[SF-Junky]

Can it be that very big .vp archives are especially vulnerable to certain... instabilities. Because I have a very big .vp (176MB) and there are not rarely appearing things like broken .pof models and so on...

[General Battuta]

I believe mv_complete had problems for reasons like this.

[Colonol Dekker]

Break it down into smaller ones

SF-J i mean, not the MVP guys

[The E]

176 MB is not that large, as vps go. mv_complete was over 1 GB, as is TBP core. There seem to be problems with vps that large which affect load times (the game needs more time to retrieve files from it).

That being said, there shouldn't be any corruption issues even with large vps; if there are any, they are symptoms of hardware trouble, not problems with FSOpen.

[Colonol Dekker]

Dodgy write process on slow hdds?

[SF-Junky]

Yes, I just realized that mv_assets is about 440MB big. But still, I will make smaller units.

That being said, there shouldn't be any corruption issues even with large vps; if there are any, they are symptoms of hardware trouble, not problems with FSOpen.

The problem really seems to be with the .vp itself. I just had a capital01.pof that I couldn't load properly, even with PCS2. Still, thanks for the quick answers.

Oh, and btw, I'm using VPMake to make my .vps.

[The E]

Dodgy write process on slow hdds?

No, the function(s) that are used to retrieve data from vps just aren't built with 1 GB files in mind. The game should never, EVER write any data to the vps. They are strictly read-only.

I mean, mv_advanced is ~600 MB large, I would guess that that is a good rule of thumb for maximum vp size.

[Herra Tohtori]

If the VP file is badly fragmented it can cause long loading times that can appear as hangs and perceived instability...

[SF-Junky]

If the VP file is badly fragmented it can cause long loading times that can appear as hangs and perceived instability...

Noob question: How can I prevent a VP file from being fragmented?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

By defragmenting your HD. Go to My Computer, righ-click the drive you want to defragment, go to Properties -> "Tools" tab -> Defragment Now. Caution: this may take a few hours.

[Colonol Dekker]

Dodgy write process on slow hdds?

No, the function(s) that are used to retrieve data from vps just aren't built with 1 GB files in mind. The game should never, EVER write any data to the vps. They are strictly read-only.

I mean, mv_advanced is ~600 MB large, I would guess that that is a good rule of thumb for maximum vp size.

I meant during the .vp creation.

[Sushi]

By defragmenting your HD. Go to My Computer, righ-click the drive you want to defragment, go to Properties -> "Tools" tab -> Defragment Now. Caution: this may take a few hours.

Better option: Get Defraggler. Not only does it defragment better than the standard Windows utility, you can also defragment specific files.

[Colonol Dekker]

Link, i assume it's freeware?
Please correct me if i'm wrong to avoid confusion

[Zacam]

The biggest problem with MV_Complete and why it was killed, was not the size of the VP.

It was in trying to maintain table validation between it and the regular VP files, because we would end up with either all of the VP TBMs in ONE table directory in ONE VP (which is a VERY bad idea) or a completely seperate set of merged tables for JUST MV_Complete.

It was deemed "not worth the headache, but an interesting idea to try".

[Sushi]

Link, i assume it's freeware?
Please correct me if i'm wrong to avoid confusion

http://www.defraggler.com/

And yes, freeware. By the same guy who made the also-awesome CCleaner.

[Herra Tohtori]

CCleaner is bad, mmkay. Not saying it will ruin your system, but "automated" registry cleaning really has no way of knowing if it should remove or not remove something.

If you need a registry cleaner, use Jouni Vuorio's Reg Cleaner.

Also, use msconfig and services.msc to determine which of the Windows' default services and other programs (especially on OEM computers) are run at startup. Many of them you don't need, but do some research and figure out what each entry does (and if you don't know what it does, don't disable/remove it). You can increase the start-up loading times and improve general operation of most Windows computers more than just using CCleaner would ever do.

[Zacam]

I think you mean they can DEcrease startup and loading times. :-)

For defraging, though I will look at defraggler, I use JkDefrag.

[Herra Tohtori]

Yes. Increase the start-up performance.