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Re-Building Plugins folder.

Started by eggman121, June 01, 2017, 12:15:55 AM

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eggman121

Hello everyone.

Apart from working on the NAM I also enjoy the delight of building my own cities.

But the legacy plugins folder that I have carried over from system to system in over the last decade has left me with alot of redundant and unnecessary files.

It can take a while to load even a large area but small populated city and navigating the menus are very tedious.

So I would like to start a discussion for new and old members about how they should go about rebuilding their plugins folder if the subject so desires.

With literally thousands of mods and dependencies out there across various websites it can be hard to navigate through all the different options.

So what I am asking is what would be the most efficient way to go about downloading mods (legally of course  ;) ) and making sure they suit your needs?

In my instance I am looking at mods that focus around transport.

These include railway stations/ depots, sea ports, airports and associated Lots.

But there is other things to consider like Power stations, Schools, Hospitals, Police stations, Fire Stations etc

In addition to add flavor to your cities there is a desire to have custom lots from small residential to Large skyscrapers.

To top it off you also have mods that affect the mechanics of the game.




So, I guess in essence I am asking for assistance on what downloads I should be looking for?

I would like to keep my plugins manageable and to do that I just want to download what I will use.

The start out would be the main plugins like the NAM and other related Mods but the essence is that rebuilding a plugin folder won't be easy.

I am going to organize my plugins this time to keep track of what is necessary and what is not.

I hope I am making sense here :-\ ?

-eggman121




art128

#1
Good thread idea.
Am myself a partisan of "the less the better" for the plugins. I only download what i believe would fit into the specific region i am making and trim down the unwcessary.
For example in a prop pack if i only use one prop, i will go into the dat file and manually remove all the restf. This makes going from a 12Mb file to a 350Kb one. Very usefull to reduce load times both ingame and PIMX wise.
Also if there is a building that i believe is not of quality high enough (not HD or bad night lights) i will see for a potential custom made replacement.

As for plugins organization i generally sort it in folders of ingame categories: (I would post a pic but am at work)



1- automatas
2- Props, Textures and exemplars (subfolders for each)
3- RCI (Subfolders for each and also separated between w2w, towers, houses.... )
4- Monuments (separated into government, stadiums, communication towers etc)
5- Parks (Subfolders for MMP, temples, sports...)
6- Civics (Subfolders for fire, police, hospitals and education)
7- Utilities (Subfolders for electricity, water and waste)
8- Transports (Subs for Trains, Misc, Port, Airport and Military)
Z- Mods

And of course the NAM trimmed down to only the components i will use.

If i need to rebuild the plugin folder from scratch i just move the current to an outside location ( preferably external hard drive or flash drive so that the NAM doesn't remove the old one during a fresh install.) Then i just go to the LEX and search by category. For the STEX i use Google or Yandex image search since the stex search has been broken for years. ( I search for something like "Simtropolis fire station" etc.. ) or just look on ST for a BATer i know the name and look at its releases.

Then i relot everything to fit my city style. :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

bombardiere


My approach is also "less is Better". I am not a big fan of huge Mega Prop packs. I use the common ones, such as Simgoober's, but other wise I use Lot editor / PIMX to replace or remove props and textures which are not in my favourite prop packs. I have my own list of prop packs I want to use and usually I can find a very good replacement.

I have some BATs I use in all regions. Mainly civic, utilities and transports. These and few buildings I really like form the main plugin folder. The rest of BATs I have organized into city specific folders. London / English, Hong Kong / Asian, Paris / French, Chicago / US. and so on.

I take these city specific folder in and out from SC 4 Plugin folder, depending on which region I am playing.

It has been a hard work to organise these folder, as I need to find suitable BATs for the city, test those and very often modify and / or relot the BATs. Unfortunately a large number of BATs, even if well modelled, have bad stats and I need to run it through PIMX. Luckily PIMX makes a quick adjustment very easy, just change the occupancy level and usually I get right balance.

Because of this, I have a separate download folder and when downloading a new BAT, I try to put it in a folder where I think it will fit the best. However, this download folder is a bit of mess and I have noticed that I keep downloading same models depending on what my citybuilding mood is.

I downloading criteria is often based on who is the Bat's author. I basically download everything from people who I know produce quality work. Such as Mattb325, Jasoncw or C.P. With some others I ponder that do I need this model and test it in PIMX. There are so many high quality BATs available that I feel that I can be picky.


Tyberius06

Nice thread, we can learn a lot about others habits. ;D
In my case I have a back up folder with all the stuff what I downloaded from the exchanges in the last 4 years. Actually 3 folders: one is quite organized (different subfolders for the main elements as res, com, ind, civics parks, mmps, trans mods, canals, embankments, seaport, other trans stuff etc), and 2 for the freshly downloaded not yet organized stuff. However my first cities contained everything what i had, nowadays I'm following the less is better philosophy, because I have no more "first cities" due to prop poy and critical failiures, and I'm working with a lot different kind building types, and hard to handle this only with the reader which sometimes breaks my plugins and gives me pains...
Transportation: I'm using the RTMT mod (waiting for the new one), that handles most of the on surfice transport and subways as well.
For industrial areas Simmer's huge railway lots give us a good use.
Mattb325 sunken railstation, and the sfbt team made some commuter rail statioms what I usually use.
The rest is depending of buiding style in rhe city.
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

Simmer2

Oh man don't get me started on this subject  :P

I have been procrastinating doing exactly that! My plugin folder is like a giant garden salad :D :D
I just never have the time to wade through 6GB of mods and pick and choose what I like  :( but it will have to be done sooner than later.

I feel for you.

Nick
________________________________________________________________________________

Kitsune

I organized mine by creator - except for some misc files that ended up in eithier an Other, Misc or zzzzz_misc folder. I just recently cleaned my 6gb plugins folder for the first time since 2005. I went through the menu ingames and looked at what I was not using and removed it from my plugin folders. It was a bit hit and miss but I would say it was about 90%. Still a few things I want to weed out. Also helps to have a hd that can do reads at 3200 mb/s .
~ NAM Team Member

eggman121

#6
Hello everyone.

I have started rebuilding my plugins folder but I can't seem to find the mod that removes dirt from agriculture zoning?

If anyone can help me track down the applicable mod I will be truly grateful :)

-eggman121

c.p.

Possibly PEG's Rural Roadways Mod? (Sorry I don't have a link).

eggman121

Thanks for the help C.P  :thumbsup:

It was actually the RUM for the RRW that solved the issue.

Thanks for the reply. You pointed me in the right direction  :thumbsup:

-eggman121

greenbelt

 :bnn:  I love this thread.  I am doing exactly this arduous (but rewarding) task right now.  After about 5 years I am returning to the game.  I used to keep all my SC4Custom Content (my precious) bag of goodies on DropBox.  It filled up my entire free allocation.  But then I faced a personal computing disaster and had to save all my personal family pictures - yep I deleted the SC4 stuff and rescued my family pictures instead.

Select a map.  Get the map into the game via SC4Mapper or whatever is needed.  Take a region picture and print it out.  Decide what I am going to do with this style wise.

Select my terrain and tree controllers.  Make sure I have all the dependencies.  Open up the map and tree every city square.

the latest NAM -- doesn't even need to be said.

Everything by PEGPROD -- just sayin'

OK so I am starting with my favorite creators.  Oh there are so many.  But this helps me keep the look or feel of my region consistent.  Each artist has his or her own style.

I am starting with the look/feel of my childhood North American small city/rural region.  That would be a 1950 and 1960 look and feel.  (CP, Mattb325, Spa, JMyers, Nexis - just for starters).  SmallTownUSA, etc. etc.  Of course I need to get all the dependencies.  Gotta make sure I have a good balance of all zone types.

I sort through all this stuff first and make a list.  This helps me know how well each part of the game is covered.  Railway Stations, Coastal stuff, Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Garbage, Water, Power, Schools, Hospitals, Fire and Police.

Everything is downloaded into a folder named SC4Vault or whatever.  I keep the zips and documentation here.  Each download has its own folder within a folder for each Creator/Artist.

Such a tedious process.  When will I actually get to play???????

Ernestmaxis

Hey Eggman

I havent play much but i have toke a look on in my plugin folder.
The file for the no dirt zone is SWAMPER-PEG_NoRailDirt_MOD_205.
This one is for no dirt zoning under rail
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/11674-street-and-road-sidewalk-mod/

This is is also working with street in agriculture zoning
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/30894-mgb-no-grass-nam-ngn/

Hope it suits your

911Diva

I look at my plug-in folder and think about organization . . . then quickly close it cuz it scares the bejessus out of me!!!!!

greenbelt

Quote from: 911Diva on August 10, 2017, 05:10:35 PM
I look at my plug-in folder and think about organization . . . then quickly close it cuz it scares the bejessus out of me!!!!!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D