why commercial game hate .x file?
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All tutorial i readed in the web talk about mesh .x file.
DirectX just support them, but i've never seen a commercial game that use .x file.
Why?
There's a few games that use .x files. But most game developers prefer to use their own format so they can be in control of how it works and so on.
Most programmers love reinventing the wheel :P
Or perhaps not reinventing the wheel by having to write the D3DX stuff overagain on PS2. Depends how you look at it.
Or perhaps not reinventing the wheel by having to write the D3DX stuff overagain on PS2. Depends how you look at it.
.x files are great for beginners and such (myself included). They contain a great amount of features and flexibility and the D3DX loaders make it very easy. Howevver, for many commercial games, the features are either way overkill, or lacking something.
Making your own model format and parser is not extremely difficult, but it is a bit overkill for most indie and personal projects... You will also either need to create your own modeler that supports the file type or create an exporter for another modeler.
Making your own model format and parser is not extremely difficult, but it is a bit overkill for most indie and personal projects... You will also either need to create your own modeler that supports the file type or create an exporter for another modeler.
Another reason I believe they dont use the format is to prevent people from stealing their content. The same goes for audio files and images.
As a developer if I was to leave my mesh format as .x I leave myself open to modders changing things, which is great for some games, but bad for others, and we all know where those changes lead.
Hot cup of coffee anyone?
Hot cup of coffee anyone?
It's so bloody easy to take content out of a game if you really want to, that's not even an argument.
I agree with whoever said "programmers love to reinvent the wheel."
I agree with whoever said "programmers love to reinvent the wheel."
If you run a commercial project and use textures from a professional artist they demand you to pack the textures into a custom format noone can hack that easy otherwise you could simple buy a game and get access to textures that would code several hundret dollars, the same is it with model files, its fine when you can compile new models but it sucks when the user is able to unpack them
this only matters if you bought the license for the models from another developer
if they are your own it don t have to care about it
and x files are nice but just another attempt of microsoft to establish a monopol
there is a project for a industry model format standard which was announced last year, sadly i dont remember its name anymore
this only matters if you bought the license for the models from another developer
if they are your own it don t have to care about it
and x files are nice but just another attempt of microsoft to establish a monopol
there is a project for a industry model format standard which was announced last year, sadly i dont remember its name anymore
Quote:Original post by Illumini
Most programmers love reinventing the wheel :P
Or perhaps not reinventing the wheel by having to write the D3DX stuff overagain on PS2. Depends how you look at it.
I don't think that is really true.. model format is very closely related to the engine guts. DirectX file format is a fairly generic file format (for the most part). Most engines will have to do alot of shuffling to get the data into their geometry format.
I would be sure that alot of developers use DirectX as an intermediate format and than convert it into native engine file streams. It's widely available, better than .3ds and .ase. Maybe eventually Collada will be the end of all of these formats.
I agree that .x would make a decent intermeadiate format (although I doubt its used much there since the very idea intermediate formats just complicates things...), even so both my points are true (the importance of either is highly debateable of course :) )
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