Print

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

[Lestrage]

when I first started I had no idea what the small smiley-faces were and soon the dorfs were dying from thirst starvation.
My first few goes on DF revolved around how to make or find a bucket and how to give this to the dorfs as I thought this was why they were starving.
I had no idea what to do and where to start. Or what even any of the visual stuff meant.

I'm still vague about stuff like minecarts and mechanics as I do not play often non-stop.

I think some explained-example-tutorials with diagrams might help. eg It details steps and diagrams to do a specific thing. - like all the steps needed to mine and channel below ground, or how to set up stairs, or steps to set up your basic military, or steps to making food and drinks, or examples of how to set up workshops and make items.

[Mediterraneo]

The single issue I still have on DF, which I didn't read here before is the lack of important information on the creatures.
I can often know the eye-color of a creature, just looking at it under its closed helm, but I cannot really say if it has an helm at all.
Also, I don't know if someone, or some procedurally generated monster is "enormous" as in 7 feet tall or 70.
I'd really like information on that, hovering or clicking on creatures

[anewaname]

The single issue I still have on DF, which I didn't read here before is the lack of important information on the creatures.
I can often know the eye-color of a creature, just looking at it under its closed helm, but I cannot really say if it has an helm at all.
Also, I don't know if someone, or some procedurally generated monster is "enormous" as in 7 feet tall or 70.
I'd really like information on that, hovering or clicking on creatures

You can check inventory of creatures using 'v', But I have this consideration also. It would be excellent to have some idea of a creature's volume from viewing it, then you can guess how hard it might hit based on what material it is made of.

[Casany]

I think people way over exaggerate the quality of the UI. Yeah it’s not the best but I never found it impossible to get into the game with it.

I started playing DF a year ago. I’d watched some videos of Quill18 playing it but otherwise I had no clue what it really was and I did not have any idea how to work the UI. My first fort was where I learned how to use squads, designations and buildings. The second I got zoned and stockpiles, and finally I got the rest on my 3rd-5th forts. It really wasn’t that difficult for me to learn. All the hotkeys are there with name such as “Designations, Buildings, Squads, Military, Stockpiles, Zones.” Like it may not look great but as long as you know space pauses it’s easy to work it out.

At least that’s just my opinion on that issue.

My main problem, and something that has caused me to be very on again off again is optimization. I have a good PC, I always limit pop to 100, and I always move my view to undiscovered rocks when I’m not doing anything. And usually I don’t reveal caves until I have to. But I always die of FPS death by year 4 at the latest, and that’s caused me to not really want to invest time into these forts.

[sketchesofpayne]

My main problem, and something that has caused me to be very on again off again is optimization. I have a good PC, I always limit pop to 100, and I always move my view to undiscovered rocks when I’m not doing anything. And usually I don’t reveal caves until I have to. But I always die of FPS death by year 4 at the latest, and that’s caused me to not really want to invest time into these forts.

What do you consider to be "FPS Death?"  20 FPS is quite playable and even 15 can work.  For me sub-15 is where it becomes a problem.  I recently played a 200 dwarf fort for twelve in-game years and it was pretty steady around 20 FPS.  Animal pathing was the biggest drain on FPS.  I solved this by putting all the non-grazers in cages and all the grazers on restraints.

Also, even if you have a "good PC," the main factor in Dwarf Fortress performance is your CPU's single-thread performance.  (I have an Intel i7-3770K which is rated 2083 on the linked benchmark list.)  Your video card makes little difference and I've never seen Dwarf Fortress use more than 3 gigs of RAM.

[Robsoie]

There are some ways to keep high fps

- smaller map size (default is 4x4 but you can still make decent enough fortress with 2x2 , and additionally it can be more challenging too as invaders are then more dangerous as they don't have to travel as long before reaching your walls)
- no more than 100 dwarves , apparently 100 is the minimum to have all the DF features according to wiki, but if you don't care about fortress evolving into a city or metropolis (that requires apparently 120 and 140 pop), 80 is even better.
- atom smasher (as simple as making a 3x3 raising bridge in a 3x3 room closed by a door and controlled by a lever) is a must to get rid of the thousand of useless objects (oh those very competent fisherdwarves and the tons of mussel shells garbage resulting and those gobs invasions meeting your competent dwarven warriors) that will soon be part of your fortress
- quantum stockpiles with a minecart stop are a must so when an ai needs an item, it's all in the same place so no pathfinding through the whole fort to get all the items it needs) , they're not as easy to setup as an atom smasher but once you have done them once or twice it's easy to redo them
- Setup large zone of traffic set to Restricted where no dwarf has any business to go over the map, will spare pathfinding calculations.

also make sure there is no door with "Keep tightly closed" enabled to prevent animals to go through them, it's a great way to heavily destroy your framerate

Cut trees regularly, this to prevent dwarves to accidentally (often when they are in a fight against an opponent or running after an animal) climbing on top of a tree and staying there without knowing how to get back, they can hammer badly the framerate (especially if they're getting a mood or are part of a squad you sent to a raid)

Apparently playing on young world can help too due to the game having then less historical figure/items to keep track of

I've been able on an old potatoe to run a 20 years old fortress in one of the 44.xx releases without framerate dropping below 50 in those conditions.
Sure i would love to not be forced to use all those tricks and limiting then what can be done in DF in order to keep the game comfortably playable enough for me , but considering low fps means everything even the simplest of task takes forever to be done and make it so incredibly boring, those tricks are currently the only way i found to no stop playing the recent versions of DF as i didn't needed that much self imposed limitations in pre-DF2014.

[sketchesofpayne]

but considering low fps means everything even the simplest of task takes forever to be done and make it so incredibly boring, those tricks are currently the only way i found to no stop playing the recent versions of DF as i didn't needed that much self imposed limitations in pre-DF2014.

Whether my FPS is 60 or 15 doesn't matter so much to me because either way I always have netflix, youtube, or twitch going on my second monitor.  I'm also usually combing through Legends Viewer or typing up a seasonal log entry on the fort's progress.

Also, newer versions of Dwarf Fortress run faster and more stable than older versions for me.  A couple months ago I played a 40.24 fort and it didn't run as well as the 44.12 forts I've played since then.

[Robsoie]

While it's true that the DF2014 performance has improved since the original 40.xx release , older versions than DF2014 (the 4x.xx serie are all part of DF2014 ) like 34.11 by example  ran faster and so allowed for less tricks to be used to keep good enough fps.

[Draco18s]

- smaller map size (default is 4x4 but you can still make decent enough fortress with 2x2 , and additionally it can be more challenging too as invaders are then more dangerous as they don't have to travel as long before reaching your walls)

1x1 embarks were also possible at one point, thought I've long since forgotten how.
I remember quite fondly the 1x1 volcano embark I did, where half my initial seven burned to death in mere moments.

[sketchesofpayne]

While it's true that the DF2014 performance has improved since the original 40.xx release , older versions than DF2014 (the 4x.xx serie are all part of DF2014 ) like 34.11 by example  ran faster and so allowed for less tricks to be used to keep good enough fps.

I will take your word for it.  I haven't tried running new versions on an old machine, or old versions on my new machine.

1x1 embarks were also possible at one point,

You can still do 1x1 embarks.  One issue is that you can easily run out of metal ore or other resources if your fort lasts for many years.  Also having enough trees for wood supply may be an issue.

[Iduno]

In addition to map size, the size of the world generated seems to have a surprisingly large impact on performance. Probably all of the other civilizations being modeled in the background (are the goblins currently fighting the elves? Etc.).

[MrWiggles]

That's not happening constantly. It happen at the year end.

[FantasticDorf]

Embarks annoy me the most, the game in motion works out for me fine but being randomly crushed (sometimes repeatedly) without the option to try again or restart after losing all my carefully adjusted embark at the very beginning can sap my enthusiasm due to the dedication to trying to reset my embark conditions to fit around a different set of dwarves.

The ability to restart within the first year under the same place, saved embark settings and same set of dwarves would be ideal as a little bit of a time rewind, then any disaster afterwards can be written off as just playing the game and took in good stead.

I could otherwise make a save backup each time i embark but that'd be a lot of work each time.

[feelotraveller]

Already in the game!  Go to your .../data/init/d_init.txt and edit to

[INITIAL_SAVE:YES]

("Set this to YES if you want it to save the game when you start a new fortress.")

If using autobackup and you want to 'reload' simply rename the initial save by deleting the date appended to the filename. If autoback is not set to yes it will be necessary to rename the initial save before saving over it.

Problem solved.