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[omega_dwarf]

I think I remember someone asking this before, but I don't recall if it ever got answered. I'd be quite happy to be pointed to an existing answer :3

I'm in a 2x2 embark with temperature off. There are trees everywhere, and as a consequence, apple leaves and apples and almonds and sand pears and...etc...littering the ground everywhere. Does that have an impact on calculations per second? I would have thought not with temperature turned off, but my fps is getting pretty bad with only 20 dwarves (most of whom attend parties all the time.)

It might be a large-ish world, but only 100 years of history. I've been in this embark for a while now, don't really want to abandon it. It should be playable for another year or two, but my megaproject won't be done by then. (A massive tower both aboveground and below, made with open-air quarries.)

This is DF 0.40.18.

Separate issue: DF uses 8% CPU. (Single-threading fml, but I know multi isn't coming any time soon.) Anyway, it should be able to use at least 12.5% because of my logical core setup. So is it possible that my memory is the bottleneck, and it's actually using all the CPU it needs? It's a pretty-much-new gaming laptop, so I would expect better than 60 FPS plugged in on high performance with 20 dwarves, 2x2 embark, only 2 caverns revealed, and temperature off.

As a last resort, if the game does become unplayable, is there anything in DFHack that allows you to transfer forts from one world/location to another world/location? I'm guessing not (since there would probably be a lot of problems with that), but it would be insanely useful, just to cut down on the history calculations if you bit off more than your computer can chew.

[Rolan7]

It sounds like you know more about hardware tech than I do, but it sounds to me like something's wrong.  My fort is getting 135 FPS (I uncapped it to test) with 59 citizens.

Intel Core i5-2410M @ 2.30GHz, 32bit.

Which is a bit odd, my old Thinkpad X40 with 1.5Ghz or something got up to about 300FPS when uncapped.  That was 40d16, though.  I suppose the new features cost a lot of CPU, or maybe I had less dwarves than I remember.

[gunpowdertea]

Yes, there was a discussion about three months ago, and the conclusion was more or less that the main bottleneck is the memory access. Ideally you'd want as much memory as "close" to the CPU as possible.

Edit: Oh, and yes, the tree litter does cause FPS issues it seems. Use dfhack to clean up the mess... Also: Pathing...

[omega_dwarf]

Yeah, I have an i7-4710, 2.5GHz (thank you, parents!), so something's up.

Oh wait, how many logical cores does your processor have, Rolan7? Since DF is single-threaded, the number of cores matters massively, which partially explains why my 2009 dual-core ran 0.34.11 just about as well as my 2014 quad-core (and possibly why your older one ran faster.) (Mine has 8 logical and 4 physical, which means theoretically DF should be able to use close to 25% CPU, but might be forced to 12.5% by some lame constraint.)

I'll try the DFHack solution and chop all the trees too, gunpowdertea. War with the elves would be interesting anyway

If I ever try/have money to, would I find instructions on how to improve the memory situation in the thread about the memory bottleneck?

And is disabling active history an option? (Pretty sure it's not in the raws, but sounds like something DFHack might be able to help.) Would culling unimportant historical figures (I noticed it's no longer defaulted to "yes" in 2014) help?

Thank you both!

[Rolan7]

I was using a Core Duo, probably with 2.2 or 2.4Ghz, which is about the same clockrate as my current quad core machine...  I guess that makes sense.  I used to run nano 1x1 fortresses on a 1.2Ghz low-voltage Pentium M, but I had major FPS issues with that of course.

[Arkangel]

Oh, and yes, the tree litter does cause FPS issues it seems. Use dfhack to clean up the mess...

Can DFHack acutally clean up all the tree litter? Because the clean command doesn't touch fallen leaves and the like.

[Slogo]

Tree litter, especially on a 2x2 embark shouldn't cause THAT much issue. I know my current fort is 2x2 heavily wooded (with fruit trees), rain 100% of the time, temp on, and I still get reasonable FPS up to 150 dwarves.

FPS issues are usually a bit of everything, but can you post some shots of your fortress? I'm guessing the big issue is pathing. Most likely problems with pathing from the quarry to the stone stockpiles and pathing from the stone or block stockpiles to the top/bottom of the tower where you are doing megaproject work.

[omega_dwarf]

I was thinking that too...but pathing shouldn't be too much of an issue. I think. I mean, I'm using minecarts to reduce hauling runs, and I was still getting about 60fps when most of my dwarves were partying. Unless the climbing mechanic makes them want to scale all the walls I'm building (I haven't seen anyone do it yet.) But still...only twenty dwarves. I can't imagine that pathfinding takes any more than twice as long as it used to.

What world size and history length do you use, Slogo?

Oh, edit: I'll post pics when I'm back to my computer.

[Slogo]

Varying, but usually <250 years.

Maybe a silly question, but you haven't capped the FPS to 60 have you? What do you get on a fresh embark (i.e. 7 dwarves idly standing around a wagon)?

[omega_dwarf]

Not a silly question, but fresh embark is always 100, and that persists for maybe a year.

On another note, doesn't seem to be much hapenning in history either unless there's some massive unreported growth in historical figures ("The world is the same as ever" the last couple caravans.) Maybe legends mode can provide some answers.

[smeeprocket]

if you have a 64 bit OS you can up the game's accessible RAM from 2 to 4 with this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/

[omega_dwarf]

Hmm, I think I did that once and notice little difference, smeeprocket, but I can try again. That was in 0.34.11.

Here are the images of the fort:
imgur.com/gallery/OpNOP/

[utunnels]

Well tree litters, blood, vomit and other contaminants make little difference to me.
I mean, they may affect fps, but after using dfhack (clean all), fps doesn't get improved.

So they may have a thing or two to do with your fps, but they don't have major effects.

[omega_dwarf]

That's been my experience too. So the other question remains: why the heck is a gaming computer producing this mediocre situation?

[MDFification]

That's been my experience too. So the other question remains: why the heck is a gaming computer producing this mediocre situation?

DF doesn't utilize computing resources like most modern games do.