I can attest to Masterwork (both 1.9.5 and Alpha2) being faster for me than vanilla DF.
I remember trying to play this once and I couldn't do anything because the tileset was eating up all of my resources.
I doubt a tileset would be the problem here. DF isn't actually ascii (as in, it's not text), the default graphics are just a tileset whose graphics are modelled on the ascii characters. So every tileset uses practically the same resources.
I don't know how to demonstrate the problem, but I can tell you now that no matter what if I use a non-ASCII tileset I have that problem regardless of what I do. I am on an old computer that predates Dwarf Fortress and can barely play vanilla mode. I'm not answering another reply regarding this because apparently people won't believe what I am saying unless I post evidence, and I am unable to do so.
Thanks @ josephWongKS and Thanks @falcone, that would have been the next thing I'd mention ^^
Someone from these forums is stalking me.
Wow... but, hey, it isnt me Point is: I did program and run this mod from a netbook, with nowhere near the power your PC has. Granted, the FPS was horrible (60 first year, ~30 second and onwards) but even I didnt need 5 mins for worldgen.
It was five minutes for the first ten years in worldgen with your mod. And listen, I'm sorry for my behavior in your thread. It's been a rough couple of days with the crap starting up again online and some offline stuff as well in regards to abusive roommates. I shouldn't have taken it out on you, and I apologize for doing so.
Swapping the tile set shouldn't cause any differences in performance at all.. If it is you might want to check out this info from the dwarf fortress wiki.
[PRINT_MODE:2D]
This value changes how Dwarf Fortress draws to the screen. As such, changing this value can significantly change the performance of Dwarf Fortress on your computer. Possible values for this are "2D", "2DSW", "2DASYNC", "STANDARD", "TEXT", "ACCUM_BUFFER", "FRAME_BUFFER", "VBO" and "PARTIAL". A technical description of what these do can be found in this post. "PARTIAL" print mode takes an additional argument similar to how the PARTIAL_PRINT value worked in previous versions, with the number representing the number of frames a changed tile is rendered before it is skipped. "TEXT" is only available on Macintosh and Linux.
[SINGLE_BUFFER:NO]
If this is "NO" Dwarf Fortress will use double buffering, which may reduce flickering of the screen at the expense of a possible (small) drop in frame rate. If this is "YES", double buffering is turned off.
[ARB_SYNC:NO]
On video cards that support the OpenGL ARB_sync extension, turning this on can greatly improve performance in GPU overload conditions. However, this can cause Dwarf Fortress to crash on some video cards.
[VSYNC:NO]
If this is set to "YES", when Dwarf Fortress redraws the screen it will wait for the monitor to finish it's vertical retrace. This can negatively impact your FPS if G_FPS is set high, as the game is forced to suspend calculating game frames to wait for the monitor to finish. The main reason to change this to "YES" is if tearing of the game image occurs regularly for you.
[TEXTURE_PARAM:LINEAR]
Can be either "LINEAR" or "NEAREST". If it is "NEAREST", the texture values use the nearest pixel value without averaging. If it is "LINEAR", the texture values use the average of the adjacent pixels. In terms of what the two options do to the graphics, the "LINEAR" option will appear to blur adjacent pixels and can result in a fuzzy appearance. The "NEAREST" option will produce a sharp, pixelated look but may result in images looking clipped at some different screen resolutions.
Make sure you have sprites OFF (set masterwork to ascii, then try swapping in tile sets manually)
Masterwork should run faster for you if you duplicate the graphics settings in vanilla that are giving you the best performance currently.
These is no reason to swear anyone out. Let get to the bottom of the issue and help everyone out, eh?
I do that already and I still am unable to use graphical tilesets. But, you're probably right. I forgot to just simply copy the damn raws into a folder that had already had it's init configured properly. I'm unable to use Stonesense or any of those other fancy programs that people forcibly bundle with their mods either because again, old computer that performs worse with Dwarf Fortress than Meph's netbook despite it's ability to play games with XBOX-quality graphics under the right circumstances.
Dwarf Fortress just acts weird on my machine. I am unable to even get some of the init options working in regards to gameplay itself for some reason. I should probably make a thread about that.