I've read that after 2 layers of folders, the game slows down. So ideally you only have the main folder: "Hacks", and then a subfolder for each creator for the type of hacks: "Pescado" "Squinge", etc.

But what I do before I do anything is put everything into the folder named "Before install", extract it and run the compressorizor and the HCDU (Hack Conflict Detection Utility). The first shrinks the files and the second makes sure that any hacks will work with each other. Then I run the Download organizer to make sure that I don't have any duplicates.

After I do this stuff though: I put the downloads in either the folder they should be in, or make a folder for them.

This process does take time, but it saves it as well. The testimony to that is my game starts fast and runs well.

My downloads folder is 847 MB, with 6,472 files and 172 folders. Tiny by some other people's, but big enough for me!

They are made by two separate people: Squinge and Pescado. It's a matter of which mod you would prefer to have in your game. It is highly unlikely either of those two gentlemen would change their own mod or even combine them for your pleasure.
If you don't know anything about SimPE, don't even dare to use it. Both of them know more about coding for mods than most of us will ever think of.
So the short answer is no. Pick which one you want and use it. That's all you can do.

It's funny, but most custom careers don't do anything to my game. Custom foods, I don't know about, but I've had custom beverages and they just take over the fridge-defaults.

But I've heard that custom foods will bork your game faster than any mod will.

You're right about ACR-it does seem to make everyone "love-happy"..and I've been tempted to take it out of my dl's as well, and I have before. Doesn't seem to make much difference, except that the romantic "interaction" is not automatic.
The Fight Club one is darned good, though..and I've seen it used to actually fight to the death a couple of times.
But I don't like the zombie apocalypse-they turn everyone zombified too quickly, so that you lose complete control of the neighborhood very fast.

Then there's the real problem of people wanting more than EA wants them to have in the game. For those who like the "naughty bits and pieces" there are mods to put in the game to give them that-but EA has decided that vanilla is the only way to play it, and they've locked it down to not accept outside mods very easily, if at all.
If you take into account that more than half of the active simmers who play it are adults of consenting age, that is a very unwise decision-and one that has hurt EA badly.
Sure, EA wants to appeal to everyone-but not everyone wants to play a "nice, clean, child-friendly" game. That's a sure sticking point for adults. They're just not built to accept the concept of EA's world, where nudity and envelope pushing interactions for adults are not permitted.
TS2 is famous for that, and believe me, the sites that offer the adult stuff are pretty popular. EA should get off it's damned high horse and acknowledge the simple fact that adults do not like to play children's games and that they do have a very active imagination when it comes to social actions.
Sure, I think that kids don't need to see that kind of stuff. It should be restricted to adults only-but for those of us who like that kind of playstyle, EA has simply ignored the entire concept of freedom of choice and locked out an entire segment of their fanbase.
And the adults have the money-always remember that. We've got far more income and for the company to just shut us out is a massive mistake. They shot themselves in the foot when they decided to make the game unmoddable for the most part by anyone except their "approved" creators.

You really want the truth? By the time EA fixes Sims 3, they will probably be so sick of the series that they will drop it in favor of the other porting games-they're tired of being begged to fix a game that can properly be played only on a PC, even when they boasted that "your grandma's computer" could run it.
Not that easy, when you realize the game takes a huge amount of memory to just start, and we won't even get into the frame rate fiasco that's happened.

No. We can wait all we want. EA will probably drop it after this. They'll milk this one to death and have done with it. Sorry.

BTW, on a side note-Dante's Inferno has had a less-than-stellar rollout, posting sales that are pathetic to any stockholder. EA is probably going to have a very bad year, financially.

I think EA has missed the opportunity to capture the majority of the Sims 2 players by not making it the "true" prequel to the Sims 2. They've lost whatever thread and backstory the game had and tossed it out the door. All for the sake of shiny stuff, some of which doesn't even work.
They haven't fixed the bugs, they haven't improved on the gameplay and have the temerity (the substitute word for what I really want to say) to charge for content that they withheld or did not create for the game until afterwards. All when their customers are screaming for other things that they're used to, repeatedly-EA doesn't even have the politeness to even hear any of the suggestions. Only now are they even close to making an EP that has some careers in it.
The modders have been valiantly trying to make it playable, the independent creators have been dutifully working to make custom content to satisfy everyone, and still it is not a good game.
All because EA did not want to make it better, just their version of it-which is not what we wanted.
I'll say it again-this game is a dumbed down version of the Sims 2. It has lost all the charm and humor of the past two games in favor of rabbit holes and adventures that have no meaning. It is not a "people simulator"-it is a very limited RPG with lots of bugs. All creativity is gone, and so is the inspiration that made the past 2 games fun.
As you can see, I'm not sold on it, nor will I be.
The best thing they can do at this point is to scrap the entire game, and rework it to better reflect what the players want, not the damned stockholders, who have been disappointed so far with their returns from a game that was supposed to blow EA out of the water from the red ink to black.
It has proven a mediocre return on money that has been spent on little improvement and mass disappointment.
Of course when they release the Sims 2 "complete edition" I will be the first in line. Phooey on the Sims 3. It's not a game I want, and it's a waste of money from what I've read and heard for the past year.

"It's only a game, people!" John Rottenchilli was quoted as saying at the last stockholders' meeting.

EA would have to do a massive overhaul (not just CAS and body shapes) to make the Sims 3 appealing to more people.
They would have to fix all the bugs, all of the problems with memory and game lag. They would have to fix it so that it would play as it is intended to. They would also have to change the entire scenario of "rpg" play to eliminate things like that first EP they put out. They should have listened more to the players and less to their marketing people for input to the game's design.
They want more customers to buy it? Fix it first, then redesign it. That's the only way they will regain any credibility with the other Sims 2 fans who will not touch it with a ten-foot pole. I'm one, and I will remain one until they do all of those things-and then I might even consider thinking about purchasing it.
Oh, and one more thing-dump that Store, yesterday. Nickel and diming your customers is not the best way to impress them.

Oh, yeah-I had a near miss with my new EP's, but it's always the best idea to just simply rename the folder for the game "old" and let the new one regenerate. I had to poke and prod the older neighborhoods to work, but finally found what the problem was with it: non-working CC which threw up errors on my lots.
Of course I replaced that with even better CC!
The biggest problem I had was to replace the hacks/mods to match more or less evenly what I had in my neighborhoods before I installed the new EP's-that alone took about half a day.

Hi, Squinge:

 I was wondering if you ever found the time to update the mod for "autogreet". You had written that you would see if you could do something to make the "visitee" drop whatever they were doing to autogreet any visitor to the lot. This was a request by someone in the thread.

I was also wondering if there was a way to make the walkbys walk right up to the door and ring the doorbell as an alternative to that.

Kind of like "driving the cattle home." I get so irritated at trying to catch all the walkby's (I have a hack that increases the number of sims going by a lot in a day) and wish it were simpler to interact with the walkby's without losing time/chances to greet visitors.

Thanks for reading this. Hope you can find time to do it. I have up to NL for EP's.

You mentioned that you have no CD drive in your computer, correct? Then you had downloaded it from EA?

That's the problem. The EADM is the Download Manager that has Securom, and it is an integral part of the EADM.

I shall ask one of our members if it's possible to play a downloaded version without the EADM and Securom. It's possible you might be able to.
(Edit) I did ask someone-and the bad news is that if you did download the game from EA, and do not have a DVD/CD for it, you will not be able to play without the EADM and Securom.

Perhaps if you got a part-time job (I know, I know..it's tough to do that.) you could possibly save up enough money to buy a proper notebook sometime. It's tough being a teen and with parents you have to prove you're worthy of their trust.

Computers do cost a bit of money, and perhaps your Mom was not very impressed with your burning up your computer. So you have to buy another one yourself. She possibly figures you might learn the value of work and the cost of things if you have to earn it yourself-and in doing so you will take better care of the computer you have to work for.

Good luck. Sorry for the bad news.

Oh, Thank you, Squinge. Nothing irritates me more than when they do this!

http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,102085.0.html

The link in this thread takes you to the place where you can get it. Next time, search the board.

I've gone to the extent of asking our head admin to see what she suggests about your problem. If you did a Securom removal by way of our tutorial and program, this is what you should do:


(If you need the link to our program and tutorial, use the link on my sig)

If you would like to have more help, please feel free to contact us at RYG or Prism about any of the suggestions. We'll be more than happy to help you out!