More Awesome Than You!

I apparently have 1211 downloaded hair packages.
About 10 of them were correctly binned.

Datgen's hairtoner crashes when I scan for files, so I've been using Simpe, so far I've correctly binned about 100 files.  It's taken hours.
Is there any better way to do it than manually?  And is there any way to keep sane if I really have to spend half a week recategorizing manually?

Sorry, and my sympathies, but, not that I've heard of.

Do you actually mean the hairtoner, or the skin manager? Thats what ive been using in the newer version, and it crashes for me too. Not helpful, but it might help to know you're not alone in that frustration.

All versions of DatGen that I've tried have crashed on me before I've been able to do anything useful with it.

I'm saeriously bored with this.  Is there any way to write macros for Simpe?

There is only one way you can do it, and it's a "Long way to Tiperary"...:). I did it, and worked several hours on it.

Edited, by the suggestion of swy - sorry to mislead you, but I didn't see the option "move to". The changes are underlined.

1) Use the Clean Installer.

2) Pass all your files in the "downloads" folder, and "Saved Sims" folder (if you have one):

2a) Open a folder on your desktop, named "saved", or any name.

3) When you see a desciption "hair" -  choose the option "move", and move the file to the new folder.

4) If you see "mesh" - do the same.

5)  Do the same for all the files that  don't have description - they are or saved sims, or meshes. You have to compromise here, because you don't know which is which.

6)  After you finish, enter your downloads folder, and see if you have a folder Saved Sims. If you have - drag it to the desktop.

8) Put the files in the folder "saved"  into Saved Sims folder,  copy the Saved Sims folder, and paste it in the my documents/EA games/TS2

Thanks swy...:).

 

148 down.
A hell of a lot to go.

Again, my sympathies.

Here's my idea: Select all of the strange hair you seem to have accumulated, and push the DELETE button.

I mean, seriously, You can't have that many sims. Even if every single one has their own unique hair, you STILL DON'T NEED THAT MANY. You do want your game to actually load today, right? Start DELETING!

It took me a lot of time to realize that. I'm down to around 100 from an original 500.  ;)

I feel your pain with DatGen, since I'm having the same problem.  I'm going to use part of Gali's instructions to make things easier for me.

I'm probably missing something here, but this bit got me.....
Why don't you just rightclick on that item and move it to a new folder?  You can do that in cleaninstaller.  In fact if you sort by category, I think you can highlight a chunk and right click to move them all into a new folder.
Please forgive if I just don't understand..
I have zillions of downloads myself and am planning on a major clean up of clothes, hair etc when I get my first EP - OFB

"Why don't you just rightclick on that item and move it to a new folder?  You can do that in cleaninstaller.  In fact if you sort by category, I think you can highlight a chunk and right click to move them all into a new folder." [swy]

Oh my! - Hit me with a stick!!! I didn't see at all the option "move to"!

Consider myself nominated...:).

I am going straight to edit the reply.

Thanks, swy...:)

Gwill is trying to catagorize all the hairs so they show up in the proper color bins in game.

I really want to do that, and I even pointed someone towards the tutorial that's somewhere here on MATY, but I have no idea how to do it myself.  I have a few (read: way more than I should) custom hairstyles, and I'd really like it to show in the right bins.  Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I'll tackle it, but it's a daunting task.

Wouldn't it be fairly easy to categorize the hair correctly when the creator is making it?  Or are my expectations too high?

I know you have to do this using SimPe, but I don't have any idea how hard it would be.  Maybe it's something they can do now that they couldn't before?  Because all of a sudden everywhere I look all the new hairs are said to be in the correct color bins when you add them to your game.  I didn't see this before, just within the past couple of months.  I would love to do that too, I even probably have the time right now, as my school district is not needing subs at the moment.  I'm just too afraid of messing something up in SimPe and blowing up my game, which I just got working again after a stupid glitch with mouse drivers.  Also I'm so technically challenged it's not even funny.  My husband won't let me even delete anything unless it has to do with my sims, because I'm sure to mess it up!

Don't be afraid of SimPE. It keeps back ups, and as long as you keep your own back ups there's nothing you can screw up so badly a fresh install won't fix. Messing with hair files will, at most, cause weirdness with said files. Sim parts (hair, clothes, skins, etc.) in general will usually just not show up if it gets screwed up. Editing in SimPE is rather more taxing on your patience than your technical skills, generally speaking.

This particular excersize, messing with the "hairtone" string, is actually quite easy. Dewshine's post, here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2119.0) should cover it; just scroll down to the first post with pictures in it, should show you what you need to do.

It would be much, much easier on everyone if the creator just did this when they made the file, because it's fairly simple but also rather tedious to do for a lot and all at once. Much easier for just one person to do it, rather than 1000.

I intend to do that as well.  But the only sensible way to delete hairs is doing in in game, as it's hard to tell from the previews what hair you're really dealing with.
And since I've already started this project, I thought I'd do the delete project later.

On a nice note; townies are being generated with the hairs from the bins, so binning all my hairs will cause a lot more of them to be used in game.

Wow. 1211. Hard for me to comprehend.

I have about 4 downloaded custom hairs. But I'm stingy, stingy, stingy with what I download.

OMG, I just checked mine and I got 431MB of hair colors and 658 files.   I really need to start deleting,  I have totally lost it.   :o   ;D

Someone shoot me please! 

All the work I did today was wasted.  I've put all my red hairs in the blond bin.

00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 is NOT red.

I did that too, Gwill, but at least it is a fairly easy fix.  I finished my hair project last week, catagorized about 1030 files, deleted probably 700.  It got to the point where I could change the hairtone number and delete the toddler and child textures and add the file name to the mouseover description in just over a minute. 

One of the best things I had was a small program called Phrase Express SE.  I put the hairtone numbers in it and just pasted.  Didn't have to do all the reds or all the blondes at one time.  I didn't change the family number, that way the genetic end of it seemed to work better in my game.

It helps to have a file folder ( I called mine test hair, it was a recycled folder) and put in no more than 10 at a time.  Much less daunting that way.

Keep going, you will be very happy with your results, I know I am!

I've started deleted all the crappy hair I'd never use, and if I saw a townie with it I'd kill it off.
I've downloaded a lot of shitty hair.

I'm down to about 950, and I foresee a lot of more deleting.  The problem is that deleting hair from within the game also takes forever.  But I guess it needs to be done.

Just a pity that you don't get the delete option with the mirror, only in CAS!  Sometimes,t hough, when you mouseover, you see the creator's name.  If you find a lot of hair by the same creator which looks dreadful in game, then when you exit, just get rid of the lot!

I've been doing some of that.
I used to be frustrated that there wan't much custom hair for men around, so I downloaded everything I could find.  So now I have a bunch of badly meshed, badly textured, huge anime hair.  I don't mind anime hair, as long as it's well made.

Are you following a tutorial to do this?  I've been meaning to classify my hair, but I have yet to find instructions that are so clear that they inspired me to start doing it. I should be ashamed for being so lazy!.  Alright if someone points me towards decently clear instructions, I vowe to turn them into a proper tutorial complete with screenshots.

Anyway, this won't help you much but for the future it might.  I started keeping a jpg of everything I download and keeping it with the file.  I make sure the jpg name matches the file.  This way, if you hate the hair, you can always go back and delete it easily.

Maybe you ought to just bite the bullet and delete every hair and start from sratch.  Reload only the hair you like.  Don't forget that some of that hair is high poly on top of being bad looking.  If some of your townies start sporting them everywhere your game will slow down.

And I've started to see hair appearing in the correct bins as well.  I welcome that change.  At least one of the creator mentioned he used Datgen.  I think that either they are all using Datgen, or the information on how to do this is being circulated more widely.  It's amazing how much progress has been made since the early days of TS2 when you compare the quality of stuff that was made then and now.


I wonder about one thing though.  If you have a sim with custom hair and you delete that hair.  I know he will go around bald or something like that.  I also know that you can make them change appearance to fix that.  But what happens to genetics.  Will missing custom hair be passed down to the babies? 

I'm sorry about the mix up in my linked post.
The numbers used for face hair and head hair are reversed for Blond and Red. I must have put the info for the face hair down there.  It's been corrected now.  Again, I'm very sorry about the misinformation there.

Best thing to do is sort into correct color folders, load that folder and the meshes, delete what you find flaws with, and catagorize what you have left. 
But that's just my opnion...

Have you considered loading bodyshop to do your hair deleting?  When I go through and clean out the clothes/hair/makeup/whatever in my game, I always use bodyshop... it's faster than in-game for sim-based stuff since it doesn't load all the objects.

I was just going to suggest that.  It takes my BodyShop a little while to load, but it's tons times faster than loading up my game AND CAS.  CAS takes forever in my game to load!  I'm all the time going through and getting rid of stuff--I've found a lot of things just don't look as good in-game as they do in a screenshot.

Loading time isn't much of an issue for me at the moment.  I've temporarily removed all my downloads that aren't hair.

I don't like to use bodyshop.  It's so bloody dark.  But I'm getting pretty sick of my Harry Potter CAS as well  ::).
Anyway, I'm down to 855, and some of those might be meshes of things I've deleted.  I feel that I've deleted everything I can't live with, but I bet I'm going to be able to part with some more when I've got through the categorizing.

It's taking time, but I'm getting there!  :D

A word of warning about moving files with CleanInstaller:

That is what I was doing a while back which caused all my downloaded files to be changed to some unusable file format... :o
So, if you do this, be prepared to risk losing all your files, or you can have CleanInstaller open next to your download directory and use the filenames from CleanInstaller to find which files need moving.

I move files with cleaninstaller on a daily basis.  Never had any problems there.

A while back, if you unchecked a file in CleanInstaller that would deactivate it.  To deactivate it, it would rename the file and remove the .package extension.  You could have either renamed your files to re-enable it, or used clean installer to do it.

Now, you need to check the files and right click on them to de-activate it.  That's much better and much harder to do by accident. 

Those of you who categorize have a lot more willpower than me...it takes me forever just to go through and delete the ones I no longer  use.

I'm sick of downloading crappy hair...I know it's my own fault but I can't figure out how some creators make it look so good on their sim "models" but in my game it's just wretched.  I think some people must be photoshopping up their sims a bit b/c there is no way some of the stuff I downloaded can be the same stuff the creator used in their picture of it.

I'm much more picky these days though...I can probably deal with the custom hair just being left as custom hair, but I need to go through it one day and delete all the excess copies of maxis styled toddler/child/teen hair that downloading hair leaves behind.  I can deal with going to the mirror if the kid ends up bald.

I don't have that much custom hair at present, so I don't mind it just remaining as Custom Hair!  I can see, though, if you have an awful lot, and that's what you mainly use, it makes a bit of a joke of the turnon/offs!

Does anyone know how to fix the genetic part of it, so that custom hair is treated the same as Maxis hair.  I saw at least one creator saying that he fixed his hair so they would work the same as Maxis (as well as be in the correct bins)

I find the most difficult part of organizing hair is not categorizing -- which is tedious but simple whether done manually (SimPE or DatGen) or with the DatGen tool.  The difficult part is preparing the files for categorization -- checking what color they are, renaming as necessary so I don't have to check every single time I mess with the file, etc.  No tool can do this, although all of them allow you to see the hair textures if you want to do it on-the-fly.

In essence, there is no easy way to categorize a bunch of (often poorly file-named) hair.  I wish creators would just catch on and distribute the things properly already.  (Some hairs at MTS2 are correct, and all of those at genensims, and I think I've seen a few at TSR2 as I've browsed the freebies now and again.)

A question for those of you who prefer to categorize in a purely manual manner using SimPE: beyond the whole "what is this file anyway?" issue above, why do you prefer the manual method to the at-least-somewhat-automated-method of DatGen?  I've done it both ways, and I'm interested to hear what others think.  I'm kind of surprised to see so many people here advocating the pure manual method.

Well, datagen sounds nifty... but I cannot get the tool to run correctly for me.  I'm just destined to be a simPE user. 
The main problems with using datagen is that the elder hair ends up having 4 of each style, unless you go back in with simpe and delete the extra ones from three colors.

I used SimPe mainly because I have it installed.  I've just got 4 different versions of Datgen downloaded.  And the instructions I followed were for SimPE.  I solved the 4 different gray hairs by deleting them all, I have very few elders in my games.  I also delete the toddler and child ones, too, if they are standard maxis styles.  Especially the hair poofs one.  hate that
I think the pure manual method gives you more control over what exactly is being done.  I don't know if Datgen will let you delete the textures you don't want from any given hair, or not use all ages. 

I would love to use datgen, it looks nice, but it crashes when I try to do anything with it.

I have so many other tools that I have never even downloaded DatGen. 

I worked for 3 hours catagorizing my downloads folder yesterday.  It was such a mess!!  Tonight, I am going to clean it out and see if I can't get rid of a lot of junk.  Question:  I have several files that Clean Installer cannot identify or preview.  Their names are a long series of numbers and letters.  I do not know if they are old Body Shop files from before TS2 was released, or if they are meshes.  I am afraid to delete them.  How can I find out what they are if Clean Installer can't read them?  Would this DatGen help?  Or SimsPE, which I do have but like everyone else, am afraid of.

open the file with Simpe and look for the geometric data container or object data, this should help you determine what it is. Usually files that cant be viewed with clean installer are meshes of some sort or sometimes persons.

The files with the long series of names can be a few different things:  Walls, floors, meshes or bodyshop files.

I think SimPE could be used to identify the file, but I don't know exactly how.  Probably in the Classic GUI part though, in Object Data.

Thanks y'a.. :)  I'm betting they're meshes.  When I was catagorizing, I had an "I don't Know" folder where I put all the things with long names like that, or ambiguious names like, "SummerDreams" that I thought might be clothes but found out it was a wall.  LOL  The Clean Installer was able to tell me what everything was and I right-clicked and moved them to their correct folders, but these, oh, 20 or 30, files had no information except their names.

Blue, I just wanted to tell you that I notice you are always one of the first people here that replies to me and gives me helpful advice, and I really appreciate it.  Thank you. 

"Blue, I just wanted to tell you that I notice you are always one of the first people here that replies to me and gives me helpful advice, and I really appreciate it.  Thank you." [Kristal]

That's the main job of the Senators (that, and  irritating JMP)  ;D ;D ;D

 

Aww, thank you.  :)

Gali, irritating Pescado is my main job.  And I do it well.  ;D

Blue, you are already professional in this job.  :D

Did you get my BlueSoup present? It's yummi...:)

(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c230/gali123/BlueSoup.jpg)

Umm, it doesn't look all thar yummy.  I think there's a bug in it.  :o

But yes, I am quite the professional at antagonizing El Presidente. 

But he likes it.  :P

It sometimes happens that a file that Clean Installer can't identify, SimPE can, so the first thing I'd be inclined to do is view that particular folder in SimPE.  They may be terrain paints from a d/l'd house, for example, and I sometimes wonder if Clean Installer always identifies them.

Even in the case of extremely long random file names, I've always been able to figure out what kind of file it was with Clean Installer, although I'm not saying it's not possible it can't identify it.

It took a lot of identify and move all those files to the right folders though.

Tell me, can the files be renamed without a problem?

The easiest thing to do is to start fresh.  :P

I finally got around to installing the game on my computer (I wiped it clean) and I organized as I downloaded. Simple as that.

Oh, all my downloads are completely organized, I just wanted to know about the wonky file names.

I think there's a thread about this further down the page.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2212.0 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2212.0)

There you go.

Thanks ZZ.  :)

You're welcome.  hope you find what you need to know.  I'll probably try it sometime too, I've got a lot of old make-up etc. with long file names, so I really haven't a clue if there ones I want to keep or not!

I don't have all that many, considering how many files I have, but it'd still be nice to change stuff so it makes more sense to me.

Yes, but it'd be nice if all make-up, hair etc. makers were to rename them and give us package files instead of sims2packs!

All you people with Datgen problems, make sure you are using the 10/19 developmental release instead of the 10/3 official release. I had horrible crashing problems too until I installed the last one. Too bad the project is over with :(

Yeah, Charliene, I tryed the 10/19 version.  It didn't crash, but it didn't really work right for me either.  I guess it was too simple for me to figure out?  Anyhow I think datgen is a cool tool for those folks who are scared by all the numbers in simPE.

I wish I had horrible crashes.
I just have dull crashes.  When I search for anything (which the program seems to force me to do, rather than just letting me tell it which folder I want it to look in), the program searches, and when it's searched through most of my files, it just stops responding.

Thats what happens to me, except, it seems to actually be after its searched all the files, when its loading them into Datgen. I have the latest release too, as I redownloaded it after it crashed the first time.

Maybe you need to slim down your folders and just give the program a few at a time to load.

I used to have that problem til I realized I was a dork and should never ever no matter what scan for files. There are just some files that will always make it puke. Now I go into my downloads with clean installer, find all the offending hair files, move them to an offending-hair folder, and make a list. Then when I open DatGen, I only open the four files per hair mesh at a time. That way it never crashes. Then I use the hair toner and ref the list I have (when the names are not intuitive) to bin the hair correctly. Then it is lather, rinse, repeat. Until all the offenders stop offending so much.

Although this is all fine and dandy but now the new version of DatGen I cannot figure the process out at all. *sigh* I think I am going to try and locate the old version.

I thought I'd give you all an update.

I'm still at it.  I'm still not playing the game, because I've moved all my non-hairy downloads out to do this.  I'm still tearing my real hear out.

I've deleted the hairs I know I'll never use.
I have completed all the fantastic hairs from sites I couldn't possibly live without.  I cheated and downloaded them all again, sorted them nicely into subfolders and ordered them into the correct bins one by one.
All the hairs that had their colours in the filename (in either of the three languages I can understand) are sorted into subfolders and SimPed into the apropriate hair bin.  I've even fixed the ones that were incorrectly named, or I just disagreed with the definiton (what some people call light brown is definitely blonde in my book).

Now I'm stuck with all the files called b4db081b56e2328e4bb4f940861973a2.package and worse.
Currently I'm using CleanInstaller to try to move the ones with the colour mentioned in their description into subfolders.  And looking through the textures of the ones where the creator thought it more important to inform me who made the skin than give any sensible description of it, and see if I can figure out which of the textures are a complete waste of space, and which ones actually say something about what colour the actual hair is.

I'm already very annoyed at people who have textures of 4 different colours in a pack where obviously only one of them is used.
I might go crazy within the next few days and decide to go on a crazy vandetta and kill all sloppy modders.  Or I might take my medicine and fall asleep as usual.

And the worst part of this?  In exactly 12 days I'm going to Hong Kong, and will be away from my computer for at least 3 months, probably 4 and a half.

Okay, part of this is coming from the part of me that someday wants to become a professional organizer...

You know those reality-TV shows, like "Clean Sweep" where a tough-minded prof. organizer says "Out it goes!" and the person being organized just weeps?

Well like that, I would say to all those indecipherably-named files - just DELETE them! You've done a good job, you already have the "fantastic hairs" from sites you can't live without.

OR, the gentler way is to simply place them into a folder elsewhere, (in a virtual attic) and ONLY if you really remember and miss a particular style do you hunt through them at a later time.

Wouldn't you rather be playing the game? (I only say this because you said you were "tearing your hair out", if you love categorizing hair, then go for it!)

You have already said you got all the fantastic hair  you couldn't possibly do without.  Ditch the rest.  You probably won't miss them.  Go on press the delete key.  A brief moment of pain and then you will be okay.  Then you'll wonder why you didn't do it before.

ps. lol Pegasys.  I read your post after I posted mine (bad girl I know).  I guess we think alike

There's a massive difference between "can't live without" and "want to have in the game".

The game gets incredibly dull if all sims have the same hairs.  Even if (and maybe especially if) they are fantastic haris.

Well your game right now consists of sorting through hair.  So that's duller than any other scenario I can think of with the game.

What I would do, if i was you, is put only a few hairs in the download folder (and nothing else) and use Body Shop to identify what they are.  BS loads in about 30 seconds when you have a blank game and an almost empty download folder.

But if it was me, I'd just start over.  You'll find new hair and find the ones you liked again.  Sort all your hair by folders and include a jpg of the hair.  This way you will never have to play the "identify the hair from the texture game".

It takes some extra work, but I've found this to be very useful, as suggested in another thread. In SimPe paste the name of the package into the 'Text List' section of the package itself; it usually has the recolorer's name in it. If there isn't a text list you can create a string - and it's useful in that if there isn't a text list section in the package at all, the package likely isn't even working in-game anyway. It's pretty easy when you just copy-paste the file name from the Open dialog in SimPe, when you go to open the file.

When you do this, you can then mouseover the hair in Bodyshop or CAS and see exactly what file it is, so when you switch between the ages you can see that it's blonde for the kids' hair and then suddenly jumps to black in the custom mesh, etc...

(Thanks to whoever suggested this in a previous thread)

I'm all done!  Finished!  Complete! Free!
My game is back up and running!

After finishing figuring out the colours, and subfolering I used Datgen for the last dirtywork.
Btw thanks CharlenieHead, the 10/19 developmental release worked, despite my sceptisim.  It doesn't do nearly as thuough a job as I did with simpe, but I was sick of it all.

I wouldn't even want to start!  Just makes me think - don't download any hair where the maker doesn't make it clear what you're getting!

I'm really glad I did this.  :D  It was really dull and time consuming, but I think it's worth it.
Now I'm going to kill all my townies and NPCs so I can regenerate them with fancy hair!

In the future I'll categorize hair as I download it.

Why kill off your townies, just give them makeovers

Killing them is a lot more fun.

Hrmm.. So I decided to categorize my hairs too, since I've only got a few dozen. The only problem is, I can't find the Hair Toner. I downloaded the latest DatGen and extracted the 10/19 release to the installed location... But hairtoner doesn't seem to be there.

I'm probably just overlooking it but I don't see it in the plugins list...

Cruel sims mommy!

I personally wouldn't want to have a mass killing of my sims because that would considerably increase the amount of sims in my 'hood and that can be bad.  I don't think it matters if they are dead or alive when it comes to too many itirations errors. 

Could be wrong, but I wouldn't take the chance.


Do it the hard way with SimPE.  It will put hair on your chest !

Aww... But I hate using SimPE! It's so slow for me and confusing. I guess a tutorial would be nice. I'll look around this thread for one. Edit: Saw plenty of people needing one, but nobody supplying. I'll wait patiently then.

This thread explained it for me, and so far I've had no problems whatsoever categorizing away:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2119.0

There's a couple of threads that are current right now about categorizing hair with SimPE.  Dewshine gave us this one, (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2119.msg59038#msg59038) so that's a possibility.  Also, do a search for categorizing hair, there are a couple more out there for it as well.

Whoo!

It worked. Call me crazy but that was actually fun. Then again, I only had a few dozen. Totally worth it.

Just a tip though, sometimes the filename will SAY "brown" in it, but don't use filenames, view the texture first and you be the judge. I guess some artists clone the base color (which is usually brown I noticed from the filenames) and just change the color without altering the filename.

Now if only we could get everyone to do this before they upload their hair...

I don't have all that many either, so I think I will eventually bite the bullet and give it a go.  A short while ago, I separated my hair files with meshes into a different subfolder (although I don't know if I got them all), so hopefully it won't be too much for me to handle.

It really wasn't too much work. Having my downloads folder completely organized by site and hair/clothes/gender made it a lot easier.

I say it took my about 30 minutes to an hour but I'm not so sure. I'll count my hair files.

Oh, no wonder it didn't take me so long. I only counted 19 or so hair files.  ;D Then again, some took longer than others (but only by a few seconds) because they included the YA age group, or because I had to actually look at the texture to decide what color it was.

Am I the only one who is happy with the only the set of Maxis hair included with game and expansion packs? I have added a few ethnic styles since I think they were lacking in that department, but otherwise I haven't gone looking for hair.

It's probably just how I play the game, but I wonder if it's because I've been playing the game since only June, not for an entire year -- when did y'all start really going on download sprees, did you do this right away or was it after several months did you suddenly reach a point where you were sick of the Maxis hair/clothing/furniture ? This isn't really a question about hair persay, but about how you play the game and how custom content fits into it...

(Oh my gosh, I'm now a cretin! Wahoo!)

I'm pretty much happy with the Maxis hair, although I do think the blond colour is a little too brassy.  I like the light ash blonde from Lyran.

I probably only have about 20 or so custom hairstyles, as I've been a lot pickier this time around than I used to be. 

Custom furniture and clothes though, is an entirely different matter.  I really hate most of the stuff that Maxis has to offer, and it wasn't long at all before I started on downloading sprees.  When I had only 256MB and a crapass video card, this made it pretty tough to take with the loading times, but I didn't care...I could have a shower or make a meal while it was loading!

It was probably about somewhere around the six month mark when I discovered custom content. I had a problem with the base game - big suprise - and went looking for answers, it was all downhill from there.

Glad to know that someone else feels the catagorizing is worth it.  I did this with over 1000 files, and I still feel it was worth it.  And I put the file name into the text list on every one of them, VERY useful. 

I started downloading custom content as soon as it became available, long before I actually got the game.  I'm more careful now, only getting the items I want out of a set instead of the whole thing.  Download folder was getting way too big.

Well, I'm in the process of splitting my download, and having a complete victorian set with furniture, walls, floors, build stuff and clothes etc.  then I'll have to sets of game folders, TheSims2 Mod and TheSims2Vic!  But at least it's staving off the moment when I have to get rid of stuff I like!

That sounds like a great idea, ZZ!!  Since I have 4 game folders, I think I might do that as well.  Too many new things downloaded to add to the "real" game, and so far no downloads in the "first alternate" game.  This could well be the best solution.

You'd need to check houses where you  know they have a lot of custom Victoriana and change it first, though, or you'll have loads of mismatched Maxis! (And bare walls and floors!  Enough to make a fortune sim wring their hands in despair!)

I've never seen the fortune sim wring their hands in dispair!  Might be worth not fixing right away....  Very few of my sims are fortune, guess my die doesn't want to roll that way.  I should probably change the order once in a while to prevent that.  Or maybe keep a closer eye on the sim before they transition and pick one suited to their personality.  That might be too much work.... ;)

I didn't mean literally! ;D  I've never seen it either, although it just might make them want to panhandle!

I'm a complete download whore.
I just love custom content.

You should be glad you're happy with the defaults.

 :D Gwill!  I am too.  Every single day.  I get up in the morning.  I start my email downloading.  I load up MATY and hit "show new messages since your last visit" and read the stuff that are responses to my messages or that look interesting.  Then I go to MTS2 and click downloads and go through the new stuff.  If someone mentions downloading cc, I usually rabbit-trail all over the internet downloading more crap I'll never use or that will make my game lag like crazy.  MY dl folder is 1.6g (!!) and contains just over 7000 items.  Wow.  I didn't realize it was that big!  LOL

C

Oh, god.  I just checked...  My downloads folder is 3.27 GB.  Just the downloads folder.
I need help.

3.27 GB!?  :o I just have shy of 600 items in my downloads folder (200 MB), and even I don't want to think about categorizing my downloaded hair. I commend you for your bravery. :)

Well, I have nearly 2GB that I'm using at present, Plus probably another 1GB that I haven't even installed, plus stuff that's sitting in a folder since I installed NL and haven't put everything back yet, plus I have another folder of victorian stuff which is probably getting on for 1GB!  But I swear I won't go over 2GBs in one Game set.  But at present I have three - Sims2 play, Sims2 build and Sims2 test - next will be Sims2 vic!  I think I'm nearly set for the next quarter of a centruy!

I'm happy enough with the Maxis hair styles, but I don't like the texture very much.  The black is too gray, it should be a rick glossy black.  The red is too orangy, it lacks dept, and the blond is too yellow.  The brown I never use.  All the colors are flat and need to be glossier, like healthy hair.That's why I'm trying to find good recolors.  I've seen some gorgeous recolors out there, but they are all custom meshes.  Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be "in" for artists of talent to recolor Maxis hair.  I'm finding some older recolors from back in the days where there was no meshing possible, but techniques have evolved since then (or the talent tool) and new hair is much better textured now.  However I am picky and will not use static, plastic meshes.  So that makes my choices limited.  Which is good in a way, I won't end up with 1000+ hair :P I did include some updo's in my hair catalog, as I find that Maxis did not include anything very elegant.  Updo's don't bother me so much, as the hair isn't meant to move anyway.  (Ah the power of a good gel).

But I am a total download whore, might be worse than you gwill.  I spend more time downloading and cataloging and organizing than I do playing. 

Whoa, ZZ. That's a lot. I'm usually pretty fussy about the stuff I download, but that can sometimes lead to me looking for something, to only realise I didn't actually download it in the first place after about half an hour of debating whether I liked it or not!

I guess I'm going to make it my new years resolution to be more picky.  ;)

Well, there's stuff I rarely use, and occasionally stuff I delete completely because it's crap, but since I have a 156GB second drive to store stuff on, it doesn't really matter how much I download!  Just takes time to sort everything, though!

I have to admit I did go on a little bit of a download spree when I started getting into building, but it's mostly for build-mode items, or recolors of existing items. I end up doing more "window shopping" - (including looking for windows to download)! And I have spent hours surfing sites just for a particular few things, or just looking at new items at MTS2...  but lately I think it may be faster to recolor oneself than to try to find a particular recolor! 

The Sims mirrors my everyday life; I hate shopping for clothes IRL and try to keep my hair simple; but my environment, well I'm always up for new furniture (not that we can always afford it though).

I'm exactly that way - I would much rather buy stuff for my house or electronic stuff than buy clothes (and I can't afford it either  :D)

Damn all of you and this thread. I had it all in the custom bin!


*goes back to catagorizing*

Could anyone give a step by step for datgen? I can't understand their tutorial, specially the part where you load files, and what they mean by sets.
The hair toner appeared when i clicked on it in the plugins folder.
Since I can't play, might as well do something useful.

I download hairs, clothes and furniture.  And hacks.  Lots of hacks.  But only the kind of hack that adds realism, not the cheaty kind.
I have almost no makeup downloaded.  Some different shades of lipstick, a couple of eyeliners and a few eyeshadows.  I only have one blush, and that's just freckles.  I have some full face makeup, but I never use it.
I need to do a clothes sweep.  I did one a few months ago, but it wasn't good enough.
I also need to stop downloading so much furniture.  I never use most of it anyway.

Thanks for reminding me to delete a lot of hairs. I got a lot of hairs from when the game wasn't even out yet lol. A lot of them i never used! and my folder is like 600mb lol. No wonder my game takes forever to start up X_x. Off to delete i go!

Hmm, I have barely any custom objects that aren't hacked ones to serve a specific function...my sims houses look like junkyards, poor things (especially their yards!)

Lol i am download crazy woman XD Anything i like i download, but i am more better at not downloading junk.

The only thing I've downloaded so far, and plan on downloading, is clothes and genetics... I admit, some of the Maxis objects are bad but once I start downloading objects I won't stop and it will clog up my game.

Well, you have far more willpower than me, I am constantly on the lookout for new objects.  ::)

Did you get Numenor's new lights? purrrrrty

Are they at MTS2?  I'm always on the lookout for nice lights which don't stop you clicking on anything within a mile of them!

OHHHH!  I saw those!  Since no poly count was listed I hesitated, but I want them.  They are very, very pretty.

C

No problems in my game with them so far - and my computer sucks. I haven't played with all the settings yet mind you.

Did somebody say lights?

Ok... I'll download lights. I love them. Especially with Gun's AWESOME lighting hack. Dusk is so pretty.

Maybe we should start a helping place for us that download to much =P.

Carrigon used to have a thread over at VS, don't know if it's still running - and belive you me, none of us compares to some of the downloadaholics over there!