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[Spreggo]

Toady be a hero and tell us what the memory vectors are so we can use dwarf therapist

Better yet, give him the dorf therapist source code so he can use it in DF.

Since Toady has direct access to the variables needed I doubt he needs or wants the DT source.

[DalGren]

Deathworks' post nails it down.

And, this is not unplayable at all. I took a deeper look at the situation and it's just a bit out of tune, no more.
Also other forum post at the Future of the Fortress topic explains the slowdown during worldgen, it doesn't seem to be the sprawl but the increased amount of battles.
The adamantite bug is a minimal raw mistake.
Pf, some guys don't even seem to understand the concept of "tuning". Even with the warning signs all around the place, like OH NOES A RELEASE (after a rather big change) MAKES IT SLIGHTLY HARDER TO FIND A SITE DWARF FORTRESS IS RUINED FOREVER BAWWWW!!!!!111ELEVEN. --What means the good sites have been taken already. Which is perfectly logic, just tweak the worldgen as pointed out by some people-- But they seem to think this is a permanent situation.

People with so little patience is either too young, or doesn't understand game developing at all. (Hint: It's not a linear process, and trial and error is present on it, even with experimented programmers).

[Spreggo]

It's not unplayable but this is a very newb-unfriendly release because it requires experience to deviate in a useful way to make it as playable as the last release was.
Most new folks are going to download the game and gen a world and give up the game because they can't figure out how to embark.
Luckily though Toady said he will release another bug-fix before month end so I'm really not that worried about it. Since these problems are likely to disappear quickly, I don't think it is really worth arguing about whether or not it is a good release.

(edit:  I don't think DF was ever 'newb-friendly' or should be, just that this release is less newb-friendly than usual.)

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Somehow, I don't have the impression that it is only newbies who are complaining about the changes.

But you are correct that the current release makes it bit harder for newbies as the default settings do make it unnecessarily difficult to find a good embark location. But then again, I am wondering how much newbies really care about the embark location during their first runs anyway... Do they really search for flux and stuff?

Personally, I see the difficulty development of DF to be constantly increasing due to the additional detail. The only real exception was the change from 2D to 3D as it brought surface farming and some other aspects making the game much easier.

FleshForge: What kind of worlds are you genning? While the default settings are not ideal, the "many" cases you describe should be unlikely (the default settings have too many civs to allow for a single city to dominate the map). Especially what map size are you using? I am on medium size and as I said, things do not look as desperate as you describe them.

GENERAL: By the way, I had a  look at my detailed map and the savagery map. While I am still not 100% sure, there does seem to be a correspondence between savagery and city sprawl. So, people who are still experimenting may consider having minimum numbers of medium/high savagery tiles in world gen.

Deathworks

[DalGren]

Yes, you are right Spreggo, that's something to be concerned about, and I understand it, but I wrote that post under knowledge of that bug-fixing release. Very few if any new players will be affected "without remedy" for it.

[kuketski]

Deathworks' post nails it down.

And, this is not unplayable at all. I took a deeper look at the situation and it's just a bit out of tune, no more.
Also other forum post at the Future of the Fortress topic explains the slowdown during worldgen, it doesn't seem to be the sprawl but the increased amount of battles.
The adamantite bug is a minimal raw mistake.
Pf, some guys don't even seem to understand the concept of "tuning". Even with the warning signs all around the place, like OH NOES A RELEASE (after a rather big change) MAKES IT SLIGHTLY HARDER TO FIND A SITE DWARF FORTRESS IS RUINED FOREVER BAWWWW!!!!!111ELEVEN. --What means the good sites have been taken already. Which is perfectly logic, just tweak the worldgen as pointed out by some people-- But they seem to think this is a permanent situation.

People with so little patience is either too young, or doesn't understand game developing at all. (Hint: It's not a linear process, and trial and error is present on it, even with experimented programmers).

Well, not just that.
For me the main problem is not the sprawl, but the migrants and fps-killing-blood-statters. we will get migrants with professions taken from Global World, the one than can be seen in adventure mode. this mean that in 31.13 migration mechanics takes creatures from global map to use in migration waves.
Its very exciting to see - getting non-dwarven migrant for example. After fort had enough FUN to be abandoned, we can read in Legends that "Urist McMigrant had migrated to <fortname> and died in flames after burning stray kitten bit his hand off."
and not being able to put them to any use is very disappointing. and what to do with such broken migrants? throw them off the cliff like cripples in Sparta?
DF if extremly complicated by now and every release with new feature will bring some bugs -  its inevitable.
but this bugs is just teasing my anticination =)
its like fancy Ferrary car, that nearly perfect, but with one little bug - its steering wheel isnt connected to anything. like, yaeh, you can drive it, but only straight forward or backward. =)
so i`ll wait(and hope taht Toady`ll release it soon) for some bugfixing release and contribute to the bugtracker.
BTW - in 31.13 FPS is doubled on my PC( VERY impressive optimisation )! THNX, Toady!

[DalGren]

Either way, you can't design a consistent interface and improve usability when the feature sets constantly change and/or improve. That's why I say making games is not a linear process.
Perhaps the sprawl will be fixed not by a quickfix, but by a future feature, as well, that limits how they spread or how they get decimated.
Either way, just the massive speedup in this release makes me want to hug it. It's awesome to move in Adventure mode like in a regular roguelike, without nearly one-second lag every move.

[Psieye]

I don't think anyone is arguing that the current sprawl situation in .13 is pleasing. People are arguing that it can be compensated for in worldgen and that future versions will address it. We like the concept of sprawl but we agree that the existing implementation is far from ideal. Likewise for the useless migrants - the concept of we're getting them from existing populations outside our fort is neat but it'll need to be debugged.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Actually, I think if we were allowed to embark within the settled areas (as we had been in previous versions at least for a while), many of the critics might suddenly become extremely pro-sprawl (^_^;;

But yes, a little fine-tuning is probably necessary.

Deathworks

[cameron]

actually thats funny, adventure mode is much slower for me now, it is still playable just at ~50 fps instead of 300, perhaps because of bigger world gens in terms of size if that does something.

and i for one think that sprawl could be a good thing if it confused people(myself included) less. my main issue is it is currently rather hard to find the capital in adventure mode.

[DalGren]

Hi!

Actually, I think if we were allowed to embark within the settled areas (as we had been in previous versions at least for a while), many of the critics might suddenly become extremely pro-sprawl (^_^;;

But yes, a little fine-tuning is probably necessary.

Deathworks

Such a source of radiance, this post.
That would be, indeed, the hackish-easy solution, but I think it can calm the haters if it's trivial to implement.

[Malorn]

Just for the record, I'm not getting any of these bugs, at all.

I got one weird immigrant who was named 'thief' but he started working as hard as anyone else.  He still has a weird graphic that looks like a skeleton, but otherwise it's fine.  Finding a spot to embark isn't hard at all, really.  It's not as if lava isn't available everywhere, and thus just finding a nice balanced spot where mountains meet forest is about that is needed.  Having a brook or river thrown is always nice too, but pretty easy to find and can be done without.

I love this update for dwarf mode, since my idiot dwarves actually sleep where they are supposed to, and setting up complex lever systems is much easier since the selection system isn't stuck one behind.  Speaking as creator of complex water systems, I approve this all around.  I haven't got any sieges yet, and I'm wondering if the goblins are having a problem or not, but that's all right now.

Guys, I don't mean to be difficult for people who are having problems, but this is really just ungrateful.  We aren't paying a cent to play this game that even in alpha is amazing and fun.  So yeah, tell the Toad about the bugs and problems so they can be fixed, but don't whine.  All that does is leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth and probably makes toady less enthusiastic about DF as a whole.  It also drives away newbies.  I know when I'm deciding whether to play a game, the attitude of the veterans always affects my choice.  Positive, helpful veterans are far more encouraging than angry resentful ones.

[greycat]

I see about 10 posts in a row telling people to stop whining, but I don't actually see any whining.  It's a weird kind of feedback loop.

I genned a world with titans raised from 9 to 12, and ending in year 200.  The result was pretty decent, although it's odd to have a choice of 8 different dwarven civs at embark instead of 1 to 3.  Most importantly, however, the resulting game was playable on my machine which only has 1 GB of RAM.  (A default 1050 year world gen creates a world that needs more memory than I have available in order to embark.)

I got a migrant labeled as a "Master Thief".  He had a modest assortment of military and civilian skills, but I couldn't give him any labors.  He had novice record keeper skill, so I made him my bookkeeper.  He performed that without complaint, since it doesn't require the labor preferences screen.

[MaDeR Levap]

just looking from the detailed export the sprawl doesn't cover much more the 10 % or so of a map

I do not care what % is sprawl. I do care on what % on map I cannot embark due to sprawl. I hope you can distinguish these two things.

Actually, I think if we were allowed to embark within the settled areas (as we had been in previous versions at least for a while), many of the critics might suddenly become extremely pro-sprawl (^_^;;

No. In this case, no one would complaint. Atm most, someone would say this sprawl is a little excessive and farmfiels are just boring. But it would not be specially pressing issue to fix (especially there is zilion other things to fix, that Toady seems to do NOT care at all).

[Rexfelum]

I have given the world gen data for the world I am currently using here.

. . . And anything that gets me closer to understanding worldgen is good.  Well, anything other than brain transplants and the like.  I want to keep my brain.  But regardless, I find that reading the wiki's pages and skimming the "worldgen cookbook" doesn't give me an intuition for even the most basic things, so I cannot look at your code to derive any "hints."  For instance . . .

Also, eliminate all the minimum numbers for unusable terrain - you don't need thousands of ocean tiles and they only take away from the usable tiles. If you ask for partial or complete oceans, you get enough ocean automatically. Unless you change the minimum/maximum values, you should get all types of terrain, so unless you really want a certain terrain like deserts, for instance, you should remove the minimums for all unusable terrain.

Also, I don't recommend minimum values for hills and grassland/plains - that's the terrain humans inhabit, and they spread really well because of that. Instead, you should consider increasing the minimum values for forests and mountains (elves and goblins) which should help balance things a little bit.

I don't understand how to find minimums.  Here is every entry I could see with "min" in the name, other than those related to caves:

[PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:0]
[PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:1]
[COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
[VOLCANO_MIN:200]

Since you were also talking about things like forests, I guess that means I need entries like this:

[REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:2500:4:4]

But how do I read it?

I have also tried increasing the variance for savagery a little bit (at least in previous versions, civs would not settle in savage areas), however I don't have any verifiable results. But theoretically, that should hamper the spread of settlements.

"Savagery" shows up in three places:

[SAVAGERY:0:100:500:500]
[SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[SAVAGERY_RANGES:0:0:0]

. . . Any help?  Or directions to a proper place where I can look this stuff up, so I don't take away from the purpose of the thread?

--Rexfelum