A gamer that wants to play your game, while it requires DX9 and he doesn't have it and is too lazy to install it, is not really a good gamer, in my opinion.
Those can be the same guys that see Doom3, and they want to play it on a Pentium MMX 166MHz and then claim that it should run and that the developer didn't make the game fast enoguh so that it could run on their system.
If you want to run the latest games, you just need a rather good pc, and not some antique system.
Once, I bought SettlersIV and it required a 4Mb gfx card.
I had a 4Mb gfx card, but couldn't run the game (because there was no 4Mb left after booting Windows).
I just bought a new gfx card, and the game ran fine.
Maybe it's just me (I'm a little crazy perhaps), but if you really want to play it, you need a suitable system.
Perhaps Mark could add support for all DirectX versions (from the first version until DX9).
Then you can be sure it runs on every pc, and include an options screen where the player can disable everything, so it could run on a P1 with only 4Mb gfx card).
There are even some computers out there (I've seen one in my family) that only can run DOS and Win3.11 (has a 386 and 16Mb Ram).
If such a person required programmers to make games today that even support those computers, because they're too lazy (or just too stubborn) to upgrade, it's their fault that they cannot run the newest games.
I've personally seen a person that had only a 486 with 32Mb Ram and he wanted the shop-owner (in a computer-store) to install Win2000 on it.
It ran, but booting required about an half hour.
Is such a person allowed to contact Microsoft and call them idiots for not making Win2000 run smoothly on his system?
If he wants to run Win2000 smoothly, then he needs a computer that CAN run it smoothly.
Those can be the same guys that see Doom3, and they want to play it on a Pentium MMX 166MHz and then claim that it should run and that the developer didn't make the game fast enoguh so that it could run on their system.
If you want to run the latest games, you just need a rather good pc, and not some antique system.
Once, I bought SettlersIV and it required a 4Mb gfx card.
I had a 4Mb gfx card, but couldn't run the game (because there was no 4Mb left after booting Windows).
I just bought a new gfx card, and the game ran fine.
Maybe it's just me (I'm a little crazy perhaps), but if you really want to play it, you need a suitable system.
Perhaps Mark could add support for all DirectX versions (from the first version until DX9).
Then you can be sure it runs on every pc, and include an options screen where the player can disable everything, so it could run on a P1 with only 4Mb gfx card).
There are even some computers out there (I've seen one in my family) that only can run DOS and Win3.11 (has a 386 and 16Mb Ram).
If such a person required programmers to make games today that even support those computers, because they're too lazy (or just too stubborn) to upgrade, it's their fault that they cannot run the newest games.
I've personally seen a person that had only a 486 with 32Mb Ram and he wanted the shop-owner (in a computer-store) to install Win2000 on it.
It ran, but booting required about an half hour.
Is such a person allowed to contact Microsoft and call them idiots for not making Win2000 run smoothly on his system?
If he wants to run Win2000 smoothly, then he needs a computer that CAN run it smoothly.