Have you tried opening it in SimPE? If it's not a sim or a lot you can look at the texture files easily and guess what it is

Good luck with your sorting... it's such a relief when it's all done XD

This is happening to me, too, and brand new neighbourhood.

It did seem to make the game load faster, after I deleted the groups.cache. However, I don't know if it's because of the compressed files or because I began using that tool during my clearout (1.2GB to 220MB... I feel all happy inside XD). I would guess that it's a little of both, because others have said the game loaded faster and I don't think they were all sorting and deleting.

I guess it depends if you have a problem with how fast your game loads. I've only got one (partitioned) 60gb drive, so space is more of an issue for me... but I also thought my loading times were too long, and the Compressorizer has helped.

It doesn't have any bad effect. It slows it down slightly because I think it compresses it again (although it's already been done), but it won't hurt anything.

Make sure to split your downloads into folders and do one folder at a time. It seems that people have had problems running the whole downloads folder through at once.

(I generally put a 'new' folder in each creator folder when there is something new and, once I've checked the stuff, I just compressorize that folder. )

dictionary.com's thesaurus is naff, but it lists 'incombustible' as a synonym for nonflammable and I kinda like the sound of that. (It also lists 'concrete', but I'm pretty sure incombustible actually means 'won't burn')

'Ignifugé' just sounds like 'ignited' to me, and that's pretty much the opposite. But I have to go to dictionary.com for synonyms, so... @_@

Do other sims still have memories of the missing ones? Something similar happened to me, and other sims had their birth/meeting/best friend memories with a blank picture (could have been mystery sim, was a while ago) and, where the name of the missing sim should have been, it was $Subject; or something like that. I reverted to a backup and, for the month that I continued to play that hood before deleting it for other reasons, it was fine.

The first sims to disappear were new ones - babies and then newer CAS sims. Then it got more indiscriminate. I'm not sure if any whole households went missing though, so it could be a totally different problem :/

If it worked before and with the same downloads it's not working, it must be a problem with one of the game files. Also, it seems to me that custom content is loaded in that pause between seeing the loading screen and the bar starting to move along.

I don't know what the problem is, but a lot of threads talk about the objects.package getting corrupted? If the ones on your pc have different modified dates to the ones on the cds then it might be corrupted. I don't know what else you should check because this hasn't happened to me.

Have you tried with the entire downloads folder moved out?

Would it be possible to have an option to delete the 'mystery sim' memories or will that still need to be done manually?

I'm pretty sure I can see the ceiling/floor-edge things under the minifences. With glass tiles, that disappears. (At least with the ones I have, from Avenida, it does)

That's the best way to do it! Binning hair isn't hard, but it's an effort to go through. So if you're in the middle of binning a hair, you're more likely to realise you hate it and never use it because you don't want to bin it. Or when you go back into the game or bodyshop and you see that particular brown hair next to the others, you realise it's low quality or something.

What's really annoyed me though is that, after my huge hair clearout, I've noticed I'd kept some hairs that had actual meshes and textures for teen/child/toddler, but didn't check that those didn't have gaps and stuff.

I'm pretty sure it's been brought up a lot here. I used to have that problem with Pets - I don't know if it was installing Seasons or just using less cc that cleared it up. I've only had it happen once since Seasons and I'm pretty sure I made that guy before I actually installed it.

If that doesn't work, try deleting CASThumbnails.package in Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails. That will force the game to regenerate a picture for everything in CAS.

I use the matching tall fence and awning from the euro set and the fairytale set to make bathrooms and occasionally pantries and bedrooms in that otherwise useless space. Light snow appears on the ground but I don't think the objects get snowed on (I've not played winter for a while, sorry), heavy snow won't appear there, and sims don't seem to get colder/hotter like they would were it truly outside. I use the matching awnings because these make it join up. I know, it doesn't really matter to the sims themselves, and there are big gaps in the fence regardless, but that's just what I feel I have to do XD

Before I actually got Seasons I wanted to use that space as a greenhouse but you can't build one there Mine always end up on the roof. I don't play anything bigger than a 1x3 (I only use those and 2x2s for community lots now), and too many storeys make as much lag as a bigger lot (not to mention, constant page up/down is annoying!) so I make sure to make efficient use of space! XD

Ooh... so, if I just fill one of those 4 folders and empty the others, it will use that for all 4? That would be even better!

Do added mp3s have the same slowing-down effect on the game that custom content has? I ask because my downloads folder is down to 279mb, which I think is rather impressive, but I have 232mb of music in the various folders and... that seems like kind of a lot. (It used to be about 320 but I got rid of some duplicates.) If it doesn't slow it down I might just use witch's tutorial to give buy, build, cas and neighbourhood the same soundtrack. I've got enough actual disk space to have duplicates and triplicates of some of my mp3s, but if it will affect loading and performance I'll strip more out.

Is it Grand Blocks or Great Bricks? I don't think they can make their mind up.

All downloads are removed? Nothing custom in your Documents\EA Games? If you've made things, they might still be in 'SavedSims'.

I don't know if having a SimPE for an EP you don't own would cause problems. The newest version is the Seasons-compatible one, so do you actually have seasons?

Does the actual game load, or is it just a problem with bodyshop?

I did it exactly the way SaraMK described, so don't worry about anything like second bellybuttons on that skin XD I hope it looks good in your games.

Out of curiosity, what does everyone else have Lyran's 3 extra skins geneticised as? I have the freckled one at 0.1, ivory at .05 and ebony at .95.

I made a skin to go between Lyran's S3 and S4. It's exactly 50% of each and has genetic value .75. I'm not going to do that for the lighter skins because, to me, they're close enough, but I thought some of the people in this thread might find this one useful, so I uploaded it here

I'd move him into a cheap lot and use money orders. I don't know how that cheat works with several households with the same name, sorry.

I'm sure I played one of those flash point-and-click puzzles with a theme somewhat like that... :/

In that yellow Rose bedroom, is the cushiony-rug thing on the left actually supported by anything? It's not a shelf attached to the wall, either, is it? :S

My downloads folder was about 550mb - does that qualify as small? It's down to 300-ish, and loading times have gone up a little (10-30 seconds - load time is now about 3mins).

Is there more than one groups.cache that I should be clearing? I deleted the one in my documents and the speed didn't improve. Still, it definitely did what it said on the box, my downloads have been almost halved

I've not compressed all my game files yet though. Will those increase the speed? Again, I'm not too bothered, what bothers me is the space this game takes up. After clearing my downloads folder down from over a gig to 550mb, it made loading so much faster that any increase from this tool really doesn't matter in comparison.

Denimjo, the boxes to the right with the numbers in? Tiny boxes, loads of them? You change the value of one of those, I think it was from 03 to 02. I have no idea either, it was just trial and error but that worked and the hack works.

Ok, the very first thing that struck me about that Space Podyssey set is that, were it real, I'd always be banging my head :/ Why such a low roof-thing on a bed?

Oh, there's the weird colours and textures, too...

Thanks for the answers

Gwill, that's why I like Lyran's skins - yes, the defaults are lighter, but there's an extra skin which is darker than maxis S4 and certainly darker than hers. It's not quite as dark as skin can be... but it wouldn't be too hard to just darken that one if you wanted a darker one (because it's already quite dark). There's a lighter-than-S1 skin (as in, lighter than hers, so really pale) too. Those all compress to 4mb or less apart from her freckled one which stays pretty huge at 7mb, I don't know if it's that the images weren't compressed initially or what :S I know some people don't like those skins, but I feel they've got the best variety for a non-shiny skin set. And I'm not being paid to say this, either XD

I don't know if it's possible to do that with hair colours :/ I'd like that too. I hand-make my townies, but if an npc ends up with hair that looks weird I just change it with a mirror. I don't bother changing their genetics because my sims rarely breed with non-townie npcs.