MOD newbie - some questions

"Emily4331;c-16979976" wrote:
Luckily for you, I just did this with my Sims 3 folder. In order to move your Sims 3 folder and have the game read and write to the folder in the new location without creating a new folder in your documents is to create a Sims 3 folder in your documents that is a symbolic link to the one in your D Drive. I hope that isn't confusing. Here's the instructions:

• Step 1: Move your The Sims 3 folder from your documents to whichever drive you want it to be on. Make sure that there is no The Sims 3 folder remaining in your Electronic Arts folder before you proceed.
  
• Step 2: Run command prompt as administrator. You can do this one of two ways:
  1. Hit the windows key+R, type "cmd", do not click okay. Instead, after you've typed cmd hit Ctrl+shift+enter. Your computer will ask you if you'd like to allow the program to make changes - click yes.
  2. Type into the search bar on your computer "cmd". Command Prompt will be the result, if it is highlighted hit ctrl+shift+enter to run it in administrator. Alternatively, you can right click Command Prompt from the search results list and select "run as administrator".
  
  
• Step 3: Type the appropriate command line to create your symbolic link.
  This step might be tricky for those not familiar with command prompts, so I'll walk you through it:
  When you open Command Prompt you'll see some trademark mumbo jumbo in there followed by a line consisting of your System32 directory. Don't let those confuse you. You don't mess with them at all, you just type. First, you'll want to type a space after System32>. Then you'll type this exactly how I have it written here unless you put your folder into a drive with a different letter assigned to it. If that's the case, just replace my drive letter with the one you moved your folder to. And obviously replace your name with the name of the user whose documents you want affect...aka yours. :lol:
  
  

  
  mklink /D "C:\Users\Yourname\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3" "H:\The Sims 3"
  

  
  
  Hit enter to confirm it and it will take effect.
  
  
  
• Enjoy your freed up C: drive space, while keeping your Sims 3 folder recognized by the game. :smiley:
  

If any of that doesn't make sense, I'll be happy to try to explain it better. :smile:

EDIT: forgot to answer the second part - you can add the framework for your mods before or after, it won't matter. And your Sims 3 folder can be accessed from the location of the symbolic link and the real location in the D Drive, so any changes made to one will change the other.

Also, obviously my documents in the tutorial above should be changed to your One Drive in your case. So just replace the first file path in the command line with the file path to your One Drive location.

EDIT2: The framework files you installed with set up wherever you extract them. Before, you extract to your Sims 3 folder in One Drive, but if you do the symbolic link before you set up the framework, you could use the path to your Sims 3 folder in One Drive or the path to your Sims 3 folder in your D Drive to extract the framework to because they are the same folder. Changing one changes the other. A folder doesn't technically exist in your One Drive, so it won't take up space, but it looks like it exists there which confuses the game into reading the folder's knew location. :lol: I am terrible at explaining things, I am so sorry. lol

Emily thank you so much for doing this :) I have understood a certain amount. I am going to ask a more computer literate friend to help me carry out the procedure because I got a little lost over the creation of the symbolic link.

So where you have typed drive c I would put drive d because that is the drive I am going to move the folder to. In which case what does drive H at the end of the link represent?

I also got the point about putting One Drive in the pathway. Does that mean I must ensure the place I put my Sims 3 folder needs an identical pathway except for the drive letter ? Currently there is no file or folder structure within the D drive except for a couple of folders I have created for the Sims 3 programme files and some of my writing projects.

Finally should I leave my Create a World files in the One Drive or do they need moving in the same way as the Sims 3 games files?

Thanks again for your help. I am really grateful :) I will confess I have had an idea for a new CAW project which I have been thinking about for a while so I am getting antsy to finish Fenbury first.