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

[Ness]

Royalty???  Where does that come from?

I'm another compulsive zip and rar keeper...  problem is, stuff that gets deleted from the game because it's crap doesn't get the corresponding zip or rar deleted.  If my downloads folder ever went splodey I'd have a really nasty time trying to sort through what needs to go back in and what should stay out.

[jsalemi]

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

Usually when problems crop up with the thumbnails, the solution is to simply delete the tumbnail files and let the game rebuild them. You'll find them in ...\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails.  It also doesn't hurt to delete the 'groups.cache' file in the directory above that (the 'main' sims directory).

[iainmac]

Thanks for the info about the thumbnails I'll go and do that now and let you know if it works.I delete the groups cache after every game.

The royality comes from your royal highness [hi ness] ;Di 

 
thanks iain

[Ambular]

We desperately need a tool that can identify meshes with no textures and vice versa so we can get rid of them easily...

[numaari]

Desperately.  *nods*

[Ambular]

Here's a question for the mod gods...we know it's possible to hide Maxis textures we don't like, but is there any way to stop the game from loading the meshes?

[jrd]

Well I'm no mod god, but the initial answer would seem to be "no".
Unless you delete the mesh from the game resource file (which would be a very bad thing).

Why would you want to do this anyway? Many Maxis game meshes are used by multiple outfits, even NPC outfits.

[Ambular]

To save load time and resources.  And some of the meshes themselves are butt-ugly and incapable of being textured in any way that is not butt-ugly, IMO.  It was just an idle thought though.

[KatEnigma]

We desperately need a tool that can identify meshes with no textures and vice versa so we can get rid of them easily...

Amen! I'd just about kill for a tool like that (HINT HINT)

[Ness]

The royality comes from your royal highness [hi ness] ;Di 

Actually, that's one play on Ness that I haven't encountered before, well done!   

But no, not royalty.

[Ambular]

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 

Jysudo, Dylan who?  And where? 

[Ness]

Dylan of laverwinkle...  http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php

absolutely gorgeous makeup!

[CandyToast]

Oh my, that is some sexy makeup. I also (somewhat sheepily) agree that an "orphaned mesh" detector is sorely needed!

[witch]

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

If you run the game in debug mode, go to Create a Family and look at the clothing, you should see the filename when you click on the clothing item I think. Is that where your cc appears after the Maxis stuff? I just wondered because other people were talking about makeup and clothing, thought that might be one way you could identify it.

[jrd]

Remember to enable CAS debugging as well: do a boolprop testingcheatsenabled 1 and then press shift+n. It should report the filename for everything, as well as other information (if defined).

[DrBeast]

...do a boolprop testingcheatsenabled 1...

Thinking in binary Jordi? 

boolprop testingcheatsenabled true 

[jrd]

1 also works :p

It's a boolean property, so 0=false, 1=true.

[DrBeast]

1 also works :p

It's a boolean property, so 0=false, 1=true.

Shit...never tried that...heh, one never ceases to learn!

[jrd]

one never ceases to learn!

true never ceases to learn! :p

[gali]

"Ok, i am sick of my ridiculous loading times for lots and my game." [Jysudo]

I just bought a new computer, with 1066 MHz processor, and the loading time "runs speedy wild"....

Size of Downloads folder:  2 Giga.

[Theo]

My past two weeks were spent cleaning out the downloads folder.

After the cleanup, I left about 2400 packages using 715Mb of disk space.
The game now loads into the neighborhood chooser in less than a minute

I didn't target a particular type of package, I just deleted the objects, clothing, hairs, walls and floors that weren't being used.

Incidently, this made me work on the orphan mesh scanner again, and it was able to root out over a hundred mesh packages that were not in use [/shameless plug]

However, the neighborhood's loading time remains essentially the same, maybe due to the sheer amount of garbage it contains. For instance, my Pleasantview main package is now over 12Mb in file size!

[Jelenedra]

Thanks for the link to the WTF scanner. The page also has a gimmick that scans for duplicate skins and makeup and such and allows for renaming and deleting and such. Which would help immensely for those who download sims as the stupid installer likes to rename helaene's nice labeled makeup to 012debakuyaw2316. I have an entire folder of stuff from custom sims that I can't identify.

On that same note, the newest version of Clean Installer seems to lost it's ability to identify from makeup, eyecolors and such. For when I scan my "made sims content folder" everything is labelled: "Parts."

Thanks, I know it's a PART of a SIM, but it's nice to know if it is MAKEUP or EYECOLOR.

[idtaminger]

Incidently, this made me work on the orphan mesh scanner again, and it was able to root out over a hundred mesh packages that were not in use [/shameless plug]

What? Orphan mesh scanner? Where, where?!?!?!?

[Theo]

Linky

This was previously mentioned in the Culling Hair thread, but at that time the results were less than encouraging

And it still helps if the downloads are organized into subfolders. For instance, I used it to scan a folder that only had the clothing recolors and meshes (of course I had to know that those were clothing meshes).

[BlueSoup]

I never heard of that project, Theo, though I did ask Jfade about a clothes scanner at one point.  He said he thought Paladin was working on one.

I'd love some more tools to do cool stuff outside the game though, and if someone *anyone* would work on fixing SimPE the Pescado way, we won't have to worry about our beloved hacks after the EP-that-shall-not-be-named comes out.