That's what I was saying when I said that the game must confuse the package files for game files. It seems to be loading them, always. Dumb thing.

Aw come on, don't you think I've done that a few times. I've been doing this a while, I'm not new.

Plain and simple, it's a game glitch that needs patching. I took the liberty of striking out on my own on google (lol) and it seems this is being reported all over the place, by both people with cc and people without,

Claeric, when are you actually going to READ what I say my game hasn't crashed at all. If you don't like my input to the discussion then just leave it, don't answer me. I think it's quite clear that people are having issues with or without cc, I'm not the only one. I don't need reminding of what the thread is about either, it's about game issues and whether cc is inviolved and if it is what and how. My input is as valid as yours.

Now for my response on this thread about the cc and the WA EP. It's nothing to do with Helper Monkey either, I uninstalled that and it had no effect.

No, it's irrelevant to what we're trying to figure out.

Once again, we are talking about people whose games ran properly with custom content before WA, lag terribly and have long loading with custom content after WA, and can confirm that these problems go away when their .package custom content is removed.

We are not talking about lag. We are not talking about crashing. We are talking about this specific situation. Someone whose game lags regarldess of CC is not helping, because we're not trying to figure out lag that isn't related to CC. We're trying to confirm that CC can cause lag and does cause lag.

Your experience does not relate to that.

Saying "My game lags, too, with or without CC, so that's not the only cause of lag." is completely and wholly irrelevant. We know the game lags. It could be anything. But we're talking about lag specifically caused by custom content. Your lag is not specifically caused by custom content and saying that doesn't help us. The thread isn't about lag. It's about package files causing lag. Unless you're talking about both at once, you're not relevant.

Much like how if someone came and started talking about how some CC crashes their game when they try to use it. It's irrelevant. It's not about the correlation between package files and lag.

Claeric, oh well I'll go start a new thread for people like me who want to try and work out the lagging issue for those of us who have it without cc as well as with. I am aware of the loading issues of the game with cc, that's why I took it all out.

Yes, that's fine. I don't mean to be rude- just understand why it doesn't really help this problem to note that you have a vaguely similar one.

Yes, its a seperate issue.
We appreciate your input though. Cheers.

Inge: You know how to make apps. How likely is a mass package to sims3pack converter then?

Well the sims3packs have completely different stuff in them. They have a manifest etc. If we are going in that direction it would have to be implemented in cloner to make new objects into sims3packs before we'd attack any type of mass converter. So someone else might get there first. But in theory, yes

I feel like this thread needs an up-to-date summary.

We have pretty much undeniably determined that package files are in fact slowing WA considerably.

What SEEMS to be happening is the game doesn't understand how to use them. .package is the default filetype the game uses for important game files it loads. And as a modding community, we've basically forced the game to use ours, too.

But WA's infrastructure seems to be making the game think of them as core game files. This makes the game take an eternity to load at startup(as it is loading each file as if it was a major one), as well as making the game lag during play(as it is loading/"using" the files even when they aren't on screen or anything close to being used.)

And we have, through lots of testing with lots of people, found that Sims3Packs do not usually have this effect (and if/when they do, it's likely an outside problem). Sims3Packs, when installed, are all clumped into ONE file- ddcache, which is somewhere I don't know where. But that one file contains all Sims3Pack stuff that has been installed. Therefore, the game only loads it, and the game doesn't try to load it during play- both load time problems and gameplay lag problems cease tp exist when there are no .package files and only installed Sims3Packs (assuming the player doesn't have lag to begin with).

So what is needed is either a way to further fiddle with the game's infrastructure to make it load the .package content properly(I wouldn't recommend it, as one expansion managed to destroy the work already done here), or a way to mass convert drag-and-drop .package files into sims3pack files for installation.

This would undoubtedly fix any and all CC-based lag and long loading problems.

We're forcing the game to do something that, from base game to expansion, it no longer understands how to manage. Who is to say it won't happen again with the next expansion? We can't keep using a file type that will require a revamp of the system to use each time. The safest solution is to only use Sims3Packs, it seems.

I've updated the first post wit that. Nice one

And TSRW has a new Launcher for those of us allergic to EA's own own

I have hacks in as .package files and they are working fine. No high load time and no lagging. Yes my previous lagging was due to not having my graphics dturned down enough, I went from high to medium and it fixed it. Here's a screenie of what I have in there.

I think it's more of a specific cc issue rather than the format of the cc. If it was just a format issue, wouldn't we all be having it?

I wonder if it would be safe to say that ,package is ok for mods but cc might need to be sims3.pack. I'll go put some paintings in now and run again and let you know what happens

Yes but fluttereyes....hacks folders are never big in size.
Does anyone have a hacks folder bigger than 50 mb?
Yours looks about 15mb.
The game can handle that amount. we know that.
Add another 600mb on to that, then tell us.

Sorry, I updated before you wrote that, I'm putting cc in now to see what the result is. Could it be that people just want far too much cc? That slowed up sims 2 eventually too

EDIT* I now have 258MB with no issues, will add more as I go along. I even have some stuff blamed for crashes in there, like Mango sims stuff.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have sims3.packs too, I'm just sayong that maybe some folks just have far too much stuff and that's the problem, maybe if we have a split between .package and sims3.packs it would be fine. I'm really saying, it isn't the format in itself, it's the sheer volume some people seem to have. I have a lot of stuff in my old folder and I'll add it all over the course of tonight and see how big the folder can get before any issues, has anyone actually done that yet? Put the stuff into the folder in stages to see if there's a maximum amount we can have?

Too much CC never resulted in the sims 2 lagging during gameplay.

Yes, it did for me and many other people, maybe not for you but for a lot of us it did. I had to delete half my cc to play the game normally in sims 2.

Is this just a crusade to get us all to use sims3 .packs or are we trying to ascertain how much we an actually use without issues?

I saw this coming a mile off to be honest with recent posts, even before WA was released

We could also be looking at a scenario where its not the actual size of the mods/packages folder, but the number of individual files inside.
This could tie in with what Claeric said in post 111.

Its understandable for the game to keep one eye on NoAutonomousSprinklers.package, but if its also keeping tabs on Raon86.package and Peggysims34.package and whatever hundreds other ones are in there, then you can see why complications arise.

Over on the other thread, did you say you don't actually have WA installed yet?

I wouldn't have said the game has problems using .package files. What is more likely the case is that the method of getting the game to use them is tantamount to fooling it into thinking they are part of the original installation. An alternative to switching to sims3pack is having another attempt at finding out how to give the game .package cc and presenting it as custom content, in the My Documents hierarchy.

I think the argument against too much CC is that people are able to handle a large number of sim3pack files through the launcher but not the equal size of packages. As for Sims 2, I had lag from too much CC and its one reason I stopped playing Sims 2. The more expansion packs the worse the lag. And while my system is not state of the art, its not that bad.

Inge, I concede on this one. I was just playing and the lag started again. It would be great if you could fool the game into allowing it again. I do think though that a split between .package files and sims3.pack files might be a way to go. This will happen again when they put out the next EP. I get the feeling they don't want us using cc anymore.

Hacks, is there a way for them to be sims3,packs? I didn't think so, but you would know better than me. CC, we know can be made in that format. How about if hacks were .package and cc was sims 3 .packs. Is that a possibility?

I'm going to leave this to people like you, Peter and Delphy to solve, as you know what you're doing. I'll feed back anything I can find out, other than that, I can't be a lot of help.

I will say that the hacks I have in place still all work as they should. CC coming out till I learn more

Just wanted to add my own experiences. I spent two days going through my custom content, piece by piece and improved my game speed greatly.

What I have found is it is not so much a matter of how much custom content you have. I have a folder of Peggy hairstyles that is about 350 mb. When I add just that folder and start the game, the game flies. When I take that same folder and add my NewSea hair folder, suddenly the game is taking 10 minutes to load what used to load in 30 seconds. From there, I start narrowing my NewSea folder into sections, and find the culprits and remove them. Then my game is flying again. I have found that whereas "bad" files used to cause crashes in Sims 2, in Sims 3, the game still loads them - they just cause HORRIBLE slowdown to load time and gameplay. I also experienced this with some footwear I downloaded from Parsimonious, and also even found that I had a few Sims 2 hair files inadvertently mixed in. They cause the SAME slowdown as the bad Sims 3 package files.

By the way, it is not all NewSea hair that causes a problem - it's mostly freebie hairstyles that actually give a "corrupted" message through WinZIP or Izarc or WinRAR when you extract them. Out of desperation to have them in my game, I had tried using them anyway - they are long gone now. They were Legally Blonde and Leisure. For those of you that will run and remove them from your game and still experience performance degradation - that just means you have OTHER files still causing a problem. As I said, after 2 days of painstakingly going through my files, I have everything that was causing a problem out of my game. I still have 985 mb of pure package files in my game. Anything I could convert over to sims3pack files I did. The game seems definitely to prefer them - also, the launcher is pickier about what it allows to install. On a couple of the package files contained in sims3packs I had downloaded (Rose's jewelry, for example), the launcher gave me a message that this content was not compatible. So, I ditched them. I think in the future it is going to be preferable for designers to find a way to create sims3pack files. The only reason I have *any* package files in my game at all now is because *all* hairstyles I want to use are available in no other way. The ones I have now aren't presenting a problem but with every new hairstyle that is released - I know I am taking a risk by adding it to my game.

Do you think you could try converting your problem files to sims3packs?

It'd be interesting to see if they still caused a problem.

I wish I knew how to! I wouldn't really want to put the bad files back in (btw, since I named them, someone else could feel free to try lol) but I would like to put even my "good" files into the game in sims3pack format. Makes it a lot easier if you later decide you want to remove something (like all these female hair conversions for males... bleh!)

As much as I'm loath the say it, wouldn't it be better if everyone went over to using just Sims3Pack format?

It would standardise things and make installing Custom Content easier. Also it might encourage EA to introduce a Custom Content section within the Launcher for easier management.

Mods would stay .package files (and rightly so), but Custom Content would change to Sims3Pack files. This simplifies the process of installation for newbies, and would also simplify the folder structure in resource.cfg to:



would it not?

I know everyone will hate having to redo all their creations but sometimes these things must be done for the greater good of all...

Theres instructions on this thread, i think page 1