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What Loads First?

Started by PaPa-J, March 14, 2018, 08:15:00 PM

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PaPa-J

Ok, just curious.  When SimCity loads what loads first?

Game Directory Plugins or Documents Plugins?

Root Directory or Sub-Directories?

Are Sub-Directories loaded alphabetically or by date of creation? I would assume alphabetically since some textures and updates are put in a folder with zzzz in for the beginning of the name.

Do all plugins load or just the ones that you are currently using in the city you loaded?
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woodb3kmaster

If I remember correctly, the load order is as follows:

Documents plugins load before install directory plugins.
Subfolders are loaded before files in the root folder, and they are loaded in Windows alphabetical order (which has some quirks vis-à-vis punctuation, numerals, etc.).

As for which plugins load, by default, all your plugins are loaded when you start the game. You can change this behavior by using a third-party startup manager to create plugin profiles for specific regions or even cities, as well as handle other startup options, such as shortcut commands. Note that, for the plugin profile of your choice to take effect, you usually have to start the game from within the startup manager.

Anyone who knows better is welcome to correct me on anything I got wrong.

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fantozzi

#2
There is a wiki entry that might answer your questions: http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Plugin_Loading_Order. Or here: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=10542.0

Well, yes - it's important to know when dealing with mods as some mods work with overrides to change aspects of the game and when two mods do similar things one has to consider which should overwrite what and therefore: where to place in load order.

An example for a discussion about correct load order can be found f.e. here: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/73083-general-load-order/.


Data is continously read from harddrive. F.e. when you zoom in out or scroll from one edge to the city on slow hard drives you can see that it take a few seconds until the images are loaded. On startup, to my knowledge, all IDs are read and 'indexed' (on double IDs the first one will be ignored) - that's where dat files can speed up starting time as they contain pre-index of the contained files sc4 can read.

Example: if you have the same lot twice, one time in a subfolder and one time in the root directory of the plugin folder, the lot in the root directory will be skipped/ignored on startup (same id).

mgb204

Generally speaking you shouldn't place plugins into the Installation Directories plugins folder. It's a recipe for problems, if you don't know what you are doing. The exception to this rule would be .DLL modifications for the game, which ideally should always be placed here, ensuring they load first.

The Install Dir Plugins folder will load entirely before the equivalent in Documents.

When looking at the folder structure, files in the root folder load first, then subfolders, both are done alphabetically. Again there is a caveat, which is that all non-.DAT files are loaded first, a second pass of all folders will load all .DAT files thereafter. Refer to the last post in the thread Fantozzi linked to, that really is the most accurate and detailed list I know of.

PaPa-J

Thanks for the responses everyone!  This is great information to know.  Should help in future endeavors.

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Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.