How much is too much

[lindaetterlee]

Ok everyone how many downloads do you have file size wise? I am bordering on 5gb after my recent cleaning spree. I only cleaned because i started seeing a slight lag. My game takes roughly 6 1/2 minutes to load from start to playing a family. I have all settings on high. Here are a few of my numbers: hair recolors 1299; hair meshes 453; Clothing meshes 6867; Clothing 14324; Object recolors  6071; Object meshes 607; walls/floors 3886; groundcovers 202 ; Makeup 1432; and every hack known to man that is compatible with NL. lol So anyone else addicted. Also what method do you use to clean out your downloads.

[BlueSoup]

Yeah, I'd say you have too much.  Unless you want your game to explode, I would start culling it back a little. 

I have all of my downloads sorted into different sections, and then use the MTS2 Clean Installer to start removing some of it.

[Emma]

I only have 7.69mb-just some makeup and freckles/beauty spots I downloaded I have no space on my hard-drive for anything more than that really Mind you I am just downloading Motoki's clothes hack thingy, I don't know how much space that will take up.

[DrBeast]

Ye Gods! 5 GB AFTER the cleaning?! Wow, that sure is a LOT! I haven't checked it out to be honest, but I must have a giga or so. Hmm...maybe I should check it out today.

[Renatus]

5 GB is practically more downloads than game!    I only have 700MB worth of stuff, and I can't even come near to using it all.

[gali]

819 MB, and don't download anymore...).

[theisz]

Oops, I guess my 6 gigs is kind of bad, huh? 

[draranha]

I have "only" 500 MB, with 1633 files. And I thought that it was too much! 5 GB!!!! 6 GB!!! Wow!!!

[Ancient Sim]

Just under a gigabyte, which is my entire downloads folder including hacks.  I did have more, but I do regular cleanouts.  One thing I did notice when I first installed NL and played without my downloads folder, was how amazingly quickly the game saved and went back to my desktop.  Normally it takes ages, but without my downloads it was almost instant.  Not sure why it should affect saving, though.

I have a silly question re. downloads.  If I delete a custom hairstyle I don't want anymore, or an item of clothing, will the mesh automatically be deleted as well?

[Motoki]

Motoki's clothes hack thingy, I don't know how much space that will take up.

Oh it doesn't take up much space it all. 470kb. The nice part about it is it uses the existing Maxis clothing meshes and textures and just recategorizes them so elders can use them.

As for how much is too much? I would say too much is when the load time gets so long you can't stand it. lol

I'm addicted to downloading but at the same time I'm irritated that the file management portion of this game is such a long and tedious process. It would help enormously for one in thing if we could delete clothes in the buy menu and hair and makeup in the mirror.

[theisz]

I have a silly question re. downloads.  If I delete a custom hairstyle I don't want anymore, or an item of clothing, will the mesh automatically be deleted as well?

I've been wondering this also as I have recently went through a "fall" cleaning and deleted tons of hairstyles I didn't want.  Now I don't know which mesh belongs to what in order to delete the unwanted ones.  It's the same thing with custom clothes meshes.  I deleted the outfits but don't know which meshes belonged to them.  Sucky.

[speedreader]

I only have 365 files and 80 MB.  And I actually thought I had a lot until I read this thread.

Over the weekend I thought I would get rid of some hairstyles I don't use.  I opened Body Shop and went through the process of deleting the unwanted.  Then I opened my game and discovered I had only 5 custom styles left, even though there were 3 pages of them when I left Body Shop.  What happened?   I had to go and re-download my favorites and  I still have one bald Sim running around town.  And let's not talk about how I no doubt downloaded even more than I had to begin with 'cause I found more I liked!

[Motoki]

Yes, that is a huge problem in that if you delete a texture that goes with a custom mesh the mesh does not get deleted and is near impossible to find and vice versa is true too if you went into downloads and deleted the mesh.

The best thing to do when downloading, although it is a bit of a pain in the ass, is to have the custom mesh and textures in its own subfolder and label the folder something descriptive that tells you what the file is and who made it, something like 'Peggygirl short and Shaggy hair' etc. It helps tremendously when you go to delete a file.

[Bangelnuts]

5 GB is practically more downloads than game!    I only have 700MB worth of stuff, and I can't even come near to using it all.

eeek 5GB is bigger than my entire Sims2 folder which is  currently 1.4GB and that is with my downloads folder and all games including nightlife my Downloads folder is at 836MB and I dont come any where near using it all. I would have to have literally a thousand  Playable sims to put my downloads into constant use .I weed out  downloads I dont use at all constantly .and if I could weed out an overload of meg hair I would.for what ever reason a glitch has spawned meg hair by the truck load.Iunfortunately meghair is a maxis Item so I cant delete the quadruples of the meg hair.

[SaraMK]

I agree with Motoki, too much is when you can't stand the loading.

My game will load in under 2 minutes with up to 20,000 files, but at 30,000 it will take over 20 minutes. I don't know what the deal is. Must be an exponential increase or something.

I keep it under 10,000 files at all times. I manage my downloads by creating more than one game set, and letting each one have its own custom content. This way, I can have as many different items as I want, but don't have to deal with the resulting loading times. For example, I have one all-alien neighborhood, and all the weird, crazy, and alien-like skins and objects go in there (example: Weird Zone from MTS2). Then, those same items do not go into any of my other game sets, because the other neighborhoods are not alien-related and I would never use the alien stuff in them, so why should they clutter up the catalog?

I always load newly downloaded items into an empty game to see what they actually look like. A lot of stuff looks good in pictures or in Bodyshop but is hideous in the game, but if your catalog is already bulging you might not see all the new stuff and it might clutter up your game for ages before you finally get a good look at it and realize it's crap and you don't want it.

I also always customize the things I download. A lot of clothing is in the wrong categories, and most hair is not genetically correct. I fix up all of that. It makes using the items much more appealing, and the catalogs load faster if there are no dresses in the swimwear section.

I also put everything in collections. It helps me locate the right stuff quickly. I actually have collections based on color of clothing. Special body meshes (fat lady, bodybuilder, etc) go into their own collections. If some clothing is a set (pants and top separate, for example), then those go into a collection as well. I even have collections for stuff from particularly good sites. I almost never use the actual catalog to rumage for clothing. Takes way too long to find the right stuff that way.

I find that the added "trouble" of looking carefully at each item and fixing it if necessary, results in me having only the very best stuff in my game.

What can I say, I'm an organization maniac. Probably because I'm a download maniac, too. I download so much that if I put it all in one game set, it would take hours for the game to load. I have, currently, 11 game sets. Each has about 10,000 files, mostly with very little overlap. Do the math.

[Katze]

Motoki where can I get your hack?

[Motoki]

Oh sorry, I posted it in Darkstormeye's thread here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1196.0

[Andygal]

215 megabytes here.

And I thought I was addicted!

[Katze]

Oh sorry, I posted it in Darkstormeye's thread here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1196.0

Thank you Motoki.

[Lynda]

Sara,  do you categorize clothing into collections that you can then pull up in the game?  How do you do this?  I haven't used the game's "collection" mode at all for objects, but I didn't even know it was available for clothing.

Or are you rather talking about grouping them in collections in your download folder?

I have about a gig's worth of downloads right now, but a lot of that is junk.  I have NO IDEA how to sort through it all as the preview image option in the clean installer doesn't really give me a good idea of what the package is.  Every once in a while I'll go through the in-game catalog mode or Body Shop to sift through objects, clothes, hair, etc and delete ones I'm not interested in anymore.  Does this actually remove the file from the downloads folder, or am I just wasting my time deleting packages this way?

For those super-organized, how EXACTLY do you manage everything?

[Diala]

I don't know how many items I have right now, but I know I have 200-300 MBs worth, including hacks. I try to keep it organized, since my game loads slowly due to my computer. Hopefully, I'll be able to upgrade it soon.

[Bangelnuts]

Ok everyone how many downloads do you have file size wise? I am bordering on 5gb after my recent cleaning spree. I only cleaned because i started seeing a slight lag. My game takes roughly 6 1/2 minutes to load from start to playing a family. I have all settings on high. Here are a few of my numbers: hair recolors 1299; hair meshes 453; Clothing meshes 6867; Clothing 14324; Object recolors  6071; Object meshes 607; walls/floors 3886; groundcovers 202 ; Makeup 1432; and every hack known to man that is compatible with NL. lol So anyone else addicted. Also what method do you use to clean out your downloads.

what I do is right click once I enter the dowloads folder andclik arrang by name and type

[jrd]

3,91 GB (4'203'947'060 bytes).

That is after pruning half my clothes, recolours, objects, and hairstyles.

[laeshanin]

2.85GB... It's the damn plants I tell you! 

[ari_]

Hmmm...

Bodyshop stuff: 9.600 objects, 4,81 GB
Objects and Recolors: 10.000 objects, 2,8 GB
And Hacks, Careers and Walls/Floors, but they take up nearly nothing in comparison.

Mind you, this is after reinstalling prior to NL, where I drastically weeded out objects.

Granted, the game lags when I start it up (~15 mins), and it takes ~4 mins when I load the first family, but all other families after that load quickly. And since I always have Firefox running the background, I just surf around a bit while the game loads. From what I've noticed, it seems it's the new meshed stuff that ups the load time: before new meshes came out, I had tons of Bodyshop objects and recolors, and hardly had any additional loadtime.

After reinstalling, nearly all of the objects I kept are new meshes, and I also have a lot of hairmeshes. I've thought about going back to mostly only recolors for objects, but I don't want to go back to the boring Maxis stuff. I mind the load-time less than I mind having all houses look alike.

I have mostly stopped downloading, tho. I have enough furniture for all the houses I play (and I am working on making my neighborhood smaller, so I'm unlikely to need more). I do still download some newly meshed stuffed, but it's mostly new decorative objects, just things to make the lots more lived-in and realistic. With Bodyshop, I only get new clothes if they're either ethnic stuff, Victorian/old-fashioned stuff, or new hair.

I could probably weed out the Bodyshop stuff, but it's so *tedious* and takes forever.