Questions about third party CC - Help

Generally the Exchange is a dangerous place.

Custard is useful and it's the best we've got but it hasn't been updated for many years. It does let you see if something is attached, most of the time. If something is attached it will appear in the rightmost column in Custard.

Crinrict has a help blog that will give you information.

https://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/01/tutorial-delphys-custard.html

She also has information on Bad CC and how to remove it and how to find it.

One thing, if downloading from the exchange is to look for items that are posted as being CC Free.

Many people have CC on their computers and don't include any CC in their builds or sims they upload and claim they are CC Free. These items may be free of CC but sometimes things attach during the upload process and there could be CC tagging along without the uploader's knowledge. This is why I only load builds or Sims to the Exchange when I am using a computer that has no CC on it.

I have also seen posts by others who happily load to the exchange with CC on their creations - including CC that is known to be damaging to other people's games and they continue to load those items to the Exchange because they don't think it really matters if the CC is bad or not or if it destroys other people's games.

If you use the Exchange then use Custard, and it is best, in my opinion, to have a separate Sims 3 folder where you can install anything you download and check if it is safe or not before adding it to your game.

I have a lot of CC in my games now. I use S3PE to extract the packages from the Sims3Pack files and add the package files to my mods folder. This makes it easy to remove anything that is causing a problem with my game. I usually just have to delete the package from my mods folder.

Last year I had an experience with a bad toddler hair. I'd had that hair in my game for over a year without a problem, but when I finally used it on a toddler and saved the game, I could never open that save again. Fortunately I have a habit of using SaveAs and saving with a different file name each time so I was able to go back to the most recent previous save, from before I added the hair to the toddler, and continue playing after removing that hair from my game. It took me about 2 days to find which file was the problem though.

I always refer to Crinrict as she's done a lot of research and has been active in assisting people keep their games running for many years and is well known and considered an authority on most things related to the Sims games.

@bobv2 Worlds ALWAYS show as corrupt in red for some reason, even if they are not.

The only way to be positive of exactly what you're installing is to install the item in a fresh Sims 3 folder, then check the launcher to see what all has been installed. Even Custard doesn't catch everything. If nothing weird has been installed, delete the fresh folder, put your old folder back and install your item or world or pattern...etc.

Thank you muchly. I just downloaded a world, from a very popular creator who I have never had an issue with before, but custard has the file in red, so does that mean its corrupt?