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[whig]

I've played DF intermittently over the years but always got put off by the fact that forts would eventually die framerate deaths. Even when I tried to prevent this by severely limiting the population and map size, using pathing-efficient layouts, and keeping stockpiles small, I tended to eventually find myself reaching undesirable framerates after a few game years at most.

Now I want to return to the game, but I want to ensure that I do everything possible to avoid that framerate degradation, because it's an incredibly sucky way of losing a fort, and (unlike losing) is not fun. I'm willing to play under most any constraints (within reason) if it means maintaining high FPS. Please, tell me what I can do to have a prosperous, long-lived fortress and keep the framerate going strong.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[kaijyuu]

Turn off temperature.
Don't make a million items; keep your food and booze production about on par with consumption.
Turning off invasions definitely helps (mainly item and unit clutter).
Lower number of dwarves = better.
Don't make a million items.
Stop making goddamn items.

[slothen]

use and love aquifers.  Reduce number of cavern layers.  Smaller world, shorter worldgen, smaller embark.  Keep low pet population.

[Talvieno]

Turn off temperature.
Don't make a million items; keep your food and booze production about on par with consumption.
Turning off invasions definitely helps (mainly item and unit clutter).
Lower number of dwarves = better.
Don't make a million items.
Stop making goddamn items.

Everything here. Also:

Delay breaching the caverns. Especially the deeper ones.
Utilize the traffic designations - "d" --> "o".
Avoid making anything that looks like the caverns - i.e. mazes.
Use multiple z-levels for your fort, rather than putting everything on the same level. Faster for your dwarves means faster for the pathfinding, which means higher FPS.
Caravans make the FPS take a large hit. I'm not sure how you would remedy that, though.
Block off anywhere you don't want your dwarves going with locked doors or walls. Anywhere. This includes abandoned mined-out ore veins.
Avoid using pumpstacks unless when absolutely necessary.
Rivers/waterfalls slow the game down somewhat. Practically any moving water does, really.
Forbid items -  "d" --> "b" --> "f" - to keep your dwarves from attempting to path to them.
Use a shorter worldgen length. This will mainly help with migrants and engravings - not much anywhere else, unfortunately.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Hotaru]

Would highly recommend making a shallow world. The way I managed to do it is disable bottom layer - one cavern layer - all layer amounts minimum - erosion cycles set to 10000 by manually editing init (don't know if it made a difference). This would result in 20-60 z levels deep regions.

What would probably be informative for this would be Operation FPS bomb. The main thing that hasn't been mentioned is - do not dig pointlessly. Even walled off spaces appear to take down the FPS, Armok knows why.

[Findulidas]

Don't make a million items.
Stop making goddamn items.

How sad it is to not be able to hoard items and have an impact on the fps. Making as much wealth as possible with a myriad of diffrent items/ways is basically how I play df.

[Sadrice]

Get creative with your wealth generating!  Only make the highest possible value items.  Wait til you get a highly skilled craftsman before making anything, gold mastercraft only, bedizzened with gold studs and gemstones, only the finest booze and food, engrave every exposed surface, but smooth everything first to produce a legendary engraver.

[mnjiman]

Thanks for reminding me of a huge issue that I currently have.... I have way too many crappy items :O

[khearn]

[quote author=whig link=topic=106961.msg3177296#msg3177296 date=1333982314
I'm willing to play under most any constraints (within reason) if it means maintaining high FPS. Please, tell me what I can do to have a prosperous, long-lived fortress and keep the framerate going strong.

Thanks in advance for any replies.
[/quote]

Everyone keeps missing one thing he can do to get higher framerates: Get a faster CPU.

[davros]

Use ramps instead of stairs. Saves on pathing costs.

[Garath]

I've just set all used clothing to be dumped in a plce that doubles as refuse pile. Over a few years, you will accumulate tons of clothing and you'll keep making becuase dowrfs get unhappy if it gets too worn. But worn clothing in a regular stockpile won't go away, and regular clothing in a stockpile for worn clothing does. Got to do it manually and you'll see fps go up after a while.

[Sadrice]

Does anyone have a link to tests for the ramps vs stairs thing? 

[Quietust]

Use ramps instead of stairs. Saves on pathing costs.

I disagree - I built a fortress using a spiral ramp in the center, and I got a significant framerate increase when I added several columns of stairs in the center.

[mscantrell]

More than anything else, it helps me on my PC to use a 2x2 (or 3x2 at the most) embark map. Seems like keeping track of all that aboveground stuff, even just weather, is intensive. Small map, small load.

[Rude]

I used to micromanage things like item counts and go way out of my way to minimize creature counts. But the biggest single change I found was turning off temperatures. 50fps -> 90fps instantly.