I've used your program, it's great, but one silly question: do you delete the original files from the folder once they're merged? I guess that you do because I've seen the merged ones.
I did make a backup of all my downloads just in case of...

After you said that this might be some specific object misbehaving i wasn't sure about it, but i'm writing this after merging files for a test again, the same files, and it seems that you are correct and it's some specific objects that don't play nice with your program. I've merged my Maxis Addons folder and first time the problem was with "Grilled Cheese Table" by Graverobber, this time it was the same - invisible and unrecolorable, but i've decided to test pretty much everything and surprise - all of the Graverobber's painting addons are broken while everything else seems to work great! That means that it's somehow related to specific creator, some bugs or mistakes or whatever they had while making packages. Another broken addons were Dahlen Bookcases by Windkeeper. I'm thinking mb there's some pattern there, and ideally program would take care of whatever that is, but at least it would be good to know if those problematic packages could be fixed by hand somehow so they can be merged. Anyway i'm glad to know that there's some kind of outside problem there from creator's part and not program breaking things randomly :) Though it still leaves that chance of borkage possible sadly, even if it's rare :(
Also if anyone reading this could test those objects merged with this program in their game that would be great. And any object creators who could poke those packages in case they spot what might be wrong there? I'll try to do this too, but i'm not much of an object specialist :D

Your ideas sound good, But I an a firm believe in if it is not broken than don't fix it, some things are left best alone as already setup by the game.
All one need to do is setup their downloads in an organized way. Your setup may be good for some members and it is wise as you have said in your notes to backup your game.
But still I thank you for sharing your idea with everyone here.

Just a thought, but one thing you might want to consider in the future is creating a database of which objects do not work with this program. That way people would know ahead of time so they could adjust accordingly and it would certainly cutback on any future trails of issues in that regard.

I have not tested the program out yet but I WILL be. I have some objects that load faster than others. I actually ran a complex test a while back dividing content into individual creator folders (that makes it easy to know who made it and where it was DLd from) I then would test out individual folders all by themselves and some had ZERO impact on game speed while others added as much as 5-15minutes of loading time (just for that one folder).

I'm just gonna try merging the ones that take up time and see how that goes.

I gave it an ambitious test run and merged 14.000 files into 40 packages. I set it to 5000 files per package. It took over an hour. BUT. It saved me 5 min of loading time which is a lot considering it usualy takes 15. Sadly, it crashed when I tried to load some of my families, so those settings were too high I guess. I managed to load one family and encoutered the same problem - some cc was missing (or invisible). I guess we have to smart about what we merge together. I was lazy and merged all the files that weren't sorted.

This simply does not work correctly.

When set to max 100mb and 1000 files, it produces 50+ files that are less than 10mb each. When set to max 250mb and unlimited files, it produces a ton of files that are less than 10mb each. It's clearly not following the settings.

I used this on some of my CC subfolders and a lot of my custom fences disappeared from the catalog. I haven't yet noticed any problems with other categories, but will continue to keep an eye on them.

Thank you so much for this! The only problems I've has are merging all my hairs into a giant 8gb bundle, but I didn't expect that to work anyway, and my rugs folder, which turned out to be because one of my rugs had two lots of object data. Once I fixed that, it worked. However, I merged everything else before the option to output a text list was available, is there any way it can get that info after a merge, perhaps by exporting all the catalogue descriptions or tooltips?

Yes. If I open a bunch of instances of the application and do different subfolders at a time, it seems to do better.

And for some reason the merged packages do not work on my game. They cause it to crash every time.

Most likely you'd delete a whole chuck of cc and game files at once. You should NEVER delete anything that's been merged or bundled together. Frankly, you should never use the in-game delete button unless it's like a wall or floor and you can't find it ANYWHERE. And even then, you should be extremely careful.

Try setting the values lower or split the packages, there might be some problematic CC that doesn't allow merging. I've had this happen too and that's why the default limits are in place.

Nope, they're not deleted.

That's really weird, limits should work OK and they indeed did for me.

Fences might be problematic then, it seems to have done this with fences before.

The text files list the names of the merged packages, not their object names/tooltips, sorry

That's OK, I suspected that might be the case but thought it wouldn't hurt to ask, just in case!

this isnt necessarily a complaint or anything - just an observation!

i compressorize just about anything i can and because i compressorized my files already prior to merging with this tool, i did not save on space (4.7gb) or speed up my load times (~6min). i did test compressorizing a merged package and no difference. i guess this is for folks that may be in the same boat im in with trying to cut down on file sizes and speed up some load time!

thank you for this rad tool. its a lot faster and more efficient than the SimPE method for sure!!

Just an FYI here - if you're going to run the Hack Conflict Detector on your game, be sure to temporarily remove all your merged CC from the Downloads folder first. The HCDU will report all the mergedcc files as conflicting with each other and then choke on the report (so many conflicts that HCDU just gives up and the read-out cuts off in the middle of the report).

Just out of curiosity, would it be possible to have a version where we can choose which files to merge as well as the option to merge an entire folder?

will work on mysims 3 mod folder ?

This is a Sims 2 tool, so no.

Thanks you so so much for this, it works in my game and I've always wanted this. Your the best and it works 100% and I had tears of joy

no sweetie its just a special tool for sims 2 x

Thank you for the lovely tool, LazyDuchess (team lazy!) I'm just curious, is it worth merging tiny files, lets say a batch of 1-5kb files? Will that save load time at all, or would it be too minuscule?

Also, suggestion for those that love the txt file with all the file names. So far I'm deleting the CCmerger.log, but would be cool if the filename txt file also includes a total count of files just like the CCmerger.log. Example: "Merged 41 packages containing 540 files into 1 packages." its basically combining both info into one txt file!

Thanks for this brilliant tool!



I merged my fences manually, and there are some points that need manual adjustments:

- all XFNCs (Fence XML) need a unique Instance number (you can use the GUID in the XFNC). This is enough for the fences to appear, but the link to the text lists is still broken, so all fences with text lists that have the group id 0xFFFFFFFF show up with the same text in catalog.
- In the Fence XML, change the value of stringsetgroupid from 0xFFFFFFFF to the new Instance number of the Fence XML
- Change the group id of the coresponding Text List to the new Instance number of the Fence XML

This should fix it.

EDIT: merging roofs colors works the same way.