Multithreaded?

[drfish]

Will Civ IV be multithreaded? As a TBS it seems like the perfect
application for dual core CPUs, it should be much simpler to program
than someting that runs in realtime, and could either significantly cut
down the wait time between turns or give you more power to make the AI
that much smarter... Seems like a winner to me and it would be good
for Firaxis to be one of the first developers to bring a fully
multithreaded game to market...

Edit: Just read some threads about GalCiv running the AI in the background while the player is moving, brilliant! I can't believe Civ doesn't already do this...

 

[mitsho]

So multithreaded means that the Computer is doing some calculation while the player is moving? Definitely a good thing, and I do not (yet?) see the negatives.
Should be included, cause it probably helps 'not-so-good' computers to keep up...

m

 

[warpstorm]

There is a downside. Multithread bugs are very hard to track down.

 

[drfish]

So multithreaded means that the Computer is doing some calculation while the player is moving?...

Not quite, that part they could do now, your CPU isn't running full tilt when you're taking your turn so it could be planning for the AI while it waits...

The multithreaded part would allow the use of multiple CPUs or CPU cores to crunch the numbers more quickly regardless of what else was going on.

There is a downside. Multithread bugs are very hard to track down.

How? I'm just saying it would be a smaller tasks to thread Civ IV than most games since it doesn't have to happen in realtime. Keeping the processors in sync is the overhead cost of threading most games and the main reason more games are SMP aware already (well, that and the fact the we're only now just starting to see dual processor computers becoming common)...