ab9rf: I never claimed to have any science. I was saying that I do NOT have science but have seen it at work. So yeah I agree but it's entirely besides the point. Reguardless the original idea I was attempting to argue against was that fwere stone drop types would lead to better FPS, and that of course cannot be the case since, if lowering the mineral types has some affect before mining out those stones, having fewer results from a calculation that has NOT been run yet cannot possibly have ANY effect of increasing FPS.
Not science. Common sense.
That would be pretty good science, if he tested in in identical conditions in identical locations on identical worlds, and perhaps repeated it a few times. Once probably isn't enough, especially if it was on different types of embark areas.
Seeded Perfect World created map, exact same settings, same year, same embark tile, same embark profile, nothing else changed but the rock/soil/mineral types... the ground looked a touch different but the overall form was nearly identical.
The test wasn't "rigorous" or repeated, but the world was close enough in generation that the name of the civ I embarked as and the volcano in the tile was named the same.
At any rate, the difference was there... but minimal at best. And didn't stop the framerate from dropping below 30 fps when I dug into the volcano and spilled it's magma into a caisson.
It is because of that that I conclude that fewer drop types of stone from the same amount of minerals wouldn't cause any appreciable effect. It's not tested because it cannot be tested, therefore is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. However, it is nonetheless my hypothesis and I don't particularly care how the science works out because it makes complete sense.
I could hypothesize that, tommorow, the sun will rise. If I don't test it, it doesn't change anything about what happens tommorow. It just makes sense to me that it will happen that way.
I've made FPS improving mods for a few different games. Overall what generally works for any game is fewer objects taking up memory, less stuff in RAM, less detail on 3d meshes, smaller textures, and the like. What all these share is that anything which is defined within the game must by necessity take up either space or processor time. Since the minerals in the original suggestion are still defined, they are taking up either space or time. In DF's case, it would be space in the RAWS, which is both disk and RAM space, and processor time in loading them.
In fact, having extra calculations to determine if the inorganic being mined had a specific type being dropped might very well cause more calculations to be performed when mining, although it's unlikely to be something that's even measurable unless one were stress-testing with 1000 Legendary Dwarf Miners at the same time (ie. Supremely Unlikely)
It would be a nice feature to have be OPTIONAL to have stones with specific drop types. Generalizing the game seems like an ineffectual response to a problem that isn't caused here (namely the FPS issues). That's all in pathfinding. But you're right in that modders and even Toady, himself, could find uses for these variable drops.
TL;DR I do not believe this will affect your frame rate in any way. It may be simpler and lead to a "faster" game for the players' decision making process, however. Green stone, Grey stone, if it's all the same stuff it doesn't really matter. It's rather unlike Dwarf Fortress to make anything less complicated than it needs to be, however.
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Topic: Generalized Stone (Read 3360 times)