Package mods not working?

[Arondight]

Hello there, as title says all my package mods don't work and I don't understand why, I have all the folders set up correctly and did even delete the cache files at the root of the documents folder and still nothing. Any help is greatly appreciated thanks

[igazor]

1 - The Mods folder should have three and only three things in it. A Packages subfolder, an Overrides subfolder, and the required Resource.cfg file. The mods, in unzipped form, go into Packages. Everything should look exactly like the illustrations here, plus or minus differences around the edges for different operating systems.
http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help%3AInstalling_Sims_3_Package_Files%2FSetup_and_Files

2 - There will be a file at the top level of your TS3 user game folder called DeviceConfig.log. Does its modification date/time, as shown on a right-click and Properties not by opening it, exactly match the last time you started up the game? If you aren't sure, then startup and the file's date/time should update instantly.

If all of the above check out, then we might need to see some screenshorts of your Mods folder showing it's in the right place and its contents in Detail View, and that of Mods\Packages, to see if we can spot anything wrong. What kind of mods are we talking about though, and how do you know they aren't loading? Not all mod types announce themselves upon startup.

[Arondight]

Originally posted by igazor:

1 - The Mods folder should have three and only three things in it. A Packages subfolder, an Overrides subfolder, and the required Resource.cfg file. The mods, in unzipped form, go into Packages. Everything should look exactly like the illustrations here, plus or minus differences around the edges for different operating systems.
http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help%3AInstalling_Sims_3_Package_Files%2FSetup_and_Files

2 - There will be a file at the top level of your TS3 user game folder called DeviceConfig.log. Does its modification date/time, as shown on a right-click and Properties not by opening it, exactly match the last time you started up the game? If you aren't sure, then startup and the file's date/time should update instantly.

If all of the above check out, then we might need to see some screenshorts of your Mods folder showing it's in the right place and its contents in Detail View, and that of Mods\Packages, to see if we can spot anything wrong. What kind of mods are we talking about though, and how do you know they aren't loading? Not all mod types announce themselves upon startup.

I do have everything in place I think but to be sure I will link a screenshot for you to see: https://imgur.com/hp42MQk
is it everything in place right?

Regarding the 2nd question, yea it does seem to match the date and time of my last login but I will try again to be sure.

It's just clothing mods plus a few reccomended that I heard like Overwatch, no build sparkle and no intro. Thanks for helping by the way :)

also I know it's not related to this issue but my other topic went unanswered, may I ask you if you know if it's possible to cap the fps of the launcher window that opens when installing sims3.pack?

[igazor]

That looks right so far, but I can't see inside of Mods\Packages in just the one screenshot.

Despite what I said prior, the three mods (not the clothing) will actually announce themselves by way of a pop-up menu at startup because they are each script mods, and Overwatch should be adding an NRaas > Overwatch menu to City Hall if it were loading correctly. And of course the intro movie should be suppressed on startup if that one were loading so you do at least have a solid indicator as to this not yet working as it should.

On the Launcher question, yes but how to do that depends on which method you are already using to cap the fps for the game in general if you are actually doing so and what you have for a GPU (graphics card). It's pretty unusual for the Launcher itself to be throwing high frame rates, more typically it's the game itself that will do that, but I guess anything is possible.

[Arondight]

Originally posted by igazor:

That looks right so far, but I can't see inside of Mods\Packages in just the one screenshot.

Despite what I said prior, the three mods (not the clothing) will actually announce themselves by way of a pop-up menu at startup because they are each script mods, and Overwatch should be adding an NRaas > Overwatch menu to City Hall if it were loading correctly. And of course the intro movie should be suppressed on startup if that one were loading so you do at least have a solid indicator as to this not yet working as it should.

On the Launcher question, yes but how to do that depends on which method you are already using to cap the fps for the game in general if you are actually doing so and what you have for a GPU (graphics card). It's pretty unusual for the Launcher itself to be throwing high frame rates, more typically it's the game itself that will do that, but I guess anything is possible.

I think I have some pop up menu after the game intro if I remember well, it says something like it found modified scripts, but see even if I get that menu i still get the intro and the other clothes don't show up

I'm using the nvidia control panel to cap the fps, it worked for the game even otugh half vsync refused to work. Do you have any idea what should I add there, I have no idea how the popup installer window is actually called, I think I tryed every exe in sims 3 folder

[igazor]

Is it possible that you have something in your Mods\Packages subfolder that is not actually a TS3 mod or item? The game cannot read zipped or other compressed files and content really meant for TS2 or TS4 shares the same file format, but of course the game will trip over those as well and if present can prevent whatever was going to load next from doing so properly. Perhaps try a test with Overwatch only or maybe that and No Intro only, the caches cleared again, and see if that works right?

On a Steam install, the executable for the game itself should be TS3W.exe (the one with the "W"). The Launcher should be Sims3LauncherW.exe (again with the "W") and will need its own Nvidia Control Panel profile. If either or both are going to be stubborn about it, I would suggest adding Nvidia Inspector to the mix, select The Sims 3 (one choice from its pull-down menu, no need to browse for executables), and explicitly set the max frame rate to 60 or as close as it will let you in Section 2 of its settings -- this assumes a monitor with a refresh rate of 60 Hz, of course some can run higher.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-profile-inspector-download.html
(the real download links are 2/3 of the way down the page, ignore anything that might show up in the upper right corner if you have no ad blocker as those would be rogue ads)

[Arondight]

Originally posted by igazor:

Is it possible that you have something in your Mods\Packages subfolder that is not actually a TS3 mod or item? The game cannot read zipped or other compressed files and content really meant for TS2 or TS4 shares the same file format, but of course the game will trip over those as well and if present can prevent whatever was going to load next from doing so properly. Perhaps try a test with Overwatch only or maybe that and No Intro only, the caches cleared again, and see if that works right?

On a Steam install, the executable for the game itself should be TS3W.exe (the one with the "W"). The Launcher should be Sims3LauncherW.exe (again with the "W") and will need its own Nvidia Control Panel profile. If either or both are going to be stubborn about it, I would suggest adding Nvidia Inspector to the mix, select The Sims 3 (one choice from its pull-down menu, no need to browse for executables), and explicitly set the max frame rate to 60 or as close as it will let you in Section 2 of its settings -- this assumes a monitor with a refresh rate of 60 Hz, of course some can run higher.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-profile-inspector-download.html
(the real download links are 2/3 of the way down the page, ignore anything that might show up in the upper right corner if you have no ad blocker as those would be rogue ads)

alright, i will try again with just a couple of mods, hopefully it works, mind if I ask you again what caches needed to me deleted? i think i forgot a couple, tough shouldn't the game crash or something if I do put ts4 stuff in there?

I have already sims3launcherw, sims3launcher and ts3w, all set with vertical sync and launcher still goes to 3000 fps if I do attempt to install mods from there, not sure if i'm missing something at this point, and yea I may try nvidia inspector later but still i think I got the launcher exe wrong since it doesn't seem to work

also this is the menu that opens when i boot the game
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/766103125878502618/56641C162307DCA5B016B9AEB40C840D3F187CED/

[igazor]

The game won't always crash if content it cannot process is found in Mods\Packages. The best we can say is that unexpected, strange things might happen. The pop-up looks right, if Overwatch were the only script mod in place although to be fair not all of them always get reported there. In fact it usually gives up trying to list them on players with hundreds of script mods in play (doesn't sound like the case here) but then goes on to load them correctly anyway, if it can.

The five cache files in question are:
CASPartCache.package
compositorCache.package
scriptCache.package (the most crucial to delete when adding/removing script mods)
simCompositorCache.package
socialCache.package (this one is optional)

[Arondight]

I had some small degree of success by moving some stuff out of the folder, clothes did show up but i'm unsure on how to categorize them since they don't have the bag icon. No intro still doesn't seem to work

[igazor]

The way to proceed then would be to have NoIntro and Overwatch be the only two things in your Mods\Packages folder at first (and clear caches). If both work, then add a small number, like five, of your clothing items in, clear caches, and check again. Then maybe five more. One "bad" file in your collection could be ruining the startup process.

Whether CC has the custom icon on it or not is usually more down to the design of the CC than the game failing to recognize it as custom. Some of what I use shows up incorrectly as store content and some of it also has no icon at all which does at times get confusing.

[Arondight]

thanks for the advices, i'm still trying, is the logo with white background supposed to happen if nointro works?

[igazor]

Somewhere along the line when patches were still coming out they "enhanced" the startup sequence with a Maxis logo bit that wasn't there before. The original NoIntro mod doesn't stop that, just the rest of it. There's an updated replacement version that kills off all of it.
http://modthesims.info/d/497903/no-intro-with-maxis-logo.html

[Arondight]

Originally posted by igazor:

Somewhere along the line when patches were still coming out they "enhanced" the startup sequence with a Maxis logo bit that wasn't there before. The original NoIntro mod doesn't stop that, just the rest of it. There's an updated replacement version that kills off all of it.
http://modthesims.info/d/497903/no-intro-with-maxis-logo.html

i see, I think i have solved it then, thank you so much for all the help :)