Technical tips, tricks, and news about game development for Microsoft platforms including desktop, Xbox, and UWP
I’ve completed my first releases of 2025 for my various GitHub projects, and there are some changes I felt were worth highlighting. This includes updates toDirectX Tool Kit for bothDX11 andDX12,DirectXTex,DirectXMesh,UVAtlas, andDirectXMath as well as a number of changes to myNuGet packages in particular.
I’ve removed all codepaths for supporting Windows 7 and Windows 8.0 from my libraries. The minimum supported operating system is now Windows 8.1 or later. Windows 7 hitend of life five years ago, and Windows 8.0 has been out of support for years as well. I could have gone so far as to remove Windows 8.1 support since that hitend of life two years ago, but I kept it for now primarily because I still have legacy Xbox One XDK support for a few of the libraries which uses the0x0602 codepaths.
As part of these changes I simplifiedDirectX Tool Kit for Audio projects considerabilty and no longer have secondaryvcxproj files for various XAudio2 versions. Instead, theDirectXTK_Desktop_20xx projects build for Windows 8.1 and XAudio 2.8. TheDirectXTK_Desktop_20xx_Win10 projects build for Windows 10 or later and use XAudio 2.9.
Thedirectxtk_desktop_2019 NuGet package no longer uses the XAudio2Redist package and just uses XAudio 2.8. Thedirectxtk[12]_desktop_win10 NuGet packages continue to use XAudio 2.9. If you want to use XAudio2Redist, this is still supported by the CMake projects.
For GamePad and building using XInput, I assume XInput 1.4 is present rather than using XInput 9.1.0 for ‘downlevel’ support which was required for Windows 7. Note I actively avoid using legacy DirectX SDK XInput 1.3 as it requires legacy DXSetup to deploy and has known security bugs.
Speaking of theDirectX Tool Kit input classes. The GameInput implementation now supports both the originalGAMEINPUT_API_VERSION of 0 and can now build for the newGAMEINPUT_API_VERSION 1 release fromGame Developer Conference last month. SeeMicrosoft Learn for more details. GameInput v1 for PC is available onNuGet andvcpkg. Be sure to runGameInputRedist.msi on your development system and include it in your redistribution.
To make use of GameInput v1 on PC, use the CMake option
BUILD_GAMEINPUT. Thedirectxtk anddirectxk12 vcpkg ports both offergameinput features.
For Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S using the Microsoft GDK with Xbox extensions, it still uses the GameInput v0 API.
In my original implementation using X3DAudio forDirectX Toolkit for Audio, I made use ofX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_MATRIX | X3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_DOPPLER | X3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_LPF_DIRECT and if there was reverb I also addedX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_LPF_REVERB | X3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_REVERB. I also set the use ofX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_REDIRECT_TO_LFE for speaker configs with an LFE channel.
I reworked this implementation as follows:
AudioEngine_DisableLFERedirect turns off the default use ofX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_REDIRECT_TO_LFE if the speaker config has a LFE channel.
AudioEngine_DisableDopplerEffect turns off the use ofX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_DOPPLER for all cases.
AudioEngine_ZeroCenter3D adds the use ofX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_ZEROCENTER for all cases.
TheSoundEffectInstance_UseRedirectLFE was originally marked as ‘internal only’ but is now used to enableX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_REDIRECT_TO_LFE on a per-voice basis if you are also usingAudioEngine_DisableLFERedirect.
TheSoundEffectInstance_ZeroCenter3D flags allows settingX3DAUDIO_CALCULATE_ZEROCENTER on a per-voice basis if not usingAudioEngine_ZeroCenter3D.
For theDirectX Tool Kit for DX11 CMake project, I renamed the option
BUILD_XAUDIO_WIN7toBUILD_XAUDIO_REDISTwhich is consistent withDirectX Tool Kit for DX12.
The latestXAudio2Redist now includes x86, x64, and ARM64 binaries.
In a recent service release ofWindows 11 SDK (26100), support for VS 2019 when building for ARM64 was dropped. I have made all ARM64 binaries use VS 2022 per the recommendation of the compiler team.
Thexyz_desktop_2019 NuGet packages now support only x86 and x64 and are built with VS 2019. This is forward compatible for VS 2022 as well.
Thexyz_uwp NuGet packages all require VS 2022 as of last October 2024 releases.
Thexyz_desktop_win10 NuGet packges are built with VS 2022 and include x86, x64, and ARM64. Note I added newdirectxtk12_desktop_win10 anduvatlas_desktop_win10 NuGet packages for this scenario.
Windows on ARM 32-bit support was removed last year due to deprecation perMicrosoft Learn.
For many years, I have focused on only supporting C++ static linking for my GitHub projects. I have occassionaly gotten requests for DLL shared lib support, but didn’t want to manage a lot of extravcxproj files and macros. I’ve since added support to the CMake projects usingBUILD_SHARED_LIBS. The GitHub projects can therefore be built as either static C++ libraries or DLLs using CMake. The MSBuild projects are all still C++ static libraries only.
For vcpkg scenarios, this means that if you usex64-windows then you will get a DLL instead of a static C++ library for these projects. The CMake target will automatically set the required import preprocessor define. For vcpkg+MSBuild integration, you have to define it in your project settings directly.
| Library as a DLL | Preprocessor define |
|---|---|
| DirectXTex | DIRECTX_TEX_IMPORT |
| DirectXMesh | DIRECTX_MESH_IMPORT |
| DirectXTK DirectXTK12 | DIRECTX_TOOLKIT_IMPORT |
| UVAtlas | UVATLAS_IMPORT |
If you still want a static C++ library, then use-static or-static-md triplets instead (i.e.x64-windows-static-md).
In the process of adding this functionality, I found a bug in thexbox community triplets toolchain file when building for a DLL instead of as a static library. This is fixed as ofthis commit.
BTW, thectest test suites for these projects all support eitherBUILD_SHARED_LIBS setting. Some of the additional ‘white box’ tests are skipped in the DLL version since those entry-points are not exported.
The DirectXMath 3.20b release is a minor update. The only code change is that theXM_DEPRECATED macro will use the C++14[[deprecated]] standard attribute instead of various compiler-specific solutions when appropriate.
The primary purpose of this release was to update the CMake project to addBUILD_XDSP,BUILD_SHMATH,BUILD_DX11, andBUILD_DX12 options for the optionalXDSP andSHMath libraries, which are used by the latest vcpkg port.
I have a few feature requests pending that I will be working on over the coming months. The main ‘break change’ I plan for later this year is to move the CMake minimum version up to 3.21 instead of 3.20. Visual Studio 2019 16.11 only came with CMake 3.20 which is why I currently use that, and Visual Studio 2022 originally shipped with 3.21. You can combine newer CMake installs with the VS 2019 toolset, but for now I wanted to keep it simple.