WMP Alottment D Fail

[citycowboy 183]

If you click on it, you can't click off it. When you click 'bye now' it stays forever. You can change what it reads in the box though.

The only thing you can do once you click on it is hit ctrl/alt/del and restart sim city 4, which takes about an hour to do!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Unfortunately, the WMP author is deceased.  I don't know if there is a fix for this. 

I find it utterly disgusting that it takes an hour to restart your game.  After you kill it from the task list, why does it take so long to start up?

[blunder 1,079]

...restart sim city 4, which takes about an hour to do!

If that's true and not sarcastic exaggeration, you have some serious problems going on, and it 's not from this one piece of custom content (I have used these allotments since their release with no problems).  Stupidly long start-up times usually come from either having very little ram or running a massive pile of plugins at once.  Running a lot of content on little available memory will make the game do all kinds of wonky things, like freezing on querry

[citycowboy 183]

yeah, we're running about 30k files in our plugins folder, which is a little over 7.9GB. 

Disk C says we're going on 162 of 232 GB of space. 

Yeah, over the years the more plugins i've added, the more slower the startup is. If I take all of the plugins out and start the game it starts instantly. 

What happens is the GDriver doesn't want to crank over so the computer seems like it turns the key over and over again for about 45 minutes to an hour until the thing starts. 

The other thing is, when you click on like, the landmarks button, it takes about 30 seconds to display my options. 

This bad boy is an HP computer that plays Sim City 4 Rush Hour using Windows XP software, from like 2002 or something. 

This computer is my designated Sim City 4 computer. 

If I put a plugin in and I don't like it or it doesn't work very well, I take it out of the plugins folder and place it in a file I have on the desktop called "SC4 EXTRA PLUGINS".

I also delete all of the zipper files right away once I unzip them.

Back to the fail I mentioned, none of the other pieces have ever done that before, and the game didn't freeze really because you could still change the title of the alottment, like rename it so I'm not sure still. It hasn't done it since on any other lots. It also didn't do it on any of the other WMP alottments, just D. 

Thanks guys. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

One of the things you can do with that enormous plugin suite is compress it into a few *.dat files.  There is a post-market program available on the STEX that does this, and it is recommended that you shrink up your plugins in a few sets, keeping the originals for safety in some other storage.

By reducing the number of files, you cut down the number of disk accesses during start up and whenever you scroll or zoom.  It also affects menu results if the menu contains custom stuff.

For the life of me, I can't remember the name of this program, probably because I don't use it.  I use a different program from ilive called Files2Dat, but you will probably want the other one which does a wholesale sweep of the folders you give it and compresses them.  Don't compress the NAM or anything else that is subject to update.

I compress plugins if they are not compressed when I download them.  I also keep all the *.zip and *.rar downloads in a separate folder organized in a similar manner to my plugins (for maintenance).  While each of my Plugins is separate, I have 829 directories, 3765 files that take up only 1.1 GB.  I save quite a bit by not loading all the features of the NAM I don't use (RHW, GLR, RRW) since the NAM installer compiles the final controller, which is much smaller with out all those RULs for the unused items.  It also saves on menu clutter.

I am running Ubuntu 15.04 with the current wine (Windows Executive) beta.  My game loads, plugins and all, including picking up the wine executive layer in: 25 seconds.  Loading a city might take as much as five minutes if the city has a population of over 1M Sims.  Most of them load in under a minute.

Since you are running XP, it is worthwhile to run both Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter weekly.  If you've never run these, the first runs will take a very long time.  Defragmenter may take overnight.  Heavily played cities with lots of saves tend to get very fragmented which causes lots of disk accesses, and an unruly Plugin folder may very well have the same problem.  These programs can be found by going to "My Computer" and right clicking on the drive to work on.  They cannot be run together, and you should not do anything else while they are running.  It is very much a go play in the traffic situation because your file system is vulnerable when they are running, especially defragmenter.

[citycowboy 183]

thanks, ill look into it.

[blunder 1,079]

yeah, we're running about 30k files in our plugins folder, which is a little over 7.9GB. 

Holy crap.  That's a problem.

The program Nonny is thinking of is called sc4datpacker, probably available on the LEX and not here.  When you use it don't pack your NAM files or individual files you might want to swap out frequently.  It's nice to pack bundles of similar types of content together, so you can swap stuff out on city tiles.  Because there's not a snowballs chance you will ever use 8GB of plugins in a single city tile, ever.  The way i do mine is, i have my base game mods, swapable mods (like water, beach), and NAM files and things that override NAM content left loose, and everything else is bundles together in numbered categories:

Skyscrapers 1.32Gb across 4 files (datpacker packs 400mb max per file, dont remember if this is default or customizeable) 

agro-rural 76mb 

suburbia 318 mb 

urban 313 mb

parksandmonuments 430 mb

industry 403 mb

waterfronts 445 mb

nature 261 mb

transit (not nam, remember) 175

airports 430 mb

zCore 602 mb.  <-- This is everything you think you absolutely need on the vast majority of tiles and dependencies that are used across multiple categories, like BSC CP 01.

Then there's another 200mb of things i might swap out as well as things that overwrite the NAM, like texture replacers.  And the NAM is left out separate too.  So what happens is, with the NAM, i'm always running about 1.2Gb of base plugins, and then depending on what tile i want to work on, anywhere from 1-2 Gigs of additional packed .dats.  You'll find that when you start packing all those disparate files into a handful of dats that it will drastically improve your performance.

Before you dat-pack you want to remove all the junk files like screenshots and readme's to a separate locatoin.  You can either do this manually or with the Cleanitol, also found on the LEX.

Also when i said 'memory' in my previous comment, i'm talking about RAM, not hard drive space.  But don't discount the defrag and disk check that nonny talked about: those are just good practice that should always be done.  Since you're on an ooooooold pc, it would be quite worth it to open it up, see if there's spare slots for RAM, and if so go buy yourself a couple new sticks.  Since your pc is ancient in computer terms it might still be running ddr2, you'll have to check your specs.  DDR2 RAM, DDR3 RAM.  Either way, 8Gb of plugins is absurdly above what you should be trying to run on a 2002pc at once.

[MushyMushy 3,618]

I could be wrong, but I think when blunder said "little available memory," he meant how much RAM you have. While it is of course also bad to completely fill up your computer's storage (what you mentioned as 162/232 GB used should be fine), I do believe RAM plays an important factor in the game startup. If you were serious about it taking anywhere near an hour to boot up SC4, you have a problem somewhere. Maybe you don't have enough RAM?

My SC4 takes about 5 or 6 minutes to start up the first time after restarting my computer, and maybe a minute or two if it's already been started before. I have about 5.7 GB of mods in my plugins folder, and the difference between the start time for 5.7 GB and 7.9 GB shouldn't be huge (I have not datpacked my plugins folder). My landmarks tab takes about 3 or 4 seconds to appear. My computer has 10 GB of RAM. How much does yours have? Considering the fact that you said the computer is from 2002, I'm worried that it has practically no RAM on it (My old computer from around that time had like 2 GB of RAM, for instance).

As a side note, I've never had any problems with the wmp stuff.

  Edited August 16, 2015 by MushyMushy  

[markussaage 762]

Well,

if you datpack your files it's not a problem. I'll use around 7 GB in plugins and most of it is datpacked. So my loading time is around 30 sec to the main screen and another minute to load a city... I think that is really ok... And I use the WMP Stuff, too, without problems. There might be a problem caused by another plugin... I can only recommend to use the SC4DataNode Tool to get the things fixed. It can be a lot of work, but it worked fine with me... I use it every time I bring new plugins into the game.

Kind regards!

[citycowboy 183]

AMD Processor 64 processor 3800 + 2.4 Ghz

3.00 GB RAM

32-bit operating system.

 

I use the data node.

 

 

[markussaage 762]

I think the problem you have is caused by another plugin. Did you remove everything except the WMP Lots out of your plugins to test if the Lot works fine then?
 Interesting to know...

Kind regards!

[citycowboy 183]

no, I haven't yet, but I'm starting to think there's a couple of plugin overlap problems that are starting to develop because I'm seeing some paris and maxis buildings pop up where they shouldn't be, for example, when i spread some of the ALN mmps i'm getting a maxis building and there's a type of 1x3 house that grows but it has a paris corner building on it, its weird. I'm trying to rework a lot of stuff right now.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If your 32-bit systems has 3GB that's probably plenty.  Mine has 3.5 GB available because .5GB is taken by the graphics chip set.  Something just over 3GB is the bandwidth memory addressing limit for the 32-bit decor.

My system is 64-bit, but I have created a 32-bit wine prefix for most MS-based games because that's what they are.  Things run better in that mode.  I've set the environment for Windows 7 and everything runs well.

The chances of a program needing more than the bandwidth limit for 32-bits is small, but the fix in the NAM to allow full addressing takes care of that by reducing the O/S space from 2 to 1 GB.  I wouldn't worry about your memory space, and your storage just needs a little attention.  With the version of NTFS that runs in XP weekly disk space maintenance is needed, and I always used to do it.  Linux uses a different system and hardly ever needs that kind of fix up.

I am using ext4 decor on top of gvfs.  There is a defragmenter (e4defrag) but it is hardly ever needed.

[markussaage 762]

no, I haven't yet, but I'm starting to think there's a couple of plugin overlap problems that are starting to develop because I'm seeing some paris and maxis buildings pop up where they shouldn't be, for example, when i spread some of the ALN mmps i'm getting a maxis building and there's a type of 1x3 house that grows but it has a paris corner building on it, its weird. I'm trying to rework a lot of stuff right now.

You said you use the SC4DataNode tool. This tool produces a log-file, which can be found in the installation folder. It can be opened with any text editor. Make sure you take a look at this file and correct the errors collected in this report. This might be a lot of work and there are errors listed also from in-game files like the simcity1.dat. I wouldn't mess with those though... After every SC4 DataNode run I recommend to delete the log file before running a new scan. So a new file will be created and you can see that the error is gone or not.

Kind regards!

[citycowboy 183]

thanks

 

[markussaage 762]

With this amount of plugins I'd refer also to this:

Not an easy way to go but on a long shot I'll help you... I started 3 years ago doing this and I am still not done yet here... And there are a lot "bad" lots out there, means that they cause problems in the game.

Kind regards!

  Edited August 17, 2015 by markussaage  

[citycowboy 183]

So I went all out today, and got gmax, plugin manager, sc4 bat, lot editor and datpacker all ready to go on the 'ancient' sc4 computer. (I don't use this computer for work or personal use) (I think it should work fine, since SC4 came out in 2003). I've decided to copy my plugins folder onto my desktop, since I don't know how to use the datpacker just yet. It says I have about 7 hours remaining for that. 

So I go back into plugins, create a new folder, and shove everything that doesn't have a Z on it into it, then open up datpacker, highlight the new folder, and press compress or ok or whatever, right? Then I just start the game?

 

[markussaage 762]

Well,

the SC4Datpacker tool requires the plugins to be in the Plugins folder. If there are no plugins in this folder, the tool will give you an error message and quit. There are different versions of this tool out to download, make sure you read the readme to get it work. Sometimes you need to download a few additional .dlls and place them in your Windows\system folder ( if you're using a Windows OS).

If you haven't done this yet it is recommended to organize your plugins to reduce the datpacked files. The datpacking process shouldn't take too long if you pack them folder by folder. And you should keep an eye on the bottom part window of the Datpacker tool. If there is something shown, these are errors you need to correct (mostly duplicated files that the tool finds in other folders or dependencies.) I had a lot back in the days and from my experience I can recommend to use a program to scan for duplicate files in your plugins folder like "Heatsoft Clone Cleaner" (a free version available) or similar.

Good luck and I guess you're gonna have a lot of work coming up...

 

Kind regards!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You should run Rivit's Datanode program before anything else and clear up any errors it finds.

[markussaage 762]

You should run Rivit's Datanode program before anything else and clear up any errors it finds.

Yes...

[rsc204 21,808]

I've decided to copy my plugins folder onto my desktop, since I don't know how to use the datpacker just yet. It says I have about 7 hours remaining for that. 

If your computer takes 7 hours to copy 8GB of data from one place on your HDD to another place on the same HDD, something is VERY wrong in Windows, this is absolutely not normal in any way. Combined with the time it takes to load SC4, I'd guess you have a RAM problem, not that your computer doesn't have enough, more likely that you simply don't have enough of it freely available for system use. This is easy to check, clean boot your machine - i.e. start it from completely off without loading any programs and when everything has settled down open task manager. How much of your system RAM is being used at this point or how much physical memory is free are the figures you are looking for.

If that's not the problem, then your Hard Drive is, they get quite cluttered over the years so you may need to defragment the drive using the Windows utility for this purpose to improve performance.

[citycowboy 183]

It didn't actually take 7 hours, it took a about twenty minutes. It just said it was going to when I started writing the post. It went from 50 min. eta to 7 hours to 2 1/2 hours, but only took 20 min. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

That really does sound like one of two problems: 

First, file system is fragmented very badly.  Solution, run the defragmentation utility which will probably take overnight or longer:

Second, you are full of viruses that are sending all kinds of junk onto the Internet.  Since the operations you are doing do not require the network, try disconnecting and see if this helps.  If it does, do a deep virus scan.

If you decide to run the defragmenter, run the disk cleanup utility first.  This will get rid of any temporary junk.

When running file system cleanup utilities, nothing else can be run.  Hands off while either of these run.  NO BROWSING.  In fact, disconnect.