Guys, no body is disputing that 32 bit is now a minority, but 23 people who use 32 bit at present in every hundred is still a significant minority, no?
Not got a problem with games that dont support XP anymore either, i think there are only about 10 anyway, though this will become more common place, which is also cool.
With the new consoles coming out soon we will see less games now coded for DX9 i imagine also, which is cool with me too.
NS2 was released with system requirements that were a little misleading to say the least, even people above recommended still struggle to play the game without lag ect, but it is now the case NS2 will not work without constant crashes on 32 bit systems because the engine now demands more resources due to memory leaks, cmon, this is not acceptable and we have a right to feel p*ssed while we wait for UWE to sort it out.
You know, that "1 in 5" equals to "20%"? If I add up the percents in your screenshot I get 22.65% of 32bit Windows (assuming "Windows 7" is 32bit, because there is a "Windows 7 64 bit" but no "Windows 7 32 bit", same for Windows 8)
...
Of course 64bit systems are a majority. Is there any point to discuss this?
But you insulted chikoto and in the next sentence you write exactly the same as he does. If 75% uses 64bit windows then there are approximately 20% who don't use 64 bit (plus the linux and mac users, who aren't considered here.)
I don't get It why there are so many Windows 7 32 bit users, either. Most of them should have a 64bit CPU, because I don't think that an 10 year old CPU can run NS2 at all.
But they are there. And you can't ignore 22% of the playerbase!
BTW there is nothing against two versions, so both systems are happy. (not that I had any problems with NS2 crashing or something since release of the game on my CPU...)
But they are there. And you can't ignore 22% of the playerbase!
BTW there is nothing against two versions, so both systems are happy. (not that I had any problems with NS2 crashing or something since release of the game on my CPU...)
Assuming 22% have 32 bit. If iron horse could get a survey on what people are running ns2 with, you're going to see 98% 64 bit. I'll put money down. Let 32 have their derpy crashing and we get our game back. I care enough to put my money where my mouth is and made a donation to see the game go the right direction. I even bought copies for all of my friends. But as it is, it's borderline unplayable.
@darkhunt333
The game is not borderline unplayable and crashing because it supports 32 bit systems. The reasons are due to the game engine having memory leaks and bugs, poor optimization and netcode. When these things are addressed your game wont be borderline unplayable.
I have seen games in the past (like the Unreal Engine Games) have a setting in the options to make all other players "one particular character model"... this was a setting introduced to cut down on the memory usage of lower end pc's and making the game less memory intensive. It also helped people with lower end GPU's as well because it didn't have to render so many different varying player character models.
Maybe UWE could add in an option to force default models, and when ticked only the ones that come with the game will be seen by that client.
I actually recommended this previously.
Quake 3 was what i remembered doing this.
I can understand the deadline behind Reinforced, with PAX. What was the reason for the deadline of exclusive content patch? That one that's causing crashes, and stuff, you know?
No, the crashes started occurring from the added content of Reinforced.. (female models) not just with the special assault skin. I personally saw a memory allocation error once on one of the PAX machines over the weekend.
It's not like those crashing are customers that paid for a released game or anything! They paid for a beta? For crashes that aren't their fault?
What?.. where do you get all this from? Who said the crashes are their faults?? Who said they aren't customers too?
Its pure numbers, friend. If UWE can determine the amount of crashes they receive (And they can) against the amount of players playing (and they can) its up to them to determine the necessity of a reversion.
Not much can be done besides going forward and fixing the problem, past that. *shrug*
Thus is the nature of software updates.. even a fix can cause a new bug :-/
I suggest you play something else in the meantime while they fix it, if it is that upsetting or frequent of a crash for you.
I'm sure they appreciate the understanding and patience from users like you.
My point of all of this was, that the game is released, it's not a beta anymore. There should be beta builds like before that would catch those very severe bugs like crashing.
It's not even my problem, I have a 64bit system, crashes are rare, well, besides horrid random microstuttering since Reinforced. But I've been asking people around free weekend and after it, I would very often hear how "game runs like shit", people bewildered at how after nearly a year after release, game feels like an unfinished beta. I can only imagine someone buying NS2 during a "global beta" build. I guess they should just play a different game. New player retention at its finest, those aren't as understanding and patient as there are other games to learn and play instead.
It's just sad seeing people call one of my favorite games "dead on arrival" or even "shitty unfinished cashgrab" just because devs rush their updates. I couldn't care less otherwise, but it's either playing with greenies that will eventually have enough of this and jump ship, or pre-release veterans that already know what they are into. I want players between those, players that don't read about every update, players that can just jump and play without problems and still understand what's going on through the game, not changelogs (interactive tutorial was the best thing from Reinforced). Not just sale spikes on steam charts.
And I want patches that don't break the game.
You can't do stuff like that UWE, innocent people are dying crashing.
My point of all of this was, that the game is released, it's not a beta anymore. There should be beta builds like before that would catch those very severe bugs like crashing..
We needed to get this out to a wider testing audience, in order to get a better sense of all the issues that the new rendering changes are causing, so that we could fix them up before the final patch release. It is certainly not an ideal way of doing things, but we had hoped that our community would be understanding of this and help us to track down issues and fix them up, to get this huge Reinforced update in good shape for later this week.
Using the Beta release on steam has been tried in the past, and just does not bring in enough people playing on the beta version, to give us adequate testing, so we just had to go with a full release here.
We needed to get this out to a wider testing audience, in order to get a better sense of all the issues that the new rendering changes are causing, so that we could fix them up before the final patch release. It is certainly not an ideal way of doing things, but we had hoped that our community would be understanding of this and help us to track down issues and fix them up, to get this huge Reinforced update in good shape for later this week.
Using the Beta release on steam has been tried in the past, and just does not bring in enough people playing on the beta version, to give us adequate testing, so we just had to go with a full release here.
The point is that this shouldn't be the paying customers problem. All this blather about the reasons behind it are just excuses for poor planning and worse execution. It's definitely not, nor should it be, "the nature of software updates".
@Zali
The point is that you, I and the rest of the community WISH there weren't any problems problems with any update, but the fact IS that new bugs introduced by a new build ARE "the nature of updates"! And because you say otherwise it doesn't make it true.
There are thousands of sold copies of NS2 that means thousands of different PC configurations with different software that all can react differently to an update of which you can test just a small part. Cory is saying that there are not enough beta testers to find the damn quirks. I do understand it as that there were some beta testers, but they unfortunately had not problems because their system configurations didn't meet the quirks but which do appear on systems outside of the beta test. So tell me, how can you plan and execute things better if you don't even knew they where there?
I tell you:
First you have to experience the problem. Therefor are beta testers who do not participate in a number which is high enough in the NS2 beta builds. So unfortunately the quirks are found in the main build by "paying customers".
So tell me, how can you plan and execute things better if you don't even knew they where there?
first, the testing team knew that there were problems (They stated that multiple times on this forum) but the devs decided to release their update anyway. Second, if there are such bugs that are not detected, you should increase the amount of testers and trying to get a higher diversity when it comes to the hardware pool.
Been unable to play since the "update" the game simply wont work without a fatal crash. This is effecting both me and my sons accounts, how close are you guys to a fix and what compensation will we receive?
Have you deactivated all mods? Did you send the crash report to UWE?
@Husar
first, the testing team knew that there were problems (They stated that multiple times on this forum) but the devs decided to release their update anyway.
Ok, I give you that. Maybe UWE felt the pressure to release because of the Reinforcement Program?
Second, if there are such bugs that are not detected, you should increase the amount of testers and trying to get a higher diversity when it comes to the hardware pool.
Well, that was exactly the problem, there weren't enough testers!
Well, that was exactly the problem, there weren't enough testers!
There are solutions for that which don't involve screwing your paying customers. Redirect some money from breaking stuff that works or the failed esports attempt to paid QA testers for example.
The problem is that UWE doesn't want to/can't seem to see the difference between paying customers and beta testers (probably because the beta was pay to enter).
NS2 has been released. It's way past time to start treating it like that. Few people who bought NS2 in that state are going to care about UWEs problems.
@Husar
first, the testing team knew that there were problems (They stated that multiple times on this forum) but the devs decided to release their update anyway.
Ok, I give you that. Maybe UWE felt the pressure to release because of the Reinforcement Program?
I think so.
About the test team thing: The weird thing is, I tried to get into it by filling out their application but I did get nothing back, neither a 'yes' nor a 'no'.
i will burn u all uwe . GRRR. 2 weeks i cant play ns2.
Others games dont have these memory limitations dont blame 32bits and our pcs and till i know there is a memory swap options with hd in windows perfectly usable for any game, is called pagefile.sys for more information if u dont know. Maybe a betatest of the patch before u drop it ?
stfu the clevers with 64 bits. I have 32 and 64 bits windows and it crashes the same. Patch 255 is shit optimization just all.
grrrrrrrrrrrr fixxxxxxxxxxxxxx
About the test team thing: The weird thing is, I tried to get into it by filling out their application but I did get nothing back, neither a 'yes' nor a 'no'.
That's because the Playtest team is community run, and we're all very busy trying to get 256 out the door to reply to every application we receive. We take on PTs in waves, the last wave we took on right before Reinforced. We'll take on another wave soon. Then people will start to be contacted.
Well, that was exactly the problem, there weren't enough testers!
There are solutions for that which don't involve screwing your paying customers. Redirect some money from breaking stuff that works or the failed esports attempt to paid QA testers for example.
The problem is that UWE doesn't want to/can't seem to see the difference between paying customers and beta testers (probably because the beta was pay to enter).
NS2 has been released. It's way past time to start treating it like that. Few people who bought NS2 in that state are going to care about UWEs problems.
You grossly underestimate how expensive it would be to have a team of paid QA testers. It would mean we would actually have far less testers then we do now, and probably less dedicated ones, as well. Our current team of unpaid testers are doing it out of their love for the game, and desire to help to see it improve, and that is invaluable. They are motivated by more then money, and they put in weekends and pulled all nighters helping us get Reinforced out the door, as well as the follow up patches.
Yes there are things we could have done differently. In hindsight we would have added the rendering changes to the main branch of the game sooner, to have more time to hammer on it. We were concerned with the workflow interruption that would have caused, as it would have broken the game completely, so instead a lot of the large game breaking issues were fixed in a separate branch, but this did not leave a lot of time for our testers to work with it before Reinforced went live.
There was sort of a perfect storm of issues that all came together near the end of Reinforced development, which by then was too late to change course. This tends to always be the case with big releases, and sometimes you get lucky and things work out ok, sometimes you don't and things are a bit messy.
We are who we are, a small, scrappy little company with lofty ambitions, making the kinds of games that we shouldn't be making given our limited resources. We are not Blizzard, we don't have a massive team of internal testers and the luxury of time to make sure any release we put out is completely refined and polished and bug free (though even Blizzard isn't doesn't manage to fully do that these days, either). We figure that the majority of our community understands this, and is along for the ride because of who we are, the games we make, and how we make them. We may lose a few along the way who are not willing to ride out some of the bumps along the road while we work to improve our process, but we are not going to just close our doors to the public and sit on every patch for months testing them to insure they are perfect. It is not who we are and not who we want to be.
@darkhunt333
The game is not borderline unplayable and crashing because it supports 32 bit systems. The reasons are due to the game engine having memory leaks and bugs, poor optimization and netcode. When these things are addressed your game wont be borderline unplayable.
If it was 64bit, it wouldn't crash for a very long time because there's no memory limit. Reducing crashes and performance problems all around by a large margin. I like how you find 2 words and avoid the problem all together. You're missing the point, anything but 64 bit is a band-aid that will come off if it gets a little damp.
i will burn u all uwe . GRRR. 2 weeks i cant play ns2.
stfu the clevers with 64 bits. I have 32 and 64 bits windows and it crashes the same.
grrrrrrrrrrrr fixxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ths
What did I just read lol. Your IQ is clearly too high to create an acceptable sentence structure. THE GAME IS 32BIT. IT DOESN"T MATTER THAT OS YOU HAVE. Learn about google and use it ffs.
We figure that the majority of our community understands this, and is along for the ride because of who we are, the games we make, and how we make them. We may lose a few along the way who are not willing to ride out some of the bumps along the road while we work to improve our process, but we are not going to just close our doors to the public and sit on every patch for months testing them to insure they are perfect. It is not who we are and not who we want to be.
The problem of course being that when you have a released game on Steam, the vast majority of people who buy it aren't going to know or care about what UWE is. You are figuring wrong. Beyond getting a playable game for their money, the majority just don't care. They aren't here extolling the virtues of UWEs style of development, the ones that decide to take some action are on the Steam forums telling everyone what a piece of shit the engine is. This is why there is a huge player retention issue. How can you possibly suggest that the majority understand when the majority don't even bother to stick around. Hell, they probably didn't even visit the website at all. The people who understand are the minority.
Those people who you say are "not willing to ride out some of the bumps along the road" (sounds like you consider them an acceptable loss, you have their money anyway, right?) bought your game and expected it to work. Delivering on that implied promise should be the first priority.
^ well put apart from the last sentence. Their top priority is to keep the company afloat/make money. How they do that is up to them but unfortunately at the moment I think that is done by growing the playerbase. To do that they need content patches like reinforced to bring back old players and get new ones to buy the game. It's just a shame there wasn't proper time to get real testing on it done since they had too early of a release date set. I do agree with what you are saying though. I feel 250 was pushed too early along with the recent patches including reinforced which caused bugs in addition to new balance issues.
Personally speaking I would like to see the main focus put on fixing existing balance and performance related issues and less on new content. But that's easy for me to say since I do not pay the bills...just being honest though
You guys realize that a 32-bit process is still limited to 4GB of address space on a 64-bit operating system right? So unless there's a 64-bit executable....
You guys realize that a 32-bit process is still limited to 4GB of address space on a 64-bit operating system right? So unless there's a 64-bit executable....
Not true, first there is no 64bit process, second I've seen the game hit 4.5gb memory on a leak, third I'm pretty sure there's some function (or something you hook from windows) that lets you break the 4gb line.
The process itself may only receive 4GB of address space. There's no way around that.
There are methods to expose more memory to a 32-bit system, but the process itself cannot exceed this amount.
If you went over 4GB, it's probably another process running along with the game. Awesomium is a definite possibility here.
The system simply cannot allocate more than 4GB to a 32-bit process, it's a basic mathematic principle and one of the primary reasons for the development of 64-bit systems.
I still do not understand, why 32-bit is so widespread in 2013. A lot of people run around with Dual or Quad Core CPUs, at least 4 GB of memory, or even more. *hint*8GB in my rig*hint*
If I look back, then only a handful of games either have both x86 and x64 binaries or only x64.
Sure, 64bit is more like "Oh my goodness, I can allocate more than 4 GB", but think about that. Games get more and more...graphical. Such data needs more memory to be placed in.
If I look back at Hellgate: London for example...it ships with x86 and x64 binaries (depends on what version you install). DX10 was included, too.
My Fallout 3/New Vegas installations were always modded to hell, so that I needed at least 4 GB of memory just for the game. Same applies to Skyrim.
32Bit is, in my opinion, restricting development for both Games and Applications, because you are limited to 4 GB of Memory instead of 512 GB.
Yes, 512 GB sounds ridiculous, but still...that's the amount of memory, which Windows 8 Ultimate can allocate. Windows 7 Ultimate can allocate up to 192 GB.
I am not familiar with the entire technical mumbojumbo now and do not know, if a 64bit EXE for Natural Selection 2 would be a curse or would do something good...but I hope you know what I mean.
^ well put apart from the last sentence. Their top priority is to keep the company afloat/make money. How they do that is up to them but unfortunately at the moment I think that is done by growing the playerbase. To do that they need content patches like reinforced to bring back old players and get new ones to buy the game. It's just a shame there wasn't proper time to get real testing on it done since they had too early of a release date set. I do agree with what you are saying though. I feel 250 was pushed too early along with the recent patches including reinforced which caused bugs in addition to new balance issues.
Personally speaking I would like to see the main focus put on fixing existing balance and performance related issues and less on new content. But that's easy for me to say since I do not pay the bills...just being honest though
and when you mention something like that, all you get is a tersely worded response about resource allocation, and how content and performance gedone in parallel, and how they can do both at the same time without sacrificing quality.
about resource allocation, and how content and performance gedone in parallel, and how they can do both at the same time without sacrificing quality.
This largely is true. For example, our artists, animators, and mappers can continue to work on new content, our gameplay programmer can continue to work on balance changes, all in parallel with the performance improvements being done. With Reinforced, for example, Biodome, Female marines, grenades, gorge webs, etc. were all handled by the art/mapping team and a single gameplay programmer. Where it overlaps is when that content gets added to the game, such as the addition of all those new models and animations which pushed us over the memory limits on 32 bit systems. Or when the code to implement new weapons and abilities cause a variety of new bugs in the game that then need to be fixed.
For the next while we are planning on focusing primarily on optimization, stability, and fixing existing bugs, rather then new content, but that does not mean that work on the art/mapping/ or even gameplay programming stops (balance changes can still be added to and tested in the BT mod, for example). t
Comments
Not got a problem with games that dont support XP anymore either, i think there are only about 10 anyway, though this will become more common place, which is also cool.
With the new consoles coming out soon we will see less games now coded for DX9 i imagine also, which is cool with me too.
NS2 was released with system requirements that were a little misleading to say the least, even people above recommended still struggle to play the game without lag ect, but it is now the case NS2 will not work without constant crashes on 32 bit systems because the engine now demands more resources due to memory leaks, cmon, this is not acceptable and we have a right to feel p*ssed while we wait for UWE to sort it out.
Of course 64bit systems are a majority. Is there any point to discuss this?
But you insulted chikoto and in the next sentence you write exactly the same as he does. If 75% uses 64bit windows then there are approximately 20% who don't use 64 bit (plus the linux and mac users, who aren't considered here.)
I don't get It why there are so many Windows 7 32 bit users, either. Most of them should have a 64bit CPU, because I don't think that an 10 year old CPU can run NS2 at all.
But they are there. And you can't ignore 22% of the playerbase!
BTW there is nothing against two versions, so both systems are happy. (not that I had any problems with NS2 crashing or something since release of the game on my CPU...)
Assuming 22% have 32 bit. If iron horse could get a survey on what people are running ns2 with, you're going to see 98% 64 bit. I'll put money down. Let 32 have their derpy crashing and we get our game back. I care enough to put my money where my mouth is and made a donation to see the game go the right direction. I even bought copies for all of my friends. But as it is, it's borderline unplayable.
The game is not borderline unplayable and crashing because it supports 32 bit systems. The reasons are due to the game engine having memory leaks and bugs, poor optimization and netcode. When these things are addressed your game wont be borderline unplayable.
Quake 3 was what i remembered doing this.
What?.. where do you get all this from? Who said the crashes are their faults?? Who said they aren't customers too?
Its pure numbers, friend. If UWE can determine the amount of crashes they receive (And they can) against the amount of players playing (and they can) its up to them to determine the necessity of a reversion.
Not much can be done besides going forward and fixing the problem, past that. *shrug*
Thus is the nature of software updates.. even a fix can cause a new bug :-/
I suggest you play something else in the meantime while they fix it, if it is that upsetting or frequent of a crash for you.
I'm sure they appreciate the understanding and patience from users like you.
It's not even my problem, I have a 64bit system, crashes are rare, well, besides horrid random microstuttering since Reinforced. But I've been asking people around free weekend and after it, I would very often hear how "game runs like shit", people bewildered at how after nearly a year after release, game feels like an unfinished beta. I can only imagine someone buying NS2 during a "global beta" build. I guess they should just play a different game. New player retention at its finest, those aren't as understanding and patient as there are other games to learn and play instead.
It's just sad seeing people call one of my favorite games "dead on arrival" or even "shitty unfinished cashgrab" just because devs rush their updates. I couldn't care less otherwise, but it's either playing with greenies that will eventually have enough of this and jump ship, or pre-release veterans that already know what they are into. I want players between those, players that don't read about every update, players that can just jump and play without problems and still understand what's going on through the game, not changelogs (interactive tutorial was the best thing from Reinforced). Not just sale spikes on steam charts.
And I want patches that don't break the game.
source.
The point is that this shouldn't be the paying customers problem. All this blather about the reasons behind it are just excuses for poor planning and worse execution. It's definitely not, nor should it be, "the nature of software updates".
The point is that you, I and the rest of the community WISH there weren't any problems problems with any update, but the fact IS that new bugs introduced by a new build ARE "the nature of updates"! And because you say otherwise it doesn't make it true.
There are thousands of sold copies of NS2 that means thousands of different PC configurations with different software that all can react differently to an update of which you can test just a small part. Cory is saying that there are not enough beta testers to find the damn quirks. I do understand it as that there were some beta testers, but they unfortunately had not problems because their system configurations didn't meet the quirks but which do appear on systems outside of the beta test. So tell me, how can you plan and execute things better if you don't even knew they where there?
I tell you:
first, the testing team knew that there were problems (They stated that multiple times on this forum) but the devs decided to release their update anyway. Second, if there are such bugs that are not detected, you should increase the amount of testers and trying to get a higher diversity when it comes to the hardware pool.
Have you deactivated all mods? Did you send the crash report to UWE?
There are solutions for that which don't involve screwing your paying customers. Redirect some money from breaking stuff that works or the failed esports attempt to paid QA testers for example.
The problem is that UWE doesn't want to/can't seem to see the difference between paying customers and beta testers (probably because the beta was pay to enter).
NS2 has been released. It's way past time to start treating it like that. Few people who bought NS2 in that state are going to care about UWEs problems.
I think so.
About the test team thing: The weird thing is, I tried to get into it by filling out their application but I did get nothing back, neither a 'yes' nor a 'no'.
Others games dont have these memory limitations dont blame 32bits and our pcs and till i know there is a memory swap options with hd in windows perfectly usable for any game, is called pagefile.sys for more information if u dont know. Maybe a betatest of the patch before u drop it ?
stfu the clevers with 64 bits. I have 32 and 64 bits windows and it crashes the same. Patch 255 is shit optimization just all.
grrrrrrrrrrrr fixxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ths
That's because the Playtest team is community run, and we're all very busy trying to get 256 out the door to reply to every application we receive. We take on PTs in waves, the last wave we took on right before Reinforced. We'll take on another wave soon. Then people will start to be contacted.
Yes there are things we could have done differently. In hindsight we would have added the rendering changes to the main branch of the game sooner, to have more time to hammer on it. We were concerned with the workflow interruption that would have caused, as it would have broken the game completely, so instead a lot of the large game breaking issues were fixed in a separate branch, but this did not leave a lot of time for our testers to work with it before Reinforced went live.
There was sort of a perfect storm of issues that all came together near the end of Reinforced development, which by then was too late to change course. This tends to always be the case with big releases, and sometimes you get lucky and things work out ok, sometimes you don't and things are a bit messy.
We are who we are, a small, scrappy little company with lofty ambitions, making the kinds of games that we shouldn't be making given our limited resources. We are not Blizzard, we don't have a massive team of internal testers and the luxury of time to make sure any release we put out is completely refined and polished and bug free (though even Blizzard isn't doesn't manage to fully do that these days, either). We figure that the majority of our community understands this, and is along for the ride because of who we are, the games we make, and how we make them. We may lose a few along the way who are not willing to ride out some of the bumps along the road while we work to improve our process, but we are not going to just close our doors to the public and sit on every patch for months testing them to insure they are perfect. It is not who we are and not who we want to be.
--Cory
If it was 64bit, it wouldn't crash for a very long time because there's no memory limit. Reducing crashes and performance problems all around by a large margin. I like how you find 2 words and avoid the problem all together. You're missing the point, anything but 64 bit is a band-aid that will come off if it gets a little damp.
What did I just read lol. Your IQ is clearly too high to create an acceptable sentence structure. THE GAME IS 32BIT. IT DOESN"T MATTER THAT OS YOU HAVE. Learn about google and use it ffs.
Not letting people defend them selves is the worst thing you can do. I could rip on this so hard lol.
The problem of course being that when you have a released game on Steam, the vast majority of people who buy it aren't going to know or care about what UWE is. You are figuring wrong. Beyond getting a playable game for their money, the majority just don't care. They aren't here extolling the virtues of UWEs style of development, the ones that decide to take some action are on the Steam forums telling everyone what a piece of shit the engine is. This is why there is a huge player retention issue. How can you possibly suggest that the majority understand when the majority don't even bother to stick around. Hell, they probably didn't even visit the website at all. The people who understand are the minority.
Those people who you say are "not willing to ride out some of the bumps along the road" (sounds like you consider them an acceptable loss, you have their money anyway, right?) bought your game and expected it to work. Delivering on that implied promise should be the first priority.
Personally speaking I would like to see the main focus put on fixing existing balance and performance related issues and less on new content. But that's easy for me to say since I do not pay the bills...just being honest though
You guys realize that a 32-bit process is still limited to 4GB of address space on a 64-bit operating system right? So unless there's a 64-bit executable....
Not true, first there is no 64bit process, second I've seen the game hit 4.5gb memory on a leak, third I'm pretty sure there's some function (or something you hook from windows) that lets you break the 4gb line.
There are methods to expose more memory to a 32-bit system, but the process itself cannot exceed this amount.
If you went over 4GB, it's probably another process running along with the game. Awesomium is a definite possibility here.
The system simply cannot allocate more than 4GB to a 32-bit process, it's a basic mathematic principle and one of the primary reasons for the development of 64-bit systems.
If I look back, then only a handful of games either have both x86 and x64 binaries or only x64.
Sure, 64bit is more like "Oh my goodness, I can allocate more than 4 GB", but think about that. Games get more and more...graphical. Such data needs more memory to be placed in.
If I look back at Hellgate: London for example...it ships with x86 and x64 binaries (depends on what version you install). DX10 was included, too.
My Fallout 3/New Vegas installations were always modded to hell, so that I needed at least 4 GB of memory just for the game. Same applies to Skyrim.
32Bit is, in my opinion, restricting development for both Games and Applications, because you are limited to 4 GB of Memory instead of 512 GB.
Yes, 512 GB sounds ridiculous, but still...that's the amount of memory, which Windows 8 Ultimate can allocate. Windows 7 Ultimate can allocate up to 192 GB.
I am not familiar with the entire technical mumbojumbo now and do not know, if a 64bit EXE for Natural Selection 2 would be a curse or would do something good...but I hope you know what I mean.
and when you mention something like that, all you get is a tersely worded response about resource allocation, and how content and performance gedone in parallel, and how they can do both at the same time without sacrificing quality.
For the next while we are planning on focusing primarily on optimization, stability, and fixing existing bugs, rather then new content, but that does not mean that work on the art/mapping/ or even gameplay programming stops (balance changes can still be added to and tested in the BT mod, for example). t