Dungeon Master Forum

Evening,

I recently started DM (Original) again, although i set the following in the config file for more of a challange,

DIFFICULTY 5
EXTRA_MONSTERS 1

My problem is that at some points in the game it slows quite substantially for about 30 seconds /1 minute. This tends to be at places where there is lots happening...

Example, At the end of level 3 (worms) where you kill the mummy to open the door for level 4, when i kill the mummy and run round to the other side things start to crawl, I set off a number of fireball and thorwing weapons to kill all the generated worms, but it seemed to take ages for things to settle down and the screen to react quickly when turning.

I have a P4, 2.6GHX, 1GB Ram and fairly clean PC (rebuilt often) so surprised at the delay...

Any thoughts or help i can give to get this improved/looked at for 0.50?

How many extra creatures are there? RTC doesn't seem to like lots going on at the same time.

"EXTRA_MONSTERS 1" doubles the number of monsters, but I don't think that's the issue (otherwise it would be running slowly all the time, not just at some points).

Can you send me a save game file from a point when it's running slowly and I'll have a look at what is going on under the covers...

I've noticed I get a laggy mouse cursor when a wall text is showing the value of a changing counter. This is with ZERO other activity in the dungeon, except for the giggler in a hidden room that's triggering the counter.

If I delete the wall text, the lag goes away.

I've made a number of changes to improve the performance so hopefully this should help - I'll see what else I can do as well.

Gambit; I tried your dungeon but it runs without any pausing at all for me - can you add the line "FRAMERATE<tab>YES" to your config.txt file and let me know what happens for you when you stand infront of your wall text (compared to standing elsewhere).

58 FPS, dropping to 55 briefly when turning to face the wallitem, then goes back to 58 and now doesn't seem laggy at all!

I had a lot of other stuff open last time I tested this, maybe the system was sluggish overall...

OK - I've made a few further improvements in performance. Not sure if they will be enough without actually trying your save game, but it should be a bit quicker.