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Author Topic: FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?  (Read 1559 times)

RPB

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FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?
« on: November 07, 2007, 04:45:00 pm »

So at the end of my 3rd autumn my FPS are down to 20-25, approximately half of what I was getting at the beginning of autumn. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? Some things that occured this season:

-I created several large new stockpiles.
-A goblin attack left me with about half a dozen dead goblins and all their equipment. I went through and flagged most of their stuff as forbidden, except the steel stuff, which is flagged for melting.
-The dwarf caravan showed up with *5* mules fully loaded with a million different gems. I've still got several pages of them sitting in the stockpile waiting for haulers.
-I opened up a new mine and mined out several hundred new pieces of magnetite and marble.

The problem is, considering all the junk I already had in my fort, none of this really represents such a large increase to account for this massive decrease. At least not in terms of raw numbers; it could be that some of this new stuff is somehow slowing things down more than usual. Any suggestions?

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Idles

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Re: FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2007, 04:50:00 pm »

It's stockpiling.

Pathfinding for units is one of the more time-intensive calculations the game does, besides fluid dynamics.

So when you'd normally have 50 dwarves idling, not moving around much, and then suddenly tell them to start hauling stuff to a stockpile, all 50 of them will start spamming the pathfinding queue with requests, which slows down the game.

And since stockpiles generate constant path-requests for your dwarves until they're full, they are a continuous problem.

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RPB

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Re: FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2007, 05:00:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Idles:
<STRONG>So when you'd normally have 50 dwarves idling,</STRONG>

Um... I don't ever have 50 dwarves idling. I don't ever have 5 dwarves idling. It is a rare lapse when I have 2 dwarves idling for more than a split-second between jobs that have piled up. So I've gone from having 50 dwarves working and hauling nonstop at 40-50 FPS, to suddenly having those same 50 dwarves working and hauling nonstop at 20-25 FPS.

It does occur to me that my trade depot is relatively far away from my fortress, though, so all the trade goods there might be slowing things down with their longer pathfinding routes.

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Kjoery

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Re: FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2007, 05:27:00 pm »

That generally happens to me when a kobold is pathing
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Plasma

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Re: FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2007, 06:13:00 pm »

Reducing the [G_FPS_CAP:X] in your init file to something much lower, such as 10, will get your FPS back for now.
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RPB

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Re: FPS suddenly cut in half--any ideas?
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2007, 08:03:00 pm »

It's almost certainly the distance of the items in the trade depot that's slowing things down. Once I got the trade depot cleaned out I got my FPS's back, but then I designated a bunch of steel goblin junk for melting down and now it's even slower since it's now tracking items all over the map. This really emphasizes the importance of compact fortress design.

[ November 07, 2007: Message edited by: RPB ]

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