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[LegoLord]

Erm . . . so hauling would go slowly while we're watching it happen, but faster while we're looking at something else?

Controlling speeds sounds like something a long way off, like once the game is able to remain at the FPS cap with a 200+ dwarf fort with giant waterfalls and magma traps.  Possibly even cliffs.  The only speed that could be easily controlled  now is creatures' speed relative to in-game time, not in-game speed relative to real time.

[Sowelu]

Walking costs FPS. We all know it, we can all agree on it. So making walking faster lessens CPU load.

I'm sorry, that's factually incorrect.  Pathing costs FPS.  Walking faster doesn't mean you path less.  Walk speed has no impact on FPS.  If you don't believe me, change the dwarves to [SPEED:1] in the raws.  Your dwarves will dash about, but your FPS stays the same.  It might make you happier though...

[Pilsu]

Currently you can only interact with one civ of each race. If such limitations are done away with, longer years for the sake of a more realistic feel and incorporating a night cycle of some kind would be quite palatable, if not preferable

[LegoLord]

No matter how many civs you can interact with, you still only have one home civ.  That normally comes once a year.  Making years longer would increase the amount of playtime necessary to get things that depend on the caravan, such as migrants.

[Pilsu]

You can fix that too you know. 7 guys founding a new hamlet should probably get more contact than a bunch of merchants at fall

It does seem to be an official endeavor all things considered

[Granite26]

I'm not sure I'm willing to accept 'it'll take too long to get immigrants' as a serious negative.

It might hurt that the first batch takes as long as it does, but as there gets to be more and more stuff to do, that might not be a bad thing either.

[LegoLord]

It's not just migrants, really.  There is the nobility to consider.

[tsen]

/facepalm

I'm quite aware of the distinction. Many dwarves walking around means lots of pathings being generated, which costs FPS. Sheesh.

And, if the dwarves arrive at their destinations more quickly, they spend less time asking the processor to generate pathings. What I'm talking about has nothing to do with the speed setting in the RAWs. Pathing could be sped up by allowing dwarves to "teleport" short hops along pre-cached paths, presenting the visual illusion of faster walking while skipping the bumping into one another (unless we count that as a tradeoff for fortress design, which I would be ok with.)

Of course, if there were enemies visible or attacking, the "fast mode" would be canceled. Just throwing things out there.

[Sowelu]

/facepalm

I'm quite aware of the distinction. Many dwarves walking around means lots of pathings being generated, which costs FPS. Sheesh.

And, if the dwarves arrive at their destinations more quickly, they spend less time asking the processor to generate pathings.

No, sorry, I don't think you are aware of the distinction if you're saying things like that.  If they walk twice as fast, they path twice as often per second.  That doesn't change the equation at all, for the same CPU cost.  The only possible bonus is from making them walk less distance, total...and there's no way to deal with that besides maybe multihauling.  Also there's improvements to the pathing calculations, or multithreading.  Making them walk faster will not change the cost of pathing at all.

Teleporting is an incredibly ugly and bad solution.  The game makes a lot of assumptions about people moving semi-realistically.  It would be really hard to handle teleporting when you have pressure plates or sneaky critters with LOS issues to worry about, trampling grass and items, not to mention incidentals like temperature effects or godforbid magic in the future--this just isn't something you can abstract away.  The calculations would be more complex to do it safely, so you wouldn't save anything.  Besides, do you really want a quantum fort that works differently on slow and fast speeds?  Sure, you could make dwarves ignore collisions with other dwarves in fast mode, but that's kind of cheating isn't it?..suddenly you don't need wide hallways UNLESS you're in battle, etc.

[tsen]

Certainly it is kludgy and unelegant. But I would sometimes like my forts to run at more than 5fps with my CPU overclocked.

And please don't insult the intelligence of people you have never met, it's slightly impolite and I have never been rude to you. My earlier comment is predicated on the assumption that there was some way for dwarves to get to their destinations in less real time. Not being a programming guru, I can't speculate on what precisely.

http://www.xkcd.com/386/   =p

[Granite26]

In Tsen's defense, it wouldn't be horrible to let each dwarf take 5 steps along his chosen path every time his 'move' came up.  It would reduce the number of pathfindings by 1/5, and each dwarf would still hit each square.  In game terms, it would look a lot like teleporting if you didn't bother to draw each step (since otherwise the hole screen would look jerky).

Not saying I think it's a good idea, it's just... mechanically plausible.

[Sowelu]

Hmmm.  Okay, that's viable, and might reduce problems in crowded areas (where pathing has the most trouble).

[Silverionmox]

Erm . . . so hauling would go slowly while we're watching it happen, but faster while we're looking at something else?

Controlling speeds sounds like something a long way off, like once the game is able to remain at the FPS cap with a 200+ dwarf fort with giant waterfalls and magma traps.  Possibly even cliffs.  The only speed that could be easily controlled  now is creatures' speed relative to in-game time, not in-game speed relative to real time.

No, the whole game goes faster when you tell it to. In practice, it would mean adjusting the FPS cap in-game. Invasion? Set it at 40. Just designated some catacombs for mining? Set it at uncapped. You'll strike a vein before you know it, and then it pauses.

[zchris13]

Too bad some people's comps can't DO 40 FPS.  That's a major problem in your plan.

[LegoLord]

Too bad some people's comps can't DO 40 FPS.  That's a major problem in your plan.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at.