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Mad Poster
#26 Old 14th Sep 2019 at 3:25 AM Last edited by igazor : 14th Sep 2019 at 3:37 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
Dumb question but how do I access ErrorTrap?

I have no idea what you are trying to do, sorry. ErrorTrap has no command menus on City Hall or anywhere. It runs all by itself and communicates what it's doing, when it actually feels like it and does do anything, by way of "error" logs (many of which won't really be errors, some might) that land in the TS3 user game folder in Documents. It's a Core Mod, not a Script Mod with menus.

Nice looking Mac, though. Suddenly I have this strong desire to play Scarab of Ra .
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Mad Poster
#27 Old 14th Sep 2019 at 12:19 PM
Oh so it's actually working as intended? Well that's interesting, then.

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Test Subject
Original Poster
#28 Old 15th Sep 2019 at 10:00 PM Last edited by history12 : 15th Sep 2019 at 10:27 PM.
Well it looks like I finally solved the problem. It seems that the cause of my save game bloat was that I had so many objects in my game. I had created a lush forest in my town of Bridgeport with hundreds of trees. Getting rid of those trees, I have no more bloat after returning home from locations. I've tried Egypt, the Future, old hometown of Twinbrook, absolutely no bloat! Thanks guys for all your help.
Mad Poster
#30 Old 16th Sep 2019 at 3:10 AM
If seemingly static objects can cause bloat over time I'm in a world of trouble. Painstakingly detailed locations are half the reason I play this game.

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Original Poster
#31 Old 16th Sep 2019 at 1:20 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
That is puzzling as trees and doodads may bloat your NHD, but it would be apparent the 1st time and it wouldn't continue to bloat since they're static. Not to mention they have no effect on traveling. Unless those are not the world trees? But those plant trees that grow and produce fruits?


No these trees don't produce fruit. They're all pine trees. They are the Tall Fir Tree, Very Tall Fir Tree, and the Scotch Pine. Do they produce anything like pinecones?

They are all local to my town. I wanted trees that matched the ones that grew in the general area.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#32 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 4:34 AM
Hello everyone. I discovered another cause of save game bloat. I found out that movies taken with a sim video camera also can cause bloat. I love making home movies in my game, and I've made A LOT. By deleting all of them, a few hundred GB were removed from my town NHD.

Regardless, I still want a fresh game, and I'm currently on the painstaking task of recreating my old save. I will have to leave my dozens of home movies out. Is there a way anyone I can convert my disc storage tower full of movies to a CC? It would be nice to delete it and bring it back whenever I want.
Mad Poster
#33 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 4:36 AM
A few hundred gigabytes? Are you sure?

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Original Poster
#34 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 5:02 AM
Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
A few hundred gigabytes? Are you sure?


Yes I am. I also noticed that with each new save game you create, the more GB the videos take. In the latest save I'm creating, they bloat the save like 900 GB. In the last save, it's half of that. In my first and original save, it's half of THAT.
Mad Poster
#35 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 7:41 AM
While I am sure that in-game home movies add to file size and save bloat considerably, this is good information, an nhd file cannot be 900 GB. That's almost 1 TB. Even if you had the strongest system in the world, it would take days or weeks for the game to startup and one would run out of usable RAM before that happens anyway. What is the total size of the hard drive on which you have TS3 installed? Most players have individual hard drives regardless of how many drives they have attached that range from 512 GB to 2 TB, some work with drives that are even smaller.

Now 900 MB for an nhd file I can understand and that would certainly be difficult to work with, load up, and save but it would at least theoretically be workable even if it would function poorly. And the save size for an entire game save (not just a single nhd) could approach 9 GB especially if the TravelDB bloats up and you have several connected worlds within the same game save. But again, not to 900 GB.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#36 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 1:21 PM
I'm sorry I meant MB. I sometimes mistake MB for GB, especially in this day and age that everything is a large as a few GB. Nobody thinks of MB anymore.

I double-checked and I meant 800 GB, not 900.
Mad Poster
#37 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 7:19 PM
Were the trees added in-game rather than in CAW?

I've heard that the in-game editor doesn't really do a good job of keeping things tidy.
Mad Poster
#38 Old 21st Sep 2019 at 7:31 PM
That may explain a thing or two hundred. Though in my case more like two thousand.

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Original Poster
#39 Old 22nd Sep 2019 at 9:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by jje1000
Were the trees added in-game rather than in CAW?

I've heard that the in-game editor doesn't really do a good job of keeping things tidy.


The trees were added in-game.
Inventor
#40 Old 22nd Sep 2019 at 10:03 PM
Nuke them SNAP files!

Simply open the nhd file with S3PE, filter the SNAP resources and delete them. Then save the file. Most of the SNAP resources are images of Sims generated by the game, but the game generates one image everytime something changes in the appearance of a Sim (and for EVERY outfit in the game). In time, you'll end up with BLOATED save files because these images never get deleted, even if those Sims are dead or they are wearing different outfits, etc.

For example, these are three SNAP images of my Sim:


As you can see, the images are almost identical. I changed the eye color and makeup of my Sim and the game generated new images, but kept the old ones that will never use again. Now think how many tiny changes you may do to your Sims and for every tiny change, the game has generated a new PNG image with a size of 20 KB. Not before long, you'll end up with a very bloated save file.
Mad Poster
#41 Old 22nd Sep 2019 at 11:27 PM
Seems like an easy solution but why isn't there a script mod that can do this automagically?

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Mad Poster
#42 Old 28th Sep 2019 at 6:58 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
We don't even know how many generations there are supposed to be in between present day worlds and Oasis Landing, has this ever been guessed at somewhere? Would have to be hundreds if not thousands.

2077 or 2200 years. Something vaguely I remember as official fact.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.
Mad Poster
#43 Old 28th Sep 2019 at 9:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
Seems like an easy solution but why isn't there a script mod that can do this automagically?


Checked and it seems like Kuree's Save Cleaner 1.1 can do it, abeit manually.

Still, yet another instance of overlooked programming by Maxis- it should be automatically handled by the game IMO.
Mad Poster
#44 Old 28th Sep 2019 at 9:24 PM
I think the challenge with modded or auto-cleanups of nhd and TravelDB files is that they are already in use (with the active nhd loaded into RAM) while the game is running. Such would have to be worked into the Save (or Save As) procedure, might introduce more instability into the process than it helps, and would also trigger the need for the ongoing game save to essentially load up all over again for any benefit to be gained.

This game we love so much is for young people, who tend to have short attention spans. If an ongoing save falls apart as quickly as the player was going to lose interest in it anyway then no harm is done, right? (see also EA's built-in story progression) I don't think the more serious players who congregate in places like MTS here were ever really part of EA/Maxis' target audience.
Mad Poster
#45 Old 28th Sep 2019 at 9:59 PM Last edited by AGuyCalledPi : 28th Sep 2019 at 10:12 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by SneakyWingPhoenix
2077 or 2200 years. Something vaguely I remember as official fact.

Problem is that Sim generations are a lot shorter than human generations. But that can be ignored. Based on the available technology I'd argue ITF is set between 2150 and 2350. Even then, 2150 is only about 130 years away and there are no signs of the old world as we know it. The completely lifeless terrain around Oasis Landing suggests a major ecological disaster to me, and the distant terrain texture reveals that there are other Oasis Landing-shaped cities just out of sight of ours. Either the Earth was severely damaged and these are planned cities built on previously inhospitable terrain (that are somehow not connected in any way or secretly part of some dystopian plot), or this is a terraformed planet. Some of the decorative items are claimed to be photographs of colonized planets and I think there are references to a stellar fleet with warp-engined ships. So there is at least an established means of interstellar flight and it's been around long enough for these planets to be full of people by now. Star Trek claimed the Earth would get fucked up around the 2030s and James Cromwell would invent the warp engine in the 2060s, so let's say Mars is colonized by the 2090s and totally inhabitable and desireable by the 2150s. Unfortunately replicators aren't invented until around that time so techno-communism still needs half a century to kick in.

Let's say it's 10 generations or about 250 years from now, but keep in mind that we're having kids later so maybe some of those generations are 35 years long and not 25. Then again after World War III I suppose everyone will be bored and there'll be a lot of shagging so maybe some of them are a lot shorter.

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Mad Poster
#46 Old 28th Sep 2019 at 10:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
I think the challenge with modded or auto-cleanups of nhd and TravelDB files is that they are already in use (with the active nhd loaded into RAM) while the game is running. Such would have to be worked into the Save (or Save As) procedure, might introduce more instability into the process than it helps, and would also trigger the need for the ongoing game save to essentially load up all over again for any benefit to be gained.


Probably had a lot to do with the weird way the game reads files, as detailed by Pepoulan while he was trying to fix the game. Sort of wish they implemented a system that cleaned played save files as you exited the game, instead of hoping players wouldn't have the attention span to play long enough to encounter issues like this.

Overall, the game is just strangely programmed, and a bunch of stuff common in other games just doesn't work here.
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