Print

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

[Zacharot]

So.. I have a bit of a story, bit of a problem, and bit of fun to tell you all about.

I'm about 7 years into a fort, and my dwarves are digging like mad trying to keep up with my inane requests. I decided to go epic, and dig out almost every square of my fortress to make it all 'extra' grand. Only, about half way through digging my epic dining room (3x3 region, all of 1 Z Level), my game is slowly grinding to a halt. I don't know if the pathfinding is the problem, but the entire dining room is a smattered mess of pillars yet to be dug in a pretty random pattern. I only have 80 dwarves, and the entire thing is bogging down like you wouldn't believe. Even as I write this, I'm down to 12fps, 60fps before the grand dig.

I have already dug out almost 2 entire Z-Levels. My lowest is a vast chamber filled to the brim with magma channels . I kept it in grids, so I can build neatly on the level above it for hundreds of forges.
Which is also dug out for said forges.

I moved up the map to the 3rd Z-Level down, which was the first of solid stone, and began boring it. This one is seriously impacting me though.

I also intend to do 2-3 Z-Levels for Just living quarters for up to 100 dwarves, each will have seperate rooms and chambers for anything they want, and all will be the highest quality.

I have enough Z's for entire floors for storage of everything, training of dwarves, etc. But, I may not get there. Wish me luck guys. I may post the save, but it has some custom options, so I'll have to post the config as well. If anyone has any tips for speeding up a fortress once it reaches giant proportions.. lemme know!

Edit: Notes: When I pause, my fps is 890~, I have the game tweaked to run flat out all the way up to 1000 fps. When I start a new 3x3, I can get about 200fps. The bog down is not video. I am on Linux, running the new fixes in d11. The video load on the game is almost 0. Speeding up the video wont help me! I need a fix or few to potentially speed up the pathfinding/handling of 80 dwarves and as many adopted pets. All of the other animals are stuffed in cages.

[Angellus]

I believe this is the pathfinding in combination with loads of objects appearing in the game, each mined section becomes a rock object needing pickup by a dwarf. This dwarf needs pathfinding to get to his rock and pathfinding to trow the rock away (this off course If you dump it all).

Elseway, I would not know, maybe too many options for pathfinding? But that would mean it would become stark raving mad in the outside too...

[Zacharot]

They just finished about half of the dining room, and it only went back up to 35fps! Argh!
I still intend to dig out every last non-load-bearing tile. I WILL stuff it full of doors and beds, chairs, cabinets, and every other ammenity, minus indoor plumbing.
On a side note.. I have 8,000 plants, 4,000 meat, 16,000 booze.. do the stockpiles slow the game down? By my calculations on piles, I will have over 250,000 food when I fill the food stockpile level.. is that crippling the game?

Edit: is there a way to make them dump the rock in the Garbage Dump Zone, instead of just dropping it? I use stockpiles for rocks only in specific ares, and use the garbage zones when clearing a space

[sev]

The "yet to be dug" part may be contributing to this problem -- I don't know if giant dig-designations kill FPS the way giant smooth- and ramp-designations do, but there's some discussion on that on a topic over here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37637

[Zacharot]

I did a huge test, and it actually appears to do with either the amount of 'face' (neighbor tile), or simply the number of accessible tiles. As they dug in crazy patterns, they created more accessible tiles than they technically started with. As they dug longer, they created more and more. As the number yet to be dug shrunk, my fps went back up. Right you were sev.

On a second note, I restarted my fort using the same map. I'm not sure this was wise. I am really close to creating a forge rewrite to create a 'rock crusher' to get rid of the huge numbers of rocks.
Either the rocks themselves being accessible are creating lag, or the huge amount of pathable terrain is. As soon as I clear a Z, I drop 20-25fps. If I wall in around the stairs, I get it back. Since the rocks are still present in a pile, I dont know if it's the rocks, or the area. Perhaps there is another discussion on that?Btw, I dumped the entire magma shaft down into my lowest Z-Level, but a Fire Man got through my Fire Man proof fortifications.
I have no diagonal leaks, and to combat Z level verti-diagonal slippage, I did this...

= is empty mined space
X is smoothed/fortified
M is magma
R is original rock wall that I channeled from above

~==XX==RMMMMM~

from above, directly over the rock wall is this..

R is rock wall, C is channel
RRRRRRRRCRRRRRRR~
~==XX==_MMMMM~

technically he should have slipped down into the gap between the fortification and the magma, but he simply went straight through it.
I've had them slip before, and from what I've seen here, I'm not sure a fortification is enough any more.
Any ideas on if bars would help? Not sure what else to do when I start draining their habitat for my own evil deeds.

[Zacharot]

Well... Fortifying rock doesn't do anything in magma against imps and fire men. I just watched an imp stroll through it twice as he strolled around. Need to find a plan B.

Edit: On a not very side note.. I apparently channeled half of the fortification, so it's possible they are moving through it diagonally. Since my fortification is only 1x wide, I can't now verify how it would go. Going to start over and test this properly, it wont take long to drain the pipe again.

[N35t0r]

I used to install a steel grate. It either works, or I was lucky, but I didn't get any magma men/imps into my forge area.

[Shoku]

Anything that fluid can go through fluid creatures can go through. Thanks to the low density of magma pipe creatures compared to underground river creatures you rarely hear about it with imps n firemen but it happens here too.

It seems that they won't see it as a way into your fortress in general if they are far away but if they happen to be wandering around nearby they'll act like the fortification or bars or whatever aren't even there. Most people think pressure is pushing them through but that's one of those myths nobody has verified and that a growing number of experiences from people seem to discredit since this happens in magma and stationary fluid.

[Zacharot]

I can in fact discredit it. I had 7/7 on the entire 3x3 bottom Z-Level, with the magma pipe already full at the bottom most level and the level above. There were only minor 6/7 eddies appearing in places. There was absolutely no 'pressure' pushing them through, they were simply wandering through them. I ran my test using a 2x wall, with what looks to be the same results. Magma creatures appear to be made of magma..

[i2amroy]

I still intend to dig out every last non-load-bearing tile.

Every non-load-bearing tile?!? That's leaving like what, one tile per z-level?

[Shoku]

I can in fact discredit it. I had 7/7 on the entire 3x3 bottom Z-Level, with the magma pipe already full at the bottom most level and the level above. There were only minor 6/7 eddies appearing in places. There was absolutely no 'pressure' pushing them through, they were simply wandering through them. I ran my test using a 2x wall, with what looks to be the same results. Magma creatures appear to be made of magma..

Well yes, it's quite easy to assume you had no pumps giving the magma pipe pressure. What's harder is making a large group of people aware that things also move through fortifications in magma in the first place.

It will be a long time before people stop saying that you can keep creatures out of your fluids with fortifications, bars, etc.

*I think a pump should be able to suck up a magma man... and probably spit out magma man chunks on the other side n_n

[DennyTom]

I still intend to dig out every last non-load-bearing tile.

Every non-load-bearing tile?!? That's leaving like what, one tile per z-level?

Less - you can not dig out borders, but they can support your fort => 1 tile per every used z-level

[Draco18s]

And given that floors can support each other at infinite distance, all you need is the border tiles.

[DennyTom]

And given that floors can support each other at infinite distance, all you need is the border tiles.

What? Floors are not gluons - there still has to be at least 1x1x1 connection with border, asuming fort is being builded in center of map.

[peterix]

Best way to keep magma critters away from your dwarves is to use steel floor grates.