Bay 12 Games Forum

[uel=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59442.0]This thread[/url] set me to wondering just how fast you folks want the game to be.
For my part, I've come to prefer capping it at around 50, for no better reason than the fact it lets me leave the game unpaused while I check my email or make myself a cup of tea without worrying too much about coming back to find half the fortress flooded or on fire.

I tend not to build many above-ground constructions apart from walls, but I've been known to roof over valleys or build outdoor sculpture parks, and anything that needs wood and metal quite often ends up in the open air so as to be handy for my outdoor stockpiles of all the flammable stuff.

Arent marksdwarves horribly broken and completely useless at the moment?

They refuse to shoot at archery targets currently, I believe, but I think they'll take potshots at live targets.

Something that's worth bearing in mind here is that the game is currently less than one third feature-complete. At this point Toady One's approach seems to be to put most of his effort into getting the content to fit his vision of the game DF is intended to become, only changing code he's already written when absolutely necessary. Systematic streamlining and optimisation will probably take place after we hit v1.0.
This may be frustrating for us in the short term, but it will ultimately bring us the finished product a lot faster.

That being said, there are not a hell of a lot of game forums where a gripe about performance issues would turn into an earnest discussion about a practical suggestion to help the developer solve some of them. Good on the lot of you!

Here's a couple I've got worked out conceptually but have yet to test.

You And What Army?: First, one channels out the floor of the tunnel save for a single tile-width at the very end, and covers the pit with as many retracting bridges as necessary. The solid ground at the very end should contain a single pressure plate set to retract the bridges when stepped on, but to extend them again when the pressure is released. What you do with the pit is limited only by your imagination and your desire to recover weapons, armour and slightly used silk underwear.
You can flank the pressure plate with traps if you like, but I prefer to imagine the look on the lone survivor's face as he hears his comrades plummeting towards some awful fate, their screams cut off by the grinding of gears as the trapdoors close over them.

Water Slide: The single pressure-plate again, only this time it's linked to a bank of screw-pumps with direct access to some local body of water, and a smaller retracting bridge leading to a tunnel going wherever the player finds most amusing. Can also function as a firefighting system.

A Bridge Too Far:: A stone floor across the moat or river, with a roof held up with pillars. And, yet again, a single pressure plate at the very end.

Important question nobody seems to have asked yet. What's your preferred FPS? If you intend to cap it at fifty or so then you can probably get by with just about any new off-the-shelf machine.
And don't completely write off netbooks either; I had a seventy-dwarf fort in .40d running at 15FPS on a 1.6GHz Acer Aspire One with weather and temperature turned on.

Suddenly the "pickchet" tool I came up with for the Dwarven Pioneer Companies (sort of a cross between your generic fantasy "ranger" and a firm of building contractors) in my rather heavily DF-inspired fantasy series looks a bit less impressive...