SC4 DATANODE

[JoeLetaxi 1]

Hello all,

 

I just started to use this great tool (Sc4DataNode). I thought i had a good organisation of my plugins, using DatPacker and Damn menus. I had not any brown boxes, no frequent crashes. Though SC4DataNode showed me a lot of existing problems:

- Overrides or overriden files. How to manage with that?

- Faulty, for this i think i can deal with helpful iLives Reader.

- Some Missing Dep that i can fix.

For "Overrides, or overriden i don't see any issue. Some help required.

 

Joe

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If the overrides are legitimate and they often are, consider it documentation.  If you get something not explained by the documentation or you were not expecting, further study might be needed in each case.  For some reason not yet discovered I can't run the installer for this, probably because wine doesn't seem to support the *.msi format or the version of the package.

[bwhitejr2 3]

This is a good program.  There is A LOT of detail and information--more than I can handle or understand since I am not a computer programmer.

 

I had a problem with brown boxes. Initially, I thought it was a missing or corrupted plugin dependency. It drove me crazy as I installed, and re-installed every recommended dependency and still the brown boxes. DataNode showed me that there was a conflict with a couple of .dat files. When I removed the offending file, the brown boxes disappeared.

 

I don't know about the overrides. I would think that (in most cases) removing the over-ridden files would be safe enough and that it would help in loading times. However, while the location of the files is indicated, it is an extremely tedious process to locate and remove the files to a back-up location (in case they are needed). And it is too easy to remove the wrong file.  I would love to see a key that would automatically remove the over-ridden file to a back-up location. And a search function would be nice to help in locating the files...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If the overridden items are part of a larger file, you may just have to leave them here.  The difference in loading time is miniscule unless there are many of them.

[bwhitejr2 3]

The biggest advantage to removing some of the over-ridden files is to save disk space. To use a specific example, I have the HKBT files on my hard-drive. I also have some of the updates and reformulations by Bixel and Paul V. Montfort in various additional prop packs. There appear to be hundreds of them. If I do not need them, I should be able to remove them safely.

 

BTW, does anyone know if rivet is planning on making an updated version of this wonderful tool?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Before you knock yourself out with a lot of meticulous work, are you sure it will make much difference in the operation of the game?

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Having downloaded nearly 3GB of mods myself (including dependencies and patches), I'm using DataNode simply to remove conflicting files in the hopes of minimizing crashes and increasing performance a bit. And if something goes catastrophically wrong I've got backups of all my plugins before I began removing certain select files using DataNode's advice.