Wow...! Yeah, very convoluted, but highly impressive 🙂 I would have thought the simplest setup would be to simply have interchangeable saves and Mods folders wouldn't it? Keep the Sims 4 folder as it is by default but inside it have something like this:
The game will only load from saves and Mods and ignore the folders numbered 1-3. If you want to play save3 with Mods3 rename saves and Mods and drop the 3 from the corresponding folders. Or am I missing the point?
Yes, it would indeed be simpler! But I have a lot of mods (whoops 🥳) so duplicating my "base" CC into three folders would take a lot more storage space unfortunately. This, in itself, isn't that much of a problem all-in-all, but I enjoyed the convenience of having one folder for "shareable" things.
For example, when removing or adding CC that can be used in any saves, it's easier to have it at it the same place in Commons/CAS/Hair/AF/, rather than copying the File to Modern/CAS/Hair/AF/, then SciFi/CAS/Hair/AF, then Medieval/CAS/Hair/AF...
The saves folder is fine though! I don't switch things around in it; I just cherry-pick mods depending on their themes 🙂
Yes pretty close!
The Mods folder actually points to Modern directly (or SciFi, or Medieval -- only one at a time) ; and I only use "Global Mods" as the place where I can organize my hoard of CC.
If that helps, here are a few screenshots :
That's the "Modern" folder (the one that is currently linked in Mods) -- in which I have symlinks to Commons/ and Fantasy/
(Please disregard the Bash scripts, I use them to remove special characters and white spaces from CC files names, eg. [creator]test_package.package to creatorTestPackage.package)
And for example, the Medieval folder is basically the same :
It's unused for now however, The Sims game has no idea it exists. But if I want to go back to my Medieval saves, I'd just have to switch the symlink in The Sims 4/Mods from Modern/ to Medieval/ 🙂
So basically The Sims 4/Mods points toward Global Mods/Modern, and if I look further, The Sims 4/Mods/Commons will point toward Global Mods/Commons directly (which is great! That's what it's supposed to do! haha)
Here's a comparison of the two folders :
Do you think it could be an issue with how the game loads files on Mac, should I open a ticket?
Thank you!
Ah, gotcha, thanks.
Do you have a resource.cgf file in the SciFI and Medieval folders?
I don't see how it is an issue with how the game loads files on macOS. All the game is doing is looking in the Documents folder for an Electronic Arts folder, for a Sims 4 folder, and then the saves folder, Mods folder, game settings file and all the other files it needs. If it can't find them it will simply recreate the files, or folders, it can't find. It doesn't know macOS is using the symlinks. But, it's interesting that this exact same setup worked for you in Windows. So I would think it could be one of two things - 1) differences in Windows and macOS (I have no experience of the command line in Windows) or 2) the symlinks not being correctly set up but from your screenshots it all looks ok.
To answer your initial question "Do you know if the Mac OS build of The Sims 4 can load symlinks inside other symlinks?" I would assume yes it can because the OS is doing the work and the game is none the wiser. I'm going to have to test this now though. Will play around later and report back with my findings 🙂
I would personally set it up with bespoke saves and Mods folders and rename them before loading the specific save I wanted to play. If storage was the issue I'd dump the whole Electronic Arts folder on a fast external and symlink to it (the problem I had and why I created this guide all those years ago now).
