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[Stout]

Hayo Bay 12 community!

Been playing DF for about a year now, and finally registered.  I have gotten to the point where I understand most of the game.  However what kills me now is mostly death by lag.  Now I love to run the game at obscene frames, and I cap my frames to about 300, which is 3 times the normal.  I usually run a 3x3 embark on a small world, which helps with the fps.  I also figured out how to edit the raws to get rid of the pesky cat-dog explosions (took me a while and help from a friend to find out how to do that).  I also cap my pop to about 40-50.  I have figured out the atom smasher trick, and I keep most my stocks somewhat low by trading away all my stone crafts as much as possible.  I also turn most my settings to as low as possible (other than the nice tilesets), like no rain, water levels hidden, etc.

Now whats killing me lag wise is those darn goblins.  I usually have 6-8 lord quality army dwarfs ready for anything thrown at my castle topside.  And they usually whirlwind through goblins with ease (minus the few dumb uristmcslipintopondsanddie).  This leaves my topside littered with goblin gear left right and all over.  I try and try to keep it clean by dumping it to a nearby atom smasher and clearing it from my map, but its such a hassle when I am plowing through waves and waves of goblin ambushes like its nothing.  It seems like a never ending wave that soon overwhelms my cpu and reduces my frames.  Now at around 40-50 dwarfs and my fps capped at 300, I find it acceptable for my fort to run between 100-200 fps.  But the ever growing mound of gob-shite slowly kills my fps till it starts dropping below 90, which I find unacceptable.

Now I know the game is not exactly optimized, but I love to run it at the higher frames.  Is there anyway to somehow make all the gob stuff topside just disappear after a year or something?  Or is there any kind of trick that would help me get rid of all this useless gear?  Also any other tips to help keep my frames up?

[NecroRebel]

Well, if you're willing to start a new fort, you could go through the raws and simply delete all forms of non-armor clothing (including, or only, removing them from all entities' allowed items lists). That'll save you a large number of items on the map as well as reducing the number of things that appear when goblins do. Reducing the number of items goblins bring by eliminating most of their useless clothing will also save hauling efforts.

Also, you could, rather than sending out your soldiers to take the goblins wherever they appear, have your soldiers lie in wait someplace closer to your fort, preferably at a choke-point of sorts. This will make all of your kills be in the same general area, and then you can drag them to an atom-smasher more easily. In addition, try to use piercing or blunt weapons instead of slashing, as they'll dismember your enemies less and create fewer body parts.

Um. Other stuff to do... You may, for your future forts, want to look into the Intensifying Mod, which consolidates many body parts that may be considered irrelevant, such as fingers, toes, and teeth, as well as those that have redundant or no functionality into single pieces. For instance, it turns all the teeth into a single "jaw" body part. Reducing the number of body parts in this fashion is believed to improve FPS as the eliminated body parts don't need to be tracked as much.

The Fortress Defense mod also has some enemies, "supernatural" ones in particular, drop a particular type of custom stone on death instead of a corpse. That stone immediately evaporates, so those creatures essentially don't leave corpses. Something like that would also reduce your clutter with each ambush.



Probably your best bet, however, is to simply get used to playing at lower FPS. Most people consider the game "playable" down to ~20 FPS, with 50-70 being good. Since your fort will usually not require your direct attention at all times, it's fine to have the game running in another window while you do something else, only checking every few minutes back to make sure nothing pressing needs your intervention.

[ext0l]

But the ever growing mound of gob-shite slowly kills my fps till it starts dropping below 90, which I find unacceptable.

I hate you 
My FPS is ~20.

I think you can mod goblins to not wear any armor. Or you can just melt the goblinite.

[Stout]

Ahh thanks for the tips.  I will look into the intensify mod you mentioned.  Seems like consolidating body parts sounds like a good idea.  I know I am a bit spoiled with the high frames, but I think I will try my best to get used to slower frames since that just seems to be the norm for the game.  I really want to start trying out larger pops, and lower frames just seems to be a harsh reality.

[rephikul]

what's your hardware? what mod you use, what world param you use, which place you embark and what settings you use? I can barely get 110-130 fps with 50 dorfs

EDIT: oh wow didnt notice the free ad I got above OwO

[Stout]

what's your hardware? what mod you use, what world param you use, which place you embark and what settings you use? I can barely get 110-130 fps with 50 dorfs

EDIT: oh wow didnt notice the free ad I got above OwO

Windows Vista 64 bit
Intel core 2 duo 3.16 ghz
4 gigs of ram
Nvidia Geforce GTS 250

I usual gen a smaller or small world.  I also use a 3x3 embark which is smaller than the 4x4 embark.  I also "neutered" my domestic pets so they don't reproduce by editing the raws.  I try and turn off all the extra stuff like weather effects, water levels.  I do my best in game to keep fps high by keeping a very efficient and simple fort design, and keeping my stocks as low as comfortably possible.  I also try and atom smash all crud I find and don't use.  But yeah once I hit 50~ dorfs my fps starts to hit around 150 and less like you said.

Edit:  O and I usually just use what ever is the newest LazyNewb pack.  I am still somewhat a noob, as i am not to good at getting mods and stuff to work.

[mrbaggins]

I may have missed this in your initial post, but dim what I understand one of the biggest killers of fps is blood and vomit splatters on bits of clothing. You can make a dwarf wash to solve this.

Also, water/magma levels are fps-friendly, as the info is what gets processed, displaying it just shows a different tile.

For the record, I get 40-50fps at 100 dwarfs

Core 2 duo at 1.86ghz
2gb ram
8400m intel video (this is a laptop)
Win7 x64

[Stout]

Yeah I remember hearing about that.  I don't use soap because I haven't bothered making it and it was bugged recently(?), and the dwarf wash sounds a bit complicated.  Any tips on how to make an effective dwarf wash system that is compact and simple?  Gathering water into a big enough pit and having it drain somewhere in my closed fort seems risky and inefficient.  Can I maybe make a large dining hall that is constantly flooded by water no larger than 3 to clean my dwarfs?  Does blood have to drain somewhere or does it disappear when the water dries?

[rephikul]

Yeah I remember hearing about that.  I don't use soap because I haven't bothered making it and it was bugged recently(?), and the dwarf wash sounds a bit complicated.  Any tips on how to make an effective dwarf wash system that is compact and simple?  Gathering water into a big enough pit and having it drain somewhere in my closed fort seems risky and inefficient.  Can I maybe make a large dining hall that is constantly flooded by water no larger than 3 to clean my dwarfs?  Does blood have to drain somewhere or does it disappear when the water dries?

For effort-free blood solution you can try my non-sticking blood fix for vanilla DF here. What it does is giving blood/pus/ichor a very low evaporation point, which make them immediately evaporate after it leave the body and wont stick on people. Since you are using temperature:off they might still stick to the floor sometimes so you need to use dfclean to wipe them off. The only downside with this is that you never get to see the awesome pages of blood after a bloodbath. But seeing as you are a macroplayer and dont RP much that may not be an issue.

How to use: go to raw\objects and replace "material_template_default.txt" with the file I've linked. If you want to use it for your current game, first save it then go to data\save\<save slot>\raw\objects and replace "material_template_default.txt" with the file I've linked. Load and resume playing as normal.

I also "neutered" my domestic pets so they don't reproduce by editing the raws.

EDIT: I think this is why I'm 20 fps less then you. By the time I get to 50 dorfs I usually have like 400 animals and the initial animals already got a few batches of babies going around.

EDIT 2: I get about 120 fps for 50 dorfs and 70 for 100 dorfs, intel i3 and 2gb of ram.

[kasan]

I can't imaging that low of a frame rate x.x

Assuming I don't embark onto a minor or major river (or coast line larger than 5x5) I get around 130-140fps at 140 dwarves with around 40 animals and wild entities in a 3x6 (or 6x3) embark.   I do have cats and dogs neutered but I also don't have exotics and a few of those breed just as bad as cats. (I embarked with 2 elephants once and had about 20 calves by the end of the first year)

AMD Phenom x4 9750 Black (2.5Ghz per core which is relevant since DF doesn't utilize multicore processors)
8g Ram
Nvidia Gt470 784mb
Windows Vista 64b

Fake Edit: Nearly 600 fps on embark, makes the earlier digging of a fort awesome.  It takes me longer to designate everything than to actually get it mined out.

Fake 2nd Edit: If I DO embark on a minor/major river or larger coast line, I end up with about a constant 130 fps until I get to about 80 or so dwarves w/ pets, the it crunches down into the 40's.   Once I discover the 2nd Cavern Layer or HFS my FPS tanks to about 20-30

[rephikul]

I get 600-800 fps on embark also if I dont bring much animals. Animals do seem to drain down on fps. The same 600 fps embarks immediately sank to 300 ish when 2 dozens or so tigermen entered the map.

[shlorf]

Do caged animals still kill fps?

[Jacob/Lee]

They shouldn't, if they do it is much less than non-caged animals because they aren't actively trying to move anywhere.