Merging mods to increase Performance!
Inge:
The potential benefit of the .dbc is that is a way the .package content can be used from My Documents hierarchy instead of having to use the Framework in the game install folders.
It could also mean that CC gets included with shared lots etc.
Does anyone know if you can have more than one .dbc in the folder?
Anach:
Quote from: Inge on 2010 January 02, 10:20:17
The potential benefit of the .dbc is that is a way the .package content can be used from My Documents hierarchy instead of having to use the Framework in the game install folders.
It could also mean that CC gets included with shared lots etc.
Does anyone know if you can have more than one .dbc in the folder?
Good suggestion in regards to the My Documents folder. As long as the .dbc are named differently, they should all work. I believe the game sets a maximum .dbc size (set in one of the .ini files) when creating them via launcher, and they are named in series dcdb0.dbc, dcdb1.dbc, etc. It would be good to know if items are included with exported lots or not, or whether the launcher is required to add more specific information to the archive for that feature to work.
Quote from: Ozrae on 2010 January 02, 09:40:18
Just wanted to mention that I followed Anach's tutorial for creating .dbc archives and have also had extremely positive results.
My game, before doing what was suggested was slow and sluggish with horrendous load times. CAS/Build/Buy modes were almost unplayable. My game now loads quickly with no in-game lag and no negative side effects. All my cc is showing and working as it should.
I am a complete novice when it comes to using s3pe but by following the guide posted by Anach I found the process to be relatively painless. I now have a total of 9 categorized .dbc files which I merged 1,4009 .package files into . The only .package files I left untouched were hacks and careers and any default replacements as I noticed they didn't work when I merged them.
Thankyou to Anach for sharing his experiment as I now have my game back and am enjoying playing for the first time since I patched...actually I think it's even running better than it was pre-patch! :-)
I've merged a few default replacement textures without issue, such as roads, skins and other minor replacements. What is it you were trying to merge but couldnt? Dont forget to clear your caches. I also didnt bother merging hacks/tweaks/careers etc, as I'm always wanting to adjust them or update them.
Glad it worked out. Hopefully we can expand and improve upon this system and hopefully later some tools to make this type of mass merging easier in terms of adding and removing specific packages from a larger archive or better conflict detection.
shiniki:
I too tried this, though I don't have nearly as much CC as Ozrae, perhaps less than 100 files altogether, mostly hair and some clothes, which tend to be larger files. I was unsure of what Anach meant by Step #6, so I cautiously skipped it.
Have about 8 .dbc files after organizing the CC. I left the hacks alonel: I'm running AM, NRaas Supercomputer, 2xbill, NoMosaicWA (updated at the same time as trying out the .dbc thing), and MoreFreqOpp.
Cleared cache and prefetch just to be safe, ensmallened the savefile, and 3booted up. Didn't notice a quicker overall neighborhood load but usually I don't sit around and time it. House and furniture loading seemed faster but this was the beginning of a play session rather than the tail end of four or five hours. House switching seemed faster, even though only two pieces of CC were Buy Mode things (both are cars).
Had a CTD around the time YA Sim #1 was ready to come home from work at the Science Lab (he got singed) while YA Sim#2 was in the shower, maybe 2:30pm. Three kids at school. 3booted up again, played through the same day (YA #1 did not get singed this time), got to midnight, saved and quit. Not sure what caused the CTD but just now I checked in my Mods/Packages and realized I left the skins .package files in the folder with the .dbc. Wondering if that may have been a contributing factor, or if skipping Step 6 is to blame.
In any case, I am still willing to keep trying this, as anything that cuts down the house-switching load times can't be bad. That was the primary reason for me keeping to The One Fambly, and neglecting my other chosen.
Anach:
Quote from: shiniki on 2010 January 02, 11:43:43
I too tried this, though I don't have nearly as much CC as Ozrae, perhaps less than 100 files altogether, mostly hair and some clothes, which tend to be larger files. I was unsure of what Anach meant by Step #6, so I cautiously skipped it.
Have about 8 .dbc files after organizing the CC. I left the hacks alonel: I'm running AM, NRaas Supercomputer, 2xbill, NoMosaicWA (updated at the same time as trying out the .dbc thing), and MoreFreqOpp.
Cleared cache and prefetch just to be safe, ensmallened the savefile, and 3booted up. Didn't notice a quicker overall neighborhood load but usually I don't sit around and time it. House and furniture loading seemed faster but this was the beginning of a play session rather than the tail end of four or five hours. House switching seemed faster, even though only two pieces of CC were Buy Mode things (both are cars).
Had a CTD around the time YA Sim #1 was ready to come home from work at the Science Lab (he got singed) while YA Sim#2 was in the shower, maybe 2:30pm. Three kids at school. 3booted up again, played through the same day (YA #1 did not get singed this time), got to midnight, saved and quit. Not sure what caused the CTD but just now I checked in my Mods/Packages and realized I left the skins .package files in the folder with the .dbc. Wondering if that may have been a contributing factor, or if skipping Step 6 is to blame.
In any case, I am still willing to keep trying this, as anything that cuts down the house-switching load times can't be bad. That was the primary reason for me keeping to The One Fambly, and neglecting my other chosen.
Step 6 is pretty much just about sorting conflicts (if there are any). If you import with the option to "Replace duplicates", it will mark any conflicts "deleted" in the s3pe window with a line through it. This is something that will only happen if there are conflicts, which in the perfect scenario there shouldnt be. Most the conflicts can be left as marked for deletion, but there were a few which werent really conflicts, such as the language strings and the 0x0000000000000000 files, which not all mods will have. So you were probably ok with skipping 6, if you didnt have any conflicts.
As for CTDs, every person's installed mods are going to be different so merging and conflicts are always going to be different, and that is really up to each person, but I do encourage every person to check their mods using process monitor before merging, as well as opening it in the appropriate editor to check for errors, as I found quite a lot of mods, even those from popular sites contain a multitude of errors, and this has been a major factor of errors while saving, CTDs, black textures and slow-downs. I'm now quite careful which mods I install.
Ozrae:
Quote from: Anach on 2010 January 02, 10:57:14
I've merged a few default replacement textures without issue, such as roads, skins and other minor replacements. What is it you were trying to merge but couldnt? Dont forget to clear your caches. I also didnt bother merging hacks/tweaks/careers etc, as I'm always wanting to adjust them or update them.
Actually...taking another look, remerging my default replacements, clearing my caches and reloading my game they are now loading in .dbc files. I think I may have had some conflicts as I removed some files when I remerged.
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