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Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion

so it goodbye to winXP based players as of March 1, 2017

bobbydazlersbobbydazlers Member Posts: 4,534 Arc User
edited December 2016 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
hope they can upgrade before the deadline.
"As of March 1, 2017, Star Trek Online will no longer be supporting Windows XP and Direct3D 9, or Video Cards with a Direct3D Hardware Feature Level less than 10.0."
otherwise they will be sadly missed.

When I think about everything we've been through together,

maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

 and if that journey takes a little longer,

so we can do something we all believe in,

 I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.

Post edited by bobbydazlers on
«1345678

Comments

  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,660 Arc User
    edited December 2016
    Microsoft dropped XP support back in April of 2014 so by then it will have gone three years without updates and security fixes. Google Chrome will have ended support a year before then and Firefox is about to end XP support.

    Anyone still using XP should see the writing on the wall.

    It's a pain to support XP since there are Win32 API calls missing from it, and Microsoft has stripped XP notes from much of their technical docs. So you need to do extra testing and sometimes jump through hoops to work around the lack of features.

    For Cryptic, they'll be able to stop maintaining two sets of graphics code for old and new versions of DirectX. Having less code generally means more time to fix bugs and add new features.
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,485 Arc User
    No offense, but XP is not even supported by microsoft anymore.

    On any computer with internet XP no longer has a place so why would a game continue to provide support for an unsafe operating system.
    This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
  • bobbydazlersbobbydazlers Member Posts: 4,534 Arc User
    I don't blame cryptic for the move if anything I am hoping this will fix some of the stability issues I have been suffering since the lighting update, I am just hoping anyone out there still on XP will be able to upgrade before the deadline.

    When I think about everything we've been through together,

    maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

     and if that journey takes a little longer,

    so we can do something we all believe in,

     I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.

  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,660 Arc User
    I realize not everyone is in the USA, but today you can get a laptop for $199 that will run STO at low settings. Plus it will replace that 10 year old XP doorstop that's probably a slow, erratic and virus-infested mess.
  • gavinrunebladegavinruneblade Member Posts: 3,894 Arc User
    >.>

    <.<

    The windows 10 upgrade is still free for people who use accessibility software. Nvda is free accessibility software.
  • bobbydazlersbobbydazlers Member Posts: 4,534 Arc User
    edited December 2016
    of course I skirted round all of the changes and focused on the xp and direct3d issue but overall a poster in the news announcement thread suggested this could effect 1/3 of the player base, personally I cant say if this estimation is true or not though I will suggest it seems a little high to me.
    I have a fairly old laptop myself and though it runs windows 10 I must say I have been having a lot of problems with the game crashing due to direct3d issues, whether this new change will cure this issue or kill the game on this laptop entirely for me remains to be seen.

    When I think about everything we've been through together,

    maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

     and if that journey takes a little longer,

    so we can do something we all believe in,

     I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.

  • officerbatman81officerbatman81 Member Posts: 2,761 Arc User
    You should clarify your thread title. I though it had something to do with XP experience points. You should probably put in Windows in front of it.

    Yeah, i dont know what "experience points based players" could mean or why they would leave either, im just saying.
  • daveynydaveyny Member Posts: 8,227 Arc User
    edited December 2016
    Anybody who wants to play STO badly enough, will find some way to do so after the changeover.
    (if not, then they will probably save a bit of coin)

    Also, anybody who uses a computer and doesn't realize that both software and hardware need to be updated/overhauled every so often, hasn't been paying attention for the last ten years.


    Whining about a principal fact of life in this electronic age, usually just gets one an over abundance of cheese offerings.
    B)

    STO Member since February 2009.
    I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
    Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
    upside-down-banana-smiley-emoticon.gif
  • alexraptorralexraptorr Member Posts: 1,192 Arc User
    I find the very notion of anyone playing STO on an operating system that is "15 years old" to be quite absurd. :pensive:
    "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    davefenestrator wrote: »
    Microsoft dropped XP support back in April of 2014 so by then it will have gone three years without updates and security fixes. Google Chrome will have ended support a year before then and Firefox is about to end XP support.

    Anyone still using XP should see the writing on the wall.

    It's a pain to support XP since there are Win32 API calls missing from it, and Microsoft has stripped XP notes from much of their technical docs. So you need to do extra testing and sometimes jump through hoops to work around the lack of features.

    For Cryptic, they'll be able to stop maintaining two sets of graphics code for old and new versions of DirectX. Having less code generally means more time to fix bugs and add new features.


    ^^ Best post in the thread.

    I'm happy Cryptic is ditching support for Windows XP: it means more resources and time for other things. As it is, Cryptic's continued support for XP, so far along the way, can be considered *extremely* generous. Microsoft gave up on it several years ago already. :)
    3lsZz0w.jpg
  • byozuma#0956 byozuma
    byozuma#0956
         Member Posts: 502 Arc User
    I find the notion of people wanting to use a Microsoft anything to be quite absurd, but I shan't judge. Still, Windows 7 is an adequate replacement for XP. It still uses a sensible UI and can support a more up-to-date DirectX. Windows 10 is spyware garbage.
    oldracesbanner.jpg
  • carter60carter60 Member Posts: 194 Arc User
    i gotta ask, if i use windows 7, will i be able to play sto after march 1?
  • fiberteksyfirfiberteksyfir Member Posts: 1,207 Arc User
    Yes Carter, us Win7 folks are gonna be just fine.:) As long as your card is compatible.
  • carter60carter60 Member Posts: 194 Arc User
    fiberteksyfir wrote: »
    Yes Carter, us Win7 folks are gonna be just fine.:) As long as your card is compatible.

    thanks, still learning about o:s , and such things like card compability =) and have a good evening and enjoy the winter event
  • cidjackcidjack Member Posts: 2,017 Arc User
    People hate change,fact of life.

    Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

    You hear that? That is the world's smallest violin playing my heart bleeds for you.
    Armada: Multiplying fleet projects in need of dilithium by 13."
    95bced8038c91ec6f880d510e6fd302f366a776c4c5761e5f7931d491667a45e.jpgvia Imgflip Meme Generator
  • tigerariestigeraries Member Posts: 3,492 Arc User
    not enough... should req a 64 bit OS as well.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,660 Arc User
    edited December 2016
    tigeraries wrote: »
    not enough... should req a 64 bit OS as well.

    That one I don't know about. Microsoft is still selling 32-bit versions of Windows, and some atom / celeron / pentium CPUs can only run 32-bit. Most sales are now 64-bit but there are a lot of 32-bit Windows 7 PCs out there as well as some 8.x and 10.

    A 64-bit OS lets you run more things at once, but the only advantage of a 64-bit process for a specific application is more addressable RAM. Unless the STO engine is constrained by the 2 GB per-process address space Crytpic gains nothing from 64-bitness. Also, code changes are required for things like the size of pointers, which means the potential for adding new bugs.
  • jaguarskxjaguarskx Member Posts: 5,945 Arc User
    bobbydazlers wrote: »
    I have a fairly old laptop myself and though it runs windows 10 I must say I have been having a lot of problems with the game crashing due to direct3d issues, whether this new change will cure this issue or kill the game on this laptop entirely for me remains to be seen.

    The good news is that laptops are fairly inexpensive in many of the modern industrialized nations of the world. Though electronics do cost an arm and a leg in Australia...

    A modern laptop using a Core i3/i5/i7 CPU and integrated Intel HD graphics core is capable of running STO well enough to play the game and does not necessary cost too much if you focus on getting a laptop with a Core i3 CPU.

  • swamarianswamarian Member Posts: 1,506 Arc User
    tigeraries wrote: »
    not enough... should req a 64 bit OS as well.

    That requires doubling the size of all of your pointers, bloating your code. You get more registers, and some guarantees as to what floating point hardware's available, at the cost of higher memory usage, and cache misses are a big speed concern. Microsoft's C++ compiler is still 32 bit, for example.
    Another reason to drop XP support is tools availability going forward. More modern runtimes don't support XP, so Cryptic couldn't move to the current generation of compilers.
  • xyquarzexyquarze Member Posts: 2,120 Arc User
    daveyny wrote: »
    Also, anybody who uses a computer and doesn't realize that both software and hardware need to be updated/overhauled every so often, hasn't been paying attention for the last ten years.

    Less so than it used to though (games excluded). When you're using your PC for basic stuff like mail, word porcessing, spreadsheets, the like, the need for upgrades and updates is very small. Until relatively recently I was able to use Office 2000, and it did all it needed to. Many companies don't use the newest computers as long as the older ones are still running.

    Still, that change will be inevitable sooner or later should be considered a given. But it ain't as it used to be that you're locked out after one development cycle.
    My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,460 Arc User
    Hey, why won't this game support my Commodore 64? It still works!​​
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
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  • bobbydazlersbobbydazlers Member Posts: 4,534 Arc User
    edited December 2016
    cidjack wrote: »
    People hate change,fact of life.

    Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

    You hear that? That is the world's smallest violin playing my heart bleeds for you.

    as I said I am running windows 10
    tigeraries wrote: »
    not enough... should req a 64 bit OS as well.

    and yes it is a 64 bit version as well.

    just that anything that has the potential to diversely effect the number of players is worrying so if we loose some to this it is far from a good thing in my eyes.

    though I should be ok, and I have always got my much more powerful desktop to fall back on if not I am guessing there's nothing wrong with having a bit of empathy for those who may fall by the wayside.

    When I think about everything we've been through together,

    maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

     and if that journey takes a little longer,

    so we can do something we all believe in,

     I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.

  • trekpuppytrekpuppy Member Posts: 446 Arc User
    This will also affect all Linux and Mac users unless Wine developers make some unrealistic progress on DX10/11 support before March.
    ---
    "-Grind is good!" --Gordon Geko
    Accolades checklist: https://bit.ly/FLUFFYS
  • hanover2hanover2 Member Posts: 1,053 Arc User
    Opened the thread looking for repugnant snobbery. Was not disappointed.
  • lucho80lucho80 Member Posts: 6,600 Bug Hunter
    Frankly, Windows XP users should have gotten the boot a long time ago. The whole, "I don't have $$ to upgrade" is kind of lame considering Windows 7 licenses are cheap as hell.
  • kodachikunokodachikuno Member Posts: 6,020 Arc User1
    as much as even I am behind the curve on upgrades, Ive had a win7 pc for a couple years now, I cant really say anything bad about anyone not supporting XP anymore... its just time.
    tumblr_mr1jc2hq2T1rzu2xzo1_400.gif
    tacofangs wrote: »
    STO isn't canon, and neither are any of the books.
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  • alexraptorralexraptorr Member Posts: 1,192 Arc User
    byozuma#0956 wrote: »
    I find the notion of people wanting to use a Microsoft anything to be quite absurd, but I shan't judge. Still, Windows 7 is an adequate replacement for XP. It still uses a sensible UI and can support a more up-to-date DirectX. Windows 10 is spyware garbage.

    It's not as much a matter of wanting to use Microsoft anything as it is a necessary evil.
    There are no alternatives, Linux is not user friendly enough for the average consumer to adopt and Mac OS is restricted to Apple computers.
    "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
  • kodachikunokodachikuno Member Posts: 6,020 Arc User1
    alexraptorr wrote: »
    byozuma#0956 wrote: »
    I find the notion of people wanting to use a Microsoft anything to be quite absurd, but I shan't judge. Still, Windows 7 is an adequate replacement for XP. It still uses a sensible UI and can support a more up-to-date DirectX. Windows 10 is spyware garbage.

    It's not as much a matter of wanting to use Microsoft anything as it is a necessary evil.
    There are no alternatives, Linux is not user friendly enough for the average consumer to adopt and Mac OS is restricted to Apple computers.

    and steamOS is still a glorified console
    tumblr_mr1jc2hq2T1rzu2xzo1_400.gif
    tacofangs wrote: »
    STO isn't canon, and neither are any of the books.
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