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Author Topic: 16x16 Embark  (Read 1178 times)

tonnot98

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16x16 Embark
« on: August 15, 2021, 08:48:03 am »
You want it, I want it, and it'd be a blast for some of the crazier succession game ideas. At what point do y'all think the game would be polished enough to actually allow for such a massive (or perhaps even larger) embark to not just be possible, but stable? Hell, at that size we'll actually be able to build full-size human towns or fit multiple mega projects in a single succession game. Not only that, but assuming infantry formations are ever implemented along with multi-tile creatures, then we'll have a larger battlefield to test our tactics.
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Mobbstar

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Re: 16x16 Embark
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2021, 08:54:42 am »
I think it's already possible, but not reasonable because travelling such long distances takes a lot of time out of people's working days, alongside other issues such as wandering animals rarely reaching the center of the map. If you are worried about "FPS death", try reducing the amount of cavern layers, or disabling them altogether.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: 16x16 Embark
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2021, 11:08:36 am »
16*16 is subject to various nasty bugs, as far as I understand, so you'd have to be satisfied with 15*15. I wouldn't do it due to the enormous amount of memory bandwidth required to shuffle all that area (and stuff in it) through DF all the time.
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TheBeardyMan

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Re: 16x16 Embark
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2021, 04:29:22 am »
I used to play 16x16 embarks way back in the 40d age. Then came the awkward time between the release of 0.31 and the first 64-bit version - a 16x16 embark would exhaust the virtual memory of a 32-bit process - and I switched to 8x8 embarks. I realized that I never used the extremities of the 16x16 map, so I didn't go back to 16x16 embarks when the 64-bit version arrived.
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Salmeuk

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Re: 16x16 Embark
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2021, 11:05:08 pm »
I will say, on ummm 5-year old comp technology (my last tower, I recently upgraded) I would encounter really awful things when playing on larger than 6x6.

Specifically, the game would intermittently hang for about 3 seconds, or even longer on the largest selections I tried. Freaking annoying to play around so I pretty much gave that up.

Not sure why, I believe people previously theorized that pathfinding is dangerously expensive on the larger maps, particularly if you end up with a bunch of Kea or whatever at your doorstep.

There is one situation where larger map embarks are useful: scouting for unique or interesting geological formations. I will often embark on a 8x8, scout for the estimated 4x4 that would pose the most interesting questions when building, and then kill the process w/ DFhack and go and reembark. Also, this lets you scout mineral composition, which lets be real, who doesn't cheat after playing this game for years. . .


I will also say that the terrain generator is MUCH less interesting when viewed at this zoomed-out scale. The flaws or incoherent mashing of various grids is much more... obvious, and so I really do think the smaller embarks prove more interesting. Plus, with over 100zlevels on most maps, you have plenty of vertical space to work with.
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