The basic question is, has anyone tried using hard links (junctions) in Windows Vista to point to other locations for custom music within TS2, and if so, what were the results?
If not, I'll be testing it soon and reporting back (if no one beats me to it while I get all my apps and tools installed and running properly), and for those of you who aren't scared away by lots of wurdz, some background information follows to elucidate the whole thought process which led me to this query, which is of course only really necessary if either no one knows the answer, or wonders just what the hell am I on about.
Background:
As most of you probably know, back in TS1 we could drop shortcuts to MP3 files into the music folders for TS1, and they'd act just like the actual files. In this way, we could deal with the "hard-locked" music folder structure, but without the annoyance of either moving our entire music collection to TS1's music folders or (worse yet) needing loads of copies of relatively large files, just to enjoy our own taste in music while simming.
Great, works for me, except that for some unknown reason (at least, I never heard a good answer), you can't do anything of the sort in TS2. Shortcuts for folders or files are apparently simply ignored, so the physical MP3s must therefore be moved or copied to the TS2 data tree in order to actually do something. Annoying to say the least, especially if (like me) you're anal to ridiculous extremes about your folder trees and redundant duplicate files.
While researching solutions to this barely-tolerable situation, I stumbled across some advice offered up by Witch (quote to follow) explaining how to create "hard links" or "junctions" with some add-on software. The below is not where she originally posted the information, but it's what search brought me, and works just fine for this purpose:
If you want to have one folder with all your music files, here's how to do it.You need a programme named
Junction Link MagicYour file system should be NTFS (Right click on C:Drive in My Computer, choose Properties, near the top of the General Tab it should say 'File System NTFS').
Go to each sims music folder, eg C:\Documents and Settings\witch\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Music\build and delete the settings file so the folder is empty. (If you're concerned make a backup of your music folder first).
Empty each music folder, from build through to techno. These source folders, which will contain 'signposts' to your music, must be empty.
Make yourself a folder to contain the music you want to listen to. It can be on your main drive or another hard drive. It doesn't matter if the second hard drive is NTFS or FAT. I called my folder 'Current'.
You can put mp3's in this Current folder. I don't think you can have sub-folders. I put copies in here and delete when I'm sick of them.
Download Junction Link Magic. Install and run the programme.
1. Start Junction link Magic. The programme will scan your hard drive(s) for any prior link points. When it's finished, click the Create button. You will see a dialogue box with 2 panels, similar to Windows Explorer.
2. On the left hand side, choose the sims music folder you wish to make a junction point in.
eg: C:\Documents and Settings\witch\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Music\hiphop
3. On the right hand side choose your music folder,
eg: C:\H_Stuff\Multimedia\Albums\Current
4. Create your link & say OK when asked if you are really really sure!
5. Repeat for each sims music folder - point each one towards your current music folder.
RTFM:
Junction links stay, you can't just delete the folder you made a link in. You MUST go into Junction Link Magic to delete any points you made if you no longer want them. You can run into problems if you don't. This is reallyreally important.
RTFM the RTFM. There is a good brief help included that explains how to use this programme and what the risks are.
My sims2 junction points:
Now, this offered a partial solution, but still left a little to be desired. Again, being an organizational nut, and also really enjoying the ability to have different radio stations (in-game) play different genres of music and not wanting them all mixed up, this wasn't quite ideal, but at the time I settled down to the fact that unless someone ever figured out a way to create a hack of some type that allowed for different behavior of the music folders or using a playlist of some kind, it was my best choice.
Due to recent circumstances I won't go into however, I was forced to purchase a new system which I am currently in the process of gutting (to get rid of junk and set things up the way I want them). Being that I got a version of Windows Vista Home Premium with the thing though, I decided to set up a dual boot system (with XP) and try to start getting used to Vista since eventually, it's going to become hard to avoid any longer anyway.
In the course of research about Vista's strengths, weaknesses, differences from XP and features, I discovered that it apparently has native support for 4 kinds of "shortcut" -2 for files and 2 for folders. One pair (soft links/shortcuts) acts almost exactly like XP's shortcuts did, but the other seems to act as if they were actual files/folders and are in fact referred to as hard links or junctions.
This, coupled with the fact that all research seemed to indicate that TS2 runs perfectly (albeit with slightly less performance in some cases) on Vista, led me to wonder if perhaps this feature could be exploited in order to set up a series of junctions from within the TS2 music folders pointing to other areas of the hard drive which already contained sorted music files and actually get them to work as intended.
There's an article which explains the Vista "MkLink" command, which is how one creates such junctions
HERE for anyone else who might be interested, and again, as time permits and I get this new system up to speed, I'll be sure to report back as to whether or not I have any luck getting any of this to work.
-Kitt
Author