I am super seriously addicted to downloading and installing custom content that I may never actually use in my games ever. Like it's seriously bad. I have an addiction.



Let's all share our ways of having obscene amounts of custom content without our game taking a half hour to load, since I know it used to be an issue for me until I started learning better how to manage it!

THESE ARE SUPER USEFUL:

• http://modthesims.info/d/461888 CC Magic: THIS SHIT IS MY JAM. It saved me from having, I shit you not, 20min load times to nothing when at 3k mods. I now have over 10k and it is kinda slow, but not near what it was without merging stuff at 3k! I highly recomment sorting things into categories that load together (ex: Accessories, Outfits, Tops, Bottoms, Windows, Doors, Decorations, etc. etc. etc! If it loads in a tab in CAS or Build/Buy, put it in the same package!)
  
• http://modthesims.info/d/387006 Delphy Dashboard: Use this to clean out corruption. Do it. Trust me.
  
• S3PE 3SOC (http://www.simlogical.com/s3pe.htm) (http://www.simlogical.com/ContentUp...s/190/index.htm): Use these to manage categories, ages, ITUN and all other things to tune your packages how you want them used!

Also, PROTIP HERE: Save at east once an hour while doing purely build/buy mode stuff, because once you get somewhere over 10gig of mods, the game will eventually error out and you'll be stuck in a menuless state where you absolutely cannot save your edits. Honestly, save often even in Live mode, because I'm sure it will eventually be stupid then, too. Also, save as a named file, rather than direct save. Have at least 5 play sessions of save files behind you.

EDIT: Almost forgot. nrass. Live it. Love it. It'll save you heartache later on. Use Mastercontroller (and cheats), and Error Trap: http://nraas.wikispaces.com Even if you never use the stuff for cheating, it can seriously get you out of game-breaking binds that all the console commands ever cannot get you out of. There's also some seriously useful stuff there for other things. Check all of it out!

Seconding the use of S3PE, S3OC and the Nraas suite. Seriously, they're awesome. I'd like to add Kuree's Save Cleaner, Sims 3 Recompressor and Delphy's Sims3Pack Multi Extracter to the mix of must-have utilities.

The Save Cleaner takes care of useless data that's bloating the save file uselessly; the Recompressor compresses .package files (it also works on savegames!) and helps reduce the filesize greatly (sometimes from 12MB to 3-4MB, especially true for hairs); and the Multi-Extracter extracts .packages from .sims3packs (or converts s3p to packages, if the sims3package is only one file i.e. not a set). It greatly helps with sorting files - I don't use programs, I sort them manually.

When the savefile is new, I can usually play it until I get bored without the fear of crashes or error 12s. Later on, I save either every half hour or after every major event (job promotion, new pregnancy, new friend etc.). Sadly, I've been through way too many Groundhog Days XD

I merge almost all my .package files into bigger ones (keeping a cap of 100MB) and then run them through S3RC to reduce their filesize as well*. Everything gets merged except mods, since I sometimes take some of them out to either test or replace them e.g. changing lighting mods when starting a new game or getting bored of them.
I keep the merged packages in the regular TS3 folder to be loaded by the game, and the unmerged ones on a separate external drive in case I want to remove any or need to identify a particular file fast.

* Edit: just merged all the female hair packages I have that aren't sorted into folders by creator. After merging, I had one package of 387 MB. After running that single package through S3RC, it now stands at 307 MB. So 80 MB less just through one action

I have a CC addiction too lol. I find myself going to CC websites everyday now whether I plan on downloading stuff or not lol. But what I do is go through my package files very often. If there's something in there that I don't recognize.. I copy the name of it and paste into google image search. Most times it will come up and I will decide from there if I actually want to keep it. I also type a hint two spaces after the name of it as a reminder of what it is (ex. eye contacts). Because I have SO MUCH CC and mods in my game now, whenever I want to download more, I FORCE myself to delete SOMETHING. Even if it's one thing and I'm downloading like 10, I make myself delete SOMETHING. That will also help you decide if you REALLY want that new CC enough to sacrifice something, or would you like to find something better at least to justify clogging the game more lol.

I am playing on a mac and I just make maps with names. Sometimes it's still a little bit messy but I don't know other way to do it.

God, I should seriously start doing that, because I am constantly finding new crap to install and meanwhile I have this pile of crap already where I maybe actually use 20% of it. I have started moving things to a 'Disabled' category (which the merged .package is, obviously, disabled) when I absolutely know I wont ever use whatever the thing is, because I hoard files like a dragon hoards gold and can never bring myself to delete things.

Yup, same here, I keep all the mods and CC I don't use in a separate "Other mods" folder on my HDD. They're either stuff I'm not finding any use for at the moment (especially fantasy-themed things), alternative versions (for the lighting mods, especially, but also default replacements), or CC that I might find some use for in the future and don't want to lose (since more and more CC sites and links have been disappearing).

Then sometimes I get bored of sorting and just plop everything I download in the game folder anyway, lol.

CCMagic. CCMagic. CCMagic.
I've created different configurations that load different types of sets that depend on what kind of game I'm playing. So for any game, I don't load more than 2GB of stuff max.

This and all my other CC is on a backup drive. I don't want to know how much there is but I don't have everything installed. One day far far into the future, I might clean house there.

Since we're not patching any more, I merge my mods as well. Still, I have those organized in folders in unmerged form as well. So I always know what's in them. So, when I do add a new mod or there is an update at NRASS, I just drop the new one into the respective folder, run Dashboard to make sure and then remerge them with the new one.

I use Kuree's Save Cleaner and have all my CC organized with folders. Don't have enough for it to impact loading on my machine. I keep a backup of my entire Documents folder on an external drive because paranoia.

Well for me; first I converted them into package files, then I checked them with Sims3Dashboard, and test run after that before combining them into few categories. Especially for clothing, hairs, eyebrows, accessories, make ups, body part mesh, and skins I tested them on TS3 CAS stand alone game so it would saved a lot of time to test them run and for me to decide which ones I like and which ones I don't want to use.

After all of them sorted out, then I put them into few categories folders before combining them with S3PE; based on the tabs available in CAS, I combined all hairs + eyebrows together, clothing + accessories together, make ups + tattoos + skins + body part meshes together, and name them into 3 categories. And another category for core mods/tuning mods and such as Awesome, NRAAS, and other gameplay mods together, and so I only have 4 categories mods files in my mod folder, after all done I also run process monitor to see how they perform while running the full game, this steps helps a lot in improving the gameplay performance and reducing lags.

Quick question to all of you folks that just convinced me into using CC Magic; I'm currently up to the daunting task of organizing all of my CC, and I just wonder how many sets you usually use? I like to have mine sorted into all sorts of subfolders, so I can quickly find the source of a missing/broken mesh, an outdated mod, avoid duplicates, remove an item from a specific fave creator, etc. I've only just started playing TS3 as of the last few months and I don't have all the EPs/SPs - sometimes I run into things that conflict or are duplicates (BG-compatible stuff, for instance) - so this is even more relevant.

However, wouldn't too many subsets defeat the purpose of CC Magic in the first place? Also, is there anything you'd advise on keeping in the Legacy/original Mods folder?

I have 165 sets, but that's over 10 thousand packages and sims3packs merged together, so it does still make an enormous difference. If you have a lot of CC, don't feel too badly about really dividing it up.

EDIT: As for things to keep in there, I leave things that I know may update very soon or that I'm currently in the midst of editing, since it's just easier.

Thanks for the quick answer! Well, I'm at 2k now after just 4 months, and that's not counting the sims3packs already installed - so I'm on my way there, lol.

You're welcome And you poor fool, this is only the beginning

Lol, I got over my CC addiction after The Sims 1... ^_^

I play the organization game.
I keep a record of every piece of cc I download, by posting it to tumblr or bookmarking the page with cc.
I download it and categorize as hair, accessories, clothes, etc and put it with all the like cc
Then I merge in sets of 50 so I have about 3-5 .packages per category

I have no idea if it's caused by having too much CC, but in the interest of sharing because it might be, here's something I found recently which is very helpful oh my god.

The original post: http://fleurdeprairie.tumblr.com/po...someone-told-me

Quoting it here just in case that page ever disappears:





EDIT: Actually, this is the exact error I was complaining about in my OP, so hey.

Oh, NOW you share this pearl...........................

I'm so sorry, man I know exactly how you feel though, since the first time it happened to me, I didn't know that and lost three hours of work.

How often should you use the Save Cleaner? As of now, I use it after about 3-5 saving times and when sims have been born, moved in/out or died.

That's pretty much how I do it too. Add to that whenever you return from uni or vacation worlds.
If you look at the savefile and think that it's getting too big, you should run it through the Save Cleaner.

I have about 5GB, and it's all neatly sorted in subfolders (CAS->Hair->Age etc.). I do notice that my game is getting really slow, though, so I am planning on merging them soon. I downlaoded CC Magic, but I'm still completely confused by how it works :')

I use cc magic for my cc, razer game booster, and the other day i put my laptop in airplane mode and it seemed to make the game play even smoother. i didn't have any staggering that time.

I think the only new thing I have to add here is that when the game starts reading your package files, it reads 0-9, A-Z and _ without a problem. But any other characters, including brackets and spaces, periods and parentheses, are read as 'special characters' and the game takes longer to read them. Renaming your files lets the game read them more easily, resulting in less wait time for you.
If you have so many files that you believe would take hours upon hours to rename, you can download the Bulk Rename Utility.

I can't make the Delphy Dashboard work.
No matter where i put it (tried: desktop. Documents. Mods folder. Package folder in mods folder) it does not show any of my cc.
It says "No packages found in any of the searched folders"

Where do you guys put this file?

. . . Well, my organization technique is just as good.