Speeding Up Loading Screens

[DigitalSympathies]

Okay, so, I'm pretty well-versed in how to take care of my game. I'm a computer technician and am around computers all day, every day.

My neighbourhoods are on semi-clean templates (they'd be fully cleaned if one of the links in the tutorial on another site wasn't broken), I only download from trusted websites, I maintain my downloads regularly and they're, for the most part, findable. I have 100,000 downloads on the dot, that's my maximum for now. I don't download a lot of lots off of obscure websites (only here, actually) and I delete my cache files. I only play the game on a fresh restart and in windowed mode, max resolution which is 1600 x 1200. I make sure it's at high system priority on every load. I have nothing running when I play the game except for iTunes which I allot VERY little memory, and Chrome during saves just to pass the five minutes (it doesn't slow anything down.)

The computer I play on has an nVidia GeForce GTS 450 Limited dedicated graphics card, which eats Battlefield 3 and Metro 2033 ALIVE. I've got 3GB DDR2 RAM with no expansion available, as I'm on a 32-bit system. I'm saving my money so I can upgrade to 64-bit, but for now I'm on Windows 7 Home Premium. My harddrive has anywhere from 45.5 to 15.5 GB of free space available each load out of 500 GB, as I move files around a lot between my external, my backup internal and my C drive.

Now onto the actual question.

HOW DO I SPEED UP THE LOADING SCREENS?!

I get that yes, it takes a LONG time to load all that content, but compared to a game I had a couple years ago, which ran very fast on the same build (but just on a chipset), this is dead slow! I'm going to clean out my computer with a can of compressed air on Saturday, that seemed to help, but I'm looking for long term here. Average load time for me, to the neighbourhood selection screen, is around 2-4 hours. It varies randomly. To get to playable is max 6 hours, minimum three.

I want to speed it up to at least an hour and a half loading time :) How would I go about this, or is it impossible? I'm not willing to reduce my CC amount as I create some very good machinima, and with the loss of Megaupload that'd just be too hard to bear.

Thanks!

Angie

[Pixelhate]

The main problem will always be the huge amount of CC. Since you're not willing to reduce it...
Maybe you don't need all of them each time you're loading, you could sort it in a way to have only the needed ones in Dwl folder while the rest is waiting out.
In XP killing a few unuseful process can help but I don't know how it works on W7.
Here's a thread about all the things that can be deleted in game installation : http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=14301.0
Hope it helps...

[HystericalParoxysm]

"My harddrive has anywhere from 45.5 to 15.5 GB of free space available each load out of 500 GB, as I move files around a lot between my external, my backup internal and my C drive."

This stood out to me - worth doing a defrag periodically anyway, but especially if you're in the habit of shuffling your files around.

[DigitalSympathies]

@HP - I defrag each week on Mondays and Fridays - nothing can be freed up that hasn't already been freed up. I also have a tendency to install my other games on my external, but TS2 is on my main.

@Pixelhate - Done that a long time ago, but thanks :)

[Pixelhate]

A possible solution could lies in there: http://simpeforum.ambertation.de/forum/viewthread/293/0
But it's from 2005 and I don't know if it has evolved.
Maybe contact Inge Jones or place a request for such a tool...

[M.M.A.A.]

what i do is, i have Windows BTW, that i hit the 'windows' button (the one with the logo on it) on the keyboard, and i wait so that the game's window minimises, then i maximise it again and wallah! it starts loading faster (a bit), but it still helps.

my game is fullscreen BTW

[Mootilda]

Have you considered buying a solid state drive for your save games? That should speed things up considerably.

A possible solution could lies in there: http://simpeforum.ambertation.de/forum/viewthread/293/0
But it's from 2005 and I don't know if it has evolved.
Maybe contact Inge Jones or place a request for such a tool...I believe that most CC cannot be combined well, because of the way that things within a package are associated.

However, you can always combine two packages by extracting everything from one package and adding it to the other.

[HugeLunatic]

SimPE will allow you to drag multiple packages into a new file, thus combining. However I don't know if they will still function. My own attempt at combining a window set once made the diagonal no longer functional. :/

[DigitalSympathies]

Thank you guys so much. I'm timing it now just to see where I'm at now, with the combined packages. I heard about that a long time ago and I did it before, my only concern was that after about a year and a half of using them with no new CC (my computer was relatively old) the game started HATING CC for no reason and glitched out every time I used it. What I've noticed with just doing what I have been doing is that my neighbourhoods are very crashy, even brand new ones, and my CC is all in the good and clear for my friends with the same "packet" I give out.

@Mootilda - I have one and I run other games off of it on another computer setup, it's just that all of a sudden the prices went through the roof for these things and I can't get my hands on one for a reasonable amount. So much so that I've had to say "mmkay, we're not replacing harddrives anymore" to my customers. My friend, my dad and I all run a little computer repairs shop so I usually have stuff laying around.

EDIT: Alright, clocked it to a "playable" state (aka, in the lot, with change appearance loaded up) - one hour, forty-two minutes. That's significant! THANKS!

EDIT 2: Okay, second thought, it started crashing so I went and did the DEP/CFF Explorer trick that I found a long time ago. I also removed all junk files in Clean Installer and lowered my windowed mode resolution to the one I use for fullscreen (1280x960) and it crashes when I go to load downloaded lots . . . tried with my backed up folder, same jazz. -bangs head against wall- Oh, joy, what did I get myself into this time, Angela?