Cleaning Mod folder

[vinceguldo]

I couldn't find a similar topic with search. So I opened this one: does anybody knows a way to identify any unused cc present in mod folder ? I'm in the process of playing again after many months, so I downloaded a bunch of new and updated stuff, now my mod folder is 40GB, the loadup of the game is already slowing down and I would like to cleanup stuff that I might have downloaded long ago but no sims of mine is wearing, or no building is using, etc.. can someone help or give me some advice?

 

Thanks 

[thellama99]

There's nothing out there that will flag custom content as unused, sadly, but there are still lots of apps you can clean your folder up with.

 

I'll go over the ones I use and some pros/cons.

 

1. Sims 4 Mod Manager: https://modthesims.info/d/663086/sims-4-mod-cc-manager-2021-by-gametimedev-beta-v1-1-0.html

The cool thing about this app is once it loads your library up it will modify the file name of any duplicate custom content (CC) as [d1]

So say you had panties.package in two folders, it'll rename one of them [d1]panties.package 

So you can just do a search in your mods folder for [d1] and delete anything with that in the name.

 

The con: If you download people's sims, sometimes they are messy and actually include mods that may have [d1] already there. Also, any app isn't perfect, it's possible it could make a mistake and delete something you need

(A good example is with skins. Some skins have "fixed," versions because patches broke them. The app may [d1] the working version of a skin/overlay and you may delete it by mistake)

Ultimately though, this is still really easily fixed.

 

And as for the app itself... top right corner, you can filter mods out so you can look for specific things. Like you can filter it so that just Male Hair shows up, or only Female Tops, or things listed as a Beard. It shows thumbnail pics of all the content. I wouldnt recommend using it to delete stuff until you really understand it all (as sometimes stuff that can see duplicated isnt. An example being a hairline mod. It may show up multiple times because theres a version for the FacialLeftMole, FacialRightMole, FacialMouthcrease, etc.)

 

2. Another app I use is the "Sims Mod Assistant" [Link seems broken at the moment, https://modthesims.info/d/647653/sims-mod-assistant.html] 

It's similar to the above mod except it lets you load a folder and you can choose to search for "Search exact doubles"

 

This shows you files that are 99% of the time 100% the same file and usually safe to delete.

I usually load the Sims 4 Mod Manager, get it to tag CC as [d1] and then use "Sims Mod Assistant" to search exact doubles and basically clean house that way.

 

Sims 4 Mod Assistant, "Search catalogue conflicts," is much more complicated and I wouldn't mess with it until you really understand how merged cc files, recolours, etc, work.

 

3. FINALLY - you can speed up your loading by merging your own CC using "Sims 4 Studio"

Merging your cc together can cause problems when the game patches, because if you merge 1000 files together and 2 of them break cause of a patch, and all your CC in in one file... it can be messy. BUT it isnt that bad! 

 

Download Sims 4 Studio - https://sims4studio.com/

Click Content-Management-Merge Packages

My CC is seperated in folders like "Tops, Bottoms, Makeup, Hair" etc. 

If you merge all the CC into one file - your loading times will become SO much faster.

If a patch happens, and you end up with broken CC, you can just use Sims 4 Studio to unmerge your files and remove any broken CC.

 

I hope this information was helpful.

 

 

[vinceguldo]

Thanks a lot for the tips @thellama99. I already used Mod assistant to delete the doubles, and even the conflict ones, when it makes sense (or maybe I messed up, who knows). But I didn't use Mod manager, I'll try as you say. Also, about merging, would you suggest to merge, let's say, all the hair in the hair folder together? Or clothes, or cc like that? 

Edited November 21, 2022 by vinceguldo

[thellama99]

On 11/19/2022 at 3:44 AM, vinceguldo said:

Thanks a lot for the tips @thellama99. I already used Mod assistant to delete the doubles, and even the conflict ones, when it makes sense (or maybe I messed up, who knows). But I didn't use Mod manager, I'll try as you say. Also, about merging, would you suggest to merge, let's say, all the hair in the hair folder together? Or clothes, or cc like that? 

I merged stuff by content creator (like I merged all of Darte's stuff together, All of GorillaGorillaGorilla, all of my PralineSims stuff)

 

Felt like this way it would be easier to keep track of it if a patch broke stuff. There seems to be about a 1.2gig limit for merging a file, so for some creators (Thisisthem, as an example) who make a lot of skins or large content you may need to make 2-3 merged files.

 

I've avoided merging general folders so far, but I do want to do it to my hair folder and a few others eventually once they're a bit more cleaned up.

[thatruth25]

On 11/19/2022 at 4:35 AM, thellama99 said:

I hope this information was helpful.

 

Thank you for all of this! I am currently wiping/remodding my game as well, and I have two quick questions:

 

-Do any of these tools show you what CC your sims are wearing? I want to delete a lot of CC, but I don't want to lose anything that I am actively using in game

-Do any of these tools help with determining which mods/CC are out of date?

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, thatruth25 said:

-Do any of these tools help with determining which mods/CC are out of date?

 

What should it check against? There's no global common repo or database to sync latest version from.

 

TSR CC Manager, YESN'T.

I can't in full consciousness recommend a freemium service that uses nagging technique and download caps to bother it's users into buying their one click premium tool.

 

Set yourself a reminder once a month and keep tabs where you got your cc from in a text file.

[thellama99]

On 11/28/2022 at 2:03 PM, thatruth25 said:

 

Thank you for all of this! I am currently wiping/remodding my game as well, and I have two quick questions:

 

-Do any of these tools show you what CC your sims are wearing? I want to delete a lot of CC, but I don't want to lose anything that I am actively using in game

-Do any of these tools help with determining which mods/CC are out of date?

Yes so the Sims Tray Importer, if you save a household, will show you all the CC thats saved to a sim - and if there is conflicting or duplicate files.

It won't show you if it's out of date - but if you have a weird bit of CC (like a shirt you've put on and now your sim is red and white with ??? on them) this tool will help you see what is causing it.

 

 

[SouthernGorilla]

Sims 4 Tray Importer is the best tool for the job. It will find duplicates, broken stuff, and stuff that conflicts with each other.

 

You can use S4TI to find unused stuff... in a roundabout way. Save all your sims to the library. Use S4TI to see what they are wearing. Drag those files to a dedicated folder. When you have all that stuff moved, delete everything else.

 

And I would strongly advise AGAINST merging packages. It's impossible to find duplicates inside merged packages. And if something is broken inside a merged package the only way to remove it is to unmerge the package first. 

 

If loading times are a problem there are better ways to fix it than merging:

 

1) Get rid of all the broken junk. This is obvious, but it's the best place to start.

2) Fix the file names. There are university papers on this subject. The TL;DR is that anything other than a letter or a number takes longer for your computer to parse. So all those special characters like ({{_+*^&$ that CC authors love to throw in their package names are hurting your load times. There's a tool called Bulk Rename Utility that will fix this in just a few clicks. It's a bit intimidating to look at, but you only need a couple of the options. And the documentation on it is fantastic.

3) Get rid of the extraneous fluff. All those PNGs, JPEGs, and README!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! files in your folder also hurt load times. Your computer doesn't know to ignore them, it has to look at every file in the folder to decide whether to load it or not. If you don't want to get rid of them, you can put them all in a separate folder above your mods folder.

4) Minimize the number of subfolders. Basically, every subfolder is a dead-end street your computer has to drive down, then turn around and go back out. If you just extract packages as-is, you no doubt have items 2-3 folders deep with only a single package in them. It's a huge waste of time digging them all out. I keep animations in a separate folder, scripts in another, and that's about it. There are a couple temporary folders I use to hold stuff I'm working on in S4S, but otherwise I keep everything directly in the mods folder. There's no functional reason to have separate folders for hairs, eyebrows, leggings, or each author you use.

 

Before the recent purge (I deleted literally everything) I had over 18,000 packages in my Mods folder. It took just 2.5 minutes from the time I clicked the launcher to the time I had a sim walking around in the game. Nothing was merged, I just did the exact steps I outlined above. And it isn't much trouble with S4TI and a bit of Powershell. You don't need to know Powershell to do it, it just makes some fancier things possible.