pouët.net

ok.. stand corrected..

but.. hehe, not woth the trouble.. yea right, they are payed, im not, and i'm the one that should do the extra effort... ( well, or loosing the extra features on the gfxcards.)

You don't have to do extra effort. You can always use ARB extensions or Direct3D.
But if you make specific stuff, then I think it should be classed as a tech-demo, not a regular PC-demo (after all, it doesn't run on regular PCs), and it should compete in a different class... Wild demo I guess.

And if you had studied Direct3D 9.0 closely, you'd have noticed that there's very little features that you have to give up on. All the important stuff is covered nicely, and in a non-vendor-specific way.

You simply create the extra effort because you refuse to use the proper API, and go for the hackjob instead. Not my fault.

WTF is it with PC only demos? :)

sagacity: i do think my post makes sence, you just didn't get it (and i doubt you even tryed, maybe due to my poor english), so why to read it, just skip.

If you already did OO code, you must know that it tends to group things into entity that share a specific semantic or behavior. Usualy, when the model extends to relations between entities (which i would call architecture, often represented as a class diagram) the result ends in being strongly structured. This helps/ensures the coders using this model to respect a given "way to use it". So, this is great for normal usage.

Now here is my point: when you're trying to trick, you often dont respect the usual path. OGL act as a set of little bricks (C calls) that can be assembled to make your own pipeline (i'm not talking here about the HW pipeline but about the one you design by yourself in your app). The OOrientation of D3D forces us to manage "entier walls" where you needed simple bricks. In this kind of missuse this results in adding complexity to our code.
Another DX drawback from my point is the endless list of arguments sum methods takes, it's crazy!!! Not talking about the arguments the docs claim as "unused" or "has to be NULL". I can hear you say "it's normal, it's for future usages". Future usages shouldn't need useless arguments with a versionned API using COM. And dont even tell me it's to ease ports to future versions, if it was true, microsoft wouldn't rename methods that dont need it ;)

Now, if you still cant understand my point, there's nothing i can(/want to) do for you.

Lets add sumthing for the arrongant bastards: do not even try to make me look like and anti OOP coder, i do C++ and i do it quite well thank you. And to the one that think i'm an OpenGL defender and that i criticize DX for pleasure and without knowing it: I have a DX8.0a & GL compatible engine and that i'm rewriting one in DX9.0 only (both APIs are great, one is just easyer to implement, trick and misuse;)

I'm not saying i know better, i express my point (which may be wrong)

/me understood alkama's point \o/

Honestly, Alkama, it wasn't your use of english which didn't make sense to me (because quite frankly I don't care how well you speak it as long as your point comes across :)) but I really disagree with you on this.

What you are saying is that, say, using a class to represent a texture (like in DirectX) is not as 'low-level' as how it's represented in OpenGL. And that just doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever to me.

But that's a topic for API wars, I guess. :)

alkama: can you give an explicit example of a trick/misuse/whatever, which is possible and useful in OpenGL, and not possible in Direct3D? I don't know what you mean.

theres nothing that OGL does and that DX cant do, this wasn't my point, but for sure they're things that are easyer to do with OGL.

You want a simple exemple? Well, with OGL your engine dont have to handle objects of and external API;) That way, it's unable to be made deprecated by the motion of object through different versions of the same API. I can change the state of my ogl device without having to handle its accessibility from the point i do it;) I can have complex methods that alter lots of semantically different parts of the HW pipeline without having to make hundreds of objects accessible to this part of my engine. This apply to just everything in OGL, in the worst case you handle IDs.

well, now, lets stop talking about that, it's just a question of taste, you prefer DX, that's fine, it's not ashaming;) and this goes for OGL. There are no reasons to try to evangelise ppl to make them pray your god.

i think someone learnt coding at school with UML \o/ and thereof really has no clue what object oriented programming really is. (hoho, this can be fun:)

question: is ogl less object oriented than d3d? what about the context shit or what they are called etc? arent ogl really TRYING to become OOP, just, they made in a dirty environment :)

alkama sucks (his french btw, and all french people are wussies, and bad at english, bad at c, bad at c++, bad at making demos, they even flame bad)

if all that is true, I make you an honorary frenchman

stefan:
Sorry to say, but please get a cookie and STFU

Stefan. i never knew you were french mate.

Anyway, let's try to answer the original question.

The problem is lack of testing, in 95% of cases. The coder makes the demo run on his hardware, and he has no clue if the demo runs somewhere else. Unlike video game developpers, demo coders are amateur, which means they can't afford buying 15 video cards for testing their 3d engine and stuff.

Hm, well if testing is the only problem, here is the solution:

Simply give your demo to other sceners/people you trust to test it on their computers. I'm pretty sure everybody here knows at least some people with computers. So go on, let them test your demo. If it works fine, good. If not, give them a debug version and see what's going wrong

But I seriously doubt that it's a problem of testing. As stated above, I guess it's a problem of the point of view. Some think it's ok, if the demo runs at least on one computer (the compo machine). Get the best out of it and win the compo.
But others like to give the scene something to enjoy...