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[Zombie0hour]

Im running a dual core Pentium Centrino 1.73GHz, 2gb of ram with windows xp pro. I have a laptop so as you can imagine its not built for speed. Is there anyway to optimise DF game settings so i can play with zero lagg? When I start to get more dwarfs like around 20-30 is when mild lagg starts to set in and it can get very annoying. With higher numbers I can not even stand to play.

[Malicus]

Though exactly when it starts to get annoying varies, everyone has this problem.  The pathfinding plays hell on the CPU, which is the main cause of DF slowing down.  Also, DF uses only one core, as it's not multithreaded.

[Demonic Spoon]

What many poeple do if they have dual core is to isolate DF to one core, so that that core only runs DF and nothing else while the second core does all the other stuff.

[Lord Dakoth]

-Make sure your laptop's power setting is sent to High Performance.
-Make one core dedicated to the DF process.
-Set the DF process' priority to "High" or "Realtime."

Honestly, you're not as bad off as you could be. I'm running DF on a Gateway laptop, 1gb RAM, AND WINDOWS FRICKING VISTA. Even though I have a duo 2.0GHz, Vista makes up for that by hogging most of the ram, just while it's idle.

I usually end all but the core processes if I'm playing a heavily populated fort. Every little bit helps.

[martinuzz]

Turning off temperature and weather in the init file saves a lot of FPS.

Also, reducing the number for your GFPS_CAP in the init speeds up the game.
This affects only the number of frames that the game draws per second, not the frames it processes.
Since the human eye can't discern more than 24 images / second, you won't even notice lowering the value until you get below that.

The further I get in the game, the lower I set my GFPS. In my current fortress, I get 10-15 FPS with 168 dwarves, quite a few animals and craploads of goods, with my GFPS cap set to 8.

Actually, this is why I abandon most of my fortresses. I think below 15 is not really enjoyable anymore. 20-25 FPS is a good pace to play the game at once you get above 100-ish dwarves.

Edit: my laptop is slightly below your specs (dual core amd Turion64X2 at 1.6 GHz, 2Gb ram, XP pro)

[Kardos]

DF rarely takes over 600MB of ram.  Usually it floats around 550MB for me.

[smokingwreckage]

I got a few tips a while back. I can't find the thread, but here's what I remember:

CAGE ALL ANIMALS! All of 'em. Let one cat out if you need to control vermin. Anytime an animal has babies, cage them too.

Use as few locked doors as possible, it plays hell with the pathing.

Make corridors straight and direct and 3-wide, with a "High Traffic" designation up the middle tile.

Lay out "high traffic" designations along any thoroughfare.

Outdoors is bad. Try to stay indoors.

Large designations of Engraving, Plant Gathering, and Woodcutting suck FPS.

Running water sucks FPS. Starting on a map with brook plus UG river plus magma pipe is probably bad.

Larger embark areas use more resources. Start on as small an area as you can stand.

[Puck]

Since the human eye can't discern more than 24 images / second, you won't even notice lowering the value until you get below that.

Shortly chiming in here. That is not entirely true. It's a bit of misinterpreted since you can hide a 25th picture in a second in teh moviez, we all know the story about that experiment.

BUT

if you're playing videogames, you CAN tell the difference between 24 and 60 frames for instance. The reason a 24 picture/second movie seems fluid, is because every frame has "motion blur". If every frame would be completely sharp, it would look weird.

DF, however, has no animations, just sprites hopping from tile to tile, so 24 frames should be plenty.

Anyway, I have something useful to add, too:
AFAIK bigger space to pick paths from might slow down pathfinding a bit, but narrow corridors force dwarves to REpath, should they collide with another dwarf, and they will only use the same tile for their way when they HAVE to. That is a bit worse than big spaces to pick paths from.

That means: major traffic ways should be 3 tiles wide at least. Stairs to stockpiles or whatever... always have moar than just one.

I tend to have 3 tile wide hallways, but the entrance to the dining room only has two doors, seperated by a wall. The other day approx 80 dwarves were hauling stone out of there and FPS dropped to 50. I removed the wall in between the doors and it climbed to 80 right away. Just sayin.

[Zombie0hour]

Oh wow I feel really retarded now, my processor is a single core.. now im feeling the pain  . My dad just gave me this laptop that was in the box, its a Dell Inspiration 9300 from like 4 years ago.. was top of the line then but didn't they use dual cores then as I can recall?

Edit: Anyway I set the priority to Realtime and turned the sound off. Lets see if it works 

[Bricks]

Realtime could be awfully unstable.

No one has said it yet - are you using any of the 40d## versions?  I think 40d11 is considered the most stable.

[durt101]

I am a complete and TOTAL hardware noob.
What do gigahertz do? I understand that it's a measure of electrical energy (right?), but how does it help your computer?
Why do you only need a few gigs of Random Access Memory, considering that I have 289 total gigs worth of storage space on my computer? What does RAM do, does it take up more hardware space than regular storage space, and how much is standard?

How do I check my hardware stats (or whatever they're called)?

[kefkakrazy]

RAM is a different sort of memory. Programs being run are stored in RAM while that happens, and it's very, very fast. If you don't have enough RAM, later versions of Windows (XP does it, so does Vista) and some other operating systems will use part of the hard drive space as a "virtual memory," which, while allowing you to run bigger programs, is much, much slower.

Example: On my old PC, I was able to run Battlefield 2 despite having HALF of the MINIMUM requirement. It just took about four times longer to load.

RAM comes in these sticks, they're not very big and they plug into their own slots.

You only need a few gigs of RAM because most programs don't take up all that much while running, and when not running, they're deleted from the RAM.

Gigahertz is a measure of your processor's speed. Basically the voltage in the processor is constantly flipping from low to high to low again, many times per second. How many times? One hertz is one complete cycle. One megahertz is one thousand. A gigahertz is one billion cycles per second.

As for checking your hardware stats, I don't know; I don't check often enough to remember how to do it easily.

[martinuzz]

for a brief summary of your hardware specs, go to your (windows) start menu, and choose 'run'.

In the dialog box that follows, type 'dxdiag', and press <Enter>.
This is assuming that you have some version of directX installed on your computer.

[durt101]

for a brief summary of your hardware specs, go to your (windows) start menu, and choose 'run'.

In the dialog box that follows, type 'dxdiag', and press <Enter>.
This is assuming that you have some version of directX installed on your computer.

I have DirectX. I also have Vista. I can't find a "run" button...
I'll use google, which I should have done in the first place. So sorry for necroing this thread

[Alex Encandar]

for a brief summary of your hardware specs, go to your (windows) start menu, and choose 'run'.

In the dialog box that follows, type 'dxdiag', and press <Enter>.
This is assuming that you have some version of directX installed on your computer.

I have DirectX. I also have Vista. I can't find a "run" button...
I'll use google, which I should have done in the first place. So sorry for necroing this thread

Vista hid it, hold windows key and R.