- Friday, 10 July 2009
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The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing - Jeane Baptiste Colbert
Diablo 3 is far from a done deal
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. µ
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So.. the whole announcement of ATi/AMD with Blizzard last week was for nothing?
So more or less all you said in your previous article was just a load of crap? Pulled out of your asses?

I mean come on, check your facts?
that Diablo players care about the graphics whizz of the game? Millions of us are still enjoying D2, a game with barely a vertex or polygon in sight on computers that don't merit one frame per second on the latest 3D Mark. Blizzard are aware of the breadth of their fanbase and the huge range of kit spec that is covered, so won't care too much about licking up to hardware X or feature set Y. D3 will have to run on a vast range of video setups if it is to keep hold of the massive fan base, so don't get this game (or, in fact, any of Blizzard's titles) in the hardware race.
Every day is a good day to bash NVIDIA here, at The Inq, eh?
Blizzard aren't Crytek. If history is anything to go by, this game won't be trying to push the boundaries of what's possible. Diablo II shipped at 640x480, required the Lord of Destruction expansion to get an 800x600 option, and was pretty playable in software-only mode.

I can't imagine why it would need, or even particularly want, a hardware physics engine.

I'm hoping for the ability to run this on my notebook, which has only an nVidia Quadro NVS 120M and a Core 2 Duo T7200. Native resolution on the LCD, at 1680x1050, would be nice.
Stop making assumption and speculation. This site has never been that reliable of any sort of news, but this is getting a little out of hand. Stop spitting crap out of your brain. My kid could have written a better article than this.
I still think DX10.1 or DX11 on a Blizzard title will have significant impact. Even though, as others have already pointed, Blizzard titles usually coverage as large range of hardware as possible. There will be those still with DX9C/XP but there those that are on the bleeding edge also.

Given the record Blizzard has in releasing hit titles, the mere anticipation of the latest API they'll support will probably impact what kind of graphics cards people will buy (as we get closer to the actual releases).

IF we know Diablo 3 is being released in 6 months or less (not true but IF) then I would bet Diablo fanboys (and gals) would buy a Radeon HD 4850 / 4870 (if they think its time for an upgrade).

Likewise, Diablo 3 with DX11 is probably going to help with the adoption of DX11. Couldn't find anything official but I am going to bet DX10.1 is probably closer to DX11 than DX10 given it looks like Vista will have DX11 support also. I don't think is all in Nvidia's flavor either.
How dare the inquirer, famous for releasing unconfirmed information well before other places have it, release unconfirmed information before anyone else has it? It's not like that's what we come here for!

A large part of why this place is good is because the information is released so early - which means that some of it will be wrong.
Isn't it funny how the Nvidia camp is so upside down, that even an article that casts fairly even aspersions onto both sides is viewed as downright blasphemy against the green temple.

Rather like a spoilt self indulgent child that would scream when its not winning at the current game.

...
You guys don't get it. Blizzard makes mass-appeal games, not cutting edge game engine tech demo games. They design Diablo III to require graphics APIs that don't even exist yet. They won't make it require Vista. Blizzard sells games, not game engines, so they aim for what they think the average person's computer will handle at the time of release; they have to because they're selling games, not game engines.
Blizzard is more into mainstream and not high end. That's why it would be amazing if it even uses DX10 to some extent. They want that game to run in many kinds of machines because the game is going to sell millions and millions...
This reminded me the days that diablo2 run much better on my 3dFX voodoo than on nvidia (due to glide, and better 2D acceleration that 3dfx provided)

Despite huge differences in performance that can make a game engine over one video card or the other, I don't think that diablo won't run well on nvidia. It will just run without DX10.1 features, if there is any worth to mention.

But to those complaining that the inquirer is bashing nvidia, think again. Why not bash Nvidia? they deserve it. I wish AMD finally release an ATI 5850 and 5870 for christmas 2008 to finally make a check mate to nvidia and end these dumb fights caused by love on a piece of video hardware. In the end, you should always get the best hardware for the money.
As others said, blizzard generally takes the safe road. They design their software to run well on common hardware.

Every title they've released has subscribed to this philosophy; often they're several years behind in technology but they recognize the value of software that just runs well when many others miss it.

It certainly doesn't look from the videos like they plan on changing it up this time around.
Its been over 8 months now. and Nvidia hasn't even added DX10.1. Do you honestly believe they will add DX 11 whenever it comes out???? Years from now.

ATI on the other hand has been first to come out with everything. And now their cards are kicking Nvidias butt for price/performance... and in some cases all performance.
All this ballyhoo over DX10 and DX10.1 haven't even died down yet and we're talking DX11 already?

Whut?
Instead of getting distressed over an article about Blizzard going over to the other side, perhaps Nvidia should take more effort in to solving the issues that a lot of people are having with their Nforce 7xx series chipset motherboards.
Notable problems are data corruption, artifacting, BSODs and system freezes.
Entertaining Enaccurate Enews!

I <3 theinquirer
This guy is full of BS, like blizzard developers are going to leak any info to a peon like him, hes just trying to spread more BS.

Anyone who watched the developer chat during blizzard invitational (in Paris) knows this game will NOT REQUIRE DX10.

His previous "article" claimed the FAQ had info about Direct10 which it doesn't.

The physics engine has already been decided you dipshots. It is on the official FAQ at blizzard for D3. 

The gameplay trailer has shown that the game is actually a good ways into production. This close to the announcement of the title and they have that much to show. I expect a 09 release.