There are some automatic UML generators that will give you an overview of the code, or parts of the code: http://droogs.org/autodia/
Behind the scenes balancing of game play
on
Ask Sid Meier
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· Score: 1
Hello Sid,
I've been a fan of yours since the original Civilization. Ever since getting hooked on Civilization I've wondered about the game design and how you achieve a excellent balance between all the aspects of game play. Although the later versions had more features, I often found I was trying to finish the game instead of playing the game. What are you in-house techniques in striking such a balance, and how have these techniques changed since the original Civilization?
I spent a summer benchmarking a couple of new computers for a the University of Otago Physics department. They were looking into buying a cluster for their Bose-Einstien condensate experiments, it was my job to see where things were going slow. I found the major bottleneck was in the network. But I also made comparisons between a P4 2.4GHz and AMD Athon-XP 2400+, the results are interesing.
Kayvon Fatahalian et al. have a good comparison for matrix-matrix multiplication between CPU's and GPU's. One major disadvantage of the GPU at the moment is that, as far as I know, no standard software (such as LINPACK, FFTW, etc) supports it.
I've had this thought before, I've been inspired after many hours trying to get my Whatcha-callit-device's to work under Linux.
Let me describe my idea using my notebook PC. It's an old Toshiba Pentium 133. I found a website that nicely walks my way through the installation, it was great. However, the instructions were for seting up SuSe, I had Debian. So there were a few small descrepencies on how to set up Linux.
It would be nice to have a deb/rpm that installs all the complimentary packages and edits the config files. For any notebook it would be very straight forward, one model will have many devices to set up, but one simple package could do it.
This could be done by using a universal script that can be translated into a.gz/.deb/.rpm. The script would create the necessary dependencies for packages, then edit the package's config files (this is the hard bit). A developer/hacker could easily download a skeleton script or base their scirpt on a similar one. Then they would edit the script with the necessary commands and upload it again.
Hey, thanks for your mention of Dragon's of Eden, later that day I went to the 24-hour book sale in Dunedin, New Zealand, and it was about the 5th book I picked up. So I bought it, 50 cents (about $US 0.25), can't complain. BTW, the 24-hour book sale is great, loads of people and books, plus live entertainment.
Yes, Brain Greene's the Elegant Universe was a good read. Well off the top of my head I can only remember one good book I've read lately. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, it's an old book with the 1st edition published in the 70's, but still a fantastic read, it has some wonderful insights to evolution. In this book he recomends The Extended Phenotype, it's apparently an excellent read too, he says it's the pride and joy of his professional career
There is Carl Sagan's TV series and book called Cosmos, videos may be viewable in your local library. This too is an old series, but still very good. It's the real basics, great for lay persons, Carl Sagan has this knack for explaining and story telling.
With most religions and philosophies, the core nature is to not harm others. Buddhism is very much like that too, if you read any of the Dali Lama's books you will find a totally differeny story than which you quote. It is followers who take the teachings of religions and philosophies out of context and create such atrocities, not the original teachings themselves.
My laptop (Toshiba 440-CDX) battery died on me about 6 months ago, yes it was annoying,... I couldn't use my laptop as a walkman on the way home from Uni.
But then I bought an older model laptop (Toshiba 410-CDT) for parts from an online auction, it came with a battery that luckily suited my new laptop and that battery has been very good. This method is however hit and miss.
Firstly the probe will have to have all its parts be heat resistant, else should have an internal cooling method, and not just one of those Duron fans.
A cooling system requires a cool reservoir which is usually outside the system being cooled. This is so that the heat can escape from the part you want to keep cool. The problem is that even the best cooling system won't work to keep electronics cool for long periods.
But why use electronics? How about some kind of fluid/mechanical mechanism that "thumps" on a regular basis depending on the surrounding temperature (for a temperature probe). When it's hot it does more "thumping" than when it's cold. But I don't know how happy the LIGO people would be with continuous "thumps", don't their experiments require absolute silence?
I wonder if lead would do, or should we try Uranium.
I know lead will melt, I think uranium will too. But who want's to send uranium down one hole, when I might be spat out another hole (such as a volcanic erruption) a few years later, and create a large radiactive mess.
I've had an idea like this a few years back; it was a little flawed, because of my very last point. Drill a hole through the Earth's crust and drop nuclear waste down it (uranium and plutonium), it will just sink to the core, which is already a huge radiactive soup, the radiactive soup is the fire which keeps the silicon (or whatever magma may be composed of) molten.
And finally the idea that most of the space under the crust is molten mantle is still just a theory.
I hope NASA get's the rovers onto the planet nice and safe, they have had a bad run lately, with Columbia and the previous Mars lander. More images of Mars will be awesome! Although they are landing in "boring" places, this means we are going to see images like we have seen previously, a flat landscape dotted with rocks.
Detecting the doppler shift at speeds 1 m/s in near impossible with todays technology. The speed of light is ~= 299,000,000 m/s, where to sucessfully detect a doppler shift would require you to travel at significant speed (at least 1/1000th of light speed). And this would also require expensive equipment. The acceleration and deceraleration at these speeds will tear your lawn mower apart.
Slashdot Mirror
There are some automatic UML generators that will give you an overview of the code, or parts of the code:
http://droogs.org/autodia/
Hello Sid,
I've been a fan of yours since the original Civilization. Ever since getting hooked on Civilization I've wondered about the game design and how you achieve a excellent balance between all the aspects of game play. Although the later versions had more features, I often found I was trying to finish the game instead of playing the game. What are you in-house techniques in striking such a balance, and how have these techniques changed since the original Civilization?
And on the other side of the equatorial line, NZ has 1000 new businesses created from online auctions.
I spent a summer benchmarking a couple of new computers for a the University of Otago Physics department. They were looking into buying a cluster for their Bose-Einstien condensate experiments, it was my job to see where things were going slow. I found the major bottleneck was in the network. But I also made comparisons between a P4 2.4GHz and AMD Athon-XP 2400+, the results are interesing.
Kayvon Fatahalian et al. have a good comparison for matrix-matrix multiplication between CPU's and GPU's.
One major disadvantage of the GPU at the moment is that, as far as I know, no standard software (such as LINPACK, FFTW, etc) supports it.
Dunno if it looks cool, but I suppose it's one solution.
-- "An egg is an chicken's way of making another chicken."
ODE (http://ode.org/) is a GNU physics engine that has a simulation where you can crash a car into a brick wall .... LOT's of fun :)
I've had this thought before, I've been inspired after many hours trying to get my Whatcha-callit-device's to work under Linux.
.gz/.deb/.rpm. The script would create the necessary dependencies for packages, then edit the package's config files (this is the hard bit). A developer/hacker could easily download a skeleton script or base their scirpt on a similar one. Then they would edit the script with the necessary commands and upload it again.
Let me describe my idea using my notebook PC. It's an old Toshiba Pentium 133. I found a website that nicely walks my way through the installation, it was great. However, the instructions were for seting up SuSe, I had Debian. So there were a few small descrepencies on how to set up Linux.
It would be nice to have a deb/rpm that installs all the complimentary packages and edits the config files. For any notebook it would be very straight forward, one model will have many devices to set up, but one simple package could do it.
This could be done by using a universal script that can be translated into a
Psi
Hey, thanks for your mention of Dragon's of Eden, later that day I went to the 24-hour book sale in Dunedin, New Zealand, and it was about the 5th book I picked up. So I bought it, 50 cents (about $US 0.25), can't complain.
BTW, the 24-hour book sale is great, loads of people and books, plus live entertainment.
Cheers, Psi
Yes, Brain Greene's the Elegant Universe was a good read. Well off the top of my head I can only remember one good book I've read lately. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, it's an old book with the 1st edition published in the 70's, but still a fantastic read, it has some wonderful insights to evolution. In this book he recomends The Extended Phenotype, it's apparently an excellent read too, he says it's the pride and joy of his professional career
There is Carl Sagan's TV series and book called Cosmos, videos may be viewable in your local library. This too is an old series, but still very good. It's the real basics, great for lay persons, Carl Sagan has this knack for explaining and story telling.
Psi
With most religions and philosophies, the core nature is to not harm others. Buddhism is very much like that too, if you read any of the Dali Lama's books you will find a totally differeny story than which you quote.
It is followers who take the teachings of religions and philosophies out of context and create such atrocities, not the original teachings themselves.
Psi
My laptop (Toshiba 440-CDX) battery died on me about 6 months ago, yes it was annoying,... I couldn't use my laptop as a walkman on the way home from Uni.
But then I bought an older model laptop (Toshiba 410-CDT) for parts from an online auction, it came with a battery that luckily suited my new laptop and that battery has been very good. This method is however hit and miss.
Psi
Firstly the probe will have to have all its parts be heat resistant, else should have an internal cooling method, and not just one of those Duron fans.
A cooling system requires a cool reservoir which is usually outside the system being cooled. This is so that the heat can escape from the part you want to keep cool. The problem is that even the best cooling system won't work to keep electronics cool for long periods.
But why use electronics? How about some kind of fluid/mechanical mechanism that "thumps" on a regular basis depending on the surrounding temperature (for a temperature probe). When it's hot it does more "thumping" than when it's cold. But I don't know how happy the LIGO people would be with continuous "thumps", don't their experiments require absolute silence?
I wonder if lead would do, or should we try Uranium.
I know lead will melt, I think uranium will too. But who want's to send uranium down one hole, when I might be spat out another hole (such as a volcanic erruption) a few years later, and create a large radiactive mess.
I've had an idea like this a few years back; it was a little flawed, because of my very last point. Drill a hole through the Earth's crust and drop nuclear waste down it (uranium and plutonium), it will just sink to the core, which is already a huge radiactive soup, the radiactive soup is the fire which keeps the silicon (or whatever magma may be composed of) molten.
And finally the idea that most of the space under the crust is molten mantle is still just a theory.
But it's a pretty sound theory too!
Psi
I hope NASA get's the rovers onto the planet nice and safe, they have had a bad run lately, with Columbia and the previous Mars lander. More images of Mars will be awesome! Although they are landing in "boring" places, this means we are going to see images like we have seen previously, a flat landscape dotted with rocks.
Psi
Yeah, what about a DVD copy of Brain Dead or even better, Bad Taste. Jackson should come back to remaster Bad Taste :).
Psy
I'll be top of the list for beta testing pls :).
Kewl, now all I need is a few superconducting electromagnets and a large hold in the ground and I can build myself baby CERN.
Detecting the doppler shift at speeds 1 m/s in near impossible with todays technology. The speed of light is ~= 299,000,000 m/s, where to sucessfully detect a doppler shift would require you to travel at significant speed (at least 1/1000th of light speed). And this would also require expensive equipment. The acceleration and deceraleration at these speeds will tear your lawn mower apart.