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[waerth]

Hello all,

It has been a long time and it should probably go into the bug section. I am playing version .44.12

I have noticed since restarting DF for the first time in years that everytime there is birds in my game it seems to significantly jerk up the CPU usage. I now have about 25 Ravens and Buzzards that generated and the CPU is constantly on it;s maximum. I noticed this because at the end of April I checked the creatures and there were no birds. Then on may 2nd the game starting becoming impossible constant stopping and I checked the creatures list again and boom 25 birds had come all of a sudden. Game can't be burned ahead since.

I deliberately played on an open plain this fort. So it can't be water or lava (1 small lake only not even a brook). But even with lots of water and lava and mountains I never experienced something like this. Also I am only in my first year of this fortress

[Uthimienure]

I'll keep a look out for this when I get a bunch of birds. I've checked CPU usage of DF before and it is usually pretty low, but never specifically for birds. BTW just as a tip, for games that hog the CPU, you can use B.E.S. (Battle Encoder Shirase) and it works great for me with no problems.

[Leonidas]

I've noticed this in adventure mode. As soon as birds load, the FPS drops to single digits.

[waerth]

I'll keep a look out for this when I get a bunch of birds. I've checked CPU usage of DF before and it is usually pretty low, but never specifically for birds. BTW just as a tip, for games that hog the CPU, you can use B.E.S. (Battle Encoder Shirase) and it works great for me with no problems.

Thx will try out B.E.S later!

[Uthimienure]

I've noticed this in adventure mode. As soon as birds load, the FPS drops to single digits.

O.P. was about CPU, not FPS.
What is the CPU load at that point?

Side note: B.E.S. shouldn't help FPS at all

[anewaname]

Creatures that fly or climb outside of combat, can path-find into a larger region of the map and that burns up FPS. In a different thread, a player posted that they exterminate them with dfhack because of the FPS drop.

[Leonidas]

On the plus side, birds make for excellent crossbow practice because they're so hard to hit.

[Fleeting Frames]

I guess a solution would be to heavily limit z-levels above ground in advanced worldgen. Default 15 is a lot of open space.

@Uthimienure: Same thing; if DF can't maintain the game speed by maxing out core even more it starts lowering fps.

[Uthimienure]

I've not played a huge population with large area embark yet, so I have not experienced the max-out of the CPU personally, and did not know that DF would ramp up to 100% CPU until reading this thread. With pop 70 on a 4x4 volcano embark after 3 years it's still running at my 40 FPS cap using only 5% CPU up to 10% when about 12 birds and 10 beasts roam the first cave (others not exposed yet).

FF, thanks for that info, it's good to know.

[anewaname]

It will only use one core of the CPU, so most machines will not max the CPU, and FPS will drop instead.

[delphonso]

Creatures that fly or climb outside of combat, can path-find into a larger region of the map and that burns up FPS. In a different thread, a player posted that they exterminate them with dfhack because of the FPS drop.

Likely culprit. I get slowdown with bugbats in the caverns sometime.

[waerth]

Very likely culprit. I have like an almost totally flat embark. Game runs at 80-95 FPS until Vultures started appearing . It now goes from 80-95 to 0 for 3-4 minutes at a time very time they appear ...

[anewaname]

Vultures have that additional pathing objective of stealing stuff. That probably factors into the  FPS drop, but 3 or 4 minutes seems like a long time.

[PatrikLundell]

There must be something else involved as well, as others (including me) routinely have birds appearing without any visible issues.

[Leonidas]

There must be something else involved as well, as others (including me) routinely have birds appearing without any visible issues.

In adventure mode, I'll sometimes start shooting at bird or climbers to eliminate the FPS hit. IIRC, sometimes I would kill a single creature and the FPS would shoot back up, even though there were other creatures of the same type still on the screen.