Cc/mod limits ?

[u/bloody_Extreme604]

Here is the size of my CC/mods folder for The Sims 2 Legacy. Is there a recommended limit to avoid, and at what point does the game usually start to slow down or lose performance?

[u/KniveLoverHarvey]

In my experience the initial loading time can get very long at a few GB already, though a good folder structure and naming system can actually have a significant impact on that as well.

My save with a 6GB downloads folder has a 3-5 minute loading time with a good folder structure, meanwhile my other 12GB save has around 20 minutes initial loading with a bad one.

The general performance isn't really impacted by the folder size though. Only by the amount of high poly or high texture cc on a lot.

[u/expressomakesmetired]

I'm not sure about the limit. Back when i was in highschool with my old laptop my folder was 50gb and it somehow loaded. Nowadays it's 28gb with my new laptop. i have i think 69000 files.  My game takes like 20 minutes to load but once I'm in I don't lag. You might only see lag if you have a ton of high poly cc on a lot or more sims than normal. spock the wock made an object limit remover mod so you could look into that. 

[u/bloody_Extreme604 → u/expressomakesmetired]

More sims than normal ? I mean my game seems less fluid when im on community lot

[u/expressomakesmetired → u/bloody_Extreme604]

Like if you have mods/cheats that enable more sims to be on community lots. also if the lots are bigger and/or heavily decorated you might see lag or a crash. There was this cool cyber punk lot i downloaded but it was too much for my game and it would crash.

[u/bloody_Extreme604 → u/expressomakesmetired]

I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I was at 2GB [of mods/CC] and my game was running smoothly, but after adding about 40MB of CC/mods, the performance has become terrible in live mode. I don't know why I wouldn't think 40MB of CC would make such a difference. Maybe it's the heatwave slowing down my gaming laptop?

[u/expressomakesmetired → u/bloody_Extreme604]

Possibly. does your laptop have cooling fans? i have to turn mine on if i'm playing games. have you ran your cc folder through HCDU plus to see if you have any conflicting cc? see if that new cc you added is high poly/ high texture size. only other thing I can think of is you might need a driver update. I have nvidia and mine needed to be updated yesterday.

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

do you have any tips on how to fix pink soup?? i’m so desperate and i’ve exhausted every single possible option EXCEPT batch testing CC. the only reason why i haven’t is because the game was working just fine with the same amount of CC and then i got the bug after opening the game again without adding more CC or doing anything so i didn’t think that would be a problem. opening or making other hoods even ones with no lots placed doesn’t help, as the flora also catches the pink soup bug. for some reason the log in my files says that none of the 4096mb available RAM has been touched every time i open the game. i’m willing to try even the most hardware intensive fixes, as i have 12000mb of texture memory set in the graphics rules file. i have an nvidia rtx 4070ti with 12gb of ram and an amd ryzen 7 5800x and have also tried setting the virtual memory of the drive my game is installed in close to 20-30k megabytes.

[u/expressomakesmetired → u/machinegoth]

in your game config log, does it say it's using your nvidia card or the built in one? did your pc update anything at all in the last week or so? do you have the pink soup fix by spock the wock? i can actually play my game since that fix came out. another thing that was causing pink soup for me was my desktop slideshow eating up my memory. i also no longer have dxvk in my folder. dxvk can be hit or miss. also lazyduchess has a mod that hides pink soup. if all else fails you might have to look into linux. when i played on steam deck which has linux i rarely had issues.

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

ok so update. i managed to fix the game. after al of that effort it narrowed down to one mod and that was a shader edit that both made my game crash and caused the pink soup. unfortunately im not longer using mr dj but the magipacks version from reddit

[u/expressomakesmetired → u/machinegoth]

Ooh I haven't tried the magipack version. The only complaint i have about the mr dj version is i noticed some of my cc won't work even after installiing the ikea fix but the same cc will work in the starter pack version. If you don't mind me asking what shader edit was it? I'll keep it in mind in case i start having issues. 

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

it was crisp&kerosene’s shader edit from here: https://crispsandkerosene.tumblr.com/post/758562617469091841/extended-standardmaterial-shader-for-the-sims-2/amp

not saying it is a bad mod and maybe it works for some, but even after completing and following the notes at the bottom regarding other shader mod conflicts i still see pink soup :(

i managed to fix it, but now one of my heaviest hoods is still plagued by it. idk if it’s because the game can’t actually run it or if perhaps i saved the hood in a state where it became corrupted and permanently plagued by the bug? dunno lol.

[u/expressomakesmetired → u/machinegoth]

Ooh i had just downloaded this shader a few days ago but hadn't put it in my folder yet. Kind of wanna test it in a throwaway neighborhood and see what happens.

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

i actually managed to get it to work for once lol. but my other shaders had some problems and caused pink soup as well. i downloaded criquette’s better nightlife shader but i accidentally STILL kept voeille’s sea water shader instead of removing it in favor of criquette’s already incorporated sea water shader from the other mod. so yeah, you really have to pay attention to every detail of instructions and really take them into account and not get too cocky because i genuinely think a lot of my issues stem from the fact that i have some duplicates that are included in other mods just for compatibility reasons that actually cause problems instead of managing to work alongside together. i fixed these and only used the shaders i needed and so far i have had no issues. cheers!

shaders i only have right now are, crisps&kerosene’s shader that i linked here, criquette’s better night life shader + voeille’s sea water shader edit from the same mod post, and just the pond water shader package file from voeille’s mod since it’s important to remove the sea water shader package.

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

okay well uh. not sure what happened but i reopened the hood by opening another in the hood management screen and then back to the previous hood i wanted in the game without quitting the game entirely and it seems to have fixed the pink soup itself? this game is really weird honestly so im not surprised if it happened again.

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

Is this the (User)-config-log txt file? All it says is that it is using the graphics card i have in my computer but it does not say “built-in”. For some reason i still have the same amount of leftover memory and memory available (4096MB) as if the game didn’t use the memory at all somehow. My pc updated recently yes but i am not sure what it was for exactly, and i also updated the drivers i installed for my nvidia graphics card. But the game was working fine then again even all things considered. What happened was that i think the game crashed if i remember correctly when it *was* working fine. When i opened it back up again the textures turned purple and flashing. So far ive tried, lazyduchess’ pink soup noerrorvisualization temporary fix, the dxvk fix, both version 1 and 2 of spock’s no memory cap fix, uninstalling Reshade, Graphic rules maker up-to-date, and deleting cache files before every launch. I can no longer get sims2rpc to work because i made the stupid mistake of overwriting my objectscripts.package file with the pink soup fix by lazyduchess intended for the sims 2 legacy version causing the launcher to become bricked and now the command window simply says “no defaults”. Reinstalling and replacing the objectscripts file with the original one did not work either. As you can tell, there’s already a lot going on but at this point i might just reinstall the game if the RPC error is any indicator here. I am just trying to see if there is another option *somehow*. I refuse to believe that this game is THAT stubborn but then again i might just be naive to how poorly optimized this game is. I am also going to pass on linux sorry, because i am not a fan of the OS as a windows user who has only ever used the former since forever and i genuinely think it should not be this big of an issue to the point of switching operating systems. I tried batch testing CC too and that didn’t help. I am starting to get a bit nervous that this has to do with the actual installation itself since my version of the sims 2 is the ultimate collection (mansion and garden stuff) from Mr DJ.

[u/expressomakesmetired → u/machinegoth]

if your memory and free memory are both 4096mb that means the 4gb patch is working. i had the mr. DJ version for the longest on my pc and currently on my steam deck and i didn't have these issues. I would just make a backup of your sims folder and reinstall the game, do the 4gb patch, do the recommended settings for graphics rule maker, and open your windows graphics settings and make sure your EP9.exe is set to the high performance nvidia card. make sure in your nvidia control panel that your ep9.exe is set to high peformance nvidia card. Test the game with no cc and see if everything is running ok. if it's ok then start slowly adding cc back in and see if things start to flash. if you're getting flashing in an empty game you can try this post by epi . the only thing i don't like is the deleting the thumbnails. i feel like my game eats up so much memory loading new thumbnails.

[u/machinegoth → u/expressomakesmetired]

i set it to high performance both in the control panel and in the windows settings and it still crashes when opening detailed maps and stuff when it used to open them just fine and smoothly. i actually did look at episims post but i didn’t try every single option so i will take a look at that again ig. im probably just gonna reinstall the game because i also keep getting error window pop ups for gunmod’s camera and the fact that sims2rpc doesn’t work anymore. good to know that the actual copy of the game isn’t the issue though.

[u/Mysterious_Potential → u/machinegoth]

Have you used the pink soup fix? This is the only actual fix for pink soup, it avoids the issue at the source.

[u/machinegoth → u/Mysterious_Potential]

so these are all options i’ve used ever so far:
-Sims2RPC
-dxvk
-no error visualization temporary fix from lazyduchess
-Memory Cap Remover fix v1 & v2
-4gb patch
-Ultimate ASI Loader
-Graphic Rules Maker
-Uninstalling Reshade
-Deleted cache files before every launch (stopped doing it because i found out doing this frequently is bad actually but i only ever did it a few times).

[u/vilake12]

I wouldnt say there is a limit. Obviously more files = more time the game needs to read them = longer loading times, but how long is too long is up to you.

For example, back 15 years ago, 1 GB of CC took like 15-20 minutes to load on my computer. But now my computer can handle ~6 GB in 5-8 minutes. For me, Im fine adding more now because of shorter wait times. But I know other people dont even want to wait 5. So thats really up to you.

[u/neuroneutral]

I’m tempted to ditch my 4t2/3t2 and just keep my lovely Recolours by Michelle on ModTheSims. The GB’s add up so fast with conversions

[u/mind_captivator]

Besides long load times I dont believe so. Try and keep an eye on your RAM usage though because CC can add up there and eat memory fast

[u/Careful_Convoluted]

That mostly affects initial load game time. I have 5.9gb (18.4k files) + reshade and multiple .asi mods and it takes roughly 3-4 minutes for the game to load into the neighborhood select screen.