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More "graphics API is the worst lock in possible"... With an online game it's way easier to escape graphics "lock in", especially considering almost everyone i
by Impossible 8y ago
More "graphics API is the worst lock in possible"... With an online game it's way easier to escape graphics "lock in", especially considering almost everyone is using a game engine (Unreal or Unity) that hides most implementation details from you. There are challenges with porting graphics apis are different shader languages but with glslang and dxc supporting different languages it's basically a solved problem. The main issue with service lock-in, and why it's worse than proprietary graphics APIs is that it blocks cross play. So even if you wrap the API for different platforms Steam users cannot play with Xbox users, etc. The idea that graphics API is the biggest bottleneck to game portability (especially across systems that also have proprietary windowing systems, threads, audio, input, programming languages, network libraries, etc) because John Carmack said we should use OpenGL 20 years ago needs to die.