Windows to the rescue? (REAL Studio Wayback Machine)

General Programming
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I had an enormous amount of work put into my Gettysburg game, in REAL Studio Enterprise, circa 2011.

Figuring things out like painting the screen in Windows (no flicker), unit routing (esp. when retreating), attrition algorithm, non-app store licensing, traversing way points, etc, etc.

I wanted to be able to open and run this project using REAL Studio. I’m on an M1 Mac, Ventura 13.0. I try to download the version that I used on Gettysburg, Real Studio 2011r2 and I could not open this on my Mac, it had the “no go” sign next to it in Finder.

I have Parallels on my Mac. I download the Real Studio 2011r2 Windows installer, it works! I dig up one of my old license keys, it works (though I need to go to the Xojo site for an 8 character key). I can open Real Studio 2011r2 in Windows using Parallels. I’m able to open, look at, and compile my project in Parallels on an M1 Mac.

Now I can trace through and cull some of the more difficult code fragments for conversion to Swift / C.

What a hard lesson to choke down. I know what my response would be if someone asked me if I recommend Xojo / REAL Studio / REALbasic, I’m not bitter though. :face_exhaling:

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As far as I know, most Windows 32bit applications still run on Windows 11.

No 32bit mac intel applications run in recent versions of macOS. First Xojo IDE 64 bit is 2017r3 (?)

If you need to run on mac only, maybe you can use UTM on your M1 Mac and install a macOS version that can run 32 bit apps?

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Mojave was the last that could run 32-bit.

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5

Well 12 years since 2011 is a long time though one lesson in software development is to keep at least one VM in condition with the required toolchain to maintain and to apply patches for paying customers.

These VMs are offline and must never go online anymore but this is more and more difficult with the current state of software industry in general.

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There is a technical Engineering Program that is still used from 1998 that was written in LISP which is 16-bit for Windows 98. This program works on Windows 11. I can confirm that most 32-bit application still run on Windows 11, and some 16-bit programs also. :slight_smile:

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I mentioned in an earlier post that I have C code fragments from over 20 years ago that still compile / work. That’s why I’m moving from Xojo, and did use Unity on my current dev effort. Swift / C for me on this effort. I hope that it will stand the test of time. :crossed_fingers:

1 Like
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My guess is that your Windows apps will still work for many years. Your Mac apps, if they are Intel, may not work in the future when there is only Apple Silicon support (or the next ‘big thing’).