Welcome a new Era of Total War - 64bit engine confirmed for Total War Warhammer / upgrade and migration advices

[alQamar]

Hi everyone,

our dream has come true. TW Warhammer will be first TW title to support a 64bit engine and more over CA makes quite clear statements about which hardware is needed to expect which kind of framerate, also setting up recommended specs for 60+ fps experience. source: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_WARHAMMER_Specs

This is truely amazing. My previous pessimistic fears about this would not happen for Warhammer yet, have been proven wrong, but I wonder why they actually have hidden this amazing fact about TW:WH, which might be even the most interesting detail to me, for such a long time and so short till release. Perhaps they wanted to assure that the 64bit code works fine prior before announcing anything that might be troubled after launch.

NOW I am excited and will likely continue the works on a seperate benchmark thread for Total War: Warhammer.

The reason for my extraordinary focus on this is because of this thread I've have posted on TW Center long ago when Rome 2 came out and performance have gone even worse with Attila for modern rigs.

I think it might be interesting to look into the recent stats if you do not want to read it all:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14816853


The minimum specs say that Windows 7 64bit is needed, this might also means that all people that still use a 32bit Windows would need to upgrade to 64bit Windows in order to play Total War Warhammer. I've hope I got this right.
Some may be disappointed now but please remind:


If you use Windows 7 32 bit (or Vista, which is not supported by TW Warhammer though) you are allowed to reinstall the OS on the same computer with the same key from a 64bit medium with no additional costs or buying a new Windows license. Same rule applies to Windows 8(.1) or Windows 10.


However There is NO way to upgrade from 32 bit to 64bit, reinstallment is technically unavoidable.

If you need a Windows 7/8.1/10 medium (DVD / USB) look for Microsoft official media creator page that is available for EACH OS.

Just in case you planned to uprade to Windows 10, your switch from a 32bit OS to 64bit OS might be welcome enough to do before end of June, because the free upgrade period.
As you need to reinstall a 32bit OS anyway, why not taking advantage of this free offer. Advice: Please don't use express settings after the Windows 10 setup but read through the custom options for better privacy.

Please note you can install a fresh Windows 10 64bit using your Windows 7/ 8.0 / 8.1 Key in the Windows 10 Setup, all you need is to download the current build of the mediacreationtool.exe for Windows 10.

Link to download Windows 10 media creator (USB / ISO): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
Link to download Windows 8.1 media creator (USB / ISO): http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-refresh-media
Link to download Windows 7 media creator (USB / ISO): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...nload/windows7

[emcdunna]

64 bit Game engine is well worth another month delay, IMO. Sure, they already were working on it... but given how bad Empire and Rome 2 were at release, the decision to delay another month is a GODSEND.

[alQamar]

64 bit Game engine is well worth another month delay, IMO. Sure, they already were working on it... but given how bad Empire and Rome 2 were at release, the decision to delay another month is a GODSEND.

yes I hope so!

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

64 bit Game engine is well worth another month delay, IMO. Sure, they already were working on it... but given how bad Empire and Rome 2 were at release, the decision to delay another month is a GODSEND.

A month is nothing in a game development progress, And since they say it's only for good reviews

Total War: WARHAMMER - Specs and Release Date
Hey, guys. Can you sit down? We need to have a talk about Total War: WARHAMMER. It’s called the ‘Here are the specs but we also have some release date news’ talk.

So first things first: we’re moving the launch of the game back by a month to 24 May 2016. Listen – we don’t want to rush this. This could be the best TW game we’ve made and we want reviewers to have enough time to play it thoroughly before launch, so that you get a fair review from a reviewer you trust. Hopefully, you can understand that – and of course we apologise for any hassle this might cause you.

So with other words the fan's have to wait so that they can get good reviews in the hope people that didn't pre-order "me included" because of the big flop called RTW II and with Atilla TW they saw a big drop in pre-orders and then late buyers of the game. I bet the pre-orders are still low with TW:Warhammer so that's why they delayed it for another month so that people can see as mutch previews as possible in the hope they will buy!. Because a month more is nothing for a big game and they will only do small tweaks between the preview build and the final build.


It's great news that they finally go for 64bit now let's hope the next historical TW game is also 64bit!....

[HigoChumbo]

I highly doubt the delayed release date is related to the 64 bit architecture implementation.

Probably just a matter of bugfixing and finding a suitable launch date.

[Jasheon]

YAY!!!!!! About dam time!! Very excited......!

[Deedlit]

So this game is finally going to take advantage of multi-core CPUs and ram being 64bit?

[addvaluejack]

In fact, 64-bit has nothing to do with multi-core CPUs, it is only related to larger RAM.

[emcdunna]

Yeah maybe they did honestly just wait to release the game so that they can get loads of let's play videos out there and make us all go crazy waiting for it before we all preorder...

[leviath]

I've yet to see a x64bits game really taking advantage of it.

[HigoChumbo]

64 bits is definately great news, but I would not get too carried away, it's not like that alone is going to make the game great. For now, I'd say that for the most part it'll improve performance (memory and cpu related issues), but I doubt they have experimented a lot with stuff which might affect game design aspects that until now were held back due to technical limitations.


Anyways, don't want to sound like a buzzkill, this is indeed great news and I'm glad they have finally taken this step. I imagine that we'll probably see more drastic 64bit-related changes in the next big game after Warhammer. It's a bit sad that they did not make Warhammer their "next-gen" game (so to speak), but there are more and more things that hint at whatever TW comes after finally being the next big step, so I guess there is reason to hope again =)

The minimum specs say that Windows 7 64bit is needed, this might also means that all people that still use a 32bit Windows would need to upgrade to 64bit Windows in order to play Total War Warhammer. I've hope I got this right.
Some may be disappointed now but please remind:

Well, don't despair, I have a 64 bit system and those who need to upgrade will probably still spend less on all the required hardware to do so (cpu and motherobard, most likely) than I'll have to spend in an overpriced gpu which might not be released until after launch (tryng to avoid the current generation of rebranded stuff).

Now, come on, Nvidia and AMD, hurry up

[alQamar]

Yes Chumbo, I agree. In the worst case Warhammer - from technology point of view could be an initial draft - like Empire or Windows Vista, but I appreciate much that they have finally taken this step.
About previous comments, we can certainly rely on that the next historical TW will be using 64bit engine and all "achievements" we got with Warhammer. They are seperate teams but share the code.

[Commala]

Forgive me for my scepticism, but the move to 64-bit could simply be due to the game needing much more RAM than 3.5GB to run smoothly. The game engine will have access to more RAM, but that in itself does not mean that the performance will be smooth or without bottlenecks such as core balancing. I really think that OP is overestimating how much of a difference this change will make, although we won't really know until the game releases. Has it actually been confirmed that the .exe is going to be native 64-bit?

[alQamar]

Forgive me for my scepticism, but the move to 64-bit could simply be due to the game needing much more RAM than 3.5GB to run smoothly. The game engine will have access to more RAM, but that in itself does not mean that the performance will be smooth or without bottlenecks such as core balancing. I really think that OP is overestimating how much of a difference this change will make, although we won't really know until the game releases. Has it actually been confirmed that the .exe is going to be native 64-bit?

Hi Commala,
I agree I might overestimate the impact but I am happy to see this change happen, as I have expected it for Rome 2 already - as back then it was overdue and would have solved many issues - just remember the later patched cam ghosting or the not so fancy draw distance and LoD issues. We had plenty of discussions about that in regards of the memory limit. Hence Attila, while being on a similar core compared to Rome 2, showed that time for 32bit is really up and we needed a change.

Back then for Rome 2, I have posted very extensive tests about multicore and HT support for Rome 2 and the scalability on TWcenter. And both is not so bad as many people think of. Imho the problem is the overload of cpu core 0 as the many graphical things that are handled in TW cause an overhead / overload due to the DirectX stack, and this won't get solved by switching to 64bit to all extends. DX12, might help out here to lower the CPU load on this particular core and free up ressources for other things.

Even modern games and engines like Rise of Tomb Raider do not offer anything near to a linear scalability for hyperthreading or multiple cores and based on this relation TW is performing as expected at this point.

As said in post #11 the step has been taken and we need to see how much the impact will be - regardless the opinion of reviewers. I can only encourage people to participate in the TW Warhammer benchmark thread that I want to continue when it is released and we will see how much this 64bit engine step is worth.

Has it actually been confirmed that the .exe is going to be native 64-bit?

I answer this with a clear yes: Based on the minimum specs that no longer state a 32bit OS compatibility (along and compared to many other recent game releases of other developers), we can assume that the executable is now compiled in 64bit, and so it is not possible to execute it in an 32bit OS environment anymore.

The quote of BartCA literally joins my point of view and I completely concur in regard how important this change is for the game and the -at least graphical complexity-
Thanks for bringing this up @Fredrin!


edit: here is one of my first post investigating the multicore and Hyperthreading (HT) scalability of Rome 2 for those that are interested:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post13205007
and
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14366419

[Fredrin]

Hey Al,

I thought you'd be happy to hear this news Definitely a positive development for the series. From a recent Q&A with Bart CA, it sounds like it's a decision they made from the outset and one which was done out of necessity:

64bit – what does it mean for the player?
Aside from a lot of under-the-hood stuff that won’t make a huge difference to you, the main thing is this: Due to the massive difference between races, characters and units, there’s a huge number of animations, textures, models and everything else that we need to hold in memory for TW:Warhammer; far over and above any game that we’ve made to date. Being 64-bit makes this Total War possible, we couldn’t make this game in 32-bit. With the ability to use more of the system RAM, players will see an increase in general performance.

Presumably they haven't announced until now as they were keeping it as an ace up their sleeve (in this case, to offset the disappointment of a delayed release). Still, good news that they've finally gone there and this obviously has some great implications for teh next historical game.

I wish I understood more about the technicalities of 64 bit support and what this will realistically mean for future TW games.

[HigoChumbo]

I wish I understood more about the technicalities of 64 bit support and what this will realistically mean for future TW games.

I'm by no means an expert, but put it simple, access to more memory allows them to deal with more different stuff at the same time (animations, models, textures, etc), so I guess the first thing to improve because of the change to 64 bits would be general variety.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Fredrin]

I'm by no means an expert, but put it simple, access to more memory allows them to deal with more different stuff at the same time (animations, models, textures, etc), so I guess the first thing to improve because of the change to 64 bits would be general variety.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks Higo, sounds about right! But then, I'm no expert either.

There's a link doing the rounds on .com which goes into a bit more detail about the technical side of things:

https://www.maketecheasier.com/why-g...4-bit-support/

I guess what I'm most interested in is what 64-bit will mean for future historical games. Is it likely to be better integrated, allowing for more interesting features which perform better? What limitations did 32-bit put on previous games?

It seems as though the way has been paved for a more modern era of combat, with all different models and textures you'd need for vehicles, aircraft etc Or maybe they will take advantage by having more varied animations for existing models - for example, more cantering/galloping animations for horses and more hand-to-hand combat variation.

Whatever happens, it's good to know that performance will always benefit from this move and there's a guaranteed economy in having some high end hardware (I hope, anyway).

[alQamar]

on the topic, is there anyone that has got questions about how to migrate from a 32bit to 64bit Windows, or anything related?

[Matamoros]

on the topic, is there anyone that has got questions about how to migrate from a 32bit to 64bit Windows, or anything related?

First of all, thank you for giving us so many information on the technical level. Your dedication and thorough research is admirable.

And yes I have questions. But they are not really related to migrating from 32bits to 64bits windows. It's more like what could be the possibilities in terms of enhanced gameplay and features.

Here come my questions.
With a new 64bit engine does it mean that:

• are we are going to get more soldiers per unit? Ex: Like 500 soldiers, so we could get a 500x20=10.000 soldiers army?
• will the AI capable of better and varied tactical maneuvers? Like harassing with skirmishers, flanking with cavalry, hiding key units in forest/behind hills, keeping reserve units, etc (and all of this simultaneously!) instead of an all-out attack?
• is the LOD going to be smoother and better looking?
• would the new engine be capable of draw more detailed and better maps like Arena TW?
• would the cities be bigger, with more levels or layers than the ones from Rome 2?
• would the units have real physics weight, so that we can see charges with momentum and heavier units pushing light units?

Sorry if that's too much asking but I really want to know if these things are possible. If you can't answer all of that never mind, that's fine too. Well, at least your opinion if that could be possible is welcome. Thanks in advance!

[NostalgiaFan]

Kinda continuing with what Matamoros said. Is this a REAL Brand New engine or is it simply the same engine now upgraded to 64 bits? If it is the former I would be hard as a rock, if the latter then would that mean we still have the same problems as before only with less bugs and crashes?