Third-Party Middleware Solutions and Tools

Most commercial games shipped include some form of third-party, open source, or shared source code. Therefore, it is important that providers of these solutions engage early on in supporting Windows x64. Failing to support x64, they risk blocking developers from starting the transition as it would otherwise make sense for their titles and technology projects.

Having 32-bit solutions that are compatible with Windows x64 is a market necessity today to avoid alienating users of 64-bit technology—which should eventually be anyone with 4 GB or more of RAM in their PCs. These solutions also need to support 64-bit native development. This includes copy-protection schemes, rendering libraries, game engines, audio libraries, animation systems, networking libraries, compilers, profilers, debuggers, 3D modeling tools, photo editing tools, and so forth. As customers of these products, game developers have a strong influence on how quickly these libraries and tools support 64-bit native development.

Use of Deprecated Technologies

Game developers are extremely busy professionals. Typically, a successful solution won’t be revisited until it breaks. Engines and libraries tend to get reused, often beyond the life of a single project. This means many modern games are still using older versions of DirectX components, Windows APIs, 16-bit code installer bootstrappers, or other technologies that may have been deprecated for many years.

In the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit execution mode, many of these older technologies were not carried forward. While such code works on Windows x64 under WOW64 as a 32-bit application, it will fail to compile as a 64-bit native application because the APIs it is using are not available for 64-bit native applications. Porting such code bases to 64-bit native requires updating to newer versions of the deprecated API. In some cases, developers need to rewrite the functionality using modern facilities.

Embrace the Future

The transition to 64-bit computing is like many technology transitions before: it requires some additional work and new learning. Nevertheless, it offers exciting new opportunities and potential.

Game developers can prepare for this not-too-distant future by learning about x64 technology, transitioning their code bases away from deprecated technologies not available to 64-bit native programs, taking advantage of tools porting efforts to prepare their code bases for the move to 64-bit native development, and learning about x64 optimization.¹¹

Internal efforts now to gain x64 experience and to push on providers of applications, tools, and third-party libraries to proactively support x64 compatibility and x64 native development will help pave a smoother road into the future that is already upon us.

Resources

¹¹ “64-bit programming for Game Developers,” Porting Applications to 64-Bit Platforms, DirectX SDK Documentation.