64bit

Improved Textures (or rather returned textures)

Better animations/resolutions for distant objects

No memory leak

RTX Support (kidding, I think)

I need to know before I spend more money, thanks

64bit

Improved Textures (or rather returned textures)

Better animations/resolutions for distant objects

No memory leak

RTX Support (kidding, I think)

 

I need to know before I spend more money, thanks

I hope you are willing to spend more time than money then.

9 years in I'm gonna assume no.

I get it and I I understand, but if they don't put that kind of support into the game, they will only make it to 10 or 11 years. Surely, the Star Wars IP is worthy of a modern MMO engine?

Heck, every mobile game uses a 64bit engine now.

I guess EA wins either way, cause they have the license, but if they choose to do nothing with it, save ride it as-is, I hope someone else takes it over.

@Thread Title:

No.

Heck, every mobile game uses a 64bit engine now.

That's because the owners of the app stores (especially Apple) insist on it. (It's a long while now since the Apple App Store rules said that all apps listed there must have a 64-bit build.)

That means that citing mobile games as a reason is worth essentially nothing.

No. Porting to another platform is not a copy-and-paste, although the results if EA attempted it might look like that's exactly what they did.

Replatforming involves a profound deep-dive into code that hasn't been touched in years, most likely not even documented, and certainly not touched by anyone currently employed at EA. Between 32-bit and 64-bit implementations, Internal variable lengths are different, how you set up indirect pointers requires different pointer types, procedure calls -- anything and everything you could possibly imagine involving code could and would break.

EA knows this.

That's why their bang for our buck is not in replatforming SWTOR. SWTOR will end when it ends, and like Everquest, which has been creaking along on its original engine since 1999, SWTOR won't receive another one. Everquest II was a completely different engine, and that's what it would take for SWTOR: an entirely new release.

Don't hold your breath.

 

That means that citing mobile games as a reason is worth essentially nothing.

It was an example of how the industry has pretty much shifted exclusively to 64bit and that having an application that is still being used, still maintained, still 32bit was a bit of an anomaly.

Thanks all for your commentary, it has been enlightening!

9 years in I'm gonna assume no.

Yet, SSG are doing that with LOTRO.

All The Best

64bit

Improved Textures (or rather returned textures)

Better animations/resolutions for distant objects

No memory leak

RTX Support (kidding, I think)

 

I need to know before I spend more money, thanks

Be careful what you wish for. They (EA) may decide to do just that and use the godawful Frostbite engine. An engine never intended to use with an RPGMMO. Imagine losing 2/3rds of what we have now when this engine is used. Anthem is the results.

Yeah, i don't think memory leak is a thing anymore. I play for several hours without performance hits.

Anyways, i'm gonna be different and say that yes, they will have to update the game. Windows 7 support is ending and it's really time.

We have seen improvements last year in how envyronments are created. I will be hopeful that if they truly have long term plans for the game, they will have to update.

But, so far nothing.

Be careful what you wish for. They (EA) may decide to do just that and use the godawful Frostbite engine. An engine never intended to use with an RPGMMO. Imagine losing 2/3rds of what we have now when this engine is used. Anthem is the results.

Well... at least it looks better and would bring people back.

It would be logical for them to do that if they made a swtor 2 cause assets could easily be used on both games (Anthem), making development faster and cheaper.

Theres no chance they will do an ffxiv arr on the vanilla game though.

Well... at least it looks better and would bring people back.

 

It would be logical for them to do that if they made a swtor 2 cause assets could easily be used on both games, making development faster and cheaper.

 

Theres no chance they will do an ffxiv arr on the vanilla game though.

Just because it may look better doesn't mean anything. Good game play is far more important then good graphics.

I'd rather have a game with amazing game play and horrible graphics then have a game with Amazing graphics, but horriible game play.

Edit: We don't know if BW/EA will even have the license extended past the 10 years, which ends I believe in 2023. No point redoing the engine if they don't get the license renewed after all.

Just because it may look better doesn't mean anything. Good game play is far more important then good graphics.

 

I'd rather have a game with amazing game play and horrible graphics then have a game with Amazing graphics, but horriible game play.

 

 

Edit: We don't know if BW/EA will even have the license extended past the 10 years, which ends I believe in 2023. No point redoing the engine if they don't get the license renewed after all.

Me too, but that is not the reality of the masses.

The overall license doesnt need renewing. Swtor was running before EA got that exclusivity deal.

Me too, but that is not the reality of the masses.

 

The overall license doesnt need renewing. Swtor was running before EA got that exclusivity deal.

actually the license will affect it however. If EA loses the license BW won't be able to continue the game, since it is owned by EA now. So whether or not Disney renews the license is very important.

actually the license will affect it however. If EA loses the license BW won't be able to continue the game, since it is owned by EA now. So whether or not Disney renews the license is very important.

You are confusing the licenses. What EA got was an exclusivity license for 10 years. EA doesnt need an exclusivity deal to continue the licence for swtor. Wich, i will remind, started before the exclusivity deal.

I don't know exactly how it would work if another company was given an exclusivity deal. But for all we know, lucasfilm can just decide not to issue them anymore or it may be swtor is unnafected as long as it doesnt release a brand new product (swtor 2 for example).

Just because it may look better doesn't mean anything. Good game play is far more important then good graphics....

Zork I loved Zork. No graphics and it was awesome. OK we are used to "great" graphics now. But I 100% agree about game play vs graphics

It was an example of how the industry has pretty much shifted exclusively to 64bit and that having an application that is still being used, still maintained, still 32bit was a bit of an anomaly.

I would say that in the case I highlighted, the mobile games' move to 64-bit wasn't by *choice*, but because of a non-technical necessity. "Non-technical" here is meant to suggest "not something that really helps the game" even though there are technological reasons for it. If the platform owner says, "You shall provide a 64-bit build or you will be ejected from the platform," you provide a 64-bit build whether or not there's actually anything to be gained from it.

That's a different question to what faces SWTOR. It probably *would* gain something from going 64-bit - GW2 certainly seems to have done so. (I've never seen a running instance of GW2 actually exceed 4GB of RAM used, but it has gone past 3.8 GB.)

However, the work to make that transition (whichever game or application you're talking about) is not just a case of changing the compiler option "--bittage=32" to "--bittage=64". There's probably still a few lunatics running 32-bit builds of Windows(1), and unless you want to lose them, you have to still provide a 32-bit build, and you have to test them both, and ...

Not to mention the sorts of short-cuts that people take in code to save a bit of space (yes, people still do that), which can mean that you can't *just* compile that code as 64-bit. (The number of times I've seen code that assumes that a pointer and an "int" are the same size is ... more than it should be, let's say. Such code breaks enthusiastically if compiled for 64-bit, but might pass the compiler and break at runtime only if it is hit, which happens one time in a million.)

Sorry. Thinking about that sort of thing is an occupational hazard.

(1) Windows 10 still has 32-bit builds available.

Considering Bioware and EA don't own the engine and there has been no new release of the said engine since 2012 I wouldn't expect an engine update unless they released SWTOR 2 as there would be very little reward for the extensive work required to either make the existing engine 64-bit or transfer to a new engine.

As for mobile games all being 64-bit, that was due to Apple and Google requiring it and a lot of mobile games are made with engines that reduce the work required to create a 64-bit version like Unity. Bioware doesn't have this restriction as EA controls all distribution of SWTOR and so can continue to release the game as a 32-bit only executable

Basically, there would be a lot of time and expense involved in updating the "engine". There's licensing fees for the engine in addition to the time/payroll to port things to the new engine.

BW would only be inclined to do that if the increased expense could be offset by an increase in subs. So, let's all hope that Disney develops the rumored Old Republic movies and doesn't blow it with more crap. 🙂

I don't think a complete overhaul will ever take place, when we got Onslaught instead of a proper expansion.

I would like, however, for the devs to continue to improve this cripple of an engine into something I don't have to reboot after 4 hours of client uptime, because it starts to lag something fierce.