How much can you merge into a package file?

ZeeGee · January 2015

There is a lot of conflicting info out there about how many packages you can merge with S3PE. Some say 100 files, some say 300 MB, some say 700 MB. Can some of you techies who have been successful at merging tell me how much you put into your merged packages?

igazor · January 2015

I'm more of a techie who has been unsuccessful at merging, due to some boneheaded mistake I made along the line (must have let a mod or a slider get into a merged file somehow and it broke everything in that particular bundle) and never circled back to try it again. Will that do?

The real answer should be "just before it's too large to work," but that's not much help. I don't think there is a hard and fast limit, so it will likely vary by player. The 100 file / 300 MB rules sound pretty good as guidelines, though.

simsgal2227 · January 2015

I have one that is 980,000 KB, another that is 121,000 KB. I think you want them smaller rather than bigger, because the bigger it is, the longer it can take to work. I am not positive on this, but I think the bigger it is, the more likely it will crash? I guess it depends on how much CC you have, and how much patience you have. I have two merged files and some individual ones of later downloads (I could probably merge those again when I feel like it). If you have two smaller merged files instead of one larger one, I don't think that makes much of a difference on game performance.

ZeeGee · January 2015

igazor wrote: »

I'm more of a techie who has been unsuccessful at merging, due to some boneheaded mistake I made along the line (must have let a mod or a slider get into a merged file somehow and it broke everything in that particular bundle) and never circled back to try it again. Will that do?

The real answer should be "just before it's too large to work," but that's not much help. I don't think there is a hard and fast limit, so it will likely vary by player. The 100 file / 300 MB rules sound pretty good as guidelines, though.

LOL! Well I a techie is unsuccessful I don't have a snowball's chance in.....

I'll try the 100 file/300 mb limit and see what happens. If all goes smooth I might add a little more. I'm a total CC junkie coming from SFP where options were excruciatingly limited. I love my CC!

igazor · January 2015

LOL, well it was more a point of not much benefit for me. I just tried the merging process once to see what all the fuss has been about. I have a fair amount of CC but not nearly as much as many others do -- the big benefit is supposed to be faster startup times. The bundles I did get merged correctly saved me around a minute, so it was never really all that important for me to try again.

TreyNutz · January 2015

The largest I have is 765 MB or so. That one is all hair. I think it's about 150 files. I have separate merges for clothing, tattoos, and accessories, they are all much smaller.

LunBeauty · January 2015

Each one of my merged files has about 100 packages in it, maybe 120 in some. I only have that much because apparently, from what I read on clubcrimsyn, if you try and merge more than that, it could cause some problems with your game. With my hair files, I have...about 12 merged files, plus the merged Colors file, which is where my hair colors are. All together, my Hairs Folder is 7.21 GB.

InfraGreen · January 2015

I merge by creator and put a cap at merging 200MB worth of files.

Tryc · January 2015

I've done both the piecemeal merges of 200MB each and the category merges that can be over 1GB - no noticeable problems in my game. How long it takes for S3PE to merge the larger packages may be the issue for some.

jillbg · January 2015

I haven't tried yet, S3PE is downloaded and fretting to get started, but as my game runs smoothly as it is (knock on wood) with 104Mo CC, poses and -of course- (Nraas) mods...

InfraGreen · January 2015

@jillbg: 104MB of CC and mods isn't much. You can probably get away with not merging.

ZeeGee · January 2015

Thanks everyone for your input.

Tryc wrote: »

I've done both the piecemeal merges of 200MB each and the category merges that can be over 1GB - no noticeable problems in my game. How long it takes for S3PE to merge the larger packages may be the issue for some.

I'm going to try a big old file and see how it works. I don't care about the waiting time to merge. What I hate is the waiting time in CAS when you click on hairs or a different outfit. Grrrrr. Maybe this will fix that

ZeeGee · January 2015

And why was my post moved to general? Is this not a techie issue? This happened once before and I thought I just accidentally posted in the wrong category.

jillbg · January 2015

@InfraGreen : Thanks for your advice, I'm actually more scared of messing up my game by merging than by leaving it like it is... $:\$

igazor · January 2015

ZeeGee wrote: »

I'm going to try a big old file and see how it works. I don't care about the waiting time to merge. What I hate is the waiting time in CAS when you click on hairs or a different outfit. Grrrrr. Maybe this will fix that

If you mean the delay before all the thumbnails load and actually become selectable when you click on the different categories, could be mistaken but don't think that merging is going to help with that. As I understand it, merging's benefits come into play during the game's loadup routine.

NRaas MasterController has a "Show in Compact Form" option for CAS that collapses all of items in a group (row) into one square -- meaning for the items that come in two or three different pre-made recolors/restyles. You can still see the pre-mades in CASt, but each entire item only takes up one square back in compact view rather than an entire row. Whenever I invoke that, the time it takes to switch categories goes down to next to nothing.

The MC Integration add-on module would also be needed if you want to see this or any other MC CAS feature in all areas of the game, such as Create a Household.

simsgal2227 · January 2015

igazor wrote: »

ZeeGee wrote: »

I'm going to try a big old file and see how it works. I don't care about the waiting time to merge. What I hate is the waiting time in CAS when you click on hairs or a different outfit. Grrrrr. Maybe this will fix that

If you mean the delay before all the thumbnails load and actually become selectable when you click on the different categories, could be mistaken but don't think that merging is going to help with that. As I understand it, merging's benefits come into play during the game's loadup routine.

NRaas MasterController has a "Show in Compact Form" option for CAS that collapses all of items in a group (row) into one square -- meaning for the items that come in two or three different pre-made recolors/restyles. You can still see the pre-mades in CASt, but each entire item only takes up one square back in compact view rather than an entire row. Whenever I invoke that, the time it takes to switch categories goes down to next to nothing.

The MC Integration add-on module would also be needed if you want to see this or any other MC CAS feature in all areas of the game, such as Create a Household.

Oh my gosh, this is news to me, so awesome... I often don't give my sims accessories just because of how long it takes to load, even though I only have a moderate amount of CAS cc.

TreyNutz · January 2015

igazor wrote: »

If you mean the delay before all the thumbnails load and actually become selectable when you click on the different categories, could be mistaken but don't think that merging is going to help with that. As I understand it, merging's benefits come into play during the game's loadup routine.

I think that's right. That's the reason I merged my CC. I didn't notice any difference in CAS loading thumbnails but the game loading improved somewhat.

ZeeGee · January 2015

igazor wrote: »

NRaas MasterController has a "Show in Compact Form" option for CAS that collapses all of items in a group (row) into one square -- meaning for the items that come in two or three different pre-made recolors/restyles. You can still see the pre-mades in CASt, but each entire item only takes up one square back in compact view rather than an entire row. Whenever I invoke that, the time it takes to switch categories goes down to next to nothing.

The MC Integration add-on module would also be needed if you want to see this or any other MC CAS feature in all areas of the game, such as Create a Household.

Found it on Google, I'l try it out. Thanks!

igazor · January 2015

@ZeeGee - Oh sorry, you could have looked in my signature instead of Google if you needed a path to our door. But anyway...

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Getting+Started+Using+NRAAS+Mods (introduction to NRaas)

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/MasterController+FAQ (the CAS section is about halfway down the page)
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/MasterController (the mod itself)

ZeeGee · January 2015

Well thank you all. I guess I've been on the wrong track. I don't really care about game loading time. I go off and do other stuff. What I don't like is when I'm trying to make a sim and have to sit there forever when changing categories. I'll check out the nraas thing @igazor‌. Hopefully it's not too complicated for the techie impaired!

igazor · January 2015

MasterController is indeed a complex mod, but unlike other mods once installed it doesn't actually do anything to your game. Besides the CAS replacement, it offers menus of commands on sims, objects, households, and the town and waits for the user to invoke any of them.

To get to the CAS options from within Live Mode, click on City Hall and NRaas > MC > Settings > CAS. From within CAS itself, you can get to the same menu by right-clicking on the "..." button in the lower left corner where the Game Options, Save, etc. menu is. Either way, the "Show in Compact Form" options are in there somewhere.

ZeeGee · January 2015

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS MOD!! Thank you. Sorry for shouting. Got excited.

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How much can you merge into a package file?

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