Is anyone still using WinXP SP2 or below?

Crimson Wizard · Sun 16/04/2017 22:51:08

I was trying to upgrade AGS Editor project to MSVS2015, because C# contributors are very restricted with the old VS2008 projects; then I found out that VS2015 does require C++ projects to target .NET 4.0 by default.

We still have C++ component in the editor, AGS.Native.dll. I experimented a bit, trying to build it with .NET 2.0 or 3.5, but it did not work, because of conflicts between 2.0 Framework and new modern CRT libraries (or so it seems).
I found few unclear answers in the web, which hint that it may be still possible to do, but all this look pretty unguaranteed.

Sorry for all the tech details, I'll get straight to the point.

According to the web, Windows XP still support .NET 4.0 (not 4.5 though), but only if you have Service Pack 3 installed. SP2 support was dropped by Microsoft back in early 2010-ies.

So I wonder, is there anyone who still uses XP SP2 without possibility to upgrade to SP3? What are the chances such AGS users exist?

Radiant · Mon 17/04/2017 08:47:46

To be clear, would the developers require .NET 4.0 or would the players require it?

Windows XP has a market share slightl bigger than Windows 8...

Crimson Wizard · Mon 17/04/2017 08:59:45

Quote from: Radiant on Mon 17/04/2017 08:47:46
To be clear, would the developers require .NET 4.0 or would the players require it?

Users of AGS Editor would require .NET 4.0 (currently - 2.0). Compiled games don't require .NET at all.

According to what I know, Windows XP SP3 does support .NET 4.0.

PS. This probably won't go into right into AGS 3.4.1, because I am concerned about possible consequences we do not yet know.

Snarky · Mon 17/04/2017 10:56:36

It's been 10 years since XP was succeeded by Vista, and 8 since SP3 was released. I think it's OK to end AGS Editor support for older systems.

By comparison, Windows ME was succeeded by XP in 2001, and AGS Editor support was discontinued with version 3.1.1 in 2008.

And after all, if someone is still on such an old system, they clearly don't care about upgrades, so they can just continue to use an older AGS version.

Danvzare · Mon 17/04/2017 11:20:42

I recommend continuing the support for Windows XP Service Pack 3 for now. But there's absolutely no need to continue supporting Windows XP Service Pack 2 or lower.
Like Snarky said, anyone using an operating system that old isn't bothered about using the newest version of anything (probably because the newest versions of things would run too slow on a computer that old).

Hobo · Mon 17/04/2017 11:25:48

I don't think this is something you should really be worrying about. Microsoft's support for XP ended 3 years ago, I see no reasonable reason why newer versions of AGS should continue it. While there might still be some XP users among AGS devs, I'm pretty sure they've upgraded to SP3.
And as Snarky said, it's always possible to use older versions of AGS.

ChamberOfFear · Mon 17/04/2017 14:21:48

I just dropped a message in GitHub but I'll copy paste it here

Quote
So I've done some more research.. Turns out upgrading to .NET 4.0 may not be a high enough of a upgrade unfortunately, at least if there's going to be any development towards bringing the AGS Editor to *nix systems. The problem is that Mono has dropped support for any compatibility with .NET below minimum v4.5. So if I or anyone else is going to pursue to work I recently began in #396 it is required that we at least upgrade to v4.5, or alternatively v4.6.1 which is the highest supported version by Mono.

By upgrading to v4.6.1 we would lose Windows Vista users(is that a problem? Is there anyone using Vista?) and minimum required VS will be 2015.

By upgrading to v4.6 we would keep the Vista support, however minimum required VS will still be 2015.

By upgrading to v4.5 we would keep the Vista support, however minimum required VS will be 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio#History
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8z6watww(v=vs.110).aspx

You'll notice on my screenshot that when I attempt to run AGS it tries to circumvent the issue by running the .NET 2.0 application in a default environment, what you can't see on my screenshot is that this freezes the entire OS when it attempts to show the splash screen, so it is stuck on that transparent rectangle.. Updating the framework version resolves the issue.

Spoiler
[close]

Crimson Wizard · Mon 17/04/2017 14:36:40

I replied there too, but I would like to just elaborate, that there are two separate (although related in a way) problems here:

1) Upgrading project to MSVS 2015 (mostly to ease work for collaborators, because VS2008 SP1 is outdated and cost money too)
2) Potentially allow running Editor on Linux.

The upgrade that I am going to do only aims first problem.

The second problem is IMO yet to be discussed (I suppose that it's going to be a big surpise, good for some, and bad for other some).

Anyway, I would rather leave this for future developers.

Gilbert · Mon 17/04/2017 16:34:06

I had purchased and installed WIN 7 a few years ago, a few days before M$ was going to end support for XP, but as I was unsure of whether it's still needed at that time, I kept XP and made my system dual boot to both XP and 7. The result? While XP was a very fine product by itself I had only booted into it twice since then. And I've upgraded to Win 10 now (a few days before that "free upgrade" period ended) and I still keep XP though, so when I make something I may still boot it to test whether it works there.

I'd say even if one is still using Win XP, there is no reason not to upgrade to SP3 anyway (maybe because of hardware not meeting requirements? I don't know), so if the editor still works with SP3 I don't see any problem. Just go ahead and drop support for SP2 and below. I'm not sure about compatibility with say, WINE, on Linux though (I think there is still no native Linux build of the editor right?). I think people(not me, as I won't use Linux anyway) would be more concerned about whether it still works under Linux, instead of really old Windows, anyway.

Also, I think this only affects the editor right? Since the engine doesn't even use .NET it could still be built for XP right? I think as long as people can still play the games on old systems it doesn't really matter.

Crimson Wizard · Mon 17/04/2017 16:48:49

There should be database of anonymous user statistics sent by AGS. If AGA can disclose it, we may see how many people still use XP (if any).

m0ds · Mon 17/04/2017 17:21:31

Presumably only a handful of people for testing purposes like Gilbot, or those who simply haven't been able to upgrade for financial reasons.

Software doesn't come as 32 bit anymore (and hasn't for a while now?) and majority of internet services Skype, Dropbox etc outright don't work with any XP anymore. I have an XP machine, but also only to run the occasional test (though I stopped caring if things work on XP last year) but moreso just for storing files on the HDD, and to run some ancient, realllly ancient, software.

Owning XP is completely impractical nowadays, you can't run software on it and you can't use many, if any, internet services. So why people would continue to use it is a bit confusing, presumably for MS Word and Minesweeper? Or was that Win 3.11? I can't remember...

Plenty of old stuff to run on XP, but nothing new! So I'd agree, pull the SP2 stuff. People can always drop back a few versions of AGS to access it if they still need it, you can still make decent games with 3.2.1 if you really are inclined (and living in the g'damn past, haha!)

It's not the data you're after, but I can at least give you a hardware survey of players from our most recent AGS game.

[I'll edit it in here if Steam ever loads the f'kin thing.]
[edit edit, still not working, but if I remember rightly from the last time it did, it went something like Win 7 (most), Win 10, Win 8, XP (least).]

Crimson Wizard · Mon 17/04/2017 22:08:02

Peder just sent me this, sais that's data for this year (Jan - Apr):

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Releases

5.1 and 5.2 is Windows XP (32 and 64-bit accordingly).
6.0 - Vista.
6.1 - Windows 7
6.2 - Windows 8

ChamberOfFear · Mon 17/04/2017 22:38:10

Windows 8.1 and 10 seems to be missing from that list, do we know why that is? I have difficulties believing that no one uses those OS with AGS, I know for a fact I have started up AGS on my Win 10 PC.

So if I'm interpreting these numbers correctly, roughly 13 people maximum will be affected by upgrading .NET to 4.0, that's not really a whole lot of people. These numbers also say nothing about if these people are keeping their AGS up to date, they could be using ages old version of AGS for all we know. Even if they did, they could possibly be persuaded into updating from Service Pack 2 to Service Pack 3.

OMG! There's someone still using Windows 2000 $:-\$

Crimson Wizard · Mon 17/04/2017 22:42:44

Quote from: ChamberOfFear on Mon 17/04/2017 22:38:10
Windows 8.1 and 10 seems to be missing from that list, do we know why that is? I have difficulties believing that no one uses those OS with AGS, I know for a fact I have started up AGS on my Win 10 PC.

Gurok mentioned that AGS uses obsolete function to detect Windows version, and all 8.1+ are reported as still being 8.0 (or not at all).

Quote from: ChamberOfFear on Mon 17/04/2017 22:38:10
OMG! There's someone still using Windows 2000 $:-\$

I know at least one person with long history of game making, who still uses AGS 2.72

.

Snarky · Mon 17/04/2017 22:55:56

Quote from: ChamberOfFear on Mon 17/04/2017 22:38:10
So if I'm interpreting these numbers correctly, roughly 13 people maximum will be affected by upgrading .NET to 4.0, that's not really a whole lot of people. These numbers also say nothing about if these people are keeping their AGS up to date, they could be using ages old version of AGS for all we know. Even if they did, they could possibly be persuaded into updating from Service Pack 2 to Service Pack 3.

Shouldn't the 34 people on line 7 also be included, upping the total to 47? Still not a whole lot... Slightly less than 0.7%.

ChamberOfFear · Mon 17/04/2017 23:06:52

Quote from: Snarky on Mon 17/04/2017 22:55:56
Shouldn't the 34 people on line 7 also be included, upping the total to 47? Still not a whole lot... Slightly less than 0.7%.

Uhh, that depends.. I can't judge from the table if they're using Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3 as they seem to have the same version number 5.1.2600, but I guess they should be added at any rate to factor in uncertainty. Like you say it is still a very low percentage so I don't think we should stop upgrading to .NET 4.0 in favor of this minority.

Crimson Wizard · Mon 17/04/2017 23:22:22

Quote from: Snarky on Mon 17/04/2017 22:55:56
Shouldn't the 34 people on line 7 also be included, upping the total to 47? Still not a whole lot... Slightly less than 0.7%.

"Dodatek Service" means "Service Pack" in Polish (or is it Czech? or both), but the number is ommited. I guess string buffer, or database field was not long enough

.

Gilbert · Tue 18/04/2017 02:14:23

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Mon 17/04/2017 22:42:44
Gurok mentioned that AGS uses obsolete function to detect Windows version, and all 8.1+ are reported as still being 8.0 (or not at all).

Oh. That explains why there were so many people using 6.2(W8+) compared to 6.1(W7). Even if there may be more (I doubt that though) people using Win8 than Win7 it couldn't be that many. I suppose a large number of users in the 6.2 group were using Win10 instead. Interesting though:

Quote
13 Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200 Service Pack 32
16 Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 16

Seriously, Service Pack 32? 16? I guess the 32 part from #13 could come from people using Win8.1 or Win10 instead of Win8, which gave some incorrect information, but Win7 Service Pack 16? Are there really that many? (I think it's also some incorrectly reported version though.)

AGA · Tue 18/04/2017 05:17:44

Bear in mind these 'people' presumably aren't unique. So that could just be one XP user who's used AGS often enough to report back multiple times? Or is it one report per unique machine ID or something, CW?

ChamberOfFear · Tue 18/04/2017 08:55:17

Quote from: AGA on Tue 18/04/2017 05:17:44
Bear in mind these 'people' presumably aren't unique. So that could just be one XP user who's used AGS often enough to report back multiple times? Or is it one report per unique machine ID or something, CW?

I'm looking at the code right now and it is set to send a new stat report when a minimum of 30 days has passed since last update.

Is anyone still using WinXP SP2 or below?

m0ds