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Author Topic:   Big Numbers and Negative Citizens

KingOfTheJohn posted 04-13-99 06:07 PM ET
For fun, I created a custom map where nutrient is easy to come by in one are, and decided to see just how big I could make one city. It was moving along at an incredibly fast pace, esp. after the cloning vats. When the city reached level 100, I was disturbed to notice that the last digit was OFF of the little, colored base size box. Not thinking much, I continued. I had four or five cities sending it colony pods so that I could tell them to "join base" and so when a pod arrived with the big base (New York, after my home town)at level 127, I figured, "hey, another day, another pod." Not so! I told the pod to join the base and the population became NEGATIVE!! So, wondering what the hell was going on with this base at level �128, I zoomed to it. There were no citizens on the citizen bar, where previously 93 transcends, 15 engineers, and 20 talents had sat moments ago. There was nothing in the nutrient bar, there was nothing in the commerce bar, only the base square was producing, and the weight of every Secret Project on the planet was draining all the cities resources. Experimentally, I razed the base with one of the former garrison units. It said something to the effect of: �New York has been razed, -1280,000 Hive citizens put to death.� WOAH! Will somebody explain what the heck was going on?? Also, When the population reached above 35, I found that I could no longer build more than 15 specialists besides the default, i.e. no more than 15 of anything besides doctors, empaths, and transcendi. I hope that Firazis will fix this glaring problem in a future patch or expansion!
BIG NUMBER SUPPORT!!! WHAT KIND OF CRACK-BABY PROGRAMMERS DO THEY HAVE THERE?!?!?
Thank you, The Spider.
HolyWarrior posted 04-15-99 11:24 PM ET
Well, 128 is 2 to the 7th. Sounds like that's the programming limit for city size.
See, computers use binary--1's and 0's. Thus 127 is 7 digits--1111111. They use an 8th digit (or bit) to indicate sign, though I have no idea why population would ever be negative.
Anyway, adding another population unit to 127 (01111111) changed it to -127 (10000000). Now, you should've kept adding population, because 255 (11111111) would have been read as -1. Adding another unit sets population at 00000000 again.
This is just the basics of binary numbers and programming. This is why there are only 7 factions plus Planet. This is why there are 16 social engineering choices. This is why a megabyte actually has 1048576 bytes.
Powers of 2--powers of 2.
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Author	Topic: Big Numbers and Negative Citizens
KingOfTheJohn	posted 04-13-99 06:07 PM ET For fun, I created a custom map where nutrient is easy to come by in one are, and decided to see just how big I could make one city. It was moving along at an incredibly fast pace, esp. after the cloning vats. When the city reached level 100, I was disturbed to notice that the last digit was OFF of the little, colored base size box. Not thinking much, I continued. I had four or five cities sending it colony pods so that I could tell them to "join base" and so when a pod arrived with the big base (New York, after my home town)at level 127, I figured, "hey, another day, another pod." Not so! I told the pod to join the base and the population became NEGATIVE!! So, wondering what the hell was going on with this base at level �128, I zoomed to it. There were no citizens on the citizen bar, where previously 93 transcends, 15 engineers, and 20 talents had sat moments ago. There was nothing in the nutrient bar, there was nothing in the commerce bar, only the base square was producing, and the weight of every Secret Project on the planet was draining all the cities resources. Experimentally, I razed the base with one of the former garrison units. It said something to the effect of: �New York has been razed, -1280,000 Hive citizens put to death.� WOAH! Will somebody explain what the heck was going on?? Also, When the population reached above 35, I found that I could no longer build more than 15 specialists besides the default, i.e. no more than 15 of anything besides doctors, empaths, and transcendi. I hope that Firazis will fix this glaring problem in a future patch or expansion! BIG NUMBER SUPPORT!!! WHAT KIND OF CRACK-BABY PROGRAMMERS DO THEY HAVE THERE?!?!? Thank you, The Spider.
HolyWarrior	posted 04-15-99 11:24 PM ET Well, 128 is 2 to the 7th. Sounds like that's the programming limit for city size. See, computers use binary--1's and 0's. Thus 127 is 7 digits--1111111. They use an 8th digit (or bit) to indicate sign, though I have no idea why population would ever be negative. Anyway, adding another population unit to 127 (01111111) changed it to -127 (10000000). Now, you should've kept adding population, because 255 (11111111) would have been read as -1. Adding another unit sets population at 00000000 again. This is just the basics of binary numbers and programming. This is why there are only 7 factions plus Planet. This is why there are 16 social engineering choices. This is why a megabyte actually has 1048576 bytes. Powers of 2--powers of 2.