Cores in games

[chucky9]

So i am currently creating a game using c++ and a lil java script. is there any way to get the game to detect the hardware of the users and therefore customize how the game perform depending on your hardware. eg using all the hardware you have instead of half your system sitting idle

 

[rgd1101]

what you are looking for is doing multi-threads on your game.

 

[minerva330]

Sounds like you are referring to Nvida's Geforecec Experience (https://developer.nvidia.com/geforce-experience)

It an app that is linked to the cloud. It detects your hardware and recommends optimal in-game settings to achieve the best visual quality for specific games

 

[chucky9]

yh but like some people have dual core, quad, six and now even 8 and i really really dont want to hard code my game to say quad or 6 core but im worried that if i put it to 8 cores then the game wont run smoothly on quad and 6 core cpu's

 

[rgd1101]

you don't code cores, you code in threads.

 

[chucky9]

sorry thats what i meant its very last here

 

[minerva330]

Also you should check out this thread...http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2001851/cores-effective-games.html

The discussion has been going for a while most games only utilize 2-4 cores. The rare exceptions like BF4 can use 6. I am not a programmer but I do not think that a java game could use 6 cores even if you wanted it to, or am I way off base?

And depending on the requirements of your game a good GPU is always more important than a CPU core count

Edit: Obviously disregard, I now realize he was referring to threading.

 

[rgd1101]

read up on what multithreading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multithreading_%28software%29#Multithreading

I am not a programmer but I do not think that a java game could use 6 cores even if you wanted it to, or am I way off base?

Yes you are way off base. One example would be Apache HTTP server.

 

[minerva330]

like I said, not a programmer, still a noob. Thanks for the link.

 

[chucky9]

well i currently head up about 20 friends who volunteer way to much of their life to making 2 games at once dont ask how we do it but some how it works anyway currently the games are more cpu intensive that gpu and run of a lot of ai and in game calculations so cores would help lol but i think ive worked it out only think i can do now is test it i suppose

 

[minerva330]

Yes you are way off base. One example would be Apache HTTP server.

I fully realize servers use more cores but regardless I read up.


EDIT: still miscommunication due to the authors first post. I was referring to cores in the physical sense. I know what multi-threading is and know that many apps use them

 

[chucky9]

Basically i wanted to know if there is a set few lines of coding that would allow the game to detect maybe the gpu and cpu and the change the way the games uses the hardware from some set defaults made by me?

 

[minerva330]

Like I said in my first post, Geforce experience is vaguely the only thing that is similar to what you were originally asking about (that I know of).

Regardless, good luck with your alpha.

 

[mbreslin1954]

It's been many years since I wrote software, but I know a fair bit about operating systems and software development, so here is my take on it:

Basically what I think you do is to parallelize as much of your code as you can, utilizing threads which can run concurrently, then the operating system parcels out the threads to however many cores the user has in his system. That is one of the primary tasks of an operating system: CPU utilization, or time-slicing. So if you have spawned 10 threads that can run simultaneously and there are only four cores, the operating system will assign the threads to the different cores until it runs out of cores. If there are more threads than cores, then time-slicing will occur (again, under the direction of the operating system).

What happens when games can only take advantage of two cores is that they are designed that way. There is limited parallelism designed in to the game. It is not easy to break software up into tasks that can happen simultaneously, and software development is behind hardware in this area.

 

[chucky9]

thank you very much very very helpful and thank you minerva330