Multicore argument (split from Military Base Response rev.)

Robert Foster · Post by **Robert Foster** » Sat, 5. Dec 09, 10:23

Exactly, what General Traag & Requiemfang Said........!!

But there are 2 people at fault in this.
The Mod Creator and Egosoft.

The mod creator for knowing the limitations of the current state of the game.

And Egosoft,
Because egosoft has yet taken advantage of Quadcore.
So users can not have and use the full potential of the game because of it.
Also, Egosoft has not made the game for 64bit users.
Giving the player advantage to use up to 16 gigs of DDR3 memory.

Before anything, Egosoft needs to convert the game to use "Quadcore" processors.

While I was running this mod in the game, Only one of my processors
was pinned to the wall, while the other 3 processors was idle and doing nothing.
Mind you I have a AMD Phenom-II 965 Quadcore Processor.
But since the game only uses one core, im screwed.
I can imagine people with only One Core or Dual Core.
This kills peoples system this way.

Egosoft really needs to convert the game into 64-bit, so users having 64 bit operating systems, can take full advantage
of the DDR3 memory expansion by using 64bit and 16gigs of DDR3 memory allocations.

Currently most users using 32bit operating systems, can only use 3.2 gig of DDR2 memory.
If the game was converted to use 64bit operating system,
they can use up to 16-gigs of DDR3 memory with the game.

Gives the game more room to breath.
It would stop the staggering game play all together.

People are having problems and staggering game play because it does not
take the full advantage of the processors being released and used today.
So, how do you think their computers would react by being slammed by many ships.
If the game itself is not capable of handling Singlecore properly
without the staggering and slideshow game play.

Quadcore compatibilities is a must, so users/players can fully take advantage of having lots of ships
and very large dog fights in sectors without having the computer running havoc on people.

Once they do that, we all would set and not complaining about this stupid staggering.
it kills the fun really fast.

This is why I myself uninstalled the mod.
Besides all the messages every 3 seconds.
My nerves where going crazy.

General Traag · Post by **General Traag** » Sat, 5. Dec 09, 10:50

Yeah I'm using the No Civs basic mod it works really well I got a T7400 2.16 Dual core with 4 GB ram and a Nvidia Geforce Go 7950 GTX 512 MB what are you guys running? I don't really know if i should start looking at a new comp in the next year or not the game runs smooth on high graphics settings most of the time but sometimes it will just pause for no reason and then fire up again. pretty sure its my processor thats lagging behind cuse i killed settings graphics but no effect on the fps. whats your exp with the full no civs mod? big performance boost? let me know please!. Yeah quad core would certainly help and you can turn off the messages via the menu if you have the plug-in editor. theres something to be said for efficient scripting and processor use for sure, and they should work on there AQC system. I play allot of simulation games and some of them are very good at picking what you should be calculating and what should be defined values it would make sense for the game in big battles to "cut corners" on projectiles and AI in order to maintain performance and seamlessness whats more enjoyable a hit probability ratio that jumps in and starts rounding off shots and dmg as well as making the shots only visual so it can save face performance wise and start cutting off AI movement and other no essential universe tasks as need be to keep performance up? i would be all for that I mean its nice to calculate everything but when and where and if should be on top of the board its a single player game i mean so its not like you cheating anyone player can only be one place at a time right? so you could def start pausing other universe tasks in-favor of better performance. anyone know of a 1 sector mod and how its performance changes when its not cal all the other crap in the others and how it performs? anyway I am way off topic with this tread so ill leave it at that and feel free moderator to move this or edit if you think I'm wasting valuable tread space.

paulwheeler · Post by **paulwheeler** » Sat, 5. Dec 09, 13:55

@ Robert Foster

What you are asking for would require a complete engine rebuild. The X3 engine is now over four years old! At the time 64bit and multicore processors were deemed to be a long way off from being commonplace.

A total rebuild for an old game is simply not going to happen. So I'm afraid we are stuck with it.

I have installed this on a moderate dual core system and am having no problems with performance at all. You can very easily reduce the rearguard token settings to reduce the number of ships.

Also as far as the messages annoying you - Just turn them off!!

----------------

In my opinion this script is great and is superior to RRF in that it is compatible with other scripts such as the Pirate Guild which RRF is not. It is also very customisable so you can make it as aggressive as you wish.

---------------
@General Traag:

Paragraphs and capital letters at the start of sentences please! It will make your posts so much easier to read.

Paul

Robert Foster · Post by **Robert Foster** » Sat, 5. Dec 09, 18:43

Your point is cool and all

, but your (not) egosoft.
So I can (not) rely on your response of
( We are not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work ).

even though it also gets said by ego themselves too.

I don't know what is it with everyone being so damn lazy.

I just don't get it.

Just pull up a chair, crack knuckles and start coding.

How are we ever suppose to move into the future for new things if everyone
just sits on their arses and say,
( We are not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work ).

Everyone else (game companies) is in the year 2010 and beyond,
and we are here still stuck in the 1980's.

Its like a mod said before,
people are afraid of change because they are use to things and they don't want to learn new things.
so they come out with excuses of
( We are not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work ).

How can people be so damn lazy.

At least I know I can't move into the future
thats for sure.

ThisIsHarsh · Post by **ThisIsHarsh** » Sat, 5. Dec 09, 22:46

@General Traag: If you break up your posts into paragraphs a bit I will read them (!).

I would assume egosoft are working on their next product, rather than endlessly bolting on new features to a game which no doubt isn't making much money nowadays.

As for the various issues, especially perfomance. I have been working on a rather large update to this script (as well as others), which should address most problems. I've been away on RL business for a while, but I can devote a bit of time to scripting now.

joelR · Post by **joelR** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 02:35

Robert Foster wrote:Your point is cool and all , but your (not) egosoft.
So I can (not) rely on your response of
( We are not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work ).

even though it also gets said by ego themselves too.

I don't know what is it with everyone being so damn lazy.
I just don't get it.

Just pull up a chair, crack knuckles and start coding.

How are we ever suppose to move into the future for new things if everyone
just sits on their arses and say,
( We are not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work ).

Everyone else (game companies) is in the year 2010 and beyond,
and we are here still stuck in the 1980's.

Its like a mod said before,
people are afraid of change because they are use to things and they don't want to learn new things.
so they come out with excuses of
( We are not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work ).

How can people be so damn lazy.

At least I know I can't move into the future
thats for sure.

Please write a new engine for us then. Unless you tell me:

( I am not doing it ) or ( It's not going happen )
or ( It takes too long ) or ( Its too much work )

Look forward to seeing it......

Robert Foster · Post by **Robert Foster** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 03:00

Sorry, not planning to go to prison for copyright infringement.
And second I don't own the company or the engine.

Had to be a smart arse, theres always one in a pack.

Won't you write it since your the smart arse.
I'll be waiting for the new release engine from you.

joelR · Post by **joelR** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 03:14

Robert Foster wrote:Sorry, not planning to go to prison for copyright infringement.
And second I don't own the company or the engine.

Had to be a smart arse, theres always one in a pack.
Won't you write it since your the smart arse.
I'll be waiting for the new release engine from you.

You see my point though?

eladan · Post by **eladan** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 03:21

Writing (or rewriting) a game engine is a huge task. There is a reason they reused the Reunion engine for TC - it's simply unaffordable to develop a new engine for each game you make. So you can understand, I hope, that rewriting the engine simply to include multiprocessor support, particularly when it won't generate significant new sales compared to the cost of doing so, well - it ain't gonna happen.

Call it lazy if you want. But at the end of the day, Egosoft are a business - they need to make money from sales of their games. They already cater extremely well to their customer base by fixing as many issues as they can, providing significant amounts of new content after release, and actually listening to the players, and trying to provide at least some of what they request. Asking them to commit financial suicide is probably a bit much to expect.

joelR · Post by **joelR** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 03:25

eladan wrote:Writing (or rewriting) a game engine is a huge task. There is a reason they reused the Reunion engine for TC - it's simply unaffordable to develop a new engine for each game you make. So you can understand, I hope, that rewriting the engine simply to include multiprocessor support, particularly when it won't generate significant new sales compared to the cost of doing so, well - it ain't gonna happen.

Call it lazy if you want. But at the end of the day, Egosoft are a business - they need to make money from sales of their games. They already cater extremely well to their customer base by fixing as many issues as they can, providing significant amounts of new content after release, and actually listening to the players, and trying to provide at least some of what they request. Asking them to commit financial suicide is probably a bit much to expect.

Well said.

Robert you should realize that our opinions really dont amount to much at the end of the day. You will save yourself a lot of heartache in your life when you can just be happy for what you have.

Robert Foster · Post by **Robert Foster** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 03:45

Settling on things does not advance us into the future for new things.
and greater game play.
Ego can be much larger then they have now if they just rewrite the engine to keep up with the times.

I am not saying that ego is a bad company, because they made a really cool game. - really they did.

But,

How do they expect to sell, if they don't support new processors, memory and newer graphics card engine if the game only supports single core and users
constantly getting staggering game play..?

Even mod creators and scripters have to watch what they create because the game is limited and the capabilities are but so much.
They always have to turn things down, turn things down, turn things down, because they can not make use of the full potential of their hardware.
Because the game engine is limited, and not capable of greater handling of better processors like Quadcore or 16gig DDR3 usages for 64bit systems..

How do they expect to sell if users can not use the game to its full potential
because if they have a lot of ships in several sectors their game almost craps out..?
Because the users can not fully enjoy the graphics effects and potential of what the game could offer.?

How do they expect to sell if the only thing they say is,
turn down your quality because the game can not keep up..?
Which is only a work around and not a complete fix.

Ego knew when they where creating the engine for "Reunion" that Quadcore was around the corner.
And even when TC was coming up and Quadcore was every where by then.

People have been asking for this for ages, but it just got ignored.

But yet they want to make the sale.

I get it, Sell, make as much money as you can, and run,
and the hell with the engine.
Let the users deal with it, not egos problem.
because as you said, egosoft is a business.
Capitalism is the key.

This game has a lot of potential, and could even go head to head with Eve-Online.
Egosoft shot themselves in the foot and its their fault if they could not sell and move many products.

eladan · Post by **eladan** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 04:10

I've split this out, since it's in danger of hijacking the thread.

Robert Foster wrote:Ego knew when they where creating the engine for "Reunion" that Quadcore was around the corner.

Sorry, but no - they would have had no way of knowing that. Multicore processors weren't even available at the time that Reunion was developed. Reunion was released at approximately the time that the issue of processor speed limits became widely discussed, but by that time, the engine was already written.

And even when TC was coming up it was every where by then.

As I said, financial considerations would have forced them to reuse the Reunion engine. I'm sure Egosoft were well aware of hardware trends, and I hardly think that they would have sat in their office saying "I know - let's screw the players with multicore processors by keeping the game single threaded!"

Robert Foster · Post by **Robert Foster** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 04:20

eladan, your a really cool cat dude.

I can see, at least you understand where I am coming from.

I had a dual core AMD processor when Reunion came out.
Still have it in the closet.

Hey, If egosoft wants, I can take their engine right here to NYU University
and get the smart kids there in the programing software department to convert/rewrite the engine for quadcore and 64bit for them.

at no cost of course. these guys would love to have the experience for a gaming company
instead of only doing class programming.

My girl said she knows a couple of kids there too that know (Stackless Python) code very well.

alex2069 · Post by **alex2069** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 04:50

As much as I'd love them to do it, it's not going to happen since it's simply not feasible. In most cases trying to implement multicore usage requires *huge* rewrites all over the place, and introduces a whole new level of bugs and other related issue (race conditions, dead locks, etc).
I've written my own engines in the past, granted not even close to the complication of the X3 Reality engine, but none the less, implementing GOOD multicore usage is a serious mind f-.

Saying that though, if there was ever a game that could actually benefit from multiple cores and a larger ram space, it's X3.
The scripting system, if it could take full advantage of multiple cores, would make this game run beautifully! You could do *so* much more with the world and the God system if you knew you could essentially have +200%/+400% CPU power.
The AI could actually be SMART! Heh, I'm actually excited at the mere prospect of it (I'm such a geek, lol).

As for the 64 bit issue, that'd be considerably easier to convert (relative to multicore anyways), and for the most part it's just a simple matter of enabling a few compilation flags... For the most part...
But it could definitely help with the RAM stuff (enabling the >2GB flag helps tremendously, but it has its issues at times).
This can introduce some seriously pain the ass bugs to find though - there's nothing more "enjoyable" than trying to figure out why it's randomly crashing, only to figure out a week later that for some reason (that you still need to work out), that 1/2 your pointer decider to disappear. x.x

apricotslice · Post by **apricotslice** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 11:44

You cant talk about the future and X3 or TC in the same sentence.

TC is OLD. X3 is older. TC IS X3, with a different set of starts and some tweaking of things.

X3 doesnt have a future. It has a past. That past will be re-released as a superbox of all the games that got us to TC.

But there is no future. Yes, there is some tweaking still going on, the next patch has something that was planned a while back. But its only tweaking.

Its already been said there will NOT be an X4.

There may be a new game developed in the future and undoubtably that will be quad core compatible. But it wont be X.

Its not laziness. Its reality. Old games DONT get updated to latest technology. The fact that people still actively play TC does not make it a new game, only an old game with staying power.

Banging on about it wont change anything.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 11:57

X3 doesnt have a future.

sounds a bit apocalyptic

maybe not a future concerning multicore-implementation but there will be a future: Mods... There are ways to improve gameplay without affecting performance and ways to improve performance without degrading gameplay.

And i can assure you that X... *runs away because he heard someone break-opened the door*

paulwheeler · Post by **paulwheeler** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 12:05

The only game i have ever seen add multicore support after release is Microsoft flight simulator x. They added multicore in a service pack, but it was only a partial implementation, and they had the might of Microsoft behind them.

Egosoft are a relatively small company. Space sims are a very small market. We should be grateful we actually have this great game. It Egosoft were in it for money they certainly wouldn't have created a space sim.

So multicore and 64bit are simply not going to happen. It would be a commercial suicide for Egosoft.

KNT79 · Post by **KNT79** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 14:53

I agree X3 has no future with professional development, forget about multicore, 64bit etc. The best you can do in hardware is to buy one of those new smart CPUs capable of speeding up one of their cores if they meet the application from the past like X3TC

Then if you are not lazy I have an idea for you. You can write the control script that freezes temporarily all the OOS scripts and maybe even some of the unneeded IS scripts while a major battle is going in the sector. When the battle is finished that control script can return the life in the Universe to its normal state.

And finally, maybe you don't know yet, but you actually own the one of the best engines in the world and you can start the development of your own game immediately. Look here http://www.udk.com/. I am considering this seriously myself

Post by **Cycrow** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 17:10

Robert Foster wrote: I had a dual core AMD processor when Reunion came out.
Still have it in the closet.

Hey, If egosoft wants, I can take their engine right here to NYU University
and get the smart kids there in the programing software department to convert/rewrite the engine for quadcore and 64bit for them.

the problem here, is the first desktop dual processor systems, were not released until May 2005

this is only a few months before the release of X3 Reunion.

games are generally finished a few months before they are released, u'll noticed that games go "Gold" awhile before they are actually released

but then, the game engine will have been developed and finished a long time before the game goes gold.

game engines can usually take several years to develop, so its likly that the game engine was most likly designed around 2003. This was a long time before dual-core even existed

there was no way that egosoft would have been able to predict that by the time the game is released ppl would be using dual-core cpus.

and, even thou dual-core was available by that time, the mass-market didn't have them. It took at least a year after thier release to become main stream.

the main problem is that game engines are pretty complex, and take a long time to develop. And the engine must be developed before the rest of the game, so its the first thing you build when making the game.

adding multi-core into an existing engine, especially a complex one like the X-Universe would be near impossible without rewriting the engine which could take years to accomplish, espeically for a small company.

and doing that would mean they wont be able to spend any time on what ever new project they might be working on

Robert Foster · Post by **Robert Foster** » Sun, 6. Dec 09, 19:57

KNT79 wrote:I agree X3 has no future with professional development, forget about multicore, 64bit etc. The best you can do in hardware is to buy one of those new smart CPUs capable of speeding up one of their cores if they meet the application from the past like X3TC

And finally, maybe you don't know yet, but you actually own the one of the best engines in the world and you can start the development of your own game immediately. Look here http://www.udk.com/. I am considering this seriously myself

We'll, I am also considering (Stackless Python)
Just because its used by Eve-Online.
and my girlfriend University friends know it very well.

But this UDK engine sound really cool too.

One problem though, this UDK engine can only be used with Intel chips and Nvidia graphic cards only.

AMD and ATI is out.

On another note:
I can't believe I can (not) get into a really heavy battle (dog fight) with the enemies,
because we all know what will happen.

I would love to have a really large dog fight with Xenon and Pirates at the same time,
with Khaak's jumping in every now and then too getting their licks in the dog fight.

Its so sad that I will never experience that at all.

Stagger, stagger, stagger, slideshow, slideshow, slideshow.....

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Multicore argument (split from Military Base Response rev.)