Aurora 4x

VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: iain on October 17, 2012, 08:04:25 AM

Title: Speed!!!
Post by: iain on October 17, 2012, 08:04:25 AM
Seeing that Aurora is such a intense CPU using game it comes as no suprise that it can stall most computers.
But all I want too see is that it uses multi cores instead of one.  I myself have a 3. 3 Ghz quad-core and find that it uses 1 core to the Max.  but i can play any other game with aurora in the background.

secondly WHY does a large population have such an adverse effect on game speed.

if you try too generate a 7000M population Earth it almost takes 15 minutes too generate.

thirdly why does having many savegames affect performance.  A new game with aurora runs as smooth as silk but after 5 new games it is a jittery mess.  could you not write that it saves individual savegames' componets into their own directory.

fourthly; What an amazing game.   ;D
Title: Re: Speed!!!
Post by: clement on October 17, 2012, 10:45:33 AM
The performance of Aurora is due to the fact that it is not multi-threaded. Because of this it cannot take advantage of multiple cores. It is not multi-threaded because of the difficulty of doing that in the language it is written in.
Title: Re: Speed!!!
Post by: Nathan_ on October 17, 2012, 11:31:32 AM
regardless of the language it is written in many of the concepts in aurora can run into scale problems very quickly, its a big game.
Title: Re: Speed!!!
Post by: Mel Vixen on October 20, 2012, 07:28:23 PM
Having many games running in one installment of Aurora impacts your game btw. because all the games are in a single database (iirc) which leads to additional problems.
Title: Re: Speed!!!
Post by: Erik L on October 20, 2012, 08:13:01 PM
Having many games running in one installment of Aurora impacts your game btw. because all the games are in a single database (iirc) which leads to additional problems.

Probably the best thing to do is make copies of stevefire.mdb and use one for each game. Just copy into a separate "save game" folder and overwrite the main directory file when needed. Just remember to copy back out after you are done.
Title: Re: Speed!!!
Post by: vonduus on November 23, 2012, 06:47:53 AM
This may be all wrong, anyway:

I have found, that if I open Windows Job Manager and check performance, Aurora is only using one core (I have a dual-core machine). But if I give Aurora a higher priority, it begins using the second core, sometimes so much, that my machine seems to freeze (both cores at 100%). Aurora is not multi-core capable, so what happens, I believe, is that Aurora uses some windows standard routines (like read/write), and that those routines then get their own core when Aurora is prioritized.

I may be wrong, but I believe that turns take a little less time to compute, when Aurora is prioritized. Not so much that I actually feel the difference every turn, but I believe that in the long run I may save quite some time.