0010671: [CLUSTER_NUMBER] creatures have erratic laggy movement

Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker - Dwarf Fortress

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Project

Category

View Status

Date Submitted

Last Update

0010671

Dwarf Fortress

Pathfinding

public

2018-03-27 08:41

2018-03-28 10:13

Reporter

FantasticDorf

Assigned To

Priority

normal

Severity

minor

Reproducibility

always

Status

new

Resolution

open

Platform

OS Version

Product Version

0.44.07

Target Version

Fixed in Version

Summary

0010671: [CLUSTER_NUMBER] creatures have erratic laggy movement

Description

Though it happens in the air as well as the ground (and in water where applicable), creatures with the [CLUSTER_NUMBER:] tag create laggy movement paths moving around the lead animal often pushing them into awkward situations and conditions.

These erratic blobs of creatures are very prone to getting stuck, stopping spawns (a anomalous blob of immobile creatures will stop spawns if the caverns or embark wilderness seem bare) and lowering FPS with many attempts to path through terrain like climbing a wall or simply whilst flying, traveling vertically up and down and constantly swapping spaces with other creatures.

Steps To Reproduce

Find creatures that naturally travel in clusters above & belowground, swarms of birds like ravens for instance, or balls of troglodytes and crundles following each other very very closely. Both ravens and troglodytes are relatively ubiquitous early on in a fortress's progress.

You may experience telltale signs of decreased offmap spawns & performance slowdowns in intensive forts, though other reports with saves substantiate this in detail. (See additional information)

Additional Information

As a technical observation, DFhack refers back to [CLUSTER_NUMBER] creatures having a separate movement idling type compared to other roaming individual creatures called [OWNER] with a approximate range of 2 at all times from the leading creature. Alterations to the idling type procure different results but also suggest that default [CLUSTER] behavior could require a alteration to make it less intensive if the following behavior is to stay in rather then gets chucked out like rooting around.

0004838 & 0008912 are directly related but this issue addresses both.

The effects of [LOOSE_CLUSTERS] suggests a opposite behavior with more distance.