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[Mel_Vixen]

By the way if the Aquivers would leak slower i could see them interacting nicely with the sorrounding layers and the coming caves. This way maybe, we could even get a nice source for the undergroundrivers/pools.

[Volfram]

I don't have a clue what y'all are concerned about framerate for.  I've always played with weather, cave-ins, temperature, and other stuff turned on, and my framerates have been either a reliable 30-50 FPS(pre-graphical upgrade) or 100+ FPS(post graphical upgrade) on my dinky little 1.6 Ghz Celeron M processor.

It's really not that bad.

Can you tell me how you're doing that? (By that I mean pasting your init file, and whatever else that might have an impact.) I have here a 2.0 GHz Sempron with 1.5 Gb of RAM, and once I get more than 20 dorfs, it feels like I'm Mother Nature in a Powerthirst commercial.

The connotation there is exactly the opposite of what I think you're trying to say, but that aside.

I generally run no larger than 4x4 forts.  I've never gotten a fort complete enough that this was a problem.

Once Partial Print was introduced, I kept it around 10.  Framerate crashes for those one or two frames when I move the screen and have to redraw, but after that, it jumps back up to happy numbers.

With the new graphical upgrades, you can stick Partial print to 0, because graphics are now handled in an entirely different thread(on the GPU, like they should be).  This not only eliminates the normal draw times, but rockets the non-draw FPS even higher, because the game isn't drawing straight to screen anymore, it's(I theorize) writing to a register which is then checked by the draw process and drawn entirely separately.

Besides embarking on slightly smaller areas than usual and taking advantage of all the newest speed tweaks, I think the only other thing I do is close everything else when running DF.  Except sometimes Firefox and 3Dwarf.  I rarely take a severe framerate hit unless I'm making waterfalls, and even then it's not bad.

All this on Windows Vista.  Anybody running XP(or Linux!) should be seeing even better performance than I do.

[Greiger]

I second that need for some way to designate an area as secure.  Its hard enough to keep civvies from wandering into harms way with just surface seiges.   

A recent fort was built on top of a basically unaccessable mountain with a tunnel leading up to it.  And the fortress defenses were in the tunnel itself.  Dwarves stay inside did absolutely nothing because it was all underground, they would wander down there for every crazy reason.

Perhaps a balancing factor for it, keep the dwarves stay indoors and stuff but also add dwarves stay in secure zone.  All dwarves will go to the nearest secure zone that still has capacity (1 dwarf per tile) and wait there.  They will not do any work (except eat and drink if they can from within the zones) and they will not sleep.  These should prevent you from using these long term.  If an enemy enters the zone the braver dwarves will fight while the others panic and run around for some added depth.

Of course that is only a suggestion.

[AbuDhabi]

The connotation there is exactly the opposite of what I think you're trying to say, but that aside.

Fair enough.

I generally run no larger than 4x4 forts.  I've never gotten a fort complete enough that this was a problem.

I generally run 3x3 forts.

Once Partial Print was introduced, I kept it around 10.  Framerate crashes for those one or two frames when I move the screen and have to redraw, but after that, it jumps back up to happy numbers.

The graphics options don't seem to do anything much for me, except in some cases make everything wonky. With PARTIAL_PRINT, FRAME_BUFFER and SINGLE_BUFFER set to "NO", I get the same efficiency as with YES, YES, NO. Other combinations introduce strangeness or slowdowns.

This is d9, since d11 doesn't work with non-QWERTY layouts.

Besides embarking on slightly smaller areas than usual and taking advantage of all the newest speed tweaks, I think the only other thing I do is close everything else when running DF.  Except sometimes Firefox and 3Dwarf.  I rarely take a severe framerate hit unless I'm making waterfalls, and even then it's not bad.

Well, I don't really have anything intensive running except mIRC and Opera.

All this on Windows Vista.  Anybody running XP(or Linux!) should be seeing even better performance than I do.

I'm using XPSP2.

With every feature turned on, but on a map without rivers or magma or chasms or pretty much anything but Fun Stuff, with 96 dorfs, I get 40 FPS when I don't do anything.

[Mel_Vixen]

Questions to toady:

Do we get for the map-painter-thingy a option for placing caves?

Will the naming be z-axis-sensitiv? To illustrate this: Can be under the "plains of fire" the "caves of stone" under which in turn are the "Deeps of slaughtering" and the "cave of the dead borgle"?

[Random832]

I second that need for some way to designate an area as secure.  Its hard enough to keep civvies from wandering into harms way with just surface seiges.   

A recent fort was built on top of a basically unaccessable mountain with a tunnel leading up to it.  And the fortress defenses were in the tunnel itself.  Dwarves stay inside did absolutely nothing because it was all underground, they would wander down there for every crazy reason.

Perhaps a balancing factor for it, keep the dwarves stay indoors and stuff but also add dwarves stay in secure zone.  All dwarves will go to the nearest secure zone that still has capacity (1 dwarf per tile) and wait there.  They will not do any work (except eat and drink if they can from within the zones) and they will not sleep.  These should prevent you from using these long term.  If an enemy enters the zone the braver dwarves will fight while the others panic and run around for some added depth.

Of course that is only a suggestion.

Your idea is more of a "panic room" than mine - my idea was to have "secured" vs "unsecured" areas (outside and WG caverns are by default unsecured), so that dwarves can go about their business within the fortress (behind the defenses) and don't wander out underground / refuse to go in your secure above-ground buildings.

[Jurph]

I always thought that pushing the fluid flows, temperature effects, and weather off onto extra cores would be a fairly easy way to improve performance.  Since they're the functions that low-end computer users turn off first anyway, the multi-threading would have the same effect: DF would use Core 1 at near 100% (like it does right now) but would run with the performance of DF-minus-aero-thermo-fluids.  DF-Weather, DF-Liquids, and DF-Thermo would run on additional cores, or all together on a second core, or whatever.

As a design matter, it seems simple, but I'm not a coder and I'm not Toady, and I haven't seen the source.  Perhaps Toady would consider handing off that code to someone like he did with the OpenGL stuff, and letting them write a standalone chunk of code that runs in parallel with DF.  Then when DF launches it could launch the others as their own processes, passing data back and forth.

I expect a legion of coders to all jump down my throat and tell me what a terrible idea this is.  Also: if your reply is of the format "Toady cancels progress: interrupted by multithreading" or "Toady has said he ain't doing it," peace - I don't want to start a fire.  Just thinking out loud.  In silent ASCII.  Something.

[Zironic]

I have no idea about hardware or anything but one thing I picked up is that people in this forum do not like the word multithread. I don't know why.

It's not the word itself, or even the concept, it's the idea that Toady doesn't currently do multithreading, and (apparently, I don't have a reference) doesn't want to halt his current work in order to learn how.

So we get a *lot* of requests for it, but it's not likely to happen anytime soon (the possibility that it will after the game goes "gold" does exist, but who knows?), and therefore it causes a certain amount of frustration and eyerolling.

Apparently, from what I've read, there are some very good arguments for the application of multithreading to the game, but I only know the very basics of it and am in no way qualified to judge it's merits.

I think it's quite clear, that DF must be multithreaded in the future. Just take a look at the v1.0 dev items. If all of these will get implemented...I am not sure that how much FPS we gonna have. The whole generated DF world will be active & alive [+hundreds of new features will be added] -> Realtime processing. Right now RT processing is only "true" about the embark area.
Either way, let's stick to the topic lads.

This is entirely illogical, and assumes that multicore cpus are the future.

v1, is like between 1 and a mole of years away. (Mole is 10^26). Who knows what kind of processing we will have then.  Plus Quantum Computers are slowly emerging. http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2008a/080626KlimeckArsenic.html

[Puzzlemaker]

I have a couple of questions...

I think some of these have been answered, so I apologize if there are any repeats.

Will the new wound system make megabeasts survive more?

Will megabeasts other then demons be able to take over goblin civilizations?  Will any civilization be able to be taken over by a megabeast?

Will soldiers be able to act as civilians when not on duty?  AKA, have a squad that act as farmers when not on duty?

Will "stacked" squads work better?  As in, have more of a chain of command then just the squad leader.

Will criminals be handled differently?  Will there be saner punishments for things?

Will there be any updates to traps?

Will crossbows be handled in a more realistic manner?

Will there be more graphics support?

Annnd... Are you ever planning to implement multithreading and/or GPU support?

[Footkerchief]

Covering the several of these that I know:

Will the new wound system make megabeasts survive more?

If you mean during worldgen, there's a list item for updating the worldgen wound system, so it'll be different at least and it could hardly get worse.  If you mean during gameplay, there's another item for ensuring that hydras are getting the benefit of their unique redundancies.  Toady also commented that plain old iron men will be much tougher, so bronze colossuses will probably be really nasty.

Will megabeasts other then demons be able to take over goblin civilizations?  Will any civilization be able to be taken over by a megabeast?

Currently, any creature with POWER and a SPHERE is eligable to take over a stock goblin civ, I think (it might have to be from a particular subset of spheres, but I'm not sure).  Other civs can be taken over by creatures, such as titans, that have (matching?) spheres.  However, it seems like not all SPHERE megabeasts are eligible for taking over a civ -- maybe it requires the CAN_SPEAK tag.

Will "stacked" squads work better?  As in, have more of a chain of command then just the squad leader.

Yeah, this list item implies a non-trivial hierarchy:

# Simple specific orders at any hierarchy level from top to individual (kill X etc.)

Will criminals be handled differently?  Will there be saner punishments for things?

There's been a lot of talk about beard shaving (as a punishment) finally getting implemented.  No confirmation, but it's certainly closer now that we have beards.

Will there be any updates to traps?

Hasn't been mentioned so probably not.

Will crossbows be handled in a more realistic manner?

Attributes, weapon skills, and projectile wounds all got reworked, so they'll probably be different.  However, the range and machinegun-like rate-of-fire probably won't be any different.

Will there be more graphics support?

From what we've seen, only in some small ways, like material colors being more widely respected (e.g. the silvery-looking feathertree wagon in the recent dev log screenshot).

Annnd... Are you ever planning to implement multithreading and/or GPU support?

Generally in the past he's said he'd rather do other kinds of optimizations before tackling that.

[Puzzlemaker]

VVELL SWEET.

Okay let me throw another batch at you and/or toady if ye don't mind.

Will the manager screen act differently?  Will the manager system be different from what it currently is?

Will noble demands be updated?

Will a more supply/demand type economy be implemented for the dwarves, instead of the fixed prices that are currently used?

Will Liasons respawn?

Will killing nobles have more of an effect on the world?

Will the Guards be more tied into the military? 

Will Royal Guards actually defend the nobles now, as in, will you be able to assign royal guards to certain nobles, to increase happiness? 

Will Fortress Guards get assigned jobs to take care of any dwarfs going crazy/tantruming, so they will drop whatever they are doing and go tackle the guy, making them actually useful?

Will Fortress Guards be capable of calming down dwarves who are tantruming via social skills?

[Dwarfu]

Okay let me throw another batch at you and/or toady if ye don't mind.

Please don't take it that I'm thrashing you in any way, but alot of the feature quotes and dev notes Footkerchief is quoting are available for you to read as well - they may answer at least some of your questions.  If they aren't on the current list of Dev Items (first post of this thread) but you find them in the Core/Req/Bloat/etc items, then at least you know we'll get there eventually.

I know its easier to ask questions on the forum, especially when you have someone like Footkerchief answer you.  But EVERYONE should really take some time and not only read ALL of the notes, but the bug list as well.  You really will appreciate this game alot more when you see the potential being designed for it.  It will also help you design your fortress with the future implementations in mind.

Oh, and I second your Royal Guard questions.  I'd love to be able to station them outside and around the royal throne room - or really anywhere the royalty might want to go, so there's always one around.

[Footkerchief]

Okay let me throw another batch at you and/or toady if ye don't mind.

I'll tackle these, but as a general rule, if your question is just "Is random feature X getting implemented" or "Is existing feature Y getting updated," the answer is "probably not yet."  And yes, as Dwarfu says, I'm just drawing on the public dev materials, which mostly means reading over stuff like the List, searching Toady's post history and Ctrl+F'ing the dev log and the Consolidated Dev Page (and occasionally pulling something out of my ass).  Also, Toady often won't know the specifics about how something will be implemented (like some of the squad stuff you brought up) until he's actually working on it.

Will the manager screen act differently?  Will the manager system be different from what it currently is?

There might be minor differences but I doubt you'll see anything like standing production orders or any of the other oft-requested manager features.

Will noble demands be updated?

Nobles are getting moved into the raws as part of the Entity Positions section, so there'll probably be some minor differences and a much greater degree of moddability.  It's possible we'll be able to mod the frequency of mandates, room quality requirements, etc.

Will a more supply/demand type economy be implemented for the dwarves, instead of the fixed prices that are currently used?

Very, very unlikely to happen until the Caravan Arc gets going.

Will Liasons respawn?

Will killing nobles have more of an effect on the world?

There are some list items concerning succession, but I'm not sure if that includes succession in offsite locations during Fortress Mode gameplay, which seems like kind of a gray area.

Will the Guards be more tied into the military? 

Yes, it sounds like you'll be able to switch them back and forth more easily now:

# Loosen up restrictions on changing elite soldiers

Will Royal Guards actually defend the nobles now, as in, will you be able to assign royal guards to certain nobles, to increase happiness? 

Will Fortress Guards get assigned jobs to take care of any dwarfs going crazy/tantruming, so they will drop whatever they are doing and go tackle the guy, making them actually useful?

Those would count as simple specific orders, I think:

# Simple specific orders at any hierarchy level from top to individual (kill X etc.)

Will Fortress Guards be capable of calming down dwarves who are tantruming via social skills?

Haha, very unlikely.

[Footkerchief]

Oh and to follow up on your earlier questions:

For goblin civ leaders, there's this, which probably means a broader range of goblin rulers:

# Remove demons as forced powers for goblins and have such arrangements arise through mega-beast behavior

And for graphics, different creature castes (i.e. genders) can have separate tiles now.

[Volfram]

With every feature turned on, but on a map without rivers or magma or chasms or pretty much anything but Fun Stuff, with 96 dorfs, I get 40 FPS when I don't do anything.

Well I'm stumped...

Just double-checking, how many icons do you have in your taskbar?

When running DF, I generally have sound, internet, power, disk speed monitor, ghost-disk monitor, touchpad monitor, and antivirus.  Anything else gets the boot before I start it up.

Sometimes, AIM, but mIRC should be more lightweight than that.