Usher in the 3rd era of RTS!

Why is Win8 available in 32-bit? Is it still possible to buy 32-bit processors? Why would anyone bother when good CPUs are so cheap?

Thanks , I may try to use it for animating trees or something.

possibly because you cannot really upgrade laptops, if you have a laptop of 3 years old, like I do, it still uses a 32 bit system, buying a new laptop is still an investment. Same goes for old motherboards which don't support the latest CPUs.

Note that I bought a 64bit desktop half a year ago, so I won't really need a new laptop, but I occasionally need my old one to bring presentations and the sorts.

So one thing of interest is that the UI system actually runs in a separate process so it's not eating address space the game needs. If you are playing single player the server can also be a separate process. This will relieve a lot of the 32-bit memory pressure (although you still need the RAM then).

I wish we could drop 32-bit but my gut tells me that would be bad.

How can the UI be drawn on top of the game if it runs inside another process? That sounds pretty weird to me.

Yeah and how do these process communicate?

Depends on the platform but there are plenty of mechanisms to communicate between processes.

The fastest one is shared texture memory that the UI gets rendered into by the other process.

Will 64bit rigs still get the larger battles and stuff due to more memory or will you be pulling the 64 bit version and the 32bit version more in-line with each other?

My guess is that 32-bit will end up being limited in battle size. We are definitely not limiting 64-bit just because 32-bit is lamezor.

I'm sending this quote to Kotaku. I can see the headline now.

"Uber Entertainment says '32bit is lamezor', Planetary Annihilation 64bit only"

So I worded that poorly. By Would it be an okay idea to expose how much memory has been allocated to the UI? I meant tally up how much memory has been allocated, and then having the UI able to display that figure. I didn't mean to say how much memory the UI is using.

Can an operating system even work if it doesn't know what resources its applications use?

He wants that the game displays the allocated memory just like most games can display the fps. Inside the game. Without other tools.

Is his question that hard to understand? xD

I second his request, stats like this should be visible via some hotkey.

Why not cpu usage too

Not not just bring up the process/activity viewer? There are already applications that show memory, cpu, bandwidth usage per process.

Especially if you're using Linux .

Vista was probably the majority of peoples introduction to a 64bit OS, so it has been 7 years since 64bit hit the big time, yet Steam reports we're still only at ~67% penetration in an enthusiast market like gamers.

Furthermore, adoption and abandonment rates are not linear, getting that last 33% over the line could take many years yet (6 months is nothing) unless someone far bigger and uglier than Uber (i.e. MS) force the issue.

So I reiterate: leaving 1/3rd of your market in the cold is a BAD idea.
We'll never get to that "golden age" unless PA makes a good start.

Is this what we're talking about?

Or is the graph stuff you're talking about going further than this?


(Path of Exile, built in, brought up with the F1 key)

Upgrading to use a killer app > dragging feet because there's no need.

It's that sort of, "if we build it, they will come", arrogance that sees a LOT of businesses fail.

Well, on the big plus side, the server architecture is separate from the client, so it's not unreasonable to assume a 64-bit only build of the server, which allows it to run a much larger map than a locally hosted map on a 32 bit gaming pc.

You could even require 64 bit to play locally, and supply servers to run singleplayer for those who still have 32 bit.

It might be a bit painful for 32 bit users to be in the 'always connected' category but it would be a decent bridge solution.