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[Wood Gnome]

(v. 33g) i turned on the seasonal autosave and autobackup just recently and twice since then my laptop has suddenly gone completely black-screen and refuses to respond to anything except turning off the power and re-starting the computer.  the lappy works just fine when i re-start it.  i was playing df both times on battery power.  if i play with the power cord attatched the game plays okay.  the autosaves are the only changes i've made to anything on my computer lately, so i believe the problem lies there, it must hiccup while running off the battery.

this is a new laptop, AMD Turion, 2 GB DDR2 running vista, yatta yatta.

it's not a huge issue, i can either keep myself plugged in or turn off the autosaves, just thought i'd mention it now that i've figured out what's been causing the problem.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Something weird is happening to you. Try setting different power management profiles, i.e. limiting CPU and memory usage, etc. The only difference when running off batteries should be the system performance... Also, try playing in a window, DF has sometimes been reluctant to let go of the screen for me, when there was an error for example. Luckily I have the Process Explorer running in background most of the time, and I can shut things down easily.

[Wood Gnome]

hmm.  i always play in a window, since playing full screen doesn't let you see any more of the playing field.  i have a processor monitor on the screen but i haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary while the game is running.  the only thing i can figure out is that the automatic pause/save during season change pisses something off.  i've turned it off again and will play without the power cord.  before i turned autosave on i didn't have any problems.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Aside from the general question "Any reason to play on a laptop without a powercord?", does DF, even in windowed mode, cause your entire screen to go black and your system to not respond to absolutely anything? If yes, then something's wrong outside of DF.

My laptop's a C2DT7300@2GHz, 1GB RAM, also running Vista. Everything's fine regardless of power mode or save setting.

Speaking of which, how do you get around playing DF on a laptop? Or do you have one of those 17-inchers with a full-size keyboard? I've had to buy a USB numpad just for this sole purpose.

[Wood Gnome]

ya got me, a 17" widescreen with full keyboard.  but i used to play df on my old 15" dinosaur before it died (but i had to use the cord ad infinitum to keep it running more than 5 minutes).  i learned to use the blue function keys a LOT.  i think (i do not KNOW) that using the cord constantly tends to shorten the life of the toy on your lap (i could be wrong, but it sure is warm in any case).

after turning off the autosaves i have played for a season or two on battery alone and had no problems.  i can save manually with no problems.  if autosave kicks in without the power cord i get a black screen and no response except for the on/off button.

i don't interpret the news, folks.  i just report it    and go back to the game.

[Sofaspud]

Check your power management settings, specifically, whether the hard drive is spun down after X minutes of inactivity while on battery power or not.  It almost certainly IS, if you're using default settings.

It's entirely possible that DF is not able to work with the delay while the system spins the drive back up (it SHOULD be, but, it's an alpha and this is a relatively rare situation).  I've had that happen with several apps that weren't built with that sort of thing in mind.

Note that battery life is going to drop pretty drastically if you turn this option off -- keeping the drive spinning takes a good chunk of power.  Not as much as (for example) sound or video, but every little bit...

[Wood Gnome]

i chose the simple route and turned the autosaves back off.  if i forget to save the game now and then it's entirely my fault.  i prefer not to run the laptop all the time with the cord plugged in because it's not good for the battery.  thanks for the help  

[Sean Mirrsen]

AFAIK, the only thing that will damage (or rather, adversely affect) the battery is constant, prolonged use with charger attached and with the battery at full charge. For such conditions it is usually best to remove the battery entirely (if you are using the laptop as a desktop) and run off the power cord. If your battery is seeing use at least a few times a week, there is no harm in keeping the laptop plugged in. The battery controller will take care of the overcharge.
That's what my ASUS laptop's User Manual says, anyway.  

Anyways. Just for the record, have you tried fullscreen then?..  I have noted that the game really does hang up and make the screen flick a bit sometimes, when it saves while windowed, though there was far less magnitude to that than what you describe.

[Sofaspud]

quote:Originally posted by Sean Mirrsen:
<STRONG>
Speaking of which, how do you get around playing DF on a laptop? Or do you have one of those 17-inchers with a full-size keyboard? I've had to buy a USB numpad just for this sole purpose.</STRONG>

Just noticed this, heh.

My primary DF machine is my laptop, a Toshiba Satellite Pro that does NOT have a full keyboard.  It's pretty easy, actually; all I needed to do was go in the first time and re-map some keys (the numpad-specific ones, like +/-).  I set those to the left and right bracket keys ([ and ]) instead, and everything's gravy now.

DF is intense enough, CPU-wise, that I only get about as much play time out of it on battery as I do, say, Team Fortress 2, but there's nothing preventing it from running just because of the lack of a numpad.

(ALthough I freely admit I spent a frustrated couple of hours trying to figure out how to play at first before someone on these boards was kind enough to point out to me that I *could* re-map those keys, heh)

[Sean Mirrsen]

I don't walk diagonally much, so the only times I used the Fn key was embarking, and during some menu actions. I'll try remapping though, should work...