Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Uninvited Guest]

my FPS is shit. it's like 10/11 and it's no fun playing anymore.

when i start a game, it rips at 100fps.. but as the game goes on, it slows to a crawl. of course one of the things that changes is the population, but i've played games where i've capped it quite low and it still slows down over time.

i've built an atom smasher at the lowest Z-level to which my dwarfs will dump 30000 stones and other assorted junk to via a central garbage chute which spans from bottom to top.

anyone know if the number of items on the map has a signif effect? might save me some time. probably will take them a while at 10fps to clear this crap.

[Captain Mayday]

It can. Also history logs, and pathfinding through corridors, and constructions.

[Jim Groovester]

Pathfinding and flowing liquids are probably greater contributors to slow fps than any amount of items you may have.

[Uninvited Guest]

how do i help them pathfind?

[Jim Groovester]

Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done. Make sure you have wide hallways, make sure there aren't any traffic bottlenecks, designate high traffic zones inside and outside your fortress.

The idea behind high traffic zones is that it will spend less time calculating the route between the dwarf and his destination, as going down the high traffic zones will have the least pathing cost. Unfortunately, this does not prevent a dwarf from recalculating his route every time he comes across an obstacle, like another dwarf on the path, which is where the real FPS drain lies.

[PencilinHand]

Pathfinding is the FPS killer.  But, having hoards of items and oodles of space doesn't help either.

EDIT: Also, setting G_FPS_CAP in the init.txt to 10 or better yet 5 will give you a nice FPS boost.

[Ametsala]

EDIT: Also, setting G_FPS_CAP in the init.txt to 10 or better yet 5 will give you a nice FPS boost.

If your graphics card works fine with DF this doesn't matter. I tried lowering this to 5 and it didn't affect my FPS at all.

Worth a try though. At least you'll find out if it's the graphics that are killing your FPS.

[Cheshire Cat]

find ways to kill all the pets.

this makes things immediately go really fast again, to a point.

efficient suggestion - pit with atom smasher activated by dwarf walking down hall to drop pet. bridge goes up, pet lands in hole. dwarf walks away, bridge goes down.

more fun suggestion - a really deep hole, or a really tall tower. or a combination of both. bits of kitten bounce multiple z levels and can go a long way. careful of miasma.

also, any large scale projects which move water/magma around kill fps dead. especially waterfalls of any kind. its fun but in a big fort it sucks.

seal any unused exploratory mining tunnels and stuff. im pretty sure just a locked door cuts areas out of being investigated by the pathfinding AI.

turning off temperature and weather can help.

a very small starting area helps a lot. smaller the better. on an old computer consider the nanofortress tool for a 1 by 1 fort. you can also set a population cap in the init files to limit the total number of dwarves you can get.

bottom line - dwarf fort is not that well optimised, and inevitably for me all my forts reach a point where things get so big and there are so many things running around that even my fairly respecable computer cannot deliver the silky smooth speed it did right after the initial embark. tis the price we pay for having only one guy doing all the work, who dedicates most of his energy into giving us a constant stream of awesome new gameplay elements rather then carefuly streamlining every last bit of code.

you can search around for more tips on optimization on the forums, there are lots more things to do depending on your system.

[BurnedToast]

Yes, masses of items can slow your game down. On my old computer (which was pretty slow) I gained a noticeable chunk of FPS (don't remember how much offhand) by dumping many thousands of stones (10,000+), tons of unused seeds (and the bags they were in) a small mountain of goblin siege garbage laying around and other various worthlessness.

Of interest, I also gained a noticable bit of FPS by dropping a cage stuffed with 100+ animals into the chasm (didn't want to bother butchering them) which was surprising. Caged creatures eat much less cpu then wandering ones but it seems they still take up a noticeable bit.

However, I'd say if you are at 10 fps it's probably not going to make that much of a difference to be worth the time taken. By all means dump the stuff if you are willing to run the fort anyway, but don't expect it to go back to 100 (or even 50 or 25) just from dumping.

[ZeroGravitas]

Of interest, I also gained a noticable bit of FPS by dropping a cage stuffed with 100+ animals into the chasm (didn't want to bother butchering them) which was surprising. Caged creatures eat much less cpu then wandering ones but it seems they still take up a noticeable bit.

I think this is something to do with the unit list. When you hit a certain number of  units, the game just loses a massive amount of speed.

[galmud]

So even caged animals chew on my precious fps? Hmm I usually just cage all animals to avoid needless pathfinding and end up with lots and lots of quadrupeds behind bars. Need to put my butchers to better use

[Phazer]

Of interest, I also gained a noticable bit of FPS by dropping a cage stuffed with 100+ animals into the chasm (didn't want to bother butchering them) which was surprising. Caged creatures eat much less cpu then wandering ones but it seems they still take up a noticeable bit.

I think this is something to do with the unit list. When you hit a certain number of  units, the game just loses a massive amount of speed.

Well it could be those TONS of pages with Deceased, you should be able to remove them.

[ZeroGravitas]

Of interest, I also gained a noticable bit of FPS by dropping a cage stuffed with 100+ animals into the chasm (didn't want to bother butchering them) which was surprising. Caged creatures eat much less cpu then wandering ones but it seems they still take up a noticeable bit.

I think this is something to do with the unit list. When you hit a certain number of  units, the game just loses a massive amount of speed.

Well it could be those TONS of pages with Deceased, you should be able to remove them.

oh god please tell me how.

i have several soldiers with hundreds of zombie mountain goat kills alone. not to mention years upon years of ambushes and sieges, an opened HFS, and fort of 120 dwarves with a few dozen of its own dead.

edit: also, OP, could you PLEASE edit thread title to "does the  # of items on map AFFECT fps?" it's sort of making my eyes bleed.

[Savok]

No. The number of items on the map does not effect FPS in any way. That would be entirely silly.

I mean really. The things that cause FPS to exist are ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from the number of items on the map.

Although, the number of items on the map can affect FPS, but that's not what you asked.

[Vengo]

All aboard the grammar-nazi-bandwagon!