I would have to say number 2, based on my experience.  

Thanks, Sarah, I was hoping that's what you meant. Slow loading of saves is my major frustration with TS3, so I'm always looking for ways to improve my load times.

You're welcome!

Well, I guess I probably will go back to merging then, when I'm done with this absurdly involved and extremely tedious project. And I may consider using CCMagic. Have played with it in the past, but have always preferred to just do it by hand for various reasons of precision and nitpickiness. (I don't care if that's a word. I am declaring it to be one.)

Thanks one and all for the input.

I just wanted to post to say I'm finally, FINALLY done!!! Everything sorted, weeded, recatagorized, fixed, merged and compressed. Holy cow. I spent most of the month of October on this project, and I hope I never have to do it again.

If anyone ever wants to undertake a project like this, I'm happy to offer some tips and things I learned while doing this (and I did learn a LOT!), but the biggest piece of advice I have is to plan on spending at least a week or more, depending on how much content you have (I have a LOT, and I managed to acquire more during this project because I'd ditch some piece of CC and go looking for a replacement and end up with way more than I had before, guh). BUT... I am hoping that my game will now run smoothly and with no glitches due to the complete lack of bad content. Yay.   And... WHEW. I need a cold juice and some goopy carbonara, I think.
 

I'd love to hear your tips and suggestions, bonniherself. In particular if you've got any tips for dealing with simspack files. I have more of those than I do .package files.

My game also ran a lot better after I merged my packages.
Especially Build/Buy is faster, mostly my dreaded decorations category which is way too full. I always let it load completely before clicking anything after opening a new category because otherwise it lags while decorating and it loads faster with less packages.
Also since I merged my packages I no longer have to manually update my filter caches for Go Here. At the start of the game the Mods load up fast enough for the update to work on its own. When I had too many packages I always had to do it by hand.
Also the loading of the objects on the lot goes faster which leads to smoother gameplay for me, because while the objects are loading my game is sometimes a bit jumpy, but most people who are not total snobs, might not even notice. I prefer my game without any lag at all.


I convert all sims3packs to packages when I download new stuff with this: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=364038

Thanks for that link, KittyTheSnowCat. I thought I'd converted sims3packs to packages previously, but couldn't remember how. I hadn't started seriously looking yet, so you've saved me from that task.

For anyone who's merged their packages, how have you kept track of what you merged? I've been trying for a while to figure out a good system to organize and document my custom content and mods. It would seem that when merging packages, some kind of a system would be a necessity so you know what's in each meta-package you create.

Tropical Insomniac wrote: ↑

October 28th, 2018, 12:36 am

For anyone who's merged their packages, how have you kept track of what you merged? I've been trying for a while to figure out a good system to organize and document my custom content and mods. It would seem that when merging packages, some kind of a system would be a necessity so you know what's in each meta-package you create.

I keep copies of the individual packages in folders titled the merged package name just in case I need to do the merge again. I can't say I have went as far to note what's in each one though.

Tropical Insomniac wrote: ↑

October 28th, 2018, 12:36 am

For anyone who's merged their packages, how have you kept track of what you merged?

I use multiple folders and sub-folders to sort everything in a way that makes sense to me. Then I merge from there. I don't mess with the original files once I have them set up and sorted unless I need to fix something (or remove something or whatever). Then if I want to know which merged file has a particular item, I can just do a search for it. Mind you, some files have quite non-inutitive names, but I can still usually figure out what I'm looking for if I need to find something.