Custom file limit?

[moniquinin]

I'm on a mac running Mac OS X.4.8 - no clean installer or any other usefull windoze apps.

Does anyone know if there is a limit to how many custom files you can have in both your downloads and saved sims folders? (and if there is, is there a way around it?)

I guess I've already sort of figured out that there is some sort of limit due to trial and error (the game crashed after adding some more content, removed what I just added, deleted stuff that worked that was superfluous, such as three out of four blonde versions of the same har, added the new stuff and then my game worked) but does anyone know exactly what it is?  Also, I've figured that it works a bit differently with savedsims content (hair, clothes) as opposed to objects and things in the downloads folder.  I guess what I'm asking is, does anyone know if the limit is fixed, or if it depends on what the content is, or if it's just how many different meshes the game can handle as well as the number of recoulours, or maybe there is no limit and it's some sort of conflict that I am unaware of but that someone could suggest I look for?

Also, has anyone had the following happen to them?

My game takes massive amounts of time to load and since I'm trying to "streamline" my custom content due to the above mentioned issue (i'm deleting stuff that I first thought was cool, but have since then found something better or just stopped liking it) to make room for stuff that I really want that I've found here) I realized that (I think) by opening Body shop, which takes a lot less time and I can do other things with my computer while it's loading, I can tell if there will be a game crash if Body Shop itself crashes, or if I get these weird backgrounds at the startup screen - either bright blue, all black, or sort of dimmed.  If I get these backgrounds, I just quit and remove what I just added and start again.

Do these messed up backgrounds actually mean anything in particular?  I know that if I try to use bodyshop when it opens with these backgrounds it just crashes, so I go back to my game, delete things that I can live without so I can make more space.  The problem is, I'm running out of stuff I want to delete, but I still want more in my game!  Part of the problem is that it's not really a static thing...it's not like if I delete 5 objects from the game, then I can add another 5 objects -- sometimes I can add more and the game wont crash, sometimes I add less and then it crashes.

This is all very weird - thanks for any help.

[miros]

Are you adding Sims exported from the game by SimSurgery?  That's one source of crashes.

Another possibility is the "dressastop" mesh, but that's usually a "during gameplay" crash, not a crash on load.

[Marhis]

In TS2 base game for Mac there was a glitch about file limits, but base game patch resolved; if it's your case (i.e. if you have a base game unpatched), download  the patch from Aspyr: http://www.aspyr.com/product/news/6/31.

If you want to raise even more the file limit, you have to edit some system configuration files, and it's not recommended, unless you know exactly what you are doing, aka edit kernel configuration files in unix.

More likely, as miros said, you have some files corrupted, and this should explain frequent crashes. Try to identify them, focusing on what circumstances exactly the game crash.

[cwykes]

Just wondering if you might do better to take it all out and add back things instead of the other way round. There's less to look at at a time, so the load or crash happens faster! Also I found I didn't need all the downloads I had nearly as much as I thought I did once I'd played without them for a bit.  I've got about 2GB downloads sitting on my desktop at the moment.  Of course you have to play something you don't normally play so as not to mess up sims you care about, but that can be fun too.  Also if you disable rather than deleting things, you can put them back if you find you made a mistake.  Cleaninstaller turns the extension to .off instead of .package  DK if that's all it does.

Sounds like you know what is what in your files though.  I'm in awe - I haven't a clue what half the clothes and hair etc are because of not being able to subfolder in base game which is when I got most of them.

[moniquinin]

hmmm...I have no idea what the files are - I'm deleting them after looking at them from within the game, like from CAS if it's hair or whatever.  My game crashes when I try to enter Pleasantview or Body Shop crashes.  I've got NL and OFB - don't really know if I need a patch - I really can't remember if I patched the base game.  If I'm using these other expansion packs, would I still need the patch?


I'm not quite sure it's a particular file that's conflicting because once I got the conflict, what I did was start from nothing and work my way up....well actually, at one point, I decided to put back in half of my files, than half again, etc.  I reached a point where I'd crash, so I put in the other half and that crashed as well, so then I started adding things little by little and what I've figured out is that for example, The last thing I tried to add was a peggy hair set - and the game crashed.  So I deleted an XM hair set which I've realised is quite crap and tried again the peggy hair set which I really want and the game works, which is why I think it might be a limit thing.  I just want to know if anyone knows for sure, if it's a limit by category thing or more global, or if there's a way around this because It's getting quite tedious and like I said, I'm running out of things I can delete. 

For example, if I delete a load of eyes I don't use, would that open up more space for more hair, or build objects or whatever.  For that matter, I know if I delete hair that a sim in my game was using, it will go back to the default hair, no problem -- is this true for eyes?  I must have a couple hundred eye files that I just don't need, but I can't remember who is using what, and I can really streamline there, but will this really screw up my game?

[seelindarun]

First of all, I think we need a better handle on exactly how big your DL folder is, in MB, and maybe how many files you have in there, sub-foldered or not.  I'm not sure that anyone knows precisely what the DL limit is, either in total size or number of files, but at least other users could report whether their game runs with more than what you have.

Another useful tidbit might be whether your computer meets spec or not.  Did you check the system specs?  If you're close to the edge in RAM especially, that might account for random crashes.

As for custom eyes, the sims using any you pull will end up with whatever default brown eyes you have (Maxis or custom default).  Their genes will be permanently messed up which might be okay if you're done breeding them, but if not, or if they already passed those genes to their children, then their kids will end up with junk in their genes even if they don't express the same custom eyes as the parent.  It won't corrupt the sims, but genes won't be passed in the proper way for the affected sims.  Unfortunately, under Mac OS you won't be able to fix this with SimPE.

Lastly, I'm not sure whether it makes a difference if you trashcan stuff from within the game, as opposed to removing the files manually from the download folder.  If you can identify the files in the DL folder from the finder, it would be safer to remove it that way, especially if the file is corrupt.