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Topics - xadism

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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Magma pump stacks, lag, and FPS - fourteen years later

« on: January 22, 2024, 01:14:58 pm »

It's been 14 years since this legendary thread, which is still linked from the wiki as the authoritative discussion on magma pump stack design and how it affects FPS. Question: is pump stack lag even still an issue? Does the 3x1 reservoir design still make a difference vs. the 1x1 reservoir?

The reason I ask: I went to test it for !!SCIENCE!! and I couldn't reproduce the lag problem. I'm in 0.50.11. I built a 10 Z-level pump stack and turned it on ... no change in FPS. So I built a 25-level pump stack, and even spent two in-game years linking up 50 little drawbridges so that my entire pump stack could be converted on-the-fly between a 1x1 reservoir design and a 3x1 reservoir design. And still - no change in FPS.

In the latter case of my 25-level pump stack in a 210-dwarf, 12-year-old fort:

pump stack off: 22FPS
pump stack on, 1x1 reservoirs: 22FPS
pump stack on, 3x1 reservoirs: 22FPS

I went back and forth several times and saw no change in FPS whatsoever. Before you ask, yes, temperature was switched on, and when I switch on the stack I can see the temperature changing both with warmth indicators in mining mode and #probe in DFHack.

So ... did Toady fix the magma-pump-lag/presumed temperature-recalculation issues? Should the wiki be updated that people shouldn't worry about pump stack lag anymore? Or do other people still have this problem and I've found some magical solution? Or something else?

Please help me, it's for !!SCIENCE!!.

The only thing I can think of I've really done different are 1) I surrounded my entire pump stack with constructed walls, so I never accidentally mine into it while it's running. And dug tunnels around those walls for construction access because I built the walls after the channels and pumps were in place. And 2) I added the drawbridges to the reservoirs on each level. Except those weren't there in my first 10-Z-level test, and I didn't see lag there either. This is what my pump stack levels look like:

.......
.=====.
.=B.B=.
.==%==.
X.D%=..
..=_=..
..===..
.......

Where = is a constructed wall, . is an empty tile, %% is the pump (pumping North), _ is a channel, B is a one-tile drawbridge, D is an access door, and X is the staircase.

Many thanks for input from the more experienced Dwarvish scientists in the forum!

DF Gameplay Questions / Invaders won't path into fortress

« on: February 22, 2011, 03:37:07 pm »

I have a long, winding trap hallway ready to meet my goblins.

However, once a few have gone into it, the rest will happily wait outside, even though there's a clear path through. I tried allowing my civilians to go outside to see if there was a blockage that needed clearing, and they immediately walked all the way through to get killed by the goblins, so there's definitely a path. Any thoughts as to why the gobbos might not try to get deeper inside?

I'm a little stuck, because there are still about 10 goblins and trolls in the outer hallway, and my military isn't up to taking them on. (When I've tried, my squads have been decimated).

Any thoughts on why this might be happening? After I started typing this, I eventually figured out that there was a kobold thief hiding in the trap hall, and killed him. A few more of the goblins and trolls came running through into the traps after that, but four goblin spearmen remain who just stand in the outer hall, unwilling to move.

DF Gameplay Questions / Constructions / digging not happening

« on: January 20, 2011, 03:53:07 pm »

I'm having a weird situation: near my entryway, I have a bunch of designated digs (remove ramps, remove up/down stairs, channels, etc) and a bunch of constructions (walls and floors) queued up to build, but the dwarves aren't doing them.

The constructions are not suspended, everything is accessible, materials are available and nearby. And other constructions / digs in immediately adjacent squares have been built. I have one wall that looks like this now: WWWWOOWOOWOWW, where W is a constructed wall and O is a wall segment waiting to be constructed. They've sat that way at least two in-game months and nobody ever builds the missing sections.

I have plenty of masons and miners with the labor turned on. But if I designate a construction anywhere else in the fortress, they'll run build that and ignore the entryway construction. If I put a burrow around the entryway and assign the miners and masons to it, they just stand around with "No Job".

Really can't figure out why they won't build these ... terrified I may get a goblin siege while my wall is still under construction! Any help appreciated.

The only thing I can see that's different about these is that they are outdoors. I've tried suspending and reactivating them, and canceling and redesignating the digs. Nothing seems to help, it's as if the dwarves are simply allergic to some of the squares.

DF Suggestions / Increasing danger idea - tunneling monsters

« on: February 06, 2009, 04:02:07 pm »

Forgive me if this has been suggested before; I didn't see it in a cursory search.

One idea I've had for making the game more dangerous to occasionally have beasts that can tunnel through solid rock - not just destroy constructions. Suppose a mindless sandworm or rock mole occasionally dug slow, meandering tunnels through the mountain. If you dug into their tunnel, you might suddenly have a fight with a group of sandworm spawn. But even better, if they breached the surface occasionally, they could make back-doors into your fortress for megabeasts.

The idea came to me because the only fortress I've lost (aside from a flooding accident) was when one of my exploratory tunnels breached the surface in a remote corner without me realizing it. (Sloppy mining). A season later, a bronze colossus walked up. I closed my drawbridges, and he calmly walked in the heretofore unknown back door and proceeded to slaughter my entire fortress from the inside.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Can't build with alunite?

« on: January 30, 2009, 01:14:02 am »

So, I just started my second fortress, and my dorfs dig straight into an alunite cluster. I've got my masonry workshop and my mechanics workshop set up so I can get rolling right away.

... and I discover that though there are a bunch of alunite stones sitting around, my dorfs won't build anything out of them. I try to order a workshop and it refuses, saying "needs non-economic stone".

I got the workshops built with a little nearby basalt, and then go to order some rock mechanisms, but the order gets cancelled because there's no suitable material.

That's weird - doesn't alunite count as rock? I have tons of it sitting around from digging my first tunnel.

Thanks!

DF Suggestions / DF Eternal Suggestion Voting Suggestion

« on: January 27, 2009, 02:38:32 am »

I have a suggestion for the voting system.

Let people spend money on voting! Every user still gets 3 free votes. But for each additional $5, you get another vote that counts as 5 votes for that feature. So you can *really* influence something's priority if you care about it ... but only by supporting the company!

I bet this would be a fantastic revenue model for Bay 12 games, much better than simply asking for donations from the generous-hearted. Toady would have a great motivation to work on the most-voted items, because if people see the most-voted items getting developed quickly, they will be much more inclined to spend money on supporting their favorite feature.

Everyone wins!

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Frustration with finding a starting location

« on: January 26, 2009, 04:51:38 pm »

So, I played my first game until year 6, until I new the interface.

Now I want to start a new one in a better starting location, so I can expore all the fun stuff the game has to offer. Specifically, I want a magma pipe so I don't have to keep shutting down and rebooting my whole metal industry every time a coal seam taps out, and I want an underground river so I can grow tower-cap and play with water-driven machinery. (all with some decent minerals as well). Unfortunately, I've been totally unable to find such a location, either with worldgen or with pregen worlds. I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong.

I've tried almost every single pregenerated world that has these features, and none of them actually have the features they claim to. (Typical example: I finally find the location, it's definitely the same place on the world map, but the geological layers aren't the same as the entry on the wiki claims.)

I've tried worldgen and search, and usually i generate the world (5-10) minutes, then search it for both lava, underground river, and flux (another 5 minutes), and come up blank ... no hits. So I've spent 15-20 minutes, find nothing, and start over ... this gets old really fast.

The weirdest thing, honestly, is how the pregen worlds claim to have features but then none of them actually match when I download them. I'm on the mac version; is it somehow handling the world files differently?

Even the map I played my first game on ("Zaludoram, the future world") claims to have a magma pool on levels 147-150, which I was unable to find even when I completely riddled those levels with tunnels every 3 rows.

I tried tweaking the worldgen parameters to increase the amount of volcanism, hoping to find more sites, but if I changed the volcanism settings at all I couldn't get any worlds to develop successfully - all were rejected, and it would just run for hours trying to make a world.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?