READ THIS FIRST!

Before installing, be aware the mod has only been tested on Windows 11. Mac is untested.
OneDrive-synced Documents folders are known to cause problems with large Mods folders; if yours is synced, the cache may rebuild more often.

I recommend backing up your The Sims 4 folder before installing.

CAS and build/buy CC is not affected; a large Mods folder that is mostly CC will see little difference.
This mod is aimed towards Mods folder with a huge amount of tuning package files that change/add game behaviour.

For measurements, time the second launch post-mod install, not the first.

Feedback is greatly appreciated.

Attempts to make The Sims 4 start faster when you have a lot of tuning mods, and make save loading faster when you have Lovestruck installed. Nothing about what the game loads changes; it just stops doing the same work twice.

The more tuning files your Mods folder holds, the more it saves.

I tested on my own setup with about 29,000 mod tuning files, the game spent about 52 seconds loading them; with this mod, about 24 seconds. On a small Mods folder the difference is much smaller.

What it does

Game start: the game reads every tuning file in your Mods folder twice.
The first read builds the whole file in slow Python only to look at its first line. This mod does that first read with the game's built-in C XML reader instead, which still checks the whole file.

It also keeps a tuning cache, HNRY_FasterTuningLoading.cache, beside the mod. Later launches hand the saved files straight to the game instead of parsing them again. Sections that repeat word for word across files of the same kind are built once, the way the game already does for its own EA tuning.

Save loading (Lovestruck): every time a save loads, the game re-adds the neighbor relationship between Sims of different households in the same world, and each one makes Lovestruck re-check that Sim's attraction to everyone they know. During that loading step this mod checks each Sim once, after the neighbor relationships are in place. The same checks run with the same result; they are just not repeated. On the test save this step went from about 23 seconds to under 2 seconds. Without Lovestruck installed this part does nothing, since it's unnecessary.

The first launch

The first launch loads normally and writes the cache, which makes that one launch a little slower. The same happens after you add, remove or update any .package file, change Resource.cfg, or install a new version of this mod. On my setup, the cache file was about 15MB for 29,000 files.

Deleting HNRY_FasterTuningLoading.cache is always safe; the next launch rebuilds it. If anything looks wrong after changing your mods, delete it first.

Checking it

Open the cheat console (Ctrl+Shift+C) and type:
hnry.ftl.status — whether the mod is active, how many tuning files were read fast or taken from the cache, and how many attraction checks the last save load needed

Requirements

• Script mods enabled
• No packs required. The save-loading part only needs Lovestruck to work.

Install

Put HNRY_FasterTuningLoading.ts4script in your Mods folder, or one folder inside it.

To uninstall, delete HNRY_FasterTuningLoading.ts4script and HNRY_FasterTuningLoading.cache.

Compatibility

Tested alongside TURBODRIVER's mods, MCCC, Lot51 Core Library, XML Injector, Better Exceptions and about 130 other script mods.

Tested on Windows. Mac is untested.

Broken tuning files still fail exactly as they do without the mod: they are handed to the game's own reader. If a game patch changes the parts of the game this mod relies on, it leaves those parts alone and hnry.ftl.status says so.

Support

For bug reporting or support you can contact me on Discord @henryvotril

Thank you for using my mods! 💕