(05-10-2011 02:58 AM)driscojs Wrote:  I love #6, but i suspect that the reason jobs are limited is to save on parsing time. I'd bet you'd have to lower the population limit in order to keep things from slowing down too much, at least in regards to consoles and generic systems. Otherwise, I'm all for it, too.

Nope It still parses the null field, and the only "expense" is in avatar queries. I've considered it, but I'm yet to test the theory and (with luck) roll it out (I'm expecting some nasty errors and got tied down by the real world) -- that's why the early Tyrannus screenshots have a third icon above the mini-map

(05-10-2011 02:58 AM)driscojs Wrote:  #13 makes good sense. Tropicans waste so much.

Already toying with at least two of these ideas Though they'll be upgrades on parallel build-types to avoid updates breaking my code.

(05-10-2011 02:58 AM)driscojs Wrote:  I like your list pretty much all the way through. I still think that the reasons we don't have more stuff is due to processor and RAM constraints. I wonder what everyone would be willing to 'take out' in order to get other items in, if that's the case.

I think it's more balance and time-taken. The same-sex edict would blow stuff out of the water (I suspect blowing the religious faction and capitalist faction out a bit, while buffing intellectuals and communists could semi-balance this though.)

As for time taken, T3->T4 code doesn't line up anywhere near as much as people think. Yes, they both use Lua, and both probably run similar core binaries, but the Lua code within the engine is breathtakingly different in some places. As a short example, the structures are very similar in T3's Apartment and T4's Apartment, but you'll note the first part (T4's DefineClass vs. T3's g_ClassDefs) marks the first difference. There are also some bits missing I suspect the g_ClassDefs does something very similar to T4's, but T3 also uses DefineClass in some parts (but not for buildings).

The engine itself appears to have been optimised to lower the requirements, which is part of the reason the population limit is set "so low" (heh, silly complaint). As the game grows (number of buildings to tick, number of people to tick, etc.), the complexity increases and the processing slows. Some people may not want each person ticking independently, but this is why Tropico is so micro in some places where SimCity and "Dawn of Discovery"/"Anno 1404" are relatively macro (read: people in DoD/Anno are rendered, but are more or less random unless they are a key participant).