How much is too much

[virgali]

  :o6 GB!!!
I too have little under 1 GB I checked 3 times! Couldn't belive it myself. I have little more than 3000 files, including everything.

[laeshanin]

  :o6 GB!!!
I too have little under 1 GB I checked 3 times! Couldn't belive it myself. I have little more than 3000 files, including everything.

Impressed with self-control... Wish I'd got me some of that, but the mouse buttons click too easy. 

[Motoki]

it is directx_9c_Apr05sdk
win32 Cabinet Self-extractor
microsoft Corporation

I already downloaded but have not installed it,  Dark Matter says in all his posts about DatGen that you must have the update for your directx or some of the plug ins will not show up.

The SDK is the Software Developer Kit and is usually HUGE and full of stuff you will never use. It's generally not something regular end users should get or ever need as it's tools for game developers. If there's a specific portion of it Dark Matter is saying is needed to run Datgen but he should have just yanked it out and redistributed it or otherwise found a way so that people don't have to download the whole darned SDK.

I've run Datgen without that file, but then again it also does tend to give me a lot of errors so I'm not sure if that's why or not.

[KellyQ]

  :o6 GB!!!
I too have little under 1 GB I checked 3 times! Couldn't belive it myself. I have little more than 3000 files, including everything.

That's intersting to me...I finally just checked last night and found I have 1 GB in downloads (hacks included) and I "only" have around 2,400. I wonder what is hogging up so much space? Time to get out the pruning sheers.

[Bangelnuts]

  :o6 GB!!!
I too have little under 1 GB I checked 3 times! Couldn't belive it myself. I have little more than 3000 files, including everything.

That's intersting to me...I finally just checked last night and found I have 1 GB in downloads (hacks included) and I "only" have around 2,400. I wonder what is hogging up so much space? Time to get out the pruning sheers.

I have Just under 5000 files taking up 768MB of space

[Danni]

I've got 1.4mb.... I guess it'll still be easy for me to organise before I go on a downloading spree, eh?

[Bangelnuts]

I've got 1.4mb.... I guess it'll still be easy for me to organise before I go on a downloading spree, eh?

I dont know I have trouble organizing with Just under 800mb

[Danni]

I had 6 files I really need to get all my fixes and stuff back

[Bangelnuts]

I had 6 files I really need to get all my fixes and stuff back

6 files is that after killing your downloads folder?

[Kristalrose]

So, are we starting a 12-step program?  I'll bring the coffee and donuts. 

I trashed my downloads in August and started over because of the insane load times.  (It's bad when I can boot up the game, go do a load of laundry, including folding, and then come back to watch the game scroll through the little "loading grill cheese, meticulating splines, etc." dialouge)  And then, feeling free to download anything and everything, I have now run it up to 1.09 GB, 3,965 total files in 16 subfolders. 

[Brynne]

I'd never get anything done without the insane loading times!

[Bangelnuts]

So, are we starting a 12-step program?  I'll bring the coffee and donuts. 

I trashed my downloads in August and started over because of the insane load times.  (It's bad when I can boot up the game, go do a load of laundry, including folding, and then come back to watch the game scroll through the little "loading grill cheese, meticulating splines, etc." dialouge)  And then, feeling free to download anything and everything, I have now run it up to 1.09 GB, 3,965 total files in 16 subfolders. 

I have 786mb and 5,000 files but a lot of my files are  pretty tiny . can Ijoin the 12 step program

[bloodstainedkisses]

Well, every once in a while, I go on a downloading spree. =) Tonight's big stop was www.simlogical.com

And alot of clothes, mainly formal. I use TwoJeff's Formal Wedding, and, considering Gen 2 Heir in my legacy will soon be going off to college, I'd needed outfits. ^^ I have to attempt to find him a wife (he's a pleasure seeker, with the life time want of 'Become Professional Party Guest'. Easy enough. =P).

I <3 Pleasure sims. Hell, but them in their PJ's, and they are in platinum! It's WICKED. So easy!

My download folder now tops 616 MB's. ^^ My game runs BEAUTIFULLY, with not too horribly bad loading times. From the time I boot up the game, til the time I'm in the neighbourhood, it takes just under five minutes. My house itself (on a six by five lot, Extreme Legacy Challenge) is about two minutes. =)


Know those links posted in this post? -POINT- THAT SENT ME ON A DOWNLOADING SPREE! -Sob- T.T

[witch]

Interesting about load times. I have about 1.5Gb downloads & saved sims, it takes my game well under 2 minutes to load. I don't have a high spec machine but it is an AMD 64bit chip (2000 series). I know windoze doesn't use 64Bit but I wondered if performance could be improved anyway. Or is it because it's an AMD?  I do have a gig of RAM.

[mishymoto]

Well, I don't feel quite so bad about my 2.49 gigs!  I did delete all my downloads before NL and then redownloaded and sorted into subfolders.  Took a while, but I'm happy with the organization, and it makes life easier if I want to get rid of something.

[BlueSoup]

I just reinstalled, and I forgot to remove the downloads folder, so now I have none.  I did have some hacks that were still in the recycle bin, so I restored and reinstalled those.

*sniff*

Maxis content is so fugly!

[witch]

Your downloads folder shouldn't have been deleted. Have you enabled custom content? Then you have to exit and restart the game before you see your stuff.

[BlueSoup]

No, it's completely gone.  I uninstalled the game manually, and reinstalled.

[dewshine]

I followed an excellent simplified tutorial by buffysmg81 at N99.
I take no credit for this! The original post can be found here: http://p218.ezboard.com/fstarlightsimsfrm62.showMessage?topicID=631.topic.

1. Open the file you want to recategorise in SimPE.
2. Click on "Property Set", then "Plugin View"
3. Click on each Property Set and find the line that says "Family". Change the value to "b52b9d28-7b62-4f41-bd88-fb382721db82" (no quotes) - just highlight what's already there and paste that over it. There will be about 5 or 6 Property Sets for each hairstyle and you need to do this for all of them.
4. Find the line that says "hairtone". Depending on what colour the hairstyle you're recategorising is, you'll need to enter one of 5 codes in the value box.

Black
00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Brown
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Blonde
00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Red
00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Grey
00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Again, you need to do the same thing to all of the Property Sets, just like you did in Step 3.
One of the property sets of each hairstyle will be grey for the elders.You'll know which Property Set is for the elders because the line "name (dtString)" will list the colour as "grey", instead of the actual colour. When you find the elder Property Set for each style, just enter the code for grey instead of the regular colour.

5. Save.

Umm, a comment here-- or more likely a question-- Did you have or do you have random hairstyle changes when a sim transitions from, say, Teen to Adult? 

I did using this method.  I think that changing the "family" value is the cause.  Changing the "Hairtone" value is enough to place the new color in the correct color bin. 

I can say that I have 2.7GB in my downloads folder.  That includes everything except the complete sims (which are in my saved sims folder).

I'm wondering if one of the resident experts here could point out which files can be deleted out of a package to trim it down for hair files.  If I delete a texture what else should be tossed? Or should I just start pulling stuff out and see if my game implodes?

[Motoki]

I'm wondering if one of the resident experts here could point out which files can be deleted out of a package to trim it down for hair files.  If I delete a texture what else should be tossed? Or should I just start pulling stuff out and see if my game implodes?

That's kind of what I did, experiment with seeing what happens when certain things were yanked out. It's not so bad if you temporarily stash you downloads and savedsims somewhere else and then make a new downloads directory with just a copy of the file you are working on and keep checking back in the bodyshop. Without all your other downloads it should work very fast.

[dewshine]

Thank you Motoki.

I'm working on one color of hair at a time, and the idea to only have what I'm working on in downloads is exactly my plan.

So what I'll do when I get to those files that are messed up (meaning that they don't have a complete color range or mesh change) I'll only have those files to worry about. 

This site is more awesome than me... 

[Issy]

Wow, I guess I'm more impatient than I thought.  My game takes about a min or less to load, and while I wait I tap my fingers constantly and complain about how slow it is

I have about 450MB of downloads, which isn't too bad.  I recently downloaded a few things and noticed that loading into house/community lots now is alot slower(probably like 20-30 more) maybe not much for some who wait 15 mins(insane!) but when you're not used to it, seems like a lifetime. 

[aqualectrix]

Umm, a comment here-- or more likely a question-- Did you have or do you have random hairstyle changes when a sim transitions from, say, Teen to Adult? 

I did using this method.  I think that changing the "family" value is the cause.  Changing the "Hairtone" value is enough to place the new color in the correct color bin. 

Corrrect.  It is not necessary to change the family value to get the hair to show up in the right bin.  And changing family values for a bunch of different hairstyles to the same thing will give you random hairstyle changes on transition, since the hair chosen on transition is "something from the right age group in this family".

What good's the family value, then?

Well, if you've chosen a Maxis hair in CAS and change to a different color bin, you get the same style in a new color.  If you change your family values so that each color of a style has the same family value, correctly-binned custom hairs will do this too.

A reminder that it's not necessary to do all this stuff manually in SimPE as DatGen has a much more automated way of doing it.  In my veiw, the less copy-and-paste I have to do, the better.

[dewshine]

I've tried DatGen before.  The only time I've successfully used it was when I wanted to update my adult clothing to work with young adults.  I am hoping that by doing some files in SimPE and thereby knowing exactly what is being changed I'll be able to use the hair sorting tool with some success.   So far I've had no luck getting the tools to load,  but I was not trying the debug version either.  Thanks to everyone for all the helpful info.