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Author Topic: Has "lag of death" been fixed?  (Read 1028 times)

-Firestar-

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Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« on: June 14, 2013, 07:18:53 pm »

I really want to play this game again so badly. But every single one of my fortresses slows to a crawl and eventually dies. To the point where my BF suspects I have melted the GPU of my last two computers playing this game.
There was a problem by having items in your fortress. Even if they were deleted or traded away, this contributed to the death lag because the items still existed in the memory somewhere until the game simply could not be played. Pathing was also an issue. The more stones you dug out, the more possible paths for your dwarves to take and the computer calculated every single one until eventually you ran out of processing power. Being near any water also made the fortress die faster.

Has this been fixed? Was it only an issue with the texture packs? I'll learn ascii if it means I can play the game again.
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Quietust

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Re: Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2013, 08:02:59 pm »

It has not been fixed, and it's unlikely to be fixed any time soon.

However, it is certainly possible to stave off these problems by careful planning - if you dig out a twisty ore vein (or discover a cavern and don't want your fortress exposed to danger), seal it off with a constructed wall and nobody will ever waste time trying to pathfind there; similarly, if you've got a large amount of junk items lying around, use your idle dwarves to haul them to a garbage dump and atom-smash them (which will reduce lag).

Additionally, if you use DFHack, there are several "fix" commands you can use to reduce lag caused by bugs in the game (such as temperature instability and dwarven obesity).

To the point where my BF suspects I have melted the GPU of my last two computers playing this game.
Dwarf Fortress is entirely CPU bound and does not make use of any graphics acceleration, so I find that highly unlikely.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2013, 08:04:36 pm by Quietust »
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entelin

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Re: Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« Reply #2 on: June 14, 2013, 09:03:58 pm »

there are some mods, like accelerated dwarf fortress that can help some. Here's some tips:

1. Kill off / minimize the number of children you have. With the new found bug showing that dwarves who become adult from being born in your fortress are still the same size as babies.... No need to have their pathfinding around unless you want a pigmey fortress.

2. Water / Magma flow hurts fps, so consider that.

3. Heat calculations from magma can hurt performance really bad, so if you are making a magma pump stack, make sure to use the larger chamber design instead of the normal water stack design.
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Zanzetkuken The Great

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Re: Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« Reply #3 on: June 14, 2013, 09:12:40 pm »

Has this been fixed? Was it only an issue with the texture packs? I'll learn ascii if it means I can play the game again.

I don't know if I am recalling a myth or not, but doesn't ASCII give you better FPS than a texture pack?

if you dig out a twisty ore vein (or discover a cavern and don't want your fortress exposed to danger), seal it off with a constructed wall and nobody will ever waste time trying to pathfind there;

Alternatively: Use the ore vein as a bedroom hallway, instead of digging out a new hallway.
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Matoro

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Re: Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2013, 03:44:06 am »

Accelerated fortress mod will speed up the game for like 25%. DFHack can be used to teleport and delete trash and other stuff.

What kind of computer you're using? DF seems to kill laptops, but if you have a good desktop computer, problems should start only after ~200 dwarves or something.

Also, "lag death" is not s real issue in a terms of gameplay - it's not going to be fixed for long time, since Toady is making new features. DF just isn't for weak CPU:s.
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VerdantSF

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Re: Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2013, 10:59:28 am »

1. Kill off / minimize the number of children you have. With the new found bug showing that dwarves who become adult from being born in your fortress are still the same size as babies.... No need to have their pathfinding around unless you want a pigmey fortress.

This has been cured in the most recent LNP :).

ORCACommander

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Re: Has "lag of death" been fixed?
« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2013, 11:53:57 am »

FPS death has nothing to do with GPU everything to do with CPU. Your GPU's being slagged is do to inadequate cooling solutions.

but ya FPS death is still a very real problem. Keep items to a minimum don't breach caverns keep corridors only as wide as necessary and trade away all the shit you can. I have never heard of trade items not being cleared from ram but saving and exited will definitely clear the ram of anything not properly cleaned up.
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