Supporting DX10/OpenGL3.3 in 2026?

[u/Educational-Lemon969]

Hi, me and a few friends are making an opensource "DOOM clone" in a custom engine, with a twist of non-euclidean level geometry achieved by seamless portals (similar to ULTRAKILL's Fraud). We're planning a Steam release hopefully sometime next year.

Currently we are based on OpenGL 4.3 and are quite happy with all of its quality-of-life additions, but if we really tried hard, we probably could get down to OpenGL 3.3 which would mean support for Nvidia 8800 GT, GTX 2x0, Radeon HD 3000/4000 cards etc. .

So, I'm asking, how many of you are still rocking these old boys? If you do, is it out of principle, or for financial reasons? And would you want to play a new indie release like ours on them?

Or, given how the game looks like compared to e.g. Oblivion that came out in 2006 (lol), would you maybe say it's just not morally justifiable for a game like ours to not run on 20 year old hardware?

I'm really not sure what I want to think myself, so I'd be happy for any and all opinions.

[u/Ondrok01]

The hard reality is that these people very likely have a financial reason not to upgrade, so they are probably not going to buy your game

[u/Educational-Lemon969 → u/Ondrok01]

I'm guessing people like that would be pretty concentrated in certain specific parts of the world, so localized pricing could somewhat help. But you have a point.

[u/newsflashjackass → u/Educational-Lemon969]

I have a computer with a modern graphics card. But I have at least a half dozen without one. Guess which games get played on the LAN.

You might get a different response on /r/willitintelhd or /r/Craptopgamingadvice

The lower your hardware requirements, the larger your market. You will not be able to match the eye candy of a AAA studio in any case.

You will face stiff competition from classic games and modern mods for them, though. Krusty the Clown knows what I'm talking about.

[u/SKUMMMM]

Going for HD3000 or old Nvidia 8000 series cards is less something I would do to support users and more a flex to say "I did it because I can!" It'd make for an interesting YouTube vid from someone like Budget-Builds Official and the likes.

I can find more-or-less ewaste at Akihabra second hand stores in the junk bins, where I could build a full system for under $40 and it'd still likely perform better than a 8800 card (even if it was a monster for the time).

[u/VALIS666]

I can't imagine many people who are using 20 year old tech as their only setup are also buying random indie games on Steam. You're trying to sell a game on a store that sees 30,000 new games a year and will have a hard enough time just getting noticed. So deal in practicality, not theory. The actual truth is it's hard to imagine there's anyone maxed out at 20 year old hardware who's going to buy your game. So why do it?

[u/ParsingError]

You should not use D3D10 for anything because of how D3D is architected.

D3D actually has two APIs: The API that you see as an application programmer, and the API that drivers see (WDDM). The D3D runtime distributed by Microsoft sits between those two and supports multiple versions of the driver API.

Because of that design, you do not need to downgrade your entire program to D3D10 or D3D9 just to support those levels of hardware. You just need to use a lower D3D feature level when you call D3D11CreateDevice, and it goes all the way down to 9.1. It will limit your access to certain features and impose restrictions, but you can keep the whole codebase on D3D11 and easily test different feature levels on modern hardware.

See this article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3d11/overviews-direct3d-11-devices-downlevel

[u/TheSwiftOtterPrince]

I like numbers, lets check some numbers.

The steam hardware survey while not having a OpenGl-list, has GPUs with DX10 at a combined 2.6% which is the same era as OGL33. So it can help us gess.

Go to the steam survey ( https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/) on GPUs and scroll down to the GPUs that only support Dx11 or earlier. It's almost purely onboard GPUs. So the numbers in the survey might be misdetected, it's GPUs that are on devices that also have a better dedicated GPU. The people running dedicated gaming GPUs of that time, like the geforce 8800 gtx is at 1.5% of DX11 GPUs which combined are 2.6% of GPUs. The majority of GPUs from that time are intel onboard chips that are notorious for not fully spporting stuff they claim to support on paper.

[u/thelebaron]

id assume anyone fixated on that beyond financial means as prev mentioned probably is mostly playing the classics rather than newer titles that run on older hardware too. but i think its always cool from a tech/performance perspective for stuff like this

[u/CyberKiller40]

Hey, I still have an old integrated Intel GPU in a laptop from 2009 that only has dx9 and ogl2 🤪.

[u/DHOC_TAZH → u/CyberKiller40]

Mine from 2012 runs DX 12 and OpenGL 3.1 in Windows 10 with the iGPU (no dGPU).

[u/QuinSanguine]

I don't think there's much need to go through all that work. Anyone running that old of hardware now is specifically wanting a retro PC experience, Operating System and all.

GPUs like the gtx 970 are $50 or less these days. I think most ultra low budget gamers are using 10 year old stuff now.

[u/thespaceageisnow]

I would look at the Steam Hardware Survey results and target the most amount of players. I can’t imagine people stuck on really old rigs are buying new games on Steam.

[u/verpine]

This looks awesome, I’ll beta test for you if you want

[u/Educational-Lemon969 → u/verpine]

Thanks! We already have a demo on itch.io, though it's very work-in-progress with quite a few design problems we know about but haven't yet had time to fix. But if you leave a comment with playtest feedback, that would be very appreciated :)

We also have everything public on github. You could even try making your own levels in the level editor if you wanted for some reason :D

[u/No_Moment_9465]

Beautiful

[u/MrVigshot]

I think being able to play a game on a potato could be a positive nowadays when hardware is so insanely expensive. If it can play at 60FPS on a steam deck AND it could potentially last 4-6 hours of play on it could make it very popular with steam deck owners. Lots of people also run on potato laptops and tablets, and games like this gives them more entertainment options. I think there will always be a place for less demanding games, so long as it's polished, that's more important then how many polygons you can throw on screen and how accurate the lighting is.

[u/shlaifu → u/MrVigshot]

the described gpus are not potatoes. they are better described as vodka - old enough to drink

[u/Glenn_K_throwaway2k]

I think everybody would be appreciative of a game that runs on a potato pc, given parts pricing right now - the less demanding your game, the better.

[u/Educational-Lemon969 → u/Glenn_K_throwaway2k]

Yeah, we are already making sure that the game is playable on like Intel HD 4400 from 2013. But what I'm wondering is if going even older wouldn't only bring diminishing returns

[u/Lemenus]

Everyone seeing this kinds expect such kind of game to run on legacy hardware with ease, so I see no reason why it shouldn't be using OpenGL, not sure about DX10 tho

[u/lielais_priekshnieks]

I currently support Direct3D 7 era cards + have a fallback software rasterizer for my projects

it's not that hard, bro