SC4 Dat Packer

[CabraBuitre]

Ok, took QUITE a while... but finally did appear to run all the way through.  As it was, though, there were several files in the "response" box that said "Not a Valid SC4 file: ..."  and listed the location of these "files" ... there were a few .exe files for uninstalls, but then there were several listed as \desktop.ini and \thumbs.bd  ... I looked through my plugins folder and don't see these files at all, am I missing something?  Apparently, these are not essential files... but are they just PART of .dats?  Because, otherwise, I have just .desc, .model, .lot and .dat files in my plugin folders (albeit in subfolders, but that shouldn't be a problem.)

Here's a screenprint of (some) of the outcomes...




Sorry it's so blurry... I tried to make it clearer, and you can clearly (or not) see how terrible my image editing skills are....

[wouanagaine]

Those files are not SC4 files but windows files, I suppose that either the creator or yourself have configured windows to have a personnal background in 'Explorer' per folder ( hence the Desktop.ini ), the Thumb.db is related to pictures in folders
If you don't see thoses files in explorer it is because you run it with 'hidden files' not shown.
open a folder, go in Tools->Folder option(last menu item)->Display( 2nd tab )->you have a checkbox or radiobutton to configure if hidden files/folders are shown or not

so everything seems quite right from the ouptut windows. You should only be concerned if a SC4 extension show up. ie SC4Model SC4Desc SC4Lot Dat.
If you have the Cleanitol, try to add
*.db
*.ini
*.exe
to the text list file and run it

[Serkanner]

Hi wougain as i was out and wandering around today i came up on SC4D and saw the DATPACKER ok i read what i can i went threw the forums and im totaly confussed by what it does and im lost.  if im reading and understanding right  it takes the plugins that are in the folder and make them one singular plugin???

That is exactly what it does Patrick. It compresses the files ( folders ) in your plugins folder into one big .dat file. The game will load much faster that way and also will almost not crash to desktop anymore. Personally, I still have a number of files in the plugins but have organised it accoring to creator ... for example I have compressed all Simgoober's growable files into one .dat file, or all BSC Mega Packs into one big .dat file. This way I can still switch files when I don't want to use a particular type of files.

Good luck experimenting with the tool ... its worth the time investment to get used to it because its shortens loading time dramatically ( example: 1.5 GB plugins folder loads now in 2 minutes instead of app. 10-12 minutes ).

[Pat]

That is exactly what it does Patrick. It compresses the files ( folders ) in your plugins folder into one big .dat file. The game will load much faster that way and also will almost not crash to desktop anymore. Personally, I still have a number of files in the plugins but have organised it accoring to creator ... for example I have compressed all Simgoober's growable files into one .dat file, or all BSC Mega Packs into one big .dat file. This way I can still switch files when I don't want to use a particular type of files.

Good luck experimenting with the tool ... its worth the time investment to get used to it because its shortens loading time dramatically ( example: 1.5 GB plugins folder loads now in 2 minutes instead of app. 10-12 minutes ).

Serkanner thank you for helping me out on that i was totaly confussed lol.  I'M Excited to try it out and see how well it will work for me and with your review i belive it will the best thing since ummmmmmmmm well hmmm yeaa lol,  but thank you again - pat

[wouanagaine]

Sorry to not have replied to you Patrick, I have totally missed your post
Thanks for taking on Serkanner

[M4346]

I don't know if this has been mentioned or addressed before, but it appears as if the DAT Packer isn't very friendly to DT's Trees either. The JRJ DT Trees I mean, as they worked fine until I packed the folder (I am now refraining from packing JRJ folders ), so I thought I'd just mention this.

Thanks again for a great tool though! 

[wouanagaine]

M => Jeroni has already update is prop trees files. I suggest you redownload it to get rid of the problem

[M4346]

Thanks for the response Wouanagaine! 

I realised that it's actually not JRJ DT trees that caused the problem, but the actual DT tree models. I sorted it out thanks!

[Pikatchoum]

First, as i can see, you, wouanagaine, seem to had invented an wonderfull tool. .
Anyway , i have some problemes with it, and i'm sure i didn't use it well.
As my english isn't perfect, i do not totally understand the read me so i'm wondering if it exists a french one ?

In fac, my game crash each time i tru to load a city. I moved up all the mods from the Plugins compressed (NAM and Colombus mods) and it works well after. Any idea on the nature of the problem ?

[wouanagaine]

Hi pika, let's go in the french thread so you can describe your problem better and I can try to find a solution in french

frnech section is here  => http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=129.0

[Pat]

Sorry to not have replied to you Patrick, I have totally missed your post
Thanks for taking on Serkanner

LOL wouanagaine its all goood,  i get that problem all the time lol    being sarcastic here of course that is.   i am having a bit of trouble though as it be.  I've tried to run datpacker a couple times now and no prevail has it finished something has happend either my system has locked up or datpacker stops running.  I've even had the error message of "datpacker memory error"  something like that and it had happen this morning, tired me didnt do a screen shot to show message but it was to that effect. - Pat

[wouanagaine]

patfirefghtr, delete your compressed_plugins files and try with 'only usefull TGI' and 'use less RAM' check, leave everything else unchecked

[Pat]

Wouanagaine,
Ok that is what i get it had happend to me again last nite after i posted.  I decided aww what the hockey pucks and do it again before bed and i woke up to that message again and scolled down, which btw i didnt take a screen shot of what it said at the bottom "unable to process Hy vee something........" I'm still gonna give it a try checking only usefull tgi and less ram. and i will let you know what happens. - Pat

[wouanagaine]

Try to open that file with reader or datgen and tell me if thoses tool can read each and every entry on it

[wouanagaine]

Patrick => I will also advise that if your 'Master Clean Folder' is bigger than 1gb it won't work very well
It is not DatPacker friendly to have only one massive subfolder in your plugins ( RAM usage problem, and if the resulting file is to be more than 2Gb the program will crash )
Try to restructure your plugin folder so it has more subfolder

[High5Tower]

Wow I can't believe I did it.  I fired up the Dat Packer and in no time at all it was done.  Since I just started using plugins back in early December my plugins totalled 725mb and after compression they are now 668.  It took me a week to get up the courage to do it and it was so simple. Just follow the instructions!  The most important improvement for me was that it (compaction) stableized my zoom out problem to levels 2&1. The load up times between cities was cut in half. Average time now for meduim size city is 8sec. Large city is now 15sec. My simcity start up time increased tho. Before compression start time was 41sec. now it is 80sec.  I can live with that  the other benefits are worth it. Special thanks to the team that made this possible.   Thank you to Wouanagaine this is just amazing. Now its up to me to learn how to upload my city pictures so you can see what I have been doing the all these creations.   

[freedo50]

hey woug, i tried your program last night and didnt appear to get any speed up, but i did get a pythoin error box that said "no compression" in it. i was wondering if you could tell me if this would result in no speed up and why it happens/how to fix it. I am recompressing the plugins folder now without the folders that i think may have caused the problems and i will get back to you.

[wouanagaine]

High5Tower
Thx a lot

freedo50
the 'no compression' is not an error but a message I left while debugging. This indicate that none of the files in that folder are originally compressed. It is quite strange but valid

The no speed up is also quite strange  .
what your plugins size before & after compression ?
how much files you have at the plugins root and what sizes ?

[ript7368]

Hello, I've read through this entire thread and downloaded the necessary dll files and I still can't get this to work. It brings up the follow error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "datPackerApp.pyo", line 662, in OnClose
  File "datPackerApp.pyo", line 666, in ShowMain
  File "config.pyo", line 14, in __init__
UnicodeDecodeError: 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 25-27: truncated \uXXXX escape


The BSC Cleanitol program works fine, however.

I'm running Windows XP SP2 with 1GB RAM and a 3.00GHz CPU.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me!

-Mark

[freedo50]

Hi woug, ive just tried to run it again after it worked last time, but withe the same problem-causing files now back in the plugins folder. However, while it was checking for updated files i got this error

Code Select Expand

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "datPackerApp.pyo", line 634, in OnStart
  File "wx\_controls.pyo", line 1462, in IsChecked
wx._core.PyAssertionError: C++ assertion "IsValid(uiIndex)" failed at ..\..\src\msw\checklst.cpp(395) in wxCheckListBox::IsChecked(): bad wxCheckListBox index

I will check my SC4 now with the partially packed files to see if there is any speed up

EDIT: Also, i dont have any files in the root of the plugins folder, other than the SC4ExtraCheats.dll file, i thought it would be better to clean them up into a subfolder and pack them too.

EDIT 2: Woug; i have some bad news, the speedtests are back:
With files unpacked :

• SC4 Startup Time: 2:10
• Time to open large city tile: 1:50
• Size of files: 1.99GB (2,141,271,033 bytes)
• No. of files: 6,904

With files packed:

• SC4 startup time: 1:55
• Time to open large city tile: 1:58
• Size of files: 1.51 GB (1,624,146,585 bytes)
• No. of files: 43