40d Talk:Traffic

Trampling food

"Also route them around food stockpiles, as food can get trampled, and if it happens to be a masterwork cooked dish, expect an insane cook."

Is this true? Did this change in the new version? Has anyone actually experienced such damage, unequivocally caused by traffic?

I remember some discussion of this long ago with the old version, but it turned out not to be damage due to traffic. (I think it was temperature?) —0x517A5D 00:54, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

It was a temperature effect, according to Toady. I don't think this has changed. --Peristarkawan 02:20, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

Going to remove it from the main page then, as I've never experienced trampling of things in stockpiles either. -twincannon

It's not trampling. It's wear. Almost every item is affected by it, wether it's food or not.Wagawaga 20:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Effect on FPS

Has anyone experienced an increase or decrease in FPS when traffic zones are used heavily? I was just wondering if this helps or hurts pathfinding algorithms and how it affects game speed. Schm0 06:14, 20 November 2007 (EST)

I haven't seen much effect on FPS personally, but the algorithm Toady One uses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_star) typically has a heuristic which assumes that all tiles are weighted equally. Generally speaking, adding tiles with high movement costs can cause A* to search much larger areas than it would normally. If you are only restricting small, non-chokepoint areas though, it should never be an issue, as A* will find a route adjacent to the restricted tiles, if possible. Basilisk 02:40, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

I'm conducting some experiments along this line now. If I understand A-star correctly, you can greatly reduce the search space by creating freeways through cavernous rooms. In this case a "freeway" is a high-traffic path between two points, bounded by two low-traffic virtual walls. As long as the freeway closely approximates the shortest distance between those points, the algorithm will take your designations as "good advice" and not search very far outside the path. If you think of high-traffic areas as low-friction valleys, and low-traffic and restricted areas as hills and cliffs respectively, you're essentially channeling the dwarves like water. Some may splash over the edges, but generally it'll stay in the ditch you've dug for it. --Jurph 18:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you, or somebody else understanding that better than me, make a diagram or a visual display of this traffic pattern ? --Karl 18:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll see if I can rig up a diagram this weekend. I noticed that I saw as much as a 15 FPS increase (from 30 to 45) when I implemented this, which is 50%, but there are many other factors in my fort: running water, animals, and major dumping operations. --Jurph 15:20, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Jobs & pathfinding

I think there should be some mentions of what traffic controls, and workarounds for common problems here. For example, Traffic designations don't work for me to prevent a dwarf from standing on the wrong side of a moat while he's channeling. My current work around for this is to place a wall where I don't want him to stand, then suspend it. Then I remove the suspended wall once the channel is dug. Also, another confusing point is that traffic restriction apparently has little/no impact on job ordering. For example, say you are constructing concentric moats, and you'd like your dwarves to start on the inner moat first, then, when thats done, work on the next outer moat. Traffic restrictions will not force them to dig the inner channel first. I don't currently have a workaround for this style of problem; the wall thing doesn't seem to work for it. Tulthix 12:38, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

Traffic designations only affect path preferences when pathfinding. Dwarves choose their destinations without thinking about them. VengefulDonut 13:19, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

A good example of traffic control would be to designate a main underground tunnel as high traffic, so that dwarves aren't trying to find shortcuts by going outside. Basilisk 02:40, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

Animals

I just read in this thread: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=22626.0 that animals will use some kind of inverse-priority for traffic designations - preferring restricted zones, and avoiding high-traffic. This should be confirmed and added as a note to the article, if true. --Raumkraut 16:13, 9 August 2008 (EDT)

Read further into the article, Toady says that animals don't do any sort of reverse pathing due to restricted traffic, but simply ignore traffic designations. --ZombieRoboNinja 17:48, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Dwarf-Only Traffic?

Is it only dwarves that use traffic designations to influence the pathing values? Or would setting high and low traffic areas affect goblins/other hostiles as well? --Josh At War 21:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Traffic designations determine what path a dwarf will take...

Only dwarves. Not even domestic animals.--Albedo 21:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)