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[dwarfhoplite]

I know this had been discussed thousand times but i couldn't find thread. My past forts all died fps deaths. Any good advice to help fps apart from using ramps instead of stairs and  having smaller embark size?

[Girlinhat]

In general, smaller is better.  Smaller size, smaller fort, smaller population...  Water and magma that are flowing can be killer too.  Ghosts, apparently, are very lethal to forts, as I almost had to abandon due to crash caused by ghosts.  I think this is because they can pass through solid object, and therefor they're pathfinding the whole map, but I have no idea how accurate this guess is.

Speaking of pathfinding, you can set traffic designations and block areas.  If you've mined out an enormous vein and don't need that big empty area, wall it off and put it behind a locked door, this prevents dwarves from pathing through it.  You can set traffic designations too, to set workshop areas as Restricted to prevent common traffic but not preventing the workshop users from going in, and set other areas as Low except for main hallways, which should be High.

Cats too, and other animals.  Animals pathfind, so lock them in 1x1 pits, cage them, or kill them.

Temperature as well.  If you don't mind locking ice/water in place, and want lava to be as dangerous as jello, turn off temperature and/or weather.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Atomsmash everything you don't need. Animals too.

[Rentorian]

Reducing the graphical frame refresh rate can also speed up your fortress a lot.  I think it starts out at somewhere around 50 but I've put it down to 10 without seeing any real problems, lower than that and things can get a bit choppy.

It's the [G_FPS_CAP] option in the init file

[Girlinhat]

I find my GFPS is identical to my FPS, that is, if my FPS drops to 20, so will GFPS, except if it goes above 50 because GFPS is capped there.

There's another option that determines how often DF checks for button presses, and I hear that you can get a lot of FPS by reducing this.  In general, wiki "maximizing fps" and play along.

[Buttery_Mess]

I've found that most techniques to keep your FPS up only add about 10% a piece. So, once you get to about 6 FPS, upping it from there can be difficult. If your FPS drops to about 20, stop expanding and focus on improving your framerate. That way, youll actually be able to notice if any measure are working. If it drops to below 10, it's difficult to notice if anything's working.

[shlorf]

I've notice that contaminants (mainly blood) are another big factor. Make cleaning trenches and fill them with 3/7 water, use dfcleanmap to get rid of them outside (especially if you're in an area without rain or only snow). If you make one trench at a place were every dwarf will path sometimes (booze stockpile) you can get them clean automatically. Make another trench for soldiers and clean them after every battle with station orders.
I'm not sure about syndromes effects on fps but since pretty much all my caged lived stock was infected from the time when my whole fort was some kind of biohazard zone (pretty funny kobold thieves would uncloak and instantly turn dizzy/nauseous and bleed out a few steps later), my fps has been rather low. I'll go and pit them all into the magma sea and see if that has any positive effects.
It has been mentioned a few times but pathing is probably a big chunk of cpu load too (seeing as fps is inversely proportional to number of dwarfs that would make sense). Avoid large open spaces with multiple entries and put low traffic designations on every door that leads to a dead end to reduce calculations. 3x3 or even bigger Up/down staircases with connections in every direction at every floor are bad for the same reason: A dwarf in the middle of the staircase has a lot of possible tiles to move to, this can be countered with traffic designations to some degree.
My observation has been that every fort where i used a very restrictive 2 tile wide single spiral central shaft has had better fps despite spanning over 100 levels in used area. That design also meant i could only easily connect every level in two directions so that forced me to build less possible ways for anyone on the ramps to move.
Oh and the items, I'm not good with this. I pumped up magma to the surface level and dumped all goblinite into it there's still so much iron left now i should have just used a DAS. I'm still not sure about how much impact stockpiled items would have on fps tho. Maybe all the leather/cloth is still subject to wear and that adds up to loads of variables being decremented all the time.

[rephikul]

play my mod with Blood:Off

No, that was totally not an advertisement.

[xmakina]

Quantum dumping can help, especially after a major strip mining operation.

Also watch out for pump stacks, especially magma ones. They can be real FPS killers.

As mentioned by Girlinhat, take a look at the wiki for lots of tips.

[rephikul]

Quantum dumping can help, especially after a major strip mining operation.

Also watch out for pump stacks, especially magma ones. They can be real FPS killers.

As mentioned by Girlinhat, take a look at the wiki for lots of tips.

The space created from the mining is just as dangerous as the stones themselves. I've never seen any difference between magma stacks and water stacks myself so not sure about that.

[brucemo]

A problem is that the things that people point to as affecting frame rate all tend to increase at the same time, so if someone tells you that an increase in something affects it, it may be an increase in something else that is really doing it.  You can turn a pump stack on and off and prove that this is a problem.  Most other stuff seems to be conjecture.

It's pretty easy to peg fluid flow as an issue.  Empty space, excess junk, caged animals, stairs versus ramps, these are harder to evaluate.  It's possible that some pathing and job-related suggestions may increase fps by reducing work done.  Atom smashing may increase fps because it tends to be preceded by a whole bunch of dump jobs, which may decrease fps. Other people claim to get good CPA by simply ignoring all the junk, and cite experience with megaprojects that involve thousands of objects.

A lot of this stuff needs experiments and numbers before it should really be paid attention to.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I can testify objectively; when I found out about dfclean and cleaned up blood my fort went from 10 f.p.s. to 25 fps, when I ran my dwarves under a shower and dfcleaned I got a steady 30, so yes, objects and blood spatter eat up fps, and magma stacks do so more than water stacks because the game is keeping track of temperature, and magma stacks rapidly change the temperature in a lot of stone.

[rephikul]

magma stacks do so more than water stacks because the game is keeping track of temperature, and magma stacks rapidly change the temperature in a lot of stone.

should that been the case, every forts would have been slow to begin with cause of the magma sea heating a whole layer of stone above it. Stones heated by magma go up to about 40 C degrees only and considering they are construction this is probably instantaneous regardless of heat transmission capability.

[Sutremaine]

But the stone above the magma layer remains heated.

[Lamphare]

generally, containments, pathfinding, temperature, weahter, liquid movement, units(population of such region) has to do with FPS
so i would say,
-locking every single animal you do not presently need, like all non-war/hunt dogs, in cage(s)
-only toggle very very few necessary animals available for adoption
-carefully control the population of cats, or other vermin hunter in various mods. basically slaughtering any ecept one or two of the new born cats upon there birth, since there is no sterilization nor abortion in DF. you can change line [BIRTH_ANIMAL:A_D:D_D] in /data/init/announcements.txt into [BIRTH_ANIMAL:A_D:D_D:P:R], thus pause and recenter to the newborn, totally preventing unwanted pet adoption.
-removing containments, esp. blood stained all over your fort and on your filthy dwarfs. there are few ways to do it. first, rain will always clean containments of the tile it lands on n' washs off containments from units, though not every tile gets wet when rain drops fall. also, you can use natural/artificial waterfall or bath tub like this to wash off bloods etc, then use dfcleanmap to remove them －－ i only use this when i'm desperate to get rid of those containments, for this utility is somewhat a cheat
-turn off weather and/or temperature, esp. in area with large body of water that would thaw in warm months and freeze in colder ones. i usually have the game freezed for minutes to unfreeze the ice. yes i love two or more (major) rivers joining together with waterfalls in Victoria Falls' manner.
-embark somewhere with fewer water tiles as possible. aquifer is fun, useful and fun. also embark with a smaller region.
-buther unwanted animal --- you dont always need 30 cows, bulls and other dozens of caputured elephants, turn them into something does not hold off your FPS! make a reverse cage trap for siegers to enjoy, that once triggered, would release dozens frenzied battle elephants and dozens other meaty excess targets!
-lower population cap in d_init.txt to something like 120 or 150. monarch guaranteed, FPS partially increased.
-the last and least viable solution: BUY A BETTER COMPUTER!