It seems somewhat known in the TS2 community that having 'too much' CC will cause semi-random crashes in the buy and build catalogues. This 'limit' is either attributed to the number of meshes one has in their game, or the amount of OBJD*. CaS stuffs seems to not count towards it.
(*: object data, an element found in the packages of objects, foods, even sims in a neighbourhood. It's pretty much a file header marking the content as being its own 'item'. Multi-tiled objects usually have 2+ of them. Recolours, walls and floors do not have any.)

Thing is, the limit doesn't seem to be set in stone by the game's engine. I've seen people with 30+ GBs (!) of B&B stuff who never encountered the issue, while you can have under 3 GBs of the relevant files and be plagued by it. Even system specs do not seem to have a fixed impact: updating from a computer bought in 2011 to a fancy 2016 one, I still had the same limit.*
(*: althought both had the same amount of RAM, which might be a trail to look into. I think I read Pescado saying that you should not have more CC than half the amount you have RAM?)

And so, I'd like to hear other people's experience and theories about the 'CC limit'. Hopefully we can assemble some (even anecdotal) info about it.

(I know not everyone here is an ardent user of CC, but I'd ask for the thread to please remain on topic. There are more appropriate threads out there if you feel the need to explain why you don't use it :P)

From what I've seen in my game (only) the limit is about 14,500 pieces of CC. If I get past that number the game will undoubtedly crash. Now, mind you, I have a more than capable computer that can handle more than that (and the space, too) anytime, but it seems that is the hard limit for mine. I have 3 gig of memory, too.

I've tried it about 5 or 6 times, and it crashed every single time, no fail. So I keep the CC down under than number, and it happily plays along. I have to remember that there are a lot of high-poly items (hair, cars, etc) that drag down performance, so keeping those to a limit will help too.

I have no idea why my game decided that was its' limit, but I'm willing to abide by it-I'd rather play the game than always have crashing.

Two tips: Duplicate File Finder and Bulk Rename Utility.

Get rid of duplicate files and rename file names to not have spaces or weird symbols. _ and numbers and letters are okay.
This speeds up your game quite a bit!

I don't think that's what's being asked here though. It isn't about speeding the game up, it's about the existence of some kind of limit on actual meshes (or OBJD), which many simmers have reported on, that isn't related to file sizes or loading time, only to the actual number of those types of files, which seems different for everyone for some reason.

I'm not saying your advice is bad, I'm just saying it's like offering sugar to someone who asked for salt.

You can speed up the game by not having any CC at all-but what's the fun in that?

After about 10 years playing this game, I think I should know by now what the game will or will not tolerate. This is my limit, yours may vary.

BTW, this is a fairly decent computer, with Win7, a vast disk, and decent graphics card. The game itself is putting the limit on the CC, not the computer. If that weren't the case, it'd be loaded to the gills with stuff.

I'm thinking that if the limit isn't set in stone, it's influence by the amount of RAM you have. I have a lot (32Gb), and my overall file limit is probably three times yours (for a total of 16GB). Only a minority of those are objects (and the like), though, so I can't say that the mesh/OBJD limit itself isn't immutable.

I never experience game crash just because of "too much CC". But there are some things which make crash more possible:

1. Neighborhood full of sims. My main hood having more than 1200 character files used to crash on old system (WinXP) even using powerful computer. When I moved TS2 to Win7 and used CFF Explorer crashes stopped for a long while.

2. Huge lot. Saying "huge" I mean not only great lot size (5x5 & more) but lots with many things placed. The last crash I experienced took place in 6x6 farm with almost all Sun&Moon's crafting stations: lots of hogs, hay, winery, fetch water and many other stuff. Sure I don't mean these items can cause crash by itself but by its enormous quantity like any other objects. Briefly, there was overloaded lot in overloaded hood full of sims and game couldn't handle it anymore.

3. Broken thumbnails. If your game crashes in certain clothes or buy mode category this is high risk of borked thumbnails. Luckily it can be fixed by deleting files in Thumbnails folder (My documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails) and loading these glitchy things again.

That's all I know about repetitive crashes.

P.S. My Downloads are more than 8 gB and there was no crashes in newly-created hoods, even rich decorated one where I played my challenge.

I have this-3072MB RAM, which isn't a lot for any computer, but I know that the game does not recognize over 4 gigs in game play.

As for objects, having more of them isn't the issue, it's what the objects are that is-having high poly anything will slow down the game and the load time. One car can be as high as 32000 polys, which is very high for one item-put more than one into the game, and it gets a bit slow.

Having large lots will slow it down. But we're talking crashes-which means that there are objects that make it crash or limits to the number of objects you can have in the catalog before it hits the limit.

What Pescado recommended is fairly good advice: don't have more than twice what your RAM is. I think that's why my game gets wonky after 14,500-that's nearly twice what my RAM is. So I play it safe and keep it under that amount.

This thread talks about this very same subject: General - File Limits

I don't think there actually is a hard limit (although, if there is, I'd guess it's 2,147,483,647 files), but it depends on your system. I have an aging computer that was good at the time and has since gotten a newer video card, so although my close-to-30,000 pieces of CC make the loading times extremely slow and the occasional crash, I don't run into much problem with actually playing the game unless I summon 500 sims onto a lot.

The 4GB Patch helps if you have a 64-bit system. There's instructions to do this manually on GoS, I believe, but the thing I linked is easier.

I think a distinciton has to be made between "Too much CC", "Broken/crashing CC" and "Too much/too heavy CC on a lot". Those are three different things with often similar results (one of them being crashing).

CC can be small files with low-poly meshes and small textures. You can often have more of those, because they're easier for the computer to render. That's why a lot of the original Sims meshes are relative low-poly with small textures (rarely more than 512x512 for objects unless very detailed or meant to be one-per-lot, and usually smaller).

The game has to load all the CC, and if all the CC is in proper working order and compatible with itself and your EP/SPs, there isn't more of a limit than what your computer can handle. You'll notice the limit on lagging, long loading times, some might experience crashes, and if you're very unlucky you'll get the pink-flashing problem (the computer/game/graphics/RAM struggles to keep all the texture info, and dumps memory to make room for whatever new crops up, leading to things randomly starting to flash pink - can also happen with other graphics that takes a toll on the graphics and RAM, such as snow). The pink-flashing usually won't crash the game, at least it doesn't for me, but it gets to a point where you can't play anyway, so the only solution tends to be to quit the game.

The problem with broken CC can be
1: CC that's got some broken game code. Will either result in jump bugs (error messages if TestingCheats is in effect) or crashing on either startup or when trying to access it (visiting downloaded lot with the CC item in it, opening the menu, trying to click the item, placing the item, sims trying to access the item, etc.)
2: CC that doesn't work with your setup of EPs/SPs, usually outdated items that haven't been updated for the newest EPs/SPs you use, or items requiring an EP you don't have, or items directly incompatible with an EP/SP.
3: CC that clashes with another CC item. Most often seen with hacks or big mods.
Solution: remove or fix the broken piece of CC. It's as simple (or difficult) as that.

You can also have too much or too heavy CC on a lot. If the lot ois big and literally has a ton of CC in it, chances are you'll notice a lag, and/or get the pink-flashing bug and/or experience crashes, because the game struggles to render the lot. The more polygons and textures you place into a lot, the more your graphic card and RAM struggles to render and remember it all. The higher poly the objects are, and if they have big or several textures, particularly with certain TXMT changes, the more careful you should be using too much of them in one lot.

There's also a difference between having a lot of CC, and using it all in one place. I'm not sure if the game actually access the items in the buy mode when leafing through them, because there's a thumbnail saved - but I haven't really noticed much of an ingame lag when adding more CC to the buy menu. The lag is always worse if actually placing the items or using a lot of CC on a sim.

I've got several GBs worth of CC (around 30 GB), and most of the time it all plays along nicely without bugs or crashing (Except for the occasional pink-flashing bug - I usually get it when using snow or very heavy lots, but most of the time my game can run for a very long time without it). I've noticed different "limits" on all 3 computers I've owned - my old laptop had a limit on around 10-14 GB. More than roughly 14 GB it would load endlessly (up tp around 3-4 hours), and was very laggy ingame. My 8 year old stationary loads roughly 30-35 GB in maybe an hour or so, maybe faster on a good day (I usually have to delete the cache files every 2-3 play sessions, leading to slower loading). It does lag some, but I've gotten used to it. My laptop handles loading 15 GB in roughly 10-15 minutes, 5 GB in less than 5 minutes (I keep the amount of CC low - or low for me anyway, because I've already run one laptop to death by playing Sims).

Hi! I just wanted to add that I'm also currently circling around "my limit".
I definitely have to remove meshes if I want to add new ones. There might be an effect of polycount, but I'm not exactly sure.
I can also tell you that it really doesn't matter what kind of lot I'm on when I hit the limit: I've tested it with big lots and small lots, fully decorated and empty; when I hit the limit, it crashes.
All of my neighborhoods are empty of Sims at the moment and I have tested in multiple neighborhoods (fully decorated and empty), so corruption is very unlikely.
Pink flashing has also never occured in my game...

Currently I have around 13GB of buy/build CC, 89.425 files in 106 folders. I don't know what my total mesh count is though.
As most people have both Buy/Bodyshop, I also wonder if perhaps Bodyshop CC does not count towards the CC limit, but I obviously can't test that.

Btw, I have 16GB of RAM and some pretty decent specs (i5-6600 and GTX-970).

Thank you for the link to that thread FranH. I found a link to this informative post in it. The issue might apparently be exacerbated by faulty thumbnails.

Simmer22, thanks to you as well for this post that will surely clarify things for a lot of people here. Long loading times, lag, crashes and graphical glitches are not synonymous, and there seem to often be confusion when you talk about those kind of problem.
Out of curiosity, I have a few questions for you: how much RAM does your current computer have, and what quantity of your CC is made of object meshes?

I've never kept acount of meshes, but I can safely say I have a lot, and then some. Several thousands on my stationary, to give a rough count (my laptop has around 1800 files with the word "mesh" in it - but I bet there's a lot more).

My old laptop (from 2006) had 512 MB, no dedicated graphics card, and ran everything up to FT with a bunch of lagging. I often used to get a message that the memory was switching to virtual memory or something, and my game frequently crashed. Eventually, the old thing slowed to a crawl, and then died (I played Sims almost non-stop for 4-5 years on the poor thing - no wonder it just gave up).
My stationary was custom-built in 2009, to handle games, 3D programs, and rendering. It has 4 GB of RAM, has a fairly good Nvidia graphics card for its time - and it's so far the only one with the pink-flashing issue. 4 GB is too little for my use, but I'm planning to upgrade it.
My current laptop (2012) has 8 GB RAM, and dual cards (integrated + Nvidia). Haven't had pink flashing on this one, but I've on occasion had other graphic problems, because once in a while the Nvidia card plays ninja, and insists it doesn't exist. It also won't run my story hood imported from the stationary (keeps crashing when entering the neighborhood, so I've just given it up - I suspect Nargles... ) but runs other neighborhoods just fine.

I believe the limit is different for everyone. You must consider the amount of RAM you have, your processing speed and the ability of your graphics card to handle all of the CC in your game without stress. I have no games other than the Sims 2 installed on my laptop and I have all EP's & SP's. The best thing I ever did was change my graphic rules, thank you Kiri! That made a huge difference. I only have 4 GB of installed RAM and since all of that is not usable I keep my DL folder below 7 gb's and I removed unnecessary high poly cc and other items that I didn't need or use. I didn't get rid of it - I have it all stored on several flash drives. It doesn't make sense to me to keep CC in my DL folder that is not in use. My high poly items are cars and hairs and a few I can't live without smaller items. If I haven't used an object within 6 months it gets stored on a flash drive. I've also removed duplicate objects and meshes which can cause game crashes (I do regular scans with clean installer). I removed duplicate game files which freed up a ton of space on my hard drive. I play a custom neighborhood and I created my own townies so my neighborhood is small. My current neighborhood Redwood Cove is in it's 4th generation with one sub-hood and one university with a total of 225 Sims (I'm considering adding a vacation neighborhood). As a rule I no longer build or play lots over 2x3 (the exceptions are my 2 beach lots). The majority of my lots are either 2x2 or smaller. I also figured something out that may only be an issue in my game; how the lot is built and the distribution of furnishings and decoration throughout the lot play a big role in how the lot loads and ease of movement. I've been playing my current neighborhood for 2 1/2 years and I'm able to play 4 to 6 hours per session without crashes. If there are major events like births, birthdays, job promotions or I've visited several lots, added new furnishings, bought clothing and Sims have learned new skills - this all takes a lot of memory, so I will usually save and shut down more often. I've said all this to say that after years of playing this game I've learned what works for me and my computer.

My computer is old, at least 6 years, has 12 Ram I think and 10 gigs of cc. It doesn't normally crash. My old game had 20 gigs and less Ram and that would crash on large lots.

I don't know if I have a limit as my computer is nearly the same age as Jo's, but I will say this:

If I have a limit, I'm about to find out REALLY soon.

This is what I've learned in my time with Sims2 and helping out at the Graphics Forum at Leefish:

MAC Limitation
Remember, if you have a Mac, there is a built-in limit to the number of objects you can have.

PC (Microsloth)
If you have a PC(Microsloth) then your limit is based on your RAM and on your tweaking. There is also an issue with cores more than 2 or 4.

RAM
So for example,
you can have way more than 2G of RAM but if you are not using a more than 2G Ram hack, then it won't use all that awesome RAM. That's one limit.
Solution: Life of a Sim's excellent Illustrated CFF Explorer Tutorial

CPU
The other limitation is your CPU. Back when the game was invented in 2004, The only types of PC's were single processor ones. By the end of Sims 2, there was such a thing as dual cores, and the game could recognise them and use them. Unfortunately, there's been no update to engine since then and nowadays we have up to 8 cores. What does that mean?

1. The game is optimised to use 1 or 2 CPU's with a high rate. When you have 8 cores with a low rate (which is what they generally are), the game doesn't handle it very well. This is part of the reason why older computers can cope with it better. (Just using random numbers )So when you have 8 x1.2, the game is really only using 2x1.2 or 2.4MHz efficiently, and the other 7.2MHz poorly or not at all. In the old days, good single cores were 3.5 or close and the game used the whole lot efficiently.

When people ask me how to configure a new PC for using Sims 2, I stress that the cores need to be at least 2.4 MHz or more - we can limit the number of cores that the game runs with, but we need a good number in the limit.

2. The way processing works for 4-8 cores is different to the way 1 or 2 cores work. Because the game is optimised for 1-2 cores, it can get out of sync and actually slow down and get lag, and hence crashing for number of objects.As a consequence you can actually improve the game by limiting the number of cores used.
http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthre...=36103#pid36103 Post on Windows Graphics Thread Solutions on how to throttle the CPU.

OTHERS
The other thing to remember is that the Sims 2 is not the only thing that is running on your PC, and that other things use CPU and RAM. The more you have going on at the same time as the game, the less RAM and CPU you have to use in the Sims 2.

SimWardrobe had an excellent post on http://www.simwardrobe.com/ under tutorials and Windows XP Game Optimization Tips which is worth a read. There is still much in it that is relevant in Windows 7 (Which I use), but I can't vouch for Windows 8 or 10. I would be interested to hear from some tech-savvy folks who use Windows 8 or 10 for this.

OBJECTS
A. Duplicate finder for reducing the number of objects in game is a worthwhile thing. DUPFILES is the one I use to identify how many real duplicates I have.
B. Bulk Rename Utility for reducing the length of names is worthwhile as well because the more complex characters and name size you have, the more RAM the file name itself takes up.
C. Bundling is also useful for reducing the number of objects in your game -
Almighty Hat's excellent explanation on how to bundle
D. Everything in your Sims 2 folder and lower gets loaded into RAM. So if you have text files, picture files, or other things, that all goes up as well and can limit the number of objects in your game.
Alternative Download for DeCrudulator will identify and remove all the crud.
E. When you have multiple hoods in your game that can add to your RAM burden. I have a policy of 1 hood, 1 game and rename the different games to whatever I'm using.
How to create a Vanilla Game space is also useful for working out how to do this.
F. Keep your music, etc outside the game. Although you can add new music to the music channels etc it ALL gets loaded up to RAM, and therefore limits your RAM for objects. The other folders to check for extra stuff is the Paintings folder, Storytelling folder, SC4 Terrains, and Saved Sims and Teleport.

Just keep in your game what you actually use, rather than everything your eyes desire.

Thanks Kiri! The fact that my old computer is dual core is probably why it runs sims 2 so well but isn't so keen on sims 4. I also did something to help it see more RAM a few years back. However I have to have pictures of what I download, its the only way I know what is what. I pay for that in my loading time, but since it does not normally crash I just put up with the time.

Thank you Kiri for a clear and concise explanation and the links. I'm glad that you mentioned the music and painting files - both of which I've customized and can't see myself playing without them. I don't have nearly as many as I used and perhaps it may be time to review those files again.

Depending on how much space you have on your machine, you can do what I did - which is have a copy of your downloads with added pictures outside your game, that way you can have the best of both worlds.

When I was bundling the hairs on my machine, I did bodyshop views of each, and then used the microsoft tagging system in Windows File Explorer to tag them with interesting things. I give the pictures the same name as the object, and that way I can search on the pictures to find what I'm looking for, or if I'm looking for a picture of a specific object, I can use the picture name.

The folder system outside the game is the master, so anytime I add downloads, I add it to the master. Then delete the downloads in game and copy the master into it. Then decrud the in-game version.

I hope that makes sense? I have close to 300G in my archives folders so what I have in my game, and what I have in my masters is only ever a subset of that. Unfortunately my archive is not so organised.

I've customised my paintings as well. The first thing I've done is pull out all the cruddy maxis ones, and then added about 10 or so that I do use.

With those files, it's best to keep it trim to what you use rather than what you'd like.

I have that problem with a lot of things I add to the game. There are plenty I haven’t used but plan to at some point in the future, or don’t plan to use at all but haven’t got around tidying up my folders.

As for the limit, I don’t think I reached it as I don’t get random crashes caused by the catalogue, and if I do get them, they’re caused by something else. Apparently the game can’t use all of the video memory despite having it set in the Graphic Rules file (I have 4 GB but the game usually uses less than 1 GB), and I do get the pink textures problem, which seems to appear randomly. At some point I thought setting the video memory value in the file fixed it as the log shows 4 GB instead of 2160 MB and the problem didn’t appear for some time, however now it does, which isn’t actually that terrible as restarting the game fixes it (and it doesn’t make saving impossible like crashing), but it’s annoying that the game doesn’t use all the memory my card has.

Thank you, Kiri, that is very clear and helpful

In addition to what's been recommended, I'd suggest that using the Compressorizer to reduce the object file size amounts is a good idea-you can also use it to reduce the following file sizes:
Characters (neighborhood folder)
Lots (neighborhood folder)
Game thumbnails (Main game folder)
Terrains
My thinking is that if you reduce the size of the files the game is processing, the game will run smoother, less chance of crashing. No, it does not lead to corruption-it merely reduces the size of the original file. However, it doesn't decrease the poly size, sadly.
Plus, you can always go in the game and delete unneeded/unwanted files. It's recommended, as a matter of fact.

Thanks for the information about the number of neighborhoods, too-I guess it's rather obvious that when you have more than 1 running, the others are just hanging fire and taking up CPU task energy. But I'm darned if I can decide which neighborhood to consign to the "saved games" folder right now..they're all special!

I've never experienced this issue, with any of my games, on any of my machines - my current game has 6.5GB of CC and my old one had 9GB (pooklet hairs ). I have succeeded in crashing my game a number of times, but usually by seeing an option that I know shouldn't be available in that context and going "Hm, I wonder what will happen if I..."

I have consistently gone for higher clock speeds in my CPUs over more cores - my current one is a quad core at 3.2Ghz, previous was an old Core2Duo. I have 16GB of RAM - I had been planning to upgrade to 32 but honestly, everything runs perfectly as is. This is all without applying the 2GB patch (as far as I remember) or changing texture memory. I did have to tweak the graphicsRules to recognise my GPU, but since doing that I haven't had any problems.

If anyone wants to test a theory against a setup that works, lemme know.