The 2 gig wall from 32 bit games & Civ 6

[Larsenex]

Greetings folks,

I have been going on and on about 64 bit but no word on it. Will the game be 64 bit or not?

Why I ask?

I am in a HUGE map Civ 5 with 5 mods in it. I have 23 Civs and 16 city states. At 260 the game grinds to a halt AND because of the wall, I lose icons, animations freeze and the game will CTD If I do not restart every other turn.

I can play insane maps with 55 ai for 500 turns in Gal Civ and the maps there are 20x larger. I think 680K hexes for insane, may be more.

I am really excited for Civ 6 but its 2016, little boy graphix aside there is absolutely no reason this game should not be 64 bit, UNLESS the target platform is a tablet or a cell phone or god forbid a console. No offense to Console users but the Civ franchise was and should be PC first, sorry my PC elitism is leaking out.

So Firaxis is Civ 6 64 bit?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I hope it is, but we have no info on that yet. It's only just been announced today.

 

[liltrogdor]

I also had a problem with civ 5 crashing on huge maps. I made the biggest map you can make in world builder IIRC 128 x 80 tiles by like late turn 200's the game was unplayable and i was just starting to enjoy it.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

X-com 2 is 64 bit, and while this is probably far removed from the civ development team, it means to me that it's a strong possibility. To be honest too, developing code for 32 and 64 bit isn't hard if done right from the start. Meaning, they could make both versions. They have confirmed as well that they developed the engine from scratch, another sign that it's a strong possibility (since they are not tied to limitations of previous build).

 

[Vic_Adams]

From what I heard from a peer/competitor (specifically Brad Wardell, CEO Stardock), Civ VI is indeed 64-bit, so no more 32-bit limit (he was bragging about how GalCiv III was the first 64-bit strat game engine). Hopefully the engine is also much more balanced to handle multi-cores more efficiently ... so frustrating Civ V turns took over a minute on my system with one core maxed out while the others weren't being used much :/

 

[ls612]

X-com 2 is 64 bit, and while this is probably far removed from the civ development team, it means to me that it's a strong possibility. To be honest too, developing code for 32 and 64 bit isn't hard if done right from the start. Meaning, they could make both versions. They have confirmed as well that they developed the engine from scratch, another sign that it's a strong possibility (since they are not tied to limitations of previous build).

XCOM uses UE3.5 (a heavily modified UE3). Civ 5 used a custom engine, and that probably was the basis for Civ 6. They understood in XCOM 2 that 64 bit was necessary to have lots of mods at once, so I'm hopeful that in 2016 a new Civ game has a 64 bit engine.

 

[Quintillus]

I was surprised that Civ5 didn't have a 64-bit version, as even Civ4 would run into the RAM ceiling (and the infamous Memory Allocation Failure, or MAF) on large enough maps. It was shortsighted to not make Civ5 support 64-bit natively, and would be silly for Civ6 not to - even the average Steam user has over 6 GB of RAM these days, and it'll be even higher by the end of the year.

I also really hope they make the AI take advantage of multiple CPU threads (as opposed to just the graphics rendering engine as in Civ5). One of the biggest weaknesses of the Civ series for me has been the AI turn times. If that can be cut by 70% or so on my quad-core, that would be a very nice improvement indeed.

These two themselves wouldn't make it an insta-buy for me, but if either (or worse, both) were missing, I would be cautious about buying even if the rest of the game looked solid. Firaxis was leading-edge with DX11 and Mantle support in Civ5; hopefully they'll now catch up with the rest of the industry and support the, IMO more important for strategy, 64-bit and multithreading features in Civ6.

From what I heard from a peer/competitor (specifically Brad Wardell, CEO Stardock), Civ VI is indeed 64-bit, so no more 32-bit limit (he was bragging about how GalCiv III was the first 64-bit strat game engine). Hopefully the engine is also much more balanced to handle multi-cores more efficiently ... so frustrating Civ V turns took over a minute on my system with one core maxed out while the others weren't being used much :/

Interesting... do you have a source link for that by chance? Stardock is indeed the company I tend to think of when I think of leading-edge strategy tech; as I recall GalCiv2 in the mid-2000's already was capable of using multiple threads for the AI, even though multi-thread systems were unusual back then.

 

[Nikolai II]

XCOM uses UE3.5 (a heavily modified UE3). Civ 5 used a custom engine, and that probably was the basis for Civ 6. They understood in XCOM 2 that 64 bit was necessary to have lots of mods at once, so I'm hopeful that in 2016 a new Civ game has a 64 bit engine.

While we don't have any information about if Civ6 is 64-bit or not, we have got confirmation in an interview that the Civ6 engine is brand new. Think it was Kotaku, but I've read so much today I might misremember the site.

 

[Nikolai II]

Right. It was IGN:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05...building-science-and-diplomacy#prclt-s61pv5bB

"First, the groundwork must be laid. Notably, this is the first Civ game since Civilization 4 in 2004 to launch with a completely new game engine – one Firaxis says it’s designed from the ground up with deep mod support in mind."

 

[kirbdog]

While we don't have any information about if Civ6 is 64-bit or not, we have got confirmation in an interview that the Civ6 engine is brand new.

Yes. And since it's 2016, I'd bet on it.

(What I wonder is whether it's single-threaded.)

 

[dexters]

64-bit makes sense; especially since they are aiming for it to be mod friendly, it will need to break the 2GB limit for all those mod files.

 

[anandus]

I read somewhere the engine used is Unity, in which case a 64-bit version is definitely possible.

 

[gunnergoz]

Somehow I can't see them creating a new engine in 32-bit form, it would be flat out crazy given their emphasis on modding support.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I read somewhere the engine used is Unity, in which case a 64-bit version is definitely possible.

I think that's more the kneejerk reaction to the graphics style. From the interviews I gathered, it's an in-house engine. Firaxis is a very programmer-heavy studio, so it's not a surprise that they're continuing to develop in-house engines.

I'm pretty sure the reason XCOM was running on Unreal Engine was the ability to port to consoles and they still modified it heavily (especially noticeable in XCOM2).

 

[stealth_nsk]

1. The main limit for the game to be 32-bit or 64-bit is not processor (all game machines now have 64-bit processors), but OS. Unfortunately, MS kept 32-bit OS version in Windows 10. Moreover, free upgrade allows upgrading 32-bit Windows 7 and 8 to 32-bit Windows 10 only. So, even with transition to Windows 10 we still have a share of 32-bit OSes.

2. The limit is not as bad as it looks. OS has 2 features - if apps require more memory, it could unload some currently unused memory to disk, but if apps require less memory than computer have, OS caches the files in memory. So in reality even 32-bit app could benefit from full memory if done properly, as reading data from files will be actually reading from cache.

3. 64-bit apps take more memory by using longer pointers. Usually it's not a significant thing, but depends on the app.

So it's not a question whether the game is 32-bit or 64-bit, the real question is - which hardware limits we'll face in both normal games and modding.

P.S. But, of course, it requires much less effort to make game with less limits as 64-bit app.

 

[Lord Tirian]

1. The main limit for the game to be 32-bit or 64-bit is not processor (all game machines now have 64-bit processors), but OS. Unfortunately, MS kept 32-bit OS version in Windows 10. Moreover, free upgrade allows upgrading 32-bit Windows 7 and 8 to 32-bit Windows 10 only. So, even with transition to Windows 10 we still have a share of 32-bit OSes.

However, the 64-bit market share has increased dramatically, according the the Steam survey, over 80% of all PCs running Steam are now on a 64-bit flavour.

Personally, I am much, much more interested in whether Firaxis is actually implementing more multi-threading in its engine, that's where a lot of turn time gains are possible.

 

[stealth_nsk]

However, the 64-bit market share has increased dramatically, according the the Steam survey, over 80% of all PCs running Steam are now on a 64-bit flavour.

Let's put it the other way around. 64-bit engine need to have really big advantage for developers to loose nearly 20% of audience.

Personally, I am much, much more interested in whether Firaxis is actually implementing more multi-threading in its engine, that's where a lot of turn time gains are possible.

Again, it's not question about technology, it's question about results:

1. Modern processors could shut down unused cores for speeding up used ones. If you have multi-threading app with uneven load, it could be easily less effective than single-threaded.

2. Sync requires both programming, processor and memory resources. Advantages are not necessary bigger than cost.

3. Multi-threaded apps are bugfest. They are hell of rarely-occuring bugs with unpredictable effects. I had an Android app which worked pretty well, but suddenly I received crash report from one of the users. By carefully studying it I found out what pressing "back" button at very specific timepoint causes page to disappear before data gathered in background thread is returned to it. I had to take this into account throughout the whole of my app. And it was so much simpler than a huge game like Civ!

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah, moving to 64-bit has much more defined advantages (and disadvantages) than the nebulous question of "multi-threading".

And let's actually do a bit of nerding out here. Multithreading support is not the same as multicore support. Most games these days have some kind of multithreaded architecture, a thread for the graphics, a thread for the game logic, even sometimes a thread for the AI, and so on. When people say "multithreaded" what they actually want is a combination of multiple thread works for the individual sections mentioned ran against multiple potential CPU cores. So you'd have a thread stack for the game logic that was balanced against the number of cores the player was running, and so on.

It's a fantastically-complicated subject even for advanced programmers. This kind of stuff is the principle of a modern operating system kernel, and that kind of programming isn't cheap. It's often easier to simply delegate the important, separate parts of the game's active processes to individual threads and leave it at that.

And in fact, your operating system will actually do some multicore stuff by itself (in Windows at least). Balancing CPU load can be influenced (and even defined) by the game / application, but it's controlled by the OS runtime.

 

[Larsenex]

Thanks for the replies folks. The topic of multi thread support is also a good one. Gal Civ III is multi thread, in that 'each ai uses its own thread' if available. Thus a 4 core I5 will use all 4 cores during turn processing. However if I have a I7 6900 (8 cores, 16 threads) my turns (in theory) should be must faster.

I can verify that more threads in Gal Civ III does in fact equal FASTER turn times and better performance.

Stardock did a good job optimizing the game for higher end rigs. I can play Insane maps (850K hex) maps with 80 ai and its pretty smooth till about turn 300 or so then it slows down as so many objects are moving, constructors really do a number on turn times.

 

[anandus]

I think that's more the kneejerk reaction to the graphics style. From the interviews I gathered, it's an in-house engine. Firaxis is a very programmer-heavy studio, so it's not a surprise that they're continuing to develop in-house engines.

You are correct and I was wrong, it is indeed an in-house engine.