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[bradley364]

-playability, and enjoyment for one's computer.


I try so hard to get into Dwarf Fortress. The game is just amazing to me on paper. All my friends play it, and once again I've grown jealous from their stories and installed the game.

Once more.

See, I always hit a wall with it. My FPS craps out very quickly, with my forts slowing down to 20 or below FPS very early on. I've tweaked the Init far into the night, like a night such as this, to no avail. So I've come to ask the community to please help me, to work with me, and to create another die hard DF fan.


For starters, I'm trying to use the Mayday Tileset, so I have already downloaded the combined release. I also use the DF Init Utility to tweak my settings, as I find it the most headache free way to try this.

As for my systems specs, they are here below.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 8/4/2010, 02:43:44
       Machine name: BRAD_PC
   Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.100216-1514)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: GATEWA
       System Model: W3506                           
               BIOS: Default System BIOS
          Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.20GHz
             Memory: 1406MB RAM
          Page File: 801MB used, 2498MB available
        Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
    DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
     DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
  DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
      Display Tab 1: The file ati2dvag.dll is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL).  You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer.
        Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
          Music Tab: No problems found.
          Input Tab: No problems found.
        Network Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D:    0/4 (n/a)
DirectDraw:  0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectPlay:  0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow:  0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
        Card name: ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series
     Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
        Chip type: ATI Radeon Xpress Series (0x5A61)
         DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
       Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5A61&SUBSYS_D6018086&REV_00
   Display Memory: 128.0 MB

Any advice or feedback would be greatly welcomed.

[timtek]

Man your pc kicks the crap out of mine. have you tried smaller worlds and smaller embarks? Mine slows down a lot but not enough to make playing it impossible.

[Lawec]

Even though your CPU has a fairly high clock rating, it is quite bad :/
I've noticed that Celerons are quite awful at handling DF.
But as Timtek says, try and embark on smaller worlds+embarks.

[Mason11987]

Nano Fortress says it only works for 40d, and you will get an error saying it isn't working, but if you run it while you are picking an embark location, you'll still be able to set it to 1x1.

Do that and tell me how it runs.

[Logical2u]

So, suggestions:

Go to the Legacy version - download that from the main page here then grab the Mayday tiles and such from the DF Wiki. You can then manually install them. The Legacy version uses less video-card related stuff, so if it's your video card causing problems, that should help.

A little bit more RAM is in order for the newest release, due to the massive underground. If you can't get any, use smaller areas - nanofortress for extreme smallness.

I think your CPU should be fine - it's just a bit old and will probably run hot, so make sure that it doesn't overheat on you!

[Blackdutchie]

you can remove underground layers in the worldgen params, try 1 cavern instead of 3 and see how you like that if decreasing embark site size or the other above mentioned tips don't work.

[Cotes]

Mess around with your init file. First of all, you should set the priority to HIGH or REALTIME and try different print modes. If all else fails, turning off temperature, weather and/or cave-ins from d_init should help.

I also hear that lowering G_FPS_CAP can help, but I don't know for sure...

[NW_Kohaku]

There are two major ways to kill your FPS, pathfinding, which is something you can't stop entirely, but which you can mitigate by reading up on this: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56041.0  and ensuring that you cage or pit all excess livestock so they can't path.

The other main killer is fluids. Keep fluids locked in perfectly still 7/7s, where they are relatively infrequently checked.  Moving fluids, even ones like murky pools that have lost some of their water, so a few tiles of 6/7 water slosh around over 5/7s constantly, will chew large amounts of your FPS.

Aside from that... well, learn to live with 20 FPS...  20 FPS is not THAT bad.

Frankly, I tend to play by pausing, and controlling things, then unpausing while I switch to another window like the forums and wait for my commands to be carried out.

[Hyndis]

Large numbers of items or large open spaces your dwarves can path too can also hurt your FPS by a large amount.

In my fortresses I've been adjusting my layout, such that I'm regularly getting 150-200ish FPS.

With 180 dwarves.



Of course the i7 960 helps out a bit. Seeing a decent improvement over the older E8400, but also refinements in fortress layout have improved things as well.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh right, and also, either use that "high traffic area" zoning thing on all your major hallways, or else go to your init files, and make traffic [1:1:5:50] just to stop the pathfinder from trying to search for extra paths that might contain some "1"s in it.

[bradley364]

At the moment, I've been trying to get a tileset to run correctly in on the Legacy version of Dwarf Fortress, can someone give me some more detailed instructions on this as all the prepacked versions seem to be of the regular DF

[sweitx]

If improving hardware is possible, try getting a some extra memory.
1GB seems a bit small.

[nbonaparte]

If improving hardware is possible, try getting a some extra memory.
1GB seems a bit small.

Although don't go overboard, DF is 32 bit. It can't take advantage of more than about 3.5 gb.

[Marconius]

Well, first of all, your hardware is old. Like... really old. As stated above, try and get some hardware if at all possible.

Other tips:
1) Make your embark area small, in all three dimensions. That means change the world gen parameters so your world isn't too deep and possibly make it so you only have one cavern layer.
2) Help the program with pathfinding and others. As said above, create high traffic zones and such to reduce the time required for pathfinding.
3) Try without using a tileset. I don't know if using a tileset impacts your FPS greatly, but as an experiment, I'd try with the default tileset once.
4) Cap your fortress population at a low number. Less dwarves mean less calculations.

Also, 20 FPS is not that bad. As long as your game is above 5-10 FPS, it should be playable.

[timtek]

Frankly, I tend to play by pausing, and controlling things, then unpausing while I switch to another window like the forums and wait for my commands to be carried out.

 I tend to do the same thing. Except in the beginning of my fort when things are moving a long at a good pace.