#game maintenance

[pudding-parade]

tl;dr: I have a strong urge to completely overhaul my entire Sims 3 set-up, and it's going to take forever and be a gigantic pain in the ass.

The non-tl;dr version is behind the cut. Because I just feel like whining at the void.

I want to get rid of Origin because...Well, Origin. The last time it did a "critical update" it fucked up my game install and I had to tinker to fix it to get it to, you know, load. And then not crash after running for five minutes. (My game very rarely crashes, normally.) It was a pain in the ass that I do not wish to repeat. And I certainly don't want this EA App bullshit, either, especially because TS3 is the only EA game I play or want to play. I'm certainly not going to give EA more money and buy the game again on Steam, so a bit ago I arrr'ed the Games4theWorld complete Sims 3 file. But, I've been procrastinating like mad on switching over to it because I'm sure there'll be headaches involved in doing so -- I remember having to go into the registry when I reinstalled everything on my old computer after de-sims3pack'ing my game -- and...and...I just want to plaaaaaaay the gaaaaaame. But I think I'm almost ready to take the plunge. Almost.

When I do, I'll have all the SPs, which I haven't had before. I only have the High End Loft pack and that only because it came as part of the combo pack that I got my base game in. And I'm thinking I'll also download all of the non-hair (because I hate EA hair) Store content in .package files, too, and just reinstall everything that way. Because the way that I DIY'ed what I have when I de-sims3pack'ed my game, none of the Store worlds are actually playable. They'll load, but you can't move any sims into them. I have all the objects from the worlds, and they work fine, which is what I care about most, but I would like to use the Store worlds to travel to for vacations, and I can't do that with my setup right now.

So if I do all that, then I'd have all EPs, all SPs, and all the Store content that I'd want. And you know what, I think that might be just about enough for me for a save that doesn't have a special scenario (like the "tribal" thing) or aesthetic, like the whole rustic thing. If I'm just playing a modern, normal game, I think EA-only might be enough...except for a few things.

Like, I just can't with EA hairs and eyes and skins and makeup. But I'm good there. I have stuff I like and don't feel a need for different/more. (Except for hairs, of course, but that's a whole other project that I'm almost done with.)

And then there are patterns. I neeeeeeed patterns because the EA ones mostly suck and I use patterns a lot. So I have ton of them, but a lot of them that I have I just don't like in-game and have never used. Some don't tile properly. Some are a pain in the ass and/or impossible to recolor when such a thing is important (like on woods). Or the scale is wrong for things that I'd want to use them on. But also, of course, some of them I really like and definitely want to keep. They're all in merged files, though, which means I need to look at the individual files. Which I do have, thankfully. I wasn't stupid enough to delete them after I knew the merged files worked. It's just...there's a lot of them. Like, a lot a lot. I'm a pattern hoarder along with being a world hoarder. Culling will take time.

And then I need to install the bazillion patterns that I've downloaded recently from Certain People who upload multiple sets every day. You know who you are, if you're reading this, and I'm not complaining. I am, however, work avoidant. LOL

And then there's the clothing, shoes, and accessories. I have a lot of clothing that just looks like crap in-game for various reasons. Also, a lot of high-poly, high-res stuff that's meant more for photoshoots and that just looks out-of-place in normal gameplay. I don't know why I'm holding on to it. It just all needs to go. I also have a lot of shoes and accessories that I never use. Lots of jewelry that clips a lot or is just too large, lots of shoes that do weird, painful-looking things to a sim's feet. Or that make them taller, which just messes up animations, making them no good for gameplay. That all needs to go, too. Which, again, means combing though the individual files, and there are a lot of them. I'm tempted to completely start over from scratch with clothing/shoes/accessories, re-downloading stuff I know I like and re-preg-morphing the clothing, etc.. It might just be easier that way, in the end. Then I can separate things into stuff I use for rustic/primitive saves and stuff I use for modern saves because right now everything's mashed together (because I am the dumb), and it takes a long time for CAS to load, even with the smooth patch.

I'm also tempted to go minimalist with objects, at least for most saves, just sticking with EA stuff and very select custom stuff. Of course, this wouldn't apply to more rustic saves, where I need a lot more custom stuff to suit the aesthetic. So, I need to go through all my files and separate out the rustic/primitive stuff from the other, more generic, stuff. Because right now, as with the clothing, everything's just mashed together in merged files, and it's a complete mess.

So...*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* I guess the best course of action would be to cull/organize/redownload/remerge the CC and then do the switch-over to the arrr'ed install. It'll only take, what? Five years? Yeah, that oughta do it. Maybe by then I'll really be ready to do the install switch-over. LOL

[ameyasims]

Game Maintenance Tut: Using Bulk Rename Utility

HEYY. The #1 biggest difference in speeding up my game has been regularly going through my cc with Bulk Rename Utility. Unfortunately it’s only for windows, but it is a must-have. It literally took my game from 10 minute load time to just about a minute or less the first time I used it! I had been skeptical but now I do it every week or two, or as soon as I finish  a big cc shop.  Why is this useful? Because while the game can read underscores and hyphens just fine, it just can’t process packages with ANY OTHER characters in its name as well, and it takes significantly longer to deal with each and every package during start up as it tries to figure it out.  My Computer Science PhD + programmer bf can’t even figure out how they even managed to make it like that, but hey. That’s EA for you!  😅 So, here’s some instructions on how to use the Bulk Rename Utility to change the name of your cc (leave script mods alone!) 

PS: Creators, ONLY USE LETTERS, NUMBERS, AND UNDERSCORES/HYPHENS IN YOUR FILE NAMES!! <3 (also please put your name and the name of the thing in the title for later sorting. Version3.package is a pita for people trying to organize their mods folder!) Anyway, onto the instructions! 0. After you download the FREE Bulk Rename Utility program, install it and open it up and here is what/where to do:

1. Navigate to your cc folders here. If you use a lot of folders to organize things like I do it can be tedious because you have to go through each  separately, but it’s still pretty quick. DO NOT CHANGE THE NAME OF YOUR SCRIPT MODS!!!!!! And iirc that you should NOT change the names of mods that *have* a corresponding script file either. I don’t even go into my mods folder and ONLY go into my cc folders with this program. 

2. This is where you tell the program what characters you want to delete from the names. I have mine set to ()[]{}#&* AND a space, as those were all the characters i was seeing in my cc that weren’t underscores or dashes. 

Of course if you just want to get rid of everything that isn’t a number or letter you could also just click Sym. But I’d rather keep as many files as possible the same to lessen the chance of me collecting multiple copies of the same file. Plus, neatness!  3. Here is where you see all the cc in that folder. I just click one and then CTRL A to select all, and it turns the filenames that will change green so they’re easy to see. You can keep them all highlighted as you then:

4. Hit rename, and it will just change the ones you can already see as to-be-changed (in green.) That’s it! Close out and boot up your game and it should genuinely surprise you at how much of a difference it has made if you’ve had a laggy startup! ;) 

[quenie-azryneth]

What in the world?

Pfft..... AHAHAHAHAH, Oh dear😂

Thanks for the head start, Cybird.

I guess I'll hafta wait for one hour and thirty minutes.

[little-ditto]

So cute! Can you just picture how this came into creation if this really was a kaiba corp creation? I’m totally picturing Seto having people submit ideas for the maintenance symbol, and then after all these professional designs Mokuba submits this hand-drawn image. Seto stares at it for like a minute and then declares this is the one they are going with.

[keevalihzeh]

when you wanna go play video games late at night because you can’t sleep, but FFXIV is down for maintenance for the third time in 48 hours

[quenie-azryneth]

Extended

I wanna play but, I'm a responsible person so I'll sleep instead. Why 11:00 pm.?

PHT GMT/UTC + 8h

[8-beatstory]

Maintenance

Hello all, just a heads up the game is currently on maintenance until December 8th around 4am Japan time (so five hours from when I'm posting this).

[blastkat]

Pokemon Shuffle Mobile will be down for scheduled server maintenance on 5/10/16 from 6:00-6:15am UTC or 1:00-1:15am EST. I see it's a whole 15 minutes. I'm sure there's a very good reason to tell us about 15 minutes most players won't see and could easily be announced at the time on the launcher. Thanks for the heads up.