Initial Alpha access restricted to 64 bit OS

I disagree. I think that 25% is low enough that support can comfortably be dropped. Most XP users are casual gamers anyway who do not buy AAA titles, keep up with the indy game scene, or play RTS games. They play stuff like the Bejeweled series and Mahjong Quest.

I've had this argument before but it's bad business to narrow you potential market size unless it's absolutely necessary.

Well, 32-bit is one thing, but we don't support XP. It may work in some cases, but there are enough differences between XP 32/64 and even Vista that it likely won't work. Keep in mind, Microsoft ends support for the 12 year old OS next year, fairly early on, and you haven't been able to buy a machine with XP on it (at least in more regions) since 2008. But XP will not be an officially supported OS.

Mac we're still determining if we can run on 10.6 - we think we can, so we listed it for now, but it may be that we have to pull it as well, which would mean, by default, all mac would be 64 bit only, since from Lion on, it was only 64bit.

Though the inverse could also be said. Why NOT get rid of it if it isn't specifically required from a business standpoint?

Given that Uber has already received significant monetary input for the game even before its release, would it really be that much of a risk to drop the support?

Edit: I'm speaking from a technological standpoint here... From strictly a business standpoint it would indeed be bad business.

If you take the numbers instead of the statistics, then considering that peak users per day is around 5 million, that means that there's still over one million players on steam alone that still use 32-bit operating systems. Now, I'm nowhere near saying that you're going to garner that many people to buy this game, but still. That just shows me that the people still using 32-bit systems is hardly 'low.'

What I found most interesting was that there's still about 10% of people using XP. Surprised me, at least. Dang. XP has been around forever, I thought it would be lower by now.

Uber can do whatever they want, and I for one can't imagine running on less than 4gb ram... That's what my own machine runs on when it's just sitting there. I'm just kind of gawking at the numbers right now :shock:

EDIT: My goodness these stats are fantastic! Where was this when I was, I don't know, somewhere else. Reading in on it, it looks like about 56% of steam users have 4 or less GB of RAM. What the frack.

if you want to look at this from a purely financial standpoint:
>dropping 32bit will decrease my possible market
>but will allow me to increase the optimization exclusively for 64bit
>this increased optimization will increase my 64bit demand
>will the increase in 64bit demand outweigh the loss of the 32bit market?

also worth noting the 64bit will continue to grow while the 32bit will shrink, so the eventual answer will be Yes. The question then becomes whether that is now, in 1 year or 3 years.

If the 32bit version of the game is, frankly, going to kinda suck, then why make it? You'd be catering to people who are going to not be capable of playing the "real" Planetary Annihilation, and my guess is that they'd be disappointed and pissed off no matter what. Why waste resources developing an inferior version that won't quite work right?

Besides, building a 64 bit rig (and installing Ubuntu for free) is not very expensive now. Back in the day, I built my first computer because I wanted to play TA without constant crashes! And I built my 3rd machine when SupCom came out and I realized my computer would struggle with it. I bet many people will just take it as a reason to upgrade if they really want to play it. I suspect most of those Steam users on 32 bit OS are not exactly into buying the latest/greatest games. They're playing indie platformers and old school GOG stuff.

But . . . but . . . I wanna play on my netbook . . . :cry:

Exactly, 32 bit users are probably not part of the market for PA anyway so dropping 32 bit support doesn't really cost you much. The savings in dev time probably make up for it. Especially when you consider the opportunity cost of not truly optimizing for 64 bit platforms.

My major concern with dropping 32 bit/XP is the bad publicity this will generate. Being a crowd funded game, the customers are that one step closer to the developers, and will feel more entitled because of this. There will be people who kickstarted/pre-ordered that will have XP/32 bit and will be extremely angry that they bought a product they cannot use.

If it isn't technically efficient (which seems to be the case) and you ditch XP and/or 32 bit, you need to be very open with the community why you are doing this and I guess offering refunds if required and, if possible, detail upgrade paths that are available to consumers allowing them to play PA. It is also better to do this earlier rather than later.

I don't want to tell you how to suck eggs (because it feels like I am doing this, and I don't want to presume the likes of Uber entertainment doesn't know how to liaise with the community), but I felt that this needed to be mentioned.

TL/DR: Be open and honest with the community about the technical difficulties of 32 bit/XP and do this as early as possible.

VIRTUALIZATION FTW.

Have we not been? (Honest question. I think we've been pretty up front with everything as we make determinations on stuff) But keep in mind, we at no time ever stated XP support. 32-bit support we'll still make work as much as we can, but as has already been stated, it's not going to be as good an experience, even if only by heavily restricting the size of games you can play due to addressable memory space.

As for XP. It was released in 2001. Anyone who still has an expectation that an OS that old should still be supported when the company that made it isn't going to any more.. well.. I don't know what to tell them, but that's not a place we normally call reality.

Gosh darn it, why can't games be different? There are times where I really want to break out Mech Warrior 2 and have a blast, and I've even tried a couple of times, and forgotten that the ol "this doesn't work on 64 bit sysems" message comes up.

And X-Wing. And Tie Fighter.

:cry:

I guess I will have to figure out this whole virtual OS stuff.

Personally, I just buy most of those through GOG.. The $2 to $5 to buy most of them is worth the not having to figure out how to get them to run. They do all that for you. My time is worth far more than the pain in the butt of fighting for hours to get mid 90s games to run.

i'm sure many more backers will be upset the game wasn't optimized for 64bit or some features were cut for a very small minority.

also you should not approach kickstarter as a marketplace, it's somewhere you go to donate to things you're passionate about. many kickstarters never materialize, it was possible PA didn't either. being upset you didn't get "what [you] paid for" isn't appropriate for kickstarter.

So there is no particular reason to kill 32-bit other than the fact that it's not going to work well in large games.

XP on the other hand is actually more work for us to support.

In that case it makes sense to drop support for XP and release for 32 and 64 bit versions of Vista/7/8 to maximize your target market. Just let servers decide if they want to accept connections from 32 bit clients and call it done.

Why the server limitation? With asynchronous servers, the only person who suffers from this is the person with the 32-bit client. They either get trounced or make sure to stick to smaller maps/games.

MechWarrior 2 is a game from an era where games were moving from DOS to Windows and from software rendered to hardware rendered. It's a game from difficult time for emulation. There are a ton of games from that era that are nearly impossible to play today, which is sad. It's the unfortunate nature of old PC gaming hardware is I don't think we gamers as a group kept old PC hardware around as much as many of us have held on to old consoles.

MechWarrior 2 is also in probably a bit of a weird place legally as Activision no longer has the license for BattleTech to be able to sell the game, and the current owner likely doesn't have a lot of incentive to negotiate rights to re-release the game.

Some users just won't get it and you'll cop flak for their trouncing.

As a minimum I think a pop-up upon joining a game might be in order: