MOD newbie - some questions

Bettyboop55

As many of you know Bettyboop55 and IT are not two things which go together. You may also know that I am nearing completion on my first serious CAW project and need to install rabbithole rugs in order to get my community lots to work properly.

I think I have got the basic principles of installing mods sorted but I have one or two questions.

I use W10 and therefore my games files save to One Drive. This I believe I must change. I can't use my C drive as this is SSD and the operating system hogs most of it. I want to put my games files to my D drive. How do I do this please without losing saved games or my CAW work.

I plan to install the Framework files from Mod the Sims. Do I do this before I move the games folders from One Drive or after ? If after will I need to do anything to get the Framework files to automatically recognise the D Drive as the place to set up ?

Any help sorting this would be appreciated. I would ask that you please use simple English as I am old and easily confused when it comes to IT.

Many thanks.
Betty

Emily4331

Luckily for you, I just did this with my Sims 3 folder. In order to move your Sims 3 folder and have the game read and write to the folder in the new location without creating a new folder in your documents is to create a Sims 3 folder in your documents that is a symbolic link to the one in your D Drive. I hope that isn't confusing. Here's the instructions:

• Step 1: Move your The Sims 3 folder from your documents to whichever drive you want it to be on. Make sure that there is no The Sims 3 folder remaining in your Electronic Arts folder before you proceed.
• Step 2: Run command prompt as administrator. You can do this one of two ways:
  1. Hit the windows key+R, type "cmd", do not click okay. Instead, after you've typed cmd hit Ctrl+shift+enter. Your computer will ask you if you'd like to allow the program to make changes - click yes.
  2. Type into the search bar on your computer "cmd". Command Prompt will be the result, if it is highlighted hit ctrl+shift+enter to run it in administrator. Alternatively, you can right click Command Prompt from the search results list and select "run as administrator".
  
• Step 3: Type the appropriate command line to create your symbolic link.
  This step might be tricky for those not familiar with command prompts, so I'll walk you through it:
  When you open Command Prompt you'll see some trademark mumbo jumbo in there followed by a line consisting of your System32 directory. Don't let those confuse you. You don't mess with them at all, you just type. First, you'll want to type a space after System32>. Then you'll type this exactly how I have it written here unless you put your folder into a drive with a different letter assigned to it. If that's the case, just replace my drive letter with the one you moved your folder to. And obviously replace your name with the name of the user whose documents you want affect...aka yours.
  
  

  mklink /D "C:\Users\Yourname\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3" "H:\The Sims 3"
  

  
  Hit enter to confirm it and it will take effect.
  
  
• Enjoy your freed up C: drive space, while keeping your Sims 3 folder recognized by the game.

If any of that doesn't make sense, I'll be happy to try to explain it better.

EDIT: forgot to answer the second part - you can add the framework for your mods before or after, it won't matter. And your Sims 3 folder can be accessed from the location of the symbolic link and the real location in the D Drive, so any changes made to one will change the other.

Also, obviously my documents in the tutorial above should be changed to your One Drive in your case. So just replace the first file path in the command line with the file path to your One Drive location.

EDIT2: The framework files you installed with set up wherever you extract them. Before, you extract to your Sims 3 folder in One Drive, but if you do the symbolic link before you set up the framework, you could use the path to your Sims 3 folder in One Drive or the path to your Sims 3 folder in your D Drive to extract the framework to because they are the same folder. Changing one changes the other. A folder doesn't technically exist in your One Drive, so it won't take up space, but it looks like it exists there which confuses the game into reading the folder's knew location. I am terrible at explaining things, I am so sorry. lol

Bettyboop55

Emily4331 wrote: »

Luckily for you, I just did this with my Sims 3 folder. In order to move your Sims 3 folder and have the game read and write to the folder in the new location without creating a new folder in your documents is to create a Sims 3 folder in your documents that is a symbolic link to the one in your D Drive. I hope that isn't confusing. Here's the instructions:

• Step 1: Move your The Sims 3 folder from your documents to whichever drive you want it to be on. Make sure that there is no The Sims 3 folder remaining in your Electronic Arts folder before you proceed.
• Step 2: Run command prompt as administrator. You can do this one of two ways:
  1. Hit the windows key+R, type "cmd", do not click okay. Instead, after you've typed cmd hit Ctrl+shift+enter. Your computer will ask you if you'd like to allow the program to make changes - click yes.
  2. Type into the search bar on your computer "cmd". Command Prompt will be the result, if it is highlighted hit ctrl+shift+enter to run it in administrator. Alternatively, you can right click Command Prompt from the search results list and select "run as administrator".
  
• Step 3: Type the appropriate command line to create your symbolic link.
  This step might be tricky for those not familiar with command prompts, so I'll walk you through it:
  When you open Command Prompt you'll see some trademark mumbo jumbo in there followed by a line consisting of your System32 directory. Don't let those confuse you. You don't mess with them at all, you just type. First, you'll want to type a space after System32>. Then you'll type this exactly how I have it written here unless you put your folder into a drive with a different letter assigned to it. If that's the case, just replace my drive letter with the one you moved your folder to. And obviously replace your name with the name of the user whose documents you want affect...aka yours.
  
  

  mklink /D "C:\Users\Yourname\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3" "H:\The Sims 3"
  

  
  Hit enter to confirm it and it will take effect.
  
  
• Enjoy your freed up C: drive space, while keeping your Sims 3 folder recognized by the game.

If any of that doesn't make sense, I'll be happy to try to explain it better.

EDIT: forgot to answer the second part - you can add the framework for your mods before or after, it won't matter. And your Sims 3 folder can be accessed from the location of the symbolic link and the real location in the D Drive, so any changes made to one will change the other.

Also, obviously my documents in the tutorial above should be changed to your One Drive in your case. So just replace the first file path in the command line with the file path to your One Drive location.

EDIT2: The framework files you installed with set up wherever you extract them. Before, you extract to your Sims 3 folder in One Drive, but if you do the symbolic link before you set up the framework, you could use the path to your Sims 3 folder in One Drive or the path to your Sims 3 folder in your D Drive to extract the framework to because they are the same folder. Changing one changes the other. A folder doesn't technically exist in your One Drive, so it won't take up space, but it looks like it exists there which confuses the game into reading the folder's knew location. I am terrible at explaining things, I am so sorry. lol

Emily thank you so much for doing this I have understood a certain amount. I am going to ask a more computer literate friend to help me carry out the procedure because I got a little lost over the creation of the symbolic link.

So where you have typed drive c I would put drive d because that is the drive I am going to move the folder to. In which case what does drive H at the end of the link represent?

I also got the point about putting One Drive in the pathway. Does that mean I must ensure the place I put my Sims 3 folder needs an identical pathway except for the drive letter ? Currently there is no file or folder structure within the D drive except for a couple of folders I have created for the Sims 3 programme files and some of my writing projects.

Finally should I leave my Create a World files in the One Drive or do they need moving in the same way as the Sims 3 games files?

Thanks again for your help. I am really grateful I will confess I have had an idea for a new CAW project which I have been thinking about for a while so I am getting antsy to finish Fenbury first.

Emily4331

Nope, the H drive in my example is the drive you moved your folder to. The directory doesn't have to be the same, no.
Yours would look something like this, I imagine, but I don't know where One Drive is located, so this is just an example:

mlink /D "C:\Users\Yourname\One Drive\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3" "D:\The Sims 3"

Basically the first directory you type is where you are creating the symbolic link - in your case, this is in One Drive. The second link is where you moved your Sims 3 folder and where you want the symbolic link to be linked to - in your case, this is your Sims 3 folder that you moved into your D Drive. You don't need a folder structure in your D Drive, just put your Sims 3 folder in.

If you are looking to move your CAW files from One Drive, then you can. Basically, it'd be the same procedure as above:

mlink /D "C:\Users\Yourname\One Drive\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Create A World Tool" "D:\The Sims 3 Create A World Tool"

And just like with your Sims 3 folder, you want to move the entire folder to where you want it to be before creating the link. The symbolic link creates the new symbolic The Sims 3 and The Sims 3 Create A World Tool folders, so you don't want them to exist at all in their previous location in One Drive before creating the symbolic link.

So, basically, here's what that command line means:

mlink /D - tells the computer to create a symbolic link using the following directories. The /D is the type of symbolic link, but you don't have to worry about that.
First Directory - Where you want to create the symbolic link folder, ending with the name you wish to give the folder. The Sims 3, in our case.
Second Directory - The location of the folder you want to symbolically link to.

And in case you aren't sure - the quotes around each directory are necessary and should be typed in the command line.

If you tell me where your One Drive is, I can give you the exact command to do the job if it's still confusing to you.

igazor

If I may interject here, why are we using symbolic links for this? Maybe I'm missing something.

The user game folder should not be in OneDrive, that's a flaw whereby the game sees the Documents folder in there and thinks that's where the user game folders should go. It came about and never got fixed because the prevalence of OneDrive usage arose during the release of Win 10, after the game's development cycle was already over.

I'll step back if this is still how the OP wishes to proceed, I mean it's not incorrect or anything, but what I would do is deactivate OneDrive entirely (unless there was some other need for it) and change the location of the entire Documents library at the user level to the D drive. Thus the goal will be that the user game folder will still be in the proper Documents folder but none of it will be on C anymore.
https://www.dummies.com/computers/operating-systems/windows-10/how-to-change-the-location-of-user-folders-in-windows-10

Emily4331

Disregard.

Emily4331

@igazor Sorry, I didn't know you could change the location of your documents honestly. This is just how I was told to do it.

Welp, now I feel 🐸🐸🐸🐸. Sorry @Bettyboop55 follow Igazor's advice. It is a lot more simple.

igazor

@Emily4331 - It was not poor advice, just not (as you said) the simplest way to go about it. If there is a benefit to the rest of what should be the user Documents library staying on the C drive such as something else being able to take advantage of it being an SSD, then your way would have been better although a bit more complicated. It also depends on how tight for space that C drive is, sometimes shifting the entire Documents location is pretty much the only way to go.

Bettyboop55

Hello @Emily4331 and @igazor thank you both for your suggestions on how best to tackle moving the TS3 folder out of One Drive. I can't say I understood all of what you have discussed but looking at the instructions I think it easiest to move the Documents folder to my C drive. This will allow me to take advantage of the SSD. I have checked the current size is 22GB which is manageable given my OS takes 57GB and the total available space is 118GB. I don't want to move the remaining items on my One Drive so I assume it is ok not to deactivate it ?

Thanks again.

Betty

igazor

I assume you do not mean 22 GB there for total size and dropped a zero or something. Should that be more like 220 GB? That's not an impossible size to work with, just an annoying one as you will have to keep checking to make sure available space does not dwindle away. The drive running Windows should never drop below 15% or 35 GB free space (Win 10 might require a bit more than that).

It's fine to keep OD activated if you have a real use for it, as long as you can "convince" the game to stop using it for its TS3 user game folder.

Bettyboop55

Good Morning @igazor. When I hold my mouse over the documents folder in One Drive it says 24.1GB. The total for everything in One Drive is only 25.4GB. I truly don't keep a lot of stuff and I only have another 3GB of store content to add back in once I have completed my CAW project.

However I have rechecked my C Drive. It says I only have 25GB of space remaining. So I am guessing it might be safer all round if I move my documents folder to the D drive which has approx 1.8TB of free space.

I am reluctant to move other folders from One Drive because the only sensible place I have for them is my D Drive. This might sound odd but there is no proper folder/file structure for the D drive at present and I have no desire to end up with a chaotic mess where I can't find things. Despite appearances to the contrary I like things neat and tidy.

igazor

Okay, I misunderstood. Your SSD (C Drive) is smaller than I thought, it must be 128 GB then with a portion not usable due to overhead. No, the real Documents library and thus the live game folder should not be on C and Windows is not going to be happy running with such a small amount of free space at or less than 25 GB.

OneDrive is intended for the synchronization and storage of data in the cloud. When set up the way it was intended (not what tends to happen by accident), whenever you add, remove, or edit a document or any kind of file in OneDrive, the change gets processed and sent up to the cloud server as a form of backup so that if you access these things from another computer or device they will be exactly the same. If you use another device to add, remove, or change the contents then the changes get sent back down to your computer. User game folders actually in use by the game, as opposed to spare copies, should not be a part of that process. If they need to be backed up to the cloud, which is not a terrible idea if one has the cloud account capacity, it should be done manually or by working with copies of the game folder data, not the files that are actually live and running when the game is being played.

If you aren't using the cloud sync features of OneDrive at all, then I'm afraid I am not understanding its purpose. If things are all organized for you in a way that you like already, can you not move or copy then delete the folders and their contents to D thus maintaining their contents and their organization at the same time? A huge empty storage chamber like a 2 TB D drive just begging to be used for storage is a blessing, not something we would typically be fearful of or annoyed at.

Bettyboop55

@igazor it is not a case of being fearful but more to do with my lack of knowledge of IT and the inner workings of W10. Moving the One Drive folders to the D drive is the most sensible solution and then deactivating One Drive. My brother who plays with computers for a living thinks I should be able to organise my D drive so that I don't lose things. What he doesn't want me doing is playing around cmd prompts. I suspect this is because he knows he will have to clear up any mess I make. I remember his rather colourful language when I let loose a couple of trojans the last time I tried to install mods.

Thank you again for your help

Bettyboop55

@igazor @Emily4331 I have managed to move my documents folder to the d drive. I nearly had another heart attack when I opened CAW for the first time but soon sussed that I needed to redirect the tool to look in the d drive for my saved versions of Fenbury. It looks like I will have to go and fiddle with my graphics setting again in TS3. I got the same message as when I first installed about the game not recognising my graphics card.

So thank you both once again. Incidentally it looks like my Onedrive had already been deactivated. I may have done that to protect the IPR for my writing projects. So now my c drive has quite a lot of space which will make my OS happy considering how much space it needs for endless updates !!