I'm quite sure it is possible. However, my understanding is that Iron Clad was basically the equivalent of an Indie company at the time of Sins release. What they did accomplish with a limited budget is fairly amazing given I don't really know what their experiences were with game engine development at the time. Also, From most user accounts the game performed fairly well with the vanilla version and has more recently suffered performance wise with the two expansions.
My own experience with large scale software development dictates it is very difficult to change the core design after you reach critical mass. It is quite possible by the time they realized they could have taken better advantage of dual core systems they were too invested in the current approach and could not afford a change due to time or money. It's even excedingly more difficult to change a productionalized system even after it becomes apparent that major flaws are present in the design.
In any case I think the game is quite fun and have done things like trimming the empire tree. Reducing fleet size on large multistar maps and setting speed settings at normal or slow. I have also considered modding out mines since the AI likes to spam these resource hogs all over the place.
The problems arise when you put those limitations on a game that can overload those parameters so easily. I still greatly hope, whether IC's next project is a full expansion or Sins 2, that they can implement 64-bit support, or (since I know that's very hard) at least add multicore support (which I'm pretty sure is much easier).
I would hope for much of the same. I have moved to 64-bit and am hopeful the PC gaming industry will as well.
I think Ironclad is STILL an indie company. I agree with your observations about the game, going from vanilla to Entrenchment to Diplomacy.
And as Frogboy has said from time to time, 64-bit is the future. Almost every computer being sold with Windows 7, even the cheap ones, has enough RAM that they are now sold with 64-bit OS. Of course I hope that the PC gaming industry takes advantage of that too, but then I also know that some really high-quality games are 32-bit, and do just fine with it. I believe the Source engine is 32-bit, SupCom 2 I think is 32-bit, and I would even wager that games like Crysis are 32-bit. Sins is 32-bit, and can be easily overloaded by running the game at about half its capabilities. (4 players, one star map, etc).
Disable Autopin for everything...in opitions. You will have to manually unpin Starbases.
I already have autopin disabled across the board, but my empire tree is still full of everything I've ever built. How do I manually get stuff to go away?
To get maximum performance out of Sins. Especially for the 2 gig, and under machines you need to disable almost everything in the "effects" options. Especially bloom.
Also turning off the skybox effects frees up ram tremendously. Disabling them frees up almost a good 200+ megs.
In your video settings turn off anti aliasing. If you are running on a large monitor (1680x1050) you dont really need it.
Play on smaller maps. Not over 4 players
Play with fewer factions, again not over 4
Hopefully the IC devs can find a way to make sins compatible for both 32, and 64 bit systems. Until then just nerf your settings.
Already done all of that on both computers. Doesn't make any difference at all.
PS Galciv2 was programmed to use more than one cpu core and is older than SINS
My point exactly.
BTW: Has anyone really ever had GPU limitations in the game? I've set my graphics card to maximum settings for Sins and Sins itself also to maximum. All that it does is to dramatically increase RAM usage (but no out of memory crashes) for better image quality. The graphics card doesn't even have to increase it's fan speed as it's still not pushing my card anywhere close to limits/heat like other games (which run faster!) do. Indeed, I can even enable the second monitor, play another game, run other apps or view a movie with HW acceleration there while keeping Sins running at exactly the same speed as before.
I couldn't max out all settings on a GeForce 8600 GTS, without lagging to 5-10 FPS immediately upon starting a SOLO game. Every other, more powerful, GPU I've tried since has been just fine.
