Need assitance identifying previously used plugins

[chick3n 3]

Hello all! First I'd like to say thanks for your time and help in advance.

I've been playing SimCity on and off for years. Last time I played was about 2 years ago and I was really dedicated in finishing a whole region. I had some good cities going and was learning to use NAM and just designing in general. Anyways long story short, I lost access to my SimCity 4 data since last year due to covid happening and other reasons (had to move out of the university town I was in to go back with parents) and last month I was barely able to retrieve my data. Unfortunately, I can't use the SSD to boot Windows but I do have access to my SimCity 4 folder. So I installed SimCity 4 on my new laptop, copied over the old SimCity 4 folder from my old Documents and was trying to identify which plugins I had installed in the old SSD so I could install them on my current laptop.

I am confused because I did not organize stuff properly and was wondering if someone with more experience could help me identify some of the plugins I previously had? Also, could majority of those plugin files just be copied over to my new SimCity 4 folder to make them functional?

I do have a folder I named "Mods" with lots of zips so I am assuming majority of the plugins I have used previously will be there but I want to confirm with someone who has more experience. (I used to keep a copy of the plugins I installed in case things like this would happen). The folder I have "Files improtant to SimCity" contains patch updates and the NAM so I got those installed in my current set up already.

List of plugins I was able to identify:

NAM

IH_Census I am assuming is the IH missing $$$ jobs fix

X-Ports

is z__NAM part of the NAM installation?

 

Thanks again for your time.

[CaptCity 4,695]

Hi @chick3n

Your first image appears to be things you've installed into the Plugins folder. These will appear in the game as they were design to do so if installed correctly. It does look like you were using a pre-NAM 37 version since you have both a Network Addon Mod folder and a z__NAM folder. They are both installed with the older NAM versions. However, newer NAM versions (37 and later) no longer have both. If you do decide to install the newest NAM 42, you will need to remove both the Network Addon Mod folder and the z__NAM folders manually.

The other folders look to be either individual creators' material (SimGoober and PEGPROD) or possibly dependencies (BSC and CSX). Dependencies are files required by others to appear and/or function correctly. The other individual files appear to be ones you've installed. The file types - dat, Model, desc, and Lot - are the types of files read by the game. Any files with these extensions will be read and used in the game.

Your 'Mod' folder in the second image is in the Plugins, so if it contains any of the above file types, they will be read into the game. This includes those that might be in the sub-folders. The folder does contain several zip files. These might be things you've stored since many are the zips of the files in your first image. The BSCCleanitol file is a zip that contains a program that can be used to check for dependencies and/or remove older file versions of newer installs. It is not an actual game plugin.

Even though these zips are in a folder that is in the Plugins, they will not be used in the game since they are not the types recognized by the game. You could easily store them outside the Plugins folder for easier organization. If the Buildings, SPAM (an agricultural Mod from Pegasus), and Everything for... folders contain zips, they can also be removed from the Plugins.

Hope this helps a little. Let us know more specifics if you have further questions.

 

[chick3n 3]

Thank you for the detailed answer and help CaptCity I believe I may have created that Mods folder to keep mostly everything I installed/added in one place for future reference. I will go ahead and store that somewhere else where it won't cause confusion to future me again I actually copied mostly everything (except some of those folders) and paste it onto my new plugins directory and everything is working good so far. Thanks again for the tremendous help! Can't wait to dive deep into SimCity 4 during my slow days at work