What downloads to delete to make loading times of game and lots more efficient?

[Jysudo]

Ok, i am sick of my ridiculous loading times for lots and my game.
I am on a major culling project and am getting rid of useless stuff. Any idea what kind of downloads have most impact on loading times?
Will deleting all my stupid terrain paints, walls and tiles help? or deleting clothes/hair/ objects recolors?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[Sleepycat]

IMHO, "new mesh" stuff slows loading time, I noticed a big difference after removing a lot of custom hair.


After removing all of the custom hair I found I didn't care for - my game would load in less then 2 minutes and even though I have now added app. 1200 recolors for maxis stuff, my game is still loading in less then 2 minutes.

With all the custom hair - loading time was closer to 5 mins - drove me nuts, anything over 2 mins means I trim my downloads - and I had less custom hair then I now have in recolors of maxis stuff.

[Gwill]

Start with the large files you don't use.
Skin files tend to be huge.

[Flamingo]

Yes, skin files are definitely huge and any that you don't use should go. I find that it helps to organize things according to size, check what they are, and remove if them if they aren't worth their gigantic file size. Custom beds are also a bit gigantic in size as well, I have a few that are larger than skintone files.

I've been trying to take a good chunk out of my downloads folder size as well, and have managed to take out about 500 MB of unused content so far. It takes awhile, but I've noticed the game speed improving a bit already.

[Jelenedra]

The last time I weeded my download folders down, I just downloaded all the the sims I made/had to have and just kept those skin files. So I had a whopping total of 10 custom skintones (other than my defaults). That helped.

[Sleepycat]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I have 30 custom skintones plus 4 default replacements, plus replacements for the alien, vampire and zombie *laughs*

they don't seem to make much of a difference in loading time for me.

[rosenshyne]

Something easily overlooked: when you remove clothes/hair/furniture whatever, get rid of the mesh. I just went in game for my cull, dropped half of everything in CAS, and cut my load time in half. When I went through and actually removed the mesh files, I dropped another few minutes (my startup load time had actually reached a half hour before the cull *shudder*) Another big one: makeup. Honestly, how much makeup do you actually use? Rather than sort it all, I just deleted them all, then found and downloaded a few that I knew I liked.

[Jysudo]

I had already deleted my entire makeup folder and with the advise of folks here, changed it all to Dylan's makeup.
As for meshes, I found it hard to delete my orphaned meshes because i don't know which clothes goes with what but you mean they make such a big difference in loading times?

As for skins, I deleted most of them. It seems that there isn't much more to be deleted but I still have 11000 files in my folder 

[Surelyfunke]

Subfolders are really helpful.

And generally having less CC.

[Jelenedra]

And becoming an avid SimPE CC editor makes you really cut down on your CC downloading if you know you're going to open it up, check the categories, the footstep sound, hairbinning, family, genetic value....

[Sleepycat]

lmao I'm a hack junkie and a makeup junkie.

I have 68 eyeshadows by Helaene and I alpha edited every single one of them (hers allowed the eyeshadow to go to far down below the eyes, looked horrible on some skintones) plus some other eyeshadows and blush (some I made) lipstick and eyeliner/lashes totaling 178 files in 20 folders 

I keep telling myself to go through them...but all the eyeshadows are different and look different on different skintones, same with the blush but theres quite a few of those I never use and don't care for, so those i need to get rid of...soon... *laughs*

[MaximilianPS]

well i'm stargint to be bored too... but actually i've mesh and customed cloth everyware (npc, townies, dormies) so removing stuff will be a problem :\
btw, when i'll get pets i'll unistall all, i'll save my sims  and then i will play without customed objects

but for sure with some hacks ^^

[Gwill]

Subfolder and organize.  It's always worth it in the end.
I started over completely blank when I installed OFB.  It's a lot better to just re-download the things you feel you need, than trying to organize a bundle of unsorted downloads.

[jsalemi]

... but actually i've mesh and customed cloth everyware (npc, townies, dormies) so removing stuff will be a problem :\

Well, not really -- if you remove custom hair or clothing, the game just picks one of the built-in clothing styles or hair types to replace them.  I usually know when I've gotten rid of womans clothes that are in use when I go to a lot and the female sim is wearing that red shirt-white pants-red shoes combo. I never assign that one to any sim, and if any come with it or get it at age transition I make them change.

[idtaminger]

btw, when i'll get pets i'll unistall all, i'll save my sims  and then i will play without customed objects

I tried that. Didn't last for more than a minute. I love my dresses and makeup too much. I do believe that my loading time is now 10 minutes or so, just to finish loading the starting splash screen.

[DrBeast]

Cars are also quite huge, especially the really detailed ones. But I'd rather have my sims walk around in the buff and bald than get rid of my cars!

[idtaminger]

Cars are also quite huge, especially the really detailed ones. But I'd rather have my sims walk around in the buff and bald than get rid of my cars!

Lol. We all have our little weaknesses.

[DrBeast]

Cars are also quite huge, especially the really detailed ones. But I'd rather have my sims walk around in the buff and bald than get rid of my cars!

Lol. We all have our little weaknesses.

*sigh!*
I wish it was a small weakness...a quarter of my Downloads folder is comprised of cars! And I'm being VERY picky, so this means only the mostly detailed (read: with a poly count through the roof!) and fully functional get in.

[Jysudo]

Deleting a ton of walls seems to help speed up loading times. At least my computer didn't sound as if it is going to get a heart attack loading my game after i rid my game of about 200 walls and terrain paints.

[jsalemi]

Deleting a ton of walls seems to help speed up loading times. At least my computer didn't sound as if it is going to get a heart attack loading my game after i rid my game of about 200 walls and terrain paints.

And using jfade's WTF editor makes it really easy to clean up those files outside of the game: http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=21

[Jysudo]

Thanks! Joe! I wish someone told me of that editor earlier. I was just randomly deleting the walls and deleting all my terrains paints. I bloody hate those but they come with the community lots all the time. 

[KatEnigma]

Thanks! Joe! I wish someone told me of that editor earlier. I was just randomly deleting the walls and deleting all my terrains paints. I bloody hate those but they come with the community lots all the time. 

Clean Installer. You need Clean Installer. I never let terrains come with a lot since they patched the problem with the lot going all blinky when you delete a terrain in use.

Walls and floors I generally delete from within the game.  But I definitely need to delete meshes, it's a pain since I can rarely tell what they are.  And then there are the idiot creators who don't label period or include the picture for Clean Installer to show me.  I know I have a ton of meshes I can dump.

I've also gotten rid of all my eyes and custom hair. I hate how the game passes on their genetics, and it's creepy to see Sims sleeping with their eyes open.  (and honestly I think those realistic looking eyes are WAY creepy, anyway! LOL) I really need to sort through my makeup too, since I always use the same ones over and over.

Not that my loading times are terrible. I LOVE my 10,000 RPM hard drive! 

[iainmac]

I decided it was time to have a clear out after reading this topic,but I've come upon a problem with make-up and eyes so far.
The problem is that the maxis items appear in the middle of the cc items and when I try and delete any cc that follow on from the maxis stuff I am unable to highlight them or delete them.
 I thought  the maxis stuff in hair,make-up always came after the custom files but I rarely looked at these things so I could be totally wrong.
Has anyone else come across this or is it a maxis feature  I have not been aware of.

Feel free to poke or should get ready to walk the plank for asking a stupid question

Thanks
iain

[Ness]

I've never seen CC appear after maxis content.

Can you figure out what files they are and delete the files from outside the game?  Apart from that, I think you may have bigger problems to deal with.  I hope someone can help you.

[iainmac]

Hi Ness,{are you royality and should I bow} I did not think it was a good sign but it does not seem to affecting the playing of the game, well so far anyway.

I had the sense to follow the teachings of someone else-I think it was Jade-here and I should be able to track them down,although that
assumes  the files are named and not just numbers,I  have all the orginal rars so nothing will be lost, well hopefully that will be the case
or I maybe deluding myself yet again when it comes to this game

Hopefully someone will have an easy fix for this problem or tell me how to avoid it the future.

iain