Is Exult's Legacy Support Still Necessary?
Dominus poses that exact question over at the Exult forums:
I’m wondering how many people are actually running stuff like Exult (or the other Ultima engine projects Pentagram, XU4, Nuvie) on really old machines or OS versions.
It always comes up whether to keep supporting Windows 9x. And now OS X ppc support is being questioned (by myself ;)), since compiling for Ppc is getting harder and harder and now SDL seems to be dropping ppc support in their upcoming SDL 1.2.15 release (and the satellite libs SDL_mixer, _net…). i can work around this somewhat but it’s getting a bit frustrating 😉So let me hear how you look at this.
And I know this is not going to be a representative poll, I just would like to know how other people think of this 😉
My feeling on this is that it probably isn’t necessary for Exult to support legacy versions of Windows and OS X, at the very least. On the Apple side of the equation, it’s actually something of a moot point, since Apple has a rather ruthless tendency of forcing APIs for older operating systems into obsolescence. Microsoft has tended to support legacy systems — in code,at least — for a much longer time, although that may start to change with Windows 8. Companies move on. Supporting technologies for software, like SDL, also move on (as Dominus notes is likely to happen in the near future).
And people move on as well. As recently as a couple years ago, I could still see Windows 98 pop up in the site traffic logs. These days, all I see is Windows XP or better. The same is true for visits from Apple operating systems, and also from Linux as well. People upgrade, and the old operating systems fade from use.
From my outside perspective, then, I just don’t see the need for the Exult team to waste time supporting old chipsets, old APIs, and outdated operating system versions. Their efforts would be better expended, I think, maturing Exult on modern systems, and on improving the tools they’ve created for the engine.
Anyhow, if you want to chime in with your thoughts, either leave them here or head on over to the Exult forum post linked above. I’m sure he’d like to hear a variety of thoughts on the matter.
The oldest version of Windows that should still be supported is XP.
If platform support is taking too much time then it should be made more platform agnostic. DirectX versus OpenGL, for example. DX only runs on certain platforms, while GL runs on many more. That sort of thing.
Well, they use SDL, which is available on most platforms IIRC. But SDL is dropping support for e.g. older OS X APIs, the stuff that supported the PowerPC chips. And Windows is seeing some changes as well; rumour is that Windows 8 is going to step away from managed code (e.g. C#) in a big way.
I think that’s more what he’s getting at.
Honestly, I play vanilla Ultima VII on platforms that it can be natively run. Usually this is on my 486 box so that I can use my IPC-MTU-T & MT-32.
However, Exult is used specifically for enhancements, mods, or projects such as Savage Empire. Windows XP was the OS for all of my original Exult endeavors.
Since Exult’s original purpose was to allow Ultima VII to be played on modern machines, it shouldn’t be so heartbreaking to remove support for non-modern OSes.
I think as long as there are available version of Exult that still support legacy OS (so 1.2 or 1.4 Exult), it’s okay to drop support for future versions.
Exactly. Since the older versions of exult will still work then it’s ok to stop the support. Generally what you want is to do it on a user base. If there still are a lot of users that have an older OS, you should still support it or help them transition. This is the same issue with the GCC compiler for example. Keeping the support for older systems just bloats the code sometimes uselessly.
I am for removing it and then seeing who it really affects,
Jc
Like I posted on the forums.. I still use a PowerMac G5, its still got plenty of horsepower for most of what I use it for, even though most of my audio recording apps and plugins havent been able to be updated for a couple years now due to dropping PPC.. And yes the next SDL has dropped it as well so without a lot of hacking and headaches I dont think well get it for PPC when the team moves ahead..
Like Sergorn said, as long as I can still download the 1.4.9 release in the future Ill be fine with it.. I honestly havent had any trouble finishing either game from way back to 1.2 all the way up to the current snapshots so its not that big of a deal..