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[lethosor]

I agree on that to make DF a better game Toady should work on play-ability.
I would say that UI is more important than optimization. The game is so huge and complex so i am impressed with the speed it is running. So the said reality maybe that he has to limit it more with capping the population and the amount of contamination's to minimize the risk of the fps death to fortresses.

But in the end i am confident that Toady will continue to do what he think is fun and develop the game in a way that make it even more interesting

I have no doubt that he will work on optimization eventually, but I would like to see it sooner rather than later. Its absurd that such a simple game runs so slowly

It's worth pointing out that Toady has fixed some performance issues, such as http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6012 and http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5971

Pointless complexity example; WASD UHJK Left Right Up Down 8462 /*-+ all depending on the particular screen you're on. There is no unified schema to it.

It's fairly consistent in fortress mode, at least. The arrow keys and 8462 (which are equivalent, by the way) are used to move around the map and scroll primary menus/lists. +-*/ are used to scroll menus when it's possible to move around the map at the same time (except the hospital menu, which I agree is inconsistent). wasdx are used for orientation, while umkh are used for resizing - there are some situations where both of these operations would be possible, as well as moving around something that's being built with the arrow keys.

The unit screen suggestion is a good idea. If that hasn't been suggested in a separate thread, you ought to make a thread for that, since Toady doesn't usually dig through suggestion threads for suggestions that aren't related to the original.

[Bumber]

It's fairly consistent in fortress mode, at least. The arrow keys and 8462 (which are equivalent, by the way) are used to move around the map and scroll primary menus/lists. +-*/ are used to scroll menus when it's possible to move around the map at the same time (except the hospital menu, which I agree is inconsistent). wasdx are used for orientation, while umkh are used for resizing - there are some situations where both of these operations would be possible, as well as moving around something that's being built with the arrow keys.

The unit screen suggestion is a good idea. If that hasn't been suggested in a separate thread, you ought to make a thread for that, since Toady doesn't usually dig through suggestion threads for suggestions that aren't related to the original.

I'm pretty sure there's an inconsistency between the military screens and the stockpile screen. I don't have access to a computer with DF right now to check.

[cata2k]

These are all valid points, getting used to the UI was the biggest challenge to me. But when I said optimization I meant performance-wise

[DeDeRon]

Word on the street is there's a lot of optimization that can be done in DF to relieve slow framerates. I, for one, would like to see this take priority over more features in the immediate future.

o how i wish toady would finally understand and put some effort into it. i definitely fear for the future of df. more and more features, making the game barely playable after a few ingame years. there was a poll somewhere in this forum asking about the reasons why ppl quit a fort, and iirc fps death came out as winner. if this doesn't wake up toady, nothing will.

the abundance of bugs falls into the same category and i am sure at least some of the bugs are responsible for fps issues. so maybe fixing the bugs would help a lot.

saying that i'm afraid this won't happen soon. having a community chanting the old "will be fixed when it's done" mantra again and again doesn't help either.

[cata2k]

Word on the street is there's a lot of optimization that can be done in DF to relieve slow framerates. I, for one, would like to see this take priority over more features in the immediate future.

o how i wish toady would finally understand and put some effort into it. i definitely fear for the future of df. more and more features, making the game barely playable after a few ingame years. there was a poll somewhere in this forum asking about the reasons why ppl quit a fort, and iirc fps death came out as winner. if this doesn't wake up toady, nothing will.

the abundance of bugs falls into the same category and i am sure at least some of the bugs are responsible for fps issues. so maybe fixing the bugs would help a lot.

saying that i'm afraid this won't happen soon. having a community chanting the old "will be fixed when it's done" mantra again and again doesn't help either.

There will be nobody to play it when its done if it isnt brought up to snuff quick. People aren't going to wait years for an ever-more-sluggish product to finally clean up its act. The people are fickle and will move on

[Putnam]

Word on the street is there's a lot of optimization that can be done in DF to relieve slow framerates. I, for one, would like to see this take priority over more features in the immediate future.

o how i wish toady would finally understand and put some effort into it. i definitely fear for the future of df. more and more features, making the game barely playable after a few ingame years. there was a poll somewhere in this forum asking about the reasons why ppl quit a fort, and iirc fps death came out as winner. if this doesn't wake up toady, nothing will.

Except that that's not actually the cause of FPS death in this version. It's something-or-another that needs to be processed not being cleaned up when it's no longer relevant. Retiring and unretiring tends to fix it.

Word on the street is there's a lot of optimization that can be done in DF to relieve slow framerates. I, for one, would like to see this take priority over more features in the immediate future.

o how i wish toady would finally understand and put some effort into it. i definitely fear for the future of df. more and more features, making the game barely playable after a few ingame years. there was a poll somewhere in this forum asking about the reasons why ppl quit a fort, and iirc fps death came out as winner. if this doesn't wake up toady, nothing will.

the abundance of bugs falls into the same category and i am sure at least some of the bugs are responsible for fps issues. so maybe fixing the bugs would help a lot.

saying that i'm afraid this won't happen soon. having a community chanting the old "will be fixed when it's done" mantra again and again doesn't help either.

There will be nobody to play it when its done if it isnt brought up to snuff quick. People aren't going to wait years for an ever-more-sluggish product to finally clean up its act. The people are fickle and will move on

The game has been slow for 9 years, so that statement is just wrong.

[Loci]

It's worth pointing out that Toady has fixed some performance issues, such as http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6012 and http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5971

From the linked profile graph it appears roughly 10% of cycles are spent in processPlants and plant::update. And those were the v0.34 numbers, before the massive plant expansion in v0.40. Surely that code could be optimized to run less frequently.

It's fairly consistent in fortress mode, at least. The arrow keys and 8462 (which are equivalent, by the way) are used to move around the map and scroll primary menus/lists. +-*/ are used to scroll menus when it's possible to move around the map at the same time (except the hospital menu, which I agree is inconsistent).

Except for the trade agreement screen, where +/- navigates the primary list and the arrow keys navigate the secondary list and set values. And inside containers, where +/- navigate the primary list.

[shadowclasper]

Every time I read these threads it makes me give up hope for this community. For every person reasonably pointing out that some level of optimization of features such as speed and UI needs to be handled sooner rather than later, there's 3-5 who exclaim 'NO! More features are needed! More shit that will slow things down and make the list of nested menus grow ever longer!'

And they act as if third party stop gaps are an actual solution rather than papering over the cracks. A method that will eventually fail to deliver appropriate results as feature bloat and further fps slow downs occur.

This stuff might not effect the next update, or even the next 20 updates. But the more updates there are, the harder it will be to fix this shit without breaking everything, fix it early on so there's less things to break. We can't just plan for this year, or next year, or even the next 5 years, but on the lifespan of the full project which is 20 years minimum. These will not be merely game breaking issues in future if not nipped in the bud now, but project killing ones. Make no mistake. If toady waits until feature completion to deal with UI and basic fps optimization? He won't be able to fix them without essentially starting from scratch.

Edit: think of it like building a house. You get the foundation complete and fully functional on how you want it functioning before you build on it. You get the frame next, then the plumbing and electricity. Each layer you build on, makes it harder to change what's already been put in. If you find out something in you foundation's has been fucked when you're just stuckoing the walls, then you have to basically rip up everything to get at it and fix it.

[Neonivek]

And they act as if third party stop gaps are an actual solution rather than papering over the cracks

Ohh dear goodness is this a huge peeve of mine.

I wish there was a way to delete every single person's post that goes "A mod does this"...

Hey maybe I want this feature in the base game because I want the basic game to be good and not the modded game.

[Vattic]

Neonivek: I do this because I figure people would be interested enough in the suggested feature to try a mod that already does it. It's not meant to detract from adding the same feature to the game; If anything an existing popular mod shows demand.

[shadowclasper]

Neonivek: I do this because I figure people would be interested enough in the suggested feature to try a mod that already does it. It's not meant to detract from adding the same feature to the game; If anything an existing popular mod shows demand.

That's not how people phrase it in these threads though. They phrase it as if it's a reason for why that particular fix should be put off until he future, rather than that it should be dealt with -now-.

A lot of the time, the people asking for this stuff? Yes, we're going to be using that mod, or have already been using that mod. The point we're trying to make is that it's gotten beyond bearable that we -need- this mod.

If a 3rd party mod is necessary to play the game, then the game is broken and it needs to be FIXED.

edit:

snip

I'm sorry I didn't address this earlier, but last time I was on mobile.

This a thousand times. And if Toady doesn't want to deal with this crap, then he should pass it onto the community by providing us with an interface like he does with the graphics. He's stated before that he's no UI designer or Graphics Artist, and that is fine. But when he admitted as much in the graphics stuff, he changed things to allow us to edit the graphics ourselves.

Now he needs to do the same thing with the UI.

[Vattic]

shadowclasper: by these threads I presume you mean the ones like this one? I didn't read Neonivek's post to mean this and still think he meant more generally. I lurk on this board quite a lot and while I have seen people dismissing the idea of adding features because of a mod most of the time I'd not say this was the intent when mods are mentioned. I suspect I am responsible for a fair few of these mod suggestions.

What 3rd party tool or mod is necessary to play the game, or is 'necessary' hyperbole? There's a lot around at the moment and I fear it's only making the arguments about this worse through misunderstanding and polarisation. The only tool I can think of is Dwarf Therapist and Toady has been and is working on his own, very different, fix for the same problem. He has been aware of the problem for a long time, but his fix depended on updating other things first (dwarf minds for one from what I remember).

On the topic of optimisation I am a little confused. For one I was taught that optimisation was for the end of a project and thought this was a common rule of programming. On the other hand I see sense in getting some extra performance when the fruit is low hanging. Luckily for us Toady does some optimisation of this kind after major releases.

[Putnam]

Yeah, every single time Toady works on new features people immediately get to suggesting optimization. He then works on optimization for a few months and people conveniently forget that the next time it comes up. It's maddening.

[shadowclasper]

No, Toady works on -bug fixes- and -bare minimum- optimization. He doesn't give it the attention it desperately deserves. It's glossed over as unnecessary in place of a focus upon new features, which layer on the problems and further interactions, likely further burying the code that will need optimization in the future to the point where making changes to it could very well crash everything built on top of it.

As for 'necessary' being a hyperbole. If it is one, it's so close to not being hyperbole as to make no nevermind. It is technically possible to play vanilla DF without Therapist, but I think most people would suggest attempting to do so is a lesson in frustration.

[StagnantSoul]

In a smaller fort or with extreme amounts of micro- which is how I play the game- it is quite possible to do the game without Therapist, especially if you use f2-12 for your ten most important dwarves and check everyone as they come in. And the optimization mods? Other than 34.11 Masterwork once in a while, I've never used them, my computer isn't the best, and I go with larger maps- yep my fps stays around 40-60.