Game logic

How the fuck do they code games so that everything moves smoothly and at a consistent rate regardless of the speed of the machine you run it on, and still have tons of shit interacting with each other somehow?
Maybe I need to find a good open-source candidate to have a look at.

Also, I wish I knew the correct terms to describe what I'm talking about.

>>13
Whew, thanks for writing all that up for me.

I still need to think about it a lot to wrap my brain around how to write a working example of a game (or just a small system) that does this kind of thing properly.

Any recommended reading would be appreciated.