How many VAR's do you have currently? Overall VAM files size?

[Juno]

My VaM folder is around 300gb to 400gb big. I also planned to clean everything up and also put everything in different sub folders. Like plugins with plugins, clothing with clothing, environments with environments etc.

I also have VaM on a external SSD driver on USB3.1. It works great though, everything loads fast. I don't work with HDD's anymore, yikes....

Plug and play and if my computers break, I still have everything on my external SSD. I also planned in making back ups to a second SSD drive, so I won't lose anything if my SSD decides to say goodbye!

Only do this if you never plan to use the var list on the left side or the filtered/flattened options to find things as any var that doesn't sit in the top level folder is not included in those searches.

 

[atani]

Actually, that is not correct. I have everything in subfolders inside AddonsPackages and the left side filter works just the same. Filtering by folder is easier because of the subfolders and filtering flattened also works.
The only downside I've ever found is that if doing a Core repair will download the default packages to AddonsPackages, but I never need that anyway. Other than that I've been super happy with subfolders for a year now.

 

[Juno]

That's real strange as that's not my experience. When I started organising they all disappeared from the list filtered/flattened views so i put it all back....maybe its my end only.

 

[atani]

Shows with scenes, presets, everything so far. The lists can be messy and long but sometimes they're handy.

 

[Toonen1988]

My lift side bar is so large, that it takes sometimes forever to search something. I would rather work with sub folders to keep everything orginized.

 

[kretos]

I'm also using subfolders. Anything other than that is nightmare.

 

[EMPIR]

I no longer use subfolder since that amazing VAM VAR MANAGER tool. I only use subfolder for necessary plugins and some must have vars.

I see no point using and seperating clothing and other stuff in a subfolder. Complete waste of time tbh.

Use VAM VAR MANAGER. It's amazing.

 

[BStarG2]

My AddonsPackages folder is 123GB in size and has a bit over 2,800 files. Not all of them are .VARs though, but most are. I stopped counting after I downloaded my 4th or 5th mod months ago. It takes about 40 seconds for VAM to start up, it's not too bad (takes maybe 10 to 12 seconds by using the FasterVAM plugin).

 

[Hayduke]

I have been saving files since day one and yes the var system is far superior to the old days but that said, many vars are packed with redundancies. I wish there was a way to flatten the entire directory and delete all redundant files. VAM would run much faster if it were not so bloated. my Virt-a-mate folder is over 520GB with 228GB of .vars (5652 files)

 

[BStarG2]

I have been saving files since day one and yes the var system is far superior to the old days but that said, many vars are packed with redundancies. I wish there was a way to flatten the entire directory and delete all redundant files. VAM would run much faster if it were not so bloated. my Virt-a-mate folder is over 520GB with 228GB of .vars (5652 files)

Regarding redundancies (not within VAR files themselves but at least within the AddonsPackages folder itself), have you tried the VAMUpdater plugin by Venkman?

Other - [Utility] VAMUpdater - Always Use the Latest Addons!

VamUpdater is a command-line utility I created to solve an annoyance...which is that the "default" for the VAM Package Builder is to use the specific version of a script as it was when the scene was packaged, versus requiring the latest version...

hub.virtamate.com

Might help you. I saved 1GB of space after I ran it.

But, be warned: It might take a long time to process for a first-time run especially in a big AddonsPackages folder contain a lot of files. It took about 2 hours for me to finish if I recall, maybe even longer. Also, after it was done, when I first launched VAM and browsed my Scenes their order in which they appear as thumbnail previews was changed (I didn't lose any, they were all there, but just placed differently). So if you do run it and then launch VAM don't panic right away if you don't see the usual scenes you're used to see when you browse, check different pages and you'll find them.

But yeah, it's worth it if you want to remove at least some unnecessary versions of the same Plugins.

 

[kretos]

I've discovered that VAM is not loading all vars after some limit. Looks like completely random loss. Sometimes it loads given var, sometimes not. The var itself is ok and loads properly with smaller system.

 

[Juno]

I've discovered that VAM is not loading all vars after some limit. Looks like completely random loss. Sometimes it loads given var, sometimes not. The var itself is ok and loads properly with smaller system.

And how many vars have you got to cause that?

 

[kretos]

almost 9000

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Atani, good info, thanks. To be clear, you unzip a var file to a folder of the same name, then delete or move the original var, and edit the meta.json inside the folder? What specifically do you edit? For example, I see this in one meta.json file:

"referenceIssues" : [
{
"reference" : "Custom/Hair/Female/VaMChan/MR Twintail/scalp_D.png",
"issue" : "BROKEN: References local file not included in package. File is missing"
},
{
"reference" : "Custom/Hair/Female/VaMChan/MR Twintail/SW_ToulouseT_Base_TR.jpg",
"issue" : "BROKEN: References local file not included in package. File is missing"
},

I have multiple var files with broken references to things that seem to be not available anywhere. I'd like to just get rid of the references and get those errors out of my error log.

 

[gokusanmar]

Yesterday I did what probably a lot of people decide to do - create a new, clean instance of VAM. Cleaning VAM became too time consuming, especially since many tools for this doesn't work for me. Also some dependencies didnt seem right with the cleaner I used? Anyway, my VAM folder simply got too big and I think it had negative impact on the performance, especially since I don't have a beefy PC. I will keep my old VAM folder for testing and creation purposes, but my second, clean VAM will be for consuming content. I moved only my favorite scenes and looks with all the dependencies. My previous VAM had 1750 var files ( 67 GB) and my new one has 116 vars ( 6,4 GB). The inital loading time difference is massive and I hope that it will also have a positive effect on the VAM performance, but I have yet to test it tho inital impressions seem promising.

 

[Juno]

Yesterday I did what probably a lot of people decide to do - create a new, clean instance of VAM. Cleaning VAM became too time consuming, especially since many tools for this doesn't work for me. Also some dependencies didnt seem right with the cleaner I used? Anyway, my VAM folder simply got too big and I think it had negative impact on the performance, especially since I don't have a beefy PC. I will keep my old VAM folder for testing and creation purposes, but my second, clean VAM will be for consuming content. I moved only my favorite scenes and looks with all the dependencies. My previous VAM had 1750 var files ( 67 GB) and my new one has 116 vars ( 6,4 GB). The inital loading time difference is massive and I hope that it will also have a positive effect on the VAM performance, but I have yet to test it tho inital impressions seem promising.

My testing showed 1000 vars = approx 10-15 fps loss so you should see some minor uplift in fps from less vars plus another uplift for not having local and var morphs loading. Best to use the official benchmark by macgruber on the hub to quantify vs your old install.

 

[Fferrett]

You don't need a clean installation; you just need to use varManager .

I don't have multiple installations of VAM, just one with more than 8,000 vars in my only installation. There's several features, but the most important is the ability to switch between different AddOnPacks configurations. In each named configuration, you can designate which packages to symlink to. Loading all 8k would take forever. I have a favorite config that loads in seconds and a test config to take a look at new works.

there's also the ability to remove dupes, stale vars, and old vars... and a hub browser... It's excellent and solves many issues.

Feelfar doesn't have any documentation that I'm aware of, but most of it is fairly intuitive.

 

[gokusanmar]

I used this varManager, but only first version worked for me, every other version crashed. It's buggy and tedious to delete vars using this program, atleast with version I used. Also like I mentioned in my post, some dependencies that this program showed didn't seem right for me. Like I tried to delete just one cloth and it wanted to delete like 10 other items as well including looks. I should be able to choose which dependencies to delete because it would not be an end of the world if I retained said look but without one cloth item.

 

[Fferrett]

I used this varManager, but only first version worked for me, every other version crashed. It's buggy and tedious to delete vars using this program, atleast with version I used. Also like I mentioned in my post, some dependencies that this program showed didn't seem right for me. Like I tried to delete just one cloth and it wanted to delete like 10 other items as well including looks. I should be able to choose which dependencies to delete because it would not be an end of the world if I retained said look but without one cloth item.

To each their own. Perhaps your experience with an initial version isn't the same as I experience with a current version. It does work and does solve many of the issues that VAR's internal tools lack.

 

[mandlorian]

very useful

 

[kretos]

Now over 13000
var browser is your friend, my friend VAM runs like young gazelle with this gem of software. No more manual install, checking dependencies. Just dump everything and let it do its job.

 

[EMPIR]

Now over 13000
var browser is your friend, my friend VAM runs like young gazelle with this gem of software. No more manual install, checking dependencies. Just dump everything and let it do its job.

var browser? what plugin are you talking about?

 

[kretos]

This one:

Other - var browser

OpenSource:https://github.com/sFisherE/var_browser var browser help people who have massive var packages and take too long time to enter game. this plugin made on BepInEx. here is the steps(this is write by kretos,thanks) (all in VAM's game...

hub.virtamate.com

there's version 12 available:

vam_plugin_release/var browser/v0.12 at main · sFisherE/vam_plugin_release

all my works for vam. Contribute to sFisherE/vam_plugin_release development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

It's stable, i'm using it all the time.

Unfortunately no longer in development - although someone made a fork.