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[Libash_Thunderhead]

...

In my experience, population(inlucding all creatures on map) is what really matters.
Keep them below 150 (citizens + guests + animals).

I wonder how many people are playing with default settings (220 hard population limit, 100 guests, if I recall correctly). To me that's hardly playable at all.

[Shonai_Dweller]

...

In my experience, population(inlucding all creatures on map) is what really matters.
Keep them below 150 (citizens + guests + animals).

I wonder how many people are playing with default settings (220 hard population limit, 100 guests, if I recall correctly). To me that's hardly playable at all.

I'm playing at about that, I up the limit to 250 though. 250 Dorfs is pretty much my playable limit, especially if I've got caverns open and stuff. But then, I prefer multiple fortress/adventurer games and don't go in for 'play as long as possible until it's absolutely hell (literally or figuratively)' fortresses. I'll usually retire or be pretty much ready to retire by the time I reach 250.

[Untrustedlife]

...

In my experience, population(inlucding all creatures on map) is what really matters.
Keep them below 150 (citizens + guests + animals).

I wonder how many people are playing with default settings (220 hard population limit, 100 guests, if I recall correctly). To me that's hardly playable at all.

I'm playing at about that, I up the limit to 250 though. 250 Dorfs is pretty much my playable limit, especially if I've got caverns open and stuff. But then, I prefer multiple fortress/adventurer games and don't go in for 'play as long as possible until it's absolutely hell (literally or figuratively)' fortresses. I'll usually retire or be pretty much ready to retire by the time I reach 250.

This is how I play I try to stay with one world as long as possible playing multiple adventurers/fortresses in that world.

[MobRules]

Reading this thread, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that...

...I am freaking old.

Get off my lawn!


(I saw the thread title and groaned because I thought it was yet another DOOM thread. Glad that it wasn't.)

[Geltor]

The active world has nothing to do with FPS death, as FPS death is dependent on fortress age while world activity is almost entirely independent from the fortress altorgether.

slight correction: fps death has little to do with fort age and more with the quantity of its denizens. a 50 man fort will run forever. the problem is the path-finding, so if your fort is a labyrinth it gets even worse. but from extensive testing ive done to reduce fps-deaths, its like stalin said..

no man no problem

[Bumber]

The active world has nothing to do with FPS death, as FPS death is dependent on fortress age while world activity is almost entirely independent from the fortress altorgether.

slight correction: fps death has little to do with fort age and more with the quantity of its denizens. a 50 man fort will run forever. the problem is the path-finding, so if your fort is a labyrinth it gets even worse. but from extensive testing ive done to reduce fps-deaths, its like stalin said..

no man no problem

Slight correction: It's what everyone's doing and how many are doing it. Over a hundred dwarves can run okay if they're just sitting around. A single dwarf in a tree that gets a mood can single-handedly wreck your FPS. A cat behind a door. A clown behind a wall. Et cetera. I think the growing dead units list contributes a bit over time, as well as tree spatter (or spatter in general.)

no pathing spam no problem... probably

[Livingdeath]

Pathing * people is definitely the main culprit, but I used to be able to have a 200-250 person fort run at 30fps on an older computer in previous versions, so its not the only reason things are this way. 

I've actually quantified things pretty well.  For instance if I turn off the mistmaker and the power generator I gain 4 fps, if I cage all animals I gain 3fps, if I cut and floor all the trees, like 6-7 fps, if I wall off the caverns (like 3-4 fps).  Quantum stockpiles definitely helps as does simply atomsmashing most items.  The active world probably is 5-10 fps difference between versions although its hard to pinpoint exactly b/c things were save incompatible.

Anyway, I used to be able to run all these things on a larger embark, so yea the performance loss between versions is beginning to be a real problem and 15 fps really matters when its the difference between an unplayable 10fps and a livable 25fps.   

The worry is not so much this version (which is just barely acceptable), its what happens when Toady keeps adding new features without a corresponding speed fix (which hasn't happened for several years).

[Libash_Thunderhead]

The active world has nothing to do with FPS death, as FPS death is dependent on fortress age while world activity is almost entirely independent from the fortress altorgether.

slight correction: fps death has little to do with fort age and more with the quantity of its denizens. a 50 man fort will run forever. the problem is the path-finding, so if your fort is a labyrinth it gets even worse. but from extensive testing ive done to reduce fps-deaths, its like stalin said..

no man no problem

Is it just my imagination or the second fort tends to be slower than the first one (same population).

[Killgoth]

It's probably just one person or a small group of people raiding the forums in an attempt to get a rise out of us. In all honesty, Toady dying is a much greater threat looming over us than anything they've mentioned. I made a graph of percentile DF completeness vs years Toady has been working on DF, put logarithmic and power trend lines on it (because it sure as hell didn't look linear), grabbed the trend line equations, punched them into Wolfram Alpha and solved for percentile DF completeness=100. The power trend line predicted that DF will be complete in late 2085, while the logarithmic trend line predicted it would be complete in 2860. However, I suspect that over the next 3-5 years Toady is going to drop some big stuff on us like the myth generator he's been talking about recently and that will speed up progress so that we see DF completed in 10-20 years down the road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTOrBNCeF1Y

[Urist_McArathos]

Toady has plans to release the source code on his death, provided it was natural causes and not some deranged fan doing him in for the code.

Since that would open up the game potentially to being finished by the community instead, I'd say DF is safe regardless of whether or not Toady lives to see v1.0.

Regardless, discussing Toady's potential death and mortality seems a little too morbid, even for these forums, so maybe we should just take into account that he has plans for his demise and leave the matter to lie; the game will be fine either way.

As for the recurring "DF is doomed", it's just one of the recurring topics.  I'm certainly concerned about the game slowing down as more features are added, but at the end of the day the answer is always the same: Toady is programming the game and is doing it his way, so all our speculation and arguing about what should/shouldn't happen is completely pointless and a waste of time.  It's more remarkable, to me, that so many long-time veterans of this forum end up taking the bait and getting into these discussions every time.  Haven't we all been here long enough to get that those kinds of threads should be left to wither and die?  Is there anything to be gained from rehashing the multithread pros v cons debate again?

[Wilm0chimp]

...

In my experience, population(inlucding all creatures on map) is what really matters.
Keep them below 150 (citizens + guests + animals).

I wonder how many people are playing with default settings (220 hard population limit, 100 guests, if I recall correctly). To me that's hardly playable at all.

Utterly agree, even the newb starter packs need tweaks imo - 100 default visitors is absolutely insane.

I crank that shit down to 5, I stay at <100 dwarves and use quantum stockpiles for everything.

I am the FPS master now.

[Dirst]

Toady has plans to release the source code on his death, provided it was natural causes and not some deranged fan doing him in for the code.

I think there's also something in there "if I inexplicably pull a lever which plunges me into magma."  He's got all of the Unfortunate Accidents covered

As far as pathing is concerned, it's not just citizens that path, so it's not strictly related to the population cap.  A catsplosion or large necro siege could also bring a computer to its knees.  Since refining the A* algorithm is a little out of scope for DF development, the issue will probably be resolved in one of three ways:

1. Stagger the pathing decisions, much like flow and temperature and item wear and creature growth are handled.
2. Shift the pathing to GPS or somewhere else out of the main thread.  This has a complicated set of pros and cons.
3. Someone else publishes an improved pathing algorithm and Toady folds it into DF.

[SirPenguin]

I'd like to think I fall in the category of longterm fan - I have been playing and following the game since I graduated high school in 2006.

I find this thread - and the attitude it represents - very frustrating

You can love the game and love Toady and still think the game is going down the wrong path. In fact, would say that by any objective metric Dwarf Fortress is not doing things "correctly" or even "very well"

Here's my current DF cycle: I view the devlog each day. After a release I just intrinsically "know" the game is completely unplayable for 2+ months because, well, it just is. After those 2 months are up I boot it up and toy around with it until I hit one of the many (years-old) game-breaking bugs. This repeats until my patience wears thin and I drop the game until the new release

I don't think I'm alone. I'd go so far as to say this is 'the norm'

This is "fine"; Toady doesn't owe me anything. I'm well off enough that I can afford a monthly donation, and I feel good about it, and I don't expect anything in return.

But how long can this cycle actually last? A previous poster did a great job describing the "myth" that is Dwarf Fortress. We tell each other stories and twist and distort the truth to fit our narratives. Readers get intrigued and maybe try to check it out themselves and then...well, it's a complete fucking mess, right?

Technical debt is called that for a reason. It's not going to go away on its own just because we want it to. It slows Toady down, it prevents new users from picking it up, and it causes old users to give up

This is 2016. The idea of a solo dev just doing his thing and coding out a game isn't a novel idea anymore. DF runs the risk of being left behind. It's ok to acknowledge that fear. That fear is not unfounded.

[Max™]

Cathelms was 19 years old, it was only a 1x2 but it was something stupid like 300...maybe 350 z from the height where the eagles spawned, like 100~150 z to the glacier where they hit and exploded when the constant rain of pretty blue ruphie juice knocked them out.

I ran with 20 dorfs for the first 8 or 9 years, then when updating to a new install I forgot the init limits and had to raise it to 40, then after 15 or so years I raised the cap to 90 and started doing all the room stuff there.

I would periodically flood the glacier with magma to get rid of the everpresent zombie sieges. There were eagles flying in, pathing around, and then kersploding all the time.

Never dropped under the 180(25) caps. Even at the end when I pulled the zombocalypse lever and released all the cages in the Zoombie it only dropped to 100 or so.

Most people won't be happy with just a 2x1 or 1x2 fort, I like them for specific purposes though, and I tend to build/dig vertically more than spread anyways so it doesn't change much vs having a larger embark.

As for active world causing lag, if this were the case why doesn't all the nonsense going on in adventurer mode cause the same lag?

When I get town-wide insurrections where 12,000 dorfs and goblins are all trying to move around and kill each other it gets pretty damn lagtastic, I don't know the fps because I turned it off, it's useless when adventuring to know you're at 960 fps. Besides that sort of craziness only things like sealed libraries full of scholars biting each other to death triggers the really awful lag spikes. Even full pop dark forts aren't as bad as those libraries.

Now, evil glaciers at nightfall when all the billions of zombie yetis and polar bears start roaming around? That's unbearable at times, but the solution is easy: shove something through their brain until they stop moving.

[Bumber]

Cathelms was 19 years old, it was only a 1x2 but it was something stupid like 300...maybe 350 z from the height where the eagles spawned, like 100~150 z to the glacier where they hit and exploded when the constant rain of pretty blue ruphie juice knocked them out.

That sentence sounds completely insane out of context. Just thought I'd point it out.