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[TxJBxT]

So I have returned to the game after roughly a year and half hiatus and I'm none to happy with the games current release.

Firstly I don't know what happened to sieges. Do they just not happen anymore or what? Over the past few days with multiple forts lasting multiple years I've yet to get anything aside from a hello/goodbye zombie siege. Again let it be clear that only ONE "siege" happened to me over the past few days. I don't even get any ambushes either. I remember when I'd get goblin snatchers like crazy on my second year and could count on them besieging me in the third year. I do thankfully still get attacked by the odd forgotten beast but they aren't what I train an elite army for.

Finally this has got to be the WORST I've seen this games FPS be at. It's truly a frustrating anti !!FUN!! mess! FPS fluctuates so much its insane. The most common drain so far seems to be the amount of dwarves and yet funnily enough I barely have any in my forts anymore. I've played around with the max pop a few times and have been very VERY reluctant to set the cap to below 50 cause whats the point of playing then? I typically prefer a standard 75ish dwarves to play with, most of them in my military but even with 50 dwarves in this release I sit at 20 FPS for no damn reason. The worst part is I don't know how to diagnose the problem to fix it myself. I've tried many ways to figure out whats draining me but I don't know. I've even made my embarks small with a 2x2. There's just no possible way that 50 dwarves is dropping frames to 20. Impossible. I have no jobs needing done aside from like what 5 dwarves training cause sparring seems to drain fps now? Bah...

Thats my biggest gripe. The inability to play and enjoy game due to FPS being a damper on fun. I seriously hope this game multi threads one day else the more content you add the worse the fps will get. It's going to get to a point where you can't even test anything. Hell I can't even play around with nobles much anymore. I've considered moving back to the 2 year old version I used to play but between the no sieges and bad fps my love of the game has been killed for now and I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't touch it again for a while. Shame really since this is one of the best games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. 

PS: Love the new Inns and Libraries! 

[PatrikLundell]

Leaving DF for another hiatus may help, of course, since it sounds like you'd come back eventually if not completely disgusted.

FPS death is, unfortunately, about the most common DF fortress death reason, and a lot of efforts have been spent on trying to keep it up, but no surefire recipe has been found.

A year and a half ago was probably around 0.40.13, which didn't differ hugely from the current version in terms of FPS, as far as I can see/remember. Two years ago would still be early 0.40.X, but might be prior to world activation (0.40.09, I think). World activation messed up sieges a fair bit in that sieges don't just spawn at your doorstep, but rather come from a specific settlement. One problem with that is that if the settlement is a small one, it won't be able to provide much in the was of sieges, and DF doesn't yet know how to recruit from other settlements. A worse problem is that the two week period in between embarking and arriving at the embark point is a mess with a flurry of wars, settlement settling, site reclamation, etc., so even if you use Legends Mode to ensure you've got a nice strong goblin dark fortress as your closest neighbor prior to embark, the buggers may have founded a crummy black pit closer to you in the mean time. Another (very reasonable) world activation effect is that enemies tend to go after the closest settlement, so if the gobbos are at war both with you and someone else, and someone else's settlement is closer to them, they may go there first, moving on to you only when that site has been taken care of.

It would help if you could state which the old DF version you used to play was, as that would help the old timers to know what your reference is.

[TxJBxT]

Judging from posts I made years ago 34.11 seems to be the hot spot.

[FantasticDorf]

Its come a loooong way since then.

Before you dismiss the new version (which is now 64 bit!) or want to ease into the new releases one block at a time, the world activation is pretty heavy but brings a LOT of detail into the world outside the fortress has been added. Visitors from the wilderness come and go and every historical figure has a past and a story of where they have been, what they have done etc, its a lot to take in of all those people moving around.

Rather than isolationist, think of world activation as communist globalism (strange i know) where civs ultimately via little chains (blocked by barriers such as oceans) grow collaboratively stronger. Dwarves for instance with your 'guidance' can establish a very successful fortresses, 'retire' said fortresses and return them to the world-gen state, meaning in the future, whatever materials your dwarves can use that they settled upon and the skills and people therin will be added to your civ for future embarks.

Daisy chain your handful of dwarves who might be in a bad state back to health and prosperity, and marvel at what you have created in a third person character adventurer who goes about the world.

Right now the game direction is swinging towards expanding into more interaction outward and working on mythos

[Sanctume]

34.xx siege units were just created out of the vacuum.

Sometimes during world activation, siege units/army come from populations. 

An issue as far as pathing was in v40 that sieges never made it some of the time, but there are some world gen in v40.24 where sieges happen (i.e. Breadbowl). 

v42 fixed the pathing issue somewhat.  I've personally had a nice escalating sieges that went up to 100 of goblins, beak dogs and trolls. 

--

As for FPS, that larger the world, the longer the history, the more things are simulated in the world.  The fortress is no longer a vacuum as historical figures and sights are also simulated elsewhere in the world.

x64 bit version is out, that should help in putting more stuff in memory, but still, core CPU is the bottleneck for handling all the calculation needed for FPS.

[TxJBxT]

See thats the one thing I really enjoy from this release is the whole visitors deal. Its pretty sweet to see people come to my fort because of whatever rumors they hear about it. I'd definetly miss that reverting back to 34.11.

[scourge728]

I mean I have 300ish dwarves and a ton of animals on my 6ish years old laptop without too much trouble... then again I don't actually know how much FPS I'm getting....

[Dunamisdeos]

The biggest change with sieges is that armies need to travel. It does not spawn units for convenience's sake on our forts anymore.

Sieges tend to range from insane and fast to rare and slow. Blazecooks has gotten 5-10 sieges in 10 years.

[Fleeting Frames]

I've even made my embarks small with a 2x2. There's just no possible way that 50 dwarves is dropping frames to 20.

Aye, hardly my experience. FPS is significantly worse from .34 days, but not that much worse usually.
Some possible causes:

Lone pet trying to path through pet-impassable door.

The fort is several years old and you embarked on forested area. Fall looks amazing, but all the falling leaves are counted.

Shenanigans in the caverns.

PS: If you want to play .34, I think there is currently running a succession fort based on Syrupleaf saga.

[lcy03406]

But what's the birthrate of those cute goblins? If they would siege me, and we kill 100 every year, eventually they will die out or surrender then we won't get any siege in centuries? Then we have won the game and should retire?

[Fleeting Frames]

Post-worldgen peacemaking isn't working currently, I believe, so it's the first. People have indeed killed off goblin civilizations, finishing off the last few in adventure mode.

Though, it can require bit of worldgen planning so that you'll be sieged from a dark fortress and not pit.

Is it winning the game? Up to you; it's a sandbox.

Personally, I find the architecture of those ancient forts always more impressive, but that is at least in part because I can look at them.

[Daris]

x64 bit version is out, that should help in putting more stuff in memory, but still, core CPU is the bottleneck for handling all the calculation needed for FPS.

I run DF on a machine with an AMD FX-9590.  That was leading-edge when I bought it 3 years ago, and is still more powerful than most new computers sold today.  It runs at an effective 4.71 gHz.  That's pretty fast, and yet I had to abandon a fort recently because FPS went to single-digits.

It's misleading to say that someone's CPU just isn't powerful enough to handle DF.  My understanding is that DF is really inefficient at accessing a CPU, utilizing only 1 of my CPU's 8 cores.  DF artificially cuts my CPU's power to 12.5% of what it normally is.  Putting the responsibility for an FPS of 7 onto my CPU isn't fair.  When I run it on a gaming machine that has a nominal speed of 5 gHz, and it still chokes, that's on the game, not on my machine.

[TxJBxT]

Aye thats the biggest thing holding the game back is it not being multi threaded. I wouldn't have any FPS problems if it used all my cores.

[PatrikLundell]

You have to figure out a way to "multi thread" memory access to make sure you actually get a speed benefit from using multiple cores. There are a number of indications DF is more memory bound than CPU bound, but yes, multi threading might provide some benefit, if used selectively.

[Sanctume]

DF uses a single process, so a single core with the highest gHz will affect FPS.  It does not care about extra cores at all. 

There is no gamer CPU that can handle the amount of calculations DF is doing to keep an acceptable FPS.  Not the way worldgen historical figures gets updated.  Not with an ever increasing number of objects as the game year progresses.

x64 is a recent version, using a newer compiler, and that is the step in the right direction.  At least in terms of going beyond the 2g/4g ram limit.

If DF has some architecture 10 years ago to use multi-threading, then sure, it will probably an easier transition.  But that isn't so.  How many are thought that 10+ years ago in college or in professional environment? 

Wiki/googlefu says first dual core is by IBM's POWER 4 cpu, released in 2001 for business servers AS/400s.
And for PC gaming, Intel's Pentium D, and AMD 64 x2 were released around May 2005. 

So multi-threading is probably not in the architecture, so I do not expect all that code worth 10 years of work can be flipped on a switch. 

It can be done, eventually, but that is like asking Toady to learn new coding concepts and my impression is that he rather work on what he knows as far as putting his ideas into code the way he know and been doing.