Multicore support?

[iLikeSheep]

Or just the same single-core game we're used to?

[Zone FNF]

Most likely not.

[Baleur]

No, there is no multicore support because there have never been any improvements what so ever to the code of the game or graphics engine since Cities XL (the first online release).
Don't fall for this scam again. The new publishers hasn't done anything what so ever to it the past 3 releases.

[Critical Failure]

Thanks for the warning.

[LieutenantClone]

Not as long as Focus Home Interactive is milking this cash cow.

[:)]

-85% from owning 2012 makes it only $4.50, but the sole fact that it doesn't have multicore support, AGAIN, is making me not buy it...

[The doctor is in]

if you run the game and run something like process explorer and view the process' detail you will see lieke 59 threads all running on different cores

but the game logic thread, like in all ther games, is single threaded. this goes back to the 1st days of gaming. its not going to change. since it would be very hard to do so. what is happening is more and more is being farmed out to other threads, like physics, rendering, sound, ect. perhaps in the future even some calculations, but in the end the game logic thread will have to assemble it all n number of times per second and since its all so very dependant its will sadly all be very linear, serial, not parallel.

same will be for simcity 5. the thing is they offloading some of the logic to cloud. but for the city sizes they are talking about supporting 100k it make little sense to use a cloud.

this game would most likely benefit more by being redone 64bit and utilizing more memory.

dont hold your breath and thing simcity is going to support cities of millions, they are talking couple hundred thousand at most from what ive read and you will have to be online passing stuff back and forth to cloud so have fun.

[The doctor is in]

Messaggio originale di glitch:

-85% from owning 2012 makes it only $4.50, but the sole fact that it doesn't have multicore support, AGAIN, is making me not buy it...

yes it does have multi core support, it has multicore support like any other game has multicore support. the thing is all games the game logic is on a single core. not an easy thing to change. would require major rewrite and you having like a farm of servers or cloud to run the game. and it would take forever to process the information then since it has to be rewritten using messing, network, workflow, ect... like large business apps are and game programmers are not the ones who write major financial systems. and you cant afford it...

[Parabol76]

Ugh... AppleJacks is sounding more and more like a planted employee of Focus...

Cities XL was made by a developer called Monte ♥♥♥♥♥♥ back in 2007 I think, at which time most PCs did not run multi core. Since then Monte ♥♥♥♥♥♥ went bankrupt and Focus picked up the rights to Cities XL. In 2011 Focus released Cities XL 2011 with a few extras but the game was still based on the core architecture of a single core processor.

Yes what AppleJacks is telling you about how multicore game engine architecture works is true... Sub prosesses of the games engine are handled by the other processors during multi core support but this is nothing new. Developers have been doing this since the addition of third party GPUs (graphics cards).

In 2012 Focus released Cities XL 2012 and claimed they have incuded multi core support. Well they did, sort of... but not in the conventional way that a new game is created with multi core support and optimized for multi core support.

In fact... Cities XL 2012 has been reported to run better on a single core processor than it does on a multi core processor.

[The doctor is in]

no, but i have worked, among numerous other things, with just about every conceivable title on very large real world business applications. and it aint going to happen. you'all dont have the hardware or the money for it. so you know not what you ask for. i know the history. no need to repeat it. the devs are gone. i know this. but putting other devs will not fix it, redoing it will not fix it. you assume that the original devs did it incorrectly. the only improvement would be to do it 64 bit and then be able to handle more memory and perhaps you better algorithms that favor the use of the availablility of more memory, but perhaps they use those algorithms already. and perhaps they could put a little bit more processing to be done by other threads, but i dont think the main game logic loop would change, and there is the problem. and to change it would require you to hire the kind of people that work for verizon and citicorp and that you pay $180k+ each and well they aint leaving citycorp to work on a game. and the game they create non of us can run, since we dont have server farms and cant afford them or the cloud to process the load or bandwidth. you pump information on 10m fake people in your city back and forth to a cloud 60 times or how many times a second it will need to crunch the information. or perhaps you just return the results. good like in keeping any framerate and your isp will be wanting to talk to you.

why do games run better on a single core than on multiple core. well there is overhead you know. you are going to roadblock on things because of dependencies and its expensive. plus we really dont have multiple cores. i have here computers with true multiple cores and multiple buses, we have sort of cheap version of that stuck on a chip which part shared we also have many other things shared, we dont have highend server motherboard with things are handled even at a bus level parallel we have low end serial versions and the machine doing tricks to make it look parallel.

anyways. this and most other games are not going to be changed an dhow they have been written. i dont see this changing.

sure simcity 5 will offload some of it to cloud, but there is really no need for them to have done it this way other than ea business decision, since its cities of like 100k and maybe 250k. think 2x2 simcity4 medium sized cities with the city eating up a lot of realestate quickly relative to the population. look not only at the images they have shown, but at the beta sites and what their own developers have said. it looks to be more hype and ea than anything. not because it needs to be.

and yes most game would do better on a single very fast core than on multiple cores. and that is sort of most games and will not change. if we didnt have limit on cpu speed it would hold. the overhead of doing multithreaded when you don gaint much because of roadblocking becomes significant. the only time you gain is when you can do a lot in parallel. but in games you can't since it all depends on a single logic loop. no logic cant do. you have to wait for the logic. you cant render without knowing what needs to be renders, you cant play sound,ect think of you being at the checkout at your grossery store and start thinking how they can come up with your total in parallel not serially. good luck ;)

[こんにちは]

applejack can you get off your soap box and come down to earth, not even half of what your saying is correct. The analogys you are using to describe your lack of knowledge are amusing but dull when you repeat them.

To others, this game still does not use multithreading and never will unless they re write the game from the ground up. The devs and publisher for this title have said in their forums they won't do that.

[こんにちは]

Messaggio originale di LieutenantClone:

Not as long as Focus Home Interactive is milking this cash cow.

Exactly, and they never will change.

Their forums is full of posts that have been deleted and they ignore support questions constantly. All they do is spew out a re hash every 6-18 months of the same game with the same old technical issues.

[necrosand]

Everyone ignore AppleJack for he knows not what he speaks.
Dangerously ignorant, and all it takes is a quick Google to take him to task.

[The doctor is in]

Messaggio originale di C= 64:

applejack can you get off your soap box and come down to earth, not even half of what your saying is correct. The analogys you are using to describe your lack of knowledge are amusing but dull when you repeat them.

To others, this game still does not use multithreading and never will unless they re write the game from the ground up. The devs and publisher for this title have said in their forums they won't do that.

re: The analogys you are using to describe your lack of knowledge are amusing but dull when you repeat them.

you way that what ive posted is incorrect, but then you repeat it as your own. that is so funny.

my lack of knowledge, that to is soo funny, do you know me, my background.

all you have do to is bringe up process explorer and you see 59 threads all whose parent is the game doing different things. you can even look at their stack traces and see what they are up to

have you done even that. i have. their still even a secure rom thread. lol

so people before you post about my lack of knowledge at least bring up process explorer and take a look while the game is running to see what hte problem is.

and same for the memory leak, that is not a memory leak... run the game in a profiler and see what is happening. oh you are too busy, dont have a profiler? dont know what is a profiler, never used one. case close...

if you'all hate the game, you are just here to make sure nobody else makes the horrible mistakes that you all have made? that is so nice of you'all. its like someone who bought a car and hated it and now stands in front of the car company making sure no new buyers. so sweet.

[The doctor is in]

Messaggio originale di necrosan:

Everyone ignore AppleJack for he knows not what he speaks.
Dangerously ignorant, and all it takes is a quick Google to take him to task.

now this is so funny too, please do quick google for me and post links, at least ive dont that much.

so i know you are too busy. ill post process explorer screenshot in the mean time. i wonder how you will respond... when you see the threads... what then...

look if you have not bought the game, its easy. some people are unhappy with an old game that they havening released a new version. the company went bankrupt. so its been nothing but content packs.

that is what ive posted about, i event details that content of those content packs.

some people remain bitter. i have not clue. it runs great on my box. sure i wish there was a 64 bit version that supports cities of 10m. but not even simcity 5 will do that. so this is what we have if we want 1m and nice graphics. ok there is simcity 4, but the graphics on that are like rollar coaster tycoon 1 msdos days.

[The doctor is in]

here is some pretty pictures of the game loaded with simple map

process explorer showing the game w 59 threads
http://imgur.com/jLrlX9X,wplYIKc,lbx6Wdx#2

process explorer showing the game's threads
http://imgur.com/jLrlX9X,wplYIKc,lbx6Wdx#1

process explorer showing the stack trace of the game's main game loop thread.
http://imgur.com/jLrlX9X,wplYIKc,lbx6Wdx#0

this is the baby that people want to be broken into multiple threads. good luck since most game s, like this game, and game engines that are used to write most games use a single game loop thread. ive done this and worse with pleanty of games by now.

u can make out the main game loop, some other game threads, directx thread, ati gpu threads, off the screen is shader threads, sounds threads.

most of the threads are roadblocked waiting on something and most likely since i had to alt+tab to the desktop to take the screenshot and activate (bring to foreground) process explorer

some other games you can see threads for each player or for things like physics events that are going on.

this game appears not to have dedicated physics thread, well i did not run much to show if they did and yes there are not multiple player threads.

i'm still waiting on that google that will take me to task.... ;)