Now I'm on a mission for faster load times. In spite of culling my downloads, my load time has crept back up to almost 15 minutes. It may not seem like a lot, but when you only have an hour to play, you want every minute to count. Also, 15 minutes seems so long now since I've installed TS3 and can start playing within 5 minutes. Then again, I don't have any downloads for TS3 besides some store items :P
My Sims 2 Folder is 3.62GB, so over half of it is downloads. I have moved on to other ways of decreasing the load time.
- Remove photos from the Storytelling folders periodically. Currently I move photos from the neighborhood storytelling folder to another folder on my computer after each simyear. I might start doing this after each playsession. I have never moved the photos from the overall storytelling
- Remove the Testing Hood that I created. I have no need for this hood anymore since I use my building hood to test items now.
- Remove items from my Saved Sims folder, especially my own recolors.
- Remove unused terrains from the SC4Terrains folder from 47.2MB to 19.3MB
- Remove unused lots from the lot catalog
For comparision, my game, without the downloads folder, loads in 5 minutes from bootup to the neighborhood.
With the downloads folder included, the load time is 13 minutes from bootup to neighborhood splash screen.
Obviously my downloads folder needs to be whipped back into shape as 13 minutes is still a bit too long.
My ideal time would be somewhere about 7 minutes, which means that if my downloads adds an additional 8 minutes of load time, then my computer loads about 0.251GB every minute and that I still need to get rid of 1.5GB to get my ideal time. My bodyshop downloads alone are 1.0GB!
Yikes, back to the drawing board about decreasing my load times...I guess I could always try and revert to the barest of downloads and see how I enjoy that (I doubt I would enjoy it very much). Maybe a more realistic ideal load time is 10 minutes, which means cutting about 0.75GB of downloads.
My next plan of action is simply removing my clothing downloads folder (over half of the bodyshop downloads folder space) and then adding outfits-ONE AT A TIME-per sim preferences, not mine. Since for the most part my sims tend to wear the same things day after day :P
Ugh, it's either that or upgrade the computer...
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That's interesting that you found removing photos and hoods you're not using caused a decrease in load time. I pulled all my photos out of Storytelling a while ago and sadly, I didn't notice any difference at all. It would have been nice though!
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I would be happy with 15 minutes but my load time is well, well above that. I tend to just start the game loading well before I want to play, so when I'm ready for the game, it's ready for me. It's just that choice between lots of custom content and a fast loading time and the CC will win every time for me.
Carla, I envy you, if I left my game loading, I know one of the cats would go dancing across the keyboard :P
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you now have TS3. Are you thinking about starting a hood like you did here?
ReplyDeleteSoneen, not yet. So far I'm still exploring the game :)
ReplyDeleteI've recently installed the TS3 base game & Ambitions. It starts almost immediately. It makes me not want to put in any CC for quite a while. My TS2 game doesn't take too long, maybe 7-10 minutes. I definitely have to get rid of some lots that I have never used. Sometimes the content out there makes it hard not to go on a download spree.
ReplyDeleteChoco, the fast loading times do try to seduce you to a CC free life. I simply try not to look at anything and avoid the great websites to keep my CC down :)
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about using game booster?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html
I used it with my old computer. I don't know will it help with loading, but it helped so much with performance. It increased my computer's performance by 40%, that was a lot of performance improvement inside the game. You just start it before playing and click the huge "Start boost" button. The program will then close useless threads running in the background and free it for your game.