Targeting 64-bit

[frag.machine]

[daemonicky]

[mh]

Guess what? gcc doesn't fully implement c99 either.

c99 is A standard, not THE standard. That means that it's optional. It means that a compiler vendor doesn't HAVE to implement it.

Reasons for using MSVC? The IDE is very nice to use, yes. Microsoft have the best debugger in the business, bar none. gdb is amateurish and tacky by comparison. If you're even remotely serious about software development, a really good debugger is a must.

Being Open Source/Free/GNU/whatever is not enough, a tool must be good. Good software is good software, irrespective of the philosophy behind it. And bad software is bad software. And I'm sorry, but gdb is bad software.

[revelator]

list of c99 in support in compilers currently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99

[frag.machine]

[Spike]

[Baker]

[Hectate]

Just to be fair, and to further confuse the issue, it's entirely possible to have mixed 32/64 in a consumer product! This laptop - a Toshiba - came with a 64-bit Athlon chip but 32-bit Windows Vista.

[Spike]

64bit windows cannot run 16bit code (the 64bit instruction set does not support the 'vm86' extension for running 16bit paged code). It can be supported with software emulation or vmx/smx extensions (depending on cpu vendor), but not all intel cpus even support vmx, so its hardly universal. And yes, there was a disturbing amount of 16bit software still around (not just dos games, but windows software too), such that 32bit windows was a muuuch safer bet.
win7 is more commonly 64bit, but that's still by no means guarenteed.
win8 is much more commonly 64bit, except for winrt versions which are strictly 32bit... yay. :s

the only 64bit issues in vanilla quake that I can presently recall were sprites and qc strings (which can be a fairly significant issue in certain situations, and not noticable in others).

[raynorpat]