This may have been asked or is found elsewhere (I couldn't find an answer), but does anyone know when / if Windows XP 32-bit operating systems will be supported?
No, never. Also it's just a fact that PA working much better 64-bit Windows Vista and Windows 7. 2GB of RAM it's just usually not enough for PA.
Well. Wish I had known they had no plans to support that BEFORE I pledged to the Kickstarter. That really sucks.
Microsoft abandon security updates for Windows XP in April 2014, there is no reason to spend time on it's support. If you using Windows XP it's mean your hardware is extremely old and PA probably won't work good anyway.
I don't want to start an argument, but there's plenty of reason to support it. Majority of PCs in existence run XP, regardless of Microsoft's plans. But if they're not going to support it, it's irrelevant. Hardware is fine, just not able to use at it's full potential. I'm running an i5 with a 8 GB chip and 800 series GPUs in SLI. My limitation is the price tag on a new OS, which I don't plan to update anytime soon. Disappointed I supported a game they didn't intend to support for my OS. What a waste.
You paid for 8GB RAM, but you can only use 3GB because of 32-bit OS limitations. And game might only use 2GB and can't really use lot of video memory for same reason. If you don't want to upgrade so much you can always install Linux (Ubuntu 13.04 for example), it's works perfectly with Nvidia GPUs and it's at least let you use more than 3GB RAM.
I probably need to notice that 64-bit version is required, e.g there is no 32-bit builds for Linux. Feel free to ask me if you have any problems with that.
You can even run XP on 16GB or 32GB, but but 32-bit Windows XP will only able to use 3-3.5GB (it's depend of your video card memory size). And games you run on it won't able to use more than 2GB.
Just out of interest: why do you have 8 GB of RAM, when you can only use 3.5 GB? Seems like a waste of money and ressources.
With Windows XP you will continue to run into more and more programs that just won't run. That's expected with a 14 year old OS that soon will be abonded by it's own creator. No reasonable developer cares for it anymore.
Indeed if you cannot afford to upgrade your windows version, you should really give Ubuntu 64bit a try
Like a lot of Kickstarter games, they stated "windows" but not which version http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts I guess it was easy to assume XP would be supported, but really it was never stated it would be. Besides Windows version after XP are more stable - better to support those anyway. If you can't afford the upgrade, like others have said, try a dual boot - but don't expect it to be very quick.
You can always just install Windows 7 64bit without a key. It will just bug you once in a while, but it still works.
There will not be XP support. If it was as simple as just providing a version that worked, we would. But it is a very non-trivial amount of work to support for a 13 year old OS that is about to be retired by Microsoft. We have no plans at any point to support XP, unfortunately.
You can afford SLI but can't afford a $100 OS? Seriously? There is NO reason to be running XP as your main OS. If you absolutely have to run some weird legacy software, then you can run it in a virtual machine.