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Author Topic: FPS And game speed  (Read 718 times)

AmberMac

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FPS And game speed
« on: June 01, 2008, 04:33:00 pm »

Is there anyway to make my computer utilize all of its ram to the game to make it go faster? Because i had a fort up and running that went realy fast, And all of my   animals were fast too. And CPU was at 99-100 at most, And now its down to a 20-30 FPS... Is there anyway i can make it go faster? Thank you for your time concerning this topic, And my problem,  :D
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Kagus

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2008, 04:46:00 pm »

I believe there's a Wiki article based around getting better FPS..  Lemme see if I can get it.

Yup, here it is.

AmberMac

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2008, 04:51:00 pm »

Thank you very much, Im going to try it now. XD
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BurnedToast

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #3 on: June 01, 2008, 06:19:00 pm »

The biggest increase will come from turning weather and temperature off - weather alone will double (or more) your FPS and right now it has no real effect on the game (other then making it rain which is no big loss). Temperature is less of an increase and has more of an effect - if you have magma on your map or if it gets cold enough to freeze in the winter you might want to consider leaving it on. If your map has no magma and does not freeze (or is always frozen) then there is no real reason to leave that on either.
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Duke 2.0

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #4 on: June 01, 2008, 06:21:00 pm »

I wonder how much speed would increase by changing the refresh rate.

And what would be a bare minimum amount?

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Gorjo MacGrymm

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2008, 08:36:00 pm »

I have an ood fps issue, i routinely run at 80-100 fps until around 60+ dwarves, then drop to 60-80.  at the moment i have a new fort with 34 dwarves and my FPS was about 80 or so, then human traders showed up and my fps dropped to 40 - major difference.  well, they just left and my fps is staying at 40.  anyone know of any trader issues with fps?  i tried  a search and got zilch.  I have weather turned off (solved All my fps issues until now).  I have heard people say that goods on the ground cause lag, others say no they dont.  when we send goods to the depot, there are litterally hundreds of objects on the ground there between myself and the caravans? is this an issue?  OT question - how the hell do i get my dwarves to Empty the friggen depot?  it stays full of stuff. i always make sure to [g] un-select all goods for trade hoping they will go back to their respective stockpiles.  is that bad?  is that the issue?  never had this prob before.  my other last major fps problem i could swear was too large of stockpiles and too much stuff.  it seems that anytime i have a flashing symbol (usually from multiplw items on a square ) the game lags.  

ok i know, lotsa scattered questions there, can anyone help me?

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Brent Not Broken

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2008, 09:14:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Gorjo MacGrymm of Clan MacGrymm:
<STRONG>I have an ood fps issue, i routinely run at 80-100 fps until around 60+ dwarves, then drop to 60-80.  at the moment i have a new fort with 34 dwarves and my FPS was about 80 or so, then human traders showed up and my fps dropped to 40 - major difference.  well, they just left and my fps is staying at 40.  anyone know of any trader issues with fps?  i tried  a search and got zilch.  I have weather turned off (solved All my fps issues until now).  I have heard people say that goods on the ground cause lag, others say no they dont.  when we send goods to the depot, there are litterally hundreds of objects on the ground there between myself and the caravans? is this an issue?  OT question - how the hell do i get my dwarves to Empty the friggen depot?  it stays full of stuff. i always make sure to [g] un-select all goods for trade hoping they will go back to their respective stockpiles.  is that bad?  is that the issue?  never had this prob before.  my other last major fps problem i could swear was too large of stockpiles and too much stuff.  it seems that anytime i have a flashing symbol (usually from multiplw items on a square ) the game lags.  

ok i know, lotsa scattered questions there, can anyone help me?</STRONG>


1. The trader-leaving FPS drop is a documented issue. Check the last few pages of the bugs forum and you'll run across a thread about it. It seems like some people return to their previous, higher FPS rates a few weeks after the traders have left the map, so you might be able to just persevere through it.

2. Haulers will move goods from your depot into appropriate stockpiles, whether or not you actually [q]-[g] deselected them for trading before the merchants left. Deselecting them only tells the haulers to go ahead and move them back now, rather than waiting for the traders to leave first. Your haulers will clean out your depot eventally as long as you have the appropriate stockpile space free, but it seems to me that moving goods from the depot to stockpiles has sort of a low job priority.

I have not noticed any effects on FPS from having goods in the depot, or from deselecting or not deselecting goods as tradeable at the depot. Though now that you mention it, it might be interesting for those of us with trader-leaving FPS drops to make note of whether the recovery of previous high FPS coincides with haulers cleaning out the depot or not.

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Gorjo MacGrymm

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #7 on: June 01, 2008, 09:23:00 pm »

Thanks Brent, I appreciate the quick response.  I am playing with temp now and other adjustments.  i did notice making a smaller meeting area improved FPS a tiny amount.  While pathfinding seems to be everyones main concern with fps, i disagree based on some tests I just ran, namely, turned off all jobs in all workshops.  only had 10 haulers working and all other dwarves (24) idle, FPS didnt change.  odd

[ June 01, 2008: Message edited by: Gorjo MacGrymm of Clan MacGrymm ]

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Brent Not Broken

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #8 on: June 01, 2008, 09:42:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Gorjo MacGrymm of Clan MacGrymm:
<STRONG>Thanks Brent, I appreciate the quick response.  I am playing with temp now and other adjustments.  i did notice making a smaller meeting area improved FPS a tiny amount.  While pathfinding seems to be everyones main concern with fps, i disagree based on some tests I just ran, namely, turned off all jobs in all workshops.  only had 10 haulers working and all other dwarves (24) idle, FPS didnt change.  odd

[ June 01, 2008: Message edited by: Gorjo MacGrymm of Clan MacGrymm ]</STRONG>


While a big portion of the pathfinding code does involve finding the most efficient ways for a dwarf to get from point A to point B (and the FPS effect of this can apparently be mitigated by certain types of fortress setup), there's a fair chunk of dwarf AI that's running for each dwarf even when that dwarf is idle. ("Do I need to do a job? Do I need to eat, drink, or sleep?" Etc.) I think that is part of the reason that tests of FPS and pathfinding generally involve setting population caps or killing dwarves and/or critters.

The meeting area size detail is an interesting one, and definitely something I'll have to try for myself. My current fledgling fortress has unexplained lower-than-normal FPS with only seven dwarves (but with a pretty huge meeting hall), and I had assumed it was Z-levels that were causing it.

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Gorjo MacGrymm

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #9 on: June 01, 2008, 10:36:00 pm »

Well, just had an ambush and snatcher at once, lost 7 dwarves.  FPS now at 20 instead of 40. apparently dead dwarves chew up lots fps ( are they idle thinking about heaven/hell lol).

edit: and now a dark gnomesplosion, frame rate at 11 and falling, i think this one is done.............

FUN! (right?  RIGHT!?  :P )

[ June 01, 2008: Message edited by: Gorjo MacGrymm of Clan MacGrymm ]

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Juason

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #10 on: June 02, 2008, 02:08:00 am »

I know the optimization wiki talks about this a bit, but make sure to set
[G_FPS_CAP:10] (or possibly lower) to improve framerates.  I went from 20fps to 40fps on one of my machines just by lowering it from 20.  

I'd also recommend turning off any unnecessary processes and avoid browsing the web while playing DF.  Bringing up CNN.com with its flash animations and crap halved my framerate literally.  The game is touchy :P

I notice that when ambushers are on the map my framerate is halved - and that usually happens right around the time caravans are coming.  So the two might be related.  You could always use the Dwarf Companion to check for hidden gobbos slowing you down.

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btmedic

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Re: FPS And game speed
« Reply #11 on: June 02, 2008, 03:06:00 am »

are you using a dual core cpu? make sure you set the affinity to core 1 in the windows task manager. it helps even my E8400 running at 4ghz 0_o
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