64-Bit Servers and Clients Arriving Soon!

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Accendo, Nov 3, 2021.

  1. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Lets reverse this debate a bit:

    Would you rather that the game stayed 32bit forever? at the cost of the game not getting future improvements? Essentially entering maintenance-mode?

    Upgrading to 64bit is a lot of work, Im sure Daybreak is doing it because they have ambitious plans for the future of Everquest, and that 32bit were seriously holding them back.
    Should they ditch those plans just to please the few players who refuse to upgrade?

    I think they are making the right call by upgrading. :)
  2. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    On the flip side we should be happy that Microsoft even supports a 32 bit app running directx 9 anymore. Apple has dropped all support for 32 bit apps and they won't run at all and I think Google is close to making the same move with Android. Considering that Microsoft is dropping the 32 bit os with Windows 11 I would suspect that they are getting close to also dropping support for 32 bit apps.
    Juicewrld, Shindius and Keella like this.
  3. Iven Antonius Bayle

    As I already stated it does not make much sense to upgrade. The 32-bit game received improvements since 22 years constantly so there is no doubt that this will end. Its like upgrading a 100 year old car with a new engine but ignoring the bad brakes and all the other old parts that are hardly changeable. Rumors are that EQ3 is in development since 2017 to counter Pantheon RotF but maybe this is wrong. I definetly would like to preserve the original EQ aspects as it got bloated up to much already for my taste. Just see how well the pseudo retro servers (Time-locked progression servers) are going. The game community is divided into retro players and the 64-bit fanboys who will eat whatever they get served as long as it is labeled *new, better, more*. These player factions do not match together. 64-bit ? Sure, but for a new game. Just rebuild the whole game from scratch and release expansion by expansion again with modern standards but get off your hands from the original parts which is a like a historical train or a living museum.
  4. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Isn't that exactly what the different E M U-servers(like p1999) are for? But since you are here, you probably like that they are still improving EQ, right? you said it yourself, "pseudo-retro", not "actual-retro". ;)


    Besides what makes you think the old parts are not changeable? isn't that exactly what they are making possible right now, bit by bit? Next part they change will probably be the UI...you probably like readable text on your hotbars just like the rest of us...
    There are lots of quality changes they could make, that wouldn't ruin the spirit of the game even for TLP's: Pathing would be another suggestion... or client side prediction...or better mouse-control when entering lagpiles...etc...:cool:
    Even recent changes like AoC's, and advloot has been good additions imho...

    Granted, all of those are not related to 64bit at all...although the changes needed for the 64bit upgrade might make future features easier to implement...
    Nightmares, Shindius and Keella like this.
  5. Peter_The_great Elder

    I really hope the stuttering and lag will be gone with the 64-bit do to more RAM, but I doubt it.

    Yes, I have a modern PC.. 5600x+ RX5700 +32GB 3600mhz RAM and a 32" 1440P monitor.


    Also 100 mbit mb/s
  6. Keella Journeyman

    From what I read converting to 64 bit will solve a ton of "out of memory" type bugs purely by having a higher RAM amount being adressable and those type of bugs were the largest by volume.

    So in one fell swoop the move to 64 bit could, not so much truly fix as alleviate, a whole range of bugs and the cost to fix those bugs within a 32 bit environment was probably getting prohibitively costly - to the point moving to 64 bit and potentially circumventing them was a cheaper option and basically takes the ball & chain off for a whole host of other things the team would like to do.

    I'm looking forward to some interesting changes post 64-bit roll out.
    Nightmares and Orangemilk like this.
  7. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    My take, is that the devs had places in the code that was "dangerous to touch", that they had to visit this time, and perhaps removed some of the danger...
    Best case scenario, is that some of those changes they have avoided for years, will now be possible...

    That is just my theory though...:)
  8. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Are you just thinking that might be so or do you personally still use a 32 bit OS? Or know some several people that do? Cause its just slightly unbelievable that anyone still plays eq on a 20 year old machine.
    Juicewrld likes this.
  9. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Are you for real?
    :confused:
  10. Zigie Journeyman


    Not what I have noted in my testing.
    While the speed of zoning with a spinning HDD did get faster when game was moved to a SSD, I did not notice any increase in speed of zoning between either the SSD to NVMe drive, OR when I ramdisked the whole EQ folder into my system RAM memory.

    While there is some drive access, the majority of the zoning time seems to be more network-server related. Only way I've found to speed up zoning is by letting the rest of the textures stream in over time. Then you can zone and be half way across a black and white cutout of where you want to be by the time the textures stream in. With higher memory capacity hopefully allowing all the assets to stay in memory the zone times should remain the same, just the streaming of assets would go away as they would all just be in memory already to be accessed.
  11. Slasher Augur

    True going from HDD to SSD was noticeable but going from SSD to NVME not really. One thing about giving them access to more memory means zones should be able to be bigger and have more content and higher resolution art.
    Shindius likes this.
  12. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    That was my thought as well, I think both Heart of Fear(RoF) and Sepulcher(VoA) were originally meant to be very big zones rather than the "3-parter" smaller zones we have now. Were they split up because of client performance, or server performance? Memory related or lag related? What are the bottlenecks with large zones?

    Would a 64bit EQ be able to handle those zones at their initial sizes?
    Shindius likes this.
  13. Slasher Augur


    Pretty sure they were split because the client/servers could not handle the size and number of assets.
    Jumbur likes this.
  14. Cannikin Elder

    x86-64 was made a complete superset of IA-32 and all previous x86 iterations dating all the way back to the original 16-bit 8086 from 1979 for good reason. Every instruction and data structure that 32-bit applications use are still there in x86-64. There is no reason why a 64-bit OS would break compatibility with 32-bit apps compared to a 32-bit version of the same OS. Though it's not relevant to most Windows applications, ARM64 for mobile devices is also much the same relative to previous generation ARM instruction sets.

    Often old software breaking on new systems is simply because the software is (poorly) hardcoded to only recognize old standards, like screen resolution/aspect ratio, causing them to break on anything running something like 4K 16:9 monitors, regardless of the OS being 32-bit or 64-bit.

    I would not conflate Apple's blatant anti-consumer practice of forced obsolescence in all its markets, software and hardware, with any architectural compatibility issue. Apple does this frequently for no other reason than to force its customers to buy its new hardware and software on a regular basis.

    Any rumors that Microsoft would deliberately break 32-bit app compatibility is nonsense. Many of Microsoft's major customers are corporations and government agencies running absolutely ancient software, and there is no way they would ever anger them by deliberately breaking compatibility. On the other hand, there is plenty of reason why Microsoft actively promotes their backwards compatibility to encourage people to upgrade to their latest OS without fear (and by extension why Microsoft maintains its dominant position in the desktop/laptop OS market).

    Windows 10 and 11 can run most programs dating back to the 90's perfectly fine (sometimes using Windows' built in compatibility modes). Just look at their latest Xbox Series X which can support many games dating back to the Xbox 360 or even the original Xbox from 2001! The 360 is even on a completely different CPU architecture (PowerPC) which is incompatible with the x86 One/Series X, meaning they had to put in the extra time, effort and money just to make an emulation layer for the sake of backwards compatibility.
    Juicewrld, Treage_Imminent and Svann2 like this.
  15. Slasher Augur

    No reason for MS to not support 32bit forever. However how is any gamer in 2021 still using a 32bit OS ?
    Shindius likes this.
  16. Cannikin Elder

    This is incorrect. 32-bit software does not run better on 32-bit Windows as compared to a 64-bit version of the same OS for many reasons.

    Probably the biggest reason is that 32-bit Windows is hard limited to addressing 3GB of RAM for the entire system, while 32-bit applications are capable of addressing 4GB. Thus 64-bit Windows is not only capable of assigning 4GB of RAM to any 32-bit app, but it can assign 4GB to any number of 32-bit apps running concurrently (up to the limit of installed RAM), while 32-bit Windows forces all apps (including Windows itself) to share 3GB total at any given time.

    And of course as I explained in my post above, x86-64 was deliberately made to include all the instructions of IA-32 and every x86 iteration dating back to 1979, so 32-bit software would run seamlessly with the 64-bit instruction set. Of course the converse situation is not the same: 64-bit software does not run at all on a 32-bit OS.

    The reason why some old software breaks is usually not due to 32-bit vs 64-bit, but because they are hardcoded to only recognize old standards like old screen resolutions.

    There are literally only two reasons not to upgrade to 64-bit: you don't want to pay for a new OS of any kind, or you don't want to reinstall your software after upgrading (64-bit cannot in-place upgrade from 32-bit, you have to clean install).
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  17. daranged Lorekeeper

    New cell phones come out people are quick to buy em 32 bit will soon be thing of the past
  18. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Backwards compatibility is pretty much "The Thing" that sets the pc apart from other platforms afaik. I doubt support for 32bit will be dropped before adequate emulation is possible. 16bit-dos support in windows was only dropped after DosBox was mature enough to replace it.

    Tbh as a gamer, I was hesitant to upgrade to something that couldn't handle my older dos-games properly, which was the main reason I took so long to drop WinXp back in the day.(yes I get nostalgic too sometimes! :cool: )

    Nowadays, the only thing I have trouble with on win10, are the older windows-games that has really crappy copy-protection(that breaks any modern driver-model).
  19. Carryion New Member

  20. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And there is also no real reason to not be coding in 64 bit especially as the age of the 32 bit os is ending. Eventually support for old software ends I mean you don't expect to be able to play old dos games unless you have emulators.