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AI Improvement with Dual or Quad Core?


Neepster

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One of the things that seems to be a fairly common complaint on here is that the AI seems to be far dumber in CMSF than it was in CMx1. To some extent this may just be the AI not being patched to some "good"/future "improved state" extent.

However, it seems that some of it is the limitations of coding an AI that operates in "Real Time" that can figure out what to do on the fly in a microprocessor that is simultaneously rendering 3D graphics, controlling the simulation, accepting input and running the AI.

If so, then is it possible to spawn the AI into a separate thread so that those of us who have dual core or quad core machines can get a better AI experience? With a full core (or two) working to calculate the AI actions, one can probably get better results and still have "Real Time" gaming.

I mean, for those without dual core, you'd still get the same current level of AI, but for those of us with more horses under the hood so to speak, we'd get an "improved" experience...

Thoughts?

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List of Symptoms and Fixes for CM:SF performance/stability issues from Steve -

Very Poor Performance, Teleporting Units, and Freezes

Symptoms - framerate less than one would expect from a much slower system and infrequent, but common, freezing up. Some cases of "teleporting units" likely related to this problem.

People Affected - seems to be multi-processors (AMD 64 and Core Duo), with 32bit OS, and nVidia card of 7xxx and 8xxx series (drivers don't make a difference). We're not sure if the cards are incidental, but it appears they have something to do with this.

Solution - one solution identified, at least for AMD 64 processors, is to disable AMD's Dual Core Optimizer. This is a suboptimal fix, but at the moment it is all we have and it will fix the problem. We are looking into code changes that might better address the problem. Here is the setup AMD users with this problem should try the first then the second suggested fix if the first one doesn't work:

FIRST

* 1. Run the game.

2. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to bring up Task Manager.

3. Go to the Processes tab.

4. Right click on CM Shock Force.exe

5. Select Set Affinity...

6. Uncheck one of the boxes.

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I'm not saying it doesn't happen to some, just not to me... And I haven't disabled any of my cores... Of course, I am using an XFX Nvidia Geforce 7800GT graphics card, so I am not sure why this isn't happening to me.

Anyway, the question still stands... Assuming they can fix whatever bugs they have that seems to not like video cards with dual core procs...

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v1.04 will make CM much happier with multi-processors, but there is no specific "optimization" for tapping into additional cores. That will take some dedicated development and testing time that we don't have right now. But yeah, anybody with a multi-processor system is going to be happy with v1.04 even if they experienced no oddities.

As for the AI, the AI isn't the way it is because of the shortage of CPU cycles (well, not specifically anyway). It's the way it is because AI takes a TON of time to program, test, tweak, test, tweak, and then test some more. CMx1's AI was also easier to program due to the more simplistic environment. So it isn't that the AI is hobbled by CPU limitations, it is simply not matured yet. We worked on CMx1's AI for many years. We've got some time to go with CM:SF yet smile.gif

Steve

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