
To download the Windows 11 SDK, Windows 10 SDK, or Windows 8.x SDK see Windows SDK and emulator archive. You can now use the Windows SDK to build great games for Windows. DirectX is now a fundamental part of Windows.īecause the Windows SDK is the primary developer SDK for Windows, DirectX is now included in it. In parallel, DirectX technologies are more integrated with Windows. Today, the availability of Direct3D hardware in computers drives even traditional desktop applications to use graphics hardware acceleration.

As DirectX technologies matured, they became relevant to a broader range of applications. We originally created the DirectX SDK as a high-performance platform for game development on top of Windows. I can now run Diablo II Remastered on Windows 7 with DirectX 12 enabled.Starting with Windows 8, the DirectX SDK is included as part of the Windows SDK. The cinematics played and I was able to create a character and start playing!

I was greeted with Blizzard’s logo and then the old Blizzard North logo. To my delight, it worked! The game loaded. I tried to run Diablo II again at this point. Seemed DirectX12 was now working, at least with WoW. I then changed between DirectX 11 and 12 several times and was greeted with smooth transitions between the two afterwards. My screen flashed, blacked out, and then after about 5 seconds cleared and came back. I turned it on and hit apply and waited to see what would happen. So I went into WoW and looked for the DirectX12 option. So I downloaded that and updated the AMD control panel.Īt this point, Diablo II was still not working, I kept getting the dx12 failed to initialize error. I then checked on my drivers and found that while they were up to date, the control software from AMD was not. In it, I didn’t see the version listings that other screenshots had shown, but I also didn’t see anything that would imply I couldn’t run it.

Well, looking into it, I decided to run dxdiag and see what versions of DirectX my graphics card would run. I can’t say this will work for every DX12 game and Windows 7, but I can now play Diablo II Remastered and that is all that I really cared about. Yes, you can get DirectX12 to work with other games. After all, I have been playing WoW: TBC Classic which is build upon the same core engine as the current retail game.Īnswer is yes. When I learned of this it made me wonder if there was a way to get my system to make it work for other games. Turns out, I learned that Activision-Blizzard managed to convince Microsoft to create a Windows 7 version of DirectX 12 for their World of Warcraft player base.
