HWA is Stable!

hey all!

To whom it may concern, I just got some data from a game I participated, "Sultan's Labyrinth: A Royal Sacrifice" and the ratio between downloads and ticket support is less than 0.5%!

This game was one of the first commercial games to use the (still beta) HWA and I was interested to see how it would perform in different computers, as the number of downloads are many thousands (with different video cards etc). That ratio between downloads and ticket support is to be considered very low (according the info I got), which means HWA, even if not officially out of beta yet, is solid as a rock compared to other commercial and custom-made engines. Kudos to Yves, François and all Clickteam staff!

Our next game is using the HWA runtime, and besides a few kinks it seems good. Game is made for the same audience too. Which DX mode did you use? 9?

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Originally Posted by Pkeod

Our next game is using the HWA runtime, and besides a few kinks it seems good. Game is made for the same audience too. Which DX mode did you use? 9?

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Yes, Direct3D9 by default. According to Yves, it rolls back to D3D8 if D3D9 is not found, and to Software mode if no Direct3D is found, but I could not effectively test this since I could not find any PC without DirectX or video card without Direct3D support :)

Ah, good to know. I was wondering about that. :)

Thanks for being brave enough to test the waters!

You're welcome :)

This is great news, thanks for sharing :)

It depends on what is done in the game/app really like effects and options used etc although that said i think HWA is in a fairly stable state now. Im sure there is still some bugs yet to be found but in general HWA should be releasable now and games being made should work fine also. It's also good to know it is working well for a commercial game, thanks for the info :)

I have been using HWA in MMF2 for quite a while now, and I must agree, it is rock solid; even in the early builds and beta's, it was still very solid, and I have yet to come accross and issue with HWA.

Clickteam FTW!

Great info, thanks!

Bruto

Thanks for posting that info about the players not encountering very many issues at all!

Hopefully we see some more games from you soon!

Thanks everyone :)

It seems that some of the newer graphics cards (especially those from NVidia) do not support DX9 correctly anymore. They switched to DX10/11 and many of these cards ignore the DX9 specifications (with "it's an old tech" excuse). While I had no bad experiences with HWA version on my DX11 machine yet, I am still curious when will things suddenly go wrong.

Just to keep that in mind while testing...

Strange, I'm a professional game dev and I have not heard this. Got a source?

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Originally Posted by kornelijepetak

It seems that some of the newer graphics cards (especially those from NVidia) do not support DX9 correctly anymore. They switched to DX10/11 and many of these cards ignore the DX9 specifications (with "it's an old tech" excuse). While I had no bad experiences with HWA version on my DX11 machine yet, I am still curious when will things suddenly go wrong.

Just to keep that in mind while testing...

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This is likely to be a driver issue/Windows 7. DX10/11 has backwards compatibility with DX9.

I am guessing at some point clickteam will make updated DX based runtimes anyway and maybe just offer a way to switch between them.

Since there is probably a load of DX9 based games i doubt they would just drop support for it. What might be the case if what you read was true would probably be it is backwards compatible but just a few things got dropped or replaced which would probably be 3d stuff anyway.

Still the thing is, we've got DX11 on market and we still even don't have fully working DX8 and 9 :(

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Originally Posted by Fanotherpg

Still the thing is, we've got DX11 on market and we still even don't have fully working DX8 and 9 :(

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How is that?

Cause HWA is still in beta ;)

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Originally Posted by Fanotherpg

Cause HWA is still in beta ;)

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LOL and so what? If Yves comes up and say "now this version is the definitive" you'd say "oh great, now we have fully working DX8 and 9"? Come on. Currently HWA is more solid and stable than many "out of beta" products out there. I'm considering this latest beta the definitive one. I don't see the non-beta version being much different than this one.

I know Bruto, it was sarcasting. Still my point is that unfortunately Clickteam is all the time a bit behind - iPhone runtime, where iPhone boom was some time ago. Ending release for DX 8 and 9 where now even version 10 in half year to one would be treated as an old and unnecessary.

Fortunately they've got new programmers employed which should boost up plenty of things :)

I think CT is doing a darn good job. Look back when they started,and how far they have come. They are doing the best they can...IMHO.

Marv

For me HWA was the one thing, that made MMf2 very interesting. It made mmf2 to an absolutely powerful tool for creating really nice 2d games and prototypes of game ideas, which is very important when you want to explain a game idea. Hwa rocks.

HWA saved my game.
I appreciate that Clickteam has to branch out to finance its operations but it would be nice to see greater headway on fixing apparently curable bugs such as basically finishing the Save Frame Position system.

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Originally Posted by Fanotherpg

I know Bruto, it was sarcasting. Still my point is that unfortunately Clickteam is all the time a bit behind - iPhone runtime, where iPhone boom was some time ago. Ending release for DX 8 and 9 where now even version 10 in half year to one would be treated as an old and unnecessary.

Fortunately they've got new programmers employed which should boost up plenty of things :)

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HWA is basically done now, i think in the last beta post it says it will become the main release in a few days if nobody found bugs yet that was a week or so ago. I guess there were some recent reports sent in or they are just finalizing or adding a few last feature (hopefully unlimited effects) now but hopefully it will be officially released soon.

I agree with you sort of though but remember that clickteam has not a huge team but as you point out hopefully with new programmers employed we will start to see more updates and cool stuff for the products. Also as it's a request from lots of people hopefully the next MMF will be more modular with multiple SDKs available for things like import formats and transitions for example which people were recently asking how to make. I think though expanding the team was a great move though and as everyone had said clickteam is great so hopefully there will be some great stuff on the way in the future. :D

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Originally Posted by Bruto

hey all!

To whom it may concern, I just got some data from a game I participated, "Sultan's Labyrinth: A Royal Sacrifice" and the ratio between downloads and ticket support is less than 0.5%!

This game was one of the first commercial games to use the (still beta) HWA and I was interested to see how it would perform in different computers, as the number of downloads are many thousands (with different video cards etc). That ratio between downloads and ticket support is to be considered very low (according the info I got), which means HWA, even if not officially out of beta yet, is solid as a rock compared to other commercial and custom-made engines. Kudos to Yves, François and all Clickteam staff!

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I think you are misinformed there mate. All DX versions have support for older versions. DX10/11 dont really offer any benefit to 2D applications I dont think anyway, except for maybe a few extra pixel shaders...

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Originally Posted by uprize

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Originally Posted by Bruto

hey all!

To whom it may concern, I just got some data from a game I participated, "Sultan's Labyrinth: A Royal Sacrifice" and the ratio between downloads and ticket support is less than 0.5%!

This game was one of the first commercial games to use the (still beta) HWA and I was interested to see how it would perform in different computers, as the number of downloads are many thousands (with different video cards etc). That ratio between downloads and ticket support is to be considered very low (according the info I got), which means HWA, even if not officially out of beta yet, is solid as a rock compared to other commercial and custom-made engines. Kudos to Yves, François and all Clickteam staff!

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I think you are misinformed there mate. All DX versions have support for older versions. DX10/11 dont really offer any benefit to 2D applications I dont think anyway, except for maybe a few extra pixel shaders...

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oops quoted wrong person...