Would any game dev be crazy/brave enough to release a mantle ONLY game?

T

tybert7

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First, I know there would be tremendous downsides. At least currently, no nvidia hardware could play it, at least not well. That shuts a large chunk of the potential market down immediately... Actually, that's the only real downside I can think of, but it's a big one.


The plus sides are less clear in many cases. If the game was a typical shooter, I am not sure what the point would be, how many draw calls are needed to get a good result? Is it THAT critical for the hardware to be able to render more units on screen to improve realism and gameplay?

Maybe not.

But more advanced rts games? Space sims with more units and asteroid fields and cosmic debris? If all of these latter types of games are targeting the lowest common denominator, directx/opengl, can they ever truly get to the next level?

For anyone who saw that oxide demo, that type of gameplay would not even be playable on a non mantle system, not with that many units and that much stuff going on. If the chains are ever to be taken off the developers, don't they kind of have to target a game for mantle only?

It's the same argument about last gen console games and pc ports, most used direct x 9, and even when they did not, the art style and limitations were often dictated by the limitations of the console and not the pc.

Am I wrong in this? I want to see what the first truly mantle only games will be like, the games where they are so much more complex in the way that only mantle systems can cope with that they can't even run right on other systems, because then, and perhaps ONLY then will we see what the future can bring.
 
It won't happen unless AMD funds most of the development. It's hard enough to get a PC exclusive now days let alone a AMD only PC exclusive.
 
yea no.....lol If AMD monopolizes the GPU market then maybe, but hypothetically speaking, if there was a time game studios launched AMD only games, then were still in the infancy stage where the brand Nvidia is still relevant. realistically unless Nvidia just gives up, i don`t see game devs being loyal to one particular GPU maker
 
Really silly idea.
Only GCN cards can use Mantle (until/if they open it up to other GPUs), so that excludes most of AMDs cards as well.
To be clear, its a really silly idea and completely pointless to think about.

There may be some demos or concepts released.
 
So the consensus seems to be that no, there will not be any game devs releasing mantle only games. I fully expect that to be true for like 99% of them, I would be surprised, and a little disappointed if no one did in the years to come. Because if no one did, then the only mantle enabled games we will ever get, are games designed from the ground up, to run on dx11, with a few extra pieces of eye candy thrown to some people with mantle capable cards from time to time. There will be no sea change in the type of games created.

I'd be fine if it took a few more years. 2014 is the first year of kaveri and GCN being built into future apus, a few years of that would dramatically increase the install base of mantle equipped hardware, same goes for the discreet gpu market. But if the answer to mantle only games is still never for anyone... that kind of sucks. What exactly was the point again? Some extra fps in standard designed games? Some extra visuals? Sounds pretty meek.
 
It would be the start of a very bad thing. Games limited to what brand of hardware you have? And if one (AMD or Nvidia) takes over the market expect to pay inflated prices for hardware.

tybert7 said:
So the consensus seems to be that no, there will not be any game devs releasing mantle only games. I fully expect that to be true for like 99% of them, I would be surprised, and a little disappointed if no one did in the years to come. Because if no one did, then the only mantle enabled games we will ever get, are games designed from the ground up, to run on dx11, with a few extra pieces of eye candy thrown to some people with mantle capable cards from time to time. There will be no sea change in the type of games created.

I'd be fine if it took a few more years. 2014 is the first year of kaveri and GCN being built into future apus, a few years of that would dramatically increase the install base of mantle equipped hardware, same goes for the discreet gpu market. But if the answer to mantle only games is still never for anyone... that kind of sucks. What exactly was the point again? Some extra fps in standard designed games? Some extra visuals? Sounds pretty meek.
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Regardless of what Mantle does, developers will continue making the same types of games they have always been doing. They, for the most part, make what sells. At the time being, these are shooters, RPGs and MMOs. Plenty of other more niche games exist, but they are either more costly to develop and/or don't sell as well as the three genres I had previously mentioned.
 
Nope it would be the worst idea they could do.

That means it would only run on AMD hardware. With Intel leading the graphics market with mobile laptops, Nvidia 2nd and AMD 3rd.

Well you just alienated 2 of the biggest players in the graphics world.

And If you are making a game, thats alot less money for you.....Doesn't make business sense.
 
IMO, the biggest problem with PC games is not hardware performance. So Mantel is not going to completely revolutionize PC gaming in ways that makes everyone wants to get a AMD card just to play that Mantel exclusive game (in other words, a Mantel exclusive game being able to do something others cannot do)

A miracle I would love to see is video games being able to efficiently utilize many CPU cores, lol. ARMA 3 utilization doesn't seem that good to me, and the game needs more CPU performance.
 
Hornet said:
IMO, the biggest problem with PC games is not hardware performance. So Mantel is not going to completely revolutionize PC gaming in ways that makes everyone wants to get a AMD card just to play that Mantel exclusive game (in other words, a Mantel exclusive game being able to do something others cannot do)

A miracle I would love to see is video games being able to efficiently utilize many CPU cores, lol. ARMA 3 utilization doesn't seem that good to me, and the game needs more CPU performance.
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Funny because Mantle is made to take the load off the CPU and use the GPU more.

So you wont need to use top of the line CPU's in games that run Mantle.
 
The last thing we need is another artificial, consoles-like, exclusivity war on the PC.
 
DASHlT said:
Funny because Mantle is made to take the load off the CPU and use the GPU more.

So you wont need to use top of the line CPU's in games that run Mantle.
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Well, unless the GPU is already using a major portion of the CPU at present, I don't think it would be huge enough overcome any present issue, or open up new possibilities.

A more efficient core scaling however would bring better return as newer CPU increases in performance, video games could benefit from the additional performance on multiple cores.
 
Hornet said:
Well, unless the GPU is already using a major portion of the CPU at present, I don't think it would be huge enough overcome any present issue, or open up new possibilities.

A more efficient core scaling however would bring better return as newer CPU increases in performance, video games could benefit from the additional performance on multiple cores.
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I totally agree with you, but Mantle is not made for that.
 
Thuleman said:
Plenty on indie developers out there that fit the bill, just check the "Early Access" list.
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Indie developer isn't going to help sell AMD cards. There's a reason AMD gave EA an $8 million bribe to bother with mantle in BF4 (which there has been eerie silence on as far as any updates on the initial "December" patch that was promised to implement Mantle).

All of these endless forum threads about Mantle are pure conjecture until it leaves vapor status and there's evidence of its existence outside of a powerpoint slideshow and its working state and benchmarks and numbers. Until such proof Mantle might as well be the name of a unicorn.

On the bright side AMD cards are doing just fine thanks to the *coin mining craze thats pushed the prices and demand up.
 
I think a bit too much is being made of the Oxide demo. Rendering large numbers of the same object, which is primarily what the demo did, is not a challenge in traditional graphics APIs. Only when you're trying to render many, many unique objects difficult or impossible to instance does Mantle start looking more attractive, and even then there methodologies in existing APIs to overcome some of those overheads.

DASHlT said:
That means it would only run on AMD hardware.
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Not just only AMD hardware — only GCN-equipped AMD hardware. I'm uncertain as to whether GCN parts have a market share even approaching 1% at the moment.

That said, 1% of a big market is still a market. It's just not clear what the business case is for that.

Hornet said:
IMO, the biggest problem with PC games is not hardware performance.
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Agreed. Performance is a challenge on the PC, but we can always just throw more hardware at things and get some level of scaling out of it. Performance on the PC is generally elusive not because of the graphics API, but because of generally poor hardware utilization. Not an unsolved problem by any stretch.
 
Does anyone see any chance that nvidia/intel will make their future gpus compatible with mantle so they can take advantage of lower cpu usage and higher draw call counts? (to intel this seems like it's asking them to walk over lava barefoot while basketball sized hail rained on top of them)
 
Lets be honest here, someone will do it eventually. It will be done for the sake of 'being the first' and a marketing tactic. Sales will suffer, but interest will peak (regardless of what a vocal few may think). When it does happen it will be a low risk, new IP title that can be a critical failure and still perhaps give some studio out there some street cred for being adventagous.
 
This isn't what mantle was created for honestly. It was meant to help supplement what is already out there much like PhysX. It is not really meant to replace the whole system itself. AMD isn't even marketing it to replace anything other than PhysX/Havoc. And mostly its a look at what is possible and what could be in store for the future.
 
DASHlT said:
Nope it would be the worst idea they could do.

That means it would only run on AMD hardware. With Intel leading the graphics market with mobile laptops, Nvidia 2nd and AMD 3rd.

Well you just alienated 2 of the biggest players in the graphics world.

And If you are making a game, thats alot less money for you.....Doesn't make business sense.
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Those with Intel graphics probably don't play much, if any 3D games. I think the vast majority of them don't. Intels are used in non-gaming laptops, especially the $500-600 budget ones. Yes, they are used in higher end laptops as well, but I doubt the people who spend $1,200+ on a laptop with Intel graphics have 3D games in mind.
 
Flogger23m said:
Those with Intel graphics probably don't play much, if any 3D games. I think the vast majority of them don't. Intels are used in non-gaming laptops, especially the $500-600 budget ones. Yes, they are used in higher end laptops as well, but I doubt the people who spend $1,200+ on a laptop with Intel graphics have 3D games in mind.
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The last statistic I saw comparing all them still had the majority of systems using Intel graphics, which would put Intel as the most used for 3D games.

EDIT: According to Steam use, the most used is Nvidia. But then again, that is just Steam, so hard to say.
 
Well, no. Inclusion in systems doesn't indicate their use.

You can argue that Intel's leading the graphics market in laptops. I don't doubt that a bit. But "most-used for 3D games"? Where is the data on that?
 
wonderfield said:
Well, no. Inclusion in systems doesn't indicate their use.

You can argue that Intel's leading the graphics market in laptops. I don't doubt that a bit. But "most-used for 3D games"? Where is the data on that?
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There was a study years ago on cards used for gaming and Intel had the overwhelming majority. There are also many studies on what people are using their system for and in the past decade there has been a huge increase in gaming. So people buying their laptops for other purposes, are still using them for gaming. Also take into account that most games now have some form of 3D gaming.

However, all that being said, there has also been a much larger number of laptops coming up with AMD or Nvidia cards in them, even in budget models. But in either case, laptops with Intel only graphics can most certainly do 3D gaming, and most of them are easily playable in 3D gaming at 1080 resolutions. The Intel graphics are no match for AMD and Nvidia offerings, but in no way are they so bad that they are incapable of 3D gaming, come on now.
 
Don't get me wrong: I never suggested they were incapable. They're (usually/sometimes) more than capable. I just found the claim that they're the most-used for 3D gaming in laptops to be somewhat dubious.
 
wonderfield said:
Don't get me wrong: I never suggested they were incapable. They're (usually/sometimes) more than capable. I just found the claim that they're the most-used for 3D gaming in laptops to be somewhat dubious.
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Well mostly the post was in reference to the comment that most people with Intel graphics are not playing 3D games, which is kind of ridiculous:

Flogger23m said:
Those with Intel graphics probably don't play much, if any 3D games.
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If you go by a few factors you can come to a conclusion that it isn't so dubious.

1) The most used video graphics is Intel.
2) More people than ever before are playing some sort of video game today.
3) More video games than ever before are using 3D graphics.

It is certainly not a direct correlation, but since I can't find any current data other than the Steam information which is vastly incomplete, I can only go on supposition. Still, I think its a pretty fair deduction given what data is available. I think too often we forget that almost everyone on this particular site is in a very small niche of society when it comes to systems and gaming.
 
Can you please give some context so that we might be able to infer the meaning of the thread title and opening post. Mantle only?
 
DPI said:
Indie developer isn't going to help sell AMD cards. There's a reason AMD gave EA an $8 million bribe to bother with mantle in BF4 (which there has been eerie silence on as far as any updates on the initial "December" patch that was promised to implement Mantle).

All of these endless forum threads about Mantle are pure conjecture until it leaves vapor status and there's evidence of its existence outside of a powerpoint slideshow and its working state and benchmarks and numbers. Until such proof Mantle might as well be the name of a unicorn.

On the bright side AMD cards are doing just fine thanks to the *coin mining craze thats pushed the prices and demand up.
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Proof, or it's a bullshitter's lie.
 
In the couple of presentations Johan Andersson has given, he has concluded with the fact that Mantle isn't locked to GCN architecture at the low level - Nvidia are free to develop their own version of the top layer to stick on top of the base one. If Mantle takes off they eventually will, and at that point I see no reason why a dev couldn't make Mantle-exclusive games provided they are willing to do the groundwork with the new API.
 
Jellylesg said:
Can you please give some context so that we might be able to infer the meaning of the thread title and opening post. Mantle only?
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Mantle is a low-level graphics API AMD developed for their GCN-equipped cards. A Mantle-only game would be a game to only support cards which support Mantle, which at this time, is only GCN-equipped cards. All currently-announced games which promise Mantle support also have a Direct3D or OpenGL renderer.

Perhaps it was just the lack of an appropriate hyphen between "Mantle" and "only" that tripped you up. It threw me off slightly when I read the thread title.
 
I'd like to see just one mantle (not even exclusive to mantle) game come out before I start to wonder if there will ever be a mantle only game.
 
NoOther said:
There was mention of this by many sites, but here:

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32673-amd-spent-millions-on-battlefield-4-deal

This isn't surprising, its not the first time AMD has given developers money to implement and promote one of their features. Nvidia does the same thing, as does Intel. Its a common practice, and why wouldn't you do it?
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that includes bundles of the game with amd hardware, they didnt pay all of that just for adding mantle.

saying amd paid EA 8million to add mantle support is a bit of a long stretch of what really happened.
 
Dion said:
I hope not. That would hurt there game sales.
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Not if Mantle is part of the standard SteamOs installation ;)
Note;
What I really meant with my first answer: that I can see a Mantle-only game to get released, but only after it get widespread acceptance - that's why the reference to SteamOS.
 
It would be in amds best interest currently to keep games from being mantle only. Not all of their gpus are gcn yet, plus APIs help push games sales, when consumers see the eventual benefit and amd sees a big push for demand for their gcn cores for this purpose then they can start pushing for more mantle integration.
 
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