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Author Topic: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.  (Read 1082 times)

Beenjamin

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FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« on: March 23, 2012, 09:43:18 pm »
Hey,
 
  My laptop is a bit too old and weak and so it starts to lag as soon as I get my first big wave of immigrants. I've tried some of the stuff to streamline it, like assigning traffic areas/highways and caging animals. I was wondering if somebody would be able to give me some specific advice to streamline DF so that my laptop could cope a bit better.

My Ram is 2GB and my processor is about 4 years old but it's nothing special from a £300 laptop.

Thankyou in advance

         Ben
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white_darkness

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2012, 09:55:20 pm »
Do you use this laptop for other things in general, since one of the big benefits is cleaning out misc. stuff running in the background you don't need.

This coming from a guy who's still using a 10 year old 2.4 Ghz P4 with 512 MB of ram to play DF.

Just DF alone, have you culled out temperature and weather?  Those will help.  I was also rather pleasantly surprised/frustrated by setting a graphical fps of 15.  Now they move too fast for my tastes.
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knutor

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #2 on: March 23, 2012, 10:06:05 pm »
Windows?

1. Open Control Panel(CP)>System>Adv System Settings>Performance>put dot next to Adjust for Best P.
2. CP>Performance Info and Tools>Manage Startup Programs>disable not remove, anything not directly related to Dwarf Fortress play.
3. Use High Power energy profile and plug into an outlet.
4. Release any Graphics Card settings limiting fast gameplay. (complicated, use a guide)
5. End those useless bundled Windows processes, that make it cost $300, instead of 3 dollars.  Ha!

Knutor
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Beenjamin

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #3 on: March 23, 2012, 10:58:28 pm »
@white_darkness
yeah I'm a student so I use it for pretty much everything. I haven't tried culling temperature and weather but i will soon, is it just a case of disabling them with the lazy newb pack?

@knutur yes it's windows. i have instigated steps 1.,2.,3, and 5. and will do some research on 4.

 Thanks for the help so far guys I'm going to test out the changes and see if my frame rate holds up a bit better once things start to get busy. I'm also trying to generate a shallower world as I've heard that may help.
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white_darkness

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2012, 04:11:27 am »
Quote from: Beenjamin on March 23, 2012, 10:58:28 pm
@white_darkness
yeah I'm a student so I use it for pretty much everything. I haven't tried culling temperature and weather but i will soon, is it just a case of disabling them with the lazy newb pack?

@knutur yes it's windows. i have instigated steps 1.,2.,3, and 5. and will do some research on 4.

 Thanks for the help so far guys I'm going to test out the changes and see if my frame rate holds up a bit better once things start to get busy. I'm also trying to generate a shallower world as I've heard that may help.

No idea with the lazy newb pack.  Never used it.  They're contained in df_34_06_win\data\init\init.txt by default.

Just be aware, without temperature, your magma won't burn stuff.  Without weather, water may not freeze, and ponds that dried out may not refill without rain.

So you're limited in what you can cut out.    It never hurts to recheck and get the electronic carving knife out and ask yourself, do I really use program x that loads process y at startup?
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robertheinrich

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2012, 08:32:11 am »
Playing on a smaller embark rectangle also helps a lot with fps. Although with less space you are forced to use lots of z-levels for your fortress. And obviously will have less trees and pools etc. And probably no adamantine at all on some maps.
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quarague

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #6 on: March 24, 2012, 09:46:53 am »
just running smaller forts would help, too. Put the max inhabitants to 50 and reduce the kid thingy to 20:20 or something like that. Your fort will top out at about 80 dorfs which is a lot faster than 250 and can still achieve almost the same things.
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Beenjamin

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2012, 04:19:15 pm »
Thanks for all the advice and help guys, I'm running a 3x3, I turned off weather and temperature and my FPS is going really well. Got about 80 dwarfs and it hasn't dropped below 45 yet!

I do feel cheaty not having magma so I'm probably going to do some tests next time and try and find a good compromise.
Thanks again to everyone who gave advice,

                                                           Ben
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FrankMcFuzz

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Re: FPS Problems, Playing on a weak laptop.
« Reply #8 on: March 25, 2012, 05:53:30 pm »
I run on 2GB RAM on my desktop computer, but it has a pretty damn powerful processor in it. I drop down to about 30-50 FPS at the sixth year though.

Try slaughtering all your free range animals. Or tying them up, I guess.

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