Well, I am a big beliethe in trying to make the code as efficient as possible.  I'm willing to spend my weekend trying to do what I can. and I have that opportunity thanks to Soren since I was scheduled to go over two game designs that now I won't have to do.

Since it's delayed can you spoil us with some more screenshots?

I will try over the weekend. Memory debugging is extremely slow so I should have  time to do that.

I vote on letting the 32-bit users choose their own fate, for good or for ill (if my vote counts too). Afterall, even Brad has admitted that there are many 32-bit users still out there.

Now, I'm no programmer, but in the old days when a game was installed, we gamers would get the options laid out in front for custom installation. I'm not just talking about "choose your directory of install", nor do I refer to the common custom choices of 'which sound card you have' or 'how many buttons on your joystick do you want to play with'. Many games had several layers of install, depending on how well your computer was able to perform. I don't know how much investment of time, money, and resources this type of request would contain, but if possible for what SD would consider to be a reasonable amount, please consider it.

During install, could we please receive the option whether or not we want to tackle huge maps. Granted, there probably is 32-bit machines out there that cannot operate FE with on a huge map. But I would be hard pressed to believe all 32-bit machines couldn't do it. Mine operates dual core for example...

During install, could we please receive the option whether or not to have the little meeples installed? I've been watching ver 1.3 very closely to see how much memory it's consuming, and I've pleasantly found out that the worst case has been only 840,000 K (from the task manager window). HUGE congrats to SD over this cause during many of the betas and even still in 1.0, that number could climb as high as 1,940,000 K on my machine. Please consider allowing customers make their own choice whether they feel they can run the game with meeples or not. If it doesn't work for some 32-bit users, all it means is a reinstall...

Perhaps this is a bit of an aside, but I was wondering if any thought has been given for the flatting of hills/mountains when city development occurs close by since I first mentioned it in beta 4. Often times, a tile(s) is flattened, yet the characteristics of that tile are maintained. Throughout the course of a game, it can be quite annoying to path your units over flat grassland only to be jipped by the 1/2 movement penalty along the way.

Thanks

You are, of course, ready to defend against the 32-bit ninja squad, I suppose.

I just don't think Stardock is. Granted, there's good reason for suggesting people upgrade to a 64-bit OS, but the company that makes FE has to take into account just how much of its customer base actually dwells in a 32-bit universe. And that's still considerable.

I strongly suspect in a year or two many of these will have moved on to 64-bit systems, but right now, planning a feature for the 64-bit crowd seems premature.

This wouldn't be bricking the game for 32-bit folks.  They just couldn't play on the largest map size. 

This would save Stardock a large amount in optimization.

Also will Stardock give us a Steam key of all Elemental ( Demigod , GalCiv series , SoaSE series )  games that we own on our Stardock account ?

Welcome Soren.

@32 bit huge maps. Is it worth the effort? ? Is it even viable to optimize memory to the point that OOMs are totally avoidable?

Speaking of Soren and OOMs, I remember one of the games Soren worked on still crashes with OOMs to this day and the company always insisted it was my PC.. but of course im running 10x the specs I was back then and it still has OOMs. Plain and simple it hits the 32 bit limit, has very little to do with what system you were running at that point. Still love the game, still one of my top all time 4x, but I still remember the OOMs well. (think I only finished 1 out of 3 or 4 games on it due to those, because I like big maps)

Point is that if you can't cross that threshold to remove the potential to OOM with 99% certainty don't bother adding the map size for 32 bit users IMO, its likely only going to lead to frustration.

Removing an option for 32 bit users > than requiring people to fully upgrade their system for a shittily optimized engine *cough* Frostbite *cough*

Civilization 4 was my favorite of all the Civilizations. (V was too experimental and III was too easy to exploit.)

Fall From Heaven II was my favorite of all Mods, for any game, ever. (Even beating out Desert Conflict for Battlefield 2)

Having the lead designers from both of these come together is like a dream-team come true.

As someone who often lags in owning the latest and greatest technology, I appreciate that SD is trying to accommodate 32 bit users. (Although, this time around, I'm in the 64 bit camp, and it's a non-issue for me)

I am glad you are optimising your game but I wouldn't spend too much time making sure people with machines that are borderline obsolete can play your largest maps.

Large maps with Max everything (including Quests) on Challenging AI and World Difficulty are fun and take a while and are quite enjoyable to finish.  I say make sure 32-bitters can play Large without trouble and leave Huge maps as a 64-bit-only feature.   After all, if there are too few incentives to upgrade to 64-bit operating systems, it will take even longer than they already have to come into prominence.

lol they are already pretty prominent. Finding a 32 bit machine locally would take some serious effort.

Not many games are being made with 64-bit requirements though.  I know all processors are 64-bit these days, but there are still a lot of legacy 32-bitter OSs around.

There have been some surveys done by marketing firms working for computer publications. This past year, at least, the Windows OS was still pretty evenly split between Win7 and WinXP, the edge going to Win7. Vista was completely out of the picture. Nobody has surveyed on how WinXP users split between 32-bit ad 64-bit, though. I certainly wouldn 't count the former out just yet. A year or two down the line: definitely.