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I Know you guys got much to do with X10. Programming, marketing,
designing endless uml diagrams...

But maybe youre reading this.

I spent almost 7 Months of work on a game made with X9.
yesterday i did send some sceenshots to some of my study
friends. All they said : "Yeah..cool, but only if you
like nostalgic games" ..."Graphics waaayy too old" and so on.

And you know what ? Theyre right.
And its no excuse that X10 will have all the features in, which
were promised to X9.
Those are some little improvements X9 needs to be in the upper
segment. And like you all know, DirectX 9.0c is awesome, too and
got room for many many graphic improvements.

The only thing FPSC would need to be competitive, is better
graphics. I am not speaking of the media provided or the
model packs. Its the shaders and the resolution !

There should be at least 3 Options,

800 X 600
1024 X 768
1280 X 1024

With a good level of anti aliasing !
And as for the shaders, theyre included but dont work correctly.
Improvement would be :

- Bloom.fx
- better normal map shader

Thats all...then my work wouldnt be outdated

But see what you fail to realize, is they know this, hence x10. thats their fix to x9's problems

maybe you should remind your friends that you made it by yourself and didn't have a whole studio of qualified personal working with you?

We all need to upgrade to X10 sooner or later anyway, It's not like the rest of the gaming market is staying on X9.

"But see what you fail to realize, is they know this, hence x10. thats their fix to x9's problems"

That would be poor !!
I was one of the EA customers years ago and i trusted in the
development of X9 upgrades. You cant let X9 down and develop
another engine, X10, which is only useful for vista and geforce 8000 owners.
Most people use X9. The amount of quality you can achieve with XP
and directx 9 is far more than fpsc v1.07.
And for the future. Vista looks cool, i tested the ultimate edition. nice handling and such. BUT it will never ever be as
stable as XP. Maybe the shader model 3 is fine, but thats all. This
crappy OS eats 1GB of your Ram just to run. OSX, Ubuntu, XP, and so
on... none of those OS requires so much hardware.
you know what i mean ? if i buy a porsche without a steering
wheel, and got promised to get one soon, then i dont want to
hear "oh...we dont develop steering wheels for this car anymore..
buy a new one and all`s fine !" even if the porsche is just one
year old !

"maybe you should remind your friends that you made it by yourself and didn't have a whole studio of qualified personal working with you?"

Youre right ! BUT this doesnt help me if i want to get my game
published commercially ! "Sorry folks, but i did all on my own..."
youll earn laughter ! Maybe i should print this sentence onto
the box cover ...maybe someone will buy it with the thoughts
"oh, he did all work on his own...who needs good graphics... i like
this guy !"
I bought an engine to make at least one commercial game. X9 has
many many features. So why no upgrade ? Not a big one...just
a few improvements. Maybe theyre afraid if tey improve X9,
the graphical gap between X9 and X10 wouldnt be as huge anymore as
it is now.....so, less X10 customers. who knows ?!


"We all need to upgrade to X10 sooner or later anyway, It's not like the rest of the gaming market is staying on X9"

Microsoft is loosing customers every day. The most switch to
OSX or ubuntu, linux. It takes years and years of updates and
upgrades for MS to get vista stable. I do not say that XP will
remain for 10 years from now on, but, and you can trust me, surely
for 5 !
Vista needs its time, the people using vista need their time, and
the whole gaming market, too.
Did you know that the most people who buy a pc or laptop this
time want a downgrade before buying ? They want XP SP2 to be
installed, not vista.


Look, i dont want to get X9 as cool as X10. I just want X9 to be
what it should be. A stable and competitive game engine based on
the powers of directx 9.0c. In fact, all i am asking for is
an option to get higher resolutions and a bloom shader.

So we got normalmapping ( little buggy but it works ) and those
dark lights...which i really love ! Cube reflection and multiplayer. If you think about it, all FPSCX9 needs to get really
really good among other X9 engines, is an resolution and shader
upgrade. And i think lee could implement that in about 2 days.
But that would be 2 days senseless development for X9 cant
earn money with that.... but i tell you something...
I WOULD BUY AN UPGRADE IF THOSE FEATURES WOULD BE INTEGRATED !

I love FPSC, and i love X10. But i dont like the way how all
X9 users are treated.

I agree with you Mr Flowerkohl!

But i am getting X10 no matter what...
And possibly when i have it, i wont go back to the current version.
Maybe i'll release some model packs for free for both of the
versions but that will be it.

I suggest you buy the needed stuff to run x10, since every
games are upgrading slowly but sure.
If you want a commercial game, than x10 is the place.

I noticed when i walk into a shop, that Vista games
are seperated from the "old" ones.
You also have some remakes...with not lots of upgrade the only
thing that is different is that its running on Vista.
With a possible shader that is increased...which you cant see.

Anyway, commercial games are changing...just like before.
Graphics are getting better, you can do more stuff with the
game itself!
So they dont see why they wouldnt use x10 for their games.
Its a bad choice to make a commercial game with x9 if x10
already has taken over.

So my suggestion still is:
Get x10....or get left behind....(well not mine suggestion, someone already mentioned this)

Most people i know already have their computer upgraded for x10.
So they could expierence "new" gameplay.
And no way they are getting back to x9...


Cheers,
Cheese Cake.

I don't upgrade to Vista just to be able to run some software. My computer is old and couldn't run new games anyway.

It's TGC decision what to release. I bought FPSC some weeks ago because I was curious. And to be honest I don't think that games created with X10 can compete with current shooters. A game-making engine can never be better than a team of coders that work on one single game and can focus on things better.

If there was a tool capable of creating new games of different genres (shooters, sports games, strategy games) nobody would buy the real games. It'd be cool nonetheless...I could create my own NBA Live with great graphics and without the horrible EA Sports bugs and bad realism.

WinXP runs well on my system, I don't buy Vista. I don't even buy more ram or a better graphic card just to play new games. I play the old Medal of Honor - Allied Assault. To me graphics can be nice but I play for fun. I'd rather play a fun game from 2003 with old graphics than buy a new game, have a bit more fun with better graphics but have to spend a few 100s of €. If you are a die-hard gamer it's important but I have many hobbies and don't want to invest money just to play the latest games.

I fear that Microsoft will release really cool things for Vista only and people have to buy it.
But I won't.

Anyway, it's just a matter of priorities in my opinion. If you really love shooters and it's really important in your life then get Vista for X10. If it's just "nice" but you have other games / software that you like then you can do without it.
Each will have to judge on his own. Just do what makes you happy.

This also includes that someone can be disappointed with X9 and feel fooled but unfortunately you can't do anything. You get what you get.

Actually, someone is working on a version of dx10 for windows xp. Considering you can already get vista themes, there will then be no reason to upgrade to vista. In my oppinion, MS practically nailed it with XP. It runs fine, using some good security software I never get viruses/hacked. It doesn't crash and most of all, all programs support it. Vista is just a patch for XP with a new interface, rebranded as a new OS.

We've had this discussion before, when X10 was first announced, there were lots of "they're going to abandon FPSC X9!" and "they don't care about us! They just want the money!" but the truth is FPSC won't be abandoned.

At the moment they're concentrating on X10 and want to get that out as bug free as possible, constantly updating FPSC X9 (X9 as I'll call it now) will push the release date even further back and people will be complaining about that!

Lee (well one of them) has said they want to try get X9 and X10 to run off almost the same code (minus the X10 stuff for X9 obviously) and Lee will have learned a lot from coding X10.

Once X10 is out, then they'll be working on upgrades to fix the bugs and stuff for X10 then (my speculation is) X9 will get re-written completely when X10 is stable enough.

Short answer? No, X9 has not been forgotten (they wouldn't dare!) but be patient as they sort out X10, you won't be disappointed.

Any comments Lee / Rick ?

My thoughts on the matter haven't changed much.

Lee has stated in the past that work on FPSC will continue, after X10 is released. There are only so many people working on X10, as well as the other daily duties of TGC.

What's most likely going to happen is that once X10 is released, there will be a time of reviewing user bugs followed by another bug-squashing session. That will precipitate a FPSC X10 V1.x release. Once that is accomplished, I'm pretty sure Lee and Co. will be taking what he learned (I imagine he has a notepad full of ideas and notes for FPSC) with coding X10 and improve upon FPSC.

Of course, development will have to continue on X10; but I think the FPSC crowd will get their fair share of Lee's attention once X10 (and the following point release) is out. Let's not forget the vacation he might have planned as well.

-Keith

No vacation for Lee!...just kidding,Lee!
It has already been posted by Rick that after x10 is released that they will be releasing the upgrade for x9.If TGC still supports DarkBasic Classic,The 3D Gamemaker,etc. then there should be no doubt they will continue to support this version of FPSC as well.
Threads like this do get old since if people read up on the subject they would already know all of this and wouldn't have posted in the first place.
TGC does not abandon their products.I know everybody's getting impatient waiting on this FPSC upgrade.Just chill out and we will get it sooner or later.

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention the several upgrades that FPSC has already had.