Leave house intact

[angelyne]

I stumbled upon this wiki while surfing and it seem to have interesting methods, I've never seen before.  For example see the "leave house intact" below.  I tried it and it seemed to work fine, although I haven't tried moving a new family in yet.

What do you guys think?

Leave house intact

Aug. 6, 2007

When you move every Sim out of a house, it leaves the house completely empty. There is a hack object called Stay-Things Shrub that will let you move every Sim out of a house without emptying it, but last I heard it doesn't work with Seasons (I have not personally used the shrub so I don't know this for fact). Here is a way to do it manually using SimPE:

   1. BACKUP YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!! Go to Tools/Neighborhood Browser, click the desired neighborhood, and click "Create Backup".
   2. Go to Tools/Neighborhood Browser and open the desired neighborhood.
   3. Select "Family Information (FAMI)" in the "Resource Tree" pane.
   4. Locate your family's household in the "Resource List" and select it. This should open the "FAMi Editor" pane.
   5. In the "FAMi Editor" pane, set the following values:
          * Lot Instance: 0x00000000
          * Flags: 0x00000000
          * Album GUID: 0x00000000
          * Money: (any amount you want, default is the value of their property+furniture+cash)
   6. Click "Commit" and go to File/Save (CTRL-S).

When you get back to your neighborhood, your family will be in the bin and the house you moved them out of will be vacant and available for sale with all the furniture right where you left it.

Check out the rest of the wiki

[J. M. Pescado]

This is far more bother than it needs to be. Given that you already have to quit the game to do this, you are MUCH better off simply doing the following:

1. Put "boolprop ShowLotPackageFilename 1" into your userstartupcheat. You already have one, right?
2. When evicting a family, note down the filename of their lot.
3. Evict them normally.
4. Reenter the lot you evicted them from, see it in its furnitureless glory. Save, exit the lot.
5. Keep playing until you get tired and quit, or really need that lot. Repeat steps 2 through 4 as needed for any family that moves out in that session.
6. Dump your lot backups back in your Neighborhood's Lots folder.
7. Next time you reload the game, all of the lots will have their furnitures back. The game will be none the wiser, and you don't have to do any math. It even works on a Mac, as you don't need SimPE! Actually, if you're on a Mac, it probably gets easier, you can just revoke write permissions to the file and chown it to root or something if the game is really stubborn.

Experimental untried method I'm currently playing with, and may or may not work even better on a Mac:
1. Put "boolprop ShowLotPackageFilename 1" into your userstartupcheat. You already have one, right?
2. When evicting a family, note down the filename of their lot. Deny write permissions to this file.
3. Evict them normally.
4. Reenter the lot you evicted them from, see it in its furnitureless glory. Save, exit the lot.
5. Restore write permissions. Play on!

[Inge]

The stay-things shrub is still working.   Pescado will want to tell you it ruins the value of your lot.  While it is true to say it will probably not be valued the same as if you had allowed the furniture to be sold, it is not a major problem for most people and won't give you a BFOD or whatever they're called.

[angelyne]

All good points thanks. 

Your method is simple enough JM, and good for the SimPe phobics or the SimPe deprived.  Although I found the SimPe method really quick and painless, and you don't have to mess around with restoring backup files or remember to enter the lot and save it.

But I guess you can't beat Inge's bush method for ease of use.  Thanks for letting me know it still works, so long as you don't care much about money.

*skitters off to edit her userstartupcheat file*

[ZephyrZodiac]

I actually found that with Seasons, if you moved out all family members but one, moved the family to a new lot and then invited the left-behind member over and asked them to move in, the lot remained intact, as if the last sim had never left, even down to the un-done washing up.   The price of the lot was the true value, as the sim moving out last only took the spare cash with them.  And I wasn't using the staythingsshrub, or any other hack that might have caused this.

It's the way it worked back in the base game and Uni, then they changed it.  It now appears that they've changed it back. 

So, if your sim wants to marry a rich sim, make sure the sim he/she chooses has a large bank balance, as they won't be bringing the value of the house and furniture with them.

But maybe someone else should try this, and see whether they get the same outcome as I got.

[J. M. Pescado]

I think this can happen if you move across subhood boundaries, as the stats of the other lot will be unavailable when their subhood is not loaded.

[cwykes]

I still think it's easier to package the lot complete with sims, edit the packaged lot with CI (Choose lot only in CI and "save as" a new filename) and re-install.  That gives you used furniture, undone dishes and a backup of the lot without moving any files around or side trips into usercheats or SimPE.

You're going to tell me there's something wrong with that now aren't you?  I can almost feel it coming!

[notovny]

I still think it's easier to package the lot complete with sims, edit the packaged lot with CI (Choose lot only in CI and "save as" a new filename) and re-install.  That gives you used furniture, undone dishes and a backup of the lot without moving any files around or side trips into usercheats or SimPE.

You're going to tell me there's something wrong with that now aren't you?  I can almost feel it coming!

The reason I haven't been using this method is because some occupied lots I've tried it on Post-Seasons have taken ridiculously long times to package, if they package at all.

Instead, I've been using the boolprop ShowLotPackageFileName true cheat,  noting the location,  hunting down the file, and then copying it to the LotCatalog folder.  I find the highest-numbered cx_########.package name that's in the folder,  and rename the file to be the very next number.

You don't have to quit the game to do this.  You will have to load a different neighborhood to make the house show up in the Houses and Lots bin without quitting.

[seelindarun]

I still think it's easier to package the lot complete with sims, edit the packaged lot with CI (Choose lot only in CI and "save as" a new filename) and re-install.  That gives you used furniture, undone dishes and a backup of the lot without moving any files around or side trips into usercheats or SimPE.

You're going to tell me there's something wrong with that now aren't you?  I can almost feel it coming!

There's nothing wrong with that.    It's just not easier for Mac users since we lack Clean Installer, too.  Thus, it's not quite so universally easy as some of the other methods.