Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[lorb]

The explanation I heard (not sure if it was that thread) was that it basically takes DF a while to sort through all the piles of crap to determine which tile to display, in what color. [...] Not sure if it's more dependent on the number of tiles or the number of items, so idk if it applies to quantum stockpiles or not.

If df needs to go through every item on a tile to determine which tile to display, that would mean the exact opposite of what this thread and the wiki are saying: that quantum stockpiling helps reduce the FPS decrease from the amount of items a fortress has.
And answering that question is why I necro'd this ages old thread. (After all, this information is tagged as being "about the current version of df" in the wiki.)

[PatrikLundell]

Pure speculations below:

I suspect the surface lag is caused by the DF display engine first "rendering" the "ground" tile, and then replacing that with a rendering of the topmost item of the the items on top of it. It might possibly skip the "ground" tile if there's construction on it (like a bed) to render that instead. If the rendering is then subject to modifications (such as vomit, leaves, blood,...) that might add additional lag. If this process is generally correct, any kind of QS would cost the same as a regular stockpile tile. Regardless, the display engine (or its usage) have to be very inefficient for it to have trouble with the limited amount of display DF requires.

It can be noted that cages with multiple creatures in it cycle the creature displayed, which might cost extra.

@martinuzz: If you channel down into the soil of vegetation less badlands the soil below supports grass (and thus grazers), but never herbs or saplings, in my experience (and I've done that a fair bit). You can build farm plots both on the actual surface and on the channeled soil, and they support the same set of crops in both locations. I wouldn't be surprised if it would be possible to get grass on the surface as well by building on it and then tearing the building down (the mud -> soil trick, basically), although I haven't actively tried, and haven't noticed it happen, but tearing things down usually mean you did it wrong in the first place...
Regardless, your moat doesn't run the risk of getting nullified by trees, but you might possibly get a rather marginal FPS effect if you cover the moat floor with either a floor or a paved road (I wouldn't bother).