poll Plugin folder size: 2019 Edition (and beyond)

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The number one best thing is to use a solid state drive. I was amazed when I switched over. I ran several tests using a stopwatch and I believe it came out like 50% faster from a cold start to inside a fully developed city. ( @Cyclone Boom might even have those percentages since he saves our chat logs. )

I can confirm. I've searched through our exported chats (almost 2 million words this year) and found said percentages.

As follows:

Cori's SSD Test
Speed Improvement Results

• 37% faster boot the comp
• 67% faster load the region
• 54% faster load the city tile
• 14% faster rotate (camera)
• Negligible difference for the Save or the Exit to Region.

 

@spiritualfire

So on average and it was indeed around a 50% speed improvement discovered there.

Of course, these figures are only a baseline indication which will vary between hardware setups (including the SATA type for the connection), but it does give an idea to what extent a SSD can improve read and write performance. It's worth mentioning too how this was only testing with a limited suite of plugins. Having more custom content installed would surely result in even more significant of a speed boost overall compared to how regular HDDs perform.

The testing with loading was done in a large developed rural tile (I6) featuring terraced hills and clusters of towns.

See the post Cori made here for a visual summary:

(If scrolling down, the one after this also has an updated comparison with more development.)

 

In a densely populated tile with skyscrapers, or even if using loads of MMPs placed for decorative purposes, the proportional gains may well be more notable too with the rate at which objects are loaded into memory. For that reason also, the time taken to load the game will be the immediate major difference.

To use a Solid State Drive is also something I'd like to look into some day. They really can improve loading speeds way more than DAT Packing, although that can collectively help still. With far better reported reliability than they used to have, and storage becoming larger and cheaper, they're certainly a smart purchase. To install your operating system on the SSD is also a wise idea, because then you'll notice all around improved performance on your computer as a whole too.

[markussaage 762]

On 12.8.2019 at 7:10 PM, spiritualfire said:

@CorinaMarie Thank you Corina, as always. I know the SSD has come a long way but I remember their longevity being in question. What is the best brand to look into?

Well, I can also confirm the longevity of SSDs. I was ten years ago, when I bought my first two SSDs from OCZ, 60GB each. One died already, the second one is still alive though. A little later I got myself two 120GB OCZ 3 again, and games were installed on this one, SC4 specifically. One died already again after 8 years or so, the other one is still in use. All broken ones have been replaced by SanDisk SSDs, because they were on sale. There fast and reliable. BUT...

ONE thing, that everybody need to keep in mind while using SSDs is, when they die, they die without warning. Both times it happened to me, it was like shutting down my computer like normal, everything was just fine, at the next start the SSD was gone. Once it happened with one SSD, that had Windows on it, the second one with my games on it. Others then regular harddisks the don't make any weird noises before they fail, because they don't have any no moving parts inside.

So, it is VERY IMPORTANT to have a full BACKUP of all your data, that you store on the SSDs, and a full OS backup, just in case it's a SSD you use for your OS and you want to save some time restoring it. Lucky me, I had backups, that alone saved me a lot of time and headache.

So, all I can say is, SSDs are reliable, but you have to have a backup, and everybody should have one anyway, even when using regular hard disk drives!

Kind regards!

[CorinaMarie 29,899]

20 minutes ago, markussaage said:

So, it is VERY IMPORTANT to have a full BACKUP of all your data, that you store on the SSDs, and a full OS backup, just in case it's a SSD you use for your OS and you want to save some time restoring it.

Good point!

I personally use Macrium Reflect for a whole hard drive image backup. I've set up this comp so only the OS and all my program installations (including SC4) are on my SSD drive C and then I keep all my data on a much larger platter drive D. So, when I make my image backup of drive C each Saturday it only takes 12 minutes. 8 of that is the actual image creation and 4 is the verify phase.

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

Indeed. It really is so important for everyone who uses a computer to backup their data regularly.

Thankfully for me I've never experienced a drive failure. I'm hoping that doesn't happen, and so far so good after 7 years and counting on this comp. However that doesn't mean one might not happen in 314 seconds after posting this. The same for an hour from now, or a day, a week, a month, a year later, or whenever.

For backing up my files, I use a tool named FreeFileSync which I've found to be useful. As the name goes and it's a fully free tool which is open source. There are all kinds of configuration rules which can be setup, and the idea being to ensure newly created or modified files are copied over to a target drive. This can either be another internal one or an externally connected drive. It's possible to have a direct mirror where both sides are kept in complete sync, or to use a versioning system where older files are retained. It's possible to have such a program run automatically too, and for SC4 usage to periodically copy all plugins and regions.

Another useful tool I've heard of which works along the same idea is Karen's Replicator.

In all cases...

It is a very wise idea to use the "3-2-1 Rule" for backups.

That's 3 copies, on 2 different devices, and with at least 1 copy being fully offline (such as on an external drive).

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

3 hours ago, markussaage said:

when they die, they die without warning.

That's one reason I just went to using a RAM drive. The other reasons were that I already have more than twice as much RAM as the game could use, and the other is that I don't want to pay for an SSD until I find employment.

I wrote two scripts: One runs at boot to load the RAM drive with my plugins and region. The second launches the game and then (on exit) x-copies back any cities that are newer in RAM than on disk. I posted them around here somewhere; a little searching should find them.

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

2 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

I posted them around here somewhere; a little searching should find them.

Found your topic from a quick search for "RAM" in my browsing history.

As follows:

 

[RipRap 4,400]

Plugin Size: 8.64 GB. My strategy is to have it maintained but packing a punch and I tend to mix a lot but I don't go for a BAT Fest. As for regions, It's about 1.4GB. I only have 2-3 active regions at the moment and it's not that bad. 

Backups: I follow @Cyclone Boom's 3-2-1 policy, with copies on my 3.5" hard drive, one zipped on another hard drive, one stored on an SSD and an online (OneDrive Copy). 

[markussaage 762]

6 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

It is a very wise idea to use the "3-2-1 Rule" for backups.

That's 3 copies, on 2 different devices, and with at least 1 copy being fully offline (such as on an external drive).

Very good point here. I made it more the "6-5-3 rule" in my case: 6 full copies, 5 different drives, 3 fully offline external drives. 'cause you can never be too careful nowadays.
And remember Murphy's Law: When it can go wrong, it will go wrong, meaning, the day you need your backup, it won't work!

Ain't that encouraging?!

And another thing. I use a RAM disk, too. But just for the TEMP stuff, you know?! But with the age of my rig, 12 years, the amount of available RAM is limited because of the age of the hardware. But I'm good with that.
Well I probably forgot to mention, that those SSDs were over 9 (nine) years old, when they died. So they were way passed the MTBF determined by the manufacturers. The thing with the backup drives is that most of the times people don't pay too much attention to what they buy. They use a cheap, big hard drive, that isn't meant to be used for backup. IMHO the backup drive should be the most expensive HDD you can get, that kind they use in Data Centers.

Kind regards!

[spiritualfire 138]

I forgot to ask you guys the other day: 

Can the "z_" rename help load the game faster with mods being loaded last? Rather, do all the mods in Plugins need to be renamed with "z_" to help load faster?

And if so, does the containing folder or the file itself need to be renamed? What is the difference in "z_" versus "zz_", "zzz_", or "zzzz_"?

How do I know which mod files should be loaded last to absolutely last?

.......... Or have I got myself into a crazy state asking too many questions????????

[CorinaMarie 29,899]

32 minutes ago, spiritualfire said:

Can the "z_" rename help load the game faster with mods being loaded last?

Nope. The loading last bit is because some mods are designed to override other things and whichever loads after another with the same IID is the one the game will be using cause it overwrites in memory the previously read one(s). The same total number of plugins will be loaded no matter what order they are in.

 

32 minutes ago, spiritualfire said:

.......... Or have I got myself into a crazy state asking too many questions????????

Again, nope. That's what ST is all about. Asking questions and then peeps helping out.

Start with this thread: Am I the only one having trouble organizing the plugin folder? and follow the linkys in it too. Then feel free to ask more questions which will likely be more specific. You can do that here or by quoting something in any thread you find on the topic and asking there.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, spiritualfire said:

How do I know which mod files should be loaded last to absolutely last?

Much of that is personal taste (which competing mod do you want taking precedence?)

To discover mod collisions, run DataNode and painstakingly walk through the overrides. Most will be mods overriding Maxis. Some will be mods overriding a few elements of other mods exactly as you want. Some will be optional parts of one mod all installed when you should have just one option and none of the others; go back to the readme file and follow directions for paring unwanted options (keeping unused options somewhere outside your plugins folder so you can swap options if your tastes / needs ever change).

And then you'll probably find cases where a mod you want is being overridden by a part of a mod that was supposed to be recessive. That's when you create folders and/or move files to change the load order.

In this process, you may find some mods are 100% overridden by other mods. This usually happens when a big mega-pack has replaced several earlier texture and/or prop packs. After assuring yourself that every element in an old mod is really supposed to be replaced by elements of a new mod, you can go ahead and remove the old mod from plugins (and move its source zip from downloads to some deprecated bin).

And don't feel like you must use escalating zzzzzz naming. I use most of the alphabet to sort my top-level subfolder names inside plugins. That makes them much easier to read than all of those zzz's.

[spiritualfire 138]

@jeffryfisher the ony mods I have worth anything are the grassy rock mod, the Brigantine water mod, the NAM, the CAM, the IRM, and one automata mod.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

4 hours ago, spiritualfire said:

the CAM, the IRM,

These don't play nicely without effort. See

 

[SD40-2 36]

With a fresh install with only one custom region, no cities, and only NAM and a water mod in place, all of my folders are quite small as of now. 

Rather amusingly, my plugins folder is approx 4 times larger (655 MB) compared to all my region folders (153 MB.), because of NAM.