idiot guide for Delphy's Download Organiser
 

Does an idiot guide exist anywhere?

I have seen the manual and the wiki page but... well I am not sure what I am doing here. I want to remove skins and hair and objexts that don't have mesh, but it throws up thousands of "orphan" files... is it possible to make a list of things that don't have meshes?

Sorry just not techy enough to play this game :P

Probably is one somewhere, but here's the shorty version:

1) Run the program. You'll see a dialog with Set Directory and Scan (disabled) buttons.

2) Click the Set Directory button. Navigate to your Downloads directory in the new dialog. You'll only need to do the Navigation portion once. Click OK.

3) Click the Scan button. Twiddle your thumbs for a while. A new window containing a grid with a line for every download appears.

4) From the File menu, choose "Scan for Duplicates." This scan should not take long. From the combo box in the lower right panel, choose "Duplicates" to see only the Duplicates. Resolve your Duplicates in one of two ways.

4a) If the Duplicates are "alphabet soup" files, you can probably safely delete them.

4b) If you're unsure about which file is the Duplicate, show all the files and scroll down looking for yellow highlights.

5) From the File menu, choose "Scan for Orphans." This scan should not take long. From the combo box in the lower right panel, choose "Clothing Textures" to see only the orphan textures. Resolve your orphans in one of two ways.

5a) Find and install the meshes. Repeat the whole process.

5b) Delete the orphans. I recommend doing this in groups of 5 or 10.

ok - Rose <HUGE HUGS> thank you...

Duplicates deleted - there were only a few. Worryingly some of them were meshes.
Um... I have 833 orphaned clothing recolours. Does this sound ridiculously huge? Is it safe to simply delete them? or alternatively, how do I find out what mesh they belong to?

Sita, 1st thing you have to do is make sure they are orphans. Don't delete them until you do! (personal experience - also Delphy said somewhere that the orphan scan isn't perfect, it will nail some files that do have meshes). My experience though is that it's pretty accurate with orphan meshes but not the clothing recolors.

Move the orphans to a separate directory to isolate them.

While you're at it if you already haven't done this. Isolate all the body and clothing meshes into a separate folder.

Then create a new empty game and either move or copy the orphan and mesh folders to the downloads folder (hopefully you're running an expansion pack beyond nightlife - if not then directly to the downloads folder).

Load the empty game and go to CAS. Then, check them one by one by seeing if the maniquin changes clothes. If the thumbnail shows up as a maxis outfit then you don't have a mesh loaded usually. Check them anyway since, for some reason, sometimes the thumbnail doesn't show properly. If you don't see a non-default outfit, then you don't have the mesh installed. If it does change, then you do. If you do find some that do display properly, then make a note of the description so you can dig them out of the directory later.

If you don't want to keep the orphans in the hopes of someday finding a mesh, then you can delete them right there in CAS.

To isolate the good recolors, go back to DDO and scan the folder where you put the orphans and move the ones with the desciptions you noted above to a new folder and then you can store what's left elsewhere.

Mail your xml file (from the DDO directory) to me at miros1 (at) iwon.com and I'll try comparing them to my meshes.

Usually duplicates are just that... duplicates. Even if they were meshes, they're still in your game in different folders or with different file names.

OK, weirdness with DDO: I have current version of .Net Framework 1.1 (i.e.: all hotfixes and service packs installed) and DDO never fully opens to the initial wizard (where you tell it where your Downloads folder is). I've redownloaded DDO twice, and none of the installs have worked. :sigh: Feeling lost here, 'cause I can't figure out what's wrong here. Installing to C:\Games\DDO, so there are no spaces to trip the program up.

I thought DDO worked on Net Framework 2 like SimPE. Why don't you try adding that to see if it helps.

I've both, actually (XP Pro, via MCE 2005) but it still never reaches first base. Color me frustrated. (Even emptying Downloads helps not at all.)

I'm tremendously careful to make sure I have meshes for all clothing, skintones and objects, but still wish the thing would work. (and the DDO docs still show a requirement for .Net 1.1, so that's what I went with.) Even thought .Net 1.1 might have been fouled at some time, so uninstalled it and had Windows Update reinstall it and its service pack. No dice. It's rather pointless to run Compressorizer; on the first run, I got a whopping 3Mb back (from close to 4 Gb of CC). That sort of ROI (Rate on Investment) would get most investors ticked off, since it's statistically insignificant.

Unlike a lot of folks, I don't use folders inside folders (aside from "first-level" folders) within Downloads. In my way of thinking, it's a bit redundant, since most CC worth keeping have the creator's name in the filename anyway. (OK, I admit some doesn't, but still, a lot of it does.)

The only version of .Net I don't have on this box is 3.x in any of its flavors. Have nothing that requires it.