Reducing the Size of Your Sims 2 Installation

[Maxwell]

This is a brief guide to some ways you can reduce the size of your Sims 2 installation. I didn't look around for other such guides, but I'm going to guess no one has gone to the same lengths I have and so I'm just going to post this anyway. I'm going to go against my worse nature and try to keep it brief; this means among other things that things will not be explained in detail. This is good, since it means idiots will not even be able to start following these instructions, which are most decidedly not for idiots. I've tested these tricks on my own installation, and haven't noticed anything terribly bad happening, but your results might be different. If you break something, you don't get to bitch at me, because you broke it and it is your fault that you were too stupid to realize that what you were doing would destroy your installation. None of these steps will destroy user data; at worst you'll have to reinstall. Which is bad, but not the end of the world. If you break something and reinstalling can't fix it, you didn't follow my instructions.

Once more: if you follow these instructions and break shit, you are on your own.

Most of this guide will be about compressing your actual installation directories, not your custom content. You can compress custom content with the aptly-named Compressorizer. If space is a priority for you, Compressorize everything. Custom content, neighborhoods, downloads, everything. It is quite safe to just run the Compressorizer on your whole EA Games folder and let it sort out what it can and can't compress. Be warned that the Compressorizer will reset file modification times, so if you like me rely on them to manage your hack versions, you will be in trouble. The solution to this is to only download hacks from people smart enough to Compressorize anything they post. The Compressorizer is somewhat slow, but it has never been observed to damage anything.

Okay, on to the meat of this guide. Every Sims 2 product has the same basic directory structure for its installation: CSBin contains content creation set binaries, TSBin contains game binaries, TSData contains game data, and Support contains a bunch of boring stuff about how to contact the useless serfs that EA calls "tech support". If your version is, like mine, the international version featuring "UK English" content, there will a lot of stuff that's both useless and uselessly duplicated in multiple languages. This version is fairly widely arrrvailable, but yours might be different.

Follow the following steps for every single expansion or stuff pack you have, since, guess what? EA keeps making the same fuckups with every single one!

Step 1: Delete the "Support" directory. The only thing worth saving in there is the readme file, and even that just barely. This saves 10MB per EP/SP for me.

2. In the TSBin directory are a whole bunch of executables with names like "TS2UPD.EXE". These are patches that were run once, when you installed the EP. Yes, some idiot decided that required copying them to the hard drive, not just running them off the CD/DVD. Whatever. Delete that little fuckup, and you can recover up 150MB per EP/SP installed, with absolutely no drawback. Goddamn morons.

3. In TSData/Res/Movies there is an annoying abomination named "ealogo_audio.movie". It is annoying, but should not be killed entirely as this may make the game unhappy. Replace it with a file of the same name but containing 0 bytes, and all will be well. Delete them, the game doesn't care. 2MB per EP/SP.

4. TSData/Res/Locale contains a whole bunch of locales, plus the one you care about. Destroy all but one of the subfolders here, and you can save about 50MB.

Those are the easy ones. Now for the potentially destructive. Do any of the following, and you may not be able to ever patch the EP/SP you mutilated. Which isn't exactly a concern, as EA shits on customers and drops "support" for all releases as soon as it can get away with it, but it's worth noting.

5. Get UPX, the Ultimate Packer for Executables, and use it on the game's files. The primary target is, of course, Sims2EPn.exe: the latest Sims2EP9.exe that makes up Mansion & Garden Stuff's bloated core is 44MB on its own (if you're using the right version, that is); after packing with UPX it's only 9.3MB, 21% of its original size. The command line you want to use is "upx --lzma --best [EXECUTABLE]"; on EP9.exe this was only 0.14% worse than the agonizingly-slow "--ultra-brute" and took only seconds. The resulting UPX-packed executable is functionally identical to the old fat version but tightly packed. It does take a couple milliseconds to decompress, but TS2 is so bloated anyway that even for a bloody gigantic 44MB executable you cannot possibly notice the decompression time on any machine able to run it to begin with.

Other good targets for UPX are GDF.dll and Sims2Launcher.exe in TSBin and PackageInstaller.exe and TS2BodyShop.exe in CSBin. Body Shop uses a shared writeable section which gave UPX pause, but the resulting executable was fine for me. You may experience different results. Also, I don't use Body Shop and so I don't really care about it.

If you're really hard up for disk space, you can probably just delete the binaries of old expansions. I haven't tried this, but my impression of the game is that it's stupid enough that this would work fine. Since the smallest TS2 executable is 15MB, there's quite a bit of space available for the harvesting here.

6. Compressorize the game package files themselves. The game doesn't care how they're packed (patches might, though), and EA packing is not as good as Compressorizer packing. But the Compressorizer is slow, and EA packing is not all that much worse than Compressorizer packing for most of the files. Still, it's easy: point the Compressorizer at a directory, let it figure out what it can Compressorize, and wait while it does the work for you. Low-risk and low-reward.

[Aggie]

3. In TSData/Res/Movies there is an annoying abomination named "ealogo_audio.movie". It is annoying, but should not be killed entirely as this may make the game unhappy. Replace it with a file of the same name but containing 0 bytes, and all will be well. 2MB per EP/SP.

Whut? I've removed them all and have had no problems whatsoever. As for this piece of advice:

If you're really hard up for disk space, you can probably just delete the binaries of old expansions. I haven't tried this, but my impression of the game is that it's stupid enough that this would work fine.

Fuck that; I'm not taking the word of someone who hasn't even tried it purely on the basis that it "probably" will work. Play test your own advice before suggesting other people do it.

[Maxwell]

3. In TSData/Res/Movies there is an annoying abomination named "ealogo_audio.movie". It is annoying, but should not be killed entirely as this may make the game unhappy. Replace it with a file of the same name but containing 0 bytes, and all will be well. 2MB per EP/SP.

Whut? I've removed them all and have had no problems whatsoever.

I suppose I'm getting TS2 confused with other games that do choke if their video files are removed entirely, and require the 0-byte 0-frame file to not bitch at you. It's not like a single MFT entry takes up a ton of space, anyway, or like creating a 0-byte file is hard to do.

As for this piece of advice:

If you're really hard up for disk space, you can probably just delete the binaries of old expansions. I haven't tried this, but my impression of the game is that it's stupid enough that this would work fine.

Fuck that; I'm not taking the word of someone who hasn't even tried it purely on the basis that it "probably" will work. Play test your own advice before suggesting other people do it.

It's not worthwhile to do unless you're in dire need of disk space, which I am not. I just tested it by removing my Seasons CSBin and TSBin directories (I picked an EP at random); the game doesn't care, still starts, and has weather and Seasons objects. I know for a fact that the only thing the patch routines check outside the registry keys are the versioning structures on the executables; they do not do any sort of intelligent binary examination, so at worst a stub executable with a forged version data structure would be enough to satisfy the game. The Seasons binaries were only 32MB anyway (before UPX at that), so it's not like this is terribly useful.

[tunaisafish]

You don't need to stop at just the logo movies.  Delete that annoying intro .movie too (the one that you probably 'escape' as soon as you see).
I can't remember the exact name.

I saved ~70Mb in total, but I didn't care so much about the space  It reduces the startup time.

[Strangel]

It's not worthwhile to do unless you're in dire need of disk space, which I am not. I just tested it by removing my Seasons CSBin and TSBin directories (I picked an EP at random); the game doesn't care, still starts, and has weather and Seasons objects. I know for a fact that the only thing the patch routines check outside the registry keys are the versioning structures on the executables; they do not do any sort of intelligent binary examination, so at worst a stub executable with a forged version data structure would be enough to satisfy the game. The Seasons binaries were only 32MB anyway (before UPX at that), so it's not like this is terribly useful.

If someone is THAT desperate (or in dire need) for space, uninstall a fucking EP/SP or delete CC and have a modicum of self control!
I don't have anything past Seasons for exactly this reason. I KNOW my comp has space enough, but it doesn't have power enough. Rather than have it seize up, I keep my game at the level my computer is capable of.

..yeah, I removed the intro movie for the same reason. Ungodly annoying to be hovering at the computer, waiting for the first chance to click past it.

[mistyk]

I have removed all intro movies, and logo movies from all EP's and my game runs fine

[Faizah]

I've deleted all the start up movie files, have done so ever since I found out it was okay to delete them. Never had a problem. I did it for the faster start time, though.

[Ambular]

This should be obvious to anyone who isn't a total nitwit, but in case any nitwits happen to be reading: whatever it may or may not do to a normal installation, removing the old executables will DEFINITELY break Numenor's AnyGameStarter.

[jolrei]

This should be obvious to anyone who isn't a total nitwit, but in case any nitwits happen to be reading: whatever it may or may not do to a normal installation, removing the old executables will DEFINITELY break Numenor's AnyGameStarter.

Hurrah!  I don't use AnyGameStarter, but I'm happy to note that I am not, by this definition, a total nitwit.

As to the rest of it, it's more-or-less helpful.  I had not thought to delete the movies, since I wasn't hard up for disk space, but I can see how it would reduce annoyances.

[Heodez]

I saved 990 Mo just by deleting the locale files and the update exes! My laptop thanks you from the bottom of its motherboard.

[CLmeow]

I couldn't get that UPX program to work for me, but I did all the rest and my laptop appreciates it.  Since I have all the expansions and all the stuff packs, what little room I can save counts.  I even cut down on what CC I downloaded to save space, imagine that!
Anywhoo, thanks for posting this.  it helped.

[CandyToast]

Are you a mind reader? 
Earlier, I was staring into the Locales folder wondering what would happen if I cleaned it. Thank you!

Edit: If anyone has problems using the upx program, I learned that you must run it from the command line.

go to Start > Run
type "cmd"
when that box pops up type in the location of your upx.exe file:
In my case C:\Users\Ctoast\Desktop\upx303w\upx.exe

[LoveStainedHeart]

Thanks, I Shaved about 2gb off my installs just by doing the first 4 steps. I always thought those other language files in locale and the support folders were totally useless but I wasn't about to see just how useless they were. So thanks for being a guinea pig for us all! 

[Argon]

OR...

You could play around with a "C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Latest EP\TSBin\Sims2.ini" file and load expansion pack files from a different location. This other location could just have the necessary files, which would improve loading time in theory.

; Sims2.ini
; Instructions - this file should be placed in the same directory as your EXE, and should be named Sims2.ini.

; ***********
; Directories
; ***********
; This section allows you to override data directories for the base game and each expansion pack.
; The data directory is the location that contains TSData.
; ep0dir=<location of base game>
; ep1dir=<location of expansion pack 1's data>
; ...
; epxdir=<location of expansion pack x's data>
;
; It is not always necessary to set a data directory if that product is installed.  The registry
; will find the path.  Also, if you are running the last expansion pack exe, it will automatically
; find the data for (just) itself relative to where the executable was started.

[Directories]
; Example:
; ep0dir=c:\Sims2Build
; ep1dir=c:\Sims2EP1Build

I haven't messed around with this since Freetime, but I'd imagine it works just fine for later EPs. Incidentally, using Sims2.ini you don't have to have the expansion pack installed for the game to recognize the files.

[Pantherocker]

Thank you!  I am dying of space because my external hard drive broke.

So is there anything that needs to be left in the TSBin?  I assume that the main game exe has to be left, but can all those .dll files be deleted?

[Mootilda]

Thank you!  I am dying of space because my external hard drive broke.

So is there anything that needs to be left in the TSBin?  I assume that the main game exe has to be left, but can all those .dll files be deleted?

In general, DLLs contain additional code for the game and cannot be deleted; they should be considered extensions of the EXE.  I don't know what's in these specific DLLs, but you should be very careful about removing them.

[Insanity Prelude]

This won't impact my ability to install SPs later should I decide to arrcquire them after all, will it?

At any rate, just clearing out the Locale crap shaved off nearly a gigabyte. Verrry nice.

[Tuxota]

Yup, followed instructions and all was well until I got to Uni, which didn't include UK English in the 'locale' directory. (Must be why I can't understand a dang word those college kids are saying.) 
Can I c/p a language folder from one of the other EPs to replace my missing file?

[jolrei]

Yup, followed instructions and all was well until I got to Uni, which didn't include UK English in the 'locale' directory. (Must be why I can't understand a dang word those college kids are saying.) 
Can I c/p a language folder from one of the other EPs to replace my missing file?

If it wasn't there to begin with, you probably don't need it.  The point of this exercise is to reduce your installation, not add new folders.  In my game, there was one EP that did not include an English folder of any kind.  This does not seem to have any impact.

[Tuxota]

Good to know. Thanks.

[Blizzaird]

It's amazing how stupidly they managed EP & SP instalation... I have all EPs and SPs and shaved almost 3 gigs. I deleted TSBin and CSBin for everything except M&G and the game runs fine. Should you ever need to you can always grab them back from the game disk (or image ) anyway. Also, you can delete Sims2Launcher.exe, you just have to redirect your shortcuts. Because really, it's only purpose is to advertise L&P.

OK WOAH, not good... in the midst of making this post I put disk one of the original game in to make sure I was remembering correctly as to how easy it is to recover the TSBin folder, and it was unexpectedly disastrous. Because I had deleted the TSBin folder, the game didn't recognize that it was already installed, so it auto ran the installer. I didn't really think much of it so I hit cancel and went back to what i was doing. Now The Sims 2 folder is empty. Apparently, even though it hadn't actually started the installation process, it acted as if I had aborted mid-installation and it deleted the game. The expansions are still intact, but the game is gone. So in short: DO NOT INSERT THE DISK (or mount the image) OF ANY EP, SP, OR ORIGINAL GAME FOR WHICH YOU HAVE DELETED THE TSBIN FOLDER. Unless you have auto run turned off or something, in which case, just don't manually run it.

[Mirelly]

Dumb question and (maybe) not so dumb observation.

Would all this noticeably reduce the loading time? (I can't imagine why it might, but dumb cat is happy to be corrected edumacated.)

To what extent might an average player notice a reduction in game-lags and/or frame-rate slippage after performing this sort of malarkey?

Assuming the answer to the previous question is unable to guarantee substantially noticeable improvements  ... (for example a lag of 3 seconds every two minutes replaced by a lag of 2.4 seconds every five minutes, or a frame rate improvement of 5 fps. Neither example offers a "noticeable improvement.)  My advice is to suggest that when hard drive space becomes critically limited beyond the the usual space reclamation procedures of archiving redundant data files, it is time to invest in a newer and larger (array if necessary) hard drive. Drives fail. Old drives are failures waiting to happen.

[seelindarun]

Possibly irrelevant response and maybe a false observation:

The number of CC files seems to have a noticeable effect on loading times, more so than size.  I started to bundle CC for my mac game where the total number of files is limited at ~10K.  In the process, I discovered that it also speeds loading time in my PC installation. 

I reduced the number of files by half (from ~16K down to ~9K)
Concurrently, I doubled the size (from 2GB to 5GB by adding more CC).

Contrary to my expectations, my loading times have fallen by a factor of 2 (from 6min. to 3min.)

I don't expect this trend is indefinitely extensible, but interesting nonetheless.

[Blizzaird]

Would all this noticeably reduce the loading time? (I can't imagine why it might, but dumb cat is happy to be corrected edumacated.)

Well deleting the movies and Sims2Launcher.exe certainly makes the initial load shorter and substantially less annoying. It didn't seem to effect the frame rate and what-not for the short period of time I played before completely breaking breaking my game (As detailed in previous post, Though my sad fate is perfectly avoidable if you're aware of it).

EDIT: and if you're really weary of deleting things, you can redirect your shortcuts without actually deleting Sims2Launcher.exe and bypass the stupid thing that way.

[Garlic Jr.]

Cool Post! We need to delete Maxis fuglish clothes and objects too. Hope Anybody come up with these guides. This wiill free up large mb. of space for our hard drives. ALSO Keeps Townies and npcs from ever created with them too!...