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[Lyrax]

quote:Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>Hate to rain on your parade, but this is the best game ever:
SOLITAIRE</STRONG>

NO.  Unless by "great game" you mean "hogs a large portion of western civilization's man-hours".  Solitaire's depth is only rivalled in paucity by the enjoyment one feels while playing it.  And the benefit one gains from not paying anything for it competes directly with the lack of gameplay.

No, umiman, that is not a great game.  It's not really even a game.  You don't "play" solitaire or minesweeper because you want to do something fun, you "play" them because you're utterly bored, and you don't have any drying paint nearby that needs watching.  Think that's a great game?  You're crazy!

'scuse me.  I mean: I respect your opinion, but I must say I am disinclined to agree with it.

[umiman]

It certainly isn't a "great game" (and I never said it was), but it quite simply is the "best game".

I wanted to highlight, somewhat ineffectively, the problem with repeatedly calling something the "best game" but Neonivek did a better job than I did. I don't think anything in this world is ever deserving of the title "best" because there is no such thing (other than me, but I digress). If everyone were to universally concede something as "best", it would mean it would be impossible to surpass it, and that's just sad. It would only serve to inflate egos and spread elitism among members as well as players while stifling imagination and ambition. Besides, what on earth would we call the next version of Dwarf Fortress if this one is the "best game"? The "besterest game"?

Thus, through some strange convoluted thinking process, one was supposed to see that if Dwarf Fortress or any other game were the "best game", then Solitaire was the "best game" as well.

[ShunterAlhena]

quote:Originally posted by Lyrax:
<STRONG>
No, umiman, that is not a great game.  It's not really even a game.  You don't "play" solitaire or minesweeper because you want to do something fun, you "play" them because you're utterly bored, and you don't have any drying paint nearby that needs watching.  Think that's a great game?  You're crazy!
</STRONG>

Agreed, I despise all computer-based card games yet sometimes I do find myself playing solitaire. Why? Because that's what is available. If you had Solitaire AND a variant of Dwarf Fortress that is as "easy to hide" as Solitaire, which one would you play? Actually, given that you're at home, with a powerful computer and access to many titles, what do you play? DF. Now, this is the true measure of greatness.

EDIT: This post was written before umiman's above reply, I just didn't send it. It's now been rendered largely irrelevant.  

[ May 13, 2008: Message edited by: ShunterAlhena ]

[Frobozz]

quote:Originally posted by sinoth:
<STRONG>- Take a task.
- Try to split it up into parts.
- See if the parts can be run at the same time.
- If they can, stick them in threads. If not, oh well.</STRONG>

Really the nature of Dwarf Fortress makes it especially easy to multithread portions. Especially the portion having to do with updating the state of the world (ie the cellular automaton portion). That alone would provide a tremendous boost in performance. Enough that you could probably skip multithreading the rest.   :p

 

quote:Originally posted by Cajoes:
<STRONG>Multiple cores are overrated anyway.</STRONG>

Nothing overrated about them at all. But unless you use software that requires a large amount of processing power (encoding, rendering models, etc) you just won't see the big of a difference with more than two cores. Anything less than two cores is just stupid - the price difference is simply not worth it.

Oh and for those of you who like to research future Intel technology, check up on Nehalem. Nehalem is going to be replacing the Intel Core 2 architecture. You might find something else interesting. That's right! The list currently lacks mention of a single-core model. And even if they eventually do come out with one, each core supports a more advanced form of hyperthreading. So it'll still attempt to run more than one thread at a time.

[ May 14, 2008: Message edited by: Frobozz ]

[Fedor]

There are a lot of things about what ToadyOne does that make me go "WOW", but the one that has me most in awe is just how stable and crash-free the "alphas" he releases tend to be.  Freakin' amazing...

[ShunterAlhena]

Yeah, I've been playing DF for well over half a year now and it crashed twice. Same bug. Corrected in next release, a week later.

Meanwhile, I was never able to complete Half-Life 2 Episode 2 because of a persistent crash that always occurs in the same damn place.

Feel the difference!  

[Onul]

I'd add on to the fawning praise, but that seems very cliche.

Instead, I am going to offer a blood sacrifice tomorrow night. He is, after all, a mortal god. I do not think my neighbor will notice that her cat is missing for quite some time, so all in all, it's all simply dependent on if Toady will accept offerings of cat blood.

Also, I am dreadfully curious. I understand that Today is a PHD in Mathematics--which scares me to death, personally. What I wanna know is where he studied, and what his background in programming is. Like, outside the practical stuff that we all love and stay up with until 3am instead of studying for midterms. Self-taught? Because if he's self-taught, I'm entirely inspired to give self-teaching another shot.

And if not, I'll totally try again anyway, because he and his work are just that awesome.

[thvaz]

AFAIK, most of what Toady knows abour programming is self-taught. He should had some courses at programming in Mathematics, though.

[Dae]

quote:Originally posted by Onul:
<STRONG>I do not think my neighbor will notice that her cat is missing for quite some time</STRONG>

She will.
And more relevant, I will.
Do not touch the cats.
Sacrifice babies and/or rebelling teenagers. No one will notice them. Especially not me.
(  :p )

[martinuzz]

quote:Originally posted by Lightning4:
<STRONG>

I've actually noticed something odd pertaining to this. My laptop, when running DF seems to behave as though it is fully utilizing both cores. I'm probably wrong about this, but that's what the CPU load is showing me. It's not background programs either, with my base programs running it gets like 5-10% on each core, but DF brings each core to around 60-80% or more.</STRONG>

It MUST be something else using one of your cores. DF uses only one. If I open my task manager, DF use 100% of my first core, and none of my second. That makes sense, because DF simply CANNOT use two cores.

Check your running processes again.