SC4 Dat Packer

[Pat]

ahhhhhhhhhh that might be the problem then i will break down the folders from master and i will give that a crack.  I did a recheck im only at 1.5g for plugins but close enough to be the problem. btw you mentioned to other programs where do i find them. will post results later pat

[freedo50]

iLive's Reader can be found here: http://www.simtropolis.com/modding/index.cfm?p=details&id=346
and Datgen can be found here: http://www.simtropolis.com/modding/index.cfm?p=details&id=334

[wouanagaine]

Thx freedo

your error log seems weird. it is even not in my own code
The only thing I can think of is that you have move/add/suppress folders between the time you run DatPacker and the time you click the 'start' button

As for the time test
The speedup is meant to be found on regional playing, ie when you will open the 2nd city
And you will get no zoom crash ( at least from what others say )

Oh, and it is not recommended to move all those 'essentials' files from the root to another one
at least make sure that you move them in the first folder, ie something starting with a '____'
you can safely leave them on the root folder


Pat=>the more I think of it, the more I think it is clearly the problem. It won't crash cause of 2Gb file limits and internal sc4 data structure ( which can handle a 2gb file ), but the tool will try to load all the data and then write it, whereas if you have more subfolders, it only load the subfolder data and clean the memory between subfolder

[dioangel]

Wait a minute...  the speedup will work when starting a new region?? 

[wouanagaine]

The speed up will be very noticeable when you will swap between 2 cities
ie load a city, play, save, get to region, enter a new city
the entering time of the 2nd city will be very quick

[dioangel]

So that's why.... No wonder cause after got all compressed and starting the region (the CJ I'm working on) didn't speed up at all. At least I understand now.

[Pat]

  yup wouanagaine that was the problem but thanks to RL i had to step out for awhile and the other day when i was exprimating with datpacker i made sure i turned off power saver mode to the monitor and screen saver cause i noticed it has a tendency to lock up datpacker and make it stop responding wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll  my dearest turned on the monitor saver after i walked away and i told her not to turn nothing on just leave it all as i got it and she said no problem hunnie so when we got back here this afternoon around 4:30 it stopped responding cause she said ooh i wasnt supposed to turn on monitor saver and of course the datpacker was almost done packing everythin and i do mean almost done and it was on the last folder it was compressing man talk about upsetting when i looked into the compressed folder and actuly saw all the files there compressed as it should be and then i turned to my wife and said hunnie guess what i got to redo now lol she is so mad  at herself now and i cant help but  but yuppers those where my problems so now after datpacker finishes i should remove all the other folders out and leave in the compressed folder in the plugins folder right?  thank you for taking your time and helping this NoOb out lol - pat

[wouanagaine]

Dioangel, yeah possibly, but most of us do see some speedup on the first city ( I don't )

Pat => Yes move ( not remove as I translate this to a deletion in my langage ) all but the compressed  sub folders outside the plugins folder ( tips => CTRL-X, CTRL-V ie cut/paste operation ) if you move the folder on same disk it will be almost instant.

the datpacker was almost done packing everythin and i do mean almost done and it was on the last folder it was compressing man talk about upsetting when i looked into the compressed folder and actuly saw all the files there compressed as it should be and then i turned to my wife and said hunnie guess what i got to redo now

You don't have to redo all folders, just rerun the tool
and do not check any boxes but the 'usefull tgi only'
if you check a box associated with a folder it will force the tool to repack it, even if the tool knows it does not have to. Thoses checkboxes are only there for special case.
If you move or add files in a folder, the tool will know it, and will repack the folder automatically, this is not link to the fact you check or not the box
You only have to check thoses boxes if the tool do not automatically repack the folder and you are sure it had to



On a side note, I have found why the latest version take so long to compress a big folder, so I will certainly upload a new version on the weekend.
It won't change anything but the speed of the process
I may also remove the checkboxes associated to folders as it seems I can't make it clear why and when they have to be checked
Let me know

Take care

[Fred_Ginger]

Wait a minute...  the speedup will work when starting a new region?? 

When I start the game or change cities or change regions they're all faster, like a minute or two!

[Pat]

I DID IT FINALY WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO
Well its done finaly now time to play woohoo im so excited thank you again wouanagaine...  ok see that is where i was running into troubles i noticed that if the folders where larger then 2mgs of file it had a very hard time to work it...  so i could have left checked the "usefull tgi only" and left the compressed folder alone and not rerun from the beginning lol im such a noOb.  Hey i know what about updating the readme to inform all Q/A to date so people that download now have the real concept of oooooooh ok so that happend now to avoid that lets me try it? but again thank you from the bottoms of my plugins folder that has been srunk down to only 583mb from a whopping 1.5 gb...  thanks again - Pat

[dioangel]

tried it one more time an works!!! 

[snorrelli]

Just wanted to note that the problem with regional tracking not working is still a problem. 

I'm not sure if I'm getting the regional rewards or not because I'm playing in a new region - could be that I just haven't earned them yet. My other regions are well-developed enough to have earned (and placed) them already. In any case, I don't get the region tracking dialogue box when cities load.

It comes back when I load the game without the compressed plugins (boy, it's hard to put up with that now... how easily we get spoiled!), so I know it's related to the DAT Packer. The Region Counter DAT is in the root plugins folder (not compressed). This is not a huge deal, particulalry if I'm still able to earn the rewards, but it a little worrisome...

Am I the only one reporting this issue?

[wouanagaine]

snorelli => You're not the only one
As far as I understand that mod, you will also need the mod files in the root folder and not packed

[daeley]

strange... to be honest I don't understand why tracking fails if you pack it...

unpacked it should still work though... that one file shouldn't make much of a difference

[soulstealer]

I found this odd issue with some some files I packed. Like I've mentioned before I keep all my textures and props in a separate folder in the program files/maxis path. Today I decided to pack this 400MB folder. after doing so game load time has slowed down dramatically from 1-2 minutes to region view to about 5-6 minutes.
For now I reverted back to packing just the BATS and lots. Any idea as of why it does that?

[snorrelli]

strange... to be honest I don't understand why tracking fails if you pack it...

unpacked it should still work though... that one file shouldn't make much of a difference

That's what I'm saying - it is unpacked and it's not tracking... Maybe the counter can't read the packed files?

[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

As per my previous issue, the only way I can get SC4 Datpacker to run is on the very first opening of the program. If I need to run it again, I've had to completely uninstall it and delete the program folder then reinstall it. Not sure why this is, but thought others might be experiencing this as well. Great program, though! Thanks!

-Mark

[dioangel]

the game an all works fine.... the strange reason after compressed everything.. I get a system file saying No Compression. 

[wouanagaine]

Sorry ript I have not seen your post
Can you confirm that on your pc, your session contains strange character ?
like :
c:\My documents and settings\your name here\My documents\Simcity 4\Plugins
can you tell me what is 'your name here' on your pc ? or PM me it if it is too secret
until I correct the bug, you will just have to remove the config.ini in the DatPacker folder.

DioAngel. Sorry I don't understand which ( SC4 or DatPacker or something else ) that sya that message

Soulstealer I have no idea . Does your game and your plugins are on same hard drive ?

snorelli & daeley if the mod is not activated, that means it is superseed by something else. That is the only thing I forsee
I will download the mod and try to see what happen

[dioangel]

What's the key command taking desktop pictures, because if I show you the picture will make sense.