Plugin mania

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

When a new user first looks at the STEX, there is a great temptation to download everything in sight.  This is suicidally mad.

Nothing should be downloaded off the STEX nor the Modds section until you know you need it.  Wanting it is not enough.

You only need an item from here when you find you want to make something happen in your game that can't happen without the download.  For example, if you feel that there are not enough networking options, you should consider adding the NAM.

Maybe you want to add a proper sea port.  Under those circumstances there are several versions of seawalls and port facilties available.  This is where selective downloading can help you enjoy your game.

Downloading something you are not going to use is simply adding to the game's memory overhead, which will slow the game down for loading at least.  By not loading thoughfully, and testing each new download, you have the possibility of having a conflict that will take you a long time to sort out.  There are literally millions of conbinations of hardware and downloads, so it is impossible for creators of new lots to make a comprehensive test in real world time.  You are the only one who can test your precise environment.

Testing should be done in a sandbox region.  To create one, simply click on create region in the regions menu.  You will get a region of assorted cities, all flat, to play with.  As a starting point for testing new lots and mods, it is better than messing with a hard earned city.  If a city is destroyed or corrupted in the sandbox, it can just be deleted.

So, think about what you are downloading, and test! test!! test!!!  You will be rewarded with fewer hangups and crashes.

[DOXXP29 5]

Go back and READ THE ABOVE POST AGAIN!!! Everything is spot on. I can attest to this as I learned it very well myself...the HARD way! Save yourself some headaches and follow N_O_Body's excellent advice.

[Dark_horse 0]

or buy yourself a faster computer with more Ram

[tchaos713 5]

Originally posted by: Dark_horse or buy yourself a faster computer with more Ramquote>

Not everyone has the money to do that.  Some of us are stuck with the computer we have.  I happen to be lucky and have a fairly high-end model.  Others are not.  Do please be sensitive about that.

@N_O_Body:  Perhaps this thread should be locked...

Not unless the comments become pejorative.  N_O_B.

Edit: Never mind then...

[jedorin 0]

Testing yes. There are too many lots with issues.

But as for only downloading lots that that you need, that assumes you are a person of some lvl of creativity and imagination. I'm one of those that download and install lots and lots of lots because I am not that great at coming up with my own ideas on what to create. Instead I often find myself scrolling thru the menus to find something that looks good in a particular area, plopping it, and then buliding up around it with aesthetic lots and zoning.

But then I also have a high end multimedia machine so it can handle a large plugin directory. I will also be testing out the SC4 startup manager tho, to see how that can help.

[Balrog 0]

lol thats what i did, get a bunch of stuff, then my game crashed..obviously it cant handle all that stuff

i guess i should organize things, does that help besides just being able to find things, or is there a load order?

[Indisguise 0]

• iof you have it orginized you flip stuff in and out of your plugins easily....only leaving things in your game that your actually using in a certain region/city

less pluggins in your folder...the faster the game will run...

[pizzanu 0]

Hey, i recently installed some BATs & LOTs found on ST-Exchange. had no problems at the first 3/4 game startups but after that a missing plugins message appeared. It says there that i'm missing these packs : 1877784719 and 269698849. This is why in my Low Density Res grew some ugly brown boxes. The weird thing is that i have not installed / uninstalled any other plugins. Any ideeas or suggestions anybody? Please ?

[SC4Noobie 5]

Well, this is a good thread. But oftentimes, I do not NEED a skyscraper, or a nice park, or suburban houses. I will pick them up anyway... I will end up using them, thats why I almost never delete BATs and LOTs unless they are causing problems or are horrribe looking. I end up using them eventually... Well, thats my POV...

^^ Check the readme, you may need some "dependencies"

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: pizzanu Hey, i recently installed some BATs & LOTs found on ST-Exchange. had no problems at the first 3/4 game startups but after that a missing plugins message appeared. It says there that i'm missing these packs : 1877784719 and 269698849. This is why in my Low Density Res grew some ugly brown boxes. The weird thing is that i have not installed / uninstalled any other plugins. Any ideeas or suggestions anybody? Please ?quote>

The lots in question were probably not used in the game before this time.  Were they growables?  Use the query tool on the brown boxes to find out the lot name then go look in the STEX or the readme's to see what dependencies you missed.

There are two dependencies that are sort of default.  Building_props_vol1.dat and ...vol2.dat are on the download page for the lot editor at simcity.com.

[dadyrghluv 8]

my CJ of Las vegas got ruined due to faulty plugins. im glad it happened before it wasnt huge. its a lesson i learned using plugins. DL desired plugins and then test these lots on a seperate region, preferably one u care nothing about. move slowly when using plugins and remeber where u put them. i recommend using a folder called "test lots". stick all new plugins there. it helps when trying to figure out which one is causing issues

[Silur 3,300]

I have nearly STEX objects. Giant body of files, but this ones collect on another Archiv Disk. Plugins folder contain only wanted.

[cubixremix 0]

I got a loaded AMD anthlon XP 3.0 1 gb memory 64 mb video 140 GB hd.  5.0 MB internet. Bought Sim City 4k played it in past when it was new. Updated on simcity.ea.com and now anything i try to change it automatically crashes after a few minutes in the game.  first i went to simtropolis modds section the simoleon thing at first seem ok. so i exit game to add the rh unlock rewards thing. crash.. so remove it.. left simoleon thing,.. entered game.. crashed again. ugh. all the heck i want is a few million or billion money and the rewards unlocked! why do i have to have so much trouble lol! someone send me a email at  {personal information removed} ASAP if they have a solution thanks.

it is against the rules to place personal data such as e-mail addresses in posts.  It is a serious security risk for you to do so.

This item properly belongs in its own topic.  It has nothing to do with this topic.

Please reorganize it, and repost as a separate message.  N_O_Body.

[wpgfatboy 0]

i have lots of plug ins to andmy game runs slow once city gets big would like to know how to organize my plug ins

[DioAngel 1]

speaking of deleteing.. how can you which lot or files that came from the Zip file for the batts? I got sooo many lots in my plug in folder.

[____----____ 37]

not sure what u are asking but for my res bats i often deleate a few of the .lot files and keep only one particular lot size of each.

since many homes come in 1x2 1x3 2x2 2x3 ect i normally keep only one size option-u get more building variety, not sure if that

was what u were asking Dio

EDIT: big note make sure to keep the  .dat and .model files

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I organize my plugins and downloads separately.  I have a desktop folder called My Downloads organized by source for all downloads.  Naturally, there is a folder in there called Simtropolis and inside it, I have all downloads from a given source.  I also have one for EA, one for Microsoft, etc.

My Plugins folder is similarly organized, by author.  All Maxis/EA orgininated plugins are in Program Files\Maxis\Simcity 4\Plugins.  Only EA originated plugins go there.  All user content is in My Documents\Simcity 4\Plugins organized by source, thus:

                Plugins

A Nonny Moose

Andreas Roth

Arctic Snowcapped terrain mod

BSC

Columbus Terrain Mod

CSX

Dark Matter

GDV

gshmails

Ill Tonkso

JEC

Jono01

Karybdis

Kwakelaar

legalizeit

NDEX

NetworkAddonMod

PEGPROD

Ralphael Ninja

Rybolton

toroca

[Nardo69 51]

DioAngel: organize it ... frequently ... even though it is a hard work to do

When your plugin folder reaches a certain size you have to reorganize it permanently. I began this permanent process when I began to work with the SC4 plugin manager - IMHO maybe the most important daily-in-use tool at all as the size of all my plugins has crossed the 1,5 GB ...

I organized my plugin folder in a way that I "group" my plugins thematically for example in order to not load the skyscrapers and heavy industry when I want to run a small rural community.

This means that I have to move almost every Lot/BAT that comes with an installer, in addition to this I have at least a hundred folders under the plugin folder (and I haven't counted the subfolder of those subfolders ...)

If I wouldn't do this I wouldn't be able to run so much different cities ...

but I don't know if I still played the game without all those great Lots&BATs ...

Bernhard

[DioAngel 1]

thanks for the advice my friends... I guess it's time for me to organize it. :-)

[Firefoxx 0]

I can tell you after spending 7 hours reinstalling everything in an organized fashion that what they said is true! Organize from the start and save yourself alot of headache later.

[GMT 389]

I'm... I don't say nothing.

I do have to many plugins, but I need them all.... really. no joke.

But I went through the folder today and I really was able to cut it by about 50 lots... at least. better than nothing ^^

[ryalmighty1 1]

I was wondering if it was feasable to create multiple plugin folders (for different city styles) with some duplicate files (such as dependencies) and then use the SC4 startup manager program to choose one of those folders, or will this idea create conflicts? if anyone has a good, concrete answer or tips on doing this, please pm me. thanks

[DioAngel 1]

that's what I'm going to do when I get home... detele all the stuff and re - download the goodies. ;-)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Dio, if you do, you had better be sure what is in your cities.  If not, the game may not load some regions or hang.

[DioAngel 1]

Nobody - Oh ok... I guess I'll leave it alone.

[thesohappy 0]

Hello,ok I have a strange problem,my police local funding keeps going to 0 ,i raise it to normal and then after 1 day it goes to 0 again,it's so annoying,police are always striking and of course the city's always dangerous,I'm tryin to remove some pulg ins to see where the problem is ... any idea?

Thanx in advance ..

Thesohappy

[jay_allen1978 0]

with my experiences, you are probably missing a dependency pack for one of your lots. that is the only thing i can see that would cause this. hope this helps

[Rymac91 15]

I have to admit...N_O_Body is completly right on this...I learned the hard way that you can't just download everything in site because it's free(or it's there). Though when I joined, I downloaded what I liked and could see a use for(though now I have a bunch of old lots I don't use because I got newer ones). and because I didn't setup a good organization method and changed it multible times...I usally can't find anything I want to remove.

However...in my case..my computer has never been on the internet. So I queue stuff in a folder on this computer called SC4 downloads...then I would burn it to a CD and install it on my computer. I'd usally acumulate a week of downloads(about 5 or 6 on averge) and then place them on my computer. I now have a 1 GB flash drive and the process is more often(usally every 3 to 5 days)...It takes me a while to move something to my computer...I forget to test it...

I have learned that you want to test stuff before hand, and if possible make sure you keep track of what you downloaded and where.(I have a bunch of blank lots with ethier CS_$$$ or CO_$$$ that I can't remove since I can't figure out what they are).'

Take N_O_Body's seriously. You will thank him(or yourself) later.

[thesohappy 0]

yea it could be that , but is there like a way to know wich dependencies i'm lacking? I always check the dependencies i need for the files i download,maybe there's a slider ... but i dont know if it's happened just because the file it's in the plug ins folfer or because i actually plobbed it ... what do u think?

thank you.

[jay_allen1978 0]

well, here is one option, first of all ,close everything, go to the stex and download pegs, no more brown boxes mod found here

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15297. install it, then load the game again, follow everything till you see some funny colors. and follow every single building. hopefully you'll see it. then query the colors, and most of the time, the query will tell you what building or lot it is. hope this might help good luck