I don't think it was "world size", as such, as the number of units that are within range of hostile units. Imagine simple AI for a stack of cataphracts in Civ; it considers every possible move, and then what moves the opponent units within range can make in reaction. Like chess but only a couple ply deep. In MMOs, you get lag when too many hostile units are within perception range; they all see you and all your allies, and each computes the possible reactions of all of them, for all of them. So the call stack gets big.
Civ I think has always been fine with enough RAM, but you can't have enough bandwidth if a raid of a hundred players invades a castle with a hundred liches, all in sight of one courtyard. That said, it does sound like the problem of cellularized weather simulation; the pressure and humidity etc at one cell impacts adjacent cells, but that propogates, so yes, I think the guys who code MPI for that should make a game with AI for lots of independent mobile units :-) Peter On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Nathan Moore <[email protected]> wrote: > Can anyone on the list comment on the structure of codes like Sid Meier's > "Civilization" or MS "Age of Empires"? I lost a week or so to each in > school and I recall there was a certain "world size," at which the game > play would completely stall. I assume because there was an all to all, or > all to most calculation between game elements that suddenly grew larger > than cache. > > Strategy games like this don't seem that different than a relaxation-style > solution to a laplace problem. It would seem natural to write the game to > take advantage of multiple cores. > > Is this really how its done? > > > -- > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > Nathan Moore > Winona, MN > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > - - - - > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > >
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