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[Jingles]

Has anyone studied the FPS ramifications of having distinct rooms and corridors vs. completely mining out a large area?

Areas that are mined out period will hit your FPS, the bigger the area, bigger the fort, the bigger your FPS hit will be. 

Now, if you keep your fort nice and compact, the FPS hit will be barely noticeable, but if its a huge-sprawling fort with underground labyrinths, then yes, it will be noticeable.

If you block access to those routes you can bring FPS back up I think.  So carve your grand hall then force the dwarfs to use the service tunnels...  Hehe, all that hard work and they arn't allowed to enjoy it.  Or like a plastic covering on a couch. 

That sounds like fun actually.

[Montague]

I think locking a door to block access, using a draw bridge, ect actually increases FPS, as the algorithm finds a path through the door only to realize it can't go that way after all and recalculates. It's been theorized that the pathfinding program learns from past paths it has created and suddenly raising a drawbridge or locking a door wrecks havoc on it as it makes futile attempts to use past pathways. This is brought up in the context of sieges and ambushes, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

I'm unsure about building walls to separate parts of the fortress.

[xaldin]

Has anyone studied the FPS ramifications of having distinct rooms and corridors vs. completely mining out a large area?

Areas that are mined out period will hit your FPS, the bigger the area, bigger the fort, the bigger your FPS hit will be. 

Now, if you keep your fort nice and compact, the FPS hit will be barely noticeable, but if its a huge-sprawling fort with underground labyrinths, then yes, it will be noticeable.

You can also adjust the FPS hit by using the traffic designations to weight certain routes differently. Random off mining tunnels get lowest priority while the main hall gets highest.

[Mushroo]

What about a wide-open space with virtual "corridors" designated using high-traffic zones? That seems like the best of both worlds.

[Montague]

What about a wide-open space with virtual "corridors" designated using high-traffic zones? That seems like the best of both worlds.

This might be efficient if the low-traffic space isn't wasted. Stockpiles or whatnot.

Corridors can be wasteful, in a manner of speaking because they are not 'useful' areas, rather they are just conveyances used to get from one useful area to another. Making a fort more efficient would reduce the ratio of useful space vs conveyance space.

One idea might be to basically set a 3x3 central staircase with rooms connected on each side and repeated down each level. It could be a balance between not mining out excessive stone and maintaining control by have individual rooms with lockable doors and everything else. It also eliminates the use of traditional corridors, except on a case-by-case basis if you gotta have apartments or whatnot.

[Darkweave]

I prefer to make large, grand organic fortresses. By that I mean I'll have 4-z high entrance hall with waterfalls, statues and engraved pillars leading to a narrow bridge across a chasm watched over by a 4-z guard barracks leading to a 40*80*4 grand hall with bedrooms lining the outside on every level with windows looking in. I also never build up/down staircases. After that I'll build/dig/smooth out each are as I imagine it would look in real life rather than to conserve FPS/improve efficiency.

[Buttery_Mess]

Basically a modular 11x11 design. Each workshop level has five stockpile rooms above and below it, if possible, so arranged so that the correct workshops don't interfere with one another. Four staircases to a room, arranged in a square from the centre with three spaces distance between each one. It's the most efficient design for the workshop areas. Other room types are arranged however I see fit, being based on 3x3, 5x5 or 11x11 designs. It always fits together perfectly this way, and is aesthetically pleasing, as well as efficient.

In fact when I see other people's forts arranged different, it bugs the hell out of me. This is why I have problems playing in succession forts.

[Montague]

In fact when I see other people's forts arranged different, it bugs the hell out of me. This is why I have problems playing in succession forts.

Yeah I hate other people's forts. I guess maybe because I started playing DF on a crappy low-end laptop all my fortress layouts are aimed at making things efficient as possible and usually on a 2x2 embark. The cavet to that is that I aim toward maximum fortress wealth as a gameplay goal as well and I try to keep the majority of my fort carved out of the 3 or 4 layers of limestone or dolomite to maximize the architectual dorfbux that result as such. Everybody else seems to favor huge hallways, huge rooms, half of which is dug out in the dirt layers and everything is messy and staircases up and down are dozens of tiles away from the busiest sections.

I've been trying to break out of my old fortress habits, with a 3wide hallway, running left to right with 3x3, 5x5 and 7x7 rooms in a sort of standardized format. With ample stairs up and down as needed, but basically only in the flux layers. The highly vertical, 11x11 on a small embark like Mushroo described sort of awed me and I'm going to try and aim for something like that for now on, with the slightly more expansive sections still in the flux layer and all.

[Mushroo]

I wanted to mention that vertical fortresses are easier than ever, due to the ability to designate across multiple z-levels in the latest release.

And make sure you have a gatehouse at the top and secure entrances to the caverns, you don't ever want fighting on your central staircase. One work-around is to stagger the stairs to make a spiral-staircase arrangement so dwarfs won't fall 100 z-levels and explode. I've heard hatches also work, can't confirm.

[The Dog Delusion]

In fact when I see other people's forts arranged different, it bugs the hell out of me. This is why I have problems playing in succession forts.

Yeah I hate other people's forts. I guess maybe because I started playing DF on a crappy low-end laptop all my fortress layouts are aimed at making things efficient as possible and usually on a 2x2 embark. The cavet to that is that I aim toward maximum fortress wealth as a gameplay goal as well and I try to keep the majority of my fort carved out of the 3 or 4 layers of limestone or dolomite to maximize the architectual dorfbux that result as such. Everybody else seems to favor huge hallways, huge rooms, half of which is dug out in the dirt layers and everything is messy and staircases up and down are dozens of tiles away from the busiest sections.

I've been trying to break out of my old fortress habits, with a 3wide hallway, running left to right with 3x3, 5x5 and 7x7 rooms in a sort of standardized format. With ample stairs up and down as needed, but basically only in the flux layers. The highly vertical, 11x11 on a small embark like Mushroo described sort of awed me and I'm going to try and aim for something like that for now on, with the slightly more expansive sections still in the flux layer and all.

I think I'm kinda the same way. I've seen some really sweet fortress designs, but usually, at most, I find myself wanting to use one or two elements from it and leaving the rest.


And I too have been trying to break out of my old habits in more recent forts, usually by varying up the entrance and surface levels, but even then, the fort proper usually ends up as a cube of efficiency, since I just can't really get myself to do it any other way.

[martinuzz]

Has anyone studied the FPS ramifications of having distinct rooms and corridors vs. completely mining out a large area?

One thing you should never do, is make 1-wide pathways. This hurts your fort in two ways:

1) FPS. A dwarf that has to pass through another dwarf will have to recalculate it's pathing from that spot onwards.

2) Inefficiency. A dwarf that has to pass through another dwarf needs to lay down / crawl to do so, and then stand up again, wasting time.

I tend to make sure there's not a single tile in my fort that is only connected to 1 other tile. Every tile should be able to path to at least 2 other tiles. My hallways are at least 3-wide, and my doorways at least 2-wide.

[Koremu]

Has anyone studied the FPS ramifications of having distinct rooms and corridors vs. completely mining out a large area?

One thing you should never do, is make 1-wide pathways. This hurts your fort in two ways:

1) FPS. A dwarf that has to pass through another dwarf will have to recalculate it's pathing from that spot onwards.

2) Inefficiency. A dwarf that has to pass through another dwarf needs to lay down / crawl to do so, and then stand up again, wasting time.

I tend to make sure there's not a single tile in my fort that is only connected to 1 other tile. Every tile should be able to path to at least 2 other tiles. My hallways are at least 3-wide, and my doorways at least 2-wide.

I use 3-wide for the main transit hallways in my forts, as well as the entrances to high-traffic sections like stockpiles, as well as the ramps (NEVER staircases) between levels.

However, low traffic areas (bedrooms) all get width-1 sealable doors in high value materials, both so that individuals can be isolated from the fort if necessary, and to improve room quality.

As well as this I've occasionally gone further and had entire subsections which can be individually isolated, usually by means of Stone Floodgates, and any entrances to the fort from the surface or the caverns has triple-isolation measures after a while.

Ideally, exterior working crews form a subsidiary caste which is never permitted to return within the hallowed halls of the fortress.

[miauw62]

My hallways are always 2 wide, but doorways to generic sleeping rooms are usually 1 tile wide, especially  because when a migrant wave comes, i always give all dwarves their own bedroom, so they have no reason at all to go in there.

[daftfad]

Tight, compact, as much as possible visible on one screen. Entrance goes down into a single long 3-wide hallway. The basic unit of room is the 11x11 (shift+arrow). But they often start out as simple 3x3 workshops coming off the hallway, which are later expanded into 11x11s. Even farms are 3x3 rooms (bucket-filled from above to muddy). Meeting hall/dining room/dormitory is one enormous 22x22 space (beds in one corner, tables in another). Noble rooms are all 3x3 - it's fun trying to get the exact amount of value required in a tiny space. Hospitals and jails contain 2x2 rooms coming off a 3-wide hallway (fits into an 11x space)

When I was a newbie (right after the 2D->3D switch) I used to be big on multi-level forts but these kill FPS and kill your fingers with the constant < and >. I try to make as many important stockpiles visible at once as possible (esp wood) so I can see my important consumables at a glance.

Avoid the massive up/down staircases, they are horrible for FPS.

[Azkanan]

Avoid the massive up/down staircases, they are horrible for FPS.

Not a problem for me .