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[Moonshine Fox]

Hi there! I'm wondering if anyone knows the intricacies of embark size. I've played everything from 6x6 to 3x3 and it honestly don't seem to make much of a difference. Are larger embark sizes (5+) doomed to kill your computer later, or is it for computers that are a bit "weaker"? In my 3x3 fort I'm currently down to about 20 FPS during regular operation, and that's with barely 100 dwarves...

Computer
Intel i7 @2.66 GHz
6 Gb Hi-Speed RAM
Win 7 x64

Graphic card irrelevant, I think but it's a GeForce 275 GTX.

[Valkyrie]

For me, it's generally a med- to late-game issue.  I currently tend to use 2x2 embarks, and wind up around 20fps with 100 dwarves after the fort has started to mature.  My current fort is a 2x2 with 40 dwarves that has attempted to be designed around maintaining fps, and it's usually in the low 30s.

My older, 3x3 80-dwarf forts tended to get unplayably slow, and it mostly was just a matter of when I would give up on it.  Most of those forts make it to a idle-at-15fps,-dwarves-doing-stuff-at-~7fps state, though one fort I was very determined about keeping I went on until it was ~5fps most of the time (dipping to 1fps if I gave any mass orders).

But at embark, I've even done a 4x4, and it lasted for (ingame) years before slowing down.  So early-game performance isn't very indicative of long-term performance, in my experience, so trying a 'new' style/size for its FPS impacts invovles significant time investment to see how it's different.

I'm at rather the other end in terms of computer specs, though:
Athlon64 FX-53 (2.4ghz single-core)
2GB DDR400 dual-channel
Windows 2000 Professional SP4
GeForce 7800GS (AGP)

[Gnauga]

Kill temperature and weather. That'll give your FPS a little boost. You can also modify your raws to give your dwarves higher speed.

[Ullallulloo]

I usually embark with a 4x4 or a 5x5 with little to no framerate problems ever(even with fortresses of a hundred dwarves and not using any FPS-saving tips) with:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.01 GHz
1.00 GB of RAM
64-bit Windows 7
Nvidia GeForce 6800GS

I tried a bigger embark once.(Something like 6x7, I think), and I almost immediately noticed the lack of FPS and abandoned.

[Aramco]

Kill temperature and weather. That'll give your FPS a little boost. You can also modify your raws to give your dwarves higher speed.

Yes, even with 5 to 10 FPS, at speed 0, they still go super fast.

[Tokkius]

I get maybe 200 FPS average on a 5x5 embark, provided the underground isn't swarming with critters. Lowers to about 100 average by 5-10 years in with a 150+ pop.

[Aramco]

How about you give me your computer, and you can have my computer? (Which is pretty bad.)

[krenshala]

I usually embark with a 4x4 or a 5x5 with little to no framerate problems ever(even with fortresses of a hundred dwarves and not using any FPS-saving tips) with:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.01 GHz
1.00 GB of RAM
64-bit Windows 7
Nvidia GeForce 6800GS

I tried a bigger embark once.(Something like 6x7, I think), and I almost immediately noticed the lack of FPS and abandoned.

I'm using the same processor (X2 3800+), but I've got 2GB of RAM, WinXP and an nVidia GTS 150 (1GB of video RAM), and I usually start at about 30 - 50 FPS on a 6x6 embark.  I once had a 6x6 embark with a cave-in at start and a whoppin' 7FPS ... while I really wanted to see what was slowing things down that early, I decided it would just take to long to get down there and find out.   If I ever get my other system working (bad motherboard) I'll get a nice memory and CPU boost which should help tremendously.

When I've showed the game to someone on another system* I get about 50 - 75FPS on the same 6x6 embark.  That system was an Optiplex 755 (Core2 Duo E6750, 2GB RAM, Radeon HD 2400 Pro for video).


* You gotta love that DF can be played from a USB key, if you don't mind the write lag when saving.

[Dok Enkephalin]

VRAM is not going to make a difference with this limited tileset, even with the most detailed custom tiles in a 16x16 embark. The day Dwarf Fortress ports into Unreal engine, then it'll rate mention.

[krenshala]

VRAM is not going to make a difference with this limited tileset, even with the most detailed custom tiles in a 16x16 embark. The day Dwarf Fortress ports into Unreal engine, then it'll rate mention.

True ... 25 years as a computer tech; when i start spewing system specs I tend to get carried away.