[Fury]

The question should be pretty self-explanatory. This poll was created to satisfy my curiosity how popular demand there is to keep supporting Win98/ME.

[NGTM-1R]

What will ceasing support for it get you?

[The E]

Basically, one giant headache less. For some reason, the SCP still supports or aims to support Windows 98 and MS Visual C 6 as target platforms. This is creating unnecessary complications for coders who are used to all the goodness modern (read: standards-compliant) compilers bring to the table.

[Vip]

To be honest, I don't see any reason to keep the 98/ME compatibility. As much as I adored those systems only a few years ago, I must admit that XP is far more stable and just plainly better than the old Windows versions. Most PCs with those OS are old machines that prolly can't even run the mediavps and are comparable in power to the current netbooks or so. And seeing how Microsoft plans to phase out WinXP and replace it with the Win7 (which is quite a good OS from what I've heard), more effort should be spent to ensure compatibility with newer OS, not older ones.

Hell, the only reason why I'm still on WinXP is because Mass Effect has lots of compatibility issues and doesn't always work well with the new OS.

[Dragon]

I've once played FSO on Win ME and I had constant problems with it, plus 3.6.10 nightlies didn't worked at all.
I didn't thought that it's still supported.
Maybe we should drop ME support and redirect people on Win ME to 3.6.10 final as a last stable build on which they can play.
We have a lot of 3.6.10 campaigns today, so I think that it would be enough (no WiH for them though).
Drop ME support, but make sure that there will be always an easy way to get 3.6.10 final and a ME-compatible PP build (provied that PP can work on Win ME).

[Androgeos Exeunt]

* Androgeos Exeunt has voted.

I don't really care for Windows 98 and Windows ME support. I've never played fs2_open on them, and anyone who knows better should have at least one computer with Windows XP by now.

[Thaeris]

I confess that I'm all for compatibility... in general... but that statement usually goes along for newer computers running older applications.

I think that keeping 3.6.10 final available for the older computers is a fine idea, but if compatibility with newer computers is potentially a problem due to old coding standards or is otherwise an inhibitant in development, then Windows 98 and ME should be dropped like a stone.

I mean, it's Windows 98? ME? Those are friggin' archaic...

[Androgeos Exeunt]

ME isn't archaic. It's disaster.

[Thaeris]

ME isn't archaic. It's disaster.

That too. 

I've personally never used it, but that's all anyone has ever said about it...

[Colonol Dekker]

A family member does still have win98 computer (in fact my old original fs2 install... untouched bar multi pilot pics) albeit in a different county.

[jr2]

Err.. doesn't windows '98 have a memory cap of like 512MB anyways?  So SCP is probably going to outgrow it sooner or later in that regard alone.

[Colonol Dekker]

Doesn't change the fact it's played on the computer. I answered a question...

Err.. doesn't windows '98 have a memory cap of like 512MB anyways?  So SCP is probably going to outgrow it sooner or later in that regard alone.

And that won't affect me in the slightest cough cough 2gig ram.

[Jeff Vader]

As far as I can tell, the only feature of FSO that 98/ME users can benefit from is the easiness of mod installation (and the fact that some mods outright require FSO), but other than that, I really can't see a reason for continued support.

[Colonol Dekker]

I agree completely.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Err.. doesn't windows '98 have a memory cap of like 512MB anyways?  So SCP is probably going to outgrow it sooner or later in that regard alone.

Actually there are ways around that.  I had 768meg in my ME machine.  FS2_Open quit running on it quite some time ago due to it have a Glide card (yea I built it to play FS2) that doesn't support OpenGL. 

So Glide is gone, DirectX is gone yet 98/ME support remains.  Seems the compatibility standards are contradictory.  If FS2_Open was meant to run with retail system specs then someone needs to get Glide and DirectX back in there.

[Ziame]

98/me support? REALLY?


The question stands: what for? If someone stays on one of those, he isn't bright enough to tell the difference between the FS2 and FSO so drop it dropdropdrop

[QuantumDelta]

Err.. doesn't windows '98 have a memory cap of like 512MB anyways?  So SCP is probably going to outgrow it sooner or later in that regard alone.

Actually there are ways around that.  I had 768meg in my ME machine.  FS2_Open quit running on it quite some time ago due to it have a Glide card (yea I built it to play FS2) that doesn't support OpenGL.  

So Glide is gone, DirectX is gone yet 98/ME support remains.  Seems the compatibility standards are contradictory.  If FS2_Open was meant to run with retail system specs then someone needs to get Glide and DirectX back in there.

This is probably the more relevant post :<
I'm all for pushing on with client data instead of keeping ancient compatibility if it helps/fixes lots of stuff for people to go on adding content, but if we are keeping backwards compat, it really should be kept proper. >.>

I still have my 98se machine in the garage, it gets used occasionally by people like my grand parents and little cousins (it's, basically setup for that purpose to keep them all off my and my dads box), FS2 stopped working on it a long time ago as far as SCP is concerned because of dropped support.
Sure if I installed 98se on THIS PC it'd work(probably), but why would I do that?

[Rodo]

I used to love Win98, now I've got XP and I'm looking to get a Win8 version, I've voted to stop supporting 98/ME... as far as I can tell there's little need to keep supporting those systems from now on, it's not like they are gonna be able to have good hardware with 98/ME anyway so running FSO in it's full capacity might be a little too much anyway.

[Mongoose]

My family had a machine that ran ME for a few years.  The fewer projects support that travesty, the better.

[Dragon]

It appears that voting is a bit one-sided.
Let's drop ME support then, 3.6.10 will do for them.
Maybe we should make a topic with instructions how to make FSO work on ME, it will contain all nessesary links (3.6.10, stable 3.6.11 with PP, etc.).
It should satisfy all of it's users out here.