So I've realized that like every time I open virta, I'm downloading anything that seems interesting, on top of that, I have tons of stuff from patreons and other creators I've bough downloaded. My virta file system is a absolute mess. I tried organizing at one point, but downloading from hub didn't put stuff where I wanted. I'm sure I have doubles if things in different folders. Is there any magical something one of you amazing people have made to organize things easier than in the hub?
I have money, I will pay for sanity lol
I was in exactly your situation and in the end the best solution was to bite the bullet and clean house. Everyone has a different way of dealing with this problem but in my case, I went through my addon folder and copied out everything that I knew I had paid for and put it all into its own folder. Once you know stuff you paid for is all safe there isnt really any massive loss if you really cant be bothered and just start from scratch. I didnt have a massive amount of stuff in the old custom folders from the old system before .vars so I left all that alone, it doesnt affect VAM speed like the addon folder anyway. The important thing after sorting everything out is coming up with a way to keep it from getting out of hand again with the least effort. Assuming you aren't gonna start from scratch then the next step for me was to make an "archive" folder for scenes you most use & dont want to go hunting for again, as well as all the paid content, and move those vars into it using creator named folders to keep it all tidy. Keep this folder inside the vam folder but outside the addon folder so the files dont affect vam. This folder will be very important later. Next step, inside addon folder make folders for stuff you want to always keep, for me I made clothes, hair, morphs, essential dependencies and fave appearances folders. I then skimmed through the addon folder and moved the biggest/most used vars into the appropriate folders. If this is too tricky another way is to wait till addon folder is cleared later on, then go into vam hub and download the top listed packs for clothes, hairs, etc 1 content type at a time and just bulk move the vars once they all appear inside the addon folder into the appropriate folders. For plugins I just searched the addon folder for the ones I know I use all the time and moved the latest version of each into the dependencies folder. Then did same with morph packs. Just searching "morph" inside the cluttered addon folder finds most of the big ones, same with hairs, clothes etc. Once youre happy youve got a fair chunk of all the vars you know youre always gonna want moved into the folders then just go ahead and select everything else thats left loose in addon folder and delete the lot. I cut and pasted all mine out just so I had them in case I realised I needed something later.
Now load Vam, go to the Hub and do the old search for missing files and updates and download all. This should in theory mean you then have all the dependencies you need for your fave appearances, hairs, clothes etc and any scenes that were saved outside the addon folder eg in custom. Sort these files out into the folders inside addon just like before as best you can and dump any remainders inside the dependencies folder.
What you're now left with is your "Base VAM" setup. You now know no matter how much shit you download off the hub, you can always go into addon folder, select everything not sorted into those "base folders" and delete EVERYTHING whenever it starts to get too much and you'll still have everything you regularly use eg appearences, plugins, clothes, hairs etc all safe.
Now as you use Vam, whenever you get something you think is worth adding to the folders to keep like great plugins, new fave looks etc, just go to addon folder, sort by date and move the vars into the folders. It's worth occasionally doing what you did before, ie clearing all the loose stuff out, going to hub in vam and downloading all files you need for new stuff youve been adding to your safe folders just so you dont have to keep downloading them each time you clean house. Personally ive almost never had to do this as most vars for things like appearances have all/most the dependancies inside them anyway. Any scenes you wanna keep for later use you should move into the "archive" folder we made earlier, remembering to make subfolders with creators names to keep it all organised. I have a "misc" folder inside my archive folder for single scenes I wanna keep.
Now heres how to use all this work youve done to never have to do all this again. You've got your base vam with nice clear addon folder, except for the folders you made inside to keep fave stuff safe, and you wanna play some scenes. All you have to do is decide what you fancy using that session eg I wanna use some scenes from Alpaca. So I just copy or move the folder named alpaca from the archive folder into the addon folder and boot vam. Go to hub and download all the required dependencies for those scenes. If there are any big files that take a while to download, I suggest at some point going to the addon folder, sorting by size and move them into the appropriate folders inside addon so theyre added to your "base vam". When finished with using alpaca scenes, just move the alpaca folder out of addon, back to archive, and delete all the loose left over files in the addon folder. You now have a nice clean vam again and with the benefit of next time you play alpaca and download the dependencies off the hub you only have to download all the smaller ones, which shouldnt take long.
If you keep doing this each time you move scenes over from archive to play, you'll slowly build up a base vam that has all your fave stuff, plus all the big dependency files your scenes need. I also suggest if you find the odd scene you like and wanna keep, make a folder inside addon called "misc scenes" or similar and move them in and out of archive to this folder and do the same procedure as before. I have a handful of random scenes I like to keep inside vam to play so they stay in the misc scenes folder and I just boot my base vam with only those scenes in the addon folder, download all the dependencies, stick them all in my folders in addon and then never have to do it again.
Last thing to do, going back to when you 1st setup your "base vam" but before you start adding more and more files to it over time from stuff you're gonna be playing regularly, is do a simple copy paste of your original base vam addonpackages folder, which is setup with just your essential plugins, looks, etc and change the name to something like "addonpackages2" and keep it in the vam folder next to the normal addonpackages folder. As long as the name is different, which it is with 2 added on, it wont have ANY effect on using vam. But what it does do is give you a clean but playable version of vam always available. I keep this here because I use VR, & If I have any REALLY resource hungry scenes that are slowed down too much by having lots of files in the addon folder, I can stick them into this addon folder, swap the folder names around between the 2 addonpackages folders and play at the best possible performance with all my fave looks and plugins still intact. Then just swap the folder names back afterwards, takes like 10 seconds. I got this idea when I found out that the number of files in the addon folder, not the file sizes, has a direct effect on VAM fps, and that by changing the folder name even slightly removes those files from having ANY effect on VAM. Creators use this feature of VAM for testing out scenes with best performance.
I hope this all made some sense or at least gave you some ideas of ways to keep vam fairly clean.
