Recycle Old Threads Drive Canceled!

raynor · #1 May 12th, 2003, 02:59 PM

One of the key elements of Gal Civ is that it is multi-threaded. This means that it is making tons and tons of calculations at the same time that you are completing your turn. One of those calculations is the somewhat complicated computation that compares the cultural significance of every one of your planetary facilities, starbases, etc against that of each one of the AI empires. The really cool feature of a game that is multi-threaded is that the game appears to run extremely fast. You really don't have to wait very long when you press 'End Turn' because the game has been making most of its calculations while you are moving your own ships around.

The developers of the game decided to shorten the game save time by not saving your status towards a cultural dominance victory. They also made the decision to shorten the game load time by not calculating it immediately upon loading the game. Instead, they spread this calculation out over two or three turns. They did this to speed the game up and let players get into the action quickly.

Can you imagine how cool this is? Instead of waiting a couple of minutes while the game does this calculation, you can instead get right back into the game. The game is actually performing this computation *while* you are playing the game. This is really quite an awesome feature. It isn't an easy thing to do, rest assured.

Wardad · #2 May 12th, 2003, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by raynor:

quote:
Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:
Regarding the problem with the cultural victory in Gal Civ: Each time you reload the game, it has to re-calculate your influence. The developers said they could have saved that piece of info as well. But it would have increased the time required to save your game. So, they left it as is.

That is a pretty crappy decision. It couldn't have increased time to save the game by very much, and would be well worth the marginal increase in saving time.
LOL. If you are a computer, you are a very poorly made one. How can you make such a statement with absolutely no facts? You have already established that you cannot program yourself out of a paper bag. Now, you are making inferences about an extremely complicated piece of code with which you have absolutely no experience?

Hey, Stop tweaking I.F.! That's my job!

I can usually play about an hour every morning. So the Cultural Save and Ship Bonus save problems are really nasty bugs for me.

[ May 12, 2003, 17:15: Message edited by: Wardad ]

raynor · #3 May 12th, 2003, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Wardad:

I can usually play about an hour every morning. So the Cultural Save and Ship Bonus save problems are really nasty bugs for me.

If you can only play an hour at a time, why play Gal Civ? You might as well be playing SEIV PBW.

Didn't you know that Gal Civ is only for those folks who can sit down and play the game for ten hours at one sitting?

Fyron · #4 May 12th, 2003, 08:23 PM

That would be a great indication of some bad game design decisions.

Roanon · #5 May 13th, 2003, 04:18 AM

Quote:

I am also getting tired ( not really

) of repeating, when I turn off "Roy" I control my planet.

Blatant lie. Working for Quicksilver?

deccan · #6 May 13th, 2003, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by eddieballgame:
I am also getting tired ( not really ) of repeating, when I turn off "Roy" I control my planet.

The main things you can't control at all are DEA and infrastructure building. You can ask the Viceroy to build a DEA at a certain region and it'll say "Planned", but often, even if you jack up Economic Development spending real high, the DEA will stay at the "Planned" phase forever.

You also can't decide to build regional improvements (like Space Ports) at all. The Viceroy does that. In any case there are many bugs with the improvements (Astro University not giving bonuses, Planetary Shields not reducing piracy etc.)

Also, you have no control of which planets get Imperial Grants. For some players, this really messes up their strategy.

Finally, even for those things that the player can control, it feels like the player doesn't control them because of the lack of immediate feedback makes it next to impossible for the player to predict the effects of his decisions.

That said, except for the above things (and maybe to a lesser extent auto-migration but that's in the game design), once you uncheck the Econ AI box, I don't believe the AI actually changes anything.

[ May 13, 2003, 04:51: Message edited by: deccan ]

Chronon · #7 May 13th, 2003, 06:29 AM

Raynor and Wardad, thanks for the info on GalCiv. Since I, too, only have about an hour a day to play games, I should probably not get into GalCiv. I'm in a couple of SE4 PBW games at the moment, which count toward that hour, so I probably don't have enough time left over each day to really get to know GalCiv. I'll just continue the Hearts of Iron game I'm working on. Perhaps I'll be done sometime this year...

PS. Raynor, I would highly recommend PBW. It's light years more challenging than any single player game I've played.