Sims3Packs

[Chicken0895]

Not sure if this is in the right place, if it isn't let me know.

I know the sims 3 launcher can't really handle more than 200mb in size. This is a pain in the ass when I want to install multiple gigabytes of sims3packs. When trying to install them all at once, the launcher just corrupts its own dbc file.

Has anyone found a way to fix this yet? I know I could extract them, but then I loose the store content icon and instead have a bunch of worse looking custom content icons.

P.S. Is it normal for the launcher to make a 2gb dcdb file, instead of splitting it into smaller ones? Maybe this is the cause of the corruption.

[porkypine]

It's a matter of memory. You have to feed it in small chunks or it chokes. You can't swallow a whole pizza at once just like the game can't unpack 200MB sims3packs at once.You may have 200GB of stuff you want to open but you only have less than 4 GB of ram to use at any one time.

[Chicken0895]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you, but I have 8gb of ram any only 2gb of stuff. So wouldn't that not matter? Or is the launcher only capable of using part of the ram?

Also, considering some sims3packs from the EA store are almost 200mb just by themselves, you'd think the game would be able to hgandle more than 200mb. But that would require EA to make some sort of sense, and we can't have that can we :rofl:

[ellacharmed]

That's not the way computers work. It's not as simple as knowing mathematically or physically that a 2cm-cube can fit into an 8cm-cube.

With computers it matters how the components talk to each other - the bandwidth (aka bus) - from CPU to RAM to HDD.
And how much of a buffer (aka cache) each of these can store at any one time before clearing these buffers and going to fetch the next set of instructions.

The Launcher creates a 2GB ebc file? I've never seen that?
This is when selecting 2GB worth of Sims3Packs to be installed in one time? Even if Launcher is able to do this, the game engine would lag when loading this 2GB file, just like it lags when it loads the FullBuild files.
Why don't you just select fewer Sims3Packs to be installed in one go? Doesn't having a working ebc file matters more than doing fewer repetitions?
Plus, wouldn't a borked install means you have to repeat things all over again and again, anyway? :)

[simsample]

Also, considering some sims3packs from the EA store are almost 200mb just by themselves, you'd think the game would be able to hgandle more than 200mb.

The DBCache size is set in an ini file so could potentially be changed; however I would not recommend it. It's likely that EA set it at 200MB for a reason; perhaps there are problems with the game reading packages of larger than 200MB. I can install more than 200 MB at once though- Launcher just splits it into separate ebc files for me- so maybe this is a limitation of your computer, as ella mentions, or perhaps one of your DCCache files is glitched.

[Chicken0895]

I've deleted them and restated multiple times. The last time I ended up with 2 500mb files and a 1gb one. Both the ebc and the dcdb files get huge, and my launcher only sometimes splits them.

Thanks ellacharm3d, I'll try splitting into two goes, and see if that helps. If not I'll try 3. I'll even try a fresh Sims 3 folder (can't hurt right?)

[simsample]

Did you modify your game ini files at all?

[Chicken0895]

You mean files like sims3.ini and sims3launcher.ini? Not that I'm aware of. I know better than to go messing with game files without knowing what they do.