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!
MTS has all free content, all the time. Find out how YOU can help to keep it running. Tell me how...

Sims 3 Dashboard tool (Updated 1st July 2022: v1.3.8217.25892)

by Tashiketh Posted 15th Jan 2010 at 11:51 PM - Updated 1st Jul 2022 at 2:25 PM by Tashiketh
 
2153 Comments / Replies (Who?) - 1627 Feedback Posts, 525 Thanks Posts
Hide Thanks Posts for this thread (Show only feedback)
Page 4 of 87
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#76 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 4:12 PM
jonha: I'll add empty package detection and a status bar that shows the current file being looked at.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Test Subject
#77 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 5:05 PM
Cleared up a couple of issues in what was becoming an niterminably slow game, thank loads for this.

However, I am experiencing a small issue - when I get the program to refresh my list of mods, it comes up with the attached error a lot. It seems to be mostly on downloaded packages of patterns, but its quite the pain. Any ideas? I'm running Windows XP (32bit).
Screenshots
Test Subject
#78 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 5:14 PM Last edited by Marmokachi : 16th Jan 2010 at 5:20 PM. Reason: Added screen shot of Error
Found over 200 blue lot items so deleted them but sadly in game I still have blue lots. Thank you for making it though as now my game runs much fast

Edit: I am also getting this error message.
Screenshots
world renowned whogivesafuckologist
retired moderator
#79 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 5:22 PM
Marmokachi - The blue lotting actually occurring in-game is not fixable. Your save is ruined and you must make a new game. By removing items that may cause blue lotting, you've prevented it from happening in future.

my simblr (sometimes nsfw)

“Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
Panquecas, panquecas e mais panquecas.
Lab Assistant
#80 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 5:25 PM
Work very well and cleaned out 146m corrupted downloads and has help with booting up the game that was begining to slow with the addition of new content.
It doesn't do the sims3packages.
Thank you this will help keep the downloads clean and creators can use it to check their creations before sharing..
Field Researcher
#81 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 5:24 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
Celebriton / Anach:

I'd be interested to know how you would intend any "mod conflict" checker to actually work. The most basic way I can think of would be to keep a track of every applicable resource type (XML, coremod, etc) and which file it is in and then check against every other file to see if there is a duplicate (kind of like the duplicate checker in DDO but MUCH more advanced).

Problem with this approach is that you'd have to somehow store all of the resources, which filename they are in, and then for each new filename you check against that list. That'd slow down scanning immensely and be fairly complex.

I might take a crack at something like this though.


XML, or ITUN are probably the most common types of conflicts I come across when downloading tweaking mods as packages can often contain multiple files and now and then some people include things they don't need to, or a mod might overlap another with one particular file. Comparing the resource key of one or two file types would be a lot quicker than comparing every file type.

Besides, if more people start merging their mods correctly, then there aren't likely to be any conflicts in there unless someone has done something silly and manually allowed it.

It would certainly be worth having for the ability to check multiple tweaking files though, as compatibility checking seems to be a very common request and often a worry from people commenting on mods. It could be included as a "Deep scan" function without needing to do it each run.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#82 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 5:47 PM
Anach, I figured out a fast way of doing it anyway, so I'll just conflict scan all the time. New version will be up within the hour.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#83 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 6:01 PM
New version is up:

* Fixed bug with Clear All caches not working
* Adding Maximise ability
* Added status bar
* Added current package file being processed to status bar
* Added detection of Empty packages
* Added detection of Conflict/Duplicate packages
* Removed "Select Corrupt" button
* Added ability to select only particular types of "bad" content - Corrupted, Duplicate, Sims 2 Packages or Empty files
* Added ability to select all types of "bad" content
* Renamed "Corrupt (BlueLot)" to "Corrupt TXTC" to better reflect the issue
* Added automatic action to Fix Corrupted TXTCs
* Removed some console output

Note: Conflict scan checks for the following types:

STBL = 0x220557DA,
TXTC = 0x033A1435,
MLOD = 0x01D10F34,
OBJK = 0x02DC343F,
OBJD = 0x319E4F1D,
VPXY = 0x736884F1,
_RIG = 0x8EAF13DE,
S3SA = 0x073FAA07,
_XML = 0x0333406C,
CASP = 0x034AEECB,
ITUN = 0x03B33DDF,

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Scholar
#84 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 6:04 PM Last edited by jonha : 16th Jan 2010 at 6:16 PM.
Very nice update. Just FYI, the cache detection still doesn't work, and now the path seems to be missing from the file name. This makes it a lot harder, to manually find the file (for example, if you want to delete it or fix it manually). So it would be nice, if you could re-add the file path.

Edit: There is a minor thing, that could be improved, too. If there are 2 conflicting packages, it would be nice, if the tool could tell me, if they are identical (then I would just delete one) or if they are different (then I would have to resolve the conflict manually or delete one).

Edit 2: Sorting by filesize doesn't do what it is expected to do. It sorts them alphabetically, for example:
1
1123234
1234
135654
1434
etc.
which is not what people probably want

Same with date...
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#85 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 6:24 PM
The path was never in the file name in the custom content box. Only the Caches list had filenames - if the cache wasn't in the base folder.

The cache failing to detect on non English windows might be down to the way I look for the My Documents folder (via a Registry key).

With regards to the conflicting... I guess I could seperate out a proper "Conflict" (ie resource within one file conflicts with a resource in another), from "Duplicate" (both files are identical).

Gimme a bit and I'll do that.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Scholar
#86 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 6:40 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
The path was never in the file name in the custom content box. Only the Caches list had filenames - if the cache wasn't in the base folder.


Oh, right. Anyway, showing the path is probably a good idea.

Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
The cache failing to detect on non English windows might be down to the way I look for the My Documents folder (via a Registry key).


I couldn't find a registry key that points to "C:\Users\XXX\Documents\Electronic Arts\Die Sims 3" (in my case), so I think, this is more difficult. Maybe let the user select the folder manually when it's not been found. Or is there possibly another method to get this folder?

Quote:
With regards to the conflicting... I guess I could seperate out a proper "Conflict" (ie resource within one file conflicts with a resource in another), from "Duplicate" (both files are identical).


The thing is, I have two separate clothing packages with both the same mesh in it (but different textures, CASParts etc.). Ideally, the tool should not count them as conflicting (currently it does because of the VPXYs) and it should not count them as identical (because deleting one file would remove one caspart, too), but I think for now, we could live with a simple file comparison.
Test Subject
#87 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 6:46 PM
Thanks. I'm going to use this tool in order to check my costume content.

Great job! Very useful.
Test Subject
#88 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 7:06 PM
Many thanks Delphy for taking the time and trouble to do this
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#89 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 7:22 PM
jonha: Ahh, yes, I see - the localised version of "The Sims 3" is, of course, "Die Sims 3" in German. So I'd need to check the registry for the localised name too. Problem is, I can't actually find anything that just stores the localised name. Any ideas?

As for folder... I'm divided on that. When you start talking about folder names, filtering, browsing to the packages location, moving packages etc, you start getting into the realms of a proper Download Organiser style program - and to be honest this tool would need quite a bit of work to achieve that goal (not least of which would be to remove the existing ListView and replace it with something akin to a DataGrid or similar as in the original DDO).

With regards to the two packages having the same mesh - well, I could probably remove VPXY from the list of types to check for conflicts - but I just added seperation of Duplicate/Conflicted so that should help.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Scholar
#90 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 7:35 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
jonha: Ahh, yes, I see - the localised version of "The Sims 3" is, of course, "Die Sims 3" in German. So I'd need to check the registry for the localised name too. Problem is, I can't actually find anything that just stores the localised name. Any ideas?


No.

Quote:
As for folder... I'm divided on that. When you start talking about folder names, filtering, browsing to the packages location, moving packages etc, you start getting into the realms of a proper Download Organiser style program


That would of course be a nice addition, but for now I think, it should be enough to add the folder in the first column. (Or alternatively add another column and put the Folder there)

For example if I see that I have two packages with the name "awesome.package" are conflicting, it would be really nice, if I could at least see, where they are (one is probably the right package and the other may be in some hideous subfolder I forgot to delete). And in this case it would be really helpful to see the folder name, so I could either see in the tool itself which is the wrong package and disable it, or, as this file is useless anyway, I would prefer not to disable it, but like to see the folder so I can easily find it in the explorer and delete it there (and see if there are other old packages in the same folder).
Field Researcher
#91 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:08 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy

Please link me to some examples of windows and cars that come up as BlueLot.


After your Update Everything is as it should be!!

ClicknPsycho
Forum Resident
#92 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:16 PM
Thanks Delphy! This is so awesome...no more blue lots! Can't wait to test.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#94 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:31 PM
Changelog for 1.0.3668.38309
* Removed conflict detection for: TXTC, OBJK, VPXY, _RIG
* Altered detection of duplicates to split between Duplicate and Conflict
* Duplicates are now Yellow, Conflicts are Goldenrod
* Added ability to de-select all checked items
* Added right-click on a package in the list to Open folder where the package is
* Added Sub-Folder name to list
* Added menu option to Find Game Cache location for localised versions where the auto-find fails
* Fixed bug with cache files showing as 0 byte 0 entries in list - now they are not shown
* Changed colour of Sims 2 packages to SteelBlue

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Forum Resident
#95 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:29 PM
Haha, I found with this that I need to fix all my paintings I made....
One question: If you are a creator with broken items, If you click "Fix" on them with this tool, and then take the files from your mods and re-upload them...will that fix them for everyone else?

You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
-Christopher Robin to Pooh
Inventor
#96 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:41 PM
This looks very useful!! Thanks so much for making it Delphy!

Curvalicious Sims 2 (My website, only sims 2 stuff currently)Curvalicious Sims2

For more great content check out PMBD

Test Subject
#97 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:46 PM
i can't even download it. keeps redirecting me to Bing search engine???
saying could not find file so maybe its a broken link.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#98 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:51 PM
CarlosFilipePedro: Maximise button is enabled in .38309.

sunken-woglinde: Packages fixed with this or the BlueLot fixer tool should be re-uploaded to the site so people can re-download if neccesary.

darkray: The link works fine.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Lab Assistant
#99 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 8:50 PM
Thanks this is a lot easier than testing each file in the blue lot fixer I can now fix any corrupt file immediatly.
Test Subject
#100 Old 16th Jan 2010 at 9:01 PM
The items that showed up in red are items that are working in the game and used alot. Why does it say they are bad? Most are cars that I downloaded.

Some where in yellow. What does that mean?
Page 4 of 87