Application Programming Interface: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.''|'''The UNIX-HATERS Handbook'''}}
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There have also been cases of newer graphics cards omitting or otherwise breaking little-used features that some games during the Direct3D 7 and prior era used, either at the driver or hardware level, so don't expect perfect backwards compatibility. Sometimes you might just have to build an old computer to run a suitably old game well, or even at all.
Direct3D is Microsoft's baby, and, thus, it's only available through Microsoft Windows operating systems, the [[
The current popular versions of DirectX are
For most of the 2000s [[Direct X]] 9.0c was dominant. It survived into the early 2010z because the [[Xbox 360]] runs on it, with a few custom features, and because Windows XP proved to retain a significant market share well past its prime.
In case you're wondering where's DirectX 10, it was released with Windows Vista. Since it offered very few quality advantages over DirectX 9.0c and was only compatible with Windows Vista, nobody really cared about it. ▼
▲In case you're wondering where's DirectX 10, it was released with Windows Vista. Since it offered very few quality advantages over DirectX 9.0c and was only compatible with Windows Vista, nobody really cared about it.
==== {{smallcaps|OpenGL}} ====▼
While DirectX officially only operates in Windows and on the XBox systems, WINE and Cedega groups have gotten some features to work fairly well on Linux.
OpenGL is Direct3D's primary competitor, and in many ways the tool of choice for cross-platform gaming (though, in truth, it is the only tool for cross-platform game development). OpenGL is a graphics API, so it only technically competes against Direct3D, the 3D portion of DirectX; most Windows games that use OpenGL use the non-graphics part of [[Direct X]] for other tasks, while other operating systems use different APIs for other tasks (for example, OpenAL for audio acceleration). Many individuals feel it's much easier to program in than DirectX. The open standard certainly made it more expandable, and many OpenGL games such as [[City of Heroes]] are made up of more extensions than original standard code.▼
While OpenGL can work with a variety of operating systems, it does have some downsides. Since DirectX is nowadays the API of choice, many graphics cards have horrible OpenGL support. Earlier ATI and Intel embedded graphics chips in particular might run a DirectX game well, but crawl when using OpenGL. After AMD got ATI, though, [http://fireuser.com/blog/amd_updates_entire_firepro_line_to_evergreen_gpus/ having fresh cards work with] any fresh software eventually ceased to be a problem.▼
▲[https://web.archive.org/web/20110226000710/http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL] is Direct3D's primary competitor, and in many ways the tool of choice for cross-platform gaming (though, in truth, it is the only tool for cross-platform game development). OpenGL is a graphics API, so it only technically competes against Direct3D, the 3D portion of DirectX; most Windows games that use OpenGL use the non-graphics part of [[Direct X]] for other tasks, while other operating systems use different APIs for other tasks (for example, OpenAL for audio acceleration). Many individuals feel it's much easier to program in than DirectX. The open standard certainly made it more expandable, and many OpenGL games such as [[City of Heroes]] are made up of more extensions than original standard code.
The latest version of OpenGL is 4.1. For older hardware (hardware limited to DirectX 10), there is version 3.3. For REALLY old hardware that is (huge fake GASP) 3+ years old, there is OpenGL 2, which roughly corresponds with DirectX 9. ▼
▲While OpenGL can work with a variety of operating systems, it does have some downsides. Since DirectX is
==== {{smallcaps|Running alien software}} ====▼
▲The latest version of OpenGL is 4.
An API is an interface, so it's only natural that people tried to let a program interact with a translation layer, resembling an OS sitting on top of the native OS - thus allowing a program to work under an OS it wasn't made for, as long as less flexible things (like CPU commands) are all the same. Naturally, x86 is the most interesting for a majority of users, as Windows and Unix (Linux and OS X) are the most desirable targets. True emulators and virtual machines eat a lot of resources, but API translators are much less voracious. Results are good, though this approach isn't a universal silver bullet and ''some'' performance is always sacrificed for translation.
* [http://www.cygwin.com/ Cygwin] is a Unix-like environment for Windows. It's ''not'' a way to run native Linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from the source if you want it to run on Windows. However, apps for Linux tend to be open source, so "rebuild" usually means just one or two extra commands as part of the installation process. It's free and open source.
** Then, there's [http://mingw.org/ MinGW], ''Minimalist GNU for Windows''. Theoretically, it functions the same way as Cygwin does (although technically, there is one major difference that hampers its compatibility). Of course, in the open source world that Linux resides in, friendly competition is good.
* [
* [http://www.winehq.org/ Wine] is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems (including post-2005 [[Apple Macintosh|Intel Macs]]). It naturally has OpenGL and even limited DirectX support. [http://appdb.winehq.org/ Application Database] has information on more than 10,000 applications' compatibility with Wine. It, too, is free and open source.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20101222071215/http://www.cedega.com/support/about-cedega/ Cedega] (formerly known as WineX) is a commercial "run Windows games on Linux" translation software, naturally focused on DirectX support. It also has some sort of limited, but free, open source demo version. Cedega was retired in February 2011, but it's back-end was rechristened [[Game Tree Linux]] and became completely free (albeit still requiring one to sign up for the service). The company behind Cedega, Transgaming, also offers a technology called "Cider" to quickly port PC software to the Mac OS X platform.
* [http://www.codeweavers.com/ CodeWeavers]' CrossOver products were Cedega's primary competitor. Like Cedega, they offer Wine distributions that have been modified with proprietary code. Unlike Cedega, they offer different versions of their software for different purposes. They also offer a version of their product that allows Intel Mac OS X users to run windows apps without an emulator or dual-booting. CodeWeavers is quite popular in the open-source community, as much of their proprietary code are often released back into the open-source WINE project.
* OpenGL does not sit and wait for better support, there are extensions that translate or emulate DirectX functionality (mainly aimed for Wine), up to [http://www.klayge.org/2014/03/25/announces-dxbc2glsl-a-hlsl-bytecode-to-glsl-compiler/ translation of DXBC code to GLSL], with the long-term goal of converting any D3D shaders into GL.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:How Video Game Specs Work]]
[[Category:Application Programming Interface]]
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