Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[obeliab]

Hi there.

I've been struggling with sub-par FPS since I learned how to channel, pretty much always falling to 20-30 frames near 50 population, and topping off at mayyyyybe 12 FPS for anything over 80 or so.  Very slow, I think.  I've seen stats that a laptop similar to mine gets double or triple the numbers... when no dwarves are working.  Helpful.  Anyway, I feel I've tried just about every FPS Improvement Project (lowering G_FPS, turning off temperature and weather, trying all the print modes, lowering the population cap, simplistic/streamlined design, limited cavern layers, traffic designations, 2x2 embark areas, caging animals, no flowing water, blahblahblisterblah), but it's seemed like, without exception, once my forts get to be reasonably sized, the FPS gets sucked down like through the drain of a non-existent dwarven plumbing system.  "Buy a new computer."  Great advice!  Thanks!

Lemme get to the point.  I've read several places about the "cheat" of adding the [SPEED:0] entry to the creature_standard raw, and that got me to thinking.  I'm not interested in overpowering myself, and I'd like to keep the game balanced and challenging (especially in combat, which is where it seems the SPEED tag could break with fairness).  So I added "[SPEED:#]" entries at 1/5th the value to the main species in creature_standard (dwarves and humans are base speed 900, so they're now [SPEED:180], elves are base 700 so they're now [SPEED:140], and goblins I don't know the base speed so I set at [SPEED:150]).  The SPEED: tag doesn't seem to be used much in the raws, so I just entered it in at the top of the creature data in each section whenever it wasn't already present.

I expected a horrible crash when I booted up DF, but, whaddya know, my dwarves are plugging along at a speed equivalent to 50 FPS, while the program itself chugs around at the regular 10 or so (10 FPS x 5 "dwarven ticks" per second).  Given, the framerate did drop a little, from an average 12-13 to 10-11, but when folks are moving about and doing actions at five times the speed, that's a pretty decent tradeoff.  A goblin thief is detected, and my extremely agile thief catcher just barely catches him at the edge of the map, just like normal!  No invasions yet.

If you modify all the major creatures in this way--I'm thinking major species, megabeasts, dogs, cave spiders, trolls, HFS, and perhaps several more--is there really any functional difference to the gameplay?  I can think of a couple, but they're pretty minor, since few things in the game seem heavily tied up in actual "game time."  Mind you, I'm thinking of only introducing the new raw files after a fort starts an FPS miasma; I don't think many people drop below their max FPS before the first few migrant waves and a bunch of rooms and paths come.  Rotting would be a little off, since haulers are moving much faster but corpses are degrading at the same rate (can that be modified?).  Your dwarves would effectively need only 1/5th (or whatever fraction you use) the food, drink, and sleep per unit of work done; this is hardly a significant issue if the raw modifications are introduced after lag starts dragging you down, because you're probably already swimming in food and drink.  Also, you'd get more work done in a shorter amount of "game years."  This, I think, is only a big deal if you really care about the amount of work that gets done during a single dwarf's lifetime, or if you insist on boasting that you built some magnificent structure "in only five years."

I skeptically see this as a great workaround for low FPS, but I am convinced that something is wrong with it.  So long as you keep your ratios the same (don't SPEED:50 dwarves while SPEED:9000ing goblins), isn't the game functionally running at a higher FPS, in this case "unit-of-significant-work/movement-per-second," while no other important game mechanics are being essentially affected?  Is this "cheaty?"  I aim to increase the speed of all significant creatures (not naked mole dogs, sorry), in proportion to their original speeds (or some reasonable estimate), so that when the game runs at 10 frames per second, the creatures move and act at the pace of 50 FPS.  Does this break anything that I'm missing?

This is why I don't start threads.  Stupidly long.

[noob]

tl:dr version plz?

[Dragonchampion]

tl:dr version plz?

Your name is an apt description of you. Either read it or don't, don't ask for a tl;dr.

I enjoy the speed up to the game that the SPEED tag gives. If you add it to everything, I think that it might become a pretty damn interesting game, if a bit too fast-paced for me. I like my dwarves fast, that is it.

[squeakyReaper]

I would imagine they'd need "less" food per job done, since they would get through with it earlier.  Less pressure for that sort of thing.  I don't know if workshop speeds are affected, so that might be different as well.

[ext0l]

tl:dr version plz?

Speed determines how fast creatures move. Lower number, faster movement.
The idea is that as FPS lowers, you can increase the speed of ALL the creatures proportionally so that it takes less real life time and feels like higher FPS.

Happy now? 

[darkflagrance]

The only issue I can see is that it requires the initial effort of modding the speed values of all relevant creatures and determining what arbitrary speed is right for you. Once that's done though...caravans and sieges will functionally come much less often. Grass and trees might take longer to grow for pastured animals, and farming would still move at the same rate (would mainly affect clothing and food export industries rather than the nutritional needs of dwarves themselves). Dwarven babies would take longer to grow up, as would baby animals you might be breeding for meat and bones. But these aren't very significant flaws.