Hiya guys,
I was an editor for PC-Zone Benelux for nearly 1,5 years, and during that time I learned A LOT about games and what makes 'em tick. Before the PC Zone-time, I was a fanatic gameplayer. Playing games but not knowing what makes 'em tick. I do now, and I think I know what's wrong with the technical side of EU.
It's the damned game-engine,i.e. the machina. It's wrong, it doesn't cooperate with Windows fully and it misses 'laps'.
Just swith the time to '1 minute = 1 year' and you will see that - once the AI-controlled powers get big, with colonies and all - the clock itself goes haywire. At the start, the clock really flows like water down a straigt drain. Once the powers get big, the clock starts to 'flicker'. Which means that the AI has to communicate with Windows, and through that with the processor. I.e., it takes the AI a hell of a lot of thinkwork in order to proceed with the overall game process.
In the meantime, your pc's memory has to keep track of all this. The thing is: REDUNDANT DATA-USE IS ALSO STORED IN THE RAM-MEMORY!!! Which fills the memory with about 30% of redundant data. Now, normally the memory works like A+B+C+D+E+F etc. However, when the dataflux goes something like A+F+E+C+D+E+G then it's NOT logical and the processor AND the RAM have to work twice as hard. Since the processor itself does not (yet!) have RAM-memory itself, you can see where things go wrong. RAM gets flushed, reaches a peak and goes bye-bye. In other words, the game crashes back to the Win9X-desktop cuz your computer is actually saying: 'Whoa...!? Too much unlogical data, and I'm already too busy to cope with it?'
My advice: take a really good look at the way Microprose/Firaxes put together Civilization 2 and/or Alpha Centauri.
I was an editor for PC-Zone Benelux for nearly 1,5 years, and during that time I learned A LOT about games and what makes 'em tick. Before the PC Zone-time, I was a fanatic gameplayer. Playing games but not knowing what makes 'em tick. I do now, and I think I know what's wrong with the technical side of EU.
It's the damned game-engine,i.e. the machina. It's wrong, it doesn't cooperate with Windows fully and it misses 'laps'.
Just swith the time to '1 minute = 1 year' and you will see that - once the AI-controlled powers get big, with colonies and all - the clock itself goes haywire. At the start, the clock really flows like water down a straigt drain. Once the powers get big, the clock starts to 'flicker'. Which means that the AI has to communicate with Windows, and through that with the processor. I.e., it takes the AI a hell of a lot of thinkwork in order to proceed with the overall game process.
In the meantime, your pc's memory has to keep track of all this. The thing is: REDUNDANT DATA-USE IS ALSO STORED IN THE RAM-MEMORY!!! Which fills the memory with about 30% of redundant data. Now, normally the memory works like A+B+C+D+E+F etc. However, when the dataflux goes something like A+F+E+C+D+E+G then it's NOT logical and the processor AND the RAM have to work twice as hard. Since the processor itself does not (yet!) have RAM-memory itself, you can see where things go wrong. RAM gets flushed, reaches a peak and goes bye-bye. In other words, the game crashes back to the Win9X-desktop cuz your computer is actually saying: 'Whoa...!? Too much unlogical data, and I'm already too busy to cope with it?'
My advice: take a really good look at the way Microprose/Firaxes put together Civilization 2 and/or Alpha Centauri.
.