Does WFTO gonna support the new MANTLE API from AMD?

[f.meussen]

Well for people that are not familiar with this. MANTLE is a new API ( like DirectX ) with the great benefit that MANTLE forces the game to utilize the GPU at the most efficient way instead of needing the processor heavily.

So Mantle will be at his best at games with lots of units at the screen or lots of different objects.
Games like the Total War series or RTS games are expected to benefit the most of this new API.

So i think that WFTO could also really benefit from MANTLE.( since there will be lots of units in the dungeon i hope )

[Noontide]

Hi f.meussen

The Mantle API is certainly a very interesting development and I'm sure many studios will be following it very closely. However as I outlined in this thread we have no intention to exclude any specific hardware or software configurations, at this time Mantle only supports the latest AMD hardware.

Furthermore as it stands at this time Unity does not support the Mantle API which ultimately blocks us off from it, unless we chose to develop an entire backend to support Mantle, something we're sadly not in a position to do.

Kind Regards,

Noontide

[Backa]

So what exactly does that Mantle thing do? It makes game less hardware-heavy? Makes it look better?

[v0id]

The former, but only on AMD Hardware. But since we use the Unity engine, we normaly don't touch such things directly and Mantle can only be supported if Unity supports it once.
However we have no intention to optimize the game for specific hardware, instead we are trying to abstract from it to support a wider range of systems.

[f.meussen]

So this means that you also wont use things like PhysX , because that would be beneficial for NVidia users.Right?

[v0id]

Things like this are not used directly by us. The thing is, that the Unity Engine does deal with most of those specifics behind an abstraction layer on which we work and we won't bypass it.
This assures that we make us not dependent from any hardware, because the unity engine provides the layer which deals with it and it uses hardware specifics internally but afaik not yet Mantle.

[Not a big fan of the government]

v0id の投稿を引用：

but only on AMD Hardware.

It can be used on Nvidia too, It just requires implementation. It is not restricted to AMD it's completely open source.

[Elentári]

If you have AMD hardware that is even more modern than mine then you are overkilling anyways.
To me the game runs smooth without mantle.

[Hawk Firestorm]

TBH as soon as I heard Unity it made me wary, mainly because of my experiences with no 64bit support and ram issues in other unity games, and their unwillingness to seem to want to sort it out.

As far as Mantle Devs won't support it unless its use becomes widespread or its easy to implement and well cheap too.

[f.meussen]

Well i hope that Mantle is gonna be just as supported as PhysX is now.
Because I believe that 90% of the games is optimized for the Nvidia cards and almost every blockbuster supports PhysX that is clearly a Nvidia ONLY thingy.
I hope that MANTLE gonna be something for the ATI users and something that ATI users can be proud of.
Best would be, PhysX also available for ATI cards and MANTLE also for NVIDIA cards, no exclusives concerning hardware please.But this would be an utopia thought i think.

[MilkMan]

f.meussen の投稿を引用：

Well i hope that Mantle is gonna be just as supported as PhysX is now.
Because I believe that 90% of the games is optimized for the Nvidia cards and almost every blockbuster supports PhysX that is clearly a Nvidia ONLY thingy.
I hope that MANTLE gonna be something for the ATI users and something that ATI users can be proud of.
Best would be, PhysX also available for ATI cards and MANTLE also for NVIDIA cards, no exclusives concerning hardware please.But this would be an utopia thought i think.

It'd be nice, but I wouldn't hope too hard for it. nVidia spends a lot of time and money on that "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" stuff. SquareEnix is the only company I know of that primarily supports ATI hardware.

[f.meussen]

Well Nvidia and Microsoft are both very irritating , that is why i sweared never ever to buy a Nvidia card again because of the PhysX thingy, ( should be available for every GPU maker )
Well Microsoft is a bit harder because i simply NEED Windows but i sweared also never ever to buy their XBOX because Microsoft is the same evil as Nvidia concerning exclusives, i say a HALO or a GEARS OF WAR or be the first with a DLC exclusive for games like GTA.

I really hate this. Same for Nintendo with their Mario and Pokemon exclusives. Also Sony with their Gods of War Stop it!
Having exclusives is nice for the shareholders of a company but not good for the gaming community.

[Lomice]

it is how the world works, get over it