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[personal profile] aikea_guinea posting in [community profile] club_crimsyn
I originally put this tutorial together for [personal profile] century_eyes, but I thought I'd go ahead and repost it here in case anyone else could get some use out of it.

If you primarily use package files for your custom content and have noticed increased load times and/or lag in your game, follow this tutorial to combine your CC into fewer, larger packages to fix the problem.



Open S3PE and choose 'New.'


Right-click in the big empty white area and select '(EXPERIMENTAL) As dbc...'


Select the files you want to combine and let S3PE do its thing. This may take a loooooong time; don't panic and just let it keep working.


You'll probably get this popup. Hit 'OK.'

[IMAGE REMOVED TO EASE CONFUSION]
Arrange the innards by instance number, select all the XML files with an instance number of 0000000000000, and delete them. (Note: There's a checkbox at the bottom of the S3PE window that says "Sort" - you have to check that box before you can arrange by instance.)
This step is outdated. S3PE automatically deletes the XML files that need to be deleted. Don't touch the others.

Repeat steps 2 through 5 as needed, then save your file. This may also take ages to finish, so just let it run. This new package is the only thing you'll need in your downloads folder for all your CC to show up, so remove the uncombined packages. I keep my uncombined files separate in case there are things I want to get rid of later on.


You can combine combined packages, and it's ok to add more things to your combined packages at a later date.

I'd suggest instead of making one huge package of all your CC to have four or five, only because when I tried to make a single package things started to blow up. I've got Objects, CAS (hair, clothes, makeup), Patterns, and my own crap as their own packages.

I've not combined Default Replacements (never sure if I'll switch those out or something), my hacks, and AM/story progression.

Very easy, and holy shit it makes a huge difference. My game now loads as quickly as it did before I had any CC in it, and no longer lags at all.

This is the original thread on MATY.

Anach has offered up this additional information, which is very useful:

1. If you have a merged a mod and wish to update it with a newer version, you will need to re-merge the entire package, or you will usually experience game breakages.

2. The game imposes a limit of 200MB on its own merged packages (dbc), however a package can be anysize, and the only limitation is processing time (larger takes longer) and filesystem limits.

3. Try to keep your total number of mod packages under 100.

4. You can also remove ICON type files (junk files used by sims3pack) and "THUM" (thumbnails) if you wish the game to generate its own thumbnails rather than use the ones provided in the package.

More Useful Information from [personal profile] darlas_mom:

"When I tried this, I ended up getting the scary-as-hell "Service initialization failed (0x065d0274)" error and had to uninstall and reinstall.

It turned out a piece of CC I'd installed that day right before doing this was bad (because the game still didn't work until I removed it, cleared my cache files again and then rebooted), but I'm still scared to try this again...uninstalling and reinstalling takes me forever because then I have to download 500+ MB of patches all over again. :-/

Just wanted to make you and others aware of this possibility, so that if it happens to anyone else, they don't panic."

In other words, make sure you don't have any corrupted CC before attempting this.

For anyone getting the 'Materials Materializing' error:

"I have some extra info that might help people who run into the "materials materializing" error. It seems that it occurs when patterns are combined with other items. And also if CAP patterns are turned into package files. So combine patterns just with other patterns, and leave CAP patterns sims3pack. I delete CAP files as fast as i can because they have brought me only troubles."

(Thanks for reminding me about this, Jolanda.)

__________________________________________________
(Originally figured out by someone Anach on MATY.)
Page 4 of 4 << [1] [2] [3] [4] >>

Date: 2012-12-08 08:22 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Used sim3pe and i must say it works great. my load time is lighting quick. thanks for creating it.

Cc went missing

Date: 2012-12-25 04:27 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I did this a long time ago and I merged my hairs. After that some of it went missing. Can someone help and hopefully fix this problem?

say what huh?

Date: 2013-01-22 10:29 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Wait wait wait, i love the idea but huh? Haha i'm a zombie when it comes to this sort of thing, do i do this in the same place i save my downloads in? in the documents - electronic art - sims 3 - mods ooorrr what? Sorry sorry, being brain dead and not having english as a first language is troublesome in theese situations....

Date: 2013-02-06 12:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] italic.livejournal.com
i'm so lost. what do i do after this step? Select the files you want to combine and let S3PE do its thing. do i click on open? what do i do after that? you weren't clear at all. thanks!

What folder do I save the files to?

Date: 2013-05-01 06:12 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I'm pretty confused here.

So I got two popups when trying to import some files. Both of which weren't discussed in the originally post at all.

Before I even got these two pop-up windows... in order to even begin the conversion process I actually had to open the file manually, hit "copy" and then "paste" the files into the big white empty space on s3pe. I had to do this because the file wasn't showing up when I would click "open" on the program itself.

Anyway, so I don't know if copying was even the right thing to do -- should I have just moved the files into s3pe? Am I going to delete the original files after I turn them into .package files? And where do I save them after the process is complete?

Information you may need before answering my questions: I downloaded all my CC from thesims3 exchange.

Re: What folder do I save the files to?

Date: 2013-05-01 11:36 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
They are .sim3pack files but I went through and it turned them into .package files just fine if I drag or paste them in. So that doesn't seem to matter.

I took a SS of a couple things so you can see what I'm talking about. Also, where do I save these files when it's done?

http://i.imgur.com/QFcHjYO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/K0AU20l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/jFsujsw.jpg (<- I'm not sure if that means it worked. The strikeout thing is misleading.)

Date: 2013-08-20 07:53 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I noticed you talk about using CCmagic which sounds a bit new to me. Have you gotten around to making a tutorial doing this with that program? Having done this with newly converted s3p files I'm having the trouble of none of the files in the batch files load. :/ While the previous ones worked just fine. I wanted to say thank you as well! It really did help the loading of my game.

bad "Magic tag"

Date: 2014-05-24 05:44 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Recently turned some objects I downloaded as sims3packs into .package files. Previous .package files seem to combine fine, but that last batch of objects that were previously sims3packs give me an error when I try to combine them. "Expected magic tag 'DBPF' found 'DBPP'. All of the files look like normal package files in my mods folder. Anyone know how to fix the "magic tag" on them so they will combine?

Re: bad "Magic tag"

Date: 2014-05-24 06:55 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Fixed. Running s3rc on sims3packs before turning them into .package allowed me to combine the files without error. s3rc found here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17746.0.html for those with a similar issue.

Date: 2014-06-18 08:53 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Ohhhhh THANK YOU my sims runs so fastttt!!! WOOHOOOO!!!!!! THANKS for the instructionnnn!!!!
I only wanted the cas to be faster but the game itself is also faaaasttt! Higher resolutiiiiioooonnn!!!
Page 4 of 4 << [1] [2] [3] [4] >>
Tristan: "I didn't think you could come up with something like this on your own. Although 'Club Crimsyn' is something I could see you having a hand in."
Chris: "The 'Y' makes it hip."
Tristan: "Yes, if you say so."











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