[Araris]

"WHAT A DIFFERENCE a day makes.

Twenty four little hours in which we learned that, contrary to what we previously thought, Blizzard isn't out to rain on Nvidia's graphical parade. Far from it, in fact.

Yesterday, we suggested that Diablo 3, Blizzard's upcoming blockbuster, would not only run DX10.1 - favouring ATI hardware over the green team - but that it would also use Havok physics, owned by Intel, rather than the Physx owned by Nvidia.

Now it's safe to say that the green team is in a small tizzy at the moment, thanks to the fact that ATI has a competitive part for the first time in what seems like an epoch. But, we can tell you that Diablo 3 isn't one of the things they're worried about.

(On a separate note, we don't see them too worried about the 4850 either. Current expectation in the channel is that Nvidia will do "whatever it takes" to stay in the $200 game).

There's been no announcement on the physics engine yet - false alarm. And as for the graphics, it still seems a dead cert that the game will support XP, Vista and OSX. µ

But here's some interesting speculation. The game is barely up and running, with a full release certainly not on the cards until 2010. And guess what is due to arrive in 2010? That's right - Windows 7 and DirectX 11.

Can you imagine, folks, Diablo goodness - in a truly next-generation engine?

Now this is little more than barely informed speculation - Blizzard isn't talking, Nvidia isn't talking and Microsoft certainly isn't talking. In fact, there's no indication beyond some backroom chatter the matter has even been discussed.

But we do hear that Nvidia has gotten its man inside Blizzard already, working to optimise the 3D code being generated. If that's the case, you can figure that the game will rock on the green team's TWIMTBP label working rather nicely indeed.
Meanwhile, ATI's Havok-on-GPU deal is not looking like all it could be. With no code from the Red Team as of yet, it looks increasingly unlikely that Intel will allow them to pull out better performance from their GPU than Chipzilla can get out of the CPU.

So stay tuned - the battle for supremacy in what is sure to be the year's top game has only just begun."

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...-far-done-deal

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[Xiaogos]

so hope that they release the game faster..cant wait to play it..

[waver_01]

*facepalm*

''But we do hear that Nvidia has gotten its man inside Blizzard already, working to optimise the 3D code being generated. If that's the case, you can figure that the game will rock on the green team's TWIMTBP label working rather nicely indeed.''

the inquirer ''heard''? really now

bullshit, it would have PhysX and DX10, instead of Havok and DX10.1 which is already confirmed

[OboveAverage]

This is bullshit, those graphics for 2010? god, if they already looks like 2006 graphics...i hope this come out next year, and i got something else to say:
ATI is one of the companys(and most important) who are working on the DX11 API, do you remember the tesselation unit inside all R600 derivates? and, Nvidia is not on that team developing DX11
Anyways I'd prefer OpenGL 3, but it seems like its dead, lets wait till SIGRAPH 2008, in octover, to see what is going on

[penguin1]

Q4 2009 to Q3 2010 sounds like a good time the game will be released

[w0mbat]

Nope, not TWIMTBP but GITG.

[Nuker_]

I don't care about blizzs games at all, but I don't simply it will be twimtbp because theinq has rumored that a simple software engineer managed to get his foot inside of the walls that form the studio developing that game.

[Shigure]

Originally Posted by penguin1

Q4 2009 to Q3 2010 sounds like a good time the game will be released

More likely they will come out Q4 2010 to Q1 2011... They won't release any game until it's almost perfect... The Blizzard's way...

[lightrush]

Cut the bulshit plx.

Billzard games do not USE any of the "features" of DX at all. Neither of them. They have OpenGL based renderer which makes possible for them to run on basically .. anything as architecture and OS. The DX renderer only reimplements the same functions on DX language. Moreover - u can find a simple confirmation of this by running any blizzard game with -opengl switch and measuring the fps. Reason is simple - Mac OS X.

[MrBungle]

the article was ridiculous, btw.

and people need to stop mentioning DX11 and Windows 7 in the same sentence. you've all been conditioned into thinking you need to buy a new OS every time Microsoft updates DirectX. we don't. M$ could release DX10 and DX11 and DX12 for XP if they wanted to. don't they already have enough of our money?

[XHD2560x1600]

Microsoft already said DX 11 is not shipping with Windows 7... So why is everyone still talking about DX 11!?!?

[joey_sfb]

Agreed. DirectX is not cross-platform. OpenGL is a better choice if they intend to release on the OSX. Besides, the present d3 graphic is cool enough for me, just release the game in due time.

Originally Posted by lightrush

Cut the bulshit plx.

Billzard games do not USE any of the "features" of DX at all. Neither of them. They have OpenGL based renderer which makes possible for them to run on basically .. anything as architecture and OS. The DX renderer only reimplements the same functions on DX language. Moreover - u can find a simple confirmation of this by running any blizzard game with -opengl switch and measuring the fps. Reason is simple - Mac OS X.

[ColdFusion]

to be frank, i hope D3 may be released using the same engine as D2 in 2.5D style.

Call me old school, but i like my Diablo to be run this way. It's the gameplay & storyline factor.

[Teemax]

Originally Posted by ColdFusion

to be frank, i hope D3 may be released using the same engine as D2 in 2.5D style.

Call me old school, but i like my Diablo to be run this way. It's the gameplay & storyline factor.

It looks like your "2.5D" wish might come true

As for Blizzard supporting NVIDIA or ATI, I seriously have my doubt on either news:
- Blizzard supports Mac, so OpenGL with DirectX wrapper.
- Blizzard as a company is arguably much stronger than NVIDIA or ATI. They're the PC game king. They need no stinking "support" for NVIDIA or ATI. NVIDIA or ATI would likely bend over for them instead

[Kage28]

looking at the screen shots, somehow I keep feeling that the gfx looks VERY similar to COH.

But either way, think that the end gfx feel should be something similar to Titan Quest. (thought that was one of the better Diable clones out there)