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[saarmae]

Hello,

am i the only one who either plays 2 fortresses at the same time, or one fortress and one adventure at the same time? I have a 4-core processor and as one instance of DF can't use em all, i just make more DF instances. Basically if i can run a certain fortress with 80-100 fps, i can ran 2 other identical fortresses at the same time, all at 80-100 fps. I guess the multitasking gets crazy when you try to run like 5 instances on a hex-core computer but 2-3 are manageable for anyone. I do believe even dual-cores can run 2 instances quite well if there isn't any crap hogging the resources in the background.

So usually i keep two instances running, one fortress and one adventure. When i give the dwarves some huge project to work on (dump ALL stones on ALL z levels... mine that WHOLE z level so i can start a underground tree farm etc etc) i go to the other window and break some limbs with my adventurer.

[lordnincompoop]

Whoa. 

Gimme your computah!

[AtomicPaperclip]

Wow I never even thought of that. Good idea. Would have given me something to do while I was filling 2 z levels with water from a minor river.

[Itnetlolor]

Well, you've put my machine to shame. Nice work, and happy slaying. By comparison, I only have a "crappy" dual-core.

[Hyperturtle]

I have you all beat.  I just let DF run and go into another room and do something else, coming back to check on things every now and then!  Ever since several of my soldiers started to continously name their weapons repeatedly over and over again, there is no point looking in the announcements anymore anyway, since its completely spammed with the naming.  So even when I am paying attention I miss deaths and cancellations simply because they're crowded out.  So I can't keep close tabs on things, so I let them work like ants and just show up now and then to unpause it when someone gets in a mood or I have to fling more elves off a bridge.

[TheCze]

I never tried to play more than two forts at a time, though usually when I see that one of my fortresses is near doom and it's just a matter of time (or if I get bored) I load up another instance and start playing there.

[Rotten]

I tried this once (dual core comp). It dropped my frame rate by 10FPS in the large fort and 50 in the new fort. My guess is that background tasks had to be shared between the two cores when before they could all be shoved on the core DF wasn't using.

[Retro]

My old dual-core laptop could run two DFs fine so long as neither had reason to lag - for me, if one lagged, both lagged (and the lag wasn't equally divided between the two, it was like one was taking the other down with it). Only tried it once on my new quad-core but didn't seem to have much issue with it. But there's no reason for me to play two forts at once, really; I micromanage so much that there's never free time to sit back and let it play out.

[Kazang]

I started to do it but I lost track of what I was doing in each fort so it became more of a nuisance than actual improvement.

Once you get to the mega project stage with long periods of working that require little or no input then I can see it being pretty nice to be able to run multiple instances. I too see very little performance drop from multiple instances of the game, DF doesn't max out my cpu even when running "slow" ~50 fps, adding more instances doesn't degrade performance at all.

[AtomicPaperclip]

I have you all beat.  I just let DF run and go into another room and do something else, coming back to check on things every now and then!  Ever since several of my soldiers started to continously name their weapons repeatedly over and over again, there is no point looking in the announcements anymore anyway, since its completely spammed with the naming.  So even when I am paying attention I miss deaths and cancellations simply because they're crowded out.  So I can't keep close tabs on things, so I let them work like ants and just show up now and then to unpause it when someone gets in a mood or I have to fling more elves off a bridge.

Last time I did that a cave crawler destroyed all my workshops, killed several war leopards, and a couple dorfs. 

[Hyperturtle]

yes, a blind cave ogre did that to me, as well as hungry heads flapping all over the place.  I pretty much had that floor emptied by the ogre, and had to rebuild everything.  But ever since then, I have security in place!

Another drawback is when I miss a mandate and someone gets wasted as a result...

I have found I can run the same DF fort in two windows, which provides zero benefit and likely could corrupt my files.  But it does work!

[o_O[WTFace]]

I have found I can run the same DF fort in two windows, which provides zero benefit and likely could corrupt my files.  But it does work!

If only you could run half a fort in each instance...

[Kattaroten]

Yeah i do this too, sometimes using savescums in a way that i explore my derelict fortress at the same time as it flourishes in my parallel universe