An Open-Source Doom 3 Engine Is Looking To Implement Vulkan Support

[Kano]

Rage was a cool game I played completely using wine. A native port would be nice, but I doubt that will happen too soon. A modified engine is used for the upcoming Doom 4.

[humbug]

Is there any point of this? Based on what croteam, Valve, RSI have said you need to properly refactor your engine to really get the benefit of Vulkan/ DX12. Do they have the resources to do that?

[Aeder]

Is there any point of this? Based on what croteam, Valve, RSI have said you need to properly refactor your engine to really get the benefit of Vulkan/ DX12. Do they have the resources to do that?

It's a open source project, those kinds of warnings are for commercial companies. If this guy completes the port to Vulkan (even if it's only in part), it becomes an incentive to attract collaborators. If he doesn't finish it, some one else can, or some other project (like Godot) can be the one to get Vulkan support first.

The point is modernizing an engine that is a lot newer than most of what's available in the open source camp, and even if he doesn't finish it, his point could easily be to learn more about Vulkan.

[mike4]

I loved to play RBDOOM-3-BFG natively and not with wine. BFG doom is not old and a Vulkan port would be way cool. How about SteamVR support? Hey man
that must be a shuddering experience...

[mike4]

BFG Doom is not old and huge fun to play natively instead of using wine. Vulkan support would be way cool but hey how about SteamVR support. This game must be truly creepy in VR.

[bug77]

Is there any point of this? Based on what croteam, Valve, RSI have said you need to properly refactor your engine to really get the benefit of Vulkan/ DX12. Do they have the resources to do that?

They'll probably wrap the whole thing in Vulkan translation layer, just like Croteam did (as a first step towards migration) with Talos Principle. A nice exercise you want to learn a thing of two about Vulkan and also something that looks good on a resume.

[eydee]

Is there any point of this? Based on what croteam, Valve, RSI have said you need to properly refactor your engine to really get the benefit of Vulkan/ DX12. Do they have the resources to do that?

There may be a point in the long run. DOOM 3 is a classic that will probably be played for long. Just like 3dfx died, opengl may die one day. Not tomorrow, but it may. Having a more modern API, even if it doesn't provide better performance, may help avoiding the need of emulation.

[uid313]

Would be nice with Vulkan and Wayland support.

[bridgman]

I had assumed it was just being done because it was a really cool thing to do

[Calinou]

There may be a point in the long run. DOOM 3 is a classic that will probably be played for long. Just like 3dfx died, opengl may die one day. Not tomorrow, but it may. Having a more modern API, even if it doesn't provide better performance, may help avoiding the need of emulation.

It is quite unlikely that workstation programs and 3D DCCs like Blender will switch to Vulkan, Khronos seems to say that OpenGL still has uses in many cases (like, for beginner programmers), too.