:lovestruc You must know that I am totally in love with this idea!

I was reading about it last night and thought what an ingenious idea. Since creating Gwrych, I've been experimenting with different ways to share lots, but unfortunately a themed lot set is CC heavy and I'm not a technical "modder". The most I can do is manipulate files and organize things so that people don't have to work to hard to get what they want. So this is absolute brilliance!

Once I complete Gwrych I shall be a willing guinea pig as I play with an idea for a complete Base "Gamish" (minimal EPs and very little CC) neighborhood. Oh the potential of this shared creation!

Thank you immensely!

Wow. This is really a super useful tool. Thank you for continuing to help us play and share our simming.

My jaw dropped. Literally. I always love all your little helper programs, thank you so much!

I seriously just heard angelic music in my head as soon as I saw the title of this upload O.o Heck, I can barely run Notepad simultaneously with TS2 because of how big it is. Gonna wait for feedback, to see if anyone gets corruption (not enough room on my disk to back my game up), but if it's safe I'm grabbing this.

Thank you for doing this: I've been using the "Compressorizer" to shrink my lots for a very long time. This will definitely replace that program for lot shrinking.
By the way, using the compressorizor does not corrupt lots, so I'm pretty sure that this program should not as well.

This program is unlikely to corrupt your lots or neighborhood. Still, I really don't recommend using the program without a backup. At the very least, backup the lots that you actually intend to compress. You could backup to a USB stick, if you don't have enough room on your hard drive.

The Compressorizer and the LotCompressor do completely different things and you can't generalize from one to the other. In fact, you can probably use both to get the maximum compression. When I used the Compressorizer on Brainania, it was reduced by another 2 M.

The LotCompressor does something very simple: it removes a bunch of images which are generated by the game each time that the lot is saved. Because of this, it's a relatively safe procedure.

If I remember correctly, the Compressorizer runs a routine to compress the text strings within a package. I can certainly look into adding this functionality to the LotCompressor.

I'm sure that there are other optimizations which can be performed. For example, I've noticed that unoccupied lots still contain information about the relationships between sims in the neighborhood where the lot was created. This is pretty useless information if the lot is unoccupied, so it may be possible to safely remove that information as well.

COOLNESS! Just tried it, after backing up my hood and lots again, gonna see if it got borked. I hope not cuz this thing just saved me a couple of gigs!

Best of ideas! That's going to save a few megs out of my full hard drive!

Thanks, Mootilda, this is great! Will help a bunch of people, but since I don't like tons of CC, I don't build houses with loads of CC, so I probably won't need this. But for others, this is very helpful!

The LotCompressor has nothing to do with CC. Brainania has no CC at all and yet the lots were compressed by more than 50%.

Thank you for this! Everything that saves game space is a huge WIN in my book. You're the best, you know that, right?

Can this help lots run faster/smoother?

Awesome. I'm gonna make backups this weekend and compress the hell out of everything. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

No, probably not. The hard drive savings are temporary. As soon as you play and save a lot, the images are added back into the lot package. Since the game does this automatically every time that you save a lot, compressed lots will not speed up or slow down your game.

This means that compression of residential lots will be lost as soon as you play the lot. Compression of lots within the lot bin and compression of community lots tend to be permanent, but that's just because those lots are never regenerated.

Because lot compression is lost as soon as the lot is saved, there isn't much use in compressing residential lots that you are currently playing. However, I definitely recommend that residential lots be compressed just before you share them.

So then, am I correct in assuming that The LotCompresor is only of value to those who share their lots?

I created this utility to reduce the size of lots and neighborhoods when they are shared.

However, if you would like to save hard drive space, then it makes sense to compress your lot catalog and all of your community lots. The LotCompressor can also be used to reduce the size of any permanent backups that you make.

Thank you, Mootilda. This will be an enormous aid for my game.

Thanks, I do this here coz websense has blocked MTS-branded address.

As for file compression,
I wanna add my 2 cent experiences.

1. Removal of useless graphical image files from the lot package files is very safe coz it won't affect data required for the game to run and play. Indeed, i've been doing so in the shared lots I've released since I started to do so. Before such act, I've tested to confirm.

2. Those useless graphical files in lot package are generally not re-compressible by any known compression method except through compression conversion.

3. As much as I remember and know about Compressorizer is it's nothing more like zip-compressibility without the ability to deal with redundant files and etc. So for maximum file-size reduction in file-sharing, if one means to use compression method to reduce data and file redundancy, one'd better not to use it. Indeed, one had better have the files in lot packages uncompressed, namely no in-game default compression on all files. Such in-game default compression was probably chosen only for running efficiency at the time and will enervate the compressibility of any stronger compression methods. One may use rar or 7z or uha for better compression than zip by then.

4. After all, files updated will be recompressed by the in-game default compression.

Yes, this makes sense to me. When I used the compressorizer on Brainania, it saved a few meg, but when I zipped the results, there was basically no difference in the size of the zip file. That really seems to indicate that the compressorizer uses the zip compression algorithm.

On the other hand, my LotCompressor algorithm made a huge difference in the resulting zip file.

Mootilda, is the lot bin display picture one of the pictures that will be deleted and the game regenerates later?

No. I retain that picture for the obvious reason.

However, if you intend to upload your lot to the Exchange, you will not want to use the LotCompressor. The pictures of the floorplans which appear on the Exchange are deleted by the LC.

I see that this work with community lots which is fantastic. I wondered what it did with business lots. Since I guess those do save, will this work or would I have to keep compressing the lot? Or not bother?

If a lot is saved when you leave it, then the game will add the pictures back into the lot.

I have been looking all over for this type of Mod...Thank you so much.