How to Optimize Mod Folder?

[FoxtrotF 6]

Hello, could you please give me some help with mods. I installed SimCity 4 Rush Hour with latest NAM, spend some time to figure out how to run it smoothly, for me it was purchase GOG version (Steam doesn't worked that) and run it via SC4Launcher App, configuring just via command arguments was not give an positive effect. Then I was able to launch it, but performance was terrible (scrolling/zoom freezes), then I configure and add my Video Card to .sgr configuration files, disabled the shadows, and it start to work a way better on small city of 200K and region total something like 2M, this was with just NAM activated, BUT when I'm switching to the version with mods (4Gb.) in total, same region start to having issues with scrolling, not too much heavy, but pretty visible. Is there any way I can optimize mod folders? May be use some apps? How guys do you managing your plugins? I guess there should be some threads or posts, about it, please share your advises or links.
Thanks,  very appreciate your help with my issue.

[twalsh102 1,601]

There are actually quite a few topics around relating to the subject of how best to organize your Plugins folder.  The trick is often trying to find them.  Many good pieces of advice might be found in topics actually not having anything to do with organize your Plugins folder.

There is no 100% right or wrong answer other than not organizing the folder at all.

In general, organizing your Plugins folder has little to do with performance.  You do want to make sure that no non-game related files are in your Plugins.  So all documentation and graphics files that might be included in a download should be removed from your Plugins folder.  In the end, the only types of files that should be in your Plugins folder are those with the following file extensions:  .SC4Lot, .SC4Desc, .SC4Model, .dat.  Any other files WILL slow down loading time as the Game will parse every file, even if it isn't game-related.  As much as possible, you want to avoid duplicates as well.

Some players will recommend that you datpack your Plugins folder (or at least most of it).  Others recommend that installing the Game and locating your Plugins folder on an SSD will boost performance (somewhat).  The vanilla game will run adequately on a computer with fairly low-end specs.  But as you add more and more "stuff" to such a computer, performance certainly takes a hit.

You've got the versions (GOG) of the game that the staff and many players recommend.  I too use the GOG version and use SC4Launcher.  My current Plugins folder varies from 7-9 GB.  As you add more stuff, your computer needs to have a faster processor and more memory.  Don't forget that this game cannot make use of multiple processors without eventually crashing.  So having more cores and/or hyper threading doesn't help any with performance.

The last part of "performance" issues is often that of expectations.  The game was written in 2003, so one usually assumes that it will run super-fast on most current computers.  The problem is that the creators of the game had no idea that the amount of content available for use with the game will have absolutely exploded in the 16 years since it was written (if they even had a clue that the game would remain popular this long).

Getting back to organizing your Plugins, understand that it is actually more about being able to find what you already have, rather than anything else.  Because of this, how someone else might have organized their Plugins folder may or may not work for you, as everybody's brain works differently.  If one thinks about their Plugins folder as a physical file cabinet, and all one's downloads as separate physical documents, how would one organize that file cabinet to make things easy for one to find?  If one doesn't know where to look, how can one avoid duplicates?

I can certainly give you some examples of how my Plugins is organized to give you some ideas, but again, my way may or may not work for you.

Finally, just some common terminology usage that will help you with your interactions with others community members:

Technically, everything that is added to the game could be considered a Mod or Add-on.  However, as used by most long-time members of the community, Mod is generally used to mean a download that modifies some aspect of the Game mechanics, i.e. something like CAM, NAM, SPAM, demand modifiers, terrain controllers, etc., as opposed to a Lot, Texture, or Prop. 

[rsc204 21,808]

1 hour ago, twalsh102 said:

The last part of "performance" issues is often that of expectations.  The game was written in 2003, so one usually assumes that it will run super-fast on most current computers.  The problem is that the creators of the game had no idea that the amount of content available for use with the game will have absolutely exploded in the 16 years since it was written (if they even had a clue that the game would remain popular this long).

What's really amazing though is that despite how far we're pushing the game, it still holds up. But sure, even with a very fast and expensive machine, you just can't take advantage of it enough to prevent the inevitable point where performance suffers.

If what you are most interested in is performance, note that simply moving files around will have little effect. Because the time it takes to read them all on startup or access them during play is dictated by how fast your computer can get data from your Hard Drive to RAM. If you've a spinning-disk drive, you have to also factor in seek-time, since the drive needs to physically find the location of each piece of data. Even with data-optimisation, such data is rarely able to be accessed in parallel. This is why SSDs are such a good investment, especially considering todays prices. They don't seek data, they know where to go to get it, not to mention how much faster they can read and write it.

If an SSDs not an option or you want to further enhance one, you can also DAT-Pack your plugins. Because of the seek time issue, having the same data stored in less files, is quicker to read than in many files. DAT-Packer asks you which folders to Pack inside your Plugins folder, then you run the process and out comes the optimised large packed files. Whilst with an SSD these benefits are marginal, I've noticed a distinct improvement loading the MMP menu, which was stuffed full of 100's of items. Before packing, a few second freeze occurred when opening the MMP menu, afterwards, it was pretty instantaneous. So it seems to me, grouping folders to pack around the menu objects reside in could well be beneficial. The drawback... it's hard to know what files are in your Plugins if they are packed, making it more of a problem to find problems. So first you want to be sure your Plugins are all working nicely before starting out with DAT-Packing. But you should ideally move the original unpacked folders to a safe location after creating their replacement packed DATs. When you add or change content in future, delete the original Packed DATs and work with the UnDAT-Packed folders you previously moved. If you don't have an SSD, you really should DATPack your Plugins IMHO.

Most GPUs, even low-mid end ones can more than handle SC4's meagre requirements. Note that driver support is most likely to be a problem in this area, if your hardware/drivers don't support legacy DX9 modes, SC4 may be unable to use it or work with it well. Ideally, you want to be running DirectX, this provides the optimum experience. Note further that most problems come from Intel integrated GPUs, which don't all support SC4 well. If you've a laptop with both, you want to force the dedicated card to be used with SC4.

Provided your system has 8GB RAM and you've installed the 4GB Patch, along with using a 64-bit version of Windows, Memory isn't an issue either. If your system has less, that's not necessarily a problem, depending on how many other apps you are using in the background.

SC4 typically bottlenecks with the CPU, as mentioned you only get one single-threaded core to use, if you prefer the game not crashing constantly at least. As you add more and more content, place or grow more items in a city and grow your population, the number of calculations needed to run the game grow exponentially. The point being, even the fastest CPU you can buy, will still eventually succumb to the numbers. The good thing is that usually this only occurs when certain background processes are ran, the most intensive being that which calculates routes for all sims to get to work. So you might have a bit of slow down a few times each in-game year, it's not usually worse.

[FoxtrotF 6]

@twalsh102, @rsc204 Thank you guys for the such answers!
@twalsh102, Do you have sets, and switching between them? I mean, something like today I want to build specific area type, so I'm switching to this set, or just one for the whole kind of situations? If you can, please share you folder organization, just to see how it look on top level.
@rsc204, I'm running it on ssd, Will search for the DAT-Pack, never heard about it before, Guess that DAT-Pack and SSD will be beneficial. Already experimented with CPU, setting to all cores working very smooth on small cities, but crashing game with the large ones. Also do the option something like "Amount of cars" (don't remember exactly the name in graphics option) just visual, or it shrinks the amount of calculations for the traffic simulation? Thanks for point on 4Gb patch, previously already use it for the Anno 1404. To bad that this game was not developed by id software, so we've already got access to the source code by this date.:D
Is there any tool to check all missing dependencies in LOTs, Props?

 

[rsc204 21,808]

1 hour ago, FoxtrotF said:

If you can, please share you folder organization, just to see how it look on top level.

Note SC4 has two Plugin folders, one in the Installation Directory and a second in your user / documents folder. As a developer, I tend to use many sets of plugins to switch between for various tasks. I even have a couple that I use for playing the game for real .

Inside the main install DIR for SC4 I have currently 8 sets of Plugins folders, which don't get loaded by the game.  The second folder shows the SimCity 4\Plugins folder, which contains the current set of installed Plugins (Plugins RTMT), the contents of which are shows in the third folder below.

When I want to switch, I move the current Plugins folder out of Plugins and back to the  previous folder (SimCity 4). Then move the set I want to use from there into the Plugins folder. Note that my Plugins folder itself contains three .dll files/fixes, custom Backgrounds and a few tools/fixes which I use with every Plugins set.

The layout of the actual set of Plugins is usually very similar. I try to keep an organised top-level, but this is a pretty basic example here. I've DAT-Packed some content selectively too. I don't tend to do a lot of that with development sets, but my main playing folder is hugely optimised, which is very time-consuming.

Lastly, you may have realised I'm not showing the User dir Plugins folders here, but I do still use it. I tend to keep that for files I'm literally in the process of editing, once anything I'm creating, modifying or adding to my game, such files get copied to the relevant Plugin sets in the Install dir. This kind of separation helps my workflow, but is really unnecessary for most users. I just figured I'd show my method, some might find it interesting/useful.

1 hour ago, FoxtrotF said:

Is there any tool to check all missing dependencies in LOTs, Props?

Datanode is a very powerful tool that can do this. Bear in mind whilst tools can tell you something is missing, they won't be able to tell you what, since there is no master reference for all content.