Early Morning CC Culling

[strangetomato]

Why yes I am up before dawn and organizing my downloads folder with a fiery passion. Why do you ask? :P Early morning insomnia is the worst, but I do appreciate the extra "me time" (and at least I went to bed pretty early last night).

I'm really getting somewhere with my cc organizing lately. I've decided to take a long, hard, honest look at what I actually use in-game. I'm limiting my Simgaroop hair recolours to one hue of each hair colour (making an exception for redheaded aliens, who look better with bright red, and I'm a little torn on the browns), deleting all the pretty-but-unnatural eyecolours (so no more townies with bright purple eyes), Maxis-match eyebrows (when I only ever use the three default shapes), and eye/nose/mouth shaders/corners, face wrinkles, nail polishes, bazillion glasses recolours, and maybe even some of the freckles (maybe). And that's just BodyShop!

I finally downloaded Homecrafter as a way of weeding out the last few walls and floors in colours I don't use, but I'm a little stuck on the object recolours. I did some hunting around, and the only method of identifying individual object recolours seems to be SimPE, and then deleting them from the downloads folder. Am I missing something? I'd love to be able to view and delete them all in one go.

Whelp... back to work! XD

Comments

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

(No idea if you know about this one or not, but I'll just go on like you don't) You can delete those recolours in game. When you use the tool to choose a different recolour, there's a rubbish bin icon. Just click on the recolour you want to get rid of, then the bin. I think that's the easiest way to do it.

I need to sort through my CC, but it's just so daunting!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Umm... *shifty eyes* You can do that? XD

Now I feel like a real noob. I thought it was a Very Bad Idea, but I haven't actually attempted to do it in ages (I usually just let the odd unwanted recolour go, or delete the whole set, or even better if they're named — I just don't add the ones I don't want).

It is a pretty daunting task. I've been at this for months now, on and off!

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I think it's deleting whole meshes ingame that is bad 'cause if you didn't get rid of all the recolours they'll stay as "orphans" in your downloads.

I didn't know about this recolour tool deleting either. :O

[simtarts.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I never knew about this! Incredible helpful.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Another potentially stupid question: How do you know if you're deleting the mesh? Is it if you delete the object once all the recolours are already gone, or if you delete the first item in the list?

It's funny the things I still don't know about the game. XD

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I think if you delete objects from the normal buy menu (not recolour tool), you delete the mesh... But I never delete any objects ingame, only occasional hair recolours and clothing recolours, so these are just learnings from the Internets and not personal experience. :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Doesn't matter, apparently. I have no trash can tool in buy mode. *sad face*

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

Weird! I haven't actually paid attention to it in ages, I'll have a look too next time I play.

[silentsteel.livejournal.com]

I've only had a problem deleting things in-game waaaay back in the early days of CC - anything made recently, like the past five years, the mesh is most likely to be seperate from the recolors. The only times I've found it linked was in clothing, anyways, and nothing by HP, Fansee, or Phaenoh comes that way.

[silentsteel.livejournal.com]

If it's a linked color-mesh, the rest of the recolors will immediately stop working correctly. That's bad for the game - it leaves the other recolors orphaned and harder to find in your Downloads folder.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm....

I'm not getting the trash can tool in the object recolour, just the "add to collections" icon.

I see the trash can in build mode, but not in buy. Could it be something that disappeared after certain EPs? I have everything, so maybe that's it.

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

I still have it in mine, last time I checked. so when you go to change the colour of an object, there's no bin icon on the pop up at all? that's so weird.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly. I have the folder icon for adding stuff to collections, and that's it.

Do you have all the EPs? If not, what's your highest one?

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

I do have them all. I'll check that it's still there when I load the game up and get back to you.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I appreciate it.

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

That's what I see when I go in there. I deleted that green bedding recolour and it switched to the recolour to the right of it. Works fine!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thanks for checking into that for me! I'll have a look at it again later.

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

that's okay!

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

How many GB of CC do you have? Just curious (and I like to compare :P).

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I have 3.9 GB right now, which is sad because I don't think I'm actually reducing it much. I keep adding things in! :P

How does that compare to you?

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

Haha, that happens when I try to tidy up my stuff too. 'I'll just delete these 2 things... and then add these 7 things...'

I have about 3.3GB right now.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Aww, man. You're doing so much better than me. :P (I feel like this is some kind of bizarre weight lost program. The Biggest CC Loser.)

I wonder what my best bet for trimming it down is. I'm considering removing all the object meshes (save maybe a handful of favourites like the Holy Simoly curtains), maybe some of the completer sets (or pieces of them).

I've been playing a lot lately, which have been fun. Mostly Maxis sims I've never played with much.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

Haha! "I went down 0.1GB this week!" "Yay!" "Go you!"

I loooove my completer sets, especially window and door ones, after I started doing a fair bit of building and lot makeovers. And those curtains are fantastic. I'm sure there's several things I could get rid of, though, but but... what if I need them one day?! And I could always use more clutter...

Ooh, sounds like fun! Did you find any new favourites?

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'm down to 3.75 GB! W00T! XD *tightens belt*

I do like the completer set, too, but I have to be honest about how much I actually use them all. Maybe I'll keep a couple of really useful ones, like the gearhead windows from AL. I love those.

I'm having a lot of fun in Belladonna Cove. I've played most every family there now. I'm really loving how easy it is to mix and match sims from different hoods in the uberhood. Before I'd have to think it through and then clone them off! :P Now I can just head downtown and find them to see if they click. Much easier!

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of "city" building decoration stuff that I don't really use very much... And I have some doubles in the window/door completer sets. But pruning is so haaaard... and tedious. :P I recently did a cleanup of my clothing CC, though.

Belladonna Cove has some quite good sims, I think. While EAxis' storylines for the EP 'hoods aren't as good, they did get pretty creative with the sims' faces, I think. They seem to have put a lot of effort into BC, the buildings aren't half-bad, and there's a lot of them!

Mixing and matching is a lot of fun. I tried playing a smaller merge with just Pleasantview and Strangetown, but I found that I very quickly missed having everyone available. So I'll just have to deal with the 'hood being huuuuuge. :)

[simgarooop.livejournal.com]

Oh, reducing CC is such a pain! I usually end up starting all over, but the last time I did that, I saved a ZIP with my neat "limited" version of my Download's folder in case my current one gets crazy (so I don't have to start over again).

That said, I am currently at 4 GB. It is not as BAD as the 12 GB I had at one point (WTF?!) but it still is too much. I blame that to all the zillion color options offered for clothing and that I have a hard time either identifying the name of the color (I still can't tell what is BMX or Explosion) or just deciding which ones to keep :P.

Good luck!

[silentsteel.livejournal.com]

I find culling CC rather relaxing, after I get in the groove. I'm surprised by what I want to keep sometimes . . . Heh. But yeah, I had a lot of duplicates and stuff I had downloaded for ToTW that I wouldn't use in my usual game at all.

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

I only delete the CC I actively dislike (generally for being either ugly or shoddily made), and as a consequence it takes so long to scroll through the hair/facial decorations/clothing catalogs that you could have three children and send them off to college by the time you finish. (I'm not sure if it makes the rest of the game slow; that might happen anyways because my computer's not that good and I demand too much of it.)

The stuff I actually have a use for, for the most part, is generally normal-life-stuff with a large dollop of somewhat-out-of-the-ordinary on top of that. However, I've got all kinds of lovely but unused random crap like elaborate gothic gowns that I don't want to delete because WHAT IF I NEED IT SOMEDAY.