3 ms·

> but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher. The client (from the original version through DE) runs a single-threaded simulation. That

> but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher. The client (from the original version through DE) runs a single-threaded simulation. That is a big barrier to getting more players or even larger maps (it used to be that ludakris size was unplayable before DE/UserPatch optimizations). Given how many players can't even clear the multiplayer performance benchmark without dramatically reducing quality settings, I'm not sure they'll bump up the player cap unless they decide to re-architect a good part of the engine internals.

reitzensteinm 6y ago
The original simulation ran fine on a Pentium 2, and that was a single core that also handled rendering, animation and audio. Considering a single core can be dedicated to it these days we're approaching two orders of magnitude more performance available. If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it.
- BadInformatics 6y ago
  The original version also had a smaller pop cap, less demanding graphics+audio, much smaller maps and less simulation (particles, animated water, fog, etc). Some other engine functionality like pathfinding has also been reworked in the Definitive Edition, so it's far from an apples-apples comparison. > If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it. This was true for the previous "remaster" of AOE2 (HD edition). That had persistent performance issues and was poorly optimized despite maintaining the same graphics style. If you read through a couple of the dev blogs for the DE release, I think it's pretty clear that there's little if any low-hanging fruit left before pretty major architectural improvements are necessary.
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    Popcap and map sizes are unchanged since AOE2: The Forgotten, though, and the other items are not in the deterministic simulation. AOE2 HD wasn't multithreaded, so we should still have an order of magnitude more CPU performance at our disposal these days. The pathfinding has been reworked, yeah. It shouldn't have made the game 10x slower. In any case, if it already supports 8 player with 500 pop, 16 with 250 is not really any different.

reitzensteinm 6y ago

The original simulation ran fine on a Pentium 2, and that was a single core that also handled rendering, animation and audio. Considering a single core can be dedicated to it these days we're approaching two orders of magnitude more performance available. If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it.

BadInformatics 6y ago
The original version also had a smaller pop cap, less demanding graphics+audio, much smaller maps and less simulation (particles, animated water, fog, etc). Some other engine functionality like pathfinding has also been reworked in the Definitive Edition, so it's far from an apples-apples comparison. > If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it. This was true for the previous "remaster" of AOE2 (HD edition). That had persistent performance issues and was poorly optimized despite maintaining the same graphics style. If you read through a couple of the dev blogs for the DE release, I think it's pretty clear that there's little if any low-hanging fruit left before pretty major architectural improvements are necessary.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  Popcap and map sizes are unchanged since AOE2: The Forgotten, though, and the other items are not in the deterministic simulation. AOE2 HD wasn't multithreaded, so we should still have an order of magnitude more CPU performance at our disposal these days. The pathfinding has been reworked, yeah. It shouldn't have made the game 10x slower. In any case, if it already supports 8 player with 500 pop, 16 with 250 is not really any different.