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[ThePup]

Anyone here have any experience with DF on a netbook?  Searched the forums with a couple of results, but not anything really useful.  I'm possibly getting a netbook in the near future, for a couple of reasons, but I'd really love to be able to play DF on it.  Looking at an Intel Atom 450, 1.66GHz, hyperthreading, 1GB RAM.  Anyone able to give a headsup at to whether this will work for me and be playable?  Tips to make it playable?

Appreciate any advice.

[gramks2k]

Search the Wiki for ways to increase FPS. Irun DF on my laptop and it has worse stats than that. Runs fairly well as long as you're conscious of what causes FPS loss. In the end it really just depends on what you're comfortable playing with.

Also, I have plans to make it so only the necessary/elite Dorfs survive in my fortress so I can increase FPS by decreasing path-finding.

[helf]

I'm running 0.31.10 under Ubuntu 10.04 on a Dell Mini 9 that has the 1.6ghz Atom N270 CPU and 2gb RAM. I get 6-12fps world genning, sits at 100fps steady at main menu, and I just did a 'Play now!' embark on a world I just generated and I'm getting 59fps. It'll jump around a lot then settle down after a minute or two.


I imagine one of the newer Atoms may run it even better but this one does fairly well with small embarks and smaller fortresses. I was kinda surprised. It'll stay over 20fps for awhile.

I'd suggest doing the usual performance things such as disabling weather and what not. This netbook is from one of the first generations, so if it handles it this well, I imagine newer ones will work well enough

[ungulateman]

@OP:

That netbook is actually marginally more powerful than my laptop, which can handle 20-30 dwarves on a reasonably flat map very well. You should be fine, assuming your computer doesn't overheat.

[Trammelkey]

If nothing else works you could use the Nano Fortress utility. As long as you don't care about playing on miniature maps.

[freeformschooler]

I only actually have a netbook and can say DF runs perfectly outside of maybe adventure mode (in which every ~20 steps the game freezes up for a second of two). Almost the same specs as yours, actually.

One thing of note is that some netbooks come with really crummy onboard video. That shouldn't matter with DF, since it's enhanced (SDL) text-based output, unless you use a tileset, in which it still shouldn't matter. 1.66 Ghz should be fine unless you plan on having a thousand dwarves in one fort. (something I've never achieved)

If you want DF to run at absolutely full speed you might consider adding a second core (not always wise on a netbook considering some don't have onboard cooling, as ridiculous as that may sound) or upgrading your RAM.

[Africa]

My netbook can run about 40-50 dwarves at reasonable speed, 2x2 map. So it's doable. But hardly the ideal.

[Rollory]

I run my 40d fortress (currently at 181 dwarves, embark area was 16x16 - max size - lots of junk stone lying around everywhere, a lot of animals too) on an ASUS EeePC netbook.  I get a pretty steady 2 FPS.  I haven't used any lag-reducing tricks (aside from only turning on the water pumping when I actually need it).  Basically it takes a couple hours of just letting it sit to get through a season.  Since most of the fort is pretty much on autopilot at this point, it's not a big problem.

I tried a 31 fort on an area that I think was 4x7; I think I was around 30 FPS at 40 dwarves.  So it's entirely doable.

The nice thing about this is I can take the thing anywhere and keep my fort advancing.

[ZaZ]

You might want to find a Atom D510 equipped netbook which is the dual-core atom chip, although it won't help DF per say, it will allow your OS to be useable while DF eats one of your cores alive. Also I would recommend a lightweight linux distro like Arch or XP performance edition so your system isn't bogged down by unnecessary processes freeing up more RAM and cpu time for DF