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NAM 34 duplicate files

Started by rick48, May 19, 2016, 09:12:43 AM

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rick48

  I have installed and reinstalled NAM 34 several times (to be sure) and there are files which are duplicated by the installer.

JENXPARIS_Prop_Bridge_Light_Cones_R1.dat (size:24,940) - 3 times(!) in Additional Bridges\Bridge Props and Models\, \Street Bridges\ and in \Tram in Road Bridges\.
RealRailway_Networks_STR.dat (size:2,637,975) in \INRUL Overrides\ and in z__NAM\y_RealRailway\.
RealHighway_FractionalAngleNetworking.dat (size:3,545,357) in \Real Highway Mod\ and in \Real Highway Mod\FARHW\.

  Getting rid of these duplicates will save us 6 MB. I use "Clone Cleaner Lite 2.01" which is free, fast and accurate. To my amazement the program has detected 16 other duplicated
files in my Plugins folder. They have the same names but different length and they are in different sub-folders. What should I do in such a case? Thanks in advance for an answer.
     

twalsh102

Rick,
First a question:  When you say that the different files have the same name but different lengths, you are saying they have different file sizes?

If this is the case, then they are not truly the same file.  For two files to be true duplicates of each other (as far as Windows is concerned), they have to have the same name (including file extension), same size, and same last modified date/time.

With SC4, things get a little more complicated, because it's all about the contents of the files involved.  All files commonly encountered by users in custom content for SC4 (.dat, .SC4model, .SC4desc, .SC4lot) actually have other files as their contents.  It's theoretically possible to have two files that appear to Windows to be duplicates, but have different contents as far as SC4 is concerned.

To truly determine if files are duplicates, I recommend two tools:  SC4DataNode, and iLives Reader.  To complicate matters further, as you'll see if you use SC4DataNode, it is entirely possible to have two files with completely different names, and have the exact same contents. 

I'm not going to go into any depth as to how to use these programs, or any depth on game mechanics, as books can be written on either of these subjects.

Some advantages of SC4DataNode are that it will show you how files override one another (a function of how SC4 loads files in-game), or a further complication - how parts of files can override one another, the actual order that files are loaded in-game, and many other things that may be of interest.  It is my go-to tool if I want to do a "deep clean" of my plugins folder.  Probably a good thing is that files can only browsed in SC4DataNode, and not manipulated in any way.

iLives Reader is a very powerful tool, and in my opinion one that should be used casually by the novice.  This tool not only allows one to look at the contents of individual SC4 files, but allows changes to be made.  This can be a good thing if one knows what they are doing in that it allows one to change the contents of almost any SC4 file.  It can be a bad thing in that one can unwittingly change files with the result that particular lots may no longer load, in-game CTDs can result, or the game may refuse to even start.

A final comment, and please don't take this as any sort of slam:  SC4 parsing through an extra 6MB of game files is not going to affect game load time to any perceptible degree, and if you are truly worried about saving space in this day and age of inexpensive 2 & 3 TB hard drives (even for laptops), you might want to reconsider where you have your Plugins folder stored.  (A cautionary note here:  putting your plugins folder on just about any storage media that is external to your computer  (e.g. thumb drives, external USB drives, or even a network storage location) will affect game load times, sometimes drastically).  The existence of true duplicates usually has no affect on game play.

So bottom line answer to your question is that unless you are positive that the contents of these duplicates are exactly the same, the safe thing to do is nothing.

mgb204

The important thing to remember is that the only thing the file name is any good for with SimCity is to see at a glace what a file contains. It's wholly possible that two files with identical names could contain totally unique content each.

In this case, the files you mention would appear to be duplicates. If you remove these files, put them somewhere you can recover them if things go wrong. But it should be safe to do so in theory.