I've read a little about using it to merge packages to decrease lag. I read someone say something about licking the play button. Does that mean you have to hit the play button on CC magic from then on to launch the launcher? Or can I simply launch the launcher and everything works like before CC Magic? If you don't ahve to hit it to play what do you hit it for exactly? Also is it usable with patch 1.67?

Hi t888!

First of all, let me dispell that myth for you. CC Magic will not help with lag during gameplay as far as I know. It should speed up the loading time of your saved game though, depending on how many package files you have installed.

You do have to launch the game with CC Magic's play button for it to do it's magic. If you use the official Launcher, I imagine everything installed through CC Magic wouldn't show up in game. Have never tried this myself though.

CC Magic does work with Patch 1.67.

Hope that answers all your questions.

I've installed CC through CC magic and launched with my usual shortcut bypassing the launcher onyl to have the content show up if it's enabled though things I forgot to enable might not show up in the game.I use it with the 167 patch and it's working great for me.

Hi Sarah_Sims! So no help with lag during gameplay? Thats mainly what I was hoping for. Now on my old computer that load speed up might have been nice but on my current computer thats not so much of a problem.

TadOlson, Sarah said it wouldn't help with lag during game play only save game load up. Whats your experience. Actually, if anybody else using CC Magic could tell me about their experience and if CC Magic will work if you launch the game through the official launcher if it would still let your mods work then I'd be grateful.

I'm a CCMagic fan..
I think you can start your game through the launcher while ccmagic does it's Magic but why would you want to do that?
The beauty of ccmagic is that it indeed merges your cc, that you can enable or disable cc to your liking or type of save which creates room. Why would you need those Christmas sweaters in summer or fantasy type of cc in a modern save for instance?

Lag is caused by several reasons. Somewhere on this beautiful site there is info on how to make your game run better.
As far as ccmagic and lag are concerned, my ccmagic file is about 30 gb.. (Yes, I'm an addict.) and my game runs fine. Of course we have a good gaming computer and my game is heavily modded to contribute to a relatively smooth running game but ccmagic surley helps me to organise and merge my cc adiction. )

I suspect the OP is already familiar with this page, but just in case not and for others who might be reading this thread...
<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Tips+For+Be ... ormance</a>

Here is a great tutorial and information thread on how CCMagic works. It is on TFM's Naughty Sims Asylum and requires a login, but it is free to create an account. http://simsasylum.com/tfm/index.php?/to ... k-through/ I have found this tutorial does a great job of explaining how CCMagic works. One of the questions asked on this page deals with launching the game. I quote: " Once everything is in ccm do I launch the game with the EA Launcher? I have read where people launch the game with ccm and I want to know if one can do either or will the cc not show up if you don't launch with ccm?

A. You can launch the game however you like. Changes made with ccm still apply. Be sure and launch the game once with ccm after you change the config to update the game configuration."

NonaMena also has a wonderful tutorial on using CCMagic here: <a class="wiki_link_ext" href="https://nonasims.wordpress.com/2012/06/ ... -cc-magic/" rel="nofollow">https://nonasims.wordpress.com/2012/06/ ... -magic/</a>

I use this program to launch my game because of all the useful configuration options. I don't have an answer to the lag question though, sorry.

Yup, I'm familiar with the page but I read elsewhere CC magic would reduce lag by merging CC thats why I asked to see if it was true but it seems only to reduce loading time which isn't really a problem for me.

When you consider how the game works, it makes sense that it doesn't reduce lag. CCMagic just merges packages into larger packages so your hard drive doesn't have to do seeks on thousands of packages during loading, which reduces loading time. Once the data is loaded it has very little to do with lag. Lag is caused by the number of things you ask the game to process and how fast it can do so with the hardware you've given it. If you want to reduce lag start with mods that clean up your game, doing it yourself through external methods, reducing Sims in the world, smaller worlds, smaller lots, less lots, less objects and so on. The less the game has to simulate the less lag you'll have.

Thanks for all the backup everyone. I was beginning to doubt myself after reading the original post on MTS by the creator of CC Magic, granthes. Within the first few lines he mentions that the program helps with lag which had me somewhat confused.

Quote: "Game Lag : When you have more than about 200 custom content files, the game begins to slow down noticeably. This is a limitation of the way modern computer operating systems work, not an issue with the game itself."

This simply isn't true though, is it? Or are we all missing something vital here?

@t888: I'm in agreement with simsoes and am also wondering why you would want to start the game using the official Launcher rather than CC Magic.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here but doesn't having The Launcher open while playing, use up extra resources from your computer (i.e. memory), especially if you are connected to the internet? I don't know if this is a good way to test or not but I've just opened up both CC Magic and The Launcher on my PC, together with Task Manager. CC Magic is using 54,500K of my RAM and The Launcher is using 135,420K. This is without the game actually running though but if you also take into account the fact that I have 7.31GB of CC installed in CC Magic and only 28.8MB installed through The Launcher, it makes you wonder exactly what The Launcher is doing. I know which one I'd rather have open while I was playing.