Multi Core support?

[Sirlion]

We are in an age of technological advancements like no other. Every modern game has multiple Core support to enhance performance. Since this is a very demanding game in terms of CPU power, how about using all cores instead of just one? I like slow motion in my FPSs, but 3-5 fps in an RTS seems a bit much. I have already reduced most of the parameters to a minimum. And I dont want to disable my antivirus because a game cant handle it.

[voltigeur]

Every modern game has multiple Core support

hmm the other historically accurate game I own, Combat Mission, doesn't use multiple cores. I don't think it's an easy thing to accomplish for a small dev team.

And I dont want to disable my antivirus because a game cant handle it.

Just whitelist the game in the av settings.

[roy64]

We are in an age of technological advancements like no other. Every modern game has multiple Core support to enhance performance. Since this is a very demanding game in terms of CPU power, how about using all cores instead of just one? I like slow motion in my FPSs, but 3-5 fps in an RTS seems a bit much. I have already reduced most of the parameters to a minimum. And I dont want to disable my antivirus because a game cant handle it.

I know the feeling, I've got 12 CPUs. :silly:

[Saddletank]

Nothing will use 12 cores/CPUs except hi-end 3D animation and hi-res video compilation. Are you an artist? A 3D animator? A designer? A film maker? I can't think of anyone other than that who could possibly use that many cores.

As voltigeur says multi-threading code in an RTS like SoW to use several cores is EXTREMELY difficult. Its apparent that the code in SOWWL isn't efficiently written in this regard. But to ask a 1-man team (Norb alone does the main game coding) to write very efficient multi-threaded code in the space of a few months while the game was being developed, plus adding in all the other changes NSD made to the Gettysburg engine is asking a bit much.

[roy64]

Nothing will use 12 cores/CPUs except hi-end 3D animation and hi-res video compilation. Are you an artist? A 3D animator? A designer? A film maker? I can't think of anyone other than that who could possibly use that many cores.

WOW. What rattled your cage. :ohmy:

[Jim]

According to the Resource Monitor on my system, SOWWL.exe has an entry that moves in the range of about 8.3 to 9.1 in the Average CPU column. At least Windows thinks the game is using a lot more than one core of the CPU.

-Jim

[Sirlion]

I'm sorry but, as a customer, I dont think I'm being unreasonable in asking something that most modern games have. Simple performance issues. I'm a new player, if a dev wants to attract somebody else other than its most trusted circle of fans, he/she should probably do more. I understand now that "he" is a single man programmer. Quite frankly, and I repeat, as a customer, I dont care. The moment you sell something for a high price you should have all the cards to make a game with good performance and a solid base. I'm not excusing anybody for a lack of "quality" - maybe not the best word to use though, sorry I'm not a native english speaker - just because this person did everything alone. It is an argument that simply wont hold.

[Saddletank]

I think its the customers (or more accurately potential customers) who need to adjust expectations. They do need to care about who the developer is. If you buy a Toyota you expect a certain type of product. If you buy a kit car pitched at an equivalent price your expectations need to be very different.

NSD are not Creative Arts or Bethesda. The customer should be aware he's buying a niche game from a garage developer. I don't think NSD are being unfair to expect that from you; they don't hide who they are.

If someone has bought a game and isn't completely happy with it that to me suggests the customer should have done more research into the game and its developer before buying.

A company always has to pitch its products at prices high enough to make sense to their sales partners. Matrix take their cut, Valve takes theirs. As I understand it most of the dev team work for peanuts and many work for nothing; its their spare time hobby. Even so the price and units sold equation means NSD have done some maths on this. I guess if people think the price is too high they don't buy the product. There is no competitor on the market, not even Histwar which was the main challenger. It depends how much people are into a niche product like this.

I have a 6-year old quad core Athlon and Waterloo runs worse on it than Gettysburg did, despite the multi-threading claims, but quite frankly I am happy to have any game as ground breaking as this at all. You look at how the software performs, what it delivers, what its potential is after its been modded, and what the market alternatives are... and you make your own mind up.

[Sirlion]

Ok, so the answer is "this or nothing, sorry, we cant make it better, but on the other hand we have no competitors, so stay silent and take it or not". Wow... at this point I would humbly suggest a Kickstarter. It would probably grant the devs much more money than what they get right now and to us customers maybe a better product.

I get it at any rate, I wont bring this up again. Lesson learned. I will not buy another NSD game if it is in this state.

[mitra76]

If your fps are so low also if your system is of average\high category, i'll start to check if your CPU is working to max potential the game permitted. The game main logic runs on a principal thread, 1 thread used from the d3d9, some minor for the dsound and dinput and four for minor parallel executions of calculations (you can verify it without problems with Process Explorer), the sum of these for the biggest scenario during the more heavy "use" should give you a average use of CPU of 25% switching from 20% to 30% of CPU. This should correspond after in a use of 40%-60% of GPU. These are the data on my system (I5 quad core 3,4ghz with gxt760, but I checked the same scale on a oldest I5 with GTX450) which corresponds to 20-30 fps for the biggest scenarios with a draw distance of 1000 yards and 80% of tree transparency.

If it is not like this your CPU is being bottlenecked from something: probably the temperature; if the CPU works well but the GPU not probably the temperature problem is here; so I should verify the scale of temperature you obtained, if they're in line with suggested one or they're dangerously near to the limit. Sargon, one of team members had the same problem and solved cleaning from the powder the heatsink and the cards with a brush and jumped from 2-3 fps to over 20 fps.

Another thing you can verify is if you have concurrent process using your graphic card when the game is running (always with process explorer) and\or if you have processes running in constant mode and\or using I\O flows in heavy mode (files writing or net transfer), you can check it using process lasso free version and eventually you can use the "Gaming" mode of this last software for have the process of game to run always in priority 1 (no interrupts) and without core parking effect.