Game Coding

gfx hardware has to in some way conform to a minimum spec, so they know roughly what is going to be possible with the hardware that will be coming out as microsoft AFAIK works with ATI and nvidia to develop the direct 3d API.

it doesn't always work of course with some hardware running certain games badly when technically they should be able to run it but supposedly it should be better once dx10 actually gets used as there are supposedly much stricter standards except if you are nvidia s you can just get them changed to suit.

The main challenge is to implement an engine that will allow the use of next-generation features. The games themselves are really a matter of creating objects with high numbers of polygons and such.

Take DX9 for instance, there are two types of shader model (2.0 and 3.0) and each had their own features and benefits. When creating an engine, they developed it using one of the 2 models which 3.0 was mostly preferred because of its stunning features in DX9.0C and is still being used in today's games.

Many games have attempted to use DX10 but they ended up putting an extra DX10 layer on top of DX9 Engines which isn't a true DX10 experience. I'm actually not aware of any games coming from a true DX10 engine. The CryEngine2 might be one but it looks as if they just added a DX10 layer. Look out for 3DMark Vantage as this will be a fully DX10 engine.

In order to "code" an engine that takes advantage of next-generation features, game developers have to partner with the platform under which the game will be built (Microsoft, XBOX, Playstation, etc) to get support from that platform. They also need to partner with other hardware providers such as CPU (Intel and AMD), GPU and similar (Nvidia and ATI) to get the latest driver support. All else is a matter of creativity and coding skills. And like infornography42 said, you can play the game at lower resolutions and with lower textures to test out new features.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Alex