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Author Topic: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies  (Read 1026 times)

Dwarf Kitty

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Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« on: December 23, 2022, 12:38:09 am »

So, snagged Steam DF and set up a fort.


Set up a tavern.  Almost instantly got a couple visiting necromancers and their undead companions.  Did turn off invasions, so these were "friendlies."


I stepped away for about half an hour and did not see what happened next develop "live."


When I returned to the game ... TOTAL FPS DEATH, 0 FPS.  Spacebar pause function did work, if I held down the key for a few seconds.



All had been well enough until the full moon hit and a wererat transformed and went berserk in the tavern.  Everyone attacked the wererat, including the necromancers.  The necromancers used their abilities in combat and resurrected my dwarves and fallen visitors.

Now, fights tend to get hit FPS a bit, but usually temporarily.  I let the fort run for about an hour and a half, but things didn't resolve.  I did notice the wererat, as the full moon was still out, and sent my squad after it.

Unfortunately, the spacebar pause stopped working, so I decided to let the game run overnight.

When I returned after about twelve hours, FPS was only 1, but the spacebar pause worked again, and about six weeks of game time had passed.  And the fort had just "regained its senses."  So, likely, sending the squad against the wererat had triggered either a loyalty cascade, or a tantrum spiral.  Or it was just the wererat's kills that created the tantrum spiral.

Didn't let the fort run much longer to see if FPS picked back up after everyone finished calming down, or if all the splatter and bodies and body parts were still weighing FPS down.

So, finally retired the fort and explored it in Legends mode.


Found a few lines where one visiting undead, a gaunt slayer, kept resurrecting, maybe by itself, as there was no mention of a necromancer re-animating it.  And several times!  Not sure if any others had the same behavior.


I think the zombies self-resurrecting, and repeatedly, contributed to FPS death here.  Or at least prolonged the FPS-sapping fight.  Maybe there should be a limit on the resurrections in a certain time period?

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Salmeuk

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Re: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2022, 10:50:07 am »

curious, give us more context? embark size, popcap?

haven't run into this myself.
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Dwarf Kitty

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Re: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« Reply #2 on: December 25, 2022, 03:20:31 am »

Embark was standard 4x4, pop cap was 200.


Pop was 75 at max, maybe.  Pretty sure it reached Village level and mayor.


Overnight run and likely tantrum spiral reduced pop to low 20s.



Hadn't breached the caverns yet in that fort, I believe.


I know the real issue was all the calculations from all the fight moves and blood splatter and body parts flying everywhere.  I'm just wondering how much the constant zombie resurrections contributed to that.


Did have autosave on Seasonal, so there's one autosave deep into the weeks-long tavern brawl.
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Putnam

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Re: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« Reply #3 on: December 25, 2022, 04:10:08 am »

The real issue was more likely units trying to walk through, becoming scared, repathing to somewhere else, and repeating this over and over. The fight calcs and body parts flying were likely not contributing much at all.

Robsoie

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Re: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« Reply #4 on: December 25, 2022, 05:55:05 am »

If the fear is the problem that lead to pathfinding spam crippling the FPS as Putnam wrote, maybe a temporary solution to salvage your fort would be to add
[NOFEAR]
to the dwarves if the token still works.
But with 50.x i see .dat files in the save , no classic raws files, so no idea how to do that in the new version or if changing the regular raws (creature_standard.txt that is now in ..\data\vanilla\vanilla_creatures\objects\  would be enough
« Last Edit: December 25, 2022, 06:04:37 am by Robsoie »
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sophia

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Re: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« Reply #5 on: December 25, 2022, 10:35:23 am »

I encountered this same problem on a 3x3 embark with 60 pop cap, 80 hard cap yesterday. My necromancer mayor got caught outside in a goblin siege and my game spent the next 10 or so minutes at 4fps while my mayor continuously resurrected anyone that died. The siege had no more than about 15 goblins and I used about 12 dwarves to fight back. If I cleared the combat log it would almost instantly fill the entire screen the moment the notification reappeared. One reanimated dwarf somehow entirely lost their name during this and got stuck in one spot forever too (I'm new so I don't know if that's something that's supposed to happen).
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Felius

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Re: Steam: Massive FPS death due to yo-yo zombies
« Reply #6 on: December 25, 2022, 11:10:06 am »

I feel that at the moment, the best option is to just disable all secrets types (aka, removing necromancers) from the game in world generation, given a fight involving them tends to instantly kill all fps.
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