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[forsaken1111]

Welp, turns out that the ONLY thing being done my the servers is DRM

I'm not surprised. In fact I posted on launch day that you don't need an online connection to play.

Well that answers one question I had... I just got a message in the middle of playing saying that the servers are down but I was able to continue playing just fine.

I don't know why this came as a surprise to anyone. Its pretty plain that there is nothing being offloaded to the servers.

[Neonivek]

Honestly why does anyone think that a server over the internet and running millions of other players games is better at running calculations then your own computer?

It isn't.

[The Darkling Wolf]

That much should be obvious by their claims that they couldn't track a sim's location or appearance as it would be too taxing.

[jocan2003]

That much should be obvious by their claims that they couldn't track a sim's location or appearance as it would be too taxing.

I know my computer could, hell i can run DF no problem up to 80 dwarf with no FPS drop, and thats on a SINGLE core no GPU assistance...

[forsaken1111]

That much should be obvious by their claims that they couldn't track a sim's location or appearance as it would be too taxing.

I know my computer could, hell i can run DF no problem up to 80 dwarf with FPS drop, and thats on a SINGLE core no GPU assistance...

Indeed, some of us do have computers which could handle these things. It would be nice if they were at least optional.

[jocan2003]

Im quite sure you remove all the falsh and the game could run on a 6yr old PC... Its basicly a statisical program with graphics on it, the traffic pathfinding tax the computer, but beside that only a few calculation are done ( once again beside the pathfinding ).

Hell even DF is more taxing than this game big a long shot, the only problem with it is si.ngle-core no GPU assistance... add both of them to the game and it would be better on all point ( technicly speaking ) and guess what? doesnt require internet or server connection.

[Meta]

Welp, turns out that the ONLY thing being done my the servers is DRM

[alexandertnt]

Im quite sure you remove all the falsh and the game could run on a 6yr old PC... Its basicly a statisical program with graphics on it.

This holds true for almost every simulation and RPG game. And the graphics part holds true for almost every modern game.

Besides, thats like saying DF shouldnt use much CPU power because the only thing it does that should be CPU heavy is pathfinding and water physics.

Honestly why does anyone think that a server over the internet and running millions of other players games is better at running calculations then your own computer?

It isn't.

Well, there is a whole field of computer science called Distributed Computing. Add to that the commercial servers that turn a high-end PC into a little toy and it doesn't seem unreasonable.

That being said Sim City doesn't appear to do that, so meh.

[Skyrunner]

The problem being high-end servers runnIng thousands of simulations won't really be better than my xcomputer running one sim... >_>

[Neonivek]

Exactly. No matter how great the server is the home computer will still be supperior.

[jocan2003]

Also im thinking here about latency mainly, Im trying to understand how it can be faster to offload a matehatical problem over internet when you could just make it. I mean let's look at it this way. Most of ppl who plays game on computer has at least a graphic card for the game fluff and crap 4gig or ram ( not relate here since we are talking about processor power) and at least the equivalent of a 2.8Ghz dual core and thats some random minimal figure im throwing in. So correct me if im wrong, but even if the server would alleviate our computer by let just say .4Ghz that still a lot of information coming in and out of your computer basicly saturing your internet connection with calculation request and answer handling wich in turn would require your CPU to process these answer to integrate in the game.

Im am no computer expert at all, but from my point of view thats how im seeing it... Unless the other way would be us creating a dedicated process on the server, reserving processor power just for us in their massive program who can handle thousand of player connected simulatanously making thousand time that little .4. Sorry but equivalent of a 400Ghz server just for 1000player? What kind of server farm do they have? and that little measly .4Ghz can easily be done on our side anyway and wont slow down the game that much if player has barely the minimal spec, in fact, just bump the frigging minimal spec for all i care.... Dont shove shit trough my throat... ( Speaking about EA professional liars. )


Edit: Or if we go the MMO way, client send a request to the server to run a function wich ask the fudged population to avoid possible cheat to buff it up, that would be a better explanation but even then, thats for cheat control nothing else, and we all saw that there is no such thing as cheat protection... Heck you can even blow up other vities for fun with a small easy game hack/mod.....

[alexandertnt]

So correct me if im wrong, but even if the server would alleviate our computer by let just say .4Ghz that still a lot of information coming in and out of your computer basicly saturing your internet connection with calculation request and answer handling wich in turn would require your CPU to process these answer to integrate in the game.

Not necessarily. Consider a computational problem that requires a very hevy ammount of easily parallelizable computation to be performed on a small ammount of data, to yield a small ammount of data. Transmitting the data accross the internet is simple enough due to its size, and the (many core) servers can process the data much faster than the home computer.

There would also be a benefit if computing the result of one set of data leads to a solution, or part of a solution that can be used to speed up the computation of some future problems. Though I am pretty sure this does not apply to Sim City, it still shows that Distributed Computing is much more complicated then you are making it out to be.

The problem being high-end servers runnIng thousands of simulations won't really be better than my xcomputer running one sim... >_>

In Sim City's case, yes. I was not saying that it may be more efficient for Sim City to do this, just showing that there are indeed cases where computations on a server may be better than doing it on a home computer.

Sim City's solution is silly and full of lies though.

It is also interesting to see that portions of Sim City are written in Javascript. Looks like scripting languages are starting to be taken seriously

[Neonivek]

Except there is a major flaw in what you wrote. You still have to transfer that information long distance while at the same time multiplying the load.

In otherwords it is currently impractical for any game to do this.

[alexandertnt]

Except there is a major flaw in what you wrote. You still have to transfer that information long distance while at the same time multiplying the load.

In otherwords it is currently impractical for any game to do this.

What I described is used when implementing part of the multiplayer component of a game, so many games already do this. Just not on the same scale, which would be impractical. But my point was to show that you can't just subtract Mhz's from one computer and add it to a server when working out the server load.

[Neonivek]

so many games already do this

Not for the same purpose, it doesn't use multiple computers together to do the same computation faster. It tends to be one computer sending information that must be calculated on its side to be given to a central location to be sent to all other computers.

In otherwords the "Many games already do this" is just one computer doing pretty much all the work.