Body-Shop

[gali]

I don't find the "technical" section, but as here visit the most of the players, I need help:

After I downloaded "zillions" of Sim-Me-s, the Body-Shop seems to load very slow, and passing from one section to another takes quite a time, and it even freezed once,  and I had to reboot the computer.

Is it possible to increase  the size of the Body-Shop folder, and how?  (seems that it reached it's limits).

[eaglezero]

My Body Shop has always been slow and had freezing problems. I don't know why, but I really wish it would run faster.

[dewshine]

what you might do to help it load faster is to place the sims you've finished with inside a folder on the desktop so that bodyshop only loads the custom sim you are working on.  It's a total pain but that's what I do.

[gali]

I know I can do it, but I like to have the files "in hand"; if I would have Mac, I could resize the folder, but in PC I don't know how to do it. I was Mac user, but I bought PC, because I saw there were more games for PC.

[Mirelly]

It's not folder size that's the problem. In Windoze, folders are as big as their contents. Your problem is that by loading so many zillions of sims you are filling up your puter's RAM (memory) You ought to have 1GB (1000MB) anyway so  feel free to upgrade your hardware. Meanwhile the preceding advice is the best if you already have the otherwise needed RAM

[gali]

I have 2 Giga RAM....

Oh, well, time to call my technician....

[dewshine]

Don't we all wish it was that easy to upgrade, folks?
Gali, here's to you having the mose ram on the planet! *toast to Gali's computer*
So how much do you plan to add?

[gali]

Lol, I don't know - but this game, which costs only 50$, made me to buy hardware for about  2000$ and more....

I have very good tech, who is my personal friend too, so I trust him completely. He charges me for the labor only 20$ - the rest is the price of the parts, and I see it too on the Internet, it's the real price.

I sweared I will never again buy a game from Maxis - I think they made a conspiracy with some hardware companies; each expansion demands more and more advanced computer.

This "business" game - if it's system requirements will be higher than I already have - can stay on the shelf, as much as I care for.

[ElviraGoth]

gali, I also have 2 GB RAM, and I don't have freezing problems, but BS does load slow.  Have you run defrag lately?  It seems that when I have slow loading problems defragging can work wonders.

I also have a 250 GB hard drive, so I have plenty of space available for storage and file-swapping, if necessary.  So it probably isn't the amount of RAM so much as HD space and cleaning up the fragments that get left behind.

I also don't have a lot of Sims, but I have a bunch or outfit recolors that I've done, plus quite a few skins, hair colors, eye colors, etc.  I figure the long loading time is partly because of all the files that have to be loaded.

When I do a lot of saving, like I do when I play TS2, I try to defrag at least once a month if not more often.  In fact, I should do that again soon - I'm way overdue!

[gali]

Elvira, lol - you defrag once a month? I defrag each 3 days....

I am sure that the slow loading and the freezing demands some update - perhaps the drivers; I use the latest graphic card, the latest video card, etc.

[Sandilou]

I confess to having a strain of COD regarding Disk Clean Up: I do it every time I go off line - to get rid of all those temporary internet files that clog up the system. I found this was just as efficient as defragging, and takes less than 3 minutes, whereas defragging can take upwards of 30 on my pc, with the same results.

I have 71.GB spare (111 GB  in total)  and I still find it physically impossible to wait for Bodyshop to load, let alone use.  It's impossibly slow.  I could have loaded TS2 5 times over - with every download in the land.  Atleast, that's what it seems like.  I still haven't used Bodyshop since I bought TS2.  Each time I've gone to load it, I suddenly decide to 'get-a-life' and go off and do other things!

[ElviraGoth]

Lol - yeah, once a month.  Takes about an hour and I go take care of other stuff while it's running.  I should get rid of my old internet files more often, but I tend to forget.  Old age creeping up, I guess!    Besides, I don't do a lot of downloading or web surfing.  Not a big fan of the internet.

Yeah, loading the game is WAY faster than loading either BS or HomeCrafter.  In fact, I'll start BS, then run Photoshop so both are loading at the same time, and Photoshop is done loading way before BS is up.  If I'm doing another recolor of something I've already done, I can usually have that recolor pretty much done by the time BS is up, so I can just reload a saved project in BS and be able to look at it at the same time.  Then I'll do a few at once, so I don't have to start it going again.

By the way, the front side bus (FSB) specs of your computer affect the speed of loading as much as RAM.  That is, in addition to the speed of your CPU.  I just got a new 'puter last summer with 3.8 GHz CPU and 800 FSB, RAM is 667 Mhz.

For the freezing problem, are you sure you don't have a corrupted file in there somewhere?  I assume you run CleanInstaller when you download new stuff, right?

Do you have the latest video drivers?  I usually don't think about checking for them, even though I am sure to get updates for other stuff I use like Norton (which is automatic) and Windows (also automatic).   It's only since I got TS2 that I even think to check for updated video drivers, and that's only because I know this graphics card (250 MB) has capabilities that I should be able to take full advantage of while playing.

I know this sounds like I'm bragging about my computer, but really, I'm not!  I just upgraded from an old 2.2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive and 64 MB graphics card, so I really appreciate just how much getting better hardware does.  (And the old computer had the crappy integrated Intel graphics to begin with, I had added a video card to it to get the 64 MB.)  But I spent $2500 on the new 'puter to do it.  I know most people can't do that.  I had gotten to the point where the poor old computer just wasn't up to running games like Neverwinter Nights and TS2 because of the 3D aspects of the game.  Upgrading that poor old thing was going to be about as much as a new one, so I just decided to get the best one I could find and hope I don't have to add much to it for a couple of years.  Or until I get it paid off, whichever comes first! Lol!

[baratron]

Elvira, lol - you defrag once a month? I defrag each 3 days....

Are you serious? I can't tell your tone of voice easily. But if you are serious, that's a REALLY bad idea. For a start, if you have Windows XP, it uses a different file system format that makes defragging much less necessary. Secondly, drives don't become very fragmented in a mere 3 days of use. Finally, defragging moves data around on the hard drive. Every time you defrag, you're using unnecessary read/write cycles on your hard drive - so reducing its lifespan, and increasing the risk of data corruption.

Once a month is just about ok. Once every 3-6 months is a better idea.

[J. M. Pescado]

Every time you defrag, you're using unnecessary read/write cycles on your hard drive - so reducing its lifespan, and increasing the risk of data corruption.

That's a good thing, provided you back up aggressively. If you can kill the drive within warrantee, you get a new one for free. If you drag it out so long that the warrantee expires before you kill it, you have to buy a new one yourself.

[Sagana]

Hey Gali, I don't really have anything useful to add, but I wanted to mention (being a mac user as well :) on the mac, you allocate the amount of ram you want available to a program (not as much in OSX though you can still do it). You're not just making a folder bigger, you're giving the program more ram to play with :) The PC is different - it automatically allocates whatever ram is available to whatever program is open - within what ram that program can or wants to use. That's is one of the reasons it's important to close background tasks - to make more of what you have available to whatever you're trying to run. (None of that is true multi-tasking, however, which has to do with the ability of the processor itself to switch tasks as necessary. OSX supposedly can do that now, as it runs on Unix, which is meant for it.)

[Bangelnuts]

Hey Gali, I don't really have anything useful to add, but I wanted to mention (being a mac user as well on the mac, you allocate the amount of ram you want available to a program (not as much in OSX though you can still do it). You're not just making a folder bigger, you're giving the program more ram to play with The PC is different - it automatically allocates whatever ram is available to whatever program is open - within what ram that program can or wants to use. That's is one of the reasons it's important to close background tasks - to make more of what you have available to whatever you're trying to run. (None of that is true multi-tasking, however, which has to do with the ability of the processor itself to switch tasks as necessary. OSX supposedly can do that now, as it runs on Unix, which is meant for it.)

Body shop is standardly slow because of the numerous things it has to load.however  I have found one little trick that seems to help Body shop run a bit fasterI move my saved sims folder to my desktop just prior to opening bodyshop and it seems to speed bodyshop up

[witch]

Just out of interest, who's AMD and who's Intel?

I run an AMD 64bit chip and Bodyshop loads in about 5 minutes or less, with almost 2 Gigs of custom content. I have 1 Gb of RAM.

[Bangelnuts]

Just out of interest, who's AMD and who's Intel?

I run an AMD 64bit chip and Bodyshop loads in about 5 minutes or less, with almost 2 Gigs of custom content. I have 1 Gb of RAM.

I have intel and body shop loads for me in under 5 minutes as well .I have 1.03 gigs of CC . I have 1 GB of RAM also

[dewshine]

AMD, 1 gig of Ram, and too much CC (in the process of getting rid of some of it).  Bodyshop loads in under 5 mins with an full downloads and Savedsims folder, but loads in under 30 seconds with them empty.  I was shocked at the difference.

[Hairfish]

Intel (2.66MHz P4 ~ I have a FSB, but no idea how fast it is. 600 something?), 1.5GB RAM, a little over 3GB of custom content. BodyShop loads in about 5 minutes for me, too, as does the game.

I've found that having ANY premade Sims in the BodyShop Sim-bin will slow down loading of both BS and CAS in the game, so I packaged them to desktop and then deleted them from BS. You can't delete the Maxis Sims (dammit), but any you've downloaded can be packaged and then reinstalled as needed.

When I took out the six "models" I was using for skin screenshots, my BS load time went from 15 minutes down to the current 5. Big difference with just those six premade Sims.

Having houses in the game's House-bin will slow down the game's load time the same way. I don't keep any houses in there ~ packaged them up and deleted them from the bin.

[Zeljka]

AMD, 1 Gig Ram and I can't be bothered to load Body Shop, but it depends on the CC.

Not sure if someone already mentioned this, but I keep all my Downloads in the download folder and all the Body Shop type stuff in SavedSims. If I want to go into Body Shop, I move the Downloads folder out and it loads much faster. I also have a lot of Sims, but they're named so I take out anyone I don't want at the time.

[Ancient Sim]

Silly question this, but if I download a Sim and use it in the game, obviously I won't be using it again, so can I delete it from Saved Sims, or does it have to stay there forever?  Not sure what deleting it would do to the in-game character, probably turn it naked and bald or something.

[Sleepycat]

Silly question this, but if I download a Sim and use it in the game, obviously I won't be using it again, so can I delete it from Saved Sims, or does it have to stay there forever?  Not sure what deleting it would do to the in-game character, probably turn it naked and bald or something.

delete away, it won't affect the sims in-game   

[Zeljka]

It's more of a pattern and once you've used it, deleting it won't affect the Sim.

[syberspunk]

Every time you defrag, you're using unnecessary read/write cycles on your hard drive - so reducing its lifespan, and increasing the risk of data corruption.

That's a good thing, provided you back up aggressively. If you can kill the drive within warrantee, you get a new one for free. If you drag it out so long that the warrantee expires before you kill it, you have to buy a new one yourself.

I'm not so sure I'd be quick to agree with you there. Sure you get another one if it's within the warranty lifespan, but... I don't know if they are always necessarily new. I suspect, in many cases, the replacements you get are actuall refurbished hard drives. Probably the very same ones that you returned and are "fixed" and given to other people who are returning theirs.

I've had to replace my laptop harddrive a couple of times, and I've "killed" numerous drives within the warranty lifespan, and the ones I get back don't always last much longer. I am pretty sure that many of them have been refurbished rather than completely new.

Ste

PS. And the drives I get usually are decent. Wesitern Digital, which isn't total crap. Sadly, a few of my Maxtor's seem to last longer.