Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 12:15 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default before I even try Ultimate Collection
I recently had an itch to play TS2 after many years. Now I'm on a Win7x64 rig. I have lots of CC copied over into folders on my pc, not the game folders. I haven't installed or changed Anything to UC beyond fixing the resolution to 1920x1080.

Now before I actually jump in and start tossing stuff into Downloads I would like to know What I'm putting in there. That's the first problem. I have SimPE and Clean Installer but Clean Installer only sometimes gives a preview window. Individually clicking through files like: 0acad865fc7d94248c83b92e441f407a.package seems cumbersome. I haven't figured out SimPE to just preview some folders with old CC saved on my desktop. Maybe there's a quicker/better program to just take a look/image preview of all these cryptic files?

Secondly, I've read posts regarding serious bugs and Critical fixes (mostly addressed by MATY). I'm not sure which will actually affect me with this new UC. One of the worst bugs that I recall had to do with fixing lots so you don't have a billion invisible guests on lots which clog the game. So I'm wondering Which only truly essential hacks/mods must I use for this Ultimate Collection to avoid game-breaking crashes and clogging?

I really need some simpler way to preview through all my CC so I can select which to keep and a list of only the most essential and critical game fixes to put in. I'm trying to be preventative before this Ultimate Collection becomes cancerous.

Any/all helpful input very, very much appreciated!

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Advertisement
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 12:34 AM
The UC is simply all EP's and SP's and it comes patched. So any mods that are for full game/AL work on the UC. of course many older mods will too, but always grab the AL version if there is one.

Not bugs per say, corruption and this remains the same as having the disk version.
Don't delete sims, move them between hoods, install occupied lots, move occupied houses into the bin (this includes graves/urns)

Most needed mods are
No unlink on delete
No corrupt death
Creature fixes (if you play vampires)
No sim loaded with Smarter EP check

After that there are mods to fix things that annoy you, but since this isn't a given and what annoys one person is enjoyed by another I won't recommend any. best to play and make a note of what irks you.

I don't use the UC but I believe the issue with SimPE and Clean Installer can be fixed.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#3 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:05 AM
Sorting random CC is still a problem. There isn't a programme that does it 100% effectively.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#4 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:06 AM
Thx joandsarah77! I saw those over at MATY.

What about these:
BV Anti-Redundancy
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=9607.0
Lot Debugger
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...topic,72.0.html
OFB & Pets
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,5957.0.html
**Beyond those I wonder if there are any really serious fixes I should use/possibly addressed by others not Pescado/FFS/MATY?

@Maxon: Have any CC browsers you use/recommend? I vaguely recall using File Maid ages ago and saw RoboMaid3000 & others but I'm not sure how they would do. I tried Wardrobe Wrangler -and it's good for just wardrobe -the other objects/stuff it doesn't really address. Delphy's Download Organizer isn't what I'm looking for either.

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#5 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:10 AM
Lot Debugger is useful for fixing random problems on the fly (you need to place one on lot). It's not essential though sometimes very, very useful. You can add it at a later date anyway and it still works just fine. Doesn't actually prevent anything. It's a tool to do stuff.

Anti-redundancy (and other no-regen hacks) is only really going to come into play if you create empty neighbourhoods (you might want to do that later but it's not essential to start with).

Job fixes is an important hack but it's not a game-breaking issue. The ones Jo outlines are major issues for neighbourhoods and game-break prevention. NoSimLoaded is probably the one you really should get since it prevents the Hug Bug which will affect the whole game (though it's not game-breaking in itself - it will drive you insane though). Creature fixes is to prevent game-breaker damage and is a necessity too. The others prevent tanking a neighbourhood (also fixed by deleting the neighbourhood but that's not necessarily what you want).

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#6 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:19 AM
Thx Maxon & Jo! I think I have a good list of initial fixes to deploy with. I am flirting with the idea of creating an empty neighborhood but it looks like some serious work to edit in SimPE as there is no hand tool, just some 4-direction arrow thing... I can already smell the smoke so I think I'll just change the existing hoods for now.

I'm not looking forward to scouring through all these folders of numerous installations since 2004ish that I have. Mostly I just burnt discs of the MyDocs/EA Games folders over the years. e.g. 0acad865fc7d94248c83b92e441f407a.package - they really made CC user-friendly..

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#7 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:21 AM Last edited by maxon : 15th Sep 2017 at 1:33 AM.
Creating empty neighbourhoods is a lot easier than that though does involve a certain amount of fiddling about. Doesn't usually involve SimPE either.

Actually, someone could just give you one. As long as you have the anti-redundancy/anti-respawn hacks in game when you load, you should be fine I think. Or maybe not - that would be an experiment to try I think. You might need empty templates too.

Edit - this one is empty of sims I think: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=575543
and very nice it is too

You would need the norespawn hacks to prevent the game from filling up the neighboruhood with NPCs and townies when you load it though you might actually like that - there are no resident sims. Have a look at the list of neighbourhoods available here - some have residents, some don't, some have only the terrain (and decor): http://www.modthesims.info/browse.p...&gs=1&f=38&gs=1

There are a pile of neighbourhood available all over the place btw. There's a fairly comprehensive list on the wiki.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#8 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:42 AM
My Sims 2 problems in the past typically were:
-CC without the proper specific add-ons
-townies visiting, physically leaving, & leaving behind their residual presence i.e. perma-townies on lot
-stuck objects that needed deleted
-clear floor tiles that wouldn't delete

I am guilty of Don't delete sims, move them between hoods, install occupied lots, move occupied houses into the bin (this includes graves/urns) previously.

Which hack polled the neighborhood, came back with a roster of x-number of invisible perma-townies, and allowed you to remove them? That one was totally indispensable.

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#9 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:52 AM
Deleting sims is bad - no exception.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#10 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 2:10 AM
Thanks for all the info. maxon & jo! It seems I have "a long boring way" to go before I can play with whatever CC I saved previously. Per the simswiki: If you just cannot stand to delete everything, or most of everything, then you're facing the long, hard, boring road of sorting through all your crap. Indeed I am. They go on to recommend Delphy's which doesn't seem as quick to sift through as Clean Installer (which itself doesn't recognize a lot of CC). Alas there is no easy button for me to locate my old CC goodies in a timely fashion beyond S2PCI.

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#11 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 2:35 AM
I find Clean Installer good for spotting stuff I can recognise easily from the texture. You can use it to rename files too. Stuff like walls and floors are fairly easy with that - and you can sort the stuff by type. Clothes and other skins are generally easy to spot too. Objects can confound you. Clean Installer is also good for spotting duplicates (pink) - sort by the MD5 number and it will group the duplicate files together - CI will delete too. Can take a while to load though if you have a lot (you can always do batches).

Once I've run the game and gone through the catalogues, I find SimCat helpful because it shows you the thumbnail. That also allows you to move or delete stuff (into folders for example) and will search (and move or delete) for recolours. Proviso - like Delphy's Download Organiser, it generally tends to only find recolours in the same folder you're looking into.

You can also do a certain amount of deleting in game - I can tell you the preferred procedure if you like.

BTW, the long names of numbers and letters come from installing CC via the in-game installer. The damn thing renames the files. It's one of the reasons people use Clean Installer. There's a list somewhere of all the codes and their original file names (this is not a good way to ID a lot of stuff - far too laborious - but if you get really stuck on a single thing, it's helpful).

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#12 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 3:00 AM
I would be very interested in the long names code list if you know where it's at. I know it's laborious but I don't think I can avoid it as I didn't save folders previously of my CC downloads -only the EA Games folders. I think I'll try SimCat as well.

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#13 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 3:03 AM
If you don't want the regular townies it's far better to start with clean and empty templates and make your own as you want them. If you go this route you will want all the mods that stop them spawning.

With your downloads, I really recommend starting from scratch with things such as hair, clothes, makeup etc. If you haven't played for years you might not be aware of how much CC has improved. If you put them side by side in your game you will see glaringly how horrible some of the older stuff now looks, this is partly from people becoming better at cc making and partly from much better graphic cards. There is so much new better stuff, there is no need to hang onto the old.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#14 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 3:23 AM
Some of the build stuff, outfits, and hair/genetics type stuff I really liked from my last play through which was back in 2007. I want to try to salvage them as I downloaded quite a bit from sites that died years ago. What would you even call those long cumbersome coded game files? I think theyre called something like CDC? names or somesuch. (ex. 0acad865fc7d94248c83b92e441f407a.package)

Edit: Oh my... this may be what I'm looking for (if I can make heads or tails of it): http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=InternalFormats

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#15 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 4:09 AM
If you know what they are you can rename them. Download folders are best organized into sub folders so you know where things are.

I've never used that, no clue sorry. Most things these days come in rar or zip files and will be named although if they come with brackets or other special characters you may want to remove those-they slow down loading. You can use a batch name program to remove those.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#16 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 4:49 AM
Ok... so I found out that these EA proprietary files with seemingly (but not) random alphanumeric "gobbledigook" such as 0acad865fc7d94248c83b92e441f407a.package are compressed using DataBase Packed File: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Packages

So how do you preview or look at the content? Well watto's game extractor http://www.watto.org/game_extractor.html will definitely open up archives like the Sims 2 .package files. First you have to have the Java runtime environment for their program to work. ** Note: the Basic (free) version has many functions disabled such as preview and saving extracted files options. So... I went through the trouble of downloading and installing Java RTE and their program just to find out I have to pay to get at the CC I have in my old CC .package files.

EAMaxis should provide tools to get at the CC that they compressed using their DBPF format... but I guess that will never happen as it's been years since anything Sims 2 related. Kinda frustrating.

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#17 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 4:58 AM
One way to keep old cc that you really like but has no name is to upload it in a lot or on a sim. So say you really like a particular skin, put it on a sim in bodyshop and package it. While you may not know it's name or creator you can then manually change the string of gobdegook to something like 'Skin1'.

I still don't think most 2007 bodyshop CC is worth saving but if you really want to be rid of the gobeldegook and keep these old files it might be worth it. Clean Installer and SimPE can often give you an idea of what something is.

I only ever use Clean Installer and SimPE since most other program refuse to run on my computer for what ever reason. First I've heard of that one you linked to above. Plenty of people like Wardrobe Wrangler or Delphy's Download Organizer.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#18 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 5:20 AM Last edited by swillfly : 15th Sep 2017 at 5:34 AM.
Thx jo! Yeah, I'm bashing my head against the wall trying to salvage these files. I like your approach of within the game saving whatever I want to a special lot/sim. Erm upload it.. to where? I don't believe I ever uploaded anything from any of my games online. The only problem I can see with that is that I really want to delete a lot of the cruddy old stuff and save just a few; once the content is in my Downloads folder and has been used wouldn't it befugger my game once I deleted said cruddy objects from Downloads?

Peter Jones's Sims3PE is really sweet BUT it won't handle Sims 2 DBPF .package files because the header is set to Sims2 for all CC. Regular SimPE I'm still trying to figure out/not as intuitive.

Edit: I think I'll probably sift through the old stuff as best I can with CIean Installer and SimPE. Likely I'll toss the majority and start from scratch and Only use Clean Installer to install anything once the path is correct. I should enjoy making my kingdom of bums in Slobobia instead of fussing with files. I guess it's the principle of having CC data which I thought I'd saved appropriately only to have EAMaxis smack me that really irks.

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#19 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 7:30 AM
You don't need to even upload it, just package and save to your desktop and rename the files. If you want to upload them, Box or sim file share are good places. That way you could make an archive of things worth saving so you have them stored someplace other than your computer for safe keeping. Once you have package everything you want to keep and have renamed them you are then free to ditch that download folder entirely with it's gobdegook and you then have all the cc you saved renamed and ready to place in your new down folder.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#20 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 1:20 PM Last edited by maxon : 15th Sep 2017 at 1:41 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by swillfly
Edit: Oh my... this may be what I'm looking for (if I can make heads or tails of it): http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=InternalFormats

No - that's the resources in a package file. Not what you're looking for.

I tried searching for the list but can't find it. Do you want to post some of these files and I can see if I can work out what they are? It's actually not that hard to do, just laborious if there's a lot.

Also, one thing you can try is simply searching with Google with one of the file names. That often turns up a reference to the object/skin/item. I will warn you though, the list is very far from complete.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#21 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 4:51 PM
maxon: It's probably more hassle than it's worth. Jo & you have been very helpful already. I understand why EAMaxis package the CC for space but they really didn't take into consideration that the CC renaming is Not user-friendly. Ah well. I'm sifting through stuff with Clean Installer (SimPE if I can figure it out) and will likely just start again from scratch using only CI to install so I can keep some sensible filenames. There seems to be some debate about using organizing folders and performance issues so I'm not sure I want to use folders/subfolders within Downloads. Cheers and happy simming!

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Mad Poster
#22 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 5:12 PM
I'm sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but why would you try to identify EAMaxis content anyway? I thought it was your downloaded CC that needed sorting.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Top Secret Researcher
#23 Old 15th Sep 2017 at 5:28 PM
Quote: Originally posted by swillfly
My Sims 2 problems in the past typically were:
-stuck objects that needed deleted
-clear floor tiles that wouldn't delete


There is Stuck Object Remover an Object Mod available on MATY that takes care of stuck objects and floor tiles. I like it a lot and it works great.

for info on changing the Mac Open File Limit check out my post here http://www.insimenator.org/index.ph...html#msg1628939
Curiosity killed the cat,
but satisfaction brought it back.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#24 Old 16th Sep 2017 at 12:06 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Rosebine
I'm sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but why would you try to identify EAMaxis content anyway? I thought it was your downloaded CC that needed sorting.


Not a dumb question. It is my downloaded CC that I previously installed into the Downloads folder on an old computer/old installation which were automatically renamed by EAMaxis compression into unhelpful/non-descriptive files such as 1b03edeb04d254f11241aee5398076a0_0001.package. I didn't know to use Clean Installer for *.sims2pack and *.package file installation years ago. Clean Installer will keep the descriptive filenames of CC -unlike the built-in Sims 2 installer that renames files for DBPF compression. If I could identify How and What Kind Of compression used then I was hopeful of using some external windows program (like the excellent Sims 3 Package Explorer) to sort through all my old CC before I put it back into my newly installed Downloads folder to prevent corruption. The best/most efficient program I found was watto's listed above but they charge $10. I can use Clean Installer and SimPE to kinda, sorta figure out what is what with all these old CC files prior to putting them in my new game Downloads folder.

Edit: That's it lordtyger9! Thx!

Kidney stones are never round pebbles... they are more like jagged stalactites.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#25 Old 16th Sep 2017 at 1:36 AM
Even Clean Installer will change some file names like walls and floors so be careful.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Page 1 of 2
Back to top