How To Take Back Your Game!

The Fine Art of Culling

How I took back control of my game!

Having lots of downloaded objects can be fun and expands the game quality immensely, however those same files also are a huge drain on resources. When you have excessive amounts of user-made items (You know who you are, Pack-kat!), the game takes a long time to start up and enter each stage and lot. Even using the downloads are nearly impossible because the catalogs are so swamped and overloaded they are hard to go through.

You know it is time to get rid of things, but just cannot bring yourself to? Then this tutorial is for you! I personally know the heartache of trying to pick and choose.

You no longer need to fear this box! Embrace it as a friend for it will help liberate you, the player, and put you back in control of the game!

And here we go!

* check bottom of page for easier method if you have all expansions/packs

Get comfy with a favorite beverage (alcohol not recommended, though, because you will need to keep alert).

This method is for objects, walls, floors, makeup and such. Hair, clothing and accessories do not often have an obvious mesh item to delete, so if you do these you will need to make sure to put the correct meshes back in the game or all you are doing in making more orphan files of textures without meshes.

1. First, make a backup of the object downloads folder you are going to work with. Not that you will have to go get it, but having it means you can start over if you feel you messed up. Also, it's a great sense of security knowing as you delete from game files that you still have them somewhere and forget about it unless something happens and you need to start over. I accept no responsibility for any problems that come up, so make sure you have that back up to start over.

2. Next, do the obvious and delete unwanted things from in game. Now, do another backup of downloads folder, because you need that folder later, so call this one the "sorting" folder.

3. Now, get the game fired up again and go through deleting what you want to save. I know this sounds strange, but trust me, it works out. Make sure to delete textures as well as mesh. What happens is that it's hard to decide what to get rid of, so this makes you think of what you want the most.

Several designers, such as Dincer and Sunair, package the objects with all their textures into one file. Deleting the file will remove all of their textures; but other usermade recolors will be separate as usual..

Also, many objects have 2 parts, such as bed frame and bedding. Many people do a recolor of each part but it is in one package, so if you delete one of the textures, the other part that is with it will also be deleted. Then the option for that part is gone and not in the catalog again, or showing as blue, until you restart the game.

And now "Open For Business" adds to the confusion: when you click on a Maxis item and view it from the catalog, the recolor deletion option is not available.

You can get the delete option by buying the object then using the design tool on it.

Some objects, mainly a few older ones, are not able to use the design tool, but I just found a trick for them. Instead of using the main object from the catalog, start with a recolor and then the design tool works. I do not know the mechanics of this and I am quite sure I do not want to know! LOL I am just glad I found this trick. It is good both for the initial deleting and for the second "delete what you want to save" phase.

4. Now, exit the game and open up two windows: an in-game folder and the corresponding "sorting" backed-up folder. I have all objects thrown together in one folder so this is very simple for myself.

If you have them sorted into subfolders, then you need to do this for each folder!

5. Select all of the files in the "sorting" and move them, either by cut and paste or just dragging, into the in-game folder.

When asked if to replace the existing files, select "No" and that is vital to how this works. I just hold down the "N" key on keyboard until it gets done.

6. Now in the "sorting" folder make sure all the files are highlighted and undo the move.

The files that were not in the in-game folder are the ones that had been deleted in the "delete what you want to save" step and they move back over, listed below the unmoved files.

7. As soon as they are all moved back, select "delete" and the files that were not moved are deleted, leaving the files you want.

When done, your sorting folders are the ones you want back in the game. Delete the folders from the game, those are files you decided not to keep.

Also in those folders are "orphan" files (meshes without textures and textures without meshes) so you end up also doing a nice little housekeeping chore!

A special note about diagonals: many curtains, blinds, windows, and doors contain 2 mesh files, the extra one being for when on a diagonal wall. I cannot think of any quick and simple way to make sure to delete the diagonal. The only thing I can think to do is to search your original downloads for "diag" and save all of those files. Go over them one by one and compare to files you end up with at the end to see if you have kept the regular one. Or just stash them somewhere and as you come across objects not having diagonals put them in the game. or if there are not a lot, just put all of them back in the game.

Some hacked items also have more than one file. I keep hacks and hacked files in a different folder than other downloads. If yours are just in with the downloads, you will need to pick out the extra files (or find the original compressed file you downloaded for them and extract them again).

** Updated method **

With all EP's and Packs before Pets (with patched Pets EP, the lots now save no custom content at all), now when a lot is saved, only the used downloads are packaged with it instead of every darn file in the game. So a method is to make an empty lot, go in and place things I want to keep, save the lot, then go to neighborhood and package it. All recolors get packaged up, too, so those will need regular sorting and deleting, but this makes the going much easier than waiting and waiting for each item to be deleted. I can just package up lots with stuff I want to keep, delete everything (or as I did, just move to a "backup" folder outside of the game for a week or so or however long it takes you to be assured you won't need any of it anymore), and then install those lots. Be sure for curtains, windows, doors, and such that diagonals are also grabbed! (I made diagonal walls and put everything on them that would go when I was doing those categories.)

1. place small empty lot in neighborhood

2. fill it with things you want to keep, be sure to use the infinity selection, that 8 laying on its side, in catalog to be sure you'll see all the items (some items are not marked for section for various reasons or mistakes) and grab diagonals

3. save the lot

4. go to neighborhood and package up that lot (I name the lot for what category is on it)

5. when you've gone through all residential and community selections, and both buy and build, and have all those wanted items packaged up, move or delete (I recommend just moving until you are sure the lots install correctly) your object downloads out of the game

6. install the packaged lots, I recommend using Clean Installer to avoid all those long, nonsensical names.

Important! some objects have a controller package file or other parts, extra files that will be needed. I try to always put things like that into "Special instruction" or "hacked" folders and handle those separate from regular downloads just to make sure to get all needed files.

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