Welcome - Clockwork Empires Announcement

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by MOOMANiBE, Aug 27, 2012.

  1. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    Physical, delta534. It's about processing power and not ability to calculate stuff from so many processes at once.
  2. My current laptop meets the requirements and it was about seven hundred as of several months ago.

    Sooo in a year and a half quad core computers will probably be pretty cheap. (I mean, a few hundred is still a lot but like... I've found a few hundred for a one time purchase is much easier to scrounge up then several hundred a month for food :p)
  3. eskr

    eskr Member

    "Quadcore" sounds fancy, but it's pretty standard. As is 4gigs of ram (I'm using 16 right now; and that's not even fancy anymore). Not that I can speak to your situation, but those are not demanding specs by almost any estimation. You can probably picksomething up on craigslist for near free if it's really a problem when the time comes.

    The year and a half is the number I was looking for though. Will try not to think too much about this in that case. S'a long way away (well, until a year and a half from now, at which point it won't have been any time at all ; ).

    @tentgq: yeah DF requires ridiculous levels of micromanagement (micromanagment without strategy, as what you tell them to do is always obvious). Couldn't get into it. Really glad to see gaslamp tkaign a swing at this. Seems like a really fun project for them given their academic bent too.
  4. Xaxio

    Xaxio Member

    That metalworker is hot. I'd hit that. Thanks, Gaslamp artists!

    Also, I have four apple cores here...will that run it? ;)
  5. Psiweapon

    Psiweapon Member

    I'd wager the diggles are the invisible geometers, plotting from behind the veil.

    It's not the same universe. But I have yet to read that they aren't set in the same multiverse.
    Fayd, Lorrelian, eskr and 1 other person like this.
  6. delta534

    delta534 Member

    That makes no sense. Laptop Intel core i5 processors are dual core processors but have much more computing power that the quad core AMD A8 processors. The i5 processors also have hyperthreading which makes it look like it has 4 cores to the OS, which is why I asked basically do logical cores count or does cpu need 4 physical cores.
  7. Kamisma

    Kamisma Member

    I don't think there's ridiculous amounts of micromanagement in DF it's just that the UI is so terrible that a simple and common task like building a wall around your cave entrance become a nightmare, but you just have to set the building the area then the dwarves automatically build the wall if they have the skills and materials. So that's not micromanagement, just horribly tedious interface.

    It's something you get a bit used to after playing a while, but the UI definitely the only downside of DF for me (and the recent releases that were encrusted with bugs). Gfx are not really an issue with proper tilesets.
  8. Daniel

    Daniel CEO Staff Member

    So the quad core requirement is actually a general bar for both logical cores and physical processing power. The game should "run" on one logical core at an arbitrary speed, but it will try to open at least 2 threads, and the more the merrier. The quad core bar is a recommendation, not a strict requirement, but it will be pretty strongly recommended. These games take a lot of processing.
    OmniNegro likes this.
  9. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member


    That makes sense, only you are unable to see it. I know what "hyperthreading" is in that particular processor series because I'm using a laptop with such a processor for quite some time, and I can tell you that if anything, if something requires "4 cores, X GHz or more", then you can get by with something that only has 2 cores, or even just 1, but that is only if the cores you do have have enough processing power and not if you have 1 or 2 cores with each of them being an "X GHz" one. Which is exactly why I wrote that what matters is processing power.

    Hyperthreading does not make it magically possible to play games that require twice the cores. It is simply something used for making it easier for your computer to manage its processing capacity, because now it has twice as many "cores" it can assign tasks to. But it can only do that if these tasks do not require your cores' full capacity; if something needs processing power equal to what 4 of your computer's cores would have and your computer only has 2 cores, hyperthreading gives you nothing at all.
    OmniNegro likes this.
  10. Tycho

    Tycho Member

    ermahgerd clockwork empires

    something to give this computer a workout, finally
  11. delta534

    delta534 Member

    Well, I got the information I need and this discussion on CPUs is why I hate CPU requirements for games and marketing people. CPU are at the point where the amount of cores and clock speed are nearly useless in figuring out how fast a cpu will need to before a game. Marketing people why try to pass a dual core processor off as a quad core, AMD I'm looking at you, are also to blame.
  12. impishacid

    impishacid Member

    My bet is that diggles are 'invented' out of street urchins (or for a less brutal take, local fauna) by unchecked scientists experimenting with new ways to speed mining efficiency :)
  13. OmniaNigrum

    OmniaNigrum Member

    Kazeto beat me to saying my thoughts on "Hyperthreading". (AKA Making up threads with zero added processing power.)
  14. jhffmn

    jhffmn Member

    I was hoping that Odin was a dwarf fortress like game. I'm guessing this far out a lot of the game play mechanics are far from set in stone, but can I take a stab at the base mechanics?

    Randomly generated world + a small handful of settlers to start. The idea is to build a city and manage an economy in a hostile world. Your settlers mostly follow orders when happy but occasionally do whatever they want, go mad, and/or die.

    Sounds pretty neat.
  15. joe bones

    joe bones Member

    Sounds good to me.
  16. Even if you use tools like Dwarf Therapist it still takes quite a lot of micromanagement. It certainly could be helped a lot by improving the interface and adding a few more automated features. (Which it sort of sounds like this is doing? I mean like with the line about your scientists turning evil if you leave them alone, it sounds like production will happen without you needing to cue up every single job. Which is definitely a good thing.)

    I do think DF's difficulty is a TAD overhyped (mostly it just has the most brutal learning curve ever, but once you've figured out how to embark and set up your basic industries and housing its pretty smooth sailing.) but it's still not a game for everyone, and this could definitely help with that.

    Plus, magic science. Evil magic science. You can't go wrong with that.
    OmniNegro likes this.
  17. OmniaNigrum

    OmniaNigrum Member

    Not trying to argue, but what CPUs has AMD done this with? Intel has Hyperthreading. The closest AMD comes to this that I know of is that the Bulldozer line combines two Integer cores for massive Floats. But how many games use floats that big anyway? Very few if any.

    If AMD has done this, I want to hear about it so I can give them grief over it just like I do with Intel's Hyperthreading BS.
  18. Wootah

    Wootah Member

    What will the people be called? Certainly not sims. Not poets either. Is there a name already established/announced?
  19. delta534

    delta534 Member

    I was referring to AMD's bulldozer and piledriver modules. Each modules has two integer units and one float point unit. The issues are that, even with the revisions that the piledriver modules brought to the table they are typically slow than an i5 and there is a lot of floating point math that goes in games, especially 3d games. The modules are closer to two cores a than Intels hyperthreading, which is more a successful attempt to better utilize existing hardware than anything else, but they are not full cores in my opinion since they suffer from the issue of for any given module, trying to run two threads, on that module, that both require the fpu will be like running the threads on a single core.
  20. OmniaNigrum

    OmniaNigrum Member

    I have never in my entire lifetime heard of a game on any platform using a 16 byte (128 bit) Float for anything at all.

    Name anything that has, and then illustrate that it was not made by Intel to pester AMD, and I will eat my own words. (Yes, I will print them up and eat the entire page. :D)


    The "modules" are paired, and each pair shares a single 128 bit floating point ... I will just quote it.
    That is from the link above. Check for yourself. The point is not that AMD is better in any way. But rather that what you said strikes me as being untrue. (That does not mean it is, nor that you intended to confuse my muddled brainstuffs.)

    3D games do use lots of Floats. But almost exclusively 8 byte floats. So each "Module" can infact do that as one separate core.

    If you want to discuss this more, we should make a new thread about it. I would like to hear a rebuttal if you care to chat. :) (If we make a new thread about this, we can probably convince Daynab to move these posts there so we do not clutter up this thread. He will probably want me to pay him some Digglebucks....)

    *Edit* Daynab, your Digglebucks are in the mail... Here is the thread.