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SC4 Dat Packer

Started by wouanagaine, January 16, 2007, 05:51:52 AM

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dragonshardz

this is why i usually delete the "Plugins_Compressed" folder before I do any major packing (ie when i reorganize my plugins folder.)

SC4BOY

#421
Quote from: High5Tower on December 09, 2007, 09:04:42 AM
Remove them and get on with enjoying the game. When I first used the new data packer I had a monster list of things to remove. After about three hours I was finished and  put all the items in a quaranteen folder and dated and packed them away. I haven't had to re-install anything. Believe the data packer its telling you good information. Get on with it and start playing again. Just my view on things. Thanks for this great tool.

My point is that Datpacker removes them for you (in that the info is never duplicated in the packed file). For that reason the typical user need not be concerned about dup's in any sense.. They can, as you put it, "get on with it and start playing again" without even spending the 3 hours you spent. Only if there is some problem might one need to go back to look, and this is unlikely to occur as long as SC4 runs properly on the plugins config that you run datpacker on, then load only the compressed file..

In fact there are valid reasons for NOT removing anything.. as maintaining the "install" form of the plugins folder allows simple adding and maintaining of new things.. you need never worry for example if you decide to remove the "PLOP" form of a lot that you in fact took out the only instance of a model file..  I am constantly fiddling with my plugins folder for looking at/testing etc.. this probably isn't typical.. most people probably keep the plugin folder fairly stable.

Quote from: dragonshardz on December 09, 2007, 09:20:43 AM
this is why i usually delete the "Plugins_Compressed" folder before I do any major packing (ie when i reorganize my plugins folder.)

Huh? what does "this is why" mean? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

dragonshardz

you know, neither am I. Just ignore that.  ;)

wouanagaine

As SC4BOY said, it is not the worth to clean your plugins before running DATPacker, duplicates files are handled by SC4DAtPacker if they are in the same subfolder trees ( ie if they will end in the same packed file ), there will be only one instance of the duplicate in the packed file, and it will be the last loaded ( in SC4 loading order ). so as far as this is the correct duplicate, it won't be a problem.
You should worry about duplicates if they rely on differents subfolders of your 'Plugins' folder as one instance can be in one packed file and another instance in another packed file. The game will use the last one in loading order of your plugin_compressed folder ( ie last in lexicographical order )

About deleting Plugins_compressed before running DatPacker, there are times where SC4DatPacker doesn't seems to recognize a folder has changed and need to be repacked ( mostly if you reput an old file in it ), and the easiest way is to delete the corresponding packed file.


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JoeST

I just had a brain wave  :D...

What would your view on making it so that you could select every directory (folder) you wanted to dat pack individually? So you could (for example) select to pack BSC/BSCTextures/ without having to move that file out of the BSC folder and into the root and it would also save on removing every folder you don't want packaged. It would be a bit like the NAM and CAM installers, with the tick boxes and the tree options.

(sorry i cant post a (crudely photoshopped) picture of what I mean, I cant get it to work on my laptop (which doesn't have sc4 installed) to take a screenshot, and i cant find a large screenshot anywhere else)

Another idea would be to allow for packing of a directory that is outside the mydocs plugin folder, this would mean that you don't have to move the vast amount of plugins many people have, in and out of the plugins folder.

Hope you understand and like my ideas. Sorry if they are just rehashed.

Joe
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

SC4BOY

If you look inside your datpack folder, you will find a dat file for each folder in your plugins directory.. so in effect you have this already. The dat file will have the name of the folder.. Of course you can force your own "configuration" just by controlling what files and folders you keep when you run datpack.. What I'm saying is you can already do what you're suggesting.. and manipulate it however you want.. Just remember to be sure all your dependencies are there before you try to run SC4  :)

JoeST

uhhh you obviously didnt read my post properly.. i know this.. i was trying to make it better...(tho improving on wou's tools is like trying to improve perfection  ;D)

I know it packs the folders in the root directory (plugins folder) but i was suggesting you can select not to do that and instead pack a folder in lets say the BSC directory (folder) on its own without DAT packing all the BSC folder as 1 DAT, and without having to take all your files out of the plugin folder and just putting the folder you want DATing in.

Joe
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

wouanagaine

The fact is that on first versions of DatPacker, there was such an option as selecting the folder you want to datpack. You just had to check a box next to the folder. But I got so many misunderstoods ( PMs, posts in ST ) about thoses boxes that I removed that option, as moving files in and out your plugins folders in XP is straight and efficient. However moving folders in Vista is like trying to move a mountain and this option may reappear ( damn it takes 1 sec in XP to move my 800 mb BSC folder, and almost 30sec in Vista without any forseeing reasons ), but I won't do anything outside the Plugins folder.

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JoeST

are you up for reincorporating that into the program (or maybe into an "advanced" version)

Quotebut I won't do anything outside the Plugins folder.
about that, could you maybe tell me how to do it? or if its even possible for me to. so I can change it for myself?

thanks for the fast response, answered my questions well

Joe
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

wouanagaine

The problem with 'advanced' version, is that everyone thinks his smart enougth to use the 'advanced', and when it will fail, they'll blame me  ???

And I can't see a workaround about the 'outside' plugin fodler datacking but allowing it in the code as I hard coded the path to 'Documents/Simcity 4/Plugins/' :(

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Divide wouanagaine by zero and you will in fact get one...one bad-ass that is - Alek King of SC4

JoeST

ahh but if they arnt smart then they wont  "$Deal"$ the (illusive) readme LOL, and anyway it serves them right if that happens...

could it be possible to reference the unpacked file locations from one of those property file things

* star.torturer has no idea really

I'm sorry I'm being such a pain, but how hard would it be to recompile with these few additions for a lets say Christmas special? lol, im just really desperate for this extra functionality..

Thanks for listening

Joe
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

dragonshardz

30 seconds in vista? you sure, Wou? I've gotten 2,000 files to move in less than 15 and one file is like "blink" "whoa it's done!"

wouanagaine

Quote from: dragonshardz on December 13, 2007, 02:53:00 PM
30 seconds in vista? you sure, Wou? I've gotten 2,000 files to move in less than 15 and one file is like "blink" "whoa it's done!"
maybe 15, the thing is that XP move them in no time, whereas my Vista take at least 14s to "compute the time" it will take to move thoses files
I hope there is something somewhere in the arcane of the OS that may tweak this. A folder or file move on the same HD is just a matter of writing some data in the FAT, not moving the whole file byte by byte and to me it looks like Vista move the file byte by byte :'(

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Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dmscopio ♦ dedgren ♦ emilin ♦ Ennedi ♦ Heblem ♦ jplumbley
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Divide wouanagaine by zero and you will in fact get one...one bad-ass that is - Alek King of SC4

dragonshardz

on my pc it's moving the files while it's "computing the time", i think that is why it is so slow, it is using processor time for two diff. activities and once the time is "computed", it moves really fast.

Either that, or the time computing is just there so that the pc seems like it's doing something useful besides moving the files and it just picks random numbers. there have been many time where i have told it to move a file and the time "computed" is like 5 days but the popup closes in 15 secs. :thumbsup:

heck there have been times where the file is moved before the time to move has even been "computed"!!  :P

So it must be that the time "computing" is nothing more than a piece of glitter and has really nothing to do with how fast the file is being moved. That's Microsoft.  ::)

Of course, my pc is running an x64 processor...so on a "normal" (x32 i beleive?) what i have just written may not be true at all!

SC4BOY

#434
WOU- In checking back over your answers, I have a couple of questions still:

1. Ref msg 418 .. can the information in the lower window be piped or copied to a txt file?

2. I think I read you saying two different things, so I will ask again. When datpacker is processing files and comes across information that it has previously read.. does it OVERWRITE the previous information or does it KEEP the FIRST VERSION of the data?  (this assumes the file information is not IDENTICAL). Sorry if I am confused.

Oh I just noticed a
3. The datpacker seems to process .bak files? Is this really a good idea? Most people use .bak to be information that is not to be used for some reason, but to preserve some previous version.

BarbyW

As a matter of course, normally .bak files should not be in plugins. They should be placed somewhere outside plugins for safety as SC4 will not read them anyway.

I shall leave wouanagaine to answer points 1 and 2.
Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. TP



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RippleJet

Actually SC4 opens all files that are in your plugins folder, regardless of their type ending.
If the files contain a valid DBPF database, the game will load its content.

Because of this it is especially important not to leave any *.BAK or *.SAV files in your plugins folder.
Otherwise you might actually have older (backed up) versions of SC4 files that are loaded after the ordinary ones.

SC4BOY

#437
This was my point of asking. I don't make .bak files in plugins. However in my NAM folder I happened to be watching as the files went by for datpacker .. this is why I KNOW it processes the .bak file.. in this case just like it was a current file. I don't know where the .bak file came from.. I use normal kinds of NAM files including for example the roadsides mod, the multi-texture mod (forget exact name) and the bridges etc.. Whatever happened it was an INSTALLER that made the .bak file. I did not do it.  In fact I didn't know it was there. It also is not on the cleanitol extension list so it will not be removed by that .. this could be a reason for an occasional mysterious crash or odd behaviour. SC 4  DOES NOT process the .bak file. For this reason datpacker COULD, depending on the order of files in the folder, create a packed file that did not equal the unpacked files.


jplumbley

I would like to point out one thing.

Do to the nature of Transit and other Complex Mods it is generally not a good idea to DAT Pack them.  NAM is a component that has been broken up into smaller files and there are too many older mods out there that can interfere with new versions of NAM which NAM has superseeded.  It is advisable that any Transit Mods should be installed as they are intended to be installed and not by any means DAT Packed.
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Street Addon Mod - SAM

Andreas

jplumbley is right, you shouldn't use SC4DATPacker for packaging NAM contents. I think the BAK file you're referring to is the one that the SAM Beta installer has created. This was done on purpose, in order to safely uninstall the SAM and restore the original NAM functionality. I can't stress it enough, but if a file says "beta", it's a beta and not meant to be used in a "productive environment" - and obviously on your own risk. It's highly dangerous to DAT pack a beta mod that is not finished, since it can cause all kinds of complications when a new version is released.
Andreas