ORIGINAL: Peter Fisla
ORIGINAL: Dietrich53
I have about a 3-4 sec delay when mowing at daylight (night is fine). I have a iMac 3.2 GHz i5, 32 GB and run Windows 7 under Parallel Desktop while having programs open on the OSX side. It is playable, but somewhat inconvenient.
One area of streamlining is the Advance Phase. Since nobody is allowed to shoot there is no reasoon for LOS checking. This whole section can be taking out of the code.
A unit can move in Advance Segment, hence it can discover new enemy hex so yes I do need to check for LOS.
TotH is a single core application, the game doesn't take advantage of multi core CPU. When I started writing the game in 2006, I didn't have multi-core CPU. This is something I would like to address in the future, however there is no way I can make substantial changes to the code as that would be very labour intensive as well as I do not want to take a chance to make the game engine unstable by possibly introducing bugs in the process. The LOS and pathfinding functions are very CPU demanding (never mind the AI processing on top), more units on larger maps will be very CPU demanding. Also, these two functions are very complicated/detailed and I decided from the beginning to write them properly without taking shortcuts. I figured, I write the functions once and let the hardware catch up. It's extremely difficult to write these two complex functions and then come back to the code two/three years later and remember what I have done in the past and make the functionality more detailed...this type of process is prone to messing things up and introduces defects - I wanted to avoid this.
I can't off-load this processing to GPU because there are so many different versions of GPU and I'm only one developer.
I don't want to come off as a jerk because I get that you are just one developer and this likely isn't even your primary job. However, the new release of the Kursk DLC effectively just made your game defective by its very definition. It is virtually unplayable. Not sure if it was your decision to put out the DLC or not, but maybe suggest no more big campaign games if the engine cannot scale.
I am not calling your baby ugly, because you have produced a great game, but if you want to take it to the next level, then you are going to have to bring it up to current standards and not a 10 year old standard or start to use shortcuts (e.g., center point LOS) to reduce the single core CPU load. Otherwise this game will die on the vine.
One additional thought and I hope it is helpful - I found it odd that as the computer chews on the processing during the firing phase, I get almost instantaneous feedback on the result in the result window, then have to wait 5 or 10 seconds for the little bullets and sound. I tried turning off the sound and same lag. Is there something on the graphics side that can be tweaked that might be easier to tackle? Just a thought. Also, I have the saved file of the Kursk DLC where I gave up (about turn 8 or so) that I would happily share.