Re-downloading all custom content

[Subzer0 0]

 Hey everyone, I'm not sure where to post this, but I assume this is good.

I have been an avid simcity player for years, and over this time I have accumulated vast quantities of custom content. My cities were enormous masterpieces that took years to make perfect. But I never thought to back them up... and recently my hard drive crashed. I have since bought a new, nicer computer (Macbook Pro, running VMware Fusion with windows XP, so no need to worry about compatibility issues), but am now faced with the monumental task of re-downloading EVERYTHING and restoring it to its former glory. I don't know where to even begin! I was wondering if there was any sort of list that had all of the main files, such as the most common dependencies, buildings, or mods, or any help at all. It will take me at the very minimum several weeks to download everything, assuming I can find it, and it would be great if there was some way to make this boring, repetitive task easier. Any suggestions? 

[Cougar2004 127]

I highly suggest you donate to SimTropolis the amount they say, and you will actually get to have a DVD With most of all the good stuff from your past. Unless you have 10,000 hours to waste, i doubt you will ever get your former favorite items back without these DVDs. The downloads from this site are actually much slower than past years, so i recommend you donate for the STEX COLLECTIONS.

I'm afraid they've lost Volume 1, but you can still grab Volumes 2 and 3 if you act fast.

Click here for more details:  https://www.simtropolis.com/stex_collections/

[Subzer0 0]

Actually I already bought volume 2, but its scratched D=

[CTMandR 9]

Do you have an account on the LEX? They have a download history section, listing everything you've downloaded before. Other than that, I don't really think theres a list anywhere on commonly downloaded files....maybe the most popular ones on the STEX?

[Releevo 0]

i have exactly the same problem

i just switched to macbook pro like 3 months ago and ever since then i didnt play sc4, i miss it a lot...

now im restarting my game play and all the plugin downloading

however i find a lot of links to dependency files in readmes are no longer active

and some of the links provided by the sc4devotion dependency list either

quite confused what to do now

[SC4BOY 20]

hmmm.. as an avid player I'd think it would be pretty easy for you.. I can browse a website and instantly recognise what I want ...and also a lot I definitely AVOID .. IN fact I could almost tell you off the top of my head what I'd use and I have almost 5 Gb in plugins..

[Simbourgeois 139]

Been there, done that...
It was a part of my painful experience of getting over laptop loss
I did it manually - going through every single page of STEX, LEX, Japanese and French sites etc. It took me a while, but at least now I know my plugin folder by heart (even though it's more than 4 Gb...).

Good luck! Hope you'll succeed in restoring your plugin folder!

Best regards,
Simbourgeois
Mayor of Belleville

[Subzer0 0]

Thanks everyone,

CTMandR: Yes I do thats a great idea! I forgot about that! The popular section will work too, but only for a few files.

Releevo: Yup it sure is a pain. Although, in the few hours I have started downloading everything back, I managed to get maybe 500mb worth of downloads just from browsing around. I just can never remember the names of some of my most favorite files.

SC4BOY: Yeah I can browse but it takes ages! And I don't always recognize everything.

Simbourgeois: Mmm yes many of my files were from foreign websites, mostly japanese, which is a pain to navigate. How in the world can you memorize that much data? I don't have that good of a memory haha. But thank you, I will need all the luck I can get!

[SC4BOY 20]

Well the nice thing is it doesn't go away.. so if you forget something then a) it wasn't worth getting anyways since it didn't make much impact on you .. b) You find yourself wondering about "hmmm, now where was that..... " and you go dl it..

Also if you don't know where you got it, how can you get it anyways? hehe.. There is a very good "Japan so far and so near" or something like that on SC4D.. that gives thumbnails of MANY MANY Japanese dl's and provides links to them.. that should help in that category.. and the entire LEX only have about 200 pages that come up with thumbnails beside the list . that also should be a great assist...I mean really browsing those is hardly more than a couple of nights of tv watching.. good luck.. I don't know quite what it is that you expect of other people if you don't know what you had or where you got it..

Anyones list would be just that.. THEIR list... and if you didn't even care enough to back it up on HD or DVD, it wasn't very valuable to you, was it?  

[Releevo 0]

i managed to re-download most mods i need to optimize the game to what i want

as well as road transport and public transport stuff

i even found a super great PEG CDK all-together file box

however, the real pain starts as i start to download agricultural/industrial buildings

as many dependency links are dead and there are heaps of them...