Mesh/Recolor Subfoldering Question

[Strangel]

Okay I seem to be having a mesh problem and it got me curious..

Say I have ONE creator's mesh (be it pants, hair, whatever) and FIVE creators' recolors of said mesh..
I'm growing terribly anal about subfoldering all my download crap so's I can easily find and flick stuff that turns out to be steaming piles. So.. I take One Creator's mesh and color options, put it into a folder labeled "One Creator- Blah". When I find the others' recolors, I subfolder WITHIN "One Creator- Blah" with titles "Recolor Creator- Blahgreen", "Recolor Creator- Blahdude", etc.

Will the game pick up on the mesh, or will I need to save a crapload of duplicates of the mesh for each and every damn recolor folder?

[Emma]

It will pick it up. I have 1 subfolder for all my hair/clothing meshes, and put any recolours in the creator's folder.

[Zeljka]

As you've probably seen by now...
I'm not sure if/what the limit on subfolders is, but it's ok, I'm sure I've gone at least 5-6 at times without problems.

I have 2 Mesh folders (Hair/Clothes) with Subfolders for Creators (Chriko, SimChic etc.. Misc for the one shot wonders)
Inside I have subfolders for each mesh (named for the mesh) and throw recolours in along with corresponding pictures. I very rarely make subfolders for recolours, though someone such as fanseelamb would be an exception because of the sheer volume and common theme (MA).
Makes it easy to find everything, and when finding new offerings online that require a mesh, it only takes a second to check if I already have it or not. Also, if/when I get tired of the mesh, all the recolours will come out with it.

[Gwill]

I have one subfolder called clothes.  In that subolder, I have one subfolder for each artist/site, within those I have one subfolder for each mesh with all recolours by the original artist, guest recolours go in a subfolder with the artist's name.
Same prosedure for hair, but I tend to have only one set of recolours per mesh there.

Like this: Downloads\Clothes\tiggerypum\MESH-tig-am-alphaloincloth\fanseelamb_towels-for-men\fanseelamb-atomicspacekitty-tiggerypum_towel_black.package
Naming the mesh folder exactly the same as the mesh makes it easier for me to avoid duplicates.

[Strangel]

Thanks, guys and gals.
Sounds like I do the same thing you do, Gwill. So.. if it DOES work, I guess I'd better figure out why this whole set of recolors stopped working.. lol

[notveryawesome]

I'm not sure why the recolours have stopped working, but I have found that, the more subfolders (and subfolders of subfolders) I have, the slower my lots load, and the Build/Buy catalogues take FOREVER to load, every single time I go into Build/Buy mode. Limiting myself to a very few subfolders has greatly improved the loading time of various aspects of my game. Personally, I would not recommend using tons of nested folders in one's Downloads directory.

[witch]

Some things don't work for me if they are too far down the directory tree, sims hair and clothing in particular. Well, that was the case in SavedSims, I moved everything to the downloads folder and haven't noticed prolems yet, I do have quite a shallow structure - two folders deep at the max.

ETA: plus I have the problem that no-one else seems to have - when I use recolours and some other stuff, the game puts another copy in the root of downloads. I regularly have to clean out my duplicates.

[Hecubus]

I agree...I go two levels down and that's it...Clothing gets sorted by age group, Objects get sorted by collection (or in some cases, just designer), and walls and floors get sorted by general type (siding, stone, etc.). I also have been limiting my downloads to stuff i REALLY use rather than stuff I might use someday. Squishified, my downloads are 1.25 gig, with 10K files in there (lots of walls, a full set of face replacements), and while I'm not entirely in the No Stuff In Unless Stuff Goes Out club, I do eliminate stuff I don't use on a regular basis.

Witch, your duplicate problem is just weird. Sure you didn't cast some sort of spell to make sure you always have a backup? 

[Ambular]

Little-known fact: There's a limit to how many characters Windows and Windows programs can handle in a filename plus its folder path (for example, for purposes of length, "C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\MyDocuments\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads\_EnableColorOptionsGMND.package" is all one 106-character filename!)

I've run into problems with SimPE once or twice because .package files are actually a type of archive that contains other types of files, whose names can get quite long.  Apparently, when the program tries to, say, import a .png image inside a .package file that is buried in a lot of subfolders, it runs up against the overall filename limit and chokes.  I had to move the .package to my Desktop in order to import the image.

I would theorize that something similar might happen within the game if a file is buried in too deep a subfolder.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't think this is a limitation of Windoze, but rather, a limitation of SimPE being stupid. They should just be using DOCUME~1/ROOT/MYDOCU~1/EAGAME~1/THESIM~1/DOWNLO~1, for a much shorter name!

[Ambular]

I don't think this is a limitation of Windoze, but rather, a limitation of SimPE being stupid. They should just be using DOCUME~1/ROOT/MYDOCU~1/EAGAME~1/THESIM~1/DOWNLO~1, for a much shorter name!

Nah, I read it somewhere.  Windows can only handle up to, I think it's 256 characters per file.  You're right, though, using DOS-style filenames would effectively fix the problem.

[witch]

Yep, 256 character limit in a path. I try to keep my own filenames short and no spaces - hangover from the 8.3 format.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yep, 256 character limit in a path. I try to keep my own filenames short and no spaces - hangover from the 8.3 format.

Space are TEH EVIL. Working with them in command line is a pain in the neck. While I no longer stick to straight 8.3 anymore, I still use Unix-legal filenaming.

[witch]

I got very confused with all the quotation and percentage signs needed for spaces when I was studying, so I avoided the problem altogether by removing the spaces. 

[Gwill]

I save quite a bit of string space by having my documents on a seperate partition.  Especially compared to the poor bastards who share a computer and end up with a path like "c:\Documents and Settings\John Smith\My Documents".  My path is "G:"