July roundup

JuliusBorisov

We have continued to share with fans what Beamdog are up to, and published a new blog entry about recent news.

http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/08/july-roundup-patches-conventions-and.html?m=1

As always, let us know what you think about this series of updates!

AndreaColombo

I've been wondering—are there any additional benefits, under-the-hood or otherwise, to transitioning to 64bit besides compatibility?

GreenWarlock

Speaking as a developer that knows nothing of the Baldur's Gate engine, I suspect not. The main benefit of 64-bit is that your program can use more than 4Gb of memory - which is not likely to be a concern for any of the infinity engine games, and also not so useful on iOS devices that still don't have more than 3Gb installed in the most expensive configurations. The downside is that every time you reference data in memory, the 'pointer' value is now twice the size, so the game becomes a little larger, and perhaps a little slower.

The other benefit of targeting 64-bits may be to assume more modern CPU chipsets and instructions. A modern intel CPU has many 'SIMD' instructions that let it do more work with a single instruction, by performing the same operation on multiple pieces of data in a single clock cycle. Using a more modern tool chain to target modern CPUs may make it easier to use those kind of optimizations, or rely on libraries built into the operating system that use those optimizations. This should help win back the speed lost to using larger data.

However, I don't think that a game engine as old as the infinity engine is particularly in need of fine-tuned optimizations to speed the gameplay - the reliability benefits of a modern tool chain could potentially be a big win though - along with not being dropped by Apple when the new iOS ships later this year

Pokota

There's a benefit for a Linux end user in having a native 64-bit build - no need for Multi-Arch shenanigans. I'm a fan of using brute force when practical, so not having to remember which packages are installed for which architectures is a major advantage for me. Presumably this would be true for MacOS as well. Windows (well, PC edition Windows at least) has built-in multi-arch x86-64 so it's less noticeable there.

_Luke_

2.4 will ship on iOS next week, right?
I mean, with luck.....

Doubledimas

@JuliusBorisov I noticed that all the bug reports that have been recently closed by Mark Ramsden contain the following line:

If you are still encountering the issue, please file a new bug including updated information here: http://redmine.beamdog.com/projects/pst-ee-public-bugs/issues

. This link however refers to the PST:EE bugs section, but that message is in every project (BG1, BG2, IWD, SoD, IE) so everyone regardless of game is referred to the PST:EE section.

gugulug5000

It's always nice to get updates from the team about what they're working on. I'm really looking forward to this round of patches. I wish there was some mention of how the search for IDII's source code is going though. Whether they found it or called off the search, it would have been nice to hear.

I also hope that the outline for the next patches shows up in Redmine. I really enjoy being able to follow their progress on the patches that way.

rede9

AndreaColombo said:

I've been wondering—are there any additional benefits, under-the-hood or otherwise, to transitioning to 64bit besides compatibility?

Like faster loading? I wonder it too.