OpenGL + Windows = tech support nightmare?

[rodent]

Hi all!

First of all thanks to all the posters! I have lurked on this forum for a couple of weeks now and have already learned a lot about indie game development. This forum is an exceptional source of golden information! :D

My question is following:

I am interested in starting to use PTK, but I am a bit scared about the OpenGL part. I have heard a number of times that a large percentage of Windows users will face problems with OpenGl, because they don't have proper drivers installed.

Is it true? Are there ways around it? What kind of percentages are we talking about? I have heard truly frightening figures like 50% of users facing difficulties and needing assistance! Would using OpenGL cause such a tech support demand, for a one man team that is already quite stressed, that it would be better to stay away from OpenGL on Windows if just possible?

I would greatly appreciate all your input on this subject.

[Jack Norton]

Let me check... hmm found interesting numbers...
Neverwinter Nights - OPENGL GAME - over 1 million of users
Star Wars - KOTOR : about 4 millions copies sold

I can continue if you want... but seems that's there some people who have windows and OpenGL around ;)

[PoV]

Ah yes, but those are mostly hardcore gamers buying those with the PC power to handle it (or those willing to acquire it when needed).

[rodent]

Thanks for your encouraging reply. :)

I see that your (?) WinterWolves site has a direct copy of the Phelios' tech tips page. :)

Where as with major game titles you can both expect the customers to have proper drivers installed and have the tech support resources to guide the gamers thru their difficulties, I think that an indie developer is in a bit different situation. Potential buyers can't be expected to have proper drivers and one man teams can't spend too much time solving driver problems.

Or can the driver difficulties be solved easily, with pages and guides like those at the WinterWolves or Phelios sites? I gather your experience is that they can? And if they can, will it still hurt sales? I think a number of people will be turned away by talk about installing drivers and such technical stuff, but how big percentage of potential buyers will it be? Opinions and experiences?

I would love to use PTK! :D

[Rainer Deyke]

I'm not sure about the exact numbers (which will vary depending on your game anyway), but a lot of users will have trouble with OpenGL (and a lot of users won't). I would stay away from OpenGL on Windows if at all possible. There are plenty of free cross-platform game development libraries that don't rely on OpenGL.

[Mark Fassett]

I think whether you have trouble or not with OpenGL will be as much related to the type of game you make as it will to anything else. And, the further into the future you get, the less trouble there will be with OpenGL. Even the newer Intel and SiS cards have OpenGL support. Statistically, the users who can't run an OpenGL game will become less and less of a problem.

[Dan MacDonald]

There's also the Driver update tool that phelios has, you can bundle it with your game. Basically if the user is having a problem running the game they can run it and it will tell them where to get new drivers.

Driver Update System (http://www.phelios.net/updatevideodrivers.html)

[Reactor]

We're fully Opengl, and although we've had a few little 'issues' to sort out, we're not expecting a tech support nightmare come release day. But, that may have to do with the fact my brother (the programmer) seems to be an uber genius when it comes to drivers, and understands exactly what it is that's happening behind the scenes. Unless you're decked out with a lot of good test hardware (Radeon and Nvidia cards) and are ready to dig deep into what it is that's going on, it might be best to save yourself some time and go with something easier.

[Karja]

My own experiences with OpenGL have been that while it might cause driver problems, it is far easier to make a properly functioning game that runs well on various Windows versions. I don't know if it's just me who's a lazy developer, but seriously: I have made small DirectX games that more or less follow initialisation procedures to the letter, that still fail to run on Win98. (As was the case with a game I posted in the Announcements section here; I re-wrote the init parts after I posted it and noticed that I still could never create a device, no matter what I tried.)

Well, I won't make any claims as to this is the fault of me, my building environment, the DirectX version I'm using, or the fact that I test my game in WMWare with Win98; but either way: after I ported the code to OpenGL, it runs perfectly without any glitches. And this has happened before as well, in the days of DirectX 5 and 7 and such.

So my personal opinion is that OpenGL is quite useful: most of the time it's mostly driver errors, and at least those can be upgraded.

[Jonas]

We've used OpenGL for our Hardware mode for years, and really it hasn't been an issue at all.

%99 of the time if anyting funky happens with video stuff in genral, folks just need to go update thier drivers.

Anyhow, OpenGL hasn't been an issue at all support wise. Our players aren't hard core gamers either, we've got soccer moms to Grampa joes and they don't have to jump through wierd hoops to get it working.

It also made porting our games to Mac OS X a hell of a lot easier too.

[princec]

No problems with OpenGL here; interesting to note that of every single one of the queries I've had from n00bs without drivers, not one has turned into a sale despite my help and sorting out their computers nicely for them. Bah.

Cas :)

[rodent]

Thanks everyone for your input!

I am not planning to do anything complicated with OpenGL. I plan to use it thru PTK and the games will be small and simple.

Considering all that has been said, I think going for PTK would be safe enough.

Ahh, feels good. :p

[patrox]

The problem of the PC is not openGL, it's more about getting exposure. It's so populated that it's hard to be noticed without spending considerable money/efforts.
Check the CatcusBruce thread and notice his advertising budget to reach such an amount of sales.

pat.

[rodent]

I know and I am prepared for it. By being prepared I of course mean that I am prepared to get no sales. :D

More seriously, I am not looking to get filthy rich, I am just planning to have some fun making small hobbyist games. And perhaps making a little extra by doing so. I have read this forum with great interest and I have learned a lot about marketing. No doubt I will fall into some of the newbie pitfalls, but such is life - blissful suffering. :)

Anyway, I just noticed that BlitzMax is out. Goodbye PTK. :)

Thanks again everyone for your input. Greatly appreciated!

[James C. Smith]

Anyhow, OpenGL hasn't been an issue at all support wise. Our players aren't hard core gamers either, we've got soccer moms to Grampa joes and they don't have to jump through wierd hoops to get it working.

Do ALL your games use OpenGL or did some of your older games not require it?

How would you know if users are having trouble with OpenGL. What is likely to happen if a potential customer, who is new to your company, finds your game, downloads the demo, and find it doesn’t work? He just download a game he never heard of but the screen shot looked cool. But now as soon as he double clicks on the game icon to start it up it just “crashes” or displays an error message about some technical words he is not familiar with (OpenGL driver). What is this customer likely to do? Is he going to complain to tech support that the free demo he just downloaded doesn’t work? Is he going to risk mucking with his computer configuration to try a game he may not even like? Not likely. He will probable just delete your game it and move on to download the next demo. If a user don’t have much invested in your game or your company, they are not likely to complain to you if your demo doesn’t work on their computer.

The reason I ask if ALL your games use OpenGL was to try to determine if you had existing customers before you starting making Open GL games. That is how we found the problems with OpenGL. We had a huge installed base of customer form out previous games. When we launched a new OpenGL game we found that many of our existing customers couldn’t play it. Even then, most of them didn’t complain to us. But we discovered problems when we sent free beta copies to some existing customers and when we posted messages on the forums of our existing games. I posted a message in the Ricochet Lost Worlds forum to ask if they hard code Ricochet fans had tried our new Wik game and that is when they finally admitted that they tried it and it didn’t work for them. Before that they didn’t bother to tell us.

What percent of your potential customers will have OpenGL problems all depends on who your target audience is. If you only distribute your game on PC-Gamer cover mount CDs you won’t run into trouble. And if/when you do run into trouble, you probably won’t know it.

It’s like saying I don’t need to bother making a Mac version of my game because not many of my customers ask for one. And none of the people visiting my web site send me e-mail asking for a Mac version. Of course they don’t. It not because there are not many Mac users (there are plenty). It’s not because a Mac version of my game is bad idea (it would be great to have a Mac version). But the people who would use a Mac version are not seeing my demo so they don’t try to buy my game or tell me they want it. Similarly, the people who play can’t play OpenGL games are probably not regularly visiting your web site and trying your demos if all your games all require OpenGL. Even if they don’t consciously know anything about OpenGL, they just never return to your web site because none of your games work.

I mostly just reject on principal this argument that OpenGL must be okay since I don’t hear about many of my customers having trouble. But the reality is that OpenGL is fairly trouble free. Even if you are targeting ultra casual players with older computer, chances are at least 80% or 90% of them will be able to play an OpenGL game. And if your game requires a more modern computer anyway, then an even larger percent of your potential customers will be able to run OpenGL games. But there is that small percentage of users out there who have Windows ME and a 3D accelerate from NVIDEA or ATI, but still have the Microsoft supplied driver from the ME install disk which has no support for hardware accelerated OpenGL. And when the free demo of your game don’t work they aren’t going to tell you about it or install new drivers. The will just delete you game and move on. But that doesn’t mean you have to change your game technology just to try to get every last potential customer. While you are spending time inventing an alternative to Open GL, you are spending less time creating the content that could help convert more potential customers to actual customers.

[James C. Smith]

I just re-read the subject of the topic and want to change my answer.

OpenGL + Windows = tech support nightmare?

No! Not at all. As long as you have a free trial version of your game, and you encourage people to play the trial version before purchasing the game, you shouldn’t have any support nightmares. The people who can’t run your game will not pester you for technical support. They will just not buy your game.

[tolik]

I adore James for phrasing everything so straightforward, that it becomes very obvious.
I wanted to say same thing as James did. I have/had (myself) and have access to hundreds of computers (not mentioning test lab) and A LOT OF THEM have problems with OpenGL.

Do you know what was the reason behind most of the problems I've resolved lately? BIOS setting. I have no idea which one and we weren't able to determine it. We spent hours and days figuring out what's wrong. Until we've accidentaly used "Load High Perfomance Settings" which didn't differ from our configs anyhow. Suddenly, driver inited w/out "Software Emulation" note. I'm referring to GF5s in this case. With ATI it was even more hellish. It wasn't mentioning SW mode, it was just using it w/out specific reason.

I wasn't able to play dozens of games for this reason. I wasn't able to resolve the problem. I know it's my problem and dev doesn't have anything to do with it so I wouldn't email him...

[princec]

I'd just like to mention here that I've collected a huge set of reliable logs over the last 18 months of OpenGL problems from my games. Regardless of your personal experiences the general public experiences this:

65% or so of Windows users have no problems whatsoever.
35% of them don't have OpenGL or experience trouble.

99% of MacOS X users have no problems whatsoever.

50% of Linux users have no problems whatsoever, apart from their strange devotion to a crazy O/S.

Cas :)

[Jonas]

Do ALL your games use OpenGL or did some of your older games not require it?

All our games since Hardwood Hearts have had a OpenGL option, but not requirement. Of course back in the day when we release Hearts, most of our players didn't have 3D cards worth using. So dependacy on them would have been a deathnell. We still allways fall back to a software mode. It's kinda a must in causal games IMO. Some games obviously don't led themselves to have that fall back.

How would you know if users are having trouble with OpenGL. What is likely to happen if a potential customer, who is new to your company, finds your game, downloads the demo, and find it doesn’t work?
...
I mostly just reject on principal this argument that OpenGL must be okay since I don’t hear about many of my customers having trouble.

Yep, your right it is not the most scientific notion that just because we don't get many reports on OpenGL problems, that doesn't mean they don't have issues. Our circumstances are a bit different in that our ace in the hole is that there is always a software mode fall back. So if they try "enhanced mode" and it fails for any reason it flips back to Software mode.

This design is intended to make customers experience as painless as possible, hence we might not even know if they had an issue since their needs we satisfied automatically.

So I guess that if a game was 100% dependent on OpenGL (or any other 3D hardware layer) then yes that becomes a serious issue indeed since folks often never bother to tell you when it doesn't work right out of the box.

All that said, my gut tells me that OpenGL really hasn't been any sort of big problem for either our customers or our developent.

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea for us to log failed attempts so we can get some good stats like Cas has.

[rodent]

Once again thanks everyone for your input. After reading all the replies a couple of times, and giving the issue a lot of thought, I am coming to the conclusion that I should not use OpenGL based engine, if there really is an alternative.

The alternative should be an easy-to-use cross platform (Win32 and Mac at least) 2D engine. It's critical that it is easy to use, as otherwise I will lose sales because it takes too long to make the games themselves. If OpenGL would cause at max a 50% loss of sales (a bit high, but let's use that figure), the alternative engine can be only 50% slower to program in, or I will lose more than I gain. For reference on easyness, my OpenGL based candidates are PTK and BlitzMax.

What are the opposing non-OpenGL candidates? I did a lot of googling, but perhaps some of you could recommend some easy-to-use cross platform 2D engines or libraries?

[Sillysoft]

I use java2D for my game. It's very easy to use. There are some questions about the performance, but it has worked nicely for me. My game does not have tons of sprites moving about though. Also the newest java JVMs use hardware acceleration where possible and supported (directX on windows and openGL on mac/unix). You can turn this acceleration off and on, I think the default is still off on many systems.

The biggest issue is that some windows users will not have java installed. However you also get all the joy of working in java.

[princec]

No acceleration at all on the Mac yet. It's all software, and dreadfully slow.

Cas :)

[Sillysoft]

That's true that java2D is not accerated on the mac if you are using java 1.4. If you use 1.3 then you can turn it on (but that has it's own set of problems). The openGL accelerated pipeline comes with java 1.5, no? So hopefully when apple actually releases a version of 1.5 it will have some acceleration. Although it looks like they will only make 1.5 available for OSX 10.4 and up.

Perhaps it is dreadfully slow for complex uses. I am totally satisfied with the speed that I get to draw some images and flashing colors and animations. After some optimizations my game runs just fine even on computers that are a few years old.

[rodent]

Aren't the Java runtime libraries several megas in size?

Perhaps the most interesting find in yesterday's googling was Gime 2D. It uses SDL thru Lua. Lua should mean very fast development, though I am a bit worried about the speed. I think Lua applications can be compiled into executables of their own, but I'm not sure. The Gime 2D site is down, so it's hard to say anything more about it.

[AlgolDreamweaver]

I am using OpenGL for Daymare 3. Part of my game development cycle involves early testing the game on a bunch of friend's computers to make sure that there are no input/output compatibility issues. About half failed due to no Glaux.dll available. I will just make sure that the dll is included in my release version. Although I generally keep it in my system folder, it will work fine if it is only in the game folder. I guess it would also be possible to make sure that no aux GL functions are used, just use the basic library.

[wazoo]

@AlgolDreamweaver: I've also "heard" talk of how buggy and unreliable glaux is. (I can't point you to anything substantiated, but on the OGL forums they stay away from it).

If you're just using it to load images for your textures, have you seen DevIL? It's a great little image loading library that takes the (eXtreme pain) of image loading and does it all nicely..

just fyi

[Evak]

OpenGL is generaly fine until you start using pixel shaders and extensions, plus there isn't much 3rd party support for those features, unlike D3D which has almost all the development time put into it.

I think thats the biggest problem, otherwise any card from the geforce2 generation and up shouldn't have too much trouble unless your using shaders.

[wazoo]

We've used OpenGL for our Hardware mode for years, and really it hasn't been an issue at all.

%99 of the time if anyting funky happens with video stuff in genral, folks just need to go update thier drivers.


True, but there's a gotcha here which nobody's pointing out (unless I'm not seeing any proper GL links).

Most video driver updates ALSO require the latest version of DirectX.

If I go to ATI to download the latest video drivers....uh oh, they require DirectX9.0!!! (I'm assuming I'm on a base 98/XP install). I'm fearfull of changing any video settings, as my brother bob's cousin's sister's brother's uncle once tried that and he had to take his computer into the shop!

Okay I'm exaggerating a little there, but I think you get my meaning. Most video driver updates (for windows anyways) require an update to DirectX, which defeats the purpose a bit..right?