I'm starting again on the PC because that's what I have at home. I've tried 5 generations of NVIDIA graphics cards and my development PC now has a GTX 970. I figure that's about the top speed anyone would expect. Previously I had a GTX 760 and before that a 550ti. The latter is about the minimum I'd expect anyone to be using now for gaming, being 4 years old. I'd also expect maybe at least a 2 core CPU. From what I've been reading so far, DirectX 11 has graphics hardware expectations that maybe go back a bit further. Not sure currently how far back the on-board graphics capabilities go. I don't want to have to code different ways of doing things for older machines. Direct X appears to support that in its own layers so I can leave that be.
My computer is called Azumi, and I built her myself from components selected to last a while, but not be too expensive. There's an i7 in there, 16GB of RAM, and with the GTX 970 has been brought more up to date. I put 2 DVD drives in, which came in handy when I converted all my music CDs to FLAC files to put onto the NAS drive for the hi-fi, and for my Windows phone. The latter has been a tale of mixed success. The phone plays lossless CD music to the earphones by wire and car stereo via Bluetooth. I'd like a word with the person that coded the condescending message to tell me to turn the Bluetooth volume down, which it also handily does itself, so as not to deafen myself with headphones - about 20 minutes into my journey, thus ensuring that I can't hear the rest of what I was listening to. Since it knows its linked to a car stereo, it might reasonably think I have a separate volume control. I would be much more likely to deafen myself by turning the volume up on said stereo to hear the Bluetooth properly at the default volume, then switch to the radio and deafen myself that way. Was this the same person that also resets the Bluetooth volume to 20 out of 30 every time the phone reboots, which is far too often, by the way, so I have to keep adjusting it back up to full, which you can only do if the Bluetooth is connected, which it isn't usually. Normally I'd be 100 metres down the road before the two devices link and I realise the volume is too low and I'm not allowed to press buttons on the phone. Sort it out, people. Stop adjusting my chosen Bluetooth volume. Rant over.
Well do I remember the hassle I had to go through to stop the MSI drivers from being over-ridden by the on-board graphics drivers before I switched the on-board graphics off in the BIOS. The PC would boot up using the MSI card, then when Windows 7 started up it would switch to the on-board, which had no monitor plugged in. You'd think the default would be the additional shiny graphics card, but no.
I'd like my software to detect the graphics capabilities and never lose a frame, but maybe have a manual over-ride if the CPU and graphics card are a bit out of step. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. One of the many things I have to investigate is how many nasty API calls I have to make to find out what resources I am using and what I have left. Been a long time since all we had to do was set the border colour at different points in the game cycle and measure the bars with a ruler. No border at all on the PC.
The PC graphics architecture pretty much expects the screen, or at least my window, to be completely refreshed every frame. That eliminates any attempts at cleverness to preserve some of what was on the screen from the previous frame. The whole concept of smooth scrolling and character maps, and palettes has all but gone. Of course you can program that back in - we more or less had to do that on the Sega Saturn for Rainbow Islands. I'm thinking that probably the Shaders would be only too pleased to do palettes and colour look-ups. They'd still be better used for reflections and lighting, i.e. the sort of things that I'd rather not have to think about.
So right now I am working through the easier of the two DirectX books that I bought in order to get a foot-hold. The trickier of the two books starting talking advanced mathematics by page 12, which I thought was out of order - pun intended. The easier book discusses topics in terms I understand and has to do things in the right order because we're constructing a demo program or 2, and I don't even know what they're going to do yet. Hopefully by the end of the first book I'll be ready to try the second book again.
I wish I had thought of adding a mass figure to in-game objects to affect collisions: taking mass into account. The PhysX library is something I will have to avail myself of. I think I could also have a bit of fun playing with that in cartoon style.
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