cannot fast-forward game play

[trainrover]

It's now been a few ottd updates that I've not been able to engage their fast forward feature. What must I be doing wrong, please, because setting their speed-up parameters haven't been successful no matter which update, and now I actually need to (periodically) speed up game play?

[Skarfester]

What game speed limit value do you have in game settings?
Are you able to fast-forward on a new game without any newgrf, AIs or game scripts?

[jfs]

Try opening the "Show frame rate" window from the menu in the game. Keep an eye on the game speed factor. It should preferably stay at 1.00x (or very close) when the game is running normally, and then should increase above 1 when you turn on fast-forward.

Open the Settings window and filter for "fast forward", it should find a setting called Fast forward speed limit. The default value is 2500%. If you have that setting changed, try increasing it, or resetting to default. If this limit is enabled, then the game can never run faster than that.

If then the game speed factor is consistently much lower than 1.00x, or it does not increase significantly, then your computer is probably not fast enough to simulate the game world you are playing. A large map size alone can cause heavy simulation load, even if you don't have a lot of vehicles. Large amounts of vehicles can also cause heavy simulation load, and the same can Game Scripts or AI players.

[Cleonilsso]

I've noticed RC3 is much slower than version 13, pressing fast forward is almost the same as normal speed, because my computer isn't fast enough.

[jfs]

I've noticed RC3 is much slower than version 13, pressing fast forward is almost the same as normal speed, because my computer isn't fast enough.

Beta and RC versions are made with additional checks, so they will be slower in general. The final release version has the extra checks removed, so it should have better performance.

The extra checks (called asserts) are to make it easier to catch bugs in the pre-release builds. The assert checks are to make sure all values are as expected, such as making sure a list of vehicles that should belong to a specific company really all do belong to that company, or that a calculation of cargo loaded/unloaded/remaining has all the right figures also when done in a different way, or that a block of code that's not supposed to run in multiplayer mode really does not run in multiplayer mode, and many more things. All those things slow things down, but also makes it easier to find bugs.