Whales
How do I look around at things that aren't next to me?
For now, yes, you need to do that. However, obviously a "look around" button is planned - I'll code that in tomorrow if I have time!
I edited this post to remove the first two issues, as they aren't that relevant.
Walking around and doing things is laggy and slow. I understand that there were several optimizations to be done that would make the saves take up less room or something (have a "no items on this tile" flag was one of them I think). Have you already done that or is it still in committee?
Bear in mind that my laptop has 4 cores each clocked at 2.5 ghz, and 8 gb of ram. This is not a weak machine.
Are you running on Windows or Linux? Are things slow from the onset, or do they start reasonably fast and slow down later?
Also, what size terminal are you running in (standard 80x24 / 80x25, or something bigger)?
Did you edit the Makefile before compiling? The Makefile is configured for debugging purposes, not for speed. Compiling without editing the Makefile will result in a version that runs at around 10% normal performance.