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.

>>1
Either using delta time as others have said, or by limiting update speed.

The second method's good for consoles since the hardware's known and there's no real danger of everything going wrong, physics engines will perform a hell of a lot better too.

Using delta time is great for varied hardware though, even if physics engine's don't like it. It can become a problem in some cases though, for example, if delta time ends up getting too high intersection testing will fail with fast moving objects, and you'll need to instead calculate if something would hit at a given time.