Don't know where to ask this, sorry if it's out of place.

I have a lot of cc...and I was considering getting the next two x-pacs for the sims3 as they came out...generations & unleashed, my question is, is all my custom content going to break?

I don't feel like finding new versions of everything I have...

I've got like 12 GB worth of goods.

We have no idea what custom content may break with the new patches/expansion packs coming out. You will certainly need to get new versions of any hacks, core mods, etc. that you have, as the base game version will be updated. But we can't tell till the game is out if they'll break anything else. Sometimes it's perfectly fine, and sometimes they change something fairly small that's a relatively easy fix (like window masks were changed to add half walls so custom windows needed fixing) and sometimes they change something larger... Or they change something absolutely tiny (like the changes that caused the blue lots bug) that mean certain custom content completely and permanently break your saves.

Oi, I guess I'll just be careful before installing the new expansions then... I've kept all the original files as well as my merged files, I just don't know the names of half of them to look them up...and I've got no idea how to fix them myself @_@

So far...is it mostly furniture and objects that break? Or clothing as well?

The majority of what I have is clothing & hair. Like, 8 gb or so of my 12 gb is nothing but clothing & hair. I don't mind trying to find new objects to fix them, but I do worry about finding new clothes x_x

Vel, I keep all original and merged files (Sims3packs and .package) on my external hard drive..or in a folder on the desktop. What I do (and I'm pretty sure most of us do) when we get a new EP is:

1. move the Mods folder out of the Electronic Arts/The Sims 3.
2. open the launcher and select Do Not Run Custom Content.
3. Install the new EP
4. Start up the game and play with it a bit - Start a new game to play in without CC and see how well it runs. Save that new game as "NO CC".
5. Exit the game, start the launcher and enable CC (for your sims3packs). Play the game (hopefully not in any of your saved games - us the NO CC saved game) and take a look at all the CC to find out what shows up and what doesn't
6. Exit the game, move your Mods folder back in
7. Start up your game and see if any/all of your saved games are showing up with all the other CC you have in your Mods folder.

What I do is move in my Mods folder with only 1 or 2 merged files... fire up the game and see if they show up. If they do then I exit and incrementally move in more CC in the Mods folder. It's time consuming but it's the only way I know to make sure everything is showing up. If they don't show up, I exit out, take those files out and put in the next batch. Rinse and repeat. For CC not showing up, most creators usually update them - either in Sims3packs or .package format. Just keep an eye out for the updates. Once you get the updates, just replace the old ones with the new ones and you should be good as gold.

There's my tips for installing CC after an EP install. If I've missed a step or two I'm sure someone will point it out and correct me Happy simming!!

Yeah, I'll do that...thing is I've got a few hundred zip files, and over 10,000 Package files, worth of content. Heck, I doubt even all of it's -actually- showing up in my game as is...

I merge it all down into 150 files.

I guess this is what I get for playing a game before all of it's x-pacs are released. With the sims 1 I just waited till the sims 2 came out, then got all of the x-pacs for it in one go.

It's just as much an issue for patches as expacks... in fact, it's not generally the expacks per se that break content, it's the patches that come out at the same time. With TS3, the patches often introduce a lot of the features of the expack (basic gameplay and build mode stuff, for instance) for free, without requiring the expack to get the updates. Which means they also can break CC. So if you even want to keep your game patched to the current version, you do have to manage your CC

However, how likely you are to have issues depends a lot on what kind of CC you have. If it's all hair and clothing, for instance, there's less likely to be an issue. If it's script mods, you HAVE to update it. Other stuff falls in between Custom windows, for instance, all broke when Nightlife came out :/ They changed something about how wall masks are handled.

You might want to take a look at the Custom Launcher that I've written. The version that is available here on MTS should be able to handle that many packages and it will take the tedium out of doing the merge.

If you are feeling adventurous, I do have a beta version of the V2 Custom Launcher available on my forums that has far more flexibility. If you are interested, look at http://sims3.the-prof.net/forums/vi....php?f=12&t=621 to see the current released beta version.

How do I use your custom launcher? I've got a lot of programs for the sims 3, including S3pe, the workshop, and a ton of other stuff... But i've never touched trying to get custom launchers to work .

The V2 Custom Launcher is just a program that lets you manage your packages. It is fairly self-evident in terms of operations. There is no special configurations that you need to worry about. Just download it, un-zip it, and run it.

There is a good tutorial here: http://sims3.the-prof.net/forums/vi....php?f=12&t=267

Sigh, I didnt back up my files before playing with your launcher...Now they're...gone? Where did my files go

P.S. Is there a manual for this thing?

http://sims3.the-prof.net/forums/vi....php?f=12&t=267

The files were moved into the <Documents>\Electronic Arts\Custom Launcher\Content folder. The V2 Custom Launcher will not delete anything, it just moves it into this folder so that it is always available.

Feel free to log into my forum and post any questions you may have there.

I don't think there is a manual for this.

There are however a good number of tutorials that only teaches you certain specific things, and there is your experience and knowledge that you accumulate over playing, reading forums, and fixing problems along the way.

I have developed for myself a guideline/structure/method of organizing my CC ready to deal with situations like hunting down bad/outdated CC, updating CC made easy, surviving a new patch/EP. I am just too busy/lazy to compose it into a guide posted somewhere on the net. But yes, being able to enjoy TS3 with CC is an entire major study of its own.

Any tips for identifying CC that's not working, or finding bad cc or out dated CC ?

Yup, we got tips :-) Here: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php..._Custom_Content

The only REAL way to find outdated files, specifically, though, is... go where you got the CC in the first place, and check for updates

And yes, that means you have to know what you have and where you got it. That is absolutely essential with all gameplay and scripting mods/hacks, specifically. Including scripted objects.

Elaborating on the above message, I arrange my CC into many subfolders first by categorizing into types (Hacks, Furnitures, Hairs, Clothing, Build mode, etc...) and provide as many subfolder levels as needed. Each and every single download gets its own folder. Make sure to adjust your resource.cfg to accommodate enough levels.

For example, if I download "Android T-Shirt" from MTS, it is likely under "Packages/Clothing/MTS/Android T-Shirt" folder. Within that folder, beside the .zip file and .package file, I also have .jpg and note.txt. Note.txt will contain the direct URL where I download this mod from, as well as any note I feel is necessary, including the version and/or download date. TS3 only reads .package files so it doesn't matter if I have a few other files in there. And it is good to include .jpg files to know exactly what that CC is, because sometimes names can be deceiving and misleading.

So if I want to update, I dig up note.txt and find the URL to copy and paste in the browser. If I compare version and see there is a new version, I will download new version to replace.

You should also download "Sims 3 Dashboard tool" by Delphy. http://sims3.modthesims.info/download.php?t=387006
This is not a CC, but a standalone program that will run and do certain checks against duplications, conflicts, or corruptions. It is not 100% prefect, but so far I know the only tool I know that will do this. It had helped me pinpointing corrupted CC that otherwise would still stay in my collection.

Keep in mind, after EP or a patch, TS3 standards will differ, and we probably need new version of Sims 3 Dashboard tool (or at least the creator will have give an OK to use if there is no update needed) as well as all other CC.

CC, depending on how they were created, may or may not be compatible with current or future patch. I know one of the earliest default and non default skin tones still work to this day (even not compatible with muscle tone slider), but there is no telling it will work next patch. It also depends on EA.

* I believe WA or Ambition patch introduced a brand new way for TS3 to handle windows. Immediately all the CC windows made previously became problematic: either look weird or down right crashing. So at that point, users either have to wait for their CC to be updated by creators (and download updated version manually by yourself) or just remove the CC entirely (in the case of creators already moved on from TS3). Thus, having the direct URL to the actual CC helps a lot. Oh, don't save the URL to the actual "downloadable link", but rather the "description" link of the CC. A "downloadable link" can be useless if it doesn't let you backtrack to read the message the creator has (like change log, updated info) and a lot of times creators will give a different links to an updated version while leaving the original (and older) version of the CC intact.

I have my cc divided into folders clothes, clothes meshes, furniture, hair, makeup, nude, pregnancy, scripts, sliders 1, sliders 2 untested, and 4 files outside of the folder - those being my cor mod.
Inside those folders are my mergers of everything I've downloaded of that type...Usually done by author, but not always, got several " misc ' package file mergers...

I bulk downloaded most of my stuff and went through it to decide if I wanted it, but didn't write down creators names or where to get the stuff..so I don't really have any way to check for updates. Heck, I don't even know how to check if everythings working in my game or not....

Is the window thing new?

if it's new I'll keep a very close eye on my window catagory...

Ah you took your first step at organizing CC. That is a good thing. Mergers are good (assuming I understand correctly that you merge them into 1 big package file?) but you still need to keep the originals.

Look at it this way, if you really like a CC, you should retain as much info about it, in case it really goes bad you know how to find the updated version, so you can continue having it. If you don't retain enough, it means you don't even care if you have it or not. And I am sure, like me, you have CC that you won't play TS3 without. A lot of CC, like clothings, don't even give you a name when you hover on them in CAS. So how are you going to search for it again? Type in google "The Sims 3 kinda blueish looking jacket that looks kinda cool with a logo on left pocket that looks kinda like a logo I saw in the mall ....", imagine the search results.

I am not here to insult your past practice, really. I just want to emphasize the need to retain info. No point beating the dead horse, I know, so we should look into how to fix your current problem. It is never too late.

- If you don't have every CC in its own folder, start doing it now.

- Going from your most important CC (the one you won't live without), start searching for it again. Remember that shirt you think you downloaded from MTS? Go to MTS and search for it. Remember the bed you downloaded from simlogical? Go to simlogical and find it again. Find them, download the .jpg and write URL, download date and notes in .txt files so you give yourself a way to track this CC in the future.

- Replace your current CC with the newly downloaded since you have no way to check versions. The newly downloaded CC is likely the most updated, or at worse, it is just the same version as you currently have.

This is a good time to start doing this now that EP is around the corner. And just so you know, you don't have to follow exactly everything I said: if you think you find a download sites with 5 different hairstyle in 1 spot, and you think you don't need to put them in 5 separate folders, then go ahead to put them in 1 folder. It matters nothing to TS3, it all matters to helping you retracing CC find updates or search for answers.

The window thing is a true story. But it happened at the beginning of Ambition or WA EP. It is already a year ago. Whatever window you downloaded recently should be ok. But those downloaded in early 2009 may pose a problem. Creators should have updated their CC long ago if they meant to do it, or else they were long ago and their CC remain "unsupported". So if your TS3 is not acting up, maybe it is really OK, or you have a time bomb among your CC causing corruptions slowly to a point you can't play anymore.

The thing about TS3 CC is that it is not clear cut "good or bad" like we hope. Having a "bad" CC in your collection will not always crash you right out. It can be dormant or silently corrupt other stuff until your saved game is totally unrecoverable. Ever load a game to see a bunch of "blue lots" or "grey walls", or some badly mutated sims, and having error 13/14 when trying to save, or even crash out within 5 minutes while you try to figure out what it wrong. That is called "last stage of cancer", waiting to die. You don't want to go there.

I don't want to put every cc into it's own folder because that's just not how I like to do things, it seems disorganized for me... I will, however, start over again on what I've been doing for the past 3 days. I've been opening up all the cc that I'm going to keep in either the workshop, s3pe, or cas unitool utility depending on which program actually wants to open the cc, and making sure the clothing isn't set for nude catagory, as well as renaming everything with at least the creators name in it.

I have the original zip files, The original unmerged files, and my finished merged files. Most of the original zip files I probably won't ever touch again because I have the sorted unmerged files, but I have them just incase.

My sims 3 was acting up until I put some more ram into my computer, and now it only acts up some of the times...I think I have too much clothing cc... 4gb isn't enough ram even for it, I just have too much.

However, I DO KNOW that there was SOMETHING object related that was funky.... because my game kept crashing on a particular house. Now that I know about the windows thing I kind of think maybe it was the windows that were doing it...

100% of the house was pretty much custom furniture and objects. So I know i have a problem -somewhere- within my downloaded objects...


I merge everything into 150-200 package files, Usually divided by what type of cc it is -- and then by creator for clothing, or type for object.

So for clothing i have like... Peggy, Liana - ect, and for furniture / objects I have -- windows, doors, ect.



Does anyone know anything about the errors you receive while opening stuff in the TS3 Workshop found on TSR ? Or any advice on files that conflict...

I have a lot of files that are by the same author that conflict with each other and I don't know if I should be concerned about that, I also have some files that conflict with TS3 Shop stuff & other items of similar type... I've googled and not been able to find much information at all about conflicts or what conflicts are okay and what conflicts are not okay...or even on how to check exactly what's conflicting.

Like I said, you don't need to follow my direction to the letter. If you think you have a better way of organizing than putting CC into each subfolders, then by all mean do so. Here is what I want you to be able to do. Either:

- You want to delete a CC because someone tells you it is bad. You know where to pin point all the .package files relating to that CC (some CC comes with more than 1 .package file), not accidentally deleting more, or leaving an extra .package file behind that continues to plague your game.

- You look at a .package file and you want to know what CC it is, is it working, is it most updated, where to find the original website you downloaded it from.

Merging is fine and all, but .... CC doesn't go bad by groups. Just because 1 hair from Peggy works fine doesn't mean the other hair does. One year ago, without Sims 3 Dashboard, it took me forever to conclude that 1 Peggy hair is in conflict with 1 car from Fresh Prince. Sims 3 Dashboard will help you pin point corrupted or conflicted CC, and upon knowing what exact .package files they are, you also want to know what CC that package file is containing, is there an update for it, so you can decide whether to discard it, fix it yourself, or update it. I merge 90% of my CC into one huge .package file (900 Mb) but I keep the original .package in case I need to remove 1-2 CC and re-merge them. If I don't keep the original, Sims 3 Dashboard can only tell me "Windows.package" is conflicted and/or corrupted. Would I delete it or ignore the error?

Like I said earlier, bad CC are not clear cut "good or bad". You can load the game just fine with bad CC only to have them get you in the future. So if Sims 3 Dashboard says it is "conflicted" it means it has "something" conflicted and likely to cause problems. If TSR Workshop says there is error, assuming you have the latest version of TSR Workshop, then likely it is the source of your crashing problem, or it will be. I said "likely" because there is a small chance TSR Workshop will give a false positive. But you can't just assume everything is false positve.

CC are stored in HDD, not RAM. So having 1000 clothes, 1000 hairs don't necessarily mean TS3 will load them all at once and have them sit in your RAM. TS3 will load all 1000 Formal dresses when you pick a formal dress for your sim in CAS, you pick a dress, close CAS, and 999 of those dresses are unloaded from RAM. The remaining 1 dress you chose will not simply be "put on" to the sim, but instead, taken into calculation of the sim's skin computing: Sim's skin will have the dress painted on, calculated which part is just skin, which part is the dress, which part is 50-50 skin and dress (like a see-thru lace area). So having 1000 dresses or 1 dress does not affect your game performance at all. The only affect is how complex the CC is. I know some of Peggysim's hair has extremely high polygons. They look good, but having 1 sim wearing that hair may equate to having 20 objects in the room, in term of taxing your computer performance.

You never mentioned how you find out about conflicts. Is it through Sims 3 Dashboard? S3PE? TSR Workshop? or CAS Unitool? I think Sims 3 Dashboard is the only software that will find out conflicts. S3PE doesn't compare different .package files. And when you say "conflict", it is very broad. It is like going to the doctor telling him you have cancer, and you expect him to give you a magic pill to cure it. It is really not that simple.

There is one thing you Must know about downloading from Sims 3 Exchange or anyplace that handles .Sims3pack files, including Custom lots from MTS. Sims3pack is collection of different packages, Sims 3 Launcher will ASSUME they are all good and install them into a different location than your Mods folder. The reality is they are just as risky as any .package file you download, but you don't really get to open them up with TSR Workshop, S3PE or any other program to edit/fix them. There is no way to tell where the CC is from. It can come from a lot you downloaded, or maybe a sim, or even some other totally irrelevant .sims3pack files. And when you do find out which download it is from, you have to remove the entire download. If there is a problematic table that came along with your "super awesome house", you have to uninstall the entire "super awesome house" to get rid of the bad table CC. Although, there is a way to save the house: you place the house, save the house in Edit Town into lot bin. Deleting the original download of "super awesome house" will not cause your saved lot bin of that lot deleted. However, the bad table CC and all other CC that came along with that download will disappear from the house, or replaced by a more generic object (likely a base game object).

I know you expect a short answer like "press that magic button, all will be fixed!" But what I am giving you now is already a short version of numerous tutorials and discussions found scattered on the web.

I am currently running all files through cas unitool, tsr workshop, and s3pe, then after I run all content through those I use delphy's dashboard.

I have A LOT of files not able to pull up in TSR Workshop, but pulling up fine in S3PE and cas unitool... I wish I knew exactly what the errors meant and how to fix them, but I can't find a guide for the life on me or a description on what the errors actually are or how to go about fixing them...

I wish the delphys tool would tell me exactly what's conflicting between two mods. What I really want to know though is that if Creator Item 1 and Creator Item 2, from the same creator, conflict, if that's a problem or not ?

I extract all sims3packs using delphys program as well. I don't really install any sims3packs unless they are worlds. I'll take a screenshot of the files that delphys say are conflicting in a little bit once I finish getting through the rest of the TSR Premium objects and use my duplicate file finder program (Vistanita Duplicate Finder) to delete duplicates....

I'll also write down the error codes I'm receiving from numerous files from the workshop an post them here, maybe someone could give me an explanation on what they mean and show me where to find information on how to fix them ?

Bravo, you are more intuitive than I originally expected.

What are the errors exactly? You kept saying "errors" but were they displayed in S3PE, in Dashboard, .... ? You have to pardon the creators of those programs. They didn't get paid for any of this. If it was me, I would polish up that "Sims3Pack Muti Installer" along with a few other programs with their file browsing UI. The way some of them let users browse files are extremely tedious, like having to pick the long list of destination folders through a tiny window. Why can't they let us at least copy and paste the path in there? But anyway, it is free, and we can't feel grateful enough that they took the time to program something that works at the first place.

Since you are here, might as well throw in a few samples of your errors you have been receiving (but don't copy and paste a whole lengthy 10 page log) and see if anyone can decipher anything about it. I haven't touched TSR Workshop for a long while so I may not be able to give you much help.

But beside these error codes when opening .package files, how is your game play, are you having problems or your game is smooth as ever?

I receive most errors in TSR Workship.

I get them mostly for objects, but also for clothing...I've googled them and haven't found much information on them, there are pages telling me what causes them -- but not how to fix them or any pages explaining what exactly is the problem. ( and for someone unfamiliar with modding sims 3 it's pretty much gibberish ).

Here are some of the errors I have been receiving while using TSR's TS3 Workshop: (All dealing with importing)

1. Problem loading object - buffer cannot be null
2. SmartExceptionsCore.unhandledException @4701, offset:76 - Results in crash (Generally pertaining to makeup / face paints, and clothing)
3. Cannot Clone CAS Part ..... I forget the entirety of this error, and I don't know a CC off of the top of my head that's producing it... But basically it tells me it can't clone the cas part / mesh, or whatever, but still loads the file.

4. Found No Suitable Entries In Package -- This one I'm assuming isn't a problem with the file, however, as I receive the error for lots & patterns...which aren't a CAS part or Object.



>> Cas Texture Unitool also produces errors sometimes. The error that that program gives me is:
1. Key is not the correct format

I have no idea what it means but it happens frequently.

With S3PE I simply get the " System out of memory " error frequently. Certain creators stuff does it more often then other creators. Miraminkova, for instance, I can't merge anymore then 30 of their files before getting that error, whereas with objects and rosesims stuff I can merge a few hundred without getting the error at all. I really don't know if it's because I don't have enough memory or because of something else...I've got 4gb of memory though.

Now I've googled most of those errors and have found descriptions in (gibberish to me) about what they are, but nobody actually explaining exactly what they are or any way to go about fixing them, or even if the errors mean somethings fundamentally wrong with the CC...

So I've got a bunch of CC that I'd prefer to fix if it needs fixing, or that I'm not sure if I should be tossing it or not...

For TSR Workshop errors:

1. Buffer cannot be null .... "This error sometimes occurs when your meshes are incorrectly named or ordered in your 3D program (some creation types such as particular objects trigger this error, whereas others do not). When it does happen, you will have made a mistake in the arrangement of your mesh groups.." according to http://www.thesimsresource.com/resources/view/id/81/ This may be creator's carelessness, but you may end up doing a whole lot of work just trying to fix it.

2. SmartExceptionsCore.unhandledException @4701, offset:76 may be TSR Workshop problem.

3. TSR Workshop isn't made to clone any CC. It is good for cloning EA based objects only if I am not wrong. TSR Workshop is a "modding made simple" commercial ware versus the "professional only" tools like S3PE that requires a whole lot more knowledge to just understand what is going on. I attempted cloning several CC, and it really gave me all sort of errors that I ended up doing it manually with other programs.

4. This one I can only guess .... this .package is linked off to something outside of itself, like a default replacement clothing (like this mod that adds a bugle in men's underwear and swimwear, TSR Workshop will never understand what it does).

Is CAS Unitool still updated or it is already a relic? http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=364926 gives a warning that this program may be too old and unsupported. But both Delphy and johna are still around and active so maybe the tool is still functional. But beside telling you that the creator of your CC didn't use the right format for naming Key ID according to CAS Unitool, I don't have any idea to fix it. S3PE running out of memory? Is this the error you get when attempting merging .packages? I think I may have run into that problem once and found something to quickly solve it. My combined .package is around 900Mb in size and took about 30 minutes to combine. Anyway, there are a lot of results on searching for this, take a look at http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=390063 .
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You seem to utilize a whole lot of programs to play with your CC, and then you complain about error explanations as "gibberish". I am not sure if you are ready to use these programs. They are not really designed for regular users, you know? If you really want to fix things, you really have to get into learning about modding. Because a lot of things you are trying to fix here dwells heavily into the modding realm and requires extensive modding experience and knowledge. Merging CC is rather easy and can be done via reading 1 tutorial. But trying to fix "conflicts" is not flipping a switch, or check/uncheck some boxes.

If Sims 3 Dashboard comes back with a "corrupted" or "conflicted" error message, it is best to contact the original creator to tell them of the error. And if they ignore, it is time to let go of that CC. Only attempt to fix CC that you really really really want to keep. But even then, like Fresh Prince's cars, some of his earlier created cars reported as "corrupted" with Dashboard, I reported it, but FP didn't comment back. To fix his cars means having to know the process he uses to create his stuff, and you have to microscope each process to make sure everything is in its place. It is just too much work.

I am also advising you that this thread is now going into Sims 3 Creation and Modding discussion.

3. I'm not trying to clone any cc, lol, I'm just trying to view my cc files so I can see the creator, the description, and what the items look like to determine if I really want it.... I have no interest in developing for sims 3, merely looking at my cc, finding errors in my cc, and fixing said cc. How would one go about solving any of the problems I've been experiencing?

1. What exactly does that mean ? what would I Have to do to fix the error? I don't even know what the error means, can you point me to any " beginning mod " tutorials that would explain it to me?

Cas unitool - No idea on this, I just use it to check clothing to see if it is classified in the right catagories and fix them if they are not...as well as preview the clothing when TSR Workshop refuses to open it....which happens quite frequently. TSR workshop won't open a clothing file, but the unitool will.

If it's outdated, then what other tools could I use to determine if the catagory is right and fix it if its not? I haven't finished going through my cc yet but I know I have some clothing items that are miscatagorized for the nude catagory and or the wrong age group. S3PE - It happens when importing files, regardless of the reason. I've figured out that it's directly related to the size of the batch as a whole. Objects tend to be much smaller then clothing, and hair tends to be the largest in terms of file size. I usually just make the merged patches smaller, the biggest at most being 200 MB.

Average user: I'm not what you'd call an average user, I've modded and merged stuff for fallout 3, oblivion, sims 1, and various other games. I have no problem with learning what those terms mean if I could find links to describe them or a place that offers beginner tutorials with explanations on how to mod and edit .package files and sims3 content.

Fine with me where you put this thread, I really didn't know where to put it myself so it makes me happy to know it's found the proper place.. .Lol.

None of my cc reads as corrupted, Well, some did but I just up and delete that stuff. The only problems I have are conflicts...and most of the conflicts are problems with files made by the same author. Some, however, are not, and I just wish there was a way to be able to tell what piece of the file was conflicting with the other file so I'd have some starting ground to figure out what was going on with the files.

And now begins the lovely process of opening -everything- I have in the workshop and unitool.... and renaming it all to have the creators name at the front of the file name. Yay :o after that I'll run it through dashboard and go from there...