Slow gameplay after STEX vol1+2 installed

[arbogli 26]

Yep! I'm here to tell a little problem... well, after playing many time whit 2GB of plugins downloaded by me, I make a "backup" of all these files and I make a blank install of stex vol 1 and vol 2 files (not all, but close), 2Gb of files too.

The point is, with the previos files I only had troubles with CAM and a citi with over a 1'5 million inhabitants in a big region, the game slows down, but now, with those ne files, I have a city of 70K inhabitants in a big region and it slows a lot and/or the game goes in small jumps.

Why can it be?

Thanks for the help.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Interesting. Did you load the current NAM in the new set of plugins? As I understand it, you removed all your other plugins and went with a suite strictly from the disks.

The early disks, and any plugins, should be loaded in small clusters and tested after each add. A huge new suite is rather unpredictable. Plugins are distributed "as is" from the STEX with no guarantee they will all work together.

This is an interesting experiment. Please keep us informed how you are making out.

  Edited May 15, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[arbogli 26]

I investigate a bit more and I think I know why it goes quite slower: my previous plugins forder has a size of 2Gb, but only 2500 files; now, the new install of all those files from STEX disks have the same size, but 7500 files and the game can't manage all them without problems (even if my compurter is only 1 year and half old).

And about the install... I installed more or less the 90% of the vol 1 and 2, and until now, except some files with a missing model (I can't find it in Internet), all works fine.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

So, your in memory tables are much bigger. Remember this is a 32-bit game and its address space is much smaller than you would get if it were 64-bit. If you are getting a lot of disk activity while running, your allocated memory is being paged.

  Edited May 15, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[arbogli 26]

Yeah... looks like if the game wasn't done to support all these extras... I should do a cleaning, but goo point for the stex disks, I didn't have any problem with the lots I used.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Quite right. Plugin suites of the size we use now were beyond the grasp of machines in 2000. Not only was the memory addressing for Brobdingnagian tables not there, but disk was very expensive as well. In that time frame I paid over $1,000 for the machine that was replace by this one with more omph than the old machine could have ever got for just around $500.

My old lump of machine economy still operates except when I purchase hardware anymore. You have to remember that my first machine had no magnetic storage (paper tape), and only 2048 words of 12-bit memory. Programming was done by toggling-in instructions from the console then dumping the result on to a paper tape loader. The coding sheet for this was simply a couple of columns that showed the address and the instruction, and you desk debugged the daylights out of it first.