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[Jackboot]

Hello! I'm playing with my fort Elbeliton "Renownedhalls". It has 156 dwarves, but FPS has dropped to about 26 FPS. This is really odd, because usually my forts chug along at a speedy pace until I hit about 200.

So I decided to take the usual steps to fix FPS: I sold off all the junk, did the traffic pathing, and put 124 cats (pets and stray alike) onto a bridge with an endless amount of refuse and corpses. There's a lever attached that drops these tons and tons of garbage straight into a lava pit where they sink and disappear, but I haven't seen any notable changes in my FPS.

I'm not very into computers or optimization so I hope I don't sound like an idiot when asking this but: Does all this stuff disappear and is no longer considered by the game, or do they remain junk data?

I really don't want to abandon this fort because I've found a treasuretrove of safe candy underneath the lava sea and it will take in game years to refine and sell it all.

[Garath]

some junk is magma safe and then you actually made the problem worse because now the game is tracking the temperature. While the non-magma safe stuff burns you'll experience more lag too. It's why I usually use atom smashing. Killing 100+ cats should make a difference, however...

selling a lot of stuff helps, but if you take it in perspective it may be nothing. Why? Well, selling 1000 pieces of clothing while you also have 35.000 bolts and 55.000 prepared meals and what not else is not going to make much of a difference. Similarly, killing 100 cats may help but if you still have 100+ dogs, 100+ turkeys and 100+ of another dozen animals, the difference is hardly noticable

Lastly, items may be still in a buffer somewhere. Quit and restart the game and a difference may be seen. I once managed to go from 20 fps to 50 just by disposing of items and creatures, though that was on a bad computer and already a small fort

[Jackboot]

some junk is magma safe and then you actually made the problem worse because now the game is tracking the temperature. While the non-magma safe stuff burns you'll experience more lag too. It's why I usually use atom smashing. Killing 100+ cats should make a difference, however...

selling a lot of stuff helps, but if you take it in perspective it may be nothing. Why? Well, selling 1000 pieces of clothing while you also have 35.000 bolts and 55.000 prepared meals and what not else is not going to make much of a difference. Similarly, killing 100 cats may help but if you still have 100+ dogs, 100+ turkeys and 100+ of another dozen animals, the difference is hardly noticable

Lastly, items may be still in a buffer somewhere. Quit and restart the game and a difference may be seen. I once managed to go from 20 fps to 50 just by disposing of items and creatures, though that was on a bad computer and already a small fort

Well my fort has pretty much become self sufficient and has a surplus of candy, so there hasn't been a need to really import anything. So I've ended up with a huge amount of food and goods tucked away, along with my 'emergency food supply' room filled with about 20 pigs.

Would it improve things to just dump everything non-vital onto the traders and start from 'scratch', or is FPS death unavoidable once a certain amount of items has been reached?

Oh! And there was also an accident with the river draining, so it's draining down 3 Z levels into a huge cavern and draining off-site. Would that impact FPS as well?

[Garath]

yes, waterfalls and water flow (not so much regular rivers but other flowing rivers) have a huge impact on fps. Destroying a lot of the items, and then I really mean a lot, will definately help. As I said, it helps, but only if you actually have destroyed a significant part of the items. You might say that yes, fps death is inevitable as your fort expands, as every dwarf has more clothing items, and as you dig and build, traps for new entrances, or new engineering projects, constructed walls etc all slowly drain your fps. It depends on your computer how far away that is from happening, maybe it won't happen. Getting rid of everything you don't need (keep a few around to trade for interesting animals, right?) including 50 years worth of food supplies and enough bolts to keep 100 marksdwarves happily shooting all year round, even if they never actually do so, sounds good

[Hans Lemurson]

Stockpiles are another factor.  They constantly search out for items which could be stored in them in order to generate hauling jobs.

[WhimsyWink]

Stockpiles are another factor.  They constantly search out for items which could be stored in them in order to generate hauling jobs.

is that statement based on knowledge of the actual code or just a way to look at it?

I've been trying to come up with a playing style that I can use on my antique laptop.  (Of course, at home I want to build aquaducts across the whole embark.)

[nymall]

is that statement based on knowledge of the actual code or just a way to look at it?

Yes, this is a simple trick to creep a few more fps out of a fort. Usually late game I'll try to resort stockpiles, and by a little optimization I can gain a good ~10-20 fps. Then again, I tend to over-stockpile.

[Merendel]

You can also save some FPS by sealing off wide open areas you have no need to access.  The pathfinding algorithem is prety fast when it only has to look at a coridor for where to go next.  On the other hand it crawls if its looking at a wide open room.  Mined out Z lvls can impact FPS if you have dwarves/pets pathing by it all the time.

I'd also recomend cageing any animals you dont have a need to have out and about.  If your not trying to breed them or have them lay eggs or performing some other task there's no reason for them to be out eating up CPU cycles while they path around whatever room they are locked in.

[Sutremaine]

Setting traffic zones is another option for wide open spaces that you don't want to make available manually, though depending on how long the desired path is you might need quite a few of them to stop the pathfinding from getting through the restricted area before it can get to the target tile.

[WhimsyWink]

You can also save some FPS by sealing off wide open areas you have no need to access.  The pathfinding algorithem is prety fast when it only has to look at a coridor for where to go next.  On the other hand it crawls if its looking at a wide open room.  Mined out Z lvls can impact FPS if you have dwarves/pets pathing by it all the time.
~

That is information I can use.  Does it have to be sealed (or will a locked door do?) and does it have to be empty?  eg a piece of stome some hauler keeps trying to get

[Snaake]

...
Oh! And there was also an accident with the river draining, so it's draining down 3 Z levels into a huge cavern and draining off-site. Would that impact FPS as well?

Blocking that waterfall and -flow will probably improve your fps FAR more than anything you can do with clearing out items, dwarves, or pathfinding tweaking.