PurpleGurl wrote: ↑Thu Mar 28, 2019 6:50 am
On Microsoft removing Pinball, a couple of things stand out on that. I don't see why they felt the need to attempt to rewrite it. It was already 32-bit and would run as-is under x64. The other thing is that it sounds like it had sloppy code to begin with. If I were them, I'd have sent the rewrite back to the original author and see what they could do with it, since the original developer likely knows it better than them.
They couldn't "send the rewrite back to the original author". The original company that wrote it (Cinematronix, LLC) was purchased by Maxis (Early enough that the Maxis name is actually visible in the MS version along with the Cinematronix name) who renamed it "Maxis South", then Maxis was purchased by EA who shut down Maxis South, and laid off all the employees. All of this happened by 1997, and the original release of "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for Itanium systems" was in 2002. Note that the first IA-64 processor was released in 2001, so while it's likely that MS was working on Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for Itanium systems a year or two prior to that, it's very unlikely that they were even considering 64-bit as far back as when EA killed Cinematronix/Maxis South in 1997.
Basically this means that any attempt to 'send it back' would have gone to EA, who would have been just as clueless regarding how it worked as MS was, and if it wasn't worth Microsoft's time to figure out and fix the 64-bit issues, it definitely wasn't worth hiring EA to do the same.
PurpleGurl wrote: ↑Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:56 pm
erkinalp wrote: ↑Thu Mar 28, 2019 1:41 pm
Reactions wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:57 pm
Interesting, couldn't they just run 32-bit programs on 64-bit?
They could, but it was a foreign code. There were math errors that did not surface using x32 code but did using amd64 code. It would require a comprehensive rewrite to eliminate all those.
I think you missed what he asked. He meant leave it as it was with no conversion to x64. If it worked as 32-bit x86, then why convert it to x64 at all? Just leave it as it is and will continue to run as before. It is a user application, not kernel mode, so no need to even recompile it. Just ship the 32-bit build of pinball with 64-bit Windows. No additional effort required.
Yeah, erkinalp, you missed the point of Reactions' post. What was meant (as PurpleGurl said) was to simply use the 32-bit version on the 64-bit release, and not bother to convert it to 64-bit.
What you all seem to be forgetting however, is that the original 64-Bit Edition of Windows XP was released for IA-64 (Itanium),
not AMD64 (x86-64) and while it did include a version of WOW64, it was was
very slow, as well as introducing many issues in 32-bit software that didn't occur when running on a 32-bit version of Windows XP, and thus while 32-bit software
could be run on it, it was
so slow, and introduced
so many issues that if they were going to include 3D Pinball, they basically
had to make a 64-bit version, which they deemed to be not worth their time/money.
Now, they
could have started including it again in Windows Vista (or even Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, released for AMD64 processors in 2005), but apparently it fell off the release schedule when they decided to cut it from the original 64-bit versions of XP, and it hasn't been included in any later version of Windows
.
Also, Note: As stated in
On the attempts to resurrect Space Cadet Pinball (thanks hbelusca) "The agreement was for including Space Cadet Pinball in Windows 95, with options to include it in the Microsoft Plus! pack for Windows 95, as well as extending the distribution rights to successor products of Windows and the Plus! pack. ... Unfortunately, release as an independent product was not included in the terms of the deal." Therefore Microsoft can't release it as a separate game without getting a new license from EA (which seems unlikely), and "The license also does not permit releasing the source code to the public." so they're not going to be releasing the source either.
So the only way we're ever likely to see a new release, is if Microsoft randomly decides to start including the 32-bit version in Windows again, which seems unlikely, or if Microsoft decides to put together a new "Plus!" pack that includes it, and since the last couple of releases in the "Plus!" series didn't include Pinball, and the "Plus!" series has been discontinued in favor of "Windows Ultimate Extras", which itself has been discontinued in favor of the Ultimate editions of Windows 7+ basically being an individual license to use the features included in the Enterprise edition, that seems pretty unlikely too.