There are TWO plugin folders? Which one to use?

[PathikritGhosh 0]

Hi guys and gals!

 

I am extremely new (been playing for around two weeks) to SC4. I love it. Had only seen Simcity2013 before, but I loved this one better. 

 

I am confused as to where to install my plugins. When I downloaded and installed NAM, it installed automatically to

My Documents/SimCity4/Plugins/

 

But, I recently discovered that there are two plugin folders, the other one being Games/Simcity4/Plugins (the one not in My documents) 

 

So my question is: which one should I use? 

1.) Mydocuments plugin

2.) Game folder plugin

 

Thanks for your help!

[infamousjbe 593]

99.9% of the time it'll be /Doc/SC4/Plugin.

 

The only two mods I know of that would be in /Programs/../../Plugins are the I-HT Fix (packed with 1.dat) and the DAMN menu. 

 

The Read-Me's will tell you exactly what you need to do

[Ltw 401]

I always use the mydocuments plugin folder. In my opinion that's much nicer to work with (I don't want to go to program files just for copying plugins). I believe it doesn't really matter which one you use, if it does matter that should be mentioned in the readme.

[.anonyman 28]

It doesn't matter much. Just keep your plugins folder well-organized to avoid major headaches later on.

[Prophet42 1,503]

The game loads the Mydocuments plugin folder last.  So anything in the Programfiles plugin folder will be overwritten by the game when the Mydocuments plugin folder is loaded.  It is better to store your MODs and BATS in the Mydocuments plugin folder to insure they are loaded properly (except those noted by infamousjbe).

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Any reinstall overwrites the Program Files area, and it is also shared with other users on the same machine.  Two good reasons not to put personal selections there.

[Kentpumas1980 4]

99.9% of the time it'll be /Doc/SC4/Plugin.

 

The only two mods I know of that would be in /Programs/../../Plugins are the I-HT Fix (packed with 1.dat) and the DAMN menu. 

 

The Read-Me's will tell you exactly what you need to do

 

Bit of a newcomer question, but what is the DAMN menu?

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

...what is the DAMN menu?

The DAMN is short for Daeley's Advanced Menu Navigator. In short, it basically allows plugins to be accessed in game, from a new navigation menu. This can make it easier to find a specific item of content, as you wouldn't have to rely on the standard menus (e.g. parks, landmarks). This guide should explain how to setup and use its functions.

 

Instead of the SSPTool, there is also an alternative management tool, called the It contains some additional features, and is said to be easier to use. However, there may be a few bugs, as it's still in a fairly new stage of development.

[infamousjbe 593]

^What Cycle said. 

 

I attempted to use the DAMN menu system, but was already choking on all the other content & dependencies, just didn't have the stomach to set up the folder structure. 

 

Still in a phase of installing and deleting things quite rapidly, that using the DAMN menu would be more of a headache than benefit at this point. 

 

Once I figure out exactly what files I NEED as standard for any city, then I might be more apt to set up the DAMN menu for the larger downloads with many menu icons. (ie: SPAR, RTMT, MRS, etc)

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Why not do a general archive of your current set up (make a .zip file of the <you>/documents/simcity 4 folder), then delete the whole shooting match and do a restart?  All you have to do is start the game to get a new <you>/documents/simcity 4 folder with the default set up.  To get back to a straight system, you might have to restore anything you did with SimCity_1.dat.

 

Now you can start running and adding things you need including the DAMN menus as you go.  Might not be a bad retrospective.  You can always just unzip the old system to put things back to where you are now.

 

For a different but similar approach, create a new userid on your system, log in to it, and start the game.  You get a naked game with the default set up, no installation nor fooling around needed.  You can use this userid to completely reorganize things.  I suggest that you will need to add a <otherid>/documents/sc4downloads folder to hold all the downloads so you can organize and keep track of what you are putting in your plugins if you don't already do that.  Arrange permissions between the two accounts as needed.

[Mr Baseball 0]

Can I move the "My Documents" SC4 file off of my Main SSD drive and onto my Data HDD where I keep a lot of my game stuff? If so, would it affect game performance?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Can I move the "My Documents" SC4 file off of my Main SSD drive and onto my Data HDD where I keep a lot of my game stuff? If so, would it affect game performance?

I think you should ask this question separately in its own thread.  It should probably be in Bugs and Technical Issues.

 

This is not a simple thing.  A file that gets a lot of writes should not be on an SSD at all.  And if you do it right, you split the SimCity 4 folder across both devices, keeping the mostly static stuff like your plugins on the SSD.  Meanwhile, take a look at the idea of links or short-cuts in the NTFS file system on your Windows O/S.

 

An SSD should never be your C: drive because you don't want temporary or swap files out there.  A lot of write/rewrite activity can run an SSD up to its best before date very quickly.

[Mr Baseball 0]

 

Can I move the "My Documents" SC4 file off of my Main SSD drive and onto my Data HDD where I keep a lot of my game stuff? If so, would it affect game performance?

I think you should ask this question separately in its own thread.  It should probably be in Bugs and Technical Issues.

 

This is not a simple thing.  A file that gets a lot of writes should not be on an SSD at all.  And if you do it right, you split the SimCity 4 folder across both devices, keeping the mostly static stuff like your plugins on the SSD.  Meanwhile, take a look at the idea of links or short-cuts in the NTFS file system on your Windows O/S.

 

An SSD should never be your C: drive because you don't want temporary or swap files out there.  A lot of write/rewrite activity can run an SSD up to its best before date very quickly.

 

I know that initially writes and rewrites were a concern, but TRIM has gone a long way to alleviate that, SSD reliability has really improved.. Anything "valuable"I keep backed up in several places, the only thing on the SSD is the OS and installed programs. SSD prices have come way down, I just put in a 2nd one for Trainz, so if the C drive fails, I'll just replace it and reinstall my OS and Programs. No big deal.

 

[z1 566]

Yes, more recent SSDs have wear-leveling firmware that extends their lifetime significantly.  Under normal use, including plenty of writes, they should last at least a decade.  What fails most often in SSDs these days is the controller, not the memory.

 

I have an early generation of SSDs, but I still put my C: drive on them; I simply have my page file and my temp files on hard drives.  These SSDs have been going fine for four years now.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The technology is slowly improving, but I still don't have one, and won't until they have the same life expectancy as a disk drive.

[Mr Baseball 0]

I love my SSD's. I have a 128GB Crucial M4 for my System Drive and a 256 GB M4 just for Trainz, which fills up quickly with extra content. I also have a 1TB HDD for data. With proper backing up of important stuff I find any risks worth taking for the extra performance, especially since the prices for SSD's have come way down and they are easy to replace.

 

I thought about moving my page file, but with 16GB of RAM I wonder if it's ever used at all. I keep mine small, 512MB max.

[z1 566]

The technology is slowly improving, but I still don't have one, and won't until they have the same life expectancy as a disk drive.

 

They already do.  From my four-year-old SSDs:

 

These things are going to outlive me.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks.  That's good that they use the SMART technology.  Next machine will have one, I suppose.  One nice thing about Linux is that you can tell it where to put your swap space.  Currently, I have a 20  GB disk partition for it.

 

I am not sure any more, but I believe that when windows loads an exe it does create page tables for it, and page the program.  If it doesn't put this out on your backing store, it must have to use temp space elsewhere for it.  Not a smart thing to have your swap space on your SSD, nor any other heavily used temp space that is often written.  Durability may have improved, but I still have my reservations.

 

You know, of course, that an SSD is a giant set of delay line memory.  What happens if it loses power?  Battery hold up?

[z1 566]

One nice thing about Linux is that you can tell it where to put your swap space.  Currently, I have a 20  GB disk partition for it.

 

Fortunately, you can do the same thing with Windows; I have my whole page file on a standard hard drive.  I'm running out of space on my SSDs as it is...

 

 

I am not sure any more, but I believe that when windows loads an exe it does create page tables for it, and page the program.

 

It does create the page tables, but it doesn't page in the whole program, as this would cause an unnecessary delay, especially for large programs, and there are a lot of pages that would never be used anyway.

 

Pages from the executable are never written to the page file, as they are never changed.  Instead, the executable file is mapped to virtual memory, and anticipatory paging makes the actual reading in of pages a little more efficient.

 

 

If it doesn't put this out on your backing store, it must have to use temp space elsewhere for it.

 

Not necessary; it just rereads this from the program file, which is much more efficient.  Only dirty data pages are paged out to the page file.

 

Here's a brief description of Windows paging and memory usage from Driver Guru over at Ars Technica; I have always found him an infallible resource when it comes to Windows internals:

 

 

There is a bit of readahead that happens upon a page fault satisfied to the pagefile - "if the process needs page n now, it will probably need n+1 pretty soon, so let's fault in as much as we can with one disk operation" - but never is the pagefile read for any reason other than "on-demand", i.e. someone needs something that's in it right now.

There is a readahead mechanism for cached files, similar to that used in the pagefile. Again, not anticipatory.

With exe and dll files, however, image prefetch is working to bring things in in advance of need, based on past history of program execution sequence. This would be called anticipatory paging. This does not happen in the pagefile.

The ultimate case of anticipatory paging is in SuperFetch, which is bringing file contents into RAM before anyone even opensthe files, based on recent history of file access. This is using low-priority Standby memory, thus not causing anything else to be lost from RAM, and this RAM remains as available as it ever was for other purposes, should the other Standby pages run out.

In addition, SuperFetch is using low-priority I/O requests to the disk so they run only when no ordinary requests are in the queue.

 

As for the persistence of data on SSDs:

 

 

You know, of course, that an SSD is a giant set of delay line memory.  What happens if it loses power?  Battery hold up?

 

SSDs are composed of flash memory, just like USB data sticks.  They have no battery, and they don't need any power to retain data.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks for the technical update.  I really did need it.  It must take quite a whack of juice to write one of these things comparatively speaking.  I have never been a hardware type, and try to avoid the gory details ever since the heads fell on my Univac fast drums in 1966.  What a mess, and that gadget cost an unconscionable amount of money for only 17MC of data (yes that's mega-characters.  (tiny).  Oh yes, and there were the size of a large Coca-Cola vending machine.