How much is too much

[SaraMK]

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.

Just in CAS. For buying clothes you still have to suffer. My collections are helpful to me because I build my own custom townies, meaning that I create dozens of sims in each neighborhood.

Does this actually remove the file from the downloads folder, or am I just wasting my time deleting packages this way?

It removes them.

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

Be organized BEFORE you install anything into the game. If you have Nightlife, use subfolders religiously. Always download pictures along with anything you download, and keep the picture inside the folder with the item. Folder names should be descriptive. I use the following format for my sub-folders:

Type of Item (objects, clothing, makeup, etc) > Site Name > Description

So if I download a hair mesh from Peggy, it will end up in Hair > Peggy > Name of Mesh

If I download any recolors, even if they are by other people, they go into that folder. Inside that folder will also be a picture of each item, and a text file that tells me where the items came from (in case of recolors that are not from the original site).

Once junk accumulates, it is very hard to get rid of, as you are finding out. At some point you just have to sit down a weed through it. Or, start over. Starting over is actually a pretty good thing to do when things have gotten out of hand. It's almost impossible to get completely organized once things are out of hand. It's one of those things you have to do from the start.

[nectere]

Does this actually remove the file from the downloads folder, or am I just wasting my time deleting packages this way?

It removes them.

You know, I am not so sure about that myself. Several times now I have gone on a cleaning spree only to find half the stuff still there the next time I fired up the game. I must be doing something wrong.

[Bangelnuts]

Does this actually remove the file from the downloads folder, or am I just wasting my time deleting packages this way?

It removes them.

You know, I am not so sure about that myself. Several times now I have gone on a cleaning spree only to find half the stuff still there the next time I fired up the game. I must be doing something wrong.

What Idid was right click after I was in side the DL folder and arrange my downloads by name  and that not only tellss me what the file is its in alphabetical order so all meshes are together . in one section of the folder along wit the mame of the mesh ie creator and what the mesh is for

[jrd]

Does this actually remove the file from the downloads folder, or am I just wasting my time deleting packages this way?

It removes them.

You know, I am not so sure about that myself. Several times now I have gone on a cleaning spree only to find half the stuff still there the next time I fired up the game. I must be doing something wrong.

You're probably deleting recolours of objects which have multiple "recolour slots". If you have a recolour package which recolours both parts, by deleting only one part the other part will either also disappear, or the original deleted part will reappear on next load as the download was not actually removed.

[nectere]

Actually I am selecting the item, not even opening the options on it and then deleting it. Its too risky to try and determine which recolor is the one to the mesh and which is not, its usually black or white but not always.  So I just select the whole thing and can it. Or so I think...

[yetyak]

If you do it in game, and the files are read only, they will never disappear.  Tried that one time, spent probably 3 hours going thru all the objects and clothes, and there they were the next time I loaded the game.... What a waste of good playing time.

[lindaetterlee]

OK I'm about to make a drastic move: I will either get rid of all Downloads minus hacks and start over to make a effort to delete atleast 2gb more. *CRIES***** Or i could attempt to upgrade computer.  It is a athlon 64 3800 with 1 gb ram and a geforce 5200fx. i know i need to upgrade the card. lol So what do you think is my solution.

[Lyall]

Five gigs? After a cleaning spree? Whoa, that's a lot.

After reading this thread I am happy to say that I don't have that much. I only have 1.46 GB. Of that 23.1 MB is the Saved Sims folder which is just things made by me or things by other people that I've converted to other ages or the other gender. 76.2 MB is most of the clothing, body, or hair meshes (a few of them have their own folders) and 7.13 MB is hacks and hacked objects. 7.35 MB is walls, floors, and terrain paint. And 72.0 MB is most of the object meshes. The rest is everything else I've downloaded. Some of them have subfolders, some of them don't. I'm not a very organized person, unfortunately.

When I clean out my downloads I do one of two things: look for the subfolder or copy of the download in my seperate Downloads folder in the desktop and copy it over and delete it. Or I use Clean Installer to weed out everything and Bodyshop or Cas to make sure I didn't miss anything.

[Bangelnuts]

OK I'm about to make a drastic move: I will either get rid of all Downloads minus hacks and start over to make a effort to delete atleast 2gb more. *CRIES***** Or i could attempt to upgrade computer.  It is a athlon 64 3800 with 1 gb ram and a geforce 5200fx. i know i need to upgrade the card. lol So what do you think is my solution.

te easiest way to  thin dow is first look at what every single down load is  and then delete every single download that you have collecting dust. thats what .since this morning  i have dumped over 75MB of downloads into the recycle bin

[yetyak]

Making the effort to selectively clean out the downloads was worth it to me.  One good place to start with objects is to get rid of any recolors of the furniture you will never use.  I hate the Lap of Luxury sofa, will never use it; but still had 47 recolors of it.  Is that crazy or just addicted?  Starting there made it easy to keep going.

[skandelouslala]

I am working on cleaning out some of my stuff

Right now my folder is 2.35 GB which isn't really that terrible (could certainly be worse, especially if I hadn't stopped downloading clothing recently) 

I have almost 9,000 files eeps!

That makes me laugh though that I can even have 2 gigs of downloads b/c back in my pre sims day I had a crappy computer and the entire hard drive was only 7 gigs.  (Yes I already said it was a crappy computer...no need to point and laugh)

I'm cleaning out a lot of custom hair.  So much of it I never use and I just hafta wade through them all to find one that I want.

Need to do the same with objects soon..I have so many that I downloaded just to have but they have yet to make an appearance in any of my sim houses.

A part of me just wants to trash my download folder and start over but I don't have the heart.

[lindaetterlee]

Ok So here is what i'm doing. Clothing first. Then Hair. Then objects. OMG i never realized how much ugly clothes i have.**DELETE*** DELETE**. Ok that should clear up a easy 300mg. lol I have a love hate relationship with custom hair. I love then but hate the organization. I am  trying to find only ones that have been put in the color bins. I might get brave and try to use datgen to organize them.

[Lynda]

A part of me just wants to trash my download folder and start over but I don't have the heart.

That's where I'm at.  I only started downloading content when NL came out and now I don't know how I'll ever live without custom content!

I do have my downloads organized by type (recolors, objects, meshes, clothes, etc, etc) so I might just try deleting a folder at a time and slowly redownloading items I like using SaraMK's method of putting each package in its own descriptive folder with a screenshot.  Then again, I'm not sure I can take the time as I usually download a couple hunred items every time I go on a downloading spree.

Edited to Add (x2): Asked a stupid question and after Googling around for a while, I found the answer myself.  To anyone who might be as stupid as me, datgen can be downloaded here

lalala...

[dizzy]

http://www.datgen.info/

Hmm, long as I'm here, I have about 29 MB of custom stuff (all hacks, though).

[Lynda]

Thanks anyway, stick.   

I've learned I should just stop asking questions that have specific answers because 8 times out of 10, I figure out the answer before anyone can respond.  For some reason, I just can't stop asking these questions though.

[Motoki]

I trashed all my stuff and started over and I while I do miss a few things, I did manage to get most of them back and I don't regret it. I would literally spend days on file management and pruning and never play the damned game and I got tired of it.

One thing to consider when downloading and chosing what to delete is the file size. A lot of recolors are small files. Many are under 100k, some well under. That's really not so much. But skins, a lot of clothes, most hair etc are HUGE files most times so I am far more selective about them and quicker to get rid of them. They are also more of a pain in the ass to delete since you have to go into the CAS or bodyshop to do it and it takes forever.

[Motoki]

Hmm, I just noticed another sign of my addiction. I downloaded a whole mess of Halloween crap and have not even gotten around to using it and don't really have time to mess with the game tonight. Luckily I put it all in its own halloween subdirectory so it's going right in the trash!

I think part of my problem is a lot of times I don't get just get things I know I will use but I grab all sorts of stuff just in case I might want to use it at some point.  I need to get better about really truthfully asking myself if I will have a definitely use for something before I download it or I'll end up with another 9 GB again and have to trash it all over again.

[Bangelnuts]

I trashed all my stuff and started over and I while I do miss a few things, I did manage to get most of them back and I don't regret it. I would literally spend days on file management and pruning and never play the damned game and I got tired of it.

One thing to consider when downloading and chosing what to delete is the file size. A lot of recolors are small files. Many are under 100k, some well under. That's really not so much. But skins, a lot of clothes, most hair etc are HUGE files most times so I am far more selective about them and quicker to get rid of them. They are also more of a pain in the ass to delete since you have to go into the CAS or bodyshop to do it and it takes forever.

what I hate is when a certain hair type suddenly decideds to multiply and its a Maxis shipped hair so you cant delete it . the hair I have multipling of is own accord is the Meg hair any clue How I can get rid of all the excess meg hair?

[Motoki]

More than likely that is actually a hair texture that you don't have the mesh for or vice versa. Also there was an issue with older versions of SimPE where if you made a new clothing or hair mesh and made recolors for it, the recolors would not work unless you also had the original texture for that hair in your downloads.

What the game does in these instances when it can't find a piece it needs is to substitute a default Maxis item instead. For women's clothes it's usually that damned frumpy red shirt that's not tucked in with the white capri pants and red cheap sneakers. I guess for women's hair it the meg do. You can safely delete them, but I'm not sure if it it will leave residual files. It probably will. 

[Bangelnuts]

More than likely that is actually a hair texture that you don't have the mesh for or vice versa. Also there was an issue with older versions of SimPE where if you made a new clothing or hair mesh and made recolors for it, the recolors would not work unless you also had the original texture for that hair in your downloads.

What the game does in these instances when it can't find a piece it needs is to substitute a default Maxis item instead. For women's clothes it's usually that damned frumpy red shirt that's not tucked in with the white capri pants and red cheap sneakers. I guess for women's hair it the meg do. You can safely delete them, but I'm not sure if it it will leave residual files. It probably will. 

how do I delete them

[lindaetterlee]

ONE BY FREAKING ONE

[lindaetterlee]

Ok does anyone know of a way to match meshes with there Skins/hai/objects etc. I have been deleting clothes all day and while i have reduced my file size by nearly a 1 gb i still have the same number of meshes.

[Bangelnuts]

ONE BY FREAKING ONE

that's not what I meant .Iwant to know how to find which ones are spawning the icky meg do

[lauraglenn]

I know that I have a problem... EDD - Excessive Download Disorder.  I have 1.65 GB of downloads.  And that's after doing clean up prior to installing NL.  And I have items to add to the game when I log out.  I keep saying I'm going to change my ways, but I don't...  

[lindaetterlee]

ONE BY FREAKING ONE

that's not what I meant .Iwant to know how to find which ones are spawning the icky meg do

only way i've found to download those is to go into game and delete them. I would advice loading up the game with only your hair and meshes that way it will be a quick load. Also one time saver i've found is to turn the settings down to low low low on everything and the deleting goes quicker if you know what you are after.