Dwarf Fortress

[Sypher]

My problem has been the game slowing down once it reaches a certain size.

For one of my fortresses I setup next to a river and then dug a moat. The goblins had to go through one area that I had left as an entrance which was also filled with traps. I think that one fell when a forgotten beast came up through one of the tunnels and started killing people.

One fortress I had to abandon when I dug into a underground lake from below (on accident)while building a second shaft for dwarves to use. I had somehow missed a underground layer completely in my attempt to dig down to find lava.

[De-Legro]

Fluid dynamics, corpses, lots of items outside stockpiles and excessive path finding are all known to cause serious slow downs. Since the game is in beta and so often large part a rewritten, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the developer to spend large amounts of time optimising these parts of the code. There are lots of posts on the forums for the game that detail ways to avoid some of the worst slow down issues.

[Indirik]

Yeah, thee are a lot of things you can do to make the game speed up. Perhaps one of the easiest is to just limit your dorf count. Try keeping it around 100. And then turn off children so you have more working dorfs. There are others that are supposed to be good, too, like turning off temperature and economy. Try this wiki page:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Maximizing_framerate

[Anaris]

I have a very simple method for maximizing framerate:

I run the game on an 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 12GB of RAM 

[Foundation]

Yeah, thee are a lot of things you can do to make the game speed up. Perhaps one of the easiest is to just limit your dorf count. Try keeping it around 100. And then turn off children so you have more working dorfs. There are others that are supposed to be good, too, like turning off temperature and economy. Try this wiki page:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Maximizing_framerate

I played a fortress before where I turned off immigration so the only new dwarves were children.

Had maybe 14-16 dwarves for a long time, so no performance issues there.

I have a very simple method for maximizing framerate:

I run the game on an 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 12GB of RAM 

Haha, showoff!  How much did that cost, especially since it's a mac?

[Anaris]

I have a very simple method for maximizing framerate:

I run the game on an 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 12GB of RAM 

Haha, showoff!  How much did that cost, especially since it's a mac?

Didn't cost me anything.  It's the computer I inherited from my predecessor at work

[Indirik]

DF runs very well on a 3 GHz quad-core Opteron. I wish it would actually *use* multiple cores, though. Then you'd see the game really fly.

[Anaris]

DF runs very well on a 3 GHz quad-core Opteron. I wish it would actually *use* multiple cores, though. Then you'd see the game really fly.

Yeah, once Toady eventually implements proper multithreading, I'll probably have to limit my framerate to keep it from going way too fast to keep up with 

[Bael]

Since the game is in beta and so often large part a rewritten, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the developer to spend large amounts of time optimising these parts of the code.

Wait...I thought this was actually an old game?!

[Foundation]

Didn't cost me anything.  It's the computer I inherited from my predecessor at work

Haha... nicely done.   I had a pretty awesome comp at work too.

[Anaris]

Wait...I thought this was actually an old game?!

No, it's being actively developed.

[Adriddae]

This thread sparked my interest of dwarf fortress. The first go around, I had no idea what was happening, didn`t know what to do. Sadly, all my dwarfs died. After a couple more tries, I still have no idea whats happening. I think I need to read the wiki.

[Indirik]

I highly recommend the tutorial Anaris posted early in the thread. Make sure you download the game archive they link to. It provides a complete copy of the game as well as a save game you can use. The step by step instruction they provide are great. It is literally impossible to comprehend this game without a detailed, step-by-step tutorial.

For reference:
http://afteractionreporter.com/dwarf-fortress-tutorials/

The title for the first two lessons are:
Part 1: “WTF?”
Part 2: “No, srsly, WTF?!”

[DoctorHarte]

I highly recommend the tutorial Anaris posted early in the thread. Make sure you download the game archive they link to. It provides a complete copy of the game as well as a save game you can use. The step by step instruction they provide are great. It is literally impossible to comprehend this game without a detailed, step-by-step tutorial.

For reference:
http://afteractionreporter.com/dwarf-fortress-tutorials/

The title for the first two lessons are:
Part 1: “WTF?”
Part 2: “No, srsly, WTF?!”

They are very very helpful, but my only problem is that when Im mining to build my fortress the tunnels and rooms are all filled with rocks, I don't know how to remove them so I can plant farms and stuff in there. Captain Duck also doesn't explain it in his videos so far and I can't really go on without help with this problem. 

[De-Legro]

Rock stockpiles will collect the rocks into one area, I tend to make a huge stockpile outside my fortress for this purpose early on. You can also designate a trash area, and mark the rock you want to move to be discarded.

One thing to remember the tag line for the game is "Losing is Fun" It generally takes a lot of fortress attempts to get to the point where you can really build something large or ornate, and even then there are always ways for your poor fortress to come to an untimely end.