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[Dagoth Urist]

I decided, in the name of Science!, that I'd try to generate a '257:257' world that would have a bit of history for me when I embarked.
10 000 years of history, in fact! I completely botched all megabeasts so that there would be no risk of them razing every civilization by year 2000... The World of Enchantments started to generate.

52 rejects, alright. Nothing to worry about. The 'recounting legends part, where the ages add up one after one, would be a bit tougher. It worked quite well up until 1700, where progress slowed down slightly. I eventually left the computer alone and went outside (!). When I came back, late-night-ish, it was on 2600. Damn. So I decided to leave it on while I slept to the sluggish drone of an overworked laptop. Incidentally, my good laptop is being repaired in some computer rehab in god know's where. So this ... five-year old laptop, defragmented to the point that not even it's own metaphorical mother would recognize it, carried on with the cumbersome task of creating this Old & Huge World.

I woke up after a good 13 hours of dreaming about gargantuan bees living in a world of heavy machinery, ...for some inexplicable reason. 3400? Oh yeah! I did feel a bit disheartened, but it went away when I experimented with using other programs while DF was running in the background. It worked! Success! I played a wee bit o' Morrowind, and finished Planescape: Torment. Two games I heavily recommend, by the by. I left the laptop alone for the rest of the day, and set the 'dwarffortress.exe' process to RealTime through Windows Task Manager. By the third day it had reached 6549: By the fourth it was 7108. The fifth; 7463. I could see that it wasn't marching forward anymore, it was more of a crawling close encounter with the floor. My laptop felt tired too, and so were I. I reasoned that I could let it go on a bit more, since Toady One hadn't released the update yet (And still hasn't! :c) By the seventh and final day I had to pull the plug from the laptop due to it going into some catatonic state where no input whatsoever seemed to affect it.

It was stuck on 8621. 86% complete. Damn. The experiment failed, the dream shattered. Oh well. What's your thoughts, feelings, threats? Have anyone done anything like this before, and are there saves?

[Bronzebeard]

I have a fairly decent desktop with quad core @ 2.50, and a world gen with too many years behind its belt makes me wait for hours. However, I've not tried something as radical as that. Perhaps I should!

[Ilmoran]

Yeah, years on large worlds tend to get loooooooooooooooong.

A standard 1050 year history on a large world takes my computer 1-3 hours, depending on how the civs survive.  I've noticed that a 129x129 with 20 civs  (same as large) is done in like 10 minutes, and with 10 civs (medium world default), about 2 minutes.  So if you've made it so your civs are thriving, its going to bog you down a *lot*.  It makes sense too:  As a civ gets older, if it's growing, it has more area to generate history for each year.

[Dagoth Urist]

Perhaps I should!

I urge anyone with a transcendental powerhouse of a computer to try to generate a large world with at least 7000 years! For DWARVEN SCIENCE!

It makes sense too:  As a civ gets older, if it's growing, it has more area to generate history for each year.

It does make sense, especially as the number of "people" inhabiting the world grows exponentially, just like in this world! I think, I think..., that there were circa 5 000 historical figures alive out of the 20 000 that has ever existed in the World of Enchantments. Hmm... I do remember how many events there were before I cancelled the experiment. It was a noteworthy amount. 2 million events. And a couple of thousand more... But still: 2 000 000. I thought it would be impossible, but yeah... I guess there was a lot of fighting during 8 000 years.. I can't even dare to dream of what could happen during 10 thousand years of worldgen in Dwarf Fortress 1.0!

[Ilmoran]

Another problem is that I'm pretty sure it tries to hold all those events in memory during world gen, and doesnt write anything out until the whole thing is finished and accepted.  It's probably not optimizing the storage either.

Damnit, now you've got me interested in the representation of events within the program, and the data structure it uses to organize them.

[Dagoth Urist]

Go ahead, put some research into it! And return with your discoveries

[Deathworks]

HI!

Yes, in the past, I have done world gens that took more than a day. Medium regions with 10,000 years of history or good large regions can reach that. My main problem with my old computer was that it crashed at around 4 million historic events, I think (it has been a little while, so I may have mixed up that number). Nowadays, I don't have the time to do such experiments and focus on genning as needed and trying to get some playing done.

Deathworks

[Mason11987]

How did you botch megabeasts?

[tieme]

\

I decided, in the name of Science!, that I'd try to generate a '257:257' world that would have a bit of history for me when I embarked.
10 000 years of history, in fact! I completely botched all megabeasts so that there would be no risk of them razing every civilization by year 2000... The World of Enchantments started to generate.

52 rejects, alright. Nothing to worry about. The 'recounting legends part, where the ages add up one after one, would be a bit tougher. It worked quite well up until 1700, where progress slowed down slightly. I eventually left the computer alone and went outside (!). When I came back, late-night-ish, it was on 2600. Damn. So I decided to leave it on while I slept to the sluggish drone of an overworked laptop. Incidentally, my good laptop is being repaired in some computer rehab in god know's where. So this ... five-year old laptop, defragmented to the point that not even it's own metaphorical mother would recognize it, carried on with the cumbersome task of creating this Old & Huge World.

I woke up after a good 13 hours of dreaming about gargantuan bees living in a world of heavy machinery, ...for some inexplicable reason. 3400? Oh yeah! I did feel a bit disheartened, but it went away when I experimented with using other programs while DF was running in the background. It worked! Success! I played a wee bit o' Morrowind, and finished Planescape: Torment. Two games I heavily recommend, by the by. I left the laptop alone for the rest of the day, and set the 'dwarffortress.exe' process to RealTime through Windows Task Manager. By the third day it had reached 6549: By the fourth it was 7108. The fifth; 7463. I could see that it wasn't marching forward anymore, it was more of a crawling close encounter with the floor. My laptop felt tired too, and so were I. I reasoned that I could let it go on a bit more, since Toady One hadn't released the update yet (And still hasn't! :c) By the seventh and final day I had to pull the plug from the laptop due to it going into some catatonic state where no input whatsoever seemed to affect it.

It was stuck on 8621. 86% complete. Damn. The experiment failed, the dream shattered. Oh well. What's your thoughts, feelings, threats? Have anyone done anything like this before, and are there saves?

I just happen to be going on vacation for the next week and would be willing to donate my spare CPU time to your endeavor.  PM me what you want for params and I'll set it to start genning.  I actually have a quad core and since DF only uses one I could easily set 3 or 4 running if you want to experiment with maybe 0,5,20,33 megabeasts or whatever you'd like.  This goes for everyone else as well.  PM me if you are interested in taking advantage of it.

Hopefully someone will take advantage of this, would love to see the ideas and the results!!

I believe that regions will be compatible in the new version (someone correct me if I'm wrong) so you can continue to use them in the future

How did you botch megabeasts?

In the world gen with parameters you can set megabeasts to zero.

[Deon]

I believe that regions will be compatible in the new version (someone correct me if I'm wrong) so you can continue to use them in the future

Yeah, it will be save-compatible, it's in the devlog.

[Ilmoran]

I would not suggest running 3 or 4 world-gen instances of this at the same time, at least not without some experimentation into DFs memory usage during worldgen.  If it does hold all information in memory, 3 or 4 10,000 year worlds could max out your memory.  If they start hitting the hard drive for virtual memory, you'll lose more speed due to read, write, and, most importantly, seek times.

If you aren't leaving in the next 4 hours, I can probably get home and at least watch DFs memory consumption during a large 1k year gen, to see if it constantly climbs.

[Dagoth Urist]

This is capital, chaps! Sweet and delicious progress.  With both tieme and Mason11987 genning, we have several subjects, praise Armok.

[Tieme] *snip*

As to what parameters I want, it's pretty much up to you. I'd like a world where civilization persists, and my previous experimentations showed that eventually one freak colossus goes ballistic and destroy everything, often in a period of interbellum between civilizations. I think that you should keep megabeasts at least below ten, for safety's sake. But then again, this is Dwarf Fortress. 
A lot of civilizations would be fun, I'd reckon. They would eventually be conquered or destroyed by neighbouring states, right? There has never been any apocalyptic wars between nations during worldgen for me anyway. Dwarves haven't got the Fat Man. Yet...
Apart from that, there's little else I think would be fit to force onto the project. What are your thoughts, people? A maximum size world would be an utter requirement, of course As to how old you'd make it, that depends... Your computer sounds like aeons ahead my current one in technology and power, so why not try to make it go to 10 000? Fulfill the prophecy! (Don't forget to set 'check megabeast stoppage-whatever' and 'population limit' to nigh-infinity )

[Draco18s]

My main problem with my old computer was that it crashed at around 4 million historic events, I think (it has been a little while, so I may have mixed up that number).

Likely 4 billion.  Or more precisely 4,294,967,295.

As that's the limit on RAM addresses for 32 bit machines, IIRC.  (Binary 1111-1111-1111-1111-1111-1111-1111-1111)

[Grimlocke]

I doubt a single historic event takes up exactelly 1 bit. And you shouldnt underestimate how much 4 billion is (because its much).

My own attempt at this on a 257x129 world with 100 civs just failed after ~2500 years due to a crash. Gah. I will try again.

[Draco18s]

I doubt a single historic event takes up exactelly 1 bit.

1 Byte.  And I doubt its due to each event filling memory (as in 32 bit apps you're limited to 2 GB) but rather a limit on the pointers to those events.

And you shouldnt underestimate how much 4 billion is (because its much).

It is.
And you're right, it could be 4,194,303.  (Binary 11-1111-1111-1111-1111-1111)