Print

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

[JoshuaFH]

I know, I know, the new version of DF has been out for some time, but I've simply not allotted any time to actually PLAYING it. I mean, I've downloaded it, it's sitting on my desktop, and in fact I could be playing it right now, but I feel it's a futile task. I say that because I leave back to college tomorrow, where I have but public computers to use and a single day's worth of playing would not suffice to actually enjoy it thoroughly.

However, my bad self had an idea, would it be possible to place Dwarf Fortress onto a flash drive, and then play it on public computers? Could I do that?

[Diablous]

People have tried this. I works. Takes a while to save and load, though.

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, just wondering.

[Trigonous]

Your only problem being that public computers generally suck horribly.  I'm speaking from experience; the computers at my university couldn't run 40d18 (I haven't tried since then).

[Soadreqm]

"A while" means like five minutes for me. If it's in any way possible to copy the game directory to the computer you're using, do that. Or at least turn off autosave.

[Aklyon]

"A while" means like five minutes for me. If it's in any way possible to copy the game directory to the computer you're using, do that. Or at least turn off autosave.

It means at least 10 for me. Ugh.

[JoshuaFH]

Is there anything in the wiki that lists all the changes this version makes from the last one?

[Soadreqm]

There's a metric buttload of changes, not all of which have been properly documented yet, but I think I've seen a complete single-page changelog somewhere. I can't remember where, but I think the list thread was pretty decent, if awfully vague at times.

[Moleculor]

I don't believe it's comprehensive, but there is a list on the wiki.

A list. On the wiki.

[BitLooter]

I've noticed it loads and saves much faster using smaller worlds. If read/write speeds are a concern, try genning a pocket-sized world.

[JoshuaFH]

Thanks, I hope that a pocket world can retain all the civilization that I like having around though.

[Hamster Man]

It probably won't - I frequently end up with only two or three civs in small worlds - but pockets take like 14 seconds to generate, so just keep popping em out til you get one.

Or you could mod the settings. Not sure to what though.

[Dave Mongoose]

Tip #1: Get a laptop! 

If you can't afford that, consider a portable hard drive instead of a flash drive - it should work just as easily (most don't need special drivers or anything, but ask before you buy), and it's likely to have a much faster transfer rate than a flash drive so you'll have less issues with saving and loading.

Unless the public computers have good specs (which most likely they don't), you'll want to tweak things in your world gen and use a small embark to delay FPS death.

Depending on the security settings and the installed .dlls, there's a small chance you won't be able to run the .exe. In that case you might have some luck with a linux boot disk (or even a linux partition on the portable HDD) and the linux version of DF (which should come out soon, since the d# merge will mean most of the work is done).

[Bruwin]

... consider a portable hard drive instead of a flash drive - it should work just as easily (most don't need special drivers or anything, but ask before you buy), and it's likely to have a much faster transfer rate than a flash drive so you'll have less issues with saving and loading.

Transfer speed isn't limited by the drive, it's limited by the interface. Since most external drives and flash drives are USB, it's limited to USB's positively sluggish rates. Otherwise, saving to a flash drive would actually be faster than to a harddrive.

[se5a]

unless you're using USB1 it shouldn't be THAT slow.

my current saves are <30MB and usb2 has a transfer rate of 480 Mbit/s (about 57MB/s) so to actualy save the data it should be less than a second.

hell, that's faster than a 100mbps network, and I've played it from a network drive no problems.