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The biggest single thing DF can do after graphical improvements is fixing the performance, perhaps make it not single threaded. I've been able to get past the

The biggest single thing DF can do after graphical improvements is fixing the performance, perhaps make it not single threaded. I've been able to get past the graphics, and work through using the keyboard menus, but having the fortress come to a screeching crawl when there's a ton of things going on is when I stopped playing.

HumanReadable 7y ago
I picked up dwarf fortress 7-8 years ago when I was in eighth grade, and have been playing it on and off since. Performance is always what kills the game for me. The game is supposed to be hard, but if you at all know what you're doing it's very easy to keep your fort well, and the only real risk of losing your fort is from you intentionally doing stuff that puts your fort at risk. You literally can defeat entire enemy armies by capturing them all with cage traps, for example. This I can forgive. Dwarf fortress is all about the crazy stupid ideas you can come up with after all. Want to build any interesting structures? Prepare for your dwarfs to get stuck every conceivable way one could possibly get stuck trying to build a simple wall. It can be incredibly tedious to accomplish something that ideally shouldn't take more than a few simple commands. All of this I could live with. The performance without fail is what eventually kills my will to play. Want to do cool stuff with magma? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to run a big society? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to do anything remotely interesting? Watch the game slow to a crawl. People go to obscene lengths to keep their performance, such as generating atom smashers that will 'delete' unwanted stuff from their fort completely, so the game stops wasting energy rendering 5000 rocks and how each dwarf is reminded about their childhood traumas as every rock reminds them of how their father died from a falling rock. This game is so close to being great but falls short at the very last mile because the basic gameplay is fundamentally flawed. This is a simulator first, game second and it shows :(
- rstupek 7y ago
  Yeah trying to build structures where the dwarf decides he can't build it because a rock is in the spot he's supposed to build on and that rock is assigned to be used on another section of wall is very frustrating. Having to continually revisit builds was laborious.
- ahefner 7y ago
  Concerning it being a simulator first and a game second, that's definitely true, but it makes me wonder if the very old 2D versions (before there was a Z-axis or fancy worldgen) was more enjoyable as a game. I didn't start playing until after those versions, but I get the impression there was a lot more consistent narrative as to what you discover while tunneling into the mountain, as opposed to so much depending on the worldgen.
gnulinux 7y ago
It seems like factorio is very well optimized and is single threaded (as per devs). Even when you make a ginormous factory, everything works mildly fine on a good laptop. I think dwarffortress mechanics is a bit more complex than factorio's in terms of computation, so maybe some parallelism can be utilized there. But it seems like as long as you optimize well, single thread goes a long way.
- Tyr42 7y ago
  I think this is only possible because factorio has a team of very dedicated programmers who care about performance. Tarn is one guy, and I don't think he's going to be able to pull out a comparative level of performance. I mean, the pipe performance fix took one factorio dev half a year. I feel like having no forward motion apart from performance for that long might demotivate tarn, and that was just for one subsystem. In a game which already invested in multithreaded performance.
- waiseristy 7y ago
  Maybe something to do with the pure voxel nature of DF. Pathing, liquid flows, etc. Factorio has a lot of pathing requirements, but everything is so much simpler when it's strictly 2D
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Being able to run mid-/end-game in grand strategy games (Crusader Kings 2, EU4, Stellaris, Civilization) at a fast speed single-handedly got me to finally build a desktop PC. I bought the best single-threaded CPU perf I could find at the time (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html) and put it in the smallest case that could support it. End-game Crusader Kings 2 takes two seconds to simulate each day on my 2017 Macbook Pro. My desktop PC can simulate half a year in that time. I can also play on the largest Stellaris galaxies. Sooo much more enjoyable when you can run a simulation as fast as you want. Now I can actually finish games instead of bailing at mid-game when things start to slow down.
robinhoodexe 7y ago
I personally limit my fort to 60 dwarves (not including children) in the config file. Makes managing a lot easier as well and I find 60 is enough for 2 squads and most of the professions.

HumanReadable 7y ago

I picked up dwarf fortress 7-8 years ago when I was in eighth grade, and have been playing it on and off since. Performance is always what kills the game for me. The game is supposed to be hard, but if you at all know what you're doing it's very easy to keep your fort well, and the only real risk of losing your fort is from you intentionally doing stuff that puts your fort at risk. You literally can defeat entire enemy armies by capturing them all with cage traps, for example. This I can forgive. Dwarf fortress is all about the crazy stupid ideas you can come up with after all. Want to build any interesting structures? Prepare for your dwarfs to get stuck every conceivable way one could possibly get stuck trying to build a simple wall. It can be incredibly tedious to accomplish something that ideally shouldn't take more than a few simple commands. All of this I could live with. The performance without fail is what eventually kills my will to play. Want to do cool stuff with magma? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to run a big society? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to do anything remotely interesting? Watch the game slow to a crawl. People go to obscene lengths to keep their performance, such as generating atom smashers that will 'delete' unwanted stuff from their fort completely, so the game stops wasting energy rendering 5000 rocks and how each dwarf is reminded about their childhood traumas as every rock reminds them of how their father died from a falling rock. This game is so close to being great but falls short at the very last mile because the basic gameplay is fundamentally flawed. This is a simulator first, game second and it shows :(

rstupek 7y ago
Yeah trying to build structures where the dwarf decides he can't build it because a rock is in the spot he's supposed to build on and that rock is assigned to be used on another section of wall is very frustrating. Having to continually revisit builds was laborious.
ahefner 7y ago
Concerning it being a simulator first and a game second, that's definitely true, but it makes me wonder if the very old 2D versions (before there was a Z-axis or fancy worldgen) was more enjoyable as a game. I didn't start playing until after those versions, but I get the impression there was a lot more consistent narrative as to what you discover while tunneling into the mountain, as opposed to so much depending on the worldgen.

gnulinux 7y ago

It seems like factorio is very well optimized and is single threaded (as per devs). Even when you make a ginormous factory, everything works mildly fine on a good laptop. I think dwarffortress mechanics is a bit more complex than factorio's in terms of computation, so maybe some parallelism can be utilized there. But it seems like as long as you optimize well, single thread goes a long way.

Tyr42 7y ago
I think this is only possible because factorio has a team of very dedicated programmers who care about performance. Tarn is one guy, and I don't think he's going to be able to pull out a comparative level of performance. I mean, the pipe performance fix took one factorio dev half a year. I feel like having no forward motion apart from performance for that long might demotivate tarn, and that was just for one subsystem. In a game which already invested in multithreaded performance.
waiseristy 7y ago
Maybe something to do with the pure voxel nature of DF. Pathing, liquid flows, etc. Factorio has a lot of pathing requirements, but everything is so much simpler when it's strictly 2D

hombre_fatal 7y ago

Being able to run mid-/end-game in grand strategy games (Crusader Kings 2, EU4, Stellaris, Civilization) at a fast speed single-handedly got me to finally build a desktop PC. I bought the best single-threaded CPU perf I could find at the time (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html) and put it in the smallest case that could support it. End-game Crusader Kings 2 takes two seconds to simulate each day on my 2017 Macbook Pro. My desktop PC can simulate half a year in that time. I can also play on the largest Stellaris galaxies. Sooo much more enjoyable when you can run a simulation as fast as you want. Now I can actually finish games instead of bailing at mid-game when things start to slow down.

robinhoodexe 7y ago

I personally limit my fort to 60 dwarves (not including children) in the config file. Makes managing a lot easier as well and I find 60 is enough for 2 squads and most of the professions.