Neuromancer
Member
You read about it and everything, but it doesn't really hit you until you see it in action. If I was a Maxis programmer in charge of this I'd be really embarrassed.
You read about it and everything, but it doesn't really hit you until you see it in action. If I was a Maxis programmer in charge of this I'd be really embarrassed.
So glad I went with Tropico 4 on sale for $10 over this because of the DRM. Having a blast with it and meanwhile in Simcity...
Imagining the world in which the ways the Sims act are normal is hilarious. It's like some 1930s view of "the world in the year 2000!" only nothing is thought through.
The only thing better would be A Wrinkle in Time style system where every worker leaves at the exact same time and arrives home to pull into their driveway at the exact same time.[...]
I'm starting to think the theories that this was a facebook game shifted to PC after facebook games collapsed are right. In that case EA had already been working on it for some time, and the focus was on getting it transitioned and released ASAP and not fixing glaring problems.
I suspect that memory would be a concern as well. If each citizen is an object and you have 100k of them then that's going to add up. Another reason why devs need to go 64-bit.
Under 500 real pop: shows real population
500-40845: shows 500+(amount over 500 ^ 1.2)
Over 40845 real pop: shows 8.25 times real pop. (this maxes out that 1.2 exponential scaling at the multiplier it reaches at that level, so it doesn't get too ridiculous)
This is what i collected so far.
CPU:AMD Phenom QuadCore 3.2Ghz
Citizens = Cpu Usage
1400 = 33%
3400 = 35%
5000 = 36%
15000 = 37%
33000 = 38%
51000 = 39%
Additionally, I have a huge craving for Sim games. Maybe I'll pop in Rollercoaster Tycoon, maybe I'll buy Tropico, but are there any other Sim management games? I'd love ones that emphasis micromanaging.
Can't EA get sued for this? I mean come on, they flat out lied, there is enough reason to think this.
Additionally, I have a huge craving for Sim games. Maybe I'll pop in Rollercoaster Tycoon, maybe I'll buy Tropico, but are there any other Sim management games? I'd love ones that emphasis micromanaging.
I know there's an old Railroad Tycoon game, I wonder how that holds up.
Can't EA get sued for this? I mean come on, they flat out lied, there is enough reason to think this.
Additionally, I have a huge craving for Sim games. Maybe I'll pop in Rollercoaster Tycoon, maybe I'll buy Tropico, but are there any other Sim management games? I'd love ones that emphasis micromanaging.
I know there's an old Railroad Tycoon game, I wonder how that holds up.
That would explain a lot:
* Worse AI = different team. Not really Maxis best crew, since it's just Facebook. Just get it working
* Javascript-based UI, meant for a webbrowser engine
* Online requirement
* Resource sharing
* Lots of DLC and extras planned
* Scaling issues. Especially as they probably designed it to be played a little bit each day, not hours on end
* Why it doesn't feel like a $60 title
Didn't they say that the simulation ran on a single core?Basing calculation on that post, we get real population of
290 = 33%
767 = 35%
1107 = 36%
2936 = 37%
5753 = 38%
6181 = 39%
So basically every 1.5k we have around 1% increase on all 4 cores, which isnt as enormous, but its still significant, especially if You look at minimum requirements, so 200k city populated by real sims [not phantoms] should have utilization around 170% of quad core 3.2Ghz cpu. If we even consider 1% increase every 3k simulated sims, it gives us around 100% utilization of quad core cpu.
Didn't they say that the simulation ran on a single core?
Have you ever tried OpenTTD? Certainly one of the best management games ever. It's a modernized, expanded version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. The Anno series, as mentioned by the previous poster, is great too if you're after micromanagement heavy games.
Didn't they say that the simulation ran on a single core?
lol? You remember where you read that?
The main sim + game loop is on a single thread, so extra cores don't help. We do make use of extra CPU for audio/rendering
Glassbox runs entirely on the CPU (sadly, single-threaded at the moment).
When it comes to path-finding for vehicles and the like, the big limit that Maxis are coming up against is the computational power of the average PC. Finding the optimal path over a non-Euclidean graph in minimal computational time is something that has a known and relatively simple solution. The issue is that when you're dealing with a graph as complex as the road network in one of Sim City's cities, and are trying to run the path-finding algorithm for hundreds or thousands of cars simultaneously, you need orders of magnitude more computational power than a home PC is going to provide. The only option you then have is to move to a non-optimal heuristic, which finds a "good guess" as to the optimal route. This is what 99% of games do when it comes to pathfinding, as it's computationally much cheaper and for the most part it produces paths that look pretty good. The issue, though, is that any non-optimal pathfinding heuristic is, by definition, going to throw up imperfect routes every so often. This is an even bigger issue when it comes to routing around traffic in a game like Sim City, as you're then dealing with non-Euclidean graphs, which adds a whole extra level of complexity.
There's simply no way around this when working within the confines of a typical PC. Either you go with an optimal solution and the game starts to chug with more than a couple of cars on the road, or you use a heuristic and end up with the occasional illogical traffic jam. It's a mathematically proveable fact, and there's nothing that Maxis can really do about it.
Non-Euclidean graph? What's that?
Also, no, it's not hard to do. You have a table of entries that you update every time you place a new road, or when a new building appears. Then the game finds all the optimal ways traveling from that place to all other places. And build it so that when you know how to get to your neighbour with the fastest route, you can use his fastest routes entries to get everywhere (which will use his neighbours' neighbours' route). Use weighted numbers for road-capacity, solve loop problematics, do special cases for intersections, et voila.
If you want to simplify it further, have a "prefered" cluster of industry and shops that that sim will want to go to, as not to map all work and shops in existence.
The sim needs to know where he's going when he leaves the house, and he can look it up in his transit table.
Apparently the Sims don't need job, educations or any way to purchase goods to be perfectly happy and content.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a7iqq/apparently_commercial_and_industrial_zones_are/
Can't EA get sued for this? I mean come on, they flat out lied, there is enough reason to think this.
Additionally, I have a huge craving for Sim games. Maybe I'll pop in Rollercoaster Tycoon, maybe I'll buy Tropico, but are there any other Sim management games? I'd love ones that emphasis micromanaging.
I know there's an old Railroad Tycoon game, I wonder how that holds up.
He does state that he does this in sandbox mode and some of the comments present good reasons why this might not work out in simulation mode.
TLDR: Really as far as the game is concerned you're providing jobs and "shopping" endlessly from the parks so they're happy and content to grow. I'm fairly sure though that this should happen a lot slower (if at all) if parks didn't give shopping happiness considering you're only employing ~10% of your workers (~1% of the phantom population) which would make the money run out and the unhappiness from various things would run it out.
For anyone who wants to try this on not-sandbox I'd recommend keeping to the $ parks and power at first to accumulate enough tax income to support your city as you grow it. Maybe Fire and Police soon after that and then work your way up to some $$ sims by plopping some $$ parks in a few areas. Most importnat thing tho is to keep enough parks nearby so that you're "satisfying shopping"
Yes.Is cheetah speed still disabled?
Is cheetah speed still disabled?
I guess it really depends what all you need to keep track of for the sim. I'd be curious to find that out. I can't imagine the memory usage for simulating 200k sims would be more than 500MB at max though.
If you look at this video it shows that they don't go by the shortest path. I think they just drive blindly until they find what they're looking for.
The deeper we go, the more feces we discover.
Was this allready posted?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d0b41H-Lnk&feature=player_embedded#!
You are gonna have to recompute things at times guys. Destroying or adding things will cause you to recompute and then precomputed paths will have to recomputed too. And precomputation also takes up ram. The more you precompute, the more ram you are gonna need.
There is a gif of a similar case, yours looks funnier though.
Was this allready posted?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d0b41H-Lnk&feature=player_embedded#!
Apparently the Sims don't need job, educations or any way to purchase goods to be perfectly happy and content.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a7iqq/apparently_commercial_and_industrial_zones_are/
I'm not a software engineer, that's not my problem. Surely there must be a smarter solution to this issue than what they came up with.You are gonna have to recompute things at times guys. Destroying or adding things will cause you to recompute and then precomputed paths will have to recomputed too. And precomputation also takes up ram. The more you precompute, the more ram you are gonna need.
Was this allready posted?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d0b41H-Lnk&feature=player_embedded#!
Why couldn't it be. The cities can get big and building a path finding map for the AI could take a lot of memory. In some cases its just impossible to build a map for the AI conventionally because the memory requirements would be astronomical.
You are gonna have to recompute things at times guys. Destroying or adding things will cause you to recompute and then precomputed paths will have to recomputed too. And precomputation also takes up ram. The more you precompute, the more ram you are gonna need.
Someone needs to repost that and replace the audio with Benny Hill.
already done
Edit: Aww yeah, the internet is ahead of me.
This is disappointing to say the least.
Has there ever been a game that has handled simulated traffic right? Or at least modeled it in a way that is relatively realistic, and that allows the player to tackle traffic as a problem that can be solved within a game.
Apparently the Sims don't need job, educations or any way to purchase goods to be perfectly happy and content.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a7iqq/apparently_commercial_and_industrial_zones_are/
Because who needs a job or shops when you're surrounded by Amphitheaters?