[General suggestion] Please, please, please support multi-core and 64-bit!

from Stardock Forums

Its probably too late for Elemental since it is released, but given how long multi-core and 64-bit processors have been out, and how common they are now, added to Stardock's supporting-games-in-the-long-run mantra, I was a bit disappointed to discover that Elemental has no multi-core nor 64-bit support.  It runs out of memory at the 32-bit max mark, and will tax one core at 100%.  I don't understand the technicals, but that tells me the game would run much more smoothly if it could use more than just one of my quad cores and would take longer to hit my computer's memory capacity (4 GB of RAM + 4 GB or so of a pagefile).  It won't stop the game from having OOM crashes from memory leaks, but they would be a lot less frequent since it'd take a lot longer to reach them, and when the bugs are worked out, it would provide room for the game to scale.

 

It would be fantastic if multi-core and 64-bit support might be considered for the 1.1x "expansion," or maybe 1.2x, or maybe the first full expansion for Elemental, but even if not, I hope whatever is eventually in the queue after Elemental will have such support.

 

On the other hand, there would be some advantages for Stardock to try, at least experimentally, to add multicore/64-bit support to its older games like GalCiv II since that game is a lot more stable, and thus you'd have a cleaner platform to try something new on so the Stardock programmers would have the experience (should I say, level up? XD) to eliminate multicore/64-bit bugs if they applied it to Elemental and future games.  It'd really put the money where Stardock's mouth is that they will support games in the long run.

10,054 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I would like to second that!!  I run an intel I7 64 bit machine with 6 Gigs of memory under Win 7.  I get crashes after about 1 to 2 hrs with an "Out of Memory" message.  When I Ctl-Alt-Del and open the task manager I see Elemental has grabbed 1.4 to 1.6 Gigs.

 

This needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

64-bit games are usually a bad idea as it tends to bloat the code base. Remember, variables and pointers take up twice as much space in 64 bit and calculations are a little slower but without any advantage.

Identifying areas where you can do parallelism in any game is a serious challenge. Supreme Commander was able to do it because it would break up all of the AI Scripts which did not have any dependancies on each other. In Elemental things tend to work in a particular order and wouldn't be able to be processed simulateously as each step affects the next step.

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Just an update. Yesterday I received a notice that a major update was available for Elemental, which I installed.  Impulse then informed me that I had v1.08b BETA.  I was able to run the game but it was extremely slow, taking 1 to 2 minutes to complete a turn.  No good.  So, I uninstalled Elemental and re-downloaded through Impulse.  Again v1.08b BETA.  The game ran well for maybe 30 truns then hung in the middle of a turn.  CTL-ALT-DEL and Task MAnager showed Elemental with 1.6 Gigs memory.  This is about what has been happening all along.

 

The memory leak apparently is not fixed, in spite of the claim made during the update process.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

The game plays pretty well for me.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I agree with the OP. As more and more titles get 'simplified' or 'steamlined' hard core strategy gamers are having a difficult time. Look what happened to Supreme Commander series. Even Civilization V, although adding some nice concepts, has lost a lot of its depth.  Galactic Civilization 2 is awesome, the only thing I would like tweaked is the ship to ship combat animations. It took me several months to learn the nuances and I enjoyed every minute. The shipyard is really fun once you figure it out and I feel I have a personal relationship with some of the AI. I love that game.

We really need a publisher/developer to stand up and reset the boundaries. The mere fact of utilizing the full 64 bits is a major marketing tool.

I want to see Elemental get deep..really deep. I want a tech tree 5x bigger than Empire Earth.

Stardock should open up contests for community submitted monsters.

Note: I have not purchased Elemental yet. I am waiting to see if Stardock gives gamers a sanctuary from the general trend of newer games to hold players hands and make things simple for them, or if they make Elemental one of the deepest TBS games ever created. I am not concerned with the bugs because I am sure they will be addressed.

Addendum: I just brought Elemental, I want to be involved with the community and see where Stardock takes this thing.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

64 bit will be supported, it has been delayed because of HAVOK wanting to charge twice once for 32bit and again to allow stardock to use 64bit. But they always intended a 64 bit version, and when it does become available 64 bit impulse customers who bought Elemental will get it automaticly.

 

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Hey Mriguy, have you tried out AI Wars yet. Sounds like something you might like as it isn't some simple run of the mill strategy and actually has a lot of depth to it. I just discovered it and am glad I did. Also not sure what you think about RPGs but King's Bounty is a fun RPG/Tactical Strategy game. I've been playing that a lot and having a blast.

 

Back on track, 64bit would be great, but in all seriousness this game isn't so complex that it needs more than 2GBs. Most of the modern games I've played recently don't use more than 2GBs that I have noticed and a lot of people only have 2GBs in their computers anyway, so yeah..

Now multi-threading is another thing and it could certainly benefit from that.