Pictures, plugins and Game Performance

[mrbarham 4]

I noticed an installer that stated that pictures (that most buildings come with) degrade game performance if they are in your plugins folder. Is this true?

Do any other files other then dat files do this?
Should I delete all the readmes and pics that came with my downloads from my plugin folder?

(For other researchers, Duplicate Dat files sould be deleted also)

Note:I looked around the forum, (specifically the five pages of the general simcity discussion form) and I didn't find this question about game performance. (I hope I didn't miss it)

[rhino120 2]

Having those extraneous files (readme and pics) in your plugins folder will increase the time it takes for the game to load, so it does slow down in that respect.  There is currently an experiment going on by some of the members of CSX trying to determine the effect plugins have on the actual game performance.  The thread is here .

Hope that helps,

 

rhino

[pnorrell 4]

I always delete the readmes and pics from the plugins folder. There has long been debate about the effect they have on loading time and game play and I'm not sure there's any consensus, but I figure even if they might hurt game performance, it's better to get rid of them.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I agree with pnorrell here. Leaving them inside your plugins folder doesn't have the slightest advantage - unless you don't keep an archive of your downloads somewhere else. I have a download archive and an active plugins folder. The archive contains all versions of a building plus screenshots plus readme. The active plugins folder only contains the building version I'm using, no readmes and no screenshots.

Besides, I would guess that there is an effect. Wanna know why? Ok, let's say you want to deactivate a lot for the time being. I thought Hey, why not just rename the file undesired_item.sc4lot to undesired_item.REMOVED? The effect was - none. So I found out that SC4 doesn't care at all about file extensions and reads everything it can interpret.

Now how does the game know which files it can interpret and which ones it can't? Clearly, SC4 doesn't have an extension filter. So I guess it opens the file and reads the first few bytes in the file header. My guess is that there are some markers that enable SC4 to tell Hey, this is an SC4 file, no matter what it's called!

And I would further guess that this process of blindly opening all files and checking the header occupies some processing power and memory resources.

Just a theory, of course, mere speculation. I'm no programmer at all, just trying to use common sense (if I have any). And since, like mentioned above, there is no advantage in keeping the files inside your plugins, and at least a potential advantage in moving them elswewhere, this is what I do.

[iquere 2]

Just delete them. It's a very small chance that you want to read them again, but if you want to, lay them in another folder. That's my method.

[Bones1 96]

I seriously doubt you were able to measure performance or memory usage accurately enough to determine that renaming a plugin had no affect.

I am 95% positive that SC4 does use a filename extension to determine what to load and what not to load. And even if it doesn't use the filename, it must use a header format within the file itself.

 

The game does not load jpeg, text files, etc. Having those in your plugin directory can only affect how long it takes the game to look through your plugins and decide what to load. This should be in the order of milliseconds.

 

So, it's no big deal. Leave everything in your plugin directory. It doesn't matter.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Date: 1/17/2006 7:34:20 AM
Author: Bones1
I seriously doubt you were able to measure performance or memory usage accurately enough to determine that renaming a plugin had no affect.

quote>
Did I say I measured performance? I tried to disable one of two ploppable test lots temporarily by renaming the extension, and in game, both lots still showed - which proves that both lot files got read no matter what the extension was.

I am 95% positive that SC4 does use a filename extension to determine what to load and what not to load. And even if it doesn't use the filename, it must use a header format within the file itself.

quote>
The above paragraph proves that the filename extension is not filtered. Your second sentence basically repeats what I said in my first reply here: The program reads the header.

The game does not load jpeg, text files, etc.

quote>
No, because the header doesn't show anything SC4-relevant.

Having those in your plugin directory can only affect how long it takes the game to look through your plugins and decide what to load.

quote>
This is what I was getting at.

This should be in the order of milliseconds.

quote>
I have no idea about that, but I would guess that you would never notice it unless you looked for it very thoroughly, and with appropriate measuring equipment.

In the end, it mostly depends on how you like to organize your stuff. I'd guess that there is a performance penalty, but the effect is probably negligible. Anyway, since I have two bunches of plugins, I keep the readmes with the bunch that doesn't get loaded.

[mrbarham 4]

Date: 1/17/2006 6:51:47 AM
Author: T Wrecks
Besides, I would guess that there is an effect. Wanna know why? Ok, let's say you want to deactivate a lot for the time being. I thought 'Hey, why not just rename the file undesired_item.sc4lot to undesired_item.REMOVED'? The effect was - none. So I found out that SC4 doesn't care at all about file extensions and reads everything it can interpret.

quote>

Thanks guys I guess I will just go ahead and delete the files since as T Wrecks said there is no real positive effect to having them.

I wonder though from what you said if the the game is still reading the file from the program file plugin dir and thats why they show up. or does deleteing the file from the my doc's folder also end up deleting it from the prog file when the game checks it. I guess I will test that one on my own. thanks also rhino for the link to the right thread.

[pnorrell 4]

Date: 1/17/2006 9:56:07 AM Author: mrbarham

Date: 1/17/2006 6:51:47 AM Author: T Wrecks Besides, I would guess that there is an effect. Wanna know why? Ok, let's say you want to deactivate a lot for the time being. I thought 'Hey, why not just rename the file undesired_item.sc4lot to undesired_item.REMOVED'? The effect was - none. So I found out that SC4 doesn't care at all about file extensions and reads everything it can interpret.

quote> Thanks guys I guess I will just go ahead and delete the files since as T Wrecks said there is no real positive effect to having them. I wonder though from what you said if the the game is still reading the file from the program file plugin dir and thats why they show up. or does deleteing the file from the my doc's folder also end up deleting it from the prog file when the game checks it. I guess I will test that one on my own.  thanks also rhino for the link to the right thread.

quote>

Just to be clear, whether you leave the .txt, .htm, .jpg or other non-SC4 files in your plugins folder or not, you should only have them in 1 place. Any given file should either be in your My Documents/SimCity 4/Plugins or Program Files/SimCity 4/Plugins - never in both. If you have duplicates of the same files in both your plugins folders, just removing the duplicates ought to give you a boost in performance.

[jabezscratch 159]

On a somewhat related note to this thread, before launching the game, I've tried going into the SC4 Plugins folder in Windows Exporer, let the folder populate itself (which, with about 1.5Gigs of plugins, takes a few seconds), then I launch the game.  My theory is that I am letting my comp cache the plugins and, thus, improve performance.  I'll be the first to admit that this theory may be seriously flawed and I cannot back up any claim of performance improvement w/ stats, but I figure that it can't hurt.

 

Can anyone comment on this, i.e., whether going into the Plugin folder and letting it populate the files in it would actually improve game performance??

[dgrid 0]

Date: 1/17/2006 11:42:01 AM Author: jabezscratch

On a somewhat related note to this thread, before launching the game, I've tried going into the SC4 Plugins folder in Windows Exporer, let the folder populate itself (which, with about 1.5Gigs of plugins, takes a few seconds), then I launch the game.  My theory is that I am letting my comp cache the plugins and, thus, improve performance.  I'll be the first to admit that this theory may be seriously flawed and I cannot back up any claim of performance improvement w/ stats, but I figure that it can't hurt.

Can anyone comment on this, i.e., whether going into the Plugin folder and letting it populate the files in it would actually improve game performance??

jabezscratch- I doubt that will help. Windows might cache the filelist in some form, but I doubt it will pass that cache onto SC.

Worth a try tho, let us know if it makes a difference.

 

[Bones1 96]

Date: 1/17/2006 7:57:38 AM Author: T Wrecks 

 Did I say I measured performance? I tried to disable one of two ploppable test lots temporarily by renaming the extension, and in game, both lots still showed - which proves that both lot files got read no matter what the extension was.

quote>

 

I believe your testing methodology is flawed.

 

Try deleting the test lot files completely. You'll get the same result. The game remembers some of the graphics of lots, even when you delete them. Eventually, the game will rebuild the lot with a valid one. Or, you can bulldoze the corrupt lot.

 

Basically, your test proved nothing about how the game reads plugins.

 

Deleting, or renaming the extension. It's all the same. The game only reads files with extensions that it knows about. It's doesn't care about jpeg, txt, etc.

[Urbangrl1nine82 0]

I always thought that you were just supposed to copy the .dat file, and the dependecies in to the plugins folder and just trash or save the readme in another folder...