Merging mods to increase Performance!

[witch]

Did you mean search this section for the dcb files?

No, SlimyNester meant search some other part of the net altogether. FFS.

@SlimyNester - willya stop enabling the fucking idiot n00bs?

[no_pulse]

I'm going to guess that the s3pe is not x64 friendly is it?  I downloaded and installed s3pe_1002-19-1756.exe and when I tried to import as .dbc, the program gives me an error.

[socurious]

I'm going to guess that the s3pe is not x64 friendly is it?  I downloaded and installed s3pe_1002-19-1756.exe and when I tried to import as .dbc, the program gives me an error.

You should probably ask that question in the S3PE forum @MTS.  There's a specific thread there for questions/problems with S3PE.

[aelfwyne]

I'm going to guess that the s3pe is not x64 friendly is it?  I downloaded and installed s3pe_1002-19-1756.exe and when I tried to import as .dbc, the program gives me an error.

Personally, I've got no issues running on Win7 x64...

[no_pulse]

turns out it the version of S3pe I was uisng, the latest one.  I'm now using version 0912-13-1729, but it doesn't have the option to import into a .dbc file.  Which is what I want to do.

[ElyZap]

Yea, it seems that they reverted to the December version on MTS, which doesn't have the Import as dbc option.

[Inge]

s3pe is 64bit friendly.  I don't know what your problem is, but it's not that :p

[bowrain]

Inge, while we're at it, can you please add a drag-and-drop support for s3pe? I find myself trying open package files by dragging and dropping them in s3pe window. Old habit from SimPE, I guess.

[Inge]

I thought it did have it?

[bowrain]

Really? I can't seem to do that. Win7 x64 here. Didn't work when I was on Vista either. Crap, what am I doing wrong?

[Inge]

Well it does support it in theory, and it is trying to open them, but it suffers from permission problems in anything later than XP

[bowrain]

Permission, eh? I get a forbidden symbol when I drag packages to s3pe window.

[Inge]

Ok, no you don't drag the package to the open s3pe window.  You drag the package to the s3pe.exe like you would with Pescado's tools.   An open s3pe with a file open accepts exported resources, not whole packages.

It could be made to accept a dragged package into its window, but there would be some confusion for the user about what it would expect to do with it, especially if there was already a package open in that window.

[bowrain]

Ah so that's what I was doing wrong. SimPE allows dragging to its window, so it became some kind of a habit.

[Inge]

There are certainly some little UI tweaks that could make life easier, but there is still so much to do to just cover all the basic functions.  I dare say the rough edges will get smoothed in time.

[geminia]

With a decent amount of packaged files (around 150-200) my game was running fine,. I  added a few, 'bout  20 I'd say, it got uber laggy. Merged most of them and still game is laggy...Even though none of them had any issues. I do have a slightly better loading time on main screen but build/buy and CAS are getting pretty annoying....Just for the record , with the merging I managed to end up with 50 files or so, in total.  I did not merge hair, mods and replacements. Besides those I have one file for all my furniture, one for decorations, 1 for cars, 1 for build items and one for clothing. I still have extra CC installed the launcher way, because since the latest patch it seems to behave. 

[Sigmund]

Actually, merging hair files has worked fine for me, and has in fact caused the most noticeable decrease in load time and lag. You just want to test the hair file out to make sure it doesn't cause any problems before merging (Newsea, for example, loves to produce really laggy package files).

[Indiasong]

Speaking of hair, I accidentally deleted my hair backup with individual files, and just have the big package. Can I extract from it the individual hairs, to make another big one with the new hairs added, or just delete a few? I am spring cleaning.

[ChilltownNJ]

Unfortunately Indiasong, I don't believe extracting a particular object from a dbc or large package is possible.  Your individual package files are more important than the one large package because without them you can't create another large package with updated items or items removed.

[Anach]

Speaking of hair, I accidentally deleted my hair backup with individual files, and just have the big package. Can I extract from it the individual hairs, to make another big one with the new hairs added, or just delete a few? I am spring cleaning.

Currently the only way to remove stuff from a merged file is to re-merge the whole lot minus the files you don't want. So keeping your individual files is important.

On another note, I updated the main thread to point to the main S3PE download area rather than the old version it was currently linking to. New version works well.

[dangerdude]

i've read through this thing twice thus far and either i'm missing something or i dunno. i'm no programmer, but after i started getting the lag in my own game two weeks ago, i've been trying to fix it. i came across this .dbc idea which sounded great, but i'm seriously lost. don't really care what kinda crap i get, just looking for an answer i can use.

1)downloaded and installed s3pe from the link from before, even though it wasn't the one originally referred to by Anach (last post notwithstanding of course)
2)selected mostly slider hacks to serve as trials to see of viability of this method
3)ran S3pe New, Resource->Import-->From package, selected everything as DBPF packages
4)left "replace duplicates" checked and hit "import"
5)saved as Mod Packs, just to try
6)deleted all my packages from the package folder
7)ran the game and found everything gone
8)started over, reread thread, found the suggestion to put the Mod Packs file into the DCCCache, deleted old file, started new file with a few extra sliders so i could tell the difference between my packages and the new file, and left my packages in the package folder, ran the game, nothing again.

so i guess my question is, if this is supposed to create a kind of database per se with everything it needs to know in it already, do i have to leave my packages in the package folder still? where does my new, supposed to be improved everything mod package go? i keep seeing ".dbc...dbc" but i'm not a programmer like most here, so i'm just trying to follow along as best i can. i'm sure i'm mucking it all up but any help would be appreciated lol.

Edit: Yes, i have deleted all my cache files, yes, i ran Delphy's Dashboard over everything, yes, i added the new line in my cfg file, yes i deleted the xml files that were mentioned in the thread, yes i'm a noob. sue me lol. oh and to top it all my typing speed is only 60 words a minute.

[Sigmund]

2)selected mostly slider hacks to serve as trials to see of viability of this method
...
6)deleted all my packages from the package folder
7)ran the game and found everything gone

When you say everything, what do you mean? Because if you only merged slider hacks together into a single package (which, by the way, is probably not a good idea), but then removed ALL packages from your mods folder, well, obviously the only thing present in your folder is going to be the merged slider hacks .package.

The idea is to merge similar things together-- hair, clothing, objects, etc. Merging hacks together is not a good idea because the likelihood of a patch or EP making it outdated is high, meaning that you would then have to delete everything that was merged along with it.

[dangerdude]

when i say "everything" i only meant the slider hacks, at least initially. i reread back through the thread though and added a few more files just in case. i kinda figured that it wasn't and suppose there are probably some better files to do that with. no, when i ran the game, it was if i had no packages in there whatsoever. no extra sliders at all. if that's the case, i can just do it with the clothing and etc, but i think on the last attempt i did yesterday, i just took everything i had in the folder and plugged it all in, skins, one hair, a few clothes, and still nothing came out. so i figured i did it all wrong and started searching again. thanks for the reply by the way.

its not so much "lag" that i'm having a problem with. considering the machine i'm running on a little bit of lag isn't unacceptable. but more often than not for the last two weeks, i'll give my sim a new command, or doing something as simple as jumping from one floor to the other, the whole game freezes for usually longer than 5-10 seconds, while all the sounds and animation keep going on. i only have 58 total package files, and while i understand its the number of files more than the size of the files is part of it, i'm pretty much down to the bare essentials- delphy's and jonha's sliders, some robokitty tats and a tramp stamp, one skin with face for male and female, a little bit of clothing (simiversity's "Badman" Vegeta shirt among them lol), and one car, the 2010 mustang shelby from fresh prince creations. i took out the awesome mod, and the only other mods i have are the no into and more happiness mods.

[Chain_Reaction]

when i say "everything" i only meant the slider hacks, at least initially. i reread back through the thread though and added a few more files just in case. i kinda figured that it wasn't and suppose there are probably some better files to do that with. no, when i ran the game, it was if i had no packages in there whatsoever. no extra sliders at all. if that's the case, i can just do it with the clothing and etc, but i think on the last attempt i did yesterday, i just took everything i had in the folder and plugged it all in, skins, one hair, a few clothes, and still nothing came out. so i figured i did it all wrong and started searching again. thanks for the reply by the way.

its not so much "lag" that i'm having a problem with. considering the machine i'm running on a little bit of lag isn't unacceptable. but more often than not for the last two weeks, i'll give my sim a new command, or doing something as simple as jumping from one floor to the other, the whole game freezes for usually longer than 5-10 seconds, while all the sounds and animation keep going on. i only have 58 total package files, and while i understand its the number of files more than the size of the files is part of it, i'm pretty much down to the bare essentials- delphy's and jonha's sliders, some robokitty tats and a tramp stamp, one skin with face for male and female, a little bit of clothing (simiversity's "Badman" Vegeta shirt among them lol), and one car, the 2010 mustang shelby from fresh prince creations. i took out the awesome mod, and the only other mods i have are the no into and more happiness mods.

1) Shift key is your friend. Use it.
2) You are over sharing. No one here cares about your tramp stamps.
3) Try merging the clothing as a starter.
4) You'll want to add "PackedFile Mods/Packages/*.dbc" to your Resource file in your games root folder for it to pick the dbc's up and place them in Mods/Packages.

[dangerdude]

Tried that. Didn't work for me. The only thing I've found to help was just to limit what package files I had in my folder and just go with sim3packs, and I limited those just in case as well. Thanks for the help anyway. I'll have to find another way.