Actually, no. Netscape 1.1 was run in Windows 3.1. Ah, Locomotion. I never played that but I've been playing the devil out of Open Transport Tycoon lately. If you haven't played it, it's a free open source version of the classic Transport Tycoon, another Chris Sawyer game, with some nice updates. and there are a lot of mods for it too Also, I re-installed Railroad Tycoon 3 and fooled around with that. Guess it's my week for nostalgic tycoon games I've also got Steam and downloaded some game demos from that and bought the whole Tropico 4 bundle when it was on sale last week. . And I haven't even bought COH2 yet. And now they've just released a new XCom game. Oy! So many games, so little time.

Actually, as far as reloading CS goes, I have a pretty good system. All my CS is archived in one folder with subfolders for different categories, based on where it's installed..style/themed. or custom, tracks, etc. Once I install something, I copy it to folder called "installed" so I know what was installed and what wasn't. And the "installed" folder has subfolders showing which folder the stuff is installed in. So, I can open my "installed/style-themed" folder for instance and see that I've had ShyGuy's Main Street sets installed so I can just re-install them. However, I made a dumb mistake. I loaded a bunch of CS. and I mean hundreds to my Style/themed and other folders before checking to make sure the game still ran....it didn't. It crashed after it started reading data..so, back to the old drawing board. Have to move all the stuff out and then put it back in a few items at a time.
That is going to take a longggggggggggggg time.

I have a tendency to engage in overkill when it comes to CS so does anyone have a list of some of the really essential items you should have installed? Stuff that gets used all the time. I realize I can always install some specialty stuff if I need it for a specific ride or park area.
I don't think I really need over 700 items in my style/themed folder. :P

No, you’re right. I don’t believe anyone really needs 700 directories in their Style\Themed folder although that is an impressive amount. No one uses most of the pieces from every set they have so assuming most of us will use only a few pieces from each set, depending on the individual I tentatively suggest that anywhere from 300 to 400 sets is enough. The most I’ve ever had was approaching 450 and it was tedious scrolling through so many items in all the lists in the game. Add to this the number of directories that live in our Style\Themed folder has a direct impact on how hard the game engine needs to work simply to scroll through all this data and it’s easy to see the fewer sets we can have in there the better.

At the time I had nearly 450 sets I managed to thin them down believing around 400 would be fine (got it down to 390+) but after my recent clean-up have decided my goal is about 350. So far I’ve narrowed it down to 361 and I just can’t go any lower – everything in my Style\Themed is something I have used and liked, am using now or plan to use futurely.

I’ve only managed to make 350 sets a realistic number because most of the sets I got rid of I’d never use because they wouldn’t integrate well into the theming I like to regularly use in my parks. Other sets went because they contained only one or two pieces I might possibly use but probably wouldn’t. Some sets went because although they were beautifully made they weren’t complete (canopy sets with no corner pieces for example). Still others went because there were similar pieces to be found in another set I planned to keep.

These past few days I’ve spent a great deal of time going over every item in walls, foliage, general scenery, paths and stalls and have been pleasantly surprised at some of the stuff I already had – and some of the stuff I could easily axe. A few of the sets I completely forgot I had them.

Thanks to Joey’s Park CleanUp it’s possible to clean out our Style\Themed folder and then clean all the deleted references out of the park file that previously referenced all that deleted CS. In some cases this cleanup tool has reduced the file size of my saved parks by about a third.

Joey’s latest version of Park CleanUp also comes with an error testing tool which will go through your CS files and tell you those that are probably the culprits for crashing your game. I’d recommend you download Joey’s utility and start the recovery of your Style\Themes folder from there.

As far as a list giving all the essential CS I’m afraid that’s a matter of personal taste. If someone were to start a thread on this and everyone responded I’m sure we’d end up with all the available CS sets being recommended as essential. You’ve probably gathered I’m about to suggest you open a sandbox and check out all your sets individually taking into account the types of parks you’ve built in the past and those parks that you’ve liked. Also make up your mind what type of CS you will absolutely not need.

I absolutely will not use horror themed stuff in my parks so this type of CS doesn’t even get a download from me. There’s nothing wrong with horror CS. I just personally don’t like it. Having said that I found I usually ignored wood sets but have lately discovered some beautiful sets by CKEF – so now I’m using wood in my parks.

I hope you’ll let us know how it goes and good luck with your CS recovery.

I have Park Cleanup, but I didn't see where it checked your Style/themed folder. I'll have to look into that. I've looking for a utility that would do that. It would make reloading my CS much easier.
I'm only half done. But I came up with an idea. It's almost impossible to know what is something is going to look like simply from the name, but if I download screenshots for every piece of CS I have. or whatever is available, I can browse them when I want to find something specific, then just install that item then instead of keeping it around in case I ever want to use it.
That is going to take some time.

After reading the release notes for Park Cleanup 2, it appears he no longer includes the content checker in the archive. Pity. I'll have to search for version 1.1 I guess before he dropped it.

Thank you so much for that link, nelson. However, the purpose of your posts seems to be to spread your website link to as many threads as poaaible. Is muslim or islam so dead you need to drum up interest like this? I'm sure I speak for others when I write here that when I'm ready to discuss politics and want entertainment and knowledge about muslim or islam I'll go to your website.

Thank you so much for that link, nelson. However, the purpose of your posts seems to be to spread your website link to as many threads as poaaible. Is muslim or islam so dead you need to drum up interest like this? I'm sure I speak for others when I write here that when I'm ready to discuss politics and want entertainment and knowledge about muslim or islam I'll go to your website.

Well said!