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Dwarf Fortress adds experimental multithreading support (store.steampowered.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In this release, we're updating the engine from SDL to SDL2, and there are many optimizations to go along with it. Aside from the optimizations, SDL2 is also the stepping stone to ports. We have Linux compiling and playable; it just needs some testing.

Moreover, there is now a(n experimental) multithreading option in the game settings that makes the game even faster!

We also have some new individual tree graphics, and an update to grass ramps as well.

This has been mostly the hard work of Putnam! Meanwhile I've started up on adventure mode - the long work of updating menus and adding audio has begun! Hopefully we'll have some progress to show their soon, as we continue updating fortress mode as well.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow. That is a cool. My limited experience working with single-threaded game-stuff tells me it is exceptionally hard to port stuff that is written without threading in mind, to multi-threading. Getting the behavior to stay the same while still actually getting better performance requires some really deep insight into how stuff works in the program. On a (program-)global scale. Mad respect if it works out. This should make huge maps or huge fortresses possible.

I haven't yet played the steam version (it is on my todo-list though), but sank quite some hours into the "legacy" version. It can become laggy if you play on big maps with a lot of dwarfs/critters etc on it. I am excited to have even more stuff possible in this already very complex and huge game.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm really curious how they're doing it, too! I'm making a multithreaded simulation game and the parts that can't multithread well are related to AI / character logic / tasks and errands / pathfinding, and anything to do with rendering.