The Sims 3: Getting Started
The Sims series has become one of the most popular PC games for creating and using mods or what is more commonly referred to in the Sims community as custom content (CC). This includes clothing, skins, hair, body sliders, decor, homes, commercial buildings, vehicles, entire worlds, and added functionality such as new careers, censor removers and utilities that eliminate errors and game bloat. Since its release in 2009 The Sims 3 has spawned a modding community that is large, passionate and very prolific with dozens of popular sites providing thousands of unique game items to tailor nearly every aspect of your game to your own tastes.
Before I get to recommending mods there are a few steps to go through to get started and ease new mod users into the process of modding TS3.
Step 1: Hardware
Maxis' minimum system requirements for TS3 are ridiculously low with a 2.4 Ghz P4 processor, 1GB RAM, 128 MB video card, and 6.1 GB hard drive space listed. If you have anything approaching this weak excuse for a PC don't even bother. The game engine is horribly optimized and while this may not be too noticeable playing the vanilla game, adding a number of the DLCs will reduce load times, cause stuttering and pop-in, and generally kill your framerate. Even without CC and with a decent PC as of 2014 (see my system specs) the game with all or most DLCs installed will noticeably suffer at least some performance loss. Add too much CC on top of this and expect to wait upwards of 10 minutes or more to load a game and experience even worse performance in game.
The good news is that with a decent PC and a little common sense you can tweak your game and its content to have a good amount of your favorite CC while keeping performance acceptable. Just bear in mind that due to the poor optimization of the game, no amount of hardware muscle apart from a supercomputer is going to make TS3 modding flawlessly smooth.
Step 2: Purchase and Install
Steam is usually the place to go when purchasing PC games online but due to their poor relationship with EA I do not recommend buying or using TS3 on Steam. EA has its own competitive retail service called Origin and as part of their effort to lure customers away from Steam only Origin sells all TS3 DLCs. I don't like this. Origin is inferior in every way and I have had some trouble with their DRM when trying to get TS3 to work when re-installing the game. Unfortunately, its the only way to legally play the game with all DLCs.
If you purchased or were gifted TS3 from Steam you can still transfer the game and any DLCs you also acquired to Origin for free. This involves uninstalling your Steam version of the game, registering with or logging into Origin, copying your serial keys for each product from Steam and re-downloading all content from Origin. Thereafter you can purchase additional DLC from Origin and transfer over any save files or CC.
Step 3: Preparing TS3 for Modding (the right way)
With a fresh copy of TS3 installed, you could immediately begin installing CC using the game launcher. Don't do it! The only time you ever use the launcher to install CC is for custom worlds and occasionally select saved sims. Like the core game, the launcher is poorly optimized and implemented. It takes ages to load CC this way, creates unnecessary file bloat that will fill up your hard drive, creates unwanted game bloat that will slow load times, it's difficult to navigate and manage files, and it's slow and unreliable when trying to install a large number of files. Instead, we're going to skip the "middle man" and install CC manually which will allow for total control, greater efficiency and less waiting all around.
Setting Up Your TS3 Folder
Let's begin by setting up your game to recognize manually loaded CC, downloading essential tools and generally getting organized. (Remaining organized from the start will be extremely helpful in the long run as CC files pile up.)
Installing Package Utilities
At this point you could begin downloading and dropping CC content with the "package" suffix into this folder to begin modding. However, I don't recommend doing so yet. A good percentage of CC online is distributed in the "Sims3Pack" format which is only recognized by the game installer and as I stated before we want to avoid using that as much as possible. Also, putting a lot of loose package files into the Package folder will force the game to install each one separately which will increase in-game load times. Finally, previewing or remembering what each package file is when you have, for instance 30 different custom hair styles for adults and 20 more for children, can make managing your CC near impossible. To address all of these problems we're going to download two essential modding utilities for TS3.
Creating a CC Filing System
The final stage in preparing your game for modding is to set up a filing structure to organize your CC prior to downloading, merging and installing. There are different ways of doing this so I'll offer up how I do it at the moment and present it as a suggested example.
Before I get to recommending mods there are a few steps to go through to get started and ease new mod users into the process of modding TS3.
Step 1: Hardware
Maxis' minimum system requirements for TS3 are ridiculously low with a 2.4 Ghz P4 processor, 1GB RAM, 128 MB video card, and 6.1 GB hard drive space listed. If you have anything approaching this weak excuse for a PC don't even bother. The game engine is horribly optimized and while this may not be too noticeable playing the vanilla game, adding a number of the DLCs will reduce load times, cause stuttering and pop-in, and generally kill your framerate. Even without CC and with a decent PC as of 2014 (see my system specs) the game with all or most DLCs installed will noticeably suffer at least some performance loss. Add too much CC on top of this and expect to wait upwards of 10 minutes or more to load a game and experience even worse performance in game.
The good news is that with a decent PC and a little common sense you can tweak your game and its content to have a good amount of your favorite CC while keeping performance acceptable. Just bear in mind that due to the poor optimization of the game, no amount of hardware muscle apart from a supercomputer is going to make TS3 modding flawlessly smooth.
Step 2: Purchase and Install
Steam is usually the place to go when purchasing PC games online but due to their poor relationship with EA I do not recommend buying or using TS3 on Steam. EA has its own competitive retail service called Origin and as part of their effort to lure customers away from Steam only Origin sells all TS3 DLCs. I don't like this. Origin is inferior in every way and I have had some trouble with their DRM when trying to get TS3 to work when re-installing the game. Unfortunately, its the only way to legally play the game with all DLCs.
If you purchased or were gifted TS3 from Steam you can still transfer the game and any DLCs you also acquired to Origin for free. This involves uninstalling your Steam version of the game, registering with or logging into Origin, copying your serial keys for each product from Steam and re-downloading all content from Origin. Thereafter you can purchase additional DLC from Origin and transfer over any save files or CC.
Step 3: Preparing TS3 for Modding (the right way)
With a fresh copy of TS3 installed, you could immediately begin installing CC using the game launcher. Don't do it! The only time you ever use the launcher to install CC is for custom worlds and occasionally select saved sims. Like the core game, the launcher is poorly optimized and implemented. It takes ages to load CC this way, creates unnecessary file bloat that will fill up your hard drive, creates unwanted game bloat that will slow load times, it's difficult to navigate and manage files, and it's slow and unreliable when trying to install a large number of files. Instead, we're going to skip the "middle man" and install CC manually which will allow for total control, greater efficiency and less waiting all around.
Setting Up Your TS3 Folder
Let's begin by setting up your game to recognize manually loaded CC, downloading essential tools and generally getting organized. (Remaining organized from the start will be extremely helpful in the long run as CC files pile up.)
- Open up your Documents folder, click on Electronic Arts and then The Sims 3 folder.
- Create a new folder called "Mods."
- Download a file called Resource.cfg (available at Simpedia) and drop this in your new Mods folder. This will allow the game to recognize "package" files in a custom folder we're about to create.
- Inside the Mods folder create another folder called "Packages." This is where you will place the majority of your CC.
- Right-click on your Packages folder and select Send to desktop (shortcut). Ideally, keep this shortcut next to your TS3 launcher shortcut.
Installing Package Utilities
At this point you could begin downloading and dropping CC content with the "package" suffix into this folder to begin modding. However, I don't recommend doing so yet. A good percentage of CC online is distributed in the "Sims3Pack" format which is only recognized by the game installer and as I stated before we want to avoid using that as much as possible. Also, putting a lot of loose package files into the Package folder will force the game to install each one separately which will increase in-game load times. Finally, previewing or remembering what each package file is when you have, for instance 30 different custom hair styles for adults and 20 more for children, can make managing your CC near impossible. To address all of these problems we're going to download two essential modding utilities for TS3.
- Download and install Delphy's Sims3Pack Multi-Extractor (aka Multi-Installer) from Mod the Sims. You will need an account but this is a good site to return to for CC content anyway. This program will allow you to quickly turn any number of sims3pack files from one folder into package files in another folder. I keep the whole program right on my desktop next to my TS3 shortcuts.
- Download and install s3pe Package Editor from Simlogical. Drop a shortcut onto your desktop, again next to your other TS3 files. This is a powerful tool that has a lot of functionality but the average mod user only needs it for two purposes. One is to merge many packages into a single package for faster in-game loading and the other is for inspecting the contents of individual packages to help in identifying them. Believe me when I say that descriptive file names will not be sufficient when you have hundreds of similar files.
Creating a CC Filing System
The final stage in preparing your game for modding is to set up a filing structure to organize your CC prior to downloading, merging and installing. There are different ways of doing this so I'll offer up how I do it at the moment and present it as a suggested example.
- Create a folder called "TS3 CC" and place it anywhere you like. I put mine on a backup drive since the contents of this folder will not be accessed by the game. Create a desktop shortcut.
- Inside TS3 CC create the following category folders to start: "BuildStuff," "Clothes," ClothesChild," "ClothesTeen," "Hair," "HairChild," "Makeup," "Meshes," "Patterns," "Poses," "Skins," "Sliders," and "Utilities." You can make any number of folders with any names you want to help you manage your files. Just keep in mind that the contents of each category folder will be merged into a single package file each time you add or delete files. If you only have a couple files in one category it probably isn't worth merging them unless you plan on adding more. If you have too many files in one category it will take a long time for s3pe to merge them into one package file. This can become a nuisance if you frequently add to, update or delete files in a large category. A good rule of thumb is that if you have five or more similar files, put them together. If you have 40 or more files in one category it may be time to divide them up into sub-categories. For example, a common problem would be having too many files in the Clothes category. You could divide them up by gender or age (although some files might be compatible with different ages) or by type such as "everyday" and "swimwear (again, some files might be flagged for multiple types in game). In the end, all that matters is the way you organize your files makes sense to you. Throwing everything into one folder and trying to merge that every time you add or delete a file is not recommended. Even if you could manage your files that way using specific file names for instance it might take an hour to merge all those files again with s3pe.