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[Button]

There's a utility packaged with the Lazy Newb Pack whatever it's called now which makes DF aware of 64-bit memory if you've got it.

In My Experience the best thing you can do is to make your fort compact, use up-down stairways instead of flat floors for hallways (and put your hallways directly above & below each other), and avoid engineering with liquids. Pathing and liquids are way bigger contributors to FPS death than items, IMO.

[catpaw]

Turn off temperature. For me with a lot of containers it was a hugh FPS killer albeit it adds only little gameplay experience. Unless you plan to make a channel of lava through the ice mountain, or an obsidian farm, temperature calculations don't make much a difference - as far I know.

[juxari]

I don't play with either weather or temperature on.

Unfortunately my fortress save file seems to be damaged for some reason. I previously played with the lazy noob pack and never had any problems with crashing or damaged saves and I have no idea why the game can't load the fortress save. Anyhow, there were no slowdowns until I started mining one single large flat floor below ground which might have been a coincidence but might also indicate that above ground building is less FPS heavy than mining out space below ground. I will test this with a new fortress in the future with no FPS cap.

[TruePikachu]

An important thing to remember is that computer specs, while a good contribuiter to FPS, doesn't necessairily translate well into comparing system results - you won't be able to give a multiplier on which to adjust FPS counts given hardware. Additionally, software (especially system services) plays in very strongly. As a result, it isn't very plausable to share absolute FPS counts, even when sharing system specs.

Really?  So are you saying that it might be possible for my computer to run one game faster than yours, while yours ran a different game faster than mine?

Very easily, especially when you consider the differences between singlethreaded and multithreaded applications.

In theory, if I had a 3GHz dual core, but you had an 2GHz quad core, many singlethreaded games would run faster on my system (DF included), while many multithreaded games would run faster on your system (assuming enough threads). A single thread of execution can only be executed on a single CPU core, so eventually, more CPU cores won't improve preformance any further.

There are a number of other factors and examples as well, but they are pretty much nothing in the big picture, since the CPU is what takes most of the grunt in this game.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

No, I mean one game of DF vs another game of DF.

[Quietust]

I think it eventually will slow you down. If I remember correctly the game has to keep track of each of those blocks used in the construction. But, with how few things you have to track a few thousand blocks shouldn't be a problem.

Constructions introduce slowdowns from two angles:
1. It has to keep track of the original item (though there is a DFHack plugin which will delete the item and flag the construction as "recreate the item from scratch when you deconstruct it"), which means that general item lookups take slightly longer (it's done via binary search, so you'd only notice significant slowdowns each time the item count in your fortress doubles).
2. It has to keep track of what the construction is made of, using a separate structure that needs to be looked up for each constructed tile that is visible on the screen. These also use binary searches, though with three values (X+Y+Z coordinates) instead of just one so they're a little bit slower. Typically, you only get noticeable slowdowns when you're building something on the scale of Flarechannel.

The second slowdown source also comes into play with engravings, made worse by the fact that the game needs to do a binary search for every map tile in the viewport to see if there's an engraving present in order to color it properly (whereas constructed tiles have their own distinct tile type which can be filtered out). Simply smoothing walls and floors shouldn't cause any slowdown, though.

[enizer]

engravings cause a slowdown?
i didnt even consider that..
is that a big one, or?

[Melting Sky]

If you are using quantum stock piles this won't make much of a difference but I noticed that my fort took a big FPS hit when I started using bins and other storage containers on mass. I think all the crazy pathing and cancellation spam you get from dwarves dragging storage containers everywhere is likely an FPS drain.

Children and other animals running free also drain FPS considerably.

[Dirac]

While the intent of your experiment is good, the execution may not yield useful results.  If we were to attempt to scientifically evaluate what aspects of the game cause FPS slowdown, we would need a control (a game where you play as normal) and variables (multiple games, each on the exact same embark site, where you implement one of your "methods to (in)crease FPS" section).

Given the complexity of Dwarf Fortress, it would be quite difficult to ensure that the only variable being tested for a given experiment is the one which you are intentionally changing.  For instance, you couldn't feasibly compare above-ground and below-ground fortresses without ensuring that the area of every floor and the layout, traffic designations, and stockpile sizes are identical.  Otherwise, how can you be sure that the FPS slowdown or boost is solely due to the fact that the fortress is above ground?

In any case, good luck.  I truly enjoy playing DF, but FPS death is the one thing that's keeping it from being the greatest game ever made.  Here's hoping for a multi-threaded DF in the future.

[Snaake]

Posting on my phone, so I'll keep this short: there exists an unofficial bugfix that stops the temperature of items in bins from getting stuck in an oscillating loop. IIRC it comes preinstalled with LNP. Of course it won't remove all the processor/memory load caused by temperature calculations, but just saying that if you've turned off temperature or stopped using bins because of bin-temperature fps slowdown, you might want to get that patch.

[catpaw]

I just doubled my FPS by de-sealing the caverns - I had a vertical shaft to the magma sea sealing off caverns. There were  3 forgotten beasts waiting for the soldiers. Seems they constantly tried to A* into the fortress bringing down the FPS.

[Melting Sky]

I just doubled my FPS by de-sealing the caverns - I had a vertical shaft to the magma sea sealing off caverns. There were  3 forgotten beasts waiting for the soldiers. Seems they constantly tried to A* into the fortress bringing down the FPS.

I never even considered that aspect of the caverns. I wonder if this is true of any "trapped" hostile.

[mross]

How could you possibly maintain interest in a fort long enough for this to be an issue

[juxari]

While the intent of your experiment is good, the execution may not yield useful results.  If we were to attempt to scientifically evaluate what aspects of the game cause FPS slowdown, we would need a control (a game where you play as normal) and variables (multiple games, each on the exact same embark site, where you implement one of your "methods to (in)crease FPS" section).

Given the complexity of Dwarf Fortress, it would be quite difficult to ensure that the only variable being tested for a given experiment is the one which you are intentionally changing.  For instance, you couldn't feasibly compare above-ground and below-ground fortresses without ensuring that the area of every floor and the layout, traffic designations, and stockpile sizes are identical.  Otherwise, how can you be sure that the FPS slowdown or boost is solely due to the fact that the fortress is above ground?

In any case, good luck.  I truly enjoy playing DF, but FPS death is the one thing that's keeping it from being the greatest game ever made.  Here's hoping for a multi-threaded DF in the future.

While I agree that it is indeed very unscientific what I'm doing here I still believe there's some value in it. For example, If in the game all other factors remain the same except the increasing number of constructions, that gives some indication regarding how constructions affect FPS.

Initially I had 1000 FPS on embark and a while after that (1000 seems to be the maximal the game will run in) and have now used maybe 30 000 blocks this far and my FPS averages around 450. I have mined out a space of around 1,5 X 144 X 144, which I did in the beginning of the game.
'

[juxari]

How could you possibly maintain interest in a fort long enough for this to be an issue

I guess that's a matter of playing style. I like to develop my forts into perfection, huge citadels and complicated mechanisms and defense systems etc.