I'm back to sims after a long time and back then I used CC Magic, Delphy's Dashboard and S3PE to check and merge my CC. There probably are new programs and such to flag problem CC and mod conflicts.

Those of you have mods and CC how do you deal with it all?

I still use it
CC Magic and S3PE, and the updated Delphi's Dashboard (even not everything it reports must be conflict).

CardinalSims has created an interesting method at MTS
https://modthesims.info/t/676240

There is also this new Mod Organiser, but I personally haven't tested yet.
https://modthesims.info/d/668610/sims-3 ... nizer.html
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Not too much has changed about the tools in use, given most of the most influential developers in the TS3 scene retired aeons ago. But our understanding of the benefits and usage of those tools has certainly evolved!
Because of this, it mostly depends on your end goal for the management- performance gain, or personal ease of access / navigability.

For the former, that set of tools still holds up just fine. As long as the content gets merged into a reasonable number of packages and you know what the content of your merges are, you'll be getting the most out of it in terms of decent load times and access for troubleshooting.

For the latter, it can definitely be more personalised depending on how organised you like to be and how it benefits your way of playing. My current kick is manual merges in S3PE, using CC Magic just for collections, and using the method kindly linked by C-Dark to kick anything that's in a collection out of my catalog.
The last link in my signature is where I categorically document every last bit of content that's in my merges- but doing it like that is more for my benefit than anything necessary or important to be doing. I just get a lot of satisfaction for doing it that way, and it suits my long-term save.

Worth noting that there will never be a magic way to see all of the ways a mod or piece of CC can be broken. The Dashboard is great at what it does, but there are plenty of issues that could cause an instant crash that it cannot see, and scripted mods can get in each others way without actually having overwriting parts. At the end of the day, the only way to root out certain types of errors is still to get in there and 50/50 things.
Prevention goes a long way though! Just being more mindful of what you install, whether you really need it, testing smaller batches etc. Being familiar with what you put in makes it much less of a pain to either know what needs to come out.

I digress, because I could talk sims-centric data entry until the sun burns out.

I'm a convert to Sims 3 Mod Organizer, which C-Dark linked above. I used CCMagic for a very long time, and it's quite good. CCMagic's developer retired before Sims 3 was done with updates, so for example it doesn't know about outerwear. That's not a big deal, though.

S3MO does conflict checking kind of like Delphy's Dashboard and allows you to see resources that conflict in a nice amount of detail (keeping in mind, of course, that overwritten resources don't necessarily mean that anything is wrong). The primary reason I moved to it, though, is that it does a simple merge of packages This allows me to copy the merged packages to a different machine (like my kid's) without having to install S3MO there. In contrast, CCMagic creates a network of folders representing your mod categories in the Mods folder and changes the Resource.cfg to point to what you're actually using -- it gets complicated and is not very portable.

Both support profiles, allowing me to run each one of my saves with a different set of mods and cc.

Echoweaver wrote: ↑

February 6th, 2024, 1:09 pm

In contrast, CCMagic creates a network of folders representing your mod categories in the Mods folder and changes the Resource.cfg to point to what you're actually using -- it gets complicated and is not very portable.

In CCMagic's defense, you can still pluck the .package out of that maze of folders, rename it, and drop it into standard Packages. That's what I used to do to make merges before doing it manually

But indeed, the only reason I don't use Sims 3 Mod Organizer is because I'm extremely familiar with the original program it's forked from (MOO and MOO2 for Bethesda games) and I think that familiarity would just confuse me when using a third, more bare bones, incarnation. Otherwise, it seems great at what it does.

CardinalSims post_id=99406 time=1707259227 user_id=22933 wrote: In CCMagic's defense, you can still pluck the .package out of that maze of folders, rename it, and drop it into standard Packages. That's what I used to do to make merges before doing it manually

Yeah, it may be that this is distinctively a problem for someone like me. I have a different mod and cc set for every save I play -- medieval, modern fantasy, realistic life, futuristic, minimalist to maximize performance, etc. I have dozens of cc and mod categories that are assigned to profiles for this stuff. Sifting a specific profile out of the CCMagic folder structure is a real hassle.

As a general rule, I'm a big fan of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

CardinalSims wrote: ↑

February 6th, 2024, 5:40 pm

I'm extremely familiar with the original program it's forked from (MOO and MOO2 for Bethesda games)

I didn't realize it was forked from another mod organizer. I haven't looked to see if the source code is available for S3MO. There are several bugs I would love to see fixed, and it doesn't sound like the dev is likely to fix them any time soon.

For this interested in S3MO, I did a review in a tumblr post, which I talk about here: https://modthesims.info/download.php?p= ... ost5864724

Reading the commentary of my past self, I remember that another big reason I moved to S3MO is that CCMagic did not work on my daughter's 1.70 EAApp installation. I have been clinging to my 1.67 game, but even I may not be able to do that forever. I *think* I did some web-searching and determined that the 1.70 with CCMagic problem was not fixable, but don't quote me on that.

I tried S3MO and it overwrote my Resource.cfg and Sims3 wouldn't load my mods anymore. I had to download a new one. Dunno what I did wrong.

KevinL5275 post_id=99469 time=1707539343 user_id=17352 wrote: I tried S3MO and it overwrote my Resource.cfg and Sims3 wouldn't load my mods anymore. I had to download a new one. Dunno what I did wrong.

Hmmm. I have a sense that something like this might've happened to me but I haven't messed with this in a while. I don't remember what causes it, because I don't think I had trouble the very first time I used it.

If you look in settings, there's the text of the Resource.cfg that it writes out, so I believe that you can just replace that text with the text of a downloaded Resource.cfg so long as you also add the folder where S3MO puts its merged packages.

KevinL5275 post_id=99469 time=1707539343 user_id=17352 wrote: I tried S3MO and it overwrote my Resource.cfg and Sims3 wouldn't load my mods anymore. I had to download a new one. Dunno what I did wrong.

I use S3MO, and because I play the disc version of the sims on a laptop with no disc drive, I use NRaas No CD mod. The game wouldn't load correctly for me with the overwritten resource.cfg file, so I keep a backup of it, and every time I merge my CC, I move the merged files to the Packages folder and then replace the new resource.cfg file with the original one. I don't merge the NRaas No CD mod. I keep that on its own in the Packages folder.