Dominions 3 on Dual Quad core machines

weimaar · #1 May 26th, 2008, 03:06 PM

Hi guys, i've noticed that Dominions 3 [peace be upon this game] only uses 1 single core when processing turns and creating the world. I usually play against impossible AIs with 15-20 nations which means that my maps are huge and it takes a while for the turns to be processed. Will there ever be a 64 bit version of the game or dual/quad core compatibility?

Endoperez · #2 May 26th, 2008, 04:08 PM

Doubtful, since any major changes to the core game are likely to cause huge problems. A recent example:

http://ulm.illwinter.com/dom3/dom3progress.html
Dominions 3 progress
17th may
* Version 3.17
* Major performance boost for windows version.

18th may
* Version 3.17 again
* Reverted performance boost for windows.

Loren · #3 May 26th, 2008, 04:57 PM

I seriously doubt they will do anything along these lines. I have no connection to Dominions but I am a programmer--and I know how hard it would be to revamp a mess of code (the code has previously been described as a major mess) to multi-thread execution.

MaxWilson · #4 May 26th, 2008, 05:26 PM

No chance. Dom3 is written in C, which is almost intrinsically sequential and thus single-core for the next few years. Take advantage of your dual core machine to play music in the background instead.

Making proper use of many-core machines is a problem the software industry is very much struggling with.

-Max

Agrajag · #5 May 26th, 2008, 05:43 PM

Play music? What a waste.
Just play two games simultaneously.
(unless it's a quadcore)

JimMorrison · #6 May 26th, 2008, 05:58 PM

Well they better hurry, Intel has promised to bring their 80 core processors to the consumer market within the next 4 years or so.

Loren · #7 May 26th, 2008, 07:58 PM

Quote:

MaxWilson said:
No chance. Dom3 is written in C, which is almost intrinsically sequential and thus single-core for the next few years. Take advantage of your dual core machine to play music in the background instead.

Making proper use of many-core machines is a problem the software industry is very much struggling with.

-Max

There's nothing about C that precludes doing things in separate threads. It's just an app not specifically designed for it generally takes a lot of work to convert.

There's also my opinion of C:

Programs, like ships, sink in the C.

Aezeal · #8 May 27th, 2008, 04:09 AM

That has got to be the very rare programmer humor. However rare it might be it's still not that funny though.

NTJedi · #9 May 27th, 2008, 04:49 AM

Quote:

MaxWilson said:
No chance. Dom3 is written in C, which is almost intrinsically sequential and thus single-core for the next few years. Take advantage of your dual core machine to play music in the background instead.

Making proper use of many-core machines is a problem the software industry is very much struggling with.

-Max

Well anyone playing multiple large SP games could run them both at the same time and use the 'set affinity' so each game can use different CPUs. Another idea is maybe running one MP game and one SP game using 'set affinity'.

Griefor · #10 May 27th, 2008, 08:23 AM

While converting the entire application to multicore might be a huge amount of work, I'd think that converting just the battle resolution (which is the only thing that takes a lot of time anyway) shouldn't be that hard. As long as you know what you're doing (this is probably not a good first attempt at multicore usage) and the battle resolution is programmed the right way in the current state.

I mean, think about it. Every turn there is a bunch of battles, and they're all mostly independent from each other. The flow of the program might have to be changed somewhat ( prepare all battles first, then resolve them all), but the subsequent multitasking is basically just resolving multiple battles at the same time rather than one at a time.