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Author Topic: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?  (Read 1144 times)

Qloos

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DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« on: December 23, 2009, 04:07:43 pm »

Lets imagine, hypothetically, that I play dwarf fortress without ever unpausing.  How many Dwarfs could I possibly host on a 16x16 map without framerate issues?

EDIT:  WELL IT'S TIME TO FIND OUT!  *embarks with pop cap at 1000 on 16x16.*  See you next year suckers.

Edit2: Started unpaused, fps dropped to 4,  Paused.  FPS went up to 100.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 04:28:53 pm by Qloos »
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sweitx

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2009, 04:55:52 pm »

If you're paused, the game is not doing anything.  The 100 FPS is simply the cap you set.
FPS of 4 sounds... painful.
The next breakthrough would be if/when Toady figure out how to multithread Dwarf Fortress.  Next thing you know, the university will wonder why is their supercomputer running at max capacity constantly.
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sonerohi

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2009, 06:38:06 pm »

I'm managing a 16x16 with 7 dwarves at a pretty awesome 70 FPS.
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QuakeIV

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2009, 06:44:50 pm »

I was picturing roughly 600 legendary axedwarves facing off against thousands of orcs on a 4x4.
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diefortheswarm

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #4 on: December 23, 2009, 08:20:52 pm »

The pathing rewrite will give the greatest performance increase.
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Sir Iryn

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2009, 12:40:11 am »

It would be cool if he could open source the pathfinding like he did with the graphics, let the math geeks fight it out over the optimum way for dwarf A to get from location B to Beer stockpile C.

I understand his opposition to open sourcing anything though, it's his baby and he should have whatever say he wants in it.
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sonerohi

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2009, 12:46:24 am »

Toady is one of the math geeks. http://www.jga.wustl.edu/contents/v18n1/adams1.pdf. That is the paper he did for his degree.
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Asmodeous

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2009, 09:22:07 am »

Holy crap that paper is a whole lot of shit I don't understand. :D
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Dame de la Licorne

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Re: DF snail pace, how much expansion is possible?
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2009, 09:48:06 am »

Hello,
It would be cool if he could open source the pathfinding like he did with the graphics, let the math geeks fight it out over the optimum way for dwarf A to get from location B to Beer stockpile C.

There is a thread here where some programmers are trying to optimize a pathfinding algorithm (or combination of pathfinding algorithms) in the hope that Toady One can then add it to the DF code to replace the current non-optimized pathfinder.  But, they are also trying to put together a pathfinder library for use in other programs.  So it isn't just for DF, although DF inspired the project (as far as I understand it).

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