• Amanda@aggregatet.orgEnglish
    7·
    4 months ago

    As a reminder:

    DirectX 8.0 as a reminder was introduced in late 2000 and went on to power games like Serious Sam: The FIrst Encounter, Max Payne, Star Wars: Starfighter, Grand Theft Auto III, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and many other titles now hitting around the 20+ year mark

  • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    64·
    4 months ago

    More than one year after the merge request was opened for adding a Direct3D 8 front-end to DXVK via the D8VK code, the merge request landed today by Valve’s Joshua Ashton.

    front-end

    I don’t think that’s the proper terminology to use? I’m actually a front-end developer… I think they mean adapter layer? Compatibility layer? Something like that.

    • Lambda@lemmy.caEnglish
      20·
      4 months ago

      Sadly front end, like “High Level” is a very relative term. For example, in compiler design, the bit that parses code is called the “front end” since the “back end” is what emits machine code. I think that’s what they mean here, the “front end” that understands D3D8 code has been added, presumably there is also a “back end” that converts the parsed/analyzed D3D8 code into valid opcodes for consumption by GPU/CPUs.

      In the other direction, a UI/UX is sometimes called a “back end” when it is part of a more complex embedded project where physical controls are the “front end”.

      • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        16·
        4 months ago

        You’re right. They’re terms far older than web development. In general the front is the abstraction while the back is the logic/processing. It started as a term for old, large (room-sized) systems where there were front-end machines such as plugboards or terminals, with back-end machines being the CPUs, memory, etc.

    • BorgDrone@lemmy.oneEnglish
      13·
      4 months ago

      No, the terminology sounds right to me. The term front-end and back-end are used in other contexts than building websites.

      For example, the term is used in compilers, where the front-end takes code in a programming language and translates it to an intermediate representation (IR), and the back-end takes the IR and translates that into machine code for a specific architecture. A compiler like LLVM has many front-ends and back-ends to support different languages and architectures.

      The term applies to many things where there is a multi-layered architecture.