64-bit engine?

#1 64-bit capability was already in Leopard. You could compile 64-bit all the time - all you had to do was click your heels together!

Did you know the OS X kernel is a hybrid kernel? Leopard and Snow Leopard might report "i386", but they can address 4GB and more, and run 64-bit programs in both 32-bit and 64-bit mode.

CPUs have also had 64-bit registers (and 80-bit!) long before operating systems ran 64-bit kernels. 64-bit calculations have been common long enough. 64-bit isn't necessarily automagically faster, either:
blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/08/a_64-bit_reality_check.html

#2 TGE and TGEA needed much work to get it to work cleanly on 64-bit. I don't know wether a cleanup of the code for 64-bit is on the roadmap for T3D, but it's safe to assume it won't be in the 1.0 release.

Even though all processors sold nowadays are 64-bit capable, the version of Windows installed (that's still the largest target market by far) is mostly 32-bit.

There isn't a large enough market right now to dedicate many resources to 64-bit compilation I reckon. Someone from GG might have more inside info about this maybe.

#3 Hmm, no wonder why when I installed 6GB of memory I didn't see much improvement...

#4 Just adding RAM gives you one benefit: More RAM. If it's on a Mac, you have a kernel capable of using whatever the hardware bus allows, even if the system is largely 32-bit.

@flammybe: The 64-bit market is large enough to care, but converting the programs is a huge undertaking, since it's more than simply recompiling. I know of a large number of developers and gamers who are on 64-bit systems, but there isn't all that much benefit beyond the memory now.

I know FarCry had a special version eventually which required a 64-bit OS, for some fancy HDR and more. I'm not sure if the real reason was to use memory for some fancy light pre-calculation or what, but that's really the only game I know of that has new features because it's 64-bit.

If you use your GPU through OpenCL or Cuda, you have far wider possibilities than 64-bit, anyway :)
The main benefit to a game would be less waiting on the harddrive, if people have 4GB+ to cache models and textures.

#5 Well I made a nice clean install of Snow Leopard, and now when I tried to install TGB, I needed to install rosetta to run it XD

Guess that means TGB is old XD

#6 How the hell did you manage that? Did you recompile it PPC-only?

#7 Nope, I don't even have the source!

All I did was run it, and since I just installed 10.6 on my computer, I didn't have rosetta yet.

Maybe someone can load up intel versions of everything?

#8 The standard downloads are universal binaries that run natively on both Intel and PPC. To get a PPC-only binary you would have to build it yourself, hence Ronny's question.

#9 No, you don't understand. It WORKS on intel, but I needed to install rosetta.

#10 Current versions of TGE and TGB are shipped as Universal Binaries that include native builds for both Intel and PPC. TGEA (and I assume T3D) is Intel-only.

Either you've built a custom PPC-only binary, you're using an old version that was still PPC-only, or you're just plain confused - pick one.

#11 I am using the newest version for TGB, and I don't have the source code (so I couldn't build one).

I double checked, and I am 100% I am using 1.7.4

And yes, it does say that I needed to install rosetta to run it.

#12 Okay, I downloaded a fresh copy of the installer, and now I see where your confusion is coming from. The installer is a PPC binary. The TGB binary is a universal binary. Once you've installed it, it runs natively on both Intel and PPC.

You can simply do a "Get Info" on "Torque Game Builder.app" to verify that it is a universal binary.

#13 The installer needs to go. then. It should just be an archive (DMG for non-source distribution on Mac).

#14 Ahh, woops! You are right, TGB itself is an intel binary. I guess that means I need to find a way to uninstall rosetta (I heard it slows down your applications if you have a PPC app running).

I agree with Ronny's statement above, wouldn't it be better to make a DMG?

#15 I agree, a DMG would be better. But, so would gamepad support, writing console.log to ~/Library/Logs, support for drag and drop, etc. Given GG's track record on Mac support, I'm not holding my breath...

#16 If you have a PPC app, removing Rosetta makes it no longer run. If it's a UB, it'll choose native before PPC. If it still chooses PPC, right-click and switch of "Run with Rosetta".

#17 Or maybe at least a .pkg

#18 Packages are bad for anything but drivers. DMGs are what people are used to for programs, and tarballs or ZIP archives for source code.