Caris Posted August 14, 2007 Posted August 14, 2007 Right, i want to be all prepaird to play Bioshock on my lovley PC but i remeber when the Lost Planet demo came out i needed to download something to make it play? I can't remeber what it was but i have just formatted and installed all the lastest important updates so do i need anything else? I also have the latest WHQL Drives from Nvidia so... Am i ready to go?
Guest Jordan Posted August 14, 2007 Posted August 14, 2007 Latest drivers (if possible, use the beta drivers, they are usually far better than current release at the moment) and the game. Sorted. DX10 is obviously built into Vista, but honestly proformance wise? It currently isn't great. Whos fault that is? We wouldn't know till Bioshock.
Caris Posted August 14, 2007 Author Posted August 14, 2007 Is that all? I'm sure people had to download something from microsoft.com to get the Lost Planet demo working... Ah well if that's all i need spot on, hope i can run it on max specs.
Guest Jordan Posted August 14, 2007 Posted August 14, 2007 I hope the Bioshock demo works on XP... Yeah it does. It has both DX9 and DX10 on a single DVD9. Handy eh?
Wesley Posted August 14, 2007 Posted August 14, 2007 Nice and handy for us folk with average gfx cards.
Caris Posted August 14, 2007 Author Posted August 14, 2007 When i try to run Lost Planet i get this: I knew there was something...
Guest Jordan Posted August 16, 2007 Posted August 16, 2007 8800 GTS or an X afaik. I know he was selling one of those and replaced it with the other... or something.
Caris Posted August 16, 2007 Author Posted August 16, 2007 BFG 8800GTS OC2 640MB, i was gonna sell it and get a GTX but never did.
Maiky-NiSuTe Posted August 16, 2007 Posted August 16, 2007 Here is something a NiSuTe member wrote about it : peace: ---------------------------------------------------------- My Discovery of the Month; DirectX10 games on XP, UNIX Article by Capz (note: i've added a bit of experimental text formatting, if you read only the bold text, you will get, in a very short period of time, a short version of the article that still has most of the information, let me know if anyone likes this, i might do this again in the future. Likewise, if you hate it, also let me know! ) Ever thought about those windows vista applications and games, and wondered why they were released for vista only? Yes, me too, and it’s perfectly possible, but I'm not going to kick off my rant against Microsoft windows this time. Today i wanted to let you know about Alky, which, as the title suggests, enables you to play (DirectX) games for Vista on your perfectly capable Win XP, Linux, or Macintosh machine, how cool is that? Let me quote some text from the project website: “The Alky Project started with the ambitious and somewhat vague goal of running Windows games on alternative platforms. As the project progressed, the goal was refined and focused to implement libraries which would allow DirectX 10 based games to run atop Windows XP and eventually other platforms as well. In May of 2007, project VAIO, who had implemented a set of libraries of their own to allow certain Windows Vista-only applications to run atop XP, merged with the Alky Project and became a part of Falling Leaf Systems. Also in May of 2007, Microsoft decided to begin releasing DirectX 9 based games which would, for no valid reason, only run atop Windows Vista. These circumstances have led to the creation of three distinct incarnations of the Alky product line...” First, there is Alky for applications, which allows you to run vista applications on windows xp. Then there is Alky for games, which allows you to run games for vista on XP, Linux, and Mac OS X. This last version will have both a free, and a paid version, which will have additional benefits. So now you have an idea on what they are trying to do, but HOW do they do it? Well the concept is simple; all executables on an operating system ( no matter which one ), have a machine code part, and some information that says "hi, im an app, this is how you should launch me". Now it’s those tiny little bits that make it a windows executable, or a linux one. “So they just change those?” you might think. Of course if it were that easy, it would have been done before, so it’s not that easy. See, that’s where DirectX comes in. Inside the machine code, there are also a bunch of so-called “handles”, or “calls” that forward information to “code libraries”. Basically what this means is that when an application runs across a handle, it knows that it should use code that someone else wrote, and put into a library, for OpenGL, or DirectX for example. DirectX then does all kinds of complicated things to handle, and send your 2, or 3D models to the graphics card, which will in turn make it into something nice for you to view. That’s a VERY simplified explanation of how it works. Now in windows XP, Linux, or the Mac OS, all of the DirectX 10 “handles” are missing, since Microsoft refuses to bring it to those platforms. This is where Alky comes in. Alky provides something for those handles to grab on to. It might not use all the fancy DirectX 10 features, but if that would enable, say Halo2 to run on your XP machine, that would be great, wouldn’t it? Alky will take the DirectX 10 “calls”, and make them into OpenGL calls, or DirectX 9 calls, where available respectively. Now you may think “oh but i’ve used WINE on Linux” or “i can run windows apps on my mac using crossover office”, and that is indeed true. However, the approach of WINE ( crossover office also uses WINE ), is that they just supply modified libraries, and this allows some apps to run, but costs a lot of money for the developers, since they need to “reverse engineer” every library an app uses. The Alky project is using a mixed approach, but one that could void your warranty. They take the machine code, and the extra code apart, stick new code for, say Linux in front of it, and then read all of the application code. They then break it down to the basics, and this means they are going down the one of the lowest levels of programming code, called “Assembly”. They then build it back up again, replacing the code that calls parts of the DirectX 10 library with DirectX 9, or OpenGL code. So they change the executable file, and every file hooked onto it ( those DLL's, etc ), and provide libraries that emulate the originals from Vista, so that Vista apps can run as well. Alky will run games faster than any other way of running windows software on UNIX systems, enable games for vista to run on XP. And, in case you’ve got curious, yes, windows sidebar does run on XP with Alky using the compatibility libraries. So what does this mean for you? Well, once Alky is stable enough, you will be able to run windows games on linux and mac os x at their native speeds, or very close to them, install vista games and apps on XP, and, for instance run Halo2, and other games on it. And personally, i can't wait for that to happen, since EA is late on their promise for EA games on the macintosh. For now, though, it’s still in early development, but progress is being made, and things are looking good! For more info, just head over to fallingleafsystems (opens in a new window).
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