Really interesting suggestions by people who have no idea about programming. *facepalm*
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You don't have to be a programmer to see that there's something wrong with the engine of CiM. Just look how many people with good pcs complain about litte fps after playing a while.
Interesting how some people draw conclusion out of nothing 
Yes i know i didn't present any easy to implement solution. Yes for example coding for quad cores is quite hard and complicated. I didn't state it's easy.
Is it worth of suggesting? I think yes. Every idea counts. You can rule them out later. At least this works very well for business so i kind of fail to see why it wouldn't work here.
My 2 cents to this only. You may disagree with me, i'm not forcing anyone into anything.
Yes i know i didn't present any easy to implement solution. Yes for example coding for quad cores is quite hard and complicated. I didn't state it's easy.
Is it worth of suggesting? I think yes. Every idea counts. You can rule them out later. At least this works very well for business so i kind of fail to see why it wouldn't work here
.My 2 cents to this only. You may disagree with me, i'm not forcing anyone into anything.
Interesting how some people draw conclusion out of nothing
Yes i know i didn't present any easy to implement solution. Yes for example coding for quad cores is quite hard and complicated. I didn't state it's easy.
Is it worth of suggesting? I think yes. Every idea counts. You can rule them out later. At least this works very well for business so i kind of fail to see why it wouldn't work here
My 2 cents to this only. You may disagree with me, i'm not forcing anyone into anything.
Problem is that they won't do it. Why? Because they would have to rewrite the whole engine of the game. So none of you're suggestions are probably going to be implemented into this game :/
Yes i tend to agree with you here. Very very slight chance given to quad core support. Even that would involve major changes in the code. Other 2 are quite far from possible i guess...
Yeah, was reffering to those suggestions by KouDy.
1. Since we do not know, how they implemented pathfinding, we can't say, if you could divert it to the GPU. Also, lots of work, especially if your're not familiar with CUDA.
2. Don't see how 64 bit would help. And rewritting the whole code to work on 32 and 64 bit is pretty time consuming.
3. Parallization sounds good in theory but has lot's of potential draw backs.
I'm not saying your suggestions won't work, but implementing them will take a lot more effort than you seem to imagine. Those design issues must be considered in the planning stage, not when the program's finished.
What might really help and should be easier to do is to review the time critical functions and try to optimize them.
So, just my 2 cents. Feel free to flame me now.
1. Since we do not know, how they implemented pathfinding, we can't say, if you could divert it to the GPU. Also, lots of work, especially if your're not familiar with CUDA.
2. Don't see how 64 bit would help. And rewritting the whole code to work on 32 and 64 bit is pretty time consuming.
3. Parallization sounds good in theory but has lot's of potential draw backs.
I'm not saying your suggestions won't work, but implementing them will take a lot more effort than you seem to imagine. Those design issues must be considered in the planning stage, not when the program's finished.
What might really help and should be easier to do is to review the time critical functions and try to optimize them.
So, just my 2 cents. Feel free to flame me now.
And you do?
I place the blame on the numbers of independent people walking the streets and stations in the end game. Each one of those people has some algorithm for pathfinding, which is constantly checked, they also have different speeds, and numerous idle animations. The processing of that is all done real-time, and while the computer is not taxed much, the engine is because it cannot handle its own load.
I think they should rethink the way pedestrians work. Because really, the only thing that increases as you build more and more lines, are the people using them.
@360Mafia:
I'm not quite following what you mean there?? The engine handles its "load" pretty much as well as the computer is able to do (apart from the multicore CPUs using mostly only one core).
As for what increases as you build more and more lines, it is not entirely true the people using them are the only thing increasing
Rendering the visuals for the lines is not cheap, running the logic of each vehicle on the line is not free either, it adds several more entities to the gameworld than just the people.
@Koudy:
1. While the idea of using more of the GPU to offload CPU tasks is not bad, it is very naive and cute
Basically, based on what I see on forums, low-end/old GPUs are the number one issue players of CiM encounter, the number 2 being GPU drivers being unpredictable, out-of-date and so on.. so using GPU to offload tasks which are really meant to be done on CPU would probably end up causing way more problems than solving them. Additionally, offloading game logic to GPU is pretty expensive when it comes to overhead, you need to somewhat pack the input for the processing into textures or tricks like that, which requires to be uploaded to Video Memory, an operation which stalls the GPU, then the processing done may be very fast, but the freedom of the operations quite limited (because of the way the video memory works), and finally you need to get the output of the processing back to main memory for use again... IMHO, offloading a task to the GPU would require for it to be so expensive that the overhead would have to be worth it, game logic isn't usually ever anywhere close to that.
2. 64bits client would be a waste of development time, it wouldn't affect performances whatsoever.
3. Multicore support would be indeed the best way to improve CPU performances here, since dual core are widely spread in nowadays gaming machines, however, do remember Colossal is a small company and in-game tasks are not always the easiest to distribute over multiple cores because of the synchronization needs. Meaning it takes much more time to develop something which exploit the cores at their maximum. So I can entirely understand why they made the call to not go that road just yet...
have the Developers, been made aware about this issue ?
what are they doing to solve it ?
what are they doing to solve it ?
Today I tested the game in a i5 2300. I saw people complain about cpu usage and think to myself that now the game will run really better. I had a E4500 before and its a huge difference between this 2 cpus.
But the fps dont change at all!!!!
When you open that little monitor the fps fall down to 15/11. Why?!
In the promo videos you see a game really fast. So, what's the configuration of the computer that the guys of Paradox use?! I'm really interested in know! Probably is some NASA computers or something. Paradox in a little time will send Marina to Mars!
But the fps dont change at all!!!!
When you open that little monitor the fps fall down to 15/11. Why?!
In the promo videos you see a game really fast. So, what's the configuration of the computer that the guys of Paradox use?! I'm really interested in know! Probably is some NASA computers or something. Paradox in a little time will send Marina to Mars!
I'm running on a Dualcore II and a XFX Radeon HD 5770 on a Win Vista and the game works fine for me, I'm never under 15 fps, even in crowded areas!
BTW, I am running on the highest resolution but without HDR-lightning. Finally Vista pays off.
BTW, I am running on the highest resolution but without HDR-lightning. Finally Vista pays off.
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Congratulations. You apparently have a hardware/softwareconfiguration the engine was created for.
I have a similar build. Athlon II X2 3.1 ghz, 4 gigs of ram and a Sapphire Radeon 6770 (basically the same as the 5770). At 1440x900 with all details turned on, I only see 11 fps when I'm fast forwarding time on very big systems (20+ lines). Since I don't build anything on that speed, it doesn't bother me. At normal speed the game is fluid at around 30-35 frames per second. Perfectly acceptable for a simulation.
Turning HDR lighting on and off doesn't seem to have a big effect. It's just speculation, but it leads me to believe that the GPU isn't doing quite a whole lot in this game, and that it's very much CPU intensive compared to say, a first person shooter with a few stupid enemies. But I'm probably wrong.
It should be noted that in 2003 big SimCity 4 cities lagged even on what was then high-end hardware at the time.
15 fps is NOT ACCEPTABLE framerate at this point in hardware development. This aint 1999. 30fps is minimum. For RTS, it was always 60fps.
It's a niche simulation from a small developer with little widespread appeal. I purchased the game for $16 on Amazon and now it's been marked down to $12 in the big Fourth of July sale. It's not Modern Warfare 2 whose launch budget alone was $200 million, and I've played Cities of Motion for more hours than all of the $60 Call of Duty games combined.
These simulation games are not the most optimized game engines on the planet. Try Microsoft Train Simulator. The game chugs even on modern hardware when scenarios and routes become too complex. Try Railworks, a more modern train simulator with the same problems. These aren't action shooter games with unrealistic floaty physics where if you shoot a guy in Just Cause 2 he does his best impression of someone jumping on the moon.
Cities of Motion is simulating traffic in virtual cities with tens of thousands of people. I wish the game ran a bit smoother too, but consider your whining in context. Cities XL also slows down in big cities. Cities of Motion is meeting the industry standard as far as I'm concerned.
You're thinking too much of the game's engine. It's not actually simulating anything, the pathfinding routines are simple and the engine itself is far from sophisticated. It is also not the best looking RTS. The only excuse for this game is that it IS a small dev game, however, there were games that were built by 1 or 2 people that had better graphics and ran better.
I wish they focused less on useless DLC, and more on improving the game's performance.
I find 20 fps to be enough for smooth gameplay, as long as you focus on the game.
I too hope that there won't be another vehicle dlc after the fourth one, but I don't think that the dlc vehicles hinder the development of CiM too much.
I too hope that there won't be another vehicle dlc after the fourth one, but I don't think that the dlc vehicles hinder the development of CiM too much.