September 27, 2013 | Dukus | 25 Comments
When I talk about DirectX 11, I'm just talking about the API. The DirectX 11 renderer only requires video cards that support shader model 4.0, and uses the downlevel hardware features to support DirectX 10 hardware. So if you have an older card that supports the DirectX 10 feature set, the game still runs using the faster DirectX 11 renderer. You'll only have to use the older DirectX 9 renderer if your video card supports only shader model 2.0 or 3.0 or you are running Windows XP. And I think you've all convinced me to include the 64 bit exe and dlls. 🙂
Take my money please!
Awesome news! Thank you for deciding on 64 bit exe! Much love!
Thanks thats a good decision now i can buy the game without worries that it dosent run very good on my x64 Pc 🙂
I don't care if you include a 64 bit executable or not, as long as you keep the 64 bit executable an *option* - as the game potentially could grow to need that larger memory size.
(Personally, I'd prefer much more if you were using OpenGL and eventually potentially targetting Linux, but I'd prefer EVEN MORE that you just release the game. It looks like it'll be worth rebooting for).
I really hate the current situation with programming.
Everything is 32 or 64 and splayed all over the place. I really hope this transition to 64bit finishes soon and we can forget 32 for good. (the death of XP will come none too soon)
But anyway, I think your articles are truly enlightening, you're doing things in extremely robust and interesting ways!
You need to fix your website. I keep throwing money at the screen and nothing is happening.
I dunno... will it cause the as of now unannounced release to be pushed back? Because I can live without a 64 bit exe as long as I get the game sooner rather than later 😉
I would prefer 64bit, but as you say, the game doesn't currently necessitate it.
Who knows what the future holds, however..
Will your game be future-proof; will it support custom resolutions, multiple screens, gamepad, etc.
None of these are required, but your engine certainly seems to be flexible enough..
only problem is that opengl and linux support would be welcome news
really hope developers will Banish(tm) directx totally and change to use opengl/opencl, so we can all start our way of Banishing windows all to gether 🙂
You sir, are a genius. Just finished reading every post in this Devlog, love what you are doing and can't wait for the game to come out. 🙂 However, as much as I want to play it now, please don't rush it. I do have a couple of questions I'm curious about though:
1. As everyone has a specific house they live in, what determines where someone works? If you allocate a new specialist (say a farmer) does the engine determine the farm most in need of a farmer and then pick the closest labourer to that farm to become a farmer? If you then closed that farm, I assume that the farmer then goes to another farm (even if it is ages away).
I plan to play this game with my town in the middle but a number of small outposts spread out all over the map. If people live in a house in 'outpost x' but work in a building at 'outpost y' they won't be very productive.
1b. With regards to the above scenario, I know you can have people change jobs (because you’ve said they will lose happiness if they change jobs too much) but do I, the player, or the engine pick which person changes jobs? I assume the engine picks which person to change (from a farmer to a labourer). If so, how does the engine work out which farmer to change back to a labourer (I assume it looks for the least efficient farmer (the one who has the most distance to travel between ‘home’ and ‘work’) and changes that person)?
2. I believe maps are going to be randomly generated and will have varying degrees of difficulty (e.g. flat v hilly). Will you have customisable inputs to generate the terrain? e.g. Sliders (1-100) for things such as: Trees, stone, water, flat/hilly/mountainous land, etc...?
Taking the above a bit further I would love to play on maps with lots of islands. I know you aren't planning on having boats (awesome idea for an expansion though :-)) so each island would have to be connected by bridges - maybe archipelagos opposed to 'islands'. I'd love to play a map where you start on the mainland (in a corner of the map) but it has very little stone (or some other resource) requiring you to build out and colonise the islands in the archipelago. It may come off as being a bit contrived but to me that would just be one of the challenges presented by different terrains.
3. Something like this (the map described above) would probably require the ability to actually manually create (or at least edit created) terrain. IF (?) you have this ability as the dev of this game, maybe you could include a few maps like this in your 'scenarios'. I’m don’t know what you have planned for your scenarios but if you (the dev, not us the players) have the ability to create/edit terrain maybe you could include a number of maps in your scenarios that would be quite different to the ones that are randomly generated.
4. You’ve touched on this before, but I’d love to see you expose the seed used to generate a map such that the community can ‘share’ maps.
5. So far you have done an awesome job (and I’m sure you will continue to do so) but I wonder how you, as one person, will be able to ‘support’ the game once it is live? Reading through your devlog I can see that you have thought about this (by making sure your code as clean, reusable, efficient etc... as possible) but what if/when you run into issues that will only be found once it is running on the limitless combinations of software and hardware that make up the computers your players are playing on?
I think there's a real problem with public perception of 64-bit vs 32-bit.
Very few people seem to be able to get their heads around the idea that, if a game or application by design will never require the use of more than 2GB of RAM, there is effectively zero difference in performance. The game runs identical code, in an identical way.
Content creation apps, like Photoshop, 3DSMax, etc, etc... certainly benefit from being 64-bit, as memory usage is dictated by the user, not the programmer, and will regularly exceed 2GB... and so naturally, those apps have had 64-bit variants for years, and some are even discarding 32-bit code paths entirely now.
A game either needs to be 64-bit, or it doesn't, entirely dependent on whether the game resources will come anywhere close to exceeding the memory limitation or not.
This perception that people have of 32-bit being "old and outdated" is nonsense. It's entirely a programming choice whether 32-bit is viable or whether it's not, and if it is, then it infers no performance penalty whatsoever.
I have a theoretical question for you. Since you are a former console game engine programmer. Just out of curiosity. Do you think the PS3 or/and Xbox 360 is fast enough to run this game @720p? They seem to have enough memory.
Yo, I still think there should be some kind of aesthetics, property value, increased property taxes type thing!!
you better get this game released before the economy collapses!
I know it's already too late and the decision0s taken but...
64 bits, yay! Where can I send my money to?
I'm really glad that you decided to go with the 64-bit version of the game as well. That's great to hear. Keep up the awesome work!
But really... why is everyone so happy to be getting a 64-bit version? What do you expect it'll do that the 32-bit version won't?
Better performance? Better compatibility with modern OSes? Better... ?
It's not like when games started switching from 16-bit colour-depth to 32-bit... it doesn't improve the graphics.
Multi-core support gives more performance boost 🙂 Still x64 exe is a nice addition!
As for release for impatient: you can always give patches, that would add multi-core support and/or x64.exe 🙂
@Dan. While I agree there is no performance difference of any note, going to 64-bit is a good idea, even if only to ensure the code is 64-bit clean. If you build it, you might as well release it.
WoW64 has been an optional component since Windows 2008 R2. Microsoft has also indicated that there will be no 32-bit versions after Windows 8. While 32-bit support may be around for a while longer on a 64-bit OS, eventually WoW64 will be dropped altogether.
Shining Rock Software is a one-man operation, and could literally disappear over night. In the interest of future-proofing the product, and ensuring I will be able to keep using it as long as possible, a 64-bit version is highly desirable.
I don't play many games. I will buy this game, play it for a few months, and forget about it. A few years down the track I may feel like playing it again, and being 64-bit, it is highly likely it will still work with future Windows versions. I wish I could say the same about SimCity 2000... occasionally I get the urge to play it, but I know the version I owned it isn't going to work as the subsystem required to run it is completely absent from newer Windows releases.
Please do preorders! I keep throwing my debit cards at the screen and yet nothing happens!
Happy to hear 64-bit will be included, I had 12gb of RAM that were staring at the other 4gb with hate in their eyes 😀
ok soooo.... where do I pre-order?
I echo the many comments on here already; please take our money!
I can't believe the quality of work that is going into this project for a one-man operation. A truly gifted and hard-working programmer. I'm looking forward to the game as their is nothing like this. Going to be great. Keep up the good work.