Interesting discussion of 32 bit vs 64 bit development

[RyanE]

Other than drivers, I see no reason to go out of my way to avoid win8.  You can run it just like its Win7.  My father-in-law was all a-scared about win8 on his new laptop.  I set it to boot right to the traditional desktop and bang, he doesn't even know its win8.

It runs a heck of a lot faster, especially 64 bit apps.  Like Google, it synchs between all of my machines, and if you like the tiles, well there you go.  I have no complaints, other than updating from 8 to 8.1 killing my CM2 activations.

[Kushan]

I made the switch to 64-bit when Vista was released. Other Vista issues aside, after the first month I never had a driver issue. IIRC there where only a few drivers I couldn't get working, most notably was an off brand camera I had gotten. But all my major hardware was covered to various degrees. Since then everything has worked fine.

As for games, the only games I've really noticed it have been games I've modded heavily, Skyrim and KSP. Luckily one of the modders for Skyrim was able to use SKSE to extend how much memory the game can use. Before the memory patch I had to be careful with the number of mods I was using. Now I can run all the highest texture packs and any game play mods I want and my computer doesn't even flinch. I haven't gotten around to modding the new version of KSP to see how the new 64-bit version improves performance or the number of mods I can run. In v0.24 i was able ti run a fair number of mods, but I had to use texture reducers in order to not hit the 3.5GB limit.

[Nefaro]

I find Win 8 totally fine and better than Win7. Blazing fast. Don't need a start menu either.  That's old school.

What exactly do you dislike? My only complaint are driver issues.

As usual with most new Windows OS releases, they've buried a lot of functionality an extra step or two further down in the UI.  This one is the worst of the bunch that I've seen.  My opinion can be written off as just being resistant to change, but I find it more of a pain in the ass to get to many things.  Like Settings & Control Panel stuff that had taken some navigation to get to before, but now it's really a scattered mess.  I suppose that if you never had to tweak or fix stuff, then you don't have to worry about that, but it's something that I still occasionally do for friends & family.

Driver issues are always a problem for a year or two after a new one is released.  That's to be expected.

If I ever picked up Win8, I'd end up looking for a proper Windows interface add-on for it.  I actually love the start menu and navigation in the previous ones.  >:(

[Yskonyn]

No need for addons anymore. Its available in Windows now or, if you just want to run something simple and be done with it I recommend Start8 by Stardock.

[RyanE]

I find Win 8 totally fine and better than Win7. Blazing fast. Don't need a start menu either.  That's old school.

What exactly do you dislike? My only complaint are driver issues.

As usual with most new Windows OS releases, they've buried a lot of functionality an extra step or two further down in the UI.  This one is the worst of the bunch that I've seen.  My opinion can be written off as just being resistant to change, but I find it more of a pain in the ass to get to many things.  Like Settings & Control Panel stuff that had taken some navigation to get to before, but now it's really a scattered mess.  I suppose that if you never had to tweak or fix stuff, then you don't have to worry about that, but it's something that I still occasionally do for friends & family.

Driver issues are always a problem for a year or two after a new one is released.  That's to be expected.

If I ever picked up Win8, I'd end up looking for a proper Windows interface add-on for it.  I actually love the start menu and navigation in the previous ones.  >:(

I agree most of the features are not explained.  But it is no different than Win7.  Right click on the start ison and select Control Panel, or any number of the same options as Win7.

[Bletchley_Geek]

The problem is that the 3Mb limit is already being hit in CM.  That is why you see huge load times and crashes on some of the bigger scenarios.  The main problem is that even some medium-sized scenarios can hit the limit if they run for a couple hours and have peaks where a ton of stuff is happening.

I have always suspected that the used the CM1 engine as a kernal for the new engine and that might be why they are reluctant to really dig into it.

More than the "kernel" I would say that they reused the "boring bits", probably stuff like the file and network input/output systems. Especially in games that support real-time multi-player, keeping in sync the state of the game amongst the "peers" is a fricking pain in the arse that people only wish to revisit once in a decade. And the more detailed is the simulation, the greater is the pain. From what I can gather reading about Steel Beasts, I think the devs did as much "refurbishing" of the older bits in the engine as they could within their internally set deadlines and decided to call it a day. Hence the lingering incompatibility between 32 and 64 bit clients.

Indeed CMx2, especially with the bigger maps in the 3.0 revision of the engine, is approaching a stage where accessing more than those "paltry" 3 GBytes is a must.