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Author Topic: Running DF on old laptop  (Read 1573 times)

MrP123

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Running DF on old laptop
« on: February 10, 2015, 04:50:14 pm »

Hello guys,

I'm new to DF and have enjoyed it a lot.
In a couple of weeks I have to stay in the hospital for around 5 days and want to play DF while staying there, so now my question is wether I can run DF on my old HP mini 2133 (only laptop I own).
I currently don't have a charger for it so I can't try it myself.

Hope you can help me.
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wierd

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2015, 05:29:48 pm »

when in doubt of your system's specs, embark on a tiny world, with short history, and a very small embark.

Only general advise that applies really.

EDIT

Oh yeah.

Here's some specs for that laptop.
1.6ghz VIA C7-M, 2gb RAM (DDR2-667).


Definately-- TINY world, short history, VERY small embark.  Keep dwarf population capped at 60 dwarves, max.  Will still run like molasses though.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2015, 05:32:56 pm by wierd »
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Insert_Gnome_Here

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2015, 05:52:33 pm »

I've run it on a slow laptop too.
only have 1 or 2 cavern layers. Glaciers (and mountains) run faster too.
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Quote from: Max™ on December 06, 2015, 04:09:21 am
Also, if you ever figure out why poets/bards/dancers just randomly start butchering people/getting butchered, please don't fix it, I love never knowing when a dance party will turn into a slaughter.

Detros

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2015, 06:42:17 pm »

a very small embark
In currently last version 0.40.24 were 1x1 embarks (48x48 tiles in fort screen) allowed even in vanilla DF. So try to go for those. Though "search for embark" can't look for so little embarks now it will probably be in the next release.
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Bobble

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2015, 03:06:18 pm »

If you look on the DF Modding/Utilities forum, some insaintly Dwarf is developing a way to play DF through a browser:  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139975.0  You'd be running DF on your fastest computer but controlling it from, say, a modest laptop in a hospital room, for example.
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Insert_Gnome_Here

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2015, 03:12:07 pm »

If you have a linux box you could run it in the terminal over ssh. ;-)
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Quote from: Max™ on December 06, 2015, 04:09:21 am
Also, if you ever figure out why poets/bards/dancers just randomly start butchering people/getting butchered, please don't fix it, I love never knowing when a dance party will turn into a slaughter.

mineforce

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2015, 03:31:31 pm »

when in doubt of your system's specs, embark on a tiny world, with short history, and a very small embark.

Only general advise that applies really.

EDIT

Oh yeah.

Here's some specs for that laptop.
1.6ghz VIA C7-M, 2gb RAM (DDR2-667).


Definately-- TINY world, short history, VERY small embark.  Keep dwarf population capped at 60 dwarves, max.  Will still run like molasses though.

I play on a laptop that's even worse than that and I can perfectly play on a large world, with a normal embark. And I also have good fps on adventure mode. The only thing that is slow is the loading times. Other than that, the game plays perfectly fine.

Me

504 ram
1.6 ghz
CPU N450
Intel atom
« Last Edit: February 12, 2015, 01:34:46 am by mineforce »
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soulsource

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Re: Running DF on old laptop
« Reply #7 on: February 12, 2015, 07:20:34 am »

If you have a linux box you could run it in the terminal over ssh. ;-)

I second this suggestion. It's working extremely well, even with low bandwith internet connections as long as there is a reasonably low package loss. I've been playing df using my 1 GHz Netbook with this solution. The only issue I encountered was that the [Shift]+[Something] keyboard combination doesn't work, so scrolling might be a bit annoying.
All you have to do to get this working, is to set up an ssh server on an OS X or Linux (or probably any other Unix-like OS that can run DF) computer, make sure that you can reach that server over the internet,  and to configure dwarf fortress to print directly on the text terminal, by setting PRINT_MODE:TEXT in init.txt.
Using a Windows client should work as well, but it needs a terminal emulator that supports ncurses, and probably it'll also need to support UTF-8 (I don't think putty does, but mobaxterm might work).

Before I forget: There might be an issue if you are using a very recent Linux version, due to incompatible changes in zlib (the usual workaround is to preload the system libpng, but for me that doesn't work with PRINT_MODE:TEXT...). In such a case you can configure dwarf fortress to use bitmap fonts instead of png, as on the terminal the fonts aren't used anyhow.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2015, 07:23:35 am by soulsource »
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