Why Win64 instead of Win32?

GDevelop general
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My low-end computer kept getting slower and switching to 32bits helped but now I can’t use the full and real GDevelop anymore, but that’s not the point.
Why is GDevelop for Windows in 64bits instead of 32bits?
I mean;

  • Windows 64bits: can run 64bits apps and 32bis apps thanks to WOW64 which is integrated in it.
  • Windows 32bits: can only run 32bis apps

And GDevelop is a JavaScript-based 2D engine, it will never need over 4gigs of ram. What kind of 2D game uses over 4gigs of ram anyway? All the 2D games that I can think of are in 32bits.
I know that there’s a Trello card for adding support for win32, but I think that we should prioritize Win32 over Win64, I already explained why.

Also, if anyone is compiling GDevelop for Win32, I am interested.

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There is a forum post by Bouh with 32 bits builds. The reason GDevelop doesn’t support 32 but is pretty simple: it’s a modern game engine built on top of modern technologies (React). 32 bits is simply slow and outdated. Microsoft also stopped supporting the 32 bits version of windows, and apple doesn’t let you run 32 but executables anymore.

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To add on to Arthuro’s response above, there are a few additional reasons:

  • All major commercial 32 bit OS (both Mac OS and Windows) have dropped support for 32 bits. Most old 32 bit versions are even outside of extended support, which means no security patches are being completed for them.
    • This means they are, at a base level, un-secure operating systems. They should probably be unsupported by all software to eliminate them from the computer market/internet to make it a more secure place.
  • Security reasons aside, there’s also issues where driver releases are no longer made for 32 Bits from a lot of manufacturers. This includes video cards.and CPUs. (most of Intel’s last 3 lines of CPU chipsets also do not have 32 bit drivers. In some cases they don’t even have 64 bit drivers for versions of windows older than Windows 10)
    • This will mean that many newer graphical and computational processing functions won’t work in 32 bit systems.

All of this said, Bouh does incredible work and effort to release an unofficial/unsupported 32 bit version of the engine as updates happen.

For your question around RAM: A good number of major 2D games released in the last few years have 4gb as a bare minimum requirement, usually recommending 6 or 8gb.

Examples:

  • Hollow Knight (4gb min, 8gb recommended)
  • Rimworld (4gb min, 8gb recommended)
  • Oxygen Not Included (4gb min, 8gb recommended)
  • Gris (4gb min, 6gb recommended)
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