#object mesh limit

[glowyjellyfish]

So I regained my cool a little when running my Object Mesh Limit solutions tonight, and decided to count the number of objects I have in the game catalog, which helped me with my Victorian downloads problems. That showed me I had over 900 objects in my Sculptures folder, so I concentrated my deletion efforts there and reduced that to 875. This enabled me to add a solid handful of files back in my build folder, but it started crashing again after that.

What I learned for my game:

-My object mesh limit is around 12,000 in-game objects, taking into account the fact that Windows and Doors all come with a diagonal mesh as well as a straight mesh. It was a little lower in my Victorian game, but that also had default replacement foods, careers, and various objects, so that may account for the discrepancy.

-For my game, it’s only about the total number of objects meshes, and it doesn’t seem to matter how full an individual category is. It’s possible it WOULD matter if I had a lot more of one category and yet was under the full limit.

The bad news is that I still have to get rid of a bunch more objects if I want to restore my last 2900~ files to my game (which I do. Very much!), and I don’t want to get rid of my new shinies or my old faithfuls. Nevertheless, I will have to force myself to ruthlessly cull as much as I can.

[sushigal007]

After three hours of troubleshooting shenanigans, I found out the 50 new LTWs tip me over the object mesh limit.

[sushigal007]

Hi sushigal, how is it going with object limit management to reduce thumbnail crashing?

Alas, so far, absolutely no progress - I recently downloaded Lamare's amazing 50 New Lifetime Wants, which put me over the limit again until I yoinked a bunch of random stuff to make space. Some people have suggested lowering the object footprint of multi-tile objects so they only use one GUID, to see if that helps, and it is something I want to try, but at that particular moment, all I wanted to do was play. XD

[sushigal007]

Game is crashing when I grab doors, time to play “is this actually a broken thing or did I just push my luck too far with the object mesh limit again”.

[sushigal007]

What is the object limit in TS2?

The alleged object limit is the limit at which you can no longer add objects to your game without it crashing. I say alleged, because nobody seems to know much about it, including whether it really exists. I’m inclined to think it does, because I’ve come across it several times now and the results are always the same.

Basically, at first glance, it’s the usual story. You add new things and the game crashes. Either it’ll crash when you open the catalogue, or just a few minutes into game play. However, doing the 50/50 on your new downloads doesn’t seem to work. You take out half, the game works. You take out another half, the game works. You put it all back, just in case it was a glitch, but then the game crashes. You take out a different, completely unrelated folder of CC that’s worked perfectly for years, the game works. You add things in, one at a time until the game crashes. You take out the last thing you added, put something new in, it crashes. You take out the second-to-last thing you added, keep the last thing in, now it works. You have hit... The Object Limit.

I don’t know exactly what the object limit is, although on this computer, it seems to be about 10,000 files. I don’t know if it varies between computer setups (although I did take out a stick of RAM and was still able to run the same amount of stuff). I don’t know if it’s been fixed in the Ultimate Collection, which I own, but haven’t installed on this machine. I don’t know if a different Windows OS would make a difference. What I do know is that:

It doesn’t matter if it it’s a multi-tile object or not. Bundling files does not get around the limit. Putting files in Bins does not get around the limit. And it’s only objects that are affected. By that, I mean files containing an OBJD resource.

Bodyshop content is fine. You can have as much bodyshop content as you want without hitting the limit. Object recolours are fine. Neighbourhood deco is fine. You’d think it wouldn’t be, but it doesn’t contain OBJD resources. You know what does? Custom jobs! That’s why it’s so difficult to find info about it, people have been saying “oh but I have 70GB and no problems and you’ve only got 5GB,” but that 70GB could be all uncompressed hair in all Pooklet recolours, including unnaturals, with swatches included, and it wouldn’t make a difference. Or people will be very confused when they take out their custom jobs because they have no clue that custom jobs are objects.

Anyway, I know I’m close to it because I did some testing when the Mod Ur Dig with 88 custom objects crashed my game. I don’t know exactly how close. I like to leave a little room for things I absolutely MUST have, like the new goggles, but I know one day I’ll hit it again. When I do, I’ll do more testing, but for now, the only thing I’ve found that fixes it, is taking something out. Which I don’t wanna do. I have no idea what stuff I’ve got on all my community lots and I don’t wanna have to go and fix them, so for now, most of the cool objects I see get downloaded and put aside ready for the day I finally beat this thing.

[sushigal007]

(obj. l. anon) I know it's just the CC objects, but... I have so much clutter and deco food for example, I feel like I could hit the limit just with that. Or plants, so many plants. And so many 3t2/4t2 conversions. I mean, just stuff like the trait mod (I assume each trait is an object) and some other mods plus custom foods will already push me way into the hundreds. + build mode stuff! 10000 is too small for my buy stuff, let alone all the extra stuff that counts. I have a hoarding problem :D

Ugh, same. Yes, alas, the traits are all individual objects. And I wound up pulling all my custom food and jobs to make room for stuff, and then I had to pull a bunch of other stuff to make way for more stuff and it’s still not enough for all the stuff I still want to install, cry cry. But I’m really hoping more discourse around this problem will lead to solutions. Preferably not solutions like “install 32GB of RAM”, but if that’s what it takes...

[sushigal007]

Hi! You mentioned the object mesh limit in your reply about how you organise your Downloads folder. I'm curious- what is the limit? And how do you know you have hit that limit? Does the game crash? Do new objects just not show up in game? Tbh, I always thought the object mesh limit was some kind of ridiculously high number like the neighborhood population limit, that exists in theory, but will never be really relevant in practical play.

Hi! I’m afraid I won’t be able to answer all your questions with any true authority because I’m just a casual simmer poking at the edges of the game, I don’t really understand what’s going on under the dashboard the way some of the smarter people in this community do, but also because the problem with the object mesh limit is that it’s such a tricky thing to diagnose, I can’t actually really be 100% certain it really exists. I’m 99% certain though, especially after hearing similar stories from other simmers.

The basic story is a familiar one - you add new stuff and the game crashes, either while clicking through the catalogue to look at your new shinies, or after a few minutes of gameplay. But then when you try to do the old 50/50, it doesn’t work. You take out half of your new downloads, it works. You swap out the other half, it works. You put it all back and take out an old, working, completely unrelated folder, and suddenly all the new stuff works. You put your old stuff back in, the crashing starts again. You do a GUID conflict scan, nothing pops up. You start taking out small amounts of files until it works, but everything you try and add after that crashes the game. Which is where I am. I reckon i have space for about 50 more items, but after that, the only way I’ll be able to add new stuff is by removing old items (although someone on MTS did say they were able to add a little more after upgrading their RAM, so that is something I want to try).

Now it’s entirely possible that all my problems are down to an old buggy file somewhere - after all, I had a set of teen shirts in my game that worked fine for years, right up until I asked Lauren Tricou to find a job. But I’ve run into this problem several times now and every time, the outcome has been exactly the same. So I’m inclined to believe the limit exists.

Anyway, during the course of my investigations, I have discovered the following: It doesn’t matter if it it’s a multi-tile object or not. Polycount does not matter. Bundling files does not get around the limit. Putting files in Bins does not get around the limit. Putting your CC in collections and hiding it from the main catalogue does not get around the limit. Extracted EAxis objects that keep the original game GUIDS do not count towards the limit. It’s not the size of the files that matters, it’s simply how many object meshes you have in total. And it’s only objects that are affected. By that, I mean files containing an OBJD resource.

Recolours are fine. Bodyshop content is fine. Wallpaper and floors are fine. Neighbourhood deco is fine - these do not contain OBJD resources. On the other hand, custom jobs do. Various mods count, but again, just the ones with OBJD resources.

It is, of course, difficult to count exactly how many files in my Downloads folder contain OBJD resources, but I estimate the limit is around 10,000 files, which seems to match up with tales of other simmers. Is that excessive? Well, yes, probably. I like pretty things, I admit. But when you consider just how many 3t2 and 4t2 conversions there are and how many custom jobs and foods and how many social mods have tokens with OBJD resources, and how doors and windows and gates all count twice because of diagonal meshes, you can see how quickly it might all add up for a serious CC junkie.

So yeah, that’s the object mesh limit. When I feel a little more comfortable going out and about, I will be visiting my local scrapstore to see if more RAM makes a difference, but until then, I try to limit myself to downloading not!objects. I’ve got a folder full of nice things on standby though and one day I will force this game to accept them.

[sushigal007]

Hi Sushi! Recently you wrote a really interesting reply to an ask about object limits. I had no idea there were object limits on Windows, I thought only Macs had these (or am I misunderstanding you?). It made me sad though, I've been preparing to get back into TS2 after a long time of not playing and I've just been downloading and downloading stuff, and if the mesh object limit really is only around 10000 objects (so low!), then I'm screwed, I won't even be able to use most of my new stuff :/

Remember, the object mesh limit is not a total file limit (I believe that is the Mac issue), it is literally just objects! And size/polycount doesn’t matter! And it’s just CC objects! And... yeah, it’s not enough, I have a bunch of stuff downloaded too that I haven’t figured out how to install yet, but as knowledge on the mesh limit is still very vague and woolly, YMMV (or rather, your setup may vary) so you may quite possibly not run into any issues at all. You won’t know until you give it a try.

But if you do hit problems, there are steps you can take, such as being wildly brutal and culling stuff that’s similar (like how many poster meshes do we really need and how many of the recolours can be extracted and slapped on an existing poster mesh?) and keeping the ones with the most recolours (I found quite a few 3t2 conversions that were duplicates because different people had converted the same mesh, so I kept the ones with subsets or more recolours) or dividing CC into separate folders if, say, you play a themed game, and swapping those folders in and out as needed, or simply resigning yourself to downloading everything else. Remember, you can still go wild with hood deco and Bodyshop and Homecrafter content! If there’s a limit for that stuff, I haven’t hit it yet!