Slow Game

[theclashrules 0]

Recently my game has been running far slower than usual. Even with the graphics setting all the way do.wn it only runs slighty smoother. I have less then 1 GB of plu3gins. One city is even slower than the rest and it is only a small village with 20,000 people!

THanks!

sorry for the typos. i broke my finger and can't type normally

(Merged posts - Astronelson)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

What are you running in the background?  If you have a big virus scanner like Norton, disconnect from the net, and turn it off.

When was the last time you defragmented your hard disk(s)?  If your swap file and other game files are fragmented, you could get a major slow down because of excessive disk accesses.  You should run the defragmentation utility at least once a week.  If you've never done this, it will take at least overnight the first time.  Less after that, once the disk is in better order.  Watching a disk defragmentation is like watching paint dry, so start it up, and go somewhere else.

You should state the configuration of your machine when you ask this kind of question.  Also, what operating system are you running?

Are you running in windowed mode?  This is slower than full screen.

As a city grows, you can expect that the game will slow up a little.  All those tables (one for each object in the map) have to be visited once around the simultation loop.  A really big city will drag you to nearly a halt unless you have something like and i5 or i7 processor.

If you are running a music player in the background, consider converting the music to MP3 and putting it in the game instead of running a multimedia process.

And if you are running in Cheetah speed, drop down to Rhino.  The game is a leisure time activity, not a high-energy FPS.  You should take your time and enjoy the animation.  Have you ever looked at one of the playing fields at magnification 5 and watched it for a while?  This definitely works best at Rhino speed.  Also, with Cheetah, the game can get behind because of the drag caused by the graphics.

[theclashrules 0]

Nope never defragmented. Could you explain what that is?

Running XP. 3.2 GHz, 4GB RAM.

NO music player, as I said it's a small city. When my cities grow more than 200,000 i usually turn down the graphics. but this city only has 20-30K.

I tried running at turtle or rhino but still slow. mostly it jerks around when edge-scrolling. or delays when i click on a icon or use a keyboard shortcut.

 

[jim 546 43]

Defragmenting will reorganise all the files on your computer so that they are in an easy to access order. It can speed up your computer by quite a bit. Also try downloading a graphics driver update and change its settings so that the application will decide what settings it will use. I did this the other day and it greatly improved the games running speeds.

[SC4BOY 20]

To "defrag" open "my computer", right click the drive you wish to defrag (should get around to doing all), select "properties", then select the tab called "tools". From that list one is "defragmentation". I recommend that you start it before going to bed as it can be a bit slow and it doesn't really like you doing other things while it runs. Good luck.

[joshriddle 29]

You should defrag every day. I also recommend buying some sort of Registry cleaner. I use Registry Mechanic and it works like a charm, but you have to pay for it. I forget how much. Once you pay for it it is valid for 3 computers.

Next you may want to run disk cleanup, or perhaps do everything on the menu that SC4BOY pointed out. Go to my computer, right click the HD you installed the game to, click properties, go to tools, and then try defraging and running disk cleanup.

I also recommend clearing browsing history, as well as other junk that may be piled on your comp.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The other thing you will want to check is that you have enough swap file space.  With this game running and a lot of plugins, you may very well want to up that to the limit for XP which is 4GB.  However if you really do have 4GB of ram, you should be OK.

There is a very complex technique for setting up your swap space to a contiguous 4GB and preventing windows from messing with it.  For this, you need to consult your local digi-nerd.  I have done this on XP, and some understanding of what you are doing is necessary.

You have entered the realm of serious users now that you have SimCity 4 running.  It can raise absolute havoc with your disk space because every save of a city will create more fragments on your disk.  You need to defrag, as Josh says, daily if you run the game very much.  Otherwise, once a week should suffice.

Things you need to learn about:

Disk space maintenance, or keeping junk off your hard disks.  Junk includes temporary files created by applications that are so poorly written they forget to clean up after themselves and leave intermediate files laying about, then create new ones when they run again.  It also includes your Internet History.  Much of this can be dumped, but keep your cookies.  If you are running FireFox you can choose how much history to keep, and edit cookies individually.

Get rid of as much Microsoft bloatware as you can.  Stop using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.  They are fat and lazy, and tend to lock you in to some things in the Microsoft world.  Switch to a new browser.  I recommend FireFox.  For mail, put in Mozilla Thunderbird.  It is a very powerful mailer and will look after you much better than anything Microsoft has to offer.  Both of these are free software but fully supported.

[theclashrules 0]

I already use firefox...

I will try defragmenting. How much file space is usually taken up by plugins before they begin to slow down the game?

Everyone's help is appreciated!

[joshriddle 29]

Originally posted by: theclashrules

I already use firefox...

I will try defragmenting. How much file space is usually taken up by plugins before they begin to slow down the game?

Everyone's help is appreciated!quote>

Rather small. For me it slows down noticeably on 10 MB.

I also fail to understand why Microsoft would be the issue, allthough I don't doubt it maybe part of it. I'm not that big a fan of IE.

Also defraging becomes all the more important when loading plugins in batch. Knowing Windows, files do become fragmented easily. I sometimes cram 30-40 MB of stuff on at a time. And that is usually when I install the NAM, but other then that mods are relatively small. BAT Buildings at the most don't exceed 5 MB.

My opinion on IE and Outlook affecting SC4 is that it may in ways, but how it can affect it, other then temporary files screwing everything up. I used to like Internet Explorer to a certain degree. Really it was IE8 that set me back.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Josh, IE and OE are bloat ware.  They both think they can do whatever they like to the environment.  They drop all kinds of temporary junk around without cleaning it up.  all this increases the possibility of disk fragmentation.

I don't think anyone really explained fragmentation to you, my friend.  Here is what happens.

When you create a region, if you are lucky, all the files are created in clean disk space, and there are no fragments (called extents).  Each file is in a single set of contiguous sectors on the disk, and can each be read with a single read command.

Now, when you play your game, you do saves.  This is fine if the new file that replaces the old one is the same size (never) or fits the the space it has.  A file is always placed in multiples of a thing called an allocation unit (AU).  On most big disks these days, that is usually 16K Bytes (16,384 Bytes) and these are on sector boundaries.  Let us suppose that your city starts out in one piece with an allocation of 10 AU, but it is really only taking up 9.5 AU.  AU come in fixed hunks, so you get 10.  Now you play the game for an hour or so, the press CTRL+s for an on-the-fly save.  The program collects what it needs to save the game, then issues a write to the file system for, say 10.5 AU.  The file system looks at this, sees it won't fit, and writes what it can in your original 10 AU, then finds another AU anywhere on the disk links it to your file description and writes the remaining stuff out.  Now your file is in two extents.  Every time you do another save, the same thing may happen, and when you finally quit the game, you file has gone to several extents in places all over the disk.  When you load the city now, it takes one read per extent to get the city into the game.  Each of these may involve as much as one full rotation of the disk to get each one, but if the queuing algorithm is good, and it is in Windows, the average will be around half a rotation per extent.  So just reading in your city if you have accumulated 100 extents, which isn't hard to do, can take up to 50 rotations of your disk.  Your disk may rotate at 7200 rpm but that means that it takes about half a second for your city to load.  This kind of thing all adds up.  If you only had one extent, the file would be accessed in about 1/10 of a millisecond, which is pretty close to three orders of magnitude (1,000 times faster).  It all adds up, and you see that if your disk is heavily fragmented, this happens on any file you try to access.

So, if you run defrag, your whole system should run better.  But before you run defrag, you should run disk cleanup.  Running this is analogous to watching grass grow, so go out for a coffee after you start it.

[joshriddle 29]

My basic idea of fragmentation was similar to that but I never knew there was more to it.

@ theclashrules: Also, what's your RAM?

[theclashrules 0]

Thank you Nonny Moose!

@joshriddle - 4GB

[joshriddle 29]

Originally posted by: theclashrules

Thank you Nonny Moose!

@joshriddle - 4GBquote>

Good grief. Your computer may be big and fast. So in that case your probably overloaded on plugins. But I found it depends more on your CPU. Mine is an Intel Pentinum 4, at 2.2 GHz single core on a laptop.

Ram definately isn't the issue. So I would say that it is just plugins.

My game slows down on my 850 MB of plugins.

[RazgrizGa12 1]

you can lower the Shadow detail to low or medium.