[1.19c] multi-threading out of control ?

from Elemental Forums

Lots of things seem to happen a bit out of order.  Next-turn, get the message you have researched a new tech and can pick one, get some other messages, then get the message to pick what area to research next.  (Or maybe sometimes I swear that last message never comes and the game decides I want to keep researching the same old).  It would be easier if the tech messages came back-to-back.

I don't know what to blame it on except maybe that there are too many threads not coordinating closely enough.

The high (low?) point was when I next-turned and between lots of other things, was attacked by bandits and killed them, then LATER got the greeting from them. 

Task mgr says Elemental uses over 20 threads.  Maybe it needs another 20+ to coordinate the first 20+ ?  :)

elemental
3,137 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Just crappy UI with a million pop-ups all set to "display above everything else". Tech research, arcane research, combat events are the worst villains I think. Finish a combat, enter another combat, finish that, go out and get the loot screen from the first combat. Oookay.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

In a normal Windows environment, such tasks are handled by 'modal' dialog boxes. That means when they pop up, they have their own message loops that stop the main UI thread from continuing until the user gives a response. In a game where things need to be animating and so forth behind the dialog box, you either have to all the static UI stuff in its own thread, or you have to use 'modeless' dialog boxes which operate like separate mini-application windows, which unlike modal dialog boxes, have the capability to pop up willy nilly in any kind of order.

If they can't use modal dialogs, they need to fake this somehow so there's a queue of needed responses before other things happen. Right now they're just throwing up dialogs when there's a need for one detected. Technically it all works out, but it is kinda confusing to deal with the most recent message before the older ones.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

The


Next-turn, get the message you have researched a new tech and can pick one, get some other messages, then get the message to pick what area to research next.  (Or maybe sometimes I swear that last message never comes and the game decides I want to keep researching the same old).  It would be easier if the tech messages came back-to-back.
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I have experienced this as well.  I thought I was just clicking through the game to fast and had inadvertently selected something.  But, the game has moved on without me selecting a research option other times.  It seems it just defaults to the next one in line in the same tree.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

This is one thing that Civ 5 did REALLY well. The notifications that required attention came up as icons that you could deal with sometime during the turn, but not right away. The ones that you had to deal with still blocked your turn from ending until you took care of them, but they didn't pop up right away and interrupt what you're doing (or pop up and interrupt dealing with another popup).

It's probably too late to do that in Elemental, but they could reduce the number of things that spawn a popup which itself would alleviate the problem.