What downloads to delete to make loading times of game and lots more efficient?

[Ambular]

But,... but I can't!

I'll post a pic later, but the trashcan now only shows for the main object.

I remember there used to be a second trashcan that deleted the recolors, but it's gone since OFB (or maybe since OFB patch 1, don't really recall).

Try the design tool, the recolor trashcan's in there.

[Ness]

Since the OFB expansion, you're no longer allowed to delete individual recolors.

Er...possibly I'm misunderstanding as I'm up obscenely early by my reckoning, but how do you figure?  I've got OFB, and I just made a random barbecue recolor to test this, and deleted it within the game no problems.  File all gone buh-bye.  ??

The OFB patch did mess things up slightly.

You can't delete individual recolours from the buy menu, but you can delete through the design mode tool.

[KatEnigma]

Gotcha -- thanks!  Now if only there were a way to delete them directly, instead of having to print out a list and delete them from the directory by hand...

I agree, it would have been nice to be able to delete them directly, or move them around from within SimPe.  I was going back and forth between SimPe and Clean Installer to reorganize things. (move out the recolors to my missing Sunair meshes  ) It wasn't too bad to just disable and then go delete them all, but an all-in-one thing would have been convenient, I agree.

I did delete them all, though, because I'd already moved all my unidentifiable files into a folder on my desktop and gone into the game to see if anything had broken or disappeared.

I seriously think that creators who don't clearly label their works shouldn't be allowed to upload anything.    For instance, whenever I do feel like hunting down my missing meshes, I know exactly which ones I need because Sunair numbers everything STRINGOFNUMBERS_SAskT016_yellow. SA for Sunair, sk for skin, and then a number that corresponds to a mesh. Inside Clean Installer, it's labelled something like SkinTO16_yellow by Sunair.  But even if no one wants to be that organized, just naming it "red dress" or Mesh_reddress" is a heck of a lot more helpful than a string of numbers, and then no thumbnail! /rant LOL 

[Theo]

Try the design tool, the recolor trashcan's in there.

The OFB patch did mess things up slightly.

You can't delete individual recolours from the buy menu, but you can delete through the design mode tool.

I'd never sort that one out 

A million thanks to you!

[Jelenedra]

Oh and the only deleting recolors from the redesign tool was "how we intended it to work in the first place." Not that they broke it during the patch, but that they finally "fixed" it.

[Ambular]

I seriously think that creators who don't clearly label their works shouldn't be allowed to upload anything. 

Heh, I'll drink to that *Raises Diet Coke!*  And I'll also add that creators should be required to label their stuff in whatever language is predominant at the site they're posting it on!

[Rose Outlaw]

Apart from huge Downloads folders, do

- custom music for buy/build/radio stations located in the Music folder
- collection files
- SC4terrain files
- Sims templates stored in SavedSims
or
- the number of neighbourhoods

add to the starting time?

[jrd]

Yes, yes, no, no, yes. But all only very slightly, and hardly after they've been indexed/cached once.

[witch]

Try the design tool, the recolor trashcan's in there.

The OFB patch did mess things up slightly.

You can't delete individual recolours from the buy menu, but you can delete through the design mode tool.

I'd never sort that one out 

A million thanks to you!

I didn't know either, thought I was stuck with zillions of bright blue recolours. Well, not zillions, but a good few. Thanks from me also.

[Rose Outlaw]

Yes, yes, no, no, yes. But all only very slightly, and hardly after they've been indexed/cached once.

Good thing to know. No more changing the audio books then.

[Jysudo]

Ok, maybe I am dense. But I have a lot of problems deleting in design mode.
You know how the texture for the objects are all linked together? E.g. car interior and exterior.
When I deleted an interior, i realise that an exterior will have a lot of html code (white background with black words...i was thinking it is html code) will appear. In which I can't delete because the bin option is no longer avaliable.End up having to delete the whole bloody thing.

how could i prevent such an issue? thanks for any help once again.

[Theo]

You know how the texture for the objects are all linked together? E.g. car interior and exterior.

I was hoping that running the game in debug mode would make the catalog show the filenames of the recolors, but it only shows the model name, which doesn't help much

The same happened when I deleted some painting frames, that unfortunately were in the same packages of the painting recolors.

The recolors I deleted appeared in the catalog in a blue color, or with black text in white background.

But I think that effect is temporary; next time you start the game, the deleted recolors should no longer appear.

[Jysudo]

Which recolor are you talking about? you mean the texture I deleted ? (e.g the interior) or will both the interior (I deleted) and its related exterior (which I didn't delete) disappear the next time I load the game? I am seriously confused. I don't know why maxis want to make it so hard for us to delete stuff 

[witch]

Not to mention that catalogues have a tendency to return to the beginning everytime something is deleted in CAS.

[KatEnigma]

Not to mention that catalogues have a tendency to return to the beginning everytime something is deleted in CAS.

I seriously hate that! 

[idtaminger]

Not to mention that catalogues have a tendency to return to the beginning everytime something is deleted in CAS.

I seriously hate that! 

Same here. Like Maxis couldn't have thought this part through. Did they really expect us to only have enough d/ls to fill up the first few pages?

[Sleepycat]

Not to mention that catalogues have a tendency to return to the beginning everytime something is deleted in CAS.

I seriously hate that! 

Ditto!!

[Rose Outlaw]

Ummm... three-to? 
Guess there's no chance that anyone could code such a change for the catalogue display?

I don't know why maxis want to make it so hard for us to delete stuff  Huh

From what I understand, that's not Maxis fault in the end, but the creators by putting both recolours in one file... that's right?

[trancejeremy]

In my experience, it's really neighborhood size (in terms of number of sims) that determines how long it takes to load a neighborhood or lot. (Which is why I'm afraid to get Pets, which will have the potential to increase the number of "sims" by a heck of a lot)

I used to have around 1200 sims in my main neighborhood - took me about 3 minutes to load the it and about 2 minutes to load a lot.   Got that down to about 850 (using the deleter tool in the QA version of Simpe, which has some side effects), and the load time dropped to 2 minutes and lot about 1:30.

And brand new neighborhoods take almost no time to load (either the 'hood or the lot).

[Qwiggles]

Has anyone tried the Orphan Mesh scanner after Pets came out?  I know I dare not open my neighborhood with the current SimPe but is opening Downloads okay?

[nekonoai]

I was thinking about creating folders for my CC, and was wondering what was and wasn't "safe" to put into folders, how the folders should be named, etc.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions. ^_^

[jsalemi]

I was thinking about creating folders for my CC, and was wondering what was and wasn't "safe" to put into folders, how the folders should be named, etc.

As long as they're all under Downloads, you can pretty much name the folders anything you want, and organize them however you want.  One scheme that seems to be common is to have  a folder for every separate hack/mod author -- makes it easy to update particular mods and reduce the chance of duplicates sneaking in.  Plus, some mods depend on load order (particularly some from TwoJeffs and Pescado) and 'twojeffs' comes after 'pescado' in the directory (assuming you're using the NTFS file system).  It's also handy to make directories for types of objects, like 'clothes', 'hair', etc.

The only thing I've found that sort-of prefers to be in the main Downloads directory is the Insimenator. It sometimes gets a little quirky if it's in a sub-directory.  Otherwise, I haven't found a hack, mod, or custom object that cares what directory it's in.

[nekonoai]

as long as they're all under Downloads, you can pretty much name the folders anything you want, and organize them however you want.  One scheme that seems to be common is to have  a folder for every separate hack/mod author -- makes it easy to update particular mods and reduce the chance of duplicates sneaking in.  Plus, some mods depend on load order (particularly some from TwoJeffs and Pescado) and 'twojeffs' comes after 'pescado' in the directory (assuming you're using the NTFS file system).  It's also handy to make directories for types of objects, like 'clothes', 'hair', etc.

The only thing I've found that sort-of prefers to be in the main Downloads directory is the Insimenator. It sometimes gets a little quirky if it's in a sub-directory.  Otherwise, I haven't found a hack, mod, or custom object that cares what directory it's in.

Sweet. Thanks a lot!

[eevilcat]

I've found that (for me at least) the best way to manage my downloads folder is to organise it into a sensible set of sub-folders e.g. all the MATY downloads are in a MATY sub-folder under downloads. If I download a set then I save all the meshes/textures to its own sub-folder named after the set. If I then download recolours for that particular set it they'll go in the same 'set' subfolder. Default skins go in a default skins folder. Everything else I try to group in sub-folders that mimic the Maxis hierarchy e.g. comfort/sofas, comfort/beds etc simply for ease of keeping track of things. I always try to keep textures (recolours) with the associated mesh(es) in their own sub-folder, usually named after the creator/mesh. If you want rid of something then delete the sub-folder. Likewise if you download another recolour you know where to put it.
The flipside to this is you have to be quite brutal with your file management... if you download something, try it and don't like it, then get rid of it. There is absolutely no point in loading content that you aren't going to use. I keep the downloaded zip/rar files in a similar folder structure - that way if I do want to retry some content it's easy to locate. It's also very tempting to install every single recolour that someone has made, again just install what you will use in game. Finally, you have to constantly be housekeeping with your downloads folder, checking what's there and pruning out the dead wood. Mine is currently around the 750Mb/2,500 files mark and is due another tidy up as the loading times have got a little too long.
(Incidentally, it seems to me that lots with pets appear to take longer to load even if they are relatively small and have only a couple of sims resident.)

[jsalemi]

Mine is currently around the 750Mb/2,500 files mark and is due another tidy up as the loading times have got a little too long.
(Incidentally, it seems to me that lots with pets appear to take longer to load even if they are relatively small and have only a couple of sims resident.)

Piker.   My downloads folder is about 3.5Gb, and there are folks here with even more than that.

And yea, Pets in general seems to have slowed down the game again, after GLS made it faster.  But of course, that's because EA didn't use the latest engine when they made Pets...