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[PatrikLundell]

The problem is that Toady probably will have to face the threading beast sooner or later regardless, but dipping the toe with a comparatively easy initial effort is probably wise. When that's done something with minimal interaction with other things can be attempted (such as the external world events. Even that isn't completely safe as you have to ensure engravers doesn't pick events that are only written half way, for instance). Just considering multi threading should get gears going to start a mind set where thread safety is at least somewhat present.

[Dark One]

You could show your friend a save of Doomforests or other huge and cluttered community fortress/succession game.

[HungryHobo]

Chatting to a friend who's very into his graphics I remember saying something like

"in your game, how hard would it be to add a creature with skin made of copper, blood made of molten iron, hair made of silver wire and bone made of stone that bleeds burning molten iron when cut and adjusts it's behavior when you cut off a limb"

"quite a while...."

"I just added it to DF while we were talking. Hey, look ,I just added a female of the species which has golden skin"

Once you get people to realise what gets excluded from more graphical games simply because it's hard to animate they can change their view of DF.

[King Kitteh]

Once you get people to realise what gets excluded from more graphical games simply because it's hard to animate they can change their view of DF.

I don't know what game you're talking about because, darn. Adding those [CREATURE_TILE:][COLOR:] can take hours of work. I usually just give up, too much effort.

[Nyxalinth]

Urist cancels beat ‼XXMangled Horse CorpseXX‼: interrupted by ‼XXMangled Horse CorpseXX‼ zombie.

[omega_dwarf]

Having him specifically browse through legends on a large world, and subsequently realize how many of those figures and civilizations and sites are still around and kicking, might bring him around.

Then mention that that's only one of like five major tasks DF has to perform (have been mentioned elsewhere) each tick.

(As a side note, I'm teaching myself how to use basic threading [hobby programmer], and yeah. Until you've done it, it's hard to envision the headaches - and mine is a relatively young project, pretty much barebones engine. PatrickLundell provided a good explanation of the moment it hits you that it's not as easy as it seems.)

Very interesting topic.

[fluffymormegil]

I don't believe that changing to 64-bit will actually speed something up. Occasionally I compare 64-bit versions of programs with their 32-bit versions, and usually the 32-bit version is faster (if there's a difference), and always it takes less memory (which is expected, and which may explain why it is faster). I suppose only the bigger forts will be affected positively, and they are already crippled by other things.

If your program's performance is limited by CPU register space, going from x86-32 to x86-64 (specifically) will get you real performance improvements because you now have 16 registers instead of 8. (This doesn't apply to 32-bit vs. 64-bit versions of most other architectures.)

If your program relies heavily on 64-bit integers, going from any 32-bit arch to its corresponding 64-bit arch will get you real performance improvements because your registers are now 64 bits wide so the generated assembly code is much simpler (and may well involve fewer loads/stores).
 
If your program's performance is limited by the speed of pointer-chasing and your whole data set (using 32-bit pointers) fits in the address space available to 32-bit applications on your chosen operating system (a combination which applies to a lot of programs in practice), going from a 32-bit arch to a 64-bit arch will - as you've seen - actually make your performance worse, all else being equal.

[Somebodyelse]

Basically, I want somebody to help explain it to him. He doesn't understand how an ascii game can be so resource intensive and he has mocked me relentlessly because of it. He's a major elitist snob who only plays modern games with HD 1080420P blaze it graphics.

He sounds like a self-absorbed egotistical superficial jackass who measures his fun in other peoples' unhappiness and looks down on others just because it makes him feel better about himself.

The solution to your problem is to stop being friends with him.

People like that don't want to understand anything. They only want something or someone to exclude/dismiss/one-up/dominate/mock or otherwise diminish in anyway they can to heighten their sense of self. As another poster already said: a bully.

[Pvt. Pirate]

very well said, somebodyelse.
long ago i've chosen to get rid of all those kind of people in my life and ever since my life has become more pleasant.