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Author Topic: Performance drop off, between games  (Read 1231 times)

crossmr

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Performance drop off, between games
« on: May 04, 2010, 03:28:49 am »

I'm not sure where to post this. this isn't a bug, exactly.
I'm playing with Mayday, and I've played 3 or 4 forts now. Last one was biggish, many floors, around 120 dwarfs.

Performance was fine.

I started a new fort, got a nice location, setting it up just the way I want and at only 20ish dwarfs or so, the performance has completely tanked.
Every 2 or 3 seconds its locking up.

I changed nothing. Didn't do anything special.
I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the well I dug. It might. I started on the same layer as the brook. So in order to put in a controllable well I dug down a couple levels and dropped in a floodgate and a hatch to control the water and capped it with a well.

I seem to recall the performance tanking after that.. I can't imagine anything there should cause it to tank would it? have I done something wrong? I've had wells in all my forts thus far and they haven't caused performance issues, though usually those are several layers down and I'm basically just channeling them over and building on top of them.

I'm using the accelerator, the custom opengl dll. I tried it with and without and it keeps freezing up. I haven't changed anything between the last game and this one and now it is completely unplayable. Even tried downloading another copy of the game, which makes me think its something I've built. Can anyone look at a save and tell me if I did something weird that would cause  massive performance problems?
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Tizer

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2010, 03:36:43 am »

Other then having some other program hogging CPU cycle, I think that the underground is more active or something and the other non-dorfs are stealing CPU. Strange
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crossmr

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2010, 03:48:31 am »

I'm only about 3 or 4 levels down. I haven't gone any deeper than before I dug the well. Maybe one level, just enough to make the reservoir for it.
I haven't opened up any caverns and I have invaders off.
I even restarted and shut everything off.
Anyway to try and figure out what it's jamming up on? is there any kind of debug or something that can be run?
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Tizer

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2010, 04:01:14 am »

Have a quick look though your possesses (Ctrl + Alt + Del > Possesses tab) and see if you see anything that's eating up all the ram/cpu.
What kind of environment is it? Is it larger, taller? Have waterfalls? Might be something that's killing fps. :\
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crossmr

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2010, 04:22:02 am »

Have a quick look though your possesses (Ctrl + Alt + Del > Possesses tab) and see if you see anything that's eating up all the ram/cpu.
What kind of environment is it? Is it larger, taller? Have waterfalls? Might be something that's killing fps. :\

Dwarf fortress was the only thing using it up. Around 50%, nothing else was really coming close.

There is a "waterfall" as I said.
I dug a shaft beside the river/brook to drop the water down so I could make a well.
It looked like this from the side.

|---CCR|
|---C--|
|-W-C--|
|-H-C--|
|-CFC--|
River
Channel
Well
Hatch
Floodgate

Would that destroy the framerate?
Floodgate is closed, so water shouldn't be constantly flowing down there. The intention was to only open the floodgate again if the well ever went dry.

Otherwise the map is the same size as other maps, a little larger brook than I've played with before. It isn't near as big as anything I've built before.

here is my save:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5zx6sq

luckily I have a backup just before I started digging out the well. If the well is what is causing it, I can design it differently. Maybe put the floodgate at the top before the water falls down.


[edit]
This seemed to be a waterfall issue. Since I moved the floodgate to the top it has been fine. What could possible be the reason for this kind of killer framerate on a little water moving vertically??
« Last Edit: May 04, 2010, 06:16:36 am by crossmr »
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Calhoun

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2010, 11:05:09 am »

Theres a lot of calculations with waterflow. Which means major slowdowns.
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crossmr

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2010, 07:37:46 pm »

Theres a lot of calculations with waterflow. Which means major slowdowns.

but are the vertical calculations so much more than horizontal ones? keep in mind that I had a floodgate at the bottom, so the water shouldn't have even been moving when the floodgate was closed. Now I have a bigger fort (around 40 dwarves) and no stuttering, so it must have been the well.
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peterix

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2010, 09:17:28 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

crossmr

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2010, 09:31:11 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. I remade the well, without the waterfall and there was no problem. I put the floodgate at the top instead of bottom so that there was no vertical flow except for a few seconds while I had it open. No performance issues. Well still exists.
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Quatch

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2010, 10:07:08 pm »

You're probably having a huge waterflow underground, say a lake draining offscreen. It doesnt start draining until you embark.

When it finishes you should get FPS back.
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SAVE THE PHILOSOPHER!
>>KillerClowns: It's faster to write "!!science!!" than any of the synonyms: "mad science", "dwarven science", or "crimes against the laws of god and man".
>>Orius: I plan my forts with some degree of paranoia.  It's kept me somewhat safe.

crossmr

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2010, 11:43:46 pm »

You're probably having a huge waterflow underground, say a lake draining offscreen. It doesnt start draining until you embark.

When it finishes you should get FPS back.

It didn't happen at embark.

Quote
I dug down a couple levels and dropped in a floodgate and a hatch to control the water and capped it with a well.

I seem to recall the performance tanking after that..

For the record the problem was solved and clearly had something to do with allowing the water to free fall down the shaft, even though it was blocked at the bottom with a floodgate and shouldn't have been moving.


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Thief^

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2010, 06:08:49 am »

If you do it again, does the problem come back?
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It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

crossmr

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2010, 07:07:43 am »

If you do it again, does the problem come back?

I can try that. Next chance I get I'll load that old save up again and see how it reacts.
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Meta

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2010, 08:06:25 am »

Did you play with an external HD plugged into your computer? I remarked that DF is slower when I don't plug-in my external HD.
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Hyperturtle

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Re: Performance drop off, between games
« Reply #14 on: May 08, 2010, 12:16:36 pm »

Your game is slower when you don't have an external device connected?  That's really weird.
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