DirectX needed

Tomio · Post by **Tomio** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 9:03 am

How would you proceed if you want to distribute a (PB)software which needs DirectX 7.0 (e.g.) and the customers are people who probably do not even know that there is something called DirectX (I mean: very normal users, no computer freaks) and you have to assume that in many cases no DX7 or newer exists.

I mean, you can't give a message like "Please update/install DirectX" to those customers.

../tomio

Kris_a · Post by **Kris_a** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 9:44 am

Include DirectX with your program?

Tomio · Post by **Tomio** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 11:05 am

Kris_a wrote:Include DirectX with your program?

a) No copyright violation to have it on my CD?

b)No risk to install it on a foreign computer?

../tomio

Kris_a · Post by **Kris_a** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 11:23 am

As far as I know, it's prefectly fine to include the DirectX installer (Downloader). After all, if you need it to actually play the game, it would be silly for Microsoft to reject the privilege

Soulfire · Post by **Soulfire** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 1:51 pm

This is 2004, who doesn't have DirectX 7 ?

dmoc · Post by **dmoc** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 3:08 pm

Anyone with Linux

Tomio · Post by **Tomio** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 5:07 pm

Soulfire wrote:This is 2004, who doesn't have DirectX 7 ?

There are many users who over years use the PC as a typewriter and read+write email now and then. They are not interested to have the PC up to date and are afraid to modify anything because they have learned how easy it is to get in trouble with the device if you don't have a good friend. But yet there is software they would like to have. I know two persons of that kind!
../tomio

Post by **freak** » Mon Apr 26, 2004 10:35 pm

Microsoft provides redistributable versions of DirectX to be included in your products.

See here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

These are usually pretty big (35mb here), and are intended to be included on
Software that is distributed on a CD (like Games).
Better not include a 35mb package in a download version

The good point about these is, that they work for lots of different Windows
systems, and are also multilanguage. This is not the case with the smaller
download versions, which you have usually 1 version per OS and language.

So if you really have a big project, and want everyone to have an easy
way to install DX, you should include this.
For smaller projects, this is not the best way to go.

Timo

Tomio · Post by **Tomio** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 7:45 am

Thank you all together for the info.
And "redistributable versions of DirectX": never heard of it, but good to know!

../tomio