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SourceSeeker 12 Aug, 2024 @ 10:00am
"Sim Time" finally solved? Not a single word?
There is only one reason which keeps us from being interested and from buying. It's the same problem which made us abandon Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation:
Sim Time

Gameplay with several CPUs/Players and even maps with only a few CPUs/Players slow down quite fast. Slowdown always reached the point, where gameplay became virtually frozen, because it became that slow, you could compare it with slow motion, likewise with standstill. We had/have no slow PCs, no slow internet connection and we tried a lot of stuff, but the company boss of each map was Sim Time and we never were able to defeat him, just unbeatable and overpowered. In my opinion a comprehensive talk about how far this game breaking issue was fixed/handled should be obligation and pinned at the top of these experimental games and discussed thoroughly! You owe this to your players.
Last edited by SourceSeeker; 12 Aug, 2024 @ 10:04am
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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments
Druark 3 Nov, 2024 @ 5:48pm 
This isn't a problem you can 'solve' per-say. Only do your best to mitigate.

This is a limitation of hardware. No matter how well optimised a game gets, it will eventually have to slow-down to keep up due to the amount of calculations needed per second. In many games this is simply FPS loss but in an RTS, with potentially 1000s of units, things are simulated client-side and so no one can step ahead of anyone else or you get a desync.
#1
DarkAshFur 4 Nov, 2024 @ 9:39am 
Originally posted by Druark:
This isn't a problem you can 'solve' per-say. Only do your best to mitigate.

This is a limitation of hardware. No matter how well optimised a game gets, it will eventually have to slow-down to keep up due to the amount of calculations needed per second. In many games this is simply FPS loss but in an RTS, with potentially 1000s of units, things are simulated client-side and so no one can step ahead of anyone else or you get a desync.
true but ... cant shake the feeling this may be a major point in this game as it promises to be a "industrial game" so I imagine the matches would take really more longer than those other RTSs
#2
imker 5 Nov, 2024 @ 10:17am 
This problem is solved in the game Beyond All Reason. Its free and open source game.
Last edited by imker; 5 Nov, 2024 @ 10:17am
#3
Druark 5 Nov, 2024 @ 2:54pm 
Originally posted by DarkAshFur:
true but ... cant shake the feeling this may be a major point in this game as it promises to be a "industrial game" so I imagine the matches would take really more longer than those other RTSs
Maybe, maybe not. SupCom battles could easily take over an hour or more, same with PA and BAR.

Really its all speculation at this point, theyve shown practically nothing of the actual gameplay yet so were just guessing.
#4
Kaezeribato 22 Nov, 2024 @ 5:15pm 
Originally posted by Druark:
This isn't a problem you can 'solve' per-say. Only do your best to mitigate.
It was when SupCom was released, it is not anymore. Modern hardware could run a SupCom with 16 player at max cap with no slow down.
SupCom had this issue because it was made in a time when multi core CPU were not common so it only use one single CPU core which was the reason for the slow down even on modern hardware.

Modern STR dont have any excuse for this, not when indie dev can make game with thousand of unit on the screen run at more than 60 FPS and no slow down.
#5
Druark 23 Nov, 2024 @ 7:18am 
Originally posted by Kaezeribato:
Originally posted by Druark:
This isn't a problem you can 'solve' per-say. Only do your best to mitigate.
It was when SupCom was released, it is not anymore. Modern hardware could run a SupCom with 16 player at max cap with no slow down.
SupCom had this issue because it was made in a time when multi core CPU were not common so it only use one single CPU core which was the reason for the slow down even on modern hardware.

Modern STR dont have any excuse for this, not when indie dev can make game with thousand of unit on the screen run at more than 60 FPS and no slow down.
This is objectively false. That isn't how hardware or software performance works. Multi-threading isn't some magic fix-all for everything because not every process within a program can be multi-threaded due to the way CPU architecture works.

Plus, SupCom uses a totally different rendering pipeline than modern games too, which also adds CPU overhead more than modern games which use GPU for more of those features. Software is not as simple as you think it is.
#6
Lunaire 29 Nov, 2024 @ 10:44pm 
Ask the guys at DSP for a hand? It's an automation game, it has combat, it has robots and it's massive in scope. This game seems to be more limited in scope, so, the way they do things over there might be a good way to go about it...
#7
Druark 30 Nov, 2024 @ 1:37am 
Originally posted by Lunaire:
Ask the guys at DSP for a hand? It's an automation game, it has combat, it has robots and it's massive in scope. This game seems to be more limited in scope, so, the way they do things over there might be a good way to go about it...
Its a singleplayer game with limited pathfinding requirements compared to an RTS full of tanks all with their own health, stats and AI to follow orders. (DSP just has flyers which go point to point).

Their genre has massively different requirements from an RTS in other ways too, factory games have conveyors of very simple shapes which as a result can be rendered super fast by the GPU. Sim time issues are CPU bound though.
#8
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Industrial Annihilation > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 12 Aug, 2024 @ 10:00am
Posts: 8

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