Tag: Mac Gaming

Choosing an external hard drive for your game

Published on by BluebellFlora2 Comments

Quick guide on choosing a decent external drive to install The Sims 4 on and using for the Sims 4 or Electronic Arts folder if creating a symlink. The drive and connection you use is REALLY important. It needs to be as fast as possible otherwise you will experience endless loading and horrible in-game lagging, if you get that far. I am an external drive junkie, I have loads of them, and have experimented with a ton of different drives over the years. The current one I have settled on, and is perfect with loading speeds and connection, is the Samsung T7. I love how small and light it is too.

What NOT to use:

  • HDD (Hard Disk Drive). These are the old style drives which manufacturers have gradually moved away from. HDDs have a spinning disk which the computer reads data from and writes data to (for example, the operating system reads the game data to load it and writes data when applying a patch. Similarly, the game reads the save file to load the save and then writes to the save file when you save). Think of it like a record deck only much smaller and only reading, not writing. HDDs are still available to buy and are typically very cheap now. They come in two speeds – 5400rpm and 7200rpm. Neither of which are fast by today’s standards. They have a higher rate of failure and can be easily damaged if dropped as they have physical moving parts. If the product description does not specifically state SSD storage then the drive will most likely be a HDD. Do not use one of these.
  • A USB-A connection
  • An adapter cable from USB-C or Thunderbolt (Mac) to USB-A (external drive) to enable a connection. Adapter cables are great and fix the physical problem of connecting an incompatible drive to a computer but are only as fast as the original connection.

What to use:

  • SSD (Solid-State Drive) or a Flash storage thumb drive with a direct USB-C/Thunderbolt connection and at least USB 3.2 speed with read/write speeds of around 1,050/1,000 MB/s.
  • External drive “Transfer” speed and “read/write” speed should not be confused when it comes to running a game through an external drive. The read/write speed is the drive spec. you should be looking at.

Why do I want to use an external drive?

  • Pro – to install the game externally so it doesn’t fill up internal disk space on your Mac.
  • Pro – if you have two or more Macs running the game through the same Origin/EA ID you can install the game on one external drive and switch it between Macs rather then install the game on each Mac.
  • Pro – by creating a symlink you can store your Sims 4 or Electronic Arts folder on the external drive, bypassing the default location in your Documents folder. Especially useful if you have a lot of CC/Mods taking up masses of precious memory and a ton of save files.
  • Con – good quality fast SSDs are still a little pricey.
  • Con – cannot play the game unless you have the external drive with you.

Best practice and how to use:

  • Always wait for your Mac to fully mount the drive before opening Origin. You should see it either on the desktop or in the Finder sidebar depending on your Mac setup.
  • Once mounted, open the drive and navigate to the deepest level folder to make sure the operating system has fully loaded the contents. This is especially important on slow drives.
    • If using for your game installation, open the Sims 4 Packs folder and then several pack folders and subfolders.
    • If using for your Sims 4/Electronic Arts folder, open the saves folder and then the Mods folder (if you use Mods) and a subfolder.
  • Never open Origin without having the drive plugged in. It will default to the internal drive location and will require you to set up the external drive location again in Origin > Installs & Saves > Game library location.
  • If the symlink is setup for the Sims 4/Electronic Arts folder, never launch the game without the external drive plugged in. You will get the game is already running error message.
  • Once you’ve found a drive you think will work, always do a little research into the read/write speeds of the drive. If the specs aren’t immediately apparent in the product description you should google the drive and “read/write speeds” to get a proper idea. If the drive is unbelievably cheap the chances are that it’s going to be pretty slow.

Helpful links:

Eternal Island, a new Sims 4 Residential Lot

Published on by BluebellFlora1 Comment

I really miss the ability to be able to edit the town or create worlds. When I saw the Reef Finery lot in Sulani I thought it would be perfect to try and incorporate the town furniture into the lot using MOO by overhanging objects across the lot boundary as much as possible.

I have loved making this lot, it’s so tranquil and instantly calming in game!

I made the lot look like it takes over the island with ample use of MOO and placing objects right on the edge of the lot so make sure MOO is enabled before placing. You can see the difference here between MOO on and MOO off:

I used content from the following packs:

  • EPs – Island Living, Get Famous, Seasons, Cats & Dogs, City Living, Get Together, Get To Work
  • GPs – Strangerville, Jungle Adventure, Parenthood, Vampires, Spa Day
  • SPs – Laundry Day, Toddler Stuff, Bowling Night, Vintage Glamour, Backyard, Romantic Garden, Movie Hangout, Cool Kitchen, Perfect Patio

Sims 4 Studio – great tool, shame about the arrogant attitude on their forums.

Published on by BluebellFlora4 Comments

So a couple of weeks ago I dared to call out a moderator’s ridiculous response on a thread about the new Sims 4 Studio for Mac, Candy Apple. I love Sims 4 Studio for two reasons – the opportunity to now be able to recolour objects in the Mac version, and their overall support for Mac users because let’s face it, no one else really bothers to support 3rd party Mac stuff for Sims 4  do they? I’ve read on other sites and social media that they can be an arrogant bunch at Sims 4 Studio but I always like to take people as I find them. In this case, sadly, they lived up to the reputation. This is a long post with lots of screenshots, the reasons for which will become apparent further down.

The story starts with the release of Sims 4 Studio Candy Apple 1.2 for Mac. Finally we get the ability to recolour objects – yay! I happily delved in and played around with it. After a couple of minutes it became apparent that it was extremely buggy but that’s ok, it’s in beta, I can live with that. I was struggling with the camera controls in the model viewer so decided to ask on the Sims 4 Studio forums about it (you can read the thread here). Orangemittens helpfully replied and it was quickly established that the software had not been optimised for an Apple mouse or Trackpad, only a 3rd party mouse with scroll wheel.

Absolutely fine, great responses and orangemittens was really helpful and patient. Then a moderator by the name of MisterS decides to elaborate further:

After me pointing out the obvious I get the following ridiculous response:

What?? He’s replying in a Mac thread and he actually states “I don’t even know what a Mac looks like”. How ignorant can you be? I couldn’t care less whether he knows what a Mac looks like but actually posting such an unhelpful and stupid response makes him look like an amateur and a mere copy and paste drone in his initial reply. I couldn’t let it go:

His petulant response:

At this point someone called Andrew jumped in. I had no idea who Andrew was but I see he’s a ‘Tech Lead’ so obviously must be someone very important. Turns out he’s the Sims 4 Studio  Messiah and also likes to throw his toys out of the pram:

I replied, massaging his ego a little because he obviously seemed a little upset:

And that was that. I’d forgotten all about it and presumed we had all moved on. Which is why when the latest update dropped this morning I was over the moon and thanked Andrew in the thread:

But no, there’s always some idiot who has to come along and flame the situation:

“also he’s a mod and it’s not a very good idea to tell someone who answers questions all day that you don’t need their help cause you may in the future. regardless of them getting one question” Oh sweetie, not everyone is as thin skinned as MisterS. Perhaps if you removed your head from his arse you may see that. I replied to paintedplumbob’s post but sadly, due to censorship issues and fragile egos, my post was deleted, so I posted another which was also deleted. Luckily, as I have had dealings in the past with power happy moderators and forum owners who can’t cope with any kind of criticism, I’ve learnt to take screenshots when I have an inkling of what is going to happen:

I then received two messages from orangemittens telling me off because I had been naughty and threatening to ban me, something which, if it hasn’t already happened, most surely will if they read this post. They’re a sensitive little bunch over at Sims 4 Studio aren’t they? Or are they behaving like EA – no one else does what they do, as well as they do it, so they come to think that they are superior to the community and take the slightest offence if anyone dares to criticise them?

 

Thankfully there are wonderful communities of creators outside of Sims 4 Studio who are more than willing to help in a nice and polite manner, and share their expertise willingly. I think I’ll reach out to them in the future 🙂

PS – I’m still none the wiser to what an ‘official spool’ is. Could someone please enlighten me? I did think that maybe he meant ‘official spiel‘?