Found a game breaking bug in since Alpha-8

[nargos]

I am a tad annoyed as the game which on my computer runs at 140 fps for a blank field is now tanking down to the low 10s with a prison of over 300. So I have gone to Mantis to report this and found that the bug has been in there since Alpha 8!!!!!! that is over two and a half years! Bug ID 0001073 btw, This bug means that the game is not using all of the CPU cores or using even all of one of them. I checked my comp last night and it is the same thing as the person who started it though I have an AMD FX 8350 and am running windows 10. How it is that IV are ok to release a game like this?

[xander]

Did you read the thread attached to that "bug"? Not using multiple cores is not a bug---it is a design decision. The problem is poor performance; one possible mitigation might be to multi-thread (though, for a lot of reasons discussed in that thread, this is not a panacea).

xander

[nargos]

Yes I did. That is not a design decision that is bad optimisation.

[xander]

Your reply does not contradict my original post. "The game doesn't use all of my cores" is not a bug.

xander

[glockshna]

Yes I did. That is not a design decision that is bad optimisation.

Creating multi-threading support for a program or game isn't a light switch you turn on or off. Much of the program needs to be designed explicitly with multi-threading in mind which in itself is not as simple as it sounds either. If you want to educate yourself on those challenges feel free to hit up google.

TL;DR:
Notwithstanding your il-informed opinion, it was a design decision.

[aubergine18]

Looking at the general state of PA, for example the vast array of bugs and huge gaping holes in the modding API, and factoring in that this product has been in active development for over 5 years, the real issue here is that the design decisions being made are consistently inadequate or just plain wrong with alarming regularity.

Why does every object have 2 ids? Why are map co-ordinates not muxed? Why do materials.txt settings for an object of type Object result in inconsistent and often incompatible API functionality? Why are there multiple ways of doing the same thing? The code-smells and anti-patterns in PA are abundant beyond coincidence. The phrase "Fractal Wrongness" comes to mind.

[nargos]

Ok a tad worried that I may be responding to trolls here, but to be clear a product sold in the UK must be fit for purpose, the product with a computer with the minimum requirements must be able to delver all an acceptable game. So for instance Fallout 4 must alow a gamer to play the game on minimum settings and experience all of the missions for instance with an acceptable frame rate. In this case PA does not allow you to do this most notably because I have a computer that is well beyond the minimum specks and it could not allow me to run the game to an acceptable level in order to achieve all the achievements. In this case the confined one which requires a prison with 1000 prisoners. My one had over 300 prisoners by the time I though in the towel with it.

As for is this a bug. Yes it is as otherwise it would have been closed off as such on the Mantis Tracker, beyond being bleeding obviously a bug.

As for is this bad optimisation the game requires as a minimum a multi core processor, so yes this is a badly optimised game.

What is worse is that I have e-mailed for support and after 2 weeks I have not so much as had more than an automated reply. This is pitiful. I am also sorry to hear about the other issues.

[Brento666]

Yeah, responding to customer feedback hasn't been happening here for a while... At least I've never read up on any kind, I've been helping out, giving advice left and right.. And to my own cries for help fixing a damn annoying (absurd modding gfx) limitation in the game-engine... not a single peep from IV was given.

I've even boldly tweeted them, guess what?...

I do still think the game is enjoyable at around 300 prisoners, but fps wise, that's pushing it for me as well.

[xander]

The closed bug report is "The game is not multithreaded." That is not a bug. That is a proposed solution to a completely different problem, which is "The game runs slowly on my machine." This problem could be a result of poor optimization, an underpowered machine, or some other problem particular to the configuration of the reporter's machine, with "poor optimization" being the only thing that IV could potentially do anything about.

That bit of semantics aside, what do you consider to be the use case that defines "fit for purpose"? Obviously, an infinitely large map with infinitely many prisoners is not possible because, well, physics. On the other hand, if the game couldn't let you build a prison on a small map with one prisoner, it would be clearly unfit for purpose. Somewhere in between those two extremes, there is a (probably quite arbitrary) line that could be drawn to represent the intended gaming experience. You seem unsatisfied with that line being somewhere near 300 prisoners. Unfortunately, your dissatisfaction is an issue that is somewhat disjoint from the question of whether or not the game is "fit for purpose".

xander