What's the size of your plugins folder?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ You are misinformed.  The patch doesn't allow more than 4 GB.  For a 32-bit game that is impossible.  What the patch does is break the 50/50 rule on 32-bit decor so that the O/S only gets 1 GB out of four leaving 3 GB for the application.

 

Frankly, any O/S kernel that needs 1 GB must be so bloated as to be unmaintainable.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

After losing my plugins folder plus its backups to a computer crash, my new plugins folder is back to 4.5GB. At one point I downloaded 1.6GB of content in three days!

[ovchar 1]

My Plugins folder contains 6.91GB installed , those additions that me liked. Impossible to play, the game crashes after 3 -15 minutes in medium-sized towns.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

My plugins folder was 2.7 GB, but the game was too slow and unwieldy.  I hated the loadup times and the frequency of the crashes and the large amount of subpar BATs that were clogging up my menus, so I spent two weeks at the end of July and beginning of August re-downloading what I wanted.  Now I have a much more manageable 980 MB (or so), and my goal is to keep it down below 1 GB.  Of course, if I see something I simply cannot do without, then I'll get it but for now, this is how I want to keep it.

[simlink 1,098]

5146 Files in 977 Directories.

2.02GB 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

My plugins folder was 2.7 GB, but the game was too slow and unwieldy.  I hated the loadup times and the frequency of the crashes and the large amount of subpar BATs that were clogging up my menus, so I spent two weeks at the end of July and beginning of August re-downloading what I wanted.  Now I have a much more manageable 980 MB (or so), and my goal is to keep it down below 1 GB.  Of course, if I see something I simply cannot do without, then I'll get it but for now, this is how I want to keep it.

Welcome to the club.  I did a general junque removal several years ago.  However, a full installation of the NAM would put us both over the 1GB mark.

[Compdude787 916]

My Plugins folder contains 6.91GB installed , those additions that me liked. Impossible to play, the game crashes after 3 -15 minutes in medium-sized towns.

Anything over 5GB is too much, IMO.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

 

My Plugins folder contains 6.91GB installed , those additions that me liked. Impossible to play, the game crashes after 3 -15 minutes in medium-sized towns.

Anything over 5GB is too much, IMO.

 

Well, I hold mine to under 1 GB, but that's being very lean and mean.  I suspect that ovchar's folder hasn't been cleaned down to eliminate a lot of the junque at that size, but if it has, well, it's his machine.

[Igo 11]

Mine is 5.23GBs and most of the pictures and readme files are removed I think. I still have about over 50 files to install.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Sounds like you have a lot of testing to do.  I suggest groups of 10, and test after each set is added.  If you get a conflict you'll know where to look.

[markussaage 762]

Mine is 5,0 GB at this moment. I had 10 GB in it, lots of double and unnecessary stuff. My game crashed every five minutes then, so I decided to go after this. Doing research and fixing for about 18 months now my game runs stable with all checked plugins... the rest of my plugins will be checked in the next months... lots of work ahead, but it's worth it... :)

[GDK 20]

Mine is 5,0 GB at this moment. I had 10 GB in it, lots of double and unnecessary stuff. My game crashed every five minutes then, so I decided to go after this. Doing research and fixing for about 18 months now my game runs stable with all checked plugins... the rest of my plugins will be checked in the next months... lots of work ahead, but it's worth it... :)

18 months              :kitty:

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Obviously not 18 man months.  Just the time he has to work on it.  I need to rework some of mine to compress more of the folders with Files2DAT.  The reduction is small, but it does matter with 774 directories, 3953 files.  The number of files in some directories will drop by 66% as three files become one.

[mightygoose 92]

Frankly if you want to run with no standard models you are not going to come in less than about 4GB without unbearable repetition.

[markussaage 762]

yes, of course I didn't work nonstop on it... but you sure cannot count all hours... it was hell of a work so far

and I've found lot of broken lots... but as I said before, it was worth it...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Care and feeding of plugins can be a lot like herding cats unless you are very careful.  Testing for conflicts can really be time consuming.

[markussaage 762]

Yes it is indeed...

[jacqulina 162]

mines 2 gb

[zdza 547]

I run a multiplayer region and I purged the plugins folder down to 1.41GB before we started another region. Our single region is 800mb

[ovchar 1]

How U play in sc4multiplayer - through dropbox? 

 

I installed STEX collection, and I have the game crashes when the city reaches an average size(every 3-15 minutes). I think that the crashes occur because the BSC,CSX,Simgoober props or other essentials is installed. But i think that can not many new buildings cause game crashes... .

 

with such huge plugins folder I would like to teach the game to use the 08-12 or 16 GB of RAM .

[Compdude787 916]

How U play in sc4multiplayer - through dropbox? 

Yes, you could use that. Pretty much any online file-syncing service including SkyDrive (aka OneDrive) and Google Drive will work.

[Lost Realist 762]

16.021 Files

8.51GB

 

Going strong. I do have a lot of documentation in there however, didn't pay attention when I started collecting stuff and that was easily 8 years ago. This is the one folder that has survived all switches to new machines, all clean swipes and all that. By now it's much too large to go in there and clean it out, I don't have that time and seeing as how my game runs very stable, I just cannot be bothered either. I don't however have any actual plugins in there I don't like or use, all that rubbish gets purged quite immediately.

[jakis 287]

2.99 gb, 2 or 3 minutes to load the game

[MaxCheng95 5]

Mine is about 2.73GB, with 5159 files and 1102 folders inside. It's a giant collection over the past 8 years and I virtually unpack everything before stuff them all in there. XP My old laptop only has 26GB hard drive spaces in C: and it was quite a strain. XD

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,198]

Mine is almost 7GB at 6.98GB and has almost 20,000 files. Of course the NAM takes up 1 of those GB. I just made a backup so If my hardrive doesn't work anymore, I won't have to re-download any plugins.

[KonstantinII 1,106]

My real Plugins folder is 4.34 GB

 

I want to make a mention about loading times. When you don't make any changes to the Plugins folder for several consecutive sessions, SC4 "gets used" to the Plugins folder, and loading times are quick. However, when you install a bunch of mods at once, loading times may be 10 mins or more.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

An interesting observation.  I have not experienced that, but then I don't download plugins in groups any more.  Still holding at just under 1 GB with my reduced NAM.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Yeah, I've noticed that the first load after a reboot always takes longer than subsequent loads and I know this has been documented elsewhere in threads where loading has been timed.  This is true with both loading the EXE and individual city tiles within the game.  Change something in the plugins folder (sometimes as simple as say swapping out one of Ennedi's slope mod variants) and you're back to square one.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Must have something to do with how Windoze loads programs.  I don't see this on Linux.

[Mymyjp 1,052]

Mine is about 1.15GB - 1,801 files, 518 folders.

I still have to load (when I will need it) files for creating seaports. I will probably also ad additional buildings for more variety within my regions.

I just recently attempted to understand how and what to datpack..Did a test on 2 folders and I was successful.

 

Now, just need to learn to datpack buildings and I should be able to maintain a reasonable size plugin folder.

 

At this time, it takes about 35-40 sec for a region to load. I am assuming it will be longer once the city reaches over 1M sims...