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Original Poster
#1 Old 12th Dec 2017 at 12:09 AM
Default Resource Load Order (Windows)
I've updated my conflcit detector program to compare packages in the load order used by the game (at least the Windows version, the load order on Mac could differ). I researched this by throwing packages with a simple conflicting interaction numbered "1", "2", "3", etc. and putting those packages into various locations in the mods folder and subfolders then running the game to see which number came up. This experiment was performed with the standard resource.cfg generated by the game. I'm not sure if the order of the PackedFile lines in that file would cause a difference, but I suspect it does not.

The load order differs significantly from what was used in the past, as well as from what I've seen in other posts (which may likely have just assumed the old style of ordering).

The big change is that the FIRST resource loaded is the one used by the game. If a conflicting resource is seen later in the load order, that resource from the package is skipped.

The second item of note is that packages are not all loaded from a folder prior to visiting subfolders, the subfolders are visited in order as the folder is processed. I'm actually not sure if this differs from previous game behavior or not, but thought it worth mentioning in case it does differ.

So... if you have three packages: B, M, & W with a conflcting resource, the one from package B will be the one used in the game. However, if you use subfolders that can change. Consider the situation with a subfolder named AA:

Mods \ AA \ M.package
Mods \ AA \ W.package
Mods \ B.package

Folder AA will get visited prior to loading the "B" package, so package "M" will be the first one loaded and will end up being the one used in the game. This appears to be true no matter how many subfolders deep it is, so for instance with the following:

Mods \ AA \ BB \ W.package
Mods \ AA \ M.package
Mods \ AA \ OO \ B.package

Package "W" will be the first one loaded as the game gets to the "AA" subfolder, goes into that and while looking for packages sees the "BB" subfolder before package "M" and so it goes into that subfolder and loads package "W". When it gets to package "M" next, the conflicting resource is skipped. Then finally it would see the "OO" subfolder and within that when it finally reaches the "B" package that will also be skipped (just the conflicting resource, not the whole package).

Anyway, I found this load order to be somewhat odd, both from previous experience with The Sims and from how I would have (and did) code it within the conflict detector, so I thought I put a quick note up in case anyone was wondering and/or wants to replicate this experiment, particularly on a Mac with it's Unix style of sort order for files.
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