Loading time questions

[AOM1550 27]

hello everyone, reading comments about loading the region and some city, understanding that the larger the region, the longer it will take to load, and a doubt, it is true that even if one has a more modern computer (mine has this configuration : Ryzen 5 3400g, 480GB nvme m.2 SSD, 16GB DDR4, no graphics card) won't the game load structures and texture tiles faster?
well referring to the same theme of the complements, the same as me at least, I am not checking if any file is duplicated or obsolete, only right now I have seen that some of them I do not even know what they are, only files with numbers and letters out of order, that it makes you bored, but hey, it's your own fault if you want the current gameplay to be better.
high SimCity 4 forever!!

PD: I attach a bmp image file of the current region that I have in the project

[Ulisse Wolf 4,414]

There are many factors to take into account with loading times. 

1. If you have too many mods the times become long. Solution---> Datpacking
2. NAM also increases loading times. Solution---> Datpacking
3. No one knows the limits of SC4 for regions. 
4. SC4 uses one core. There is a bug that prevents execution for multi core systems. 
5. SC4 uses 2GB of RAM (4GB of RAM if you run the patch). If SC4 has access to more RAM memory it can speed up the time

[Wiimeiser 444]

On 09/04/2022 at 2:08 AM, ulisse said:

No one knows the limits of SC4 for regions. 

If the region exceeds ~90-96 horizontally it breaks, not sure what the limit is vertically.

On 09/04/2022 at 2:08 AM, ulisse said:

SC4 uses one core. There is a bug that prevents execution for multi core systems. 

The game predates multi-core systems (other than the Sega Saturn, of course)

[rsc204 21,817]

On 08/04/2022 at 6:08 PM, ulisse said:

• SC4 uses one core. There is a bug that prevents execution for multi core systems. 

There is no bug, SC4 has no multi-core code because unsurprisingly (shipping as it did before multi-core processors were 'a thing'), Maxis would never had coded it to work that way. What is happening is that Windows sees the application using multiple processes, thinks 'ah, I can improve performance if I offload each to a separate core', but instead this is what leads to problems. Because in order for those two processes to work, they occasionally need to be in-sync. The code wasn't designed to handle such situations and therefore in these moments, instead of one waiting for the other, it doesn't know to do this. If these processes get out of sync, you get a CTD, which is why everyone should disable this function of Windows by using the -CPUCount:1 command. Note this is only an issue if you are using Windows Vista or later and have a multi-core CPU, so it applies to pretty much 99%+ of PC users.

On 08/04/2022 at 6:08 PM, ulisse said:

• If you have too many mods the times become long. Solution---> Datpacking
• NAM also increases loading times. Solution---> Datpacking

Just beware that whilst DATPacking isn't a bad idea, the improvment in loading times depends very much on your hardware, there is only so much optimisation you can make. If you are using a traditional HDD (spinning disk), then DATPacking can make a huge difference for loading times, because it prevents having to find (seek) as many files, in other words less files = less looking for them and thus faster loading overall. SSDs don't have seek times, they don't need to look for anything, instead they have something like a map (index), so when a request to read data comes, it knows exactly where that data is and can access it in nanoseconds. DATPacking can still have some benefits for users with SSDs, but it's going to be very minor in respect of loading times, the larger benefit can be a slightly more responsive game and quicker switching between certain menus/overlays.

Whilst your modern system is probably vastly more capable than SC4 is able to take advantage of, the same would apply to most 10-15 year old machines too. We know from testing that beyond a certain point, SC4 simply can not load data any faster, even if your hardware theoretically can, but this makes total sense. Hardware and Software are intertwined, specifically software is written with APIs that handle many functions, this is in essence what DirectX is, a series of APIs to make use of hardware (drivers) related to gaming. The code for older APIs is simply not written that it can make use of many of the advancements in hardware, that have been instrumental in making computers faster. Similarly, the code for SC4 itself would have been coded to be optimised for the technology of its time. Often in such cases the software is reliant on compatibility or legacy code in order to run on a modern system, this adds a potential additional 'cost', further slowing the process.

Ultimately no matter how fast your computer is, everyone will run into performance issues playing eventually, which degrade further as more buildings grow, populations increase and items are added to your city, this is quite normal. Likewise if you are using the Full/RHW controller option from the NAM, you have to load millions of additional lines of RUL code on startup, however this only needs to happen for the first city you load after starting the game. Lastly, be sure to remove any non-SC4 files from your Plugins folder, it's quite easy to end up with many readmes, image files and other things that SC4 has no use for. If these files reside in the Plugins folder, the game checks each one to see if it contains SC4 content on startup, removing them if you have many such files, can make quite a difference in terms of loading times.