternatives). Ideally we want as close to 'vanilla' windows as possible. Installing some updates and drivers to get the system working properly is sensible. Installing some extra runtimes is a bitter pill, but if it's necessary.

Bundling a player or some dlls with a 4k though? That's getting really bitter :/

las: The way you are forming your arguments looks more and more like an attempt to ban some technology (or at least make using it look bad) with no apparent reason. Why exactly are you doing it?

psonice: Probably everybody who has GPU decent enough to run 4k intros has already heard about DirectX and will consider this as key system component.

If you want to say that I try to "bend the rules" in my favor - I can neither deny nor confirm that - but I think going on the level any further wont help at all.
Just so you know: I also know how to use DX/D3DX and I know the fancy things.

The why from my direction is: Somebody else (I 100% agree with him) asked me that we should again talk about this issue - I agreed and opened a thread - does this answer your question properly?


Maybe I'm forming my arguments in a pretty bad way - but I thought I pointed out quite clearly that there are some pretty good reasons - you might want to read some of my previous posts again.


As you can figure out from some of my posts - DirectX is provided on a vanilla system - D3DX is not.

KK:That only holds true for the latest, most high-end 4Ks. And even for them, a few years later pretty much everyone has the hardware to run them, but probably not the runtimes. It spoils the party for everyone for all time.

And we're talking now about the future, where some people want to start requiring a dll which isn't party of directx. Well, it is.. but it's not part of the standard install and it's not part of any mainstream directx download. It's a bad path to be going down, if there's any way to avoid it.

That's not really the answer. If you were asked to raise this issue by somebody, then forward this question to him/her.

I read every single of your posts in this thread, and when there are some valid points there, similar points can be made for many other valid scene cases (i.e. "Amigas are no longer in mass production").

My point is: you can find sensible arguments against any single thing in the world if you are inclined enough to look for them. But why you are looking for them is still a mystery to me.


I was rather expecting answer along the lines of "to make it run everywhere" or "not to include several MBs of extra stuff" or something like this. In general, some kind of answer that would clarify where you'd like the scene to go.


Yeah, but something as basic as compiling a shader doesn't really qualify as fancy thing.

Honestly, all your effort in this thread tries to push 4k scene into pit of "use OpenGL or make crap". And this would just hurt 4k scene with close to no positive impact.


But as long as both are installed by "dxwebsetup.exe", I would consider them both to be a part of DirectX.

Do you guys really expect to be able to form a common set of 4k compo rules by achieving consensus on Pouet?

Good luck with that.

..or anywhere else, for that matter. Trying to shape some sort of common-ground requirements for making 4k intros (apart from: "must run on a computer, must be below 4097 bytes in size") is like trying to herd a whole flock of square cats into a very tiny round hole.

...somewhere, Archee just started coding.

well, i have to somehow sum up what i (as a coder) think about the whole discussion after reasoning a little about it. i mainly agree now, that generally banning some libs is not up to the coders, the coders decide for which platform they develop, let it be amiga, c64 or well, here come the point: you can't simply say it's PC. we need drivers and libs. some come with the drivers, some have been installed separately. this makes the actual platform, and the platforms are changing for each PC 4k compo (some allow linux, some don't for instance, same for mac or browser). all these decisions are probably made by the respective compo orgas for various reasons or based on prejudice. in the end the platform is subject to change. i can't run any dos 4ks on my machine without an emulator, so what, then i install a friggin emulator. same holds for d3dx for users of a plain win 8 distro. point is: if you want to watch older 4ks you might run into the dll issue (also i don't know anything about backward compatibility of dx 9 to let's say dx 3). then again: if you only wanna watch it, you could just downloaded the missing dll and be happy with it. also wysiwtf will prolly (and also hopefully) build the scenish lib pack :D

anyway, point is: i started coding ogl on linux and well, there are very few compos where you can actually enter linux entries (although it's PC), so i adopted. if orgas say: no, installing the damn sdk is too much, we don't want d3dx, then as a coder you have two choices, accept it or don't. i for one accepted that it's too much pita for the compo orgas to provide a requested (for me common) linux setup. so if orgas decide it's too much pita to provide d3dx for just one 4k out of 10, so be it... the future will show how many coders still rely on d3dx or migrate to ogl, dx10, dx11 or whatever. i don't think we can make a binding decision here anyway. all we do is giving orgas arguments for or against providing certain libs on the compo machine :)

i guess i could wrap up a little nsis pakage if someone gave me a list of the needed dlls and an idea where to put them so every program is able to find it (except for the /windows/ folder where they dont seem to belong).

but if the majority of people is against this solution anyway, why bother?

sooner or later we probably need that ;) time will tell when we reached that point.

wysiwtf: %windir%\system32 and its x64 equivalent is the right place.

My own summary of this discussion is: It's reasonable to assume the Jun2010 DirectX end user runtime to be installed on the compo machines, this includes D3DX, as it just has been until now. This can still be installed over Windows 8. Period. That's where this legacy tech support ends. This satisfies the "latest windows, latest dx end user runtime, perhaps msvcrt" rule of thumb. If party organizers stick to that, then it means: no newer d3dcompiler dlls for sizecoding intros. That's a platform limitation then, deal with it... B-)
Then the only option for sizecoding intros to use newest technologies (like new shader models) is to use OpenGL. Too bad, but that's how it is.

Can we agree on these terms?

Well - I said that before - thus I thought I wouldn't have to state that again and again and again.

I don't necessarily think people are against it, I just think that something that requires non-creative work, standardization and cooperating between coders, party-organizers and the general demowatching public is always going to lose when compared to "just do what you did the last time you made something".

xTr1m: My thoughts exactly.

xtrim: yeah, pretty much.

This is almost what I suggested before, except I suggested this setup for win 7 or xp, and vanilla windows 8. Is there any benefit for targeting win8 if you're not going for the latest shader model etc.?

xTr1m: are you saying, dx9 and dx10/11 cant be installed in parallel?
and here i thought windows was ahead of linux' library hell :P

Wait, what is the benefit of using win8?

You're joking, right? The phrase "DLL Hell" has been well known in the Windows world for at least 15 years. Despite recommendations to install DLLs to the system directory, the only way to ensure you're actually using the DLLs you actually want is to package each and every DLL you need in with the executable... o\

But back to the point, DX11 apparently has a "fallback" mdoe and can emulate any of the previous versions, although I believe you are supposed to use the new DX11 interface to request the old DX9 functionality.

But certainly on Windows 7, DX9 and DX11 can coexist happily, so I'm not sure why there's a rush to move to Windows 8 at all, as it just seems to be Windows 7 with extra DRM and a tablet-optimised GUI. (Spoken like the true Linux fanboy that I am!)

vectory: I never said anything like that. On the contray, I quote:

can, not can't. That means, Win 8 is perfectly capable to run Dx9 intros, intros that use D3DX, Dx10 and Dx11 intros, if the Jun2010 DirectX end user runtime is installed (which has been installed on every compo pc in the past years).
What won't work is the new >Dx11 stuff that is part of the Windows SDK, like the new d3dcompiler.dll
I hope this clarifies things a bit.

You seem to be a bit late to the party - it wasn't always that way.
And MSVCRT is btw. almost _never_ allowed in intro compos.

Continuing this "discussion" will be pointless - I guess we have everything that's pro & con by now.

Did you notice that there are no ponies yet? I'm more than surprised!

So, what can be concluded? - I'm not about to read all of your posts :)

i asked tjoppen to derail the thread, he refused ;)

Well we can simply conclude: The final decision wont be made here.

Also discussing with heavy D3DX users shows that they are pretty biased on the issue - as I am too. Nobody likes it if you recommend to take away their toys.

If you want to know my opinion: I'm still all in for exclusion.
Now it's up to the party organizers.