Why are SimCitys cities so small? Because EA didn't make it for multicore CPU's

[FordGT90Concept]

People played the beta and didn't complain about performance. I'm not that concerned about it.

 

[1ceTr0n]

People played the beta and didn't complain about performance. I'm not that concerned about it.

Well seeings my GTX 670 FTW was getting maxed out as my population hit 20k and I was moving around the city WITHOUT AA, I am a bit concerned i'll need a damn SLI setup to maintain playable framerates

 

[RejZoR]

Don't buy it. Latest games that bang on the origin of the franchises (when they drop the numbers) they pretty much always suck. Stick with excellent SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4. Sure they are old but they are by far the best city building games.

 

[1ceTr0n]

I'm in a heated debate about this whole thing at the OVerclock forums. A lot of people just arn't getting it and even defending EA for this garbage.


http://www.overclock.net/t/1359624/...in-sim-game-loop-will-be-single-threaded/0_20

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Again, I stress that this was on Twitter which is notoriously bad for giving inadequate details, only a headline.

Don't buy it. Latest games that bang on the origin of the franchises (when they drop the numbers) they pretty much always suck. Stick with excellent SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4. Sure they are old but they are by far the best city building games.

They both lack the multiplayer component which did and continues to make SimCity 2000 Network Edition the best ever (except the crashing). XD

 

[...PACMAN...]

Surely the very nature of the game demands that it can utilize modern hardware to it's fullest. And Ford, I like the way you are a very calm guy but seriously you are telling me that a huge company with the resources they have at their disposal could not dedicate that time in creating an engine worthy of modern hardware? Really?

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Help me to understand. What I'm hearing is:

1) I hate EA, and they must be behind this travesty.
2) The game only uses one core for simulation.
3) We don't know if the Beta you are testing has optimization, but one anecdotal experience is huge cities don't run well.


So you understand, I hate EA. Origin is a crappy version of Steam, and EA deserves whatever they get when it comes to consumer hatred (given slimy business tactics). Now, here's the other side of the token.

1) EA didn't develop the game engine, the developer did. If you have a bone to pick raise it with them.
2) Anecdotal proof =/= reality. Additionally, betas are beta for a reason. It took Bethesda how long to get Skyrim frame rates out of the crapper? That wasn't even the beta...
3) If you don't like it don't buy it. The more painful it is for you, the more the publishers hurt. EA buys up talent, leeches it dry, then moves on. Imagine if you just didn't allow their leeching to work. They would change their practices, or they would die.



A final point, companies exist to earn money. If you don't pay, they will blame pirates. After they can no longer blame piracy, they will change their practices. It hurts not to play ME3, it will hurt to avoid Crysis, and it is a relief to avoid their yearly sports sims. A little bit of pain now will mean changes for the better in the future.

 

[newtekie1]

Well seeings my GTX 670 FTW was getting maxed out as my population hit 20k and I was moving around the city WITHOUT AA, I am a bit concerned i'll need a damn SLI setup to maintain playable framerates

And that takes us right back to what Ford said originally, the game will be limited by the GPU more so than the CPU on most systems, even if it is only using one CPU thread.

Honestly, after reading more about this, this isn't really as big of a deal as people have been making it out to me. There were no performance issues related to the CPU in the beta, most people were maxing out their GPUs. And even as you said, it is maxing out higher end GPUs. So being limited to a single thread isn't going to be what limits performance in the end.

Surely the very nature of the game demands that it can utilize modern hardware to it's fullest. And Ford, I like the way you are a very calm guy but seriously you are telling me that a huge company with the resources they have at their disposal could not dedicate that time in creating an engine worthy of modern hardware? Really?

Not if it adds a huge amount of work for a result that won't impact the actual performance of the game. The game being heavy on a single thread only becomes an issue if it is the limiting factor, but so far the game seems to be massively GPU intensive, so the single CPU thread won't limit the game.

And look at the original twitter post. It was in response to a question about how futureproof the engine is, there isn't any reference to the current game's performance. There is no doubt that the current game will run just fine.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Surely the very nature of the game demands that it can utilize modern hardware to it's fullest. And Ford, I like the way you are a very calm guy but seriously you are telling me that a huge company with the resources they have at their disposal could not dedicate that time in creating an engine worthy of modern hardware? Really?

Games are always designed to fit the needs of what is necessary to achieve the design goals. If it doesn't take a hexa-core processor to run a solitaire game, why should they r!ce the game out to make it use six cores? That would most likely be the worst solitaire game ever made.

Also keep in mind that EA is likely targetting the same audience that plays The Sims 3 now. 75% of those people are running laptops with pathetic specs. You can't sell a game that targets extreme specs to a group with pathetic specs but you can sell a game that targets pathetic specs to a group with extreme specs. Remember, EA is a corporation and they are out to make money. They're going to target the broadest spectrum of buyers they reasonably can.

 

[Disparia]

Surely the very nature of the game demands that it can utilize modern hardware to it's fullest. And Ford, I like the way you are a very calm guy but seriously you are telling me that a huge company with the resources they have at their disposal could not dedicate that time in creating an engine worthy of modern hardware? Really?

Oh, they could, but big companies have analysts to maximize money and time spent vs estimated revenue. Give developers enough time and they could design an engine that would allow a map size in proportion to your system resources. A desirable situation for sure, but one that cuts the margins pretty thin.

 

[...PACMAN...]

You all make very fair points and I appreciate that. I'm just getting really sick of the fact that hardware scaling can be such a hit and miss thing nowadays. BF3 nailed it I think, they can appeal to a massive audience. If you want all the goodies and whatever, you need the processor/GPU and hardware grunt to pull it off smoothly, however, if you still want to play it on your dual core/lower end card then you can also.

As for design choices, I go back to my original point, surely a game like this which relies on AI so much and with such scope/freedom of design choices demanded at the start of the project that they maybe took into account the power of modern day CPUs and the benefits they could bring to their title?

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Odd. Shouldn't this be a console port? That would ensure multi-threading.

 

[HalfAHertz]

Enodo DemoReel 2012 - YouTube
^nuff said.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I guarentee you that is "real time" rendered on a Tesla or similar card--if not many of them. Also, if you pay attention, they change perspectives more than content. A real-time game is a completely different ball of wax from a real-time motion picture. The only thing that makes that motion picture difficult is the number of polygons (overcome by many Tesla cards). I wouldn't be surprised at all if the rigs running that are $10,000+ dollar machines.

 

[Kaynar]

You can always disable all extra cores and HT and remain with 1 core for lowest heat emission from having 1 core only. Then you go up to 8Ghz overclocking record and play SimCity like a boss rofl

 

[agent00skid]

The only negative thing I can draw from this, is that it puts me a bit in doubt about the depth of the simulation. But I haven't tried it, or read anything about it, so can't say anything concrete about it.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

If it is the same as what reviewers were playing, it's the most realistic city simulator to date. An old explaination:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/08/simcity-inside-the-glassbox-engine/

 

[Phusius]

I don't care if this game used 8 cores, I just don't like the way the graphics look, its funky to me. Personal taste. ./shrug

I am having a ton of fun with Cities in Motion though

 

[dude12564]

Hopefully some of the EA brass will catch wind of the disappointment and crack the whip on the devs. lol.

Hate to mention it, but ME3.

 

[hellrazor]

A final point, companies exist to earn money.

Incorrect, companies exist to do a service and/or sell a product, money is only used to fund and advance the doing of a service and/or selling of a product - it's the corporation part that makes it exist solely to earn money.

 

[Frick]

Incorrect, companies exist to do a service and/or sell a product, money is only used to fund and advance the doing of a service and/or selling of a product.

In a dream world.

But surely you want to rage at the devs instead. Oh wait no its EA so people will default to neanderthal mode no matter what.

 

[hellrazor]

As a programmer myself, there still shouldn't be anything in SimCity that can't be made to run on multiple threads.

 

[Aquinus]

He did say:

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

I don't know how much CPU that the Sim and game loop takes but from what I gathered he said that for audio and rendering, multiple threads are used.

 

[Easy Rhino]

i can tell you guys that it is going to be OK. this isn't the end of the world. im sure everything will play just fine.

 

[brandonwh64]

i can tell you guys that it is going to be OK. this isn't the end of the world. im sure everything will play just fine.

There are PLENTY of single threaded games like this that run very well and their main goal was to have it work on lower end machines as well.

Every post in this thread reminds me of this.