No Windows XP support? :( hack/workaround?

Maybe I missed this, but this is the first I have found out about PA not supporting XP. I get that its old but I really expected to be told sooner....was it ever mentioned? I dont see it on the Kickstarter page :?

Theres still a good number of XP users, in fact 4 times more then Windows 8 and an order of magnitude more then Linux and MacOS, so a large number of potential players still have it.

I thought at first it might be a 64 bit requirement...which would kinda make sense, as very few people use XP64 and drivers are a pain for it. But then, there's 32 bit Linux versions coming.

I don't mean to whine....but is there an explanation anywhere :? I was really looking forward to this, but suddenly my $20 game backing as become a $20+$120 one.

XP is 32 bit and can therefore only use 3 gig of ram effectively, while PA requires 4 gig. No solution other than upgrading.

The reason XP isn't really supported is RAM
It has to do with 32bit OS's having RAM limitations.
32bit OS's usually can't use anymore than 4gb of RAM unless the OS and Processor have PAE support for more than 4gb of ram.

Linux and MAC have PAE that allows for the pc's to handle more than 4gb of ram on a 32bit OS, but the only version of win XP 32bit that can handle more than 4gb of ram is the Enterprise edition wich almost no-one but business's running windows server networks own.

That's because XP is still used by many businesses. Because, you know. A lot of people aren't computer literate enough to make the change.

It is a 64 bit requirement.

Seriously dude, XP is 12 years old now. It is pretty antiquated, and you can't expect the developers to be developing for the last generation of computing.

Microsoft will no longer support Windows XP after April 8, 2014.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/help/what-does-end-of-support-mean

You should probably get a new computer. Considering Microsoft has end of life XP should expect no support for the platform from software developers.

Linux is free,, why not just install linux on a samll partition
it would save you the $120 OS upgrade

Because much of the game had not been built when the Kickstarter was running, they were unsure what the specific requirements would be at that time. We have mentioned in a few places what the minimum computer specifications are and in one of our FAQ page, it is noted that Windows XP and 32-bit Linux are not supported.

Does your hardware meet the minimum requirements to support PA? Please attach your DxDiag.txt. Instructions on how to do so are in my signature.

I don't say this to be mean spirited,
But if you want to play a next gen game,
Isn't it only only reasonable to have at least a last gen OS?
That would be Windows 7.

XP is 2 operating system versions behind even that....



It came out in 2001.
The same time as the Playstation 2.
Back in the days of CDs.

Before these...
- Invention of Call of Duty
- BluRay
- the first iPhone
- Capacitive touch screen
- Quad core processors
- 1080p televisions
- before YouTube

I have a Win Vista 64 sitting around collecting dust if that would help?

This made me feel so old hahaahha.

One day we have to tell our kids:
-"I was born before cellphones"
-"i was born before commercial internet"
-"I was born before DVD's...whats a DVD you ask? uuuuh..well kids, pull up a chair"

Made me feel old too - I remember a time before the Internet. Ah, that glorious occasion when I first heard a dial-up ring tone, and later trying to download the free Total Annihilation units that Cavedog released (and taking hours to do so).

I felt old when i posted this ,, I have the ultimate gaming laptop


CPU: 16MHz 30386SX
RAM: 6MB (upgraded from 4MB)
HDD: 80 MB IDE
Graphics: Western Digital WD90C20LR
Display: LCD 9.5 "640 x 480/16 gray levels
Interfaces:

• serial
• parallel
• Keyboard
• Floppy Connector
• VGA (256 colors)
• Expansion

This amazing gaming MONSTER plays these great titles:

• Commander Keen
• Duke Nukem
• Dune 2
• Doom 1 + 2
• Descent
• The "Original" Test Drive games
• Stunts
• HiOctane
• FASA Dos RPG's (Robotek and Mechwarrior)
• SupaPlex
• and many more great games

Mmm yeah i feel old still owning a laptop predating windows 95, this beast runs windows 3.1 and dos 6.2

my Dad has one of the first email addresses in New Zealand. Pretty impressive.

You managed to get Descent to run on that!? I just looked up the specs and it required a 33MHz possessor! Still one of the best games ever, despite its age.

Go for Linux mint with KDE if your machine supports it. Great OS!

Windows XP isn't supported, and I already got into this a while back when I first came on.

While XP being 32bit majority of the time, and and only capable of handling 3.4gb or so (4gb with the 64bit), as far as I know, PA doesn't seem to actually require 4gb of ram. I think having lower than 4gb of ram would be extremely bad for PA and it wouldn't run very fast at all, but I don't think it would completely stop the game from running.

This is actually completely false. It has absolutely nothing to do with RAM at all. I'll even quote myself when I did (gasp!) research on the subject during the time I had this very same conversation.

XD ↑ lol I was hoping you'd make a post, and I like your turnaround.

lemme just make a quick correction. PA's MIN SPEC is 4.0Gb of RAM, you can't go lower than that or it won't run.

And it runs pretty crap on 4gig pcs.

Our reasons for not supporting XP don't really have anything to do with memory limits or 32-bitness.

There are fundamental architectural differences in XP that have changed since Win Vista. If it was a simple recompile, we would at least provide a build - it really isn't a huge deal. However, it is a significant amount of work to support XP at the code level, and even then, there's no guarantee that the effort spent would result in a very playable version of the game.

Unfortunately, it is time to upgrade. Microsoft is ending all future support and patching of XP, and you're going to start seeing more and more games not even run on it, just like Win 95 saw happen during the switchover to XP (And that was only 7 years, rather than the 12 year run we've had with XP .

Hahaha, yeah I saw this thread, and I'm like oh here we go, this thing again. I wasn't gonna post till I saw the reply saying it doesn't work cuz ram, and I was like "wut. no."

Don't get me wrong, I love Windows XP, and the only reason I currently use 7 is to play this game. I won't lie, I have all the games I normally play installed on here so I don't have to switch back and forth, but it won't make much of a difference. XP is my preferred currently because it's more user-friendly. At the very top I would personally prefer the extreme amount of user-adaptability and user-friendliness of Windows 98 SE over XP, Vista, or 7 because it gets worse and worse the more recent you get. The newer OSes continue to act more and more like the user knows less and less about using a computer whatsoever. (XP started that, too.) 98 SE had the ability to customize absolutely everything, but I realize that function is more important than looks, and this is why I accept windows 7 as an OS I will run, not just for PA, but in general.

Is this actually documented like.. hard-coded into the game that it won't run on less than 4gb? I can take a stick of ram out of my tower to test and see, but I don't see why it would give an error saying something like

That said, I do run on 4gb of 1600 DDR3 Ripjaws from Gskill and PA runs pretty well if I do say so myself. It may not be as fast as other towers with faster and/or higher capacity ram, but it's not like I can't throw medium graphics on and play games at a couple dozen frames with a several hundred units in play. It works. I do know that when I get into the thousand or so units, I start getting pretty bad chops in my frame rate.

Edit : I actually have screenshots of the limits of where my PC stands on said 4gb of ram.




Dem bombers. Don't ask. Also, one pass destroyed both AI's bases. The entire thing. Everything.

yes it's hard coded to my knowledge. if the .exe is run on a system possessing less than 4Gb of ram it will crash with an error message.

see what I mean? not to mention 1000 units is pretty shabby, you wanna be looking for 10000 at least.

I wanna be the first to hit the mil.