Thread: Going from DirectX to OpenGL

Originally Posted by Bubba

Give me one good reason as to why cross-platform is even remotely important as it relates to game programming. Cross-platform doesn't mean squat when nearly every game coded only runs on x86 Windows machines. It has been that way, is that way, and always will be that way.

First, let me give you a nice list
Quake 4
Doom 3
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2003
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament
Quake 2
Tribes 2

That's just out of one genre of games that have Linux ports, Never Winter Nights also had a native Linux port. I know most of the titles I mentioned are from 2 major developers (id Software and Epic Games) but you will notice they make a killing just off licensing the engine, which includes Linux for those companies that want it.

Also, you will find that even FPS games that strictly have a Windows client will have a Linux server binary available due to a large number of hosting providers using it for hosting.

Don't forget about Mac OS either, the move to Intel I think might just give it a good kick into the gaming market. Blizzard has been targeting the Mac OS platform for years.

Oh, and should I even mention the reported use of OpenGL by the PlayStaion3?

Small Edit: forgot to mention, how many CAD/Modeling programs use Direct3D for rendering? Its an OpenGL world there, has been for a long time.

Oh, and since when has DirectSound been low level? Its an abstraction layer, just like SDL/OpenAL.