Well, I think it's finally happened....

"Babykittyjade;c-17872471" wrote:
One more thing u can also get mods conflict detector and you probably have loads of duplicates.

I use Sims 4 Tray importer as it has a thing to look for conflicts. That helped me find about 370+ identical mods that had been randomly thrown into folders by people releasing pre-made sims...

A week ago I went through all my mods and put all the CAS ones that have no scripts into folders by category - getting rid of all those 'premade sim' messy folders, and that cleared out most conflicts.

I also made an '!!Overrides' folder, and set my game so that the things in that folder load at priority 1000 while everything else is 500.

The '!!' is because load order for Sims 4 mods seems to be alphabetical and later loads won't overwrite - it's first in top priority by default from what I know so far...

The real problem comes with those stacks and stacks of mods out there that insist they be in the top level folder and not have any folders renamed... I moved ALL of my gameplay / scripted mods into a folder I named '!Gameplay' and then one by one put them back in the top level folder if they didn't like being in the sub-folder...

@Jyotai said:
That helped me find about 370+ identical mods that had been randomly thrown into folders by people releasing pre-made sims...

The best thing to do is to stop downloading pre-made sims. Spend the time enjoying that part of the game known as Create A Sim and make your own. I'm sure you can do a better job in the way that you want your sims to look anyway.

But more importantly, avoid downloading bundled mods that come with these pre-made sims and just tossing them blindly into your Mods folder. That's just asking for a whole lot of trouble. Unless you can specifically identify what mods have been included with that sim, you run the risk of installing old, outdated mods. If there are script mods included in that bundle, that makes matters even worse.

Yes, there are people out there who make some pretty sims. That doesn't mean that they should be trusted in the way they mod their game.

Take a moment to ponder this thought. Would you blindly hand over your computer to a total stranger? That's what you're doing when you download a pre-made sim and install all of the mods required. You're basically letting that person dictate what should be on your hard drive.

I've only downloaded a few premade sims. None of them were any good in terms of quality. I use a silly number like 370 as a point of exaggeration for how badly some stuff gets piled on.

With some of these compilations, the same mod can end up in there more than once... meaning the final 'bundle mod' has a conflict with itself.

That said, I find the reply above a bit condescending, though I don't think it was intended to be.

I'm not handing my computer over to a stranger, I'm letting some things alter aspects of my gameplay within a contained environment.

At this point in time I prefer the more cartoony look of Sims 4. If I had ended up going the other way on that choice - those premade sims would have been very valuable to me. Instead I've cannibalized what I got from them. Some of the compilations have things that are no longer available but which work perfectly well - a few clothing and sim traits I've kept from that process.


I think a bigger takeaway is mod makers need to learn to organize their stuff better. Requiring everything be in the top level folder is bad design.

I've got a few mods that have must have features for me, who's makers bundled every mod idea they've every had into one package file, rather than using a modular code structure. That's very bad design. These are things I figured out by breaking open packages and looking through folders of what I'd obtained.

There are mods that will replace the defaults for skin, teeth, body parts, etc - that fail to label themselves properly and don't put themselves into an 'override' folder. This can be an easy source of conflicts if you don't know what to look for you can have multiple 'defaults' for a given thing, which means your game has to sort out which of these is the right one to use on every load up. That's why I use the '!!Overrides' folder and set my Resource.cfg to look like this:

Priority 500
PackedFile *.package
PackedFile */*.package
PackedFile */*/*.package
PackedFile */*/*/*.package
PackedFile */*/*/*/*.package
PackedFile */*/*/*/*/*.package
Priority 1000
PackedFile !!Overrides\*\*\*\*\*.package

- Moving all the mods that will allow you to move them, into organized folders, and them making a folder that appears 'first' in sort by name, giving only that folder priority 1000, and placing only a very select list of things in it, is a good way to tell sim 4 what to do over potential conflicts.

The workflow process of organizing it all like that, is a good way to find those conflicts before you even load up the game.

For things like clothing mods, I have folders within folders to sort clothing into the same categories as they appear in CAS - which just makes it easier to be more aware of what I've downloaded.


As I happen to be a professional developer, I can look through these things and figure out what I'm looking at, and I don't get scared when something breaks, I get interested. Those mods that I've kept are still worth keeping, even if badly made. On balance I get the things I want out of them.

> @BatmanFanGirl said:
> I think that is a good idea, the issue is I don't know what clothing, objects etc are. Like what if I delete an object that is in my current household? I don't know the descriptions really well. :(


Sims 4 Studio can help with that. Once you download that software and install it, you can launch it (while your game is NOT running) and it will let you click on each of your CC files and actually view the content so you can see the objects, clothing, hair, etc that are associated with the file names...and then you can click the delete button right there in the Sims 4 Studio UI to remove anything you don't want to keep in your game.

I'm a visual kind of person, too. I can't remember what something looks like just by the file name either. I need to be able to actually SEE it. Sims 4 Studio will let you do that, and it makes it really easy to figure out what's what.

I'd recommend making a copy of your Mods folder beforehand, though, and putting that backup copy on your desktop before you start deleting things through Sims 4 Studio, just in case you accidentally remove something you meant to keep.

Hope that helps! :)

Thank you so much @BitterBubbly that sounds exactly like what I need!

> @BatmanFanGirl said:
> Thank you so much @BitterBubbly that sounds exactly like what I need!

You're welcome! Happy to help! I'm the same way when it comes to associating file names with their actual visual content, and Sims 4 Studio has been a good solution for me (so far) so I hope it helps you, too!

Happy Simming! :)

"BatmanFanGirl;c-17880339" wrote:
@BitterBubbly Quick question is there a way of selecting multiple items to delete in sims studio? I can't seem to find it in the mods folder but if I can select it in the studio at once I can get rid of it that way?

If you are trying to track down duplicate CC Sims Mod Assistant has that function.

If you want to delete unwanted CC, make a Sim with CC you are looking for and save it. Close the game then open the Sims 4 Tray Importer to look at the CC, you can delete the file straight from the program.

I would move the "mods" folder to my desk top. Then create folders to separate them into categories such as - must haves, game play mods, make up, furniture and misc. I would put back all clothing, hair (unless you know you don't really like some of them) into mods folder, and must have mods. Then just go through each folder (it's not so daunting that way) keeping just a few faves from each category. Don't throw out the rest, just put all the folders into one and keep it just in case. Then put your mods folder back in your Sims 4 game file. Sounds like a lot of work, I know, but the alternatives are worse. This is what works for me.

I think that is a good idea, the issue is I don't know what clothing, objects etc are. Like what if I delete an object that is in my current household? I don't know the descriptions really well. :(

This is why you keep the clothing and hair and safeguard by keeping a copy of it all somewhere on your computer. If you do delete something, the game will put something of kind in it's place. There is a more grueling option. Right click on every piece and select "search on line" for it, view it and decide if you want it. It would almost be easier to start over. Having been there and done that I feel your pain.