Matrix Games Forums

I'm curious, there are so many DB versions it seems within my CMANO file. (3+GBs). Is it safe to delete a number of these say if I only play scenarios later then 1970s.

I'm looking to clear some of my C: drive space (my C: drive is my fastest SDD drive). I have a data drive D: with lots of space on it but should I not keep CMANO on my SSD drive (thus C).

Thanks for any advice.

ORIGINAL: TMP95

I'm curious, there are so many DB versions it seems within my CMANO file. (3+GBs). Is it safe to delete a number of these say if I only play scenarios later then 1970s.

I'm looking to clear some of my C: drive space (my C: drive is my fastest SDD drive). I have a data drive D: with lots of space on it but should I not keep CMANO on my SSD drive (thus C).

Thanks for any advice.

I don’t think there is a way, not that I heard of.

Speaking of drive space, forgive me if I put it bluntly, but why not upgrade with a new, larger SSD? I reckon today’s SSD pricing is no longer steep, if not as cheap as normal hard drives. 500GB range is usually around 80-150 USD depends on the performance and socket type. Unless you installed a very large amount of program softwares, 500GB for OS is very enough for most of the gamers.

I recommend you use the windows file compression for the older databases. Right click on the file -> properties -> attribute -> expanded -> compress. The menus may have different names on your system.
It saves almost 50% of disk space.

N.

Honestly it would be nice if older database versions were held centrally and automatically downloaded like terrain will be for CMO. For CMANO the main thing I'd change is putting the latest CWDB version second on the list in the editor so I don't have to scroll through a hundred DB3000 variants to find a Sea Vixen.

Personal experience: it's doable but gains not that much.
I played CMANO on Yoga Book Gen1 (yes that crazy small "laptop" no larger than an iPad). As the system has 64G eMMC internal storage, sparing 12G space for CMANO is nearly impossible.

There are four blocks of bulk data in CMANO:

1. GIS data, for map topography, telling the system how high the hills are and how deep the sea is. Not removable, ~5G.

2. Graphical Topology Map in WW folder. In Cache folder, you can find four folders, the "Blue Marble" earth tile textures for maps are in them, with multiple layers denoted with a numbered folder name. Removing anything beyond level 0 saves ~1.5G space.

3. Database descriptions, in DB\Images and DB\Descriptions, are removable. You can save ~1G by deleting them.

WARNING: YOU ARE ACT AGAINST EULA AND MAY GET SUED, AND VOID ANY WARRENTY, AND LOST THE ABILITY TO READ ANY SCENARIO USING DELETED DATABASES OR/AND CAN'T OPEN THE MAIN PROGRAM ANYMORE, BY USING THE METHOD BELOW (or maybe above...).

4. Database itself. Not all database files are created equal. As I inferred from file sizes and experiments, there are some major revisions in some files, and addtional data chanage in other files.

For example, DB3K_464.db3 is 91M, and all later DB3K files are much smaller.

But that's not always the case as I found out some smaller databases are "Base files", removing them would make any database version after it can't be read by the program.

Playing safe, I removed anything beforce CWDB 455 and DB3K 447, and resulted a 2.5G DB folder. As far as I only run scenarios created myself (sorry for all the development effort into those fabulous works), it didn't break the game for me.

Removing some other small files (like music, sound, multiple versions of manual, and some intro programs) make a 6.77G CMANO folder.

If you are really desperate for space, use NTFS hard link. Move the GIS folder to another physical drive, and link it back into CMANO folder. I used this trick in my Yoga Book, moving the GIS folder to SD card.