I am wondering everyone’s opinion on a what if. What if they only developed it for 64 bit environments? How many people would actually be effected by a decision like that in today’s age?
The reason I ask is if they are only 64 bit they could focus on only one front. There will be some bugs that pop up in 64 bit not in 32 bit, along with the reverse being true. Also unless I am mistaken, sometimes there may numbers that work one way in one 64 or 32 bit but break when changed to the other causing trees to be formed to follow either path.
I think that the issue is that there would have been users that kickstarted on a 32bit machine, and moving to a 64 bit exclusive title at this stage might cause some ruffled feathers.
I think they are up to the challenge for both builds. They will probably use the 64bit build as a proving ground with the extra resources to incorporate a lot of features and ideas. In turn this can help them refine it to incorporate it into the 32bit builds as a more streamlined and stable program. Just a guess as to why 2 builds.
I was looking at that while talking to a friend about that. It brought up the question of how many of those aren’t 64 bit CPUs though. As you can see the 32 bit version of windows 8 is pretty small, we might see the other shrink when windows 10 comes out and people upgrade. After all the first 64 bit CPUs came out nearly 12 years ago now. (Late 2003)
Many other games have this approach also, since you guys have started this course supporting both (possibly promising…?) it may be best to at least say the released version will support both but development will continue on 64bit for faster development (to say the least, most would understand this approach). Ruffled feathers as mentioned above will happen if you abandoned 32 but I guess its better to do now if your going to before this gets a much larger fan base.
It doesn’t matter whether the CPU is 64bit capable or not; if the operation system isn’t, the game can’t be. There are still computers sold with 32bit licenses, although I’ll admit that this is probably a very small percentage. Nonetheless, Windows 7 looks like it’s going to stay for a while, so abandoning those 16% might hurt a lot.
Windows 7 is only 11%, though still a fair chunk of people. The reason I mention the CPUs is depending on when this game releases, those people may have upgraded to windows 10 by then. You never know. Also since the game is going to be on Mac and Linux, they don’t have any 32 bit, so it might also help out there? Never know.
Its a fair amount considering the number of customers they have now unfortunately, but like I said, maybe they could drop 32 if it would speed development and then crunch bugs later for the big release.
Just a thought is all. It’d be cool to see official numbers though. While steam may have 16%, what do those 16% play? Might be that the stonehearth fanbase is less than 1% 32 bit.
If Stonehearth could answer, that would be an excellent reason to drop it. I’m no developer by any means but if it simplifies bug squashing and more releases, I’m all for it. Stonehearths’ name is popping up all over Steam.