Import Strangetown and Veronaville into Pleasantville - Can it be done?

[dadditude]

Ok, I had an idea for a project that I really wanted to do, but it is looking more and more like it is going to be very difficult at best or nearly impossible at worst. I have asked on two different sites about this, but no one has really been able to help me. As such, I am coming to you wise folks here, where I realize now I should have come in the first place.

My idea:
Since A given neighborhood can have more than one Downtown or Shopping District, and since Sims can live in these areas just the same as any other part of the neighborhood, wouldn't it be cool to import Strangetown and Veronaville into Pleasantville as one of these?

What I would like to do is to move the complete neighborhoods, complete with the houses, decorations, Sims, relationships, and neighborhood/family stories.

The closest I have been able to come is to create new shopping districts in my Pleasantville with the Veronaville and Strangetown terrain files and then move each of the houses and families to the lot bin and then into the new hoods, thereby destroying the relationships.

Is it possible to do what I want? Can someone tell me how? If you can't explain how, could someone do this and then provide a compressed "neighborhoods" folder that I can then drop into my Sims 2 Data folder?

I have The Sims 2 and all expansions, in case that makes any difference.

Thanks in advance, o wise ones. I await your wisdom.

[BlueSoup]

Well, I don't know about that exact thing, but last night I did package up all the characters of Pleasantview and Strangetown and merge them into a third, custom hood, including townies and some NPCs.

I used this site as a guide to do it - http://www.lifeofasim.com/how/index.php

Perhaps you can do that with Veronaville and Strangetown, then do neighbourhood terrain surgery or something?

[Dark Trepie]

As it stands now, lotbinning houses with families in them and moving them to another hood is an excellent way of making that hood explode.

The only safe way I can think of doing this is to take a stock Pleasantview, Strangetown, or Veronaville and make one of them your base hood.  Then go and make copies of the sims in the other hoods with SimPE's Sim Surgery and create them through CAS.  (make sure you take note of their personality first so you can recreate them as they should be)  As for getting their orginal houses to the new hood you can just move the family out of the house, lot bin it, then set it down somewhere in your new hood.  Be sure to use something like Inge's Things Stay Shrub so you don't have to refurnish the whole house.

The sims from the other two hoods won't have all of the family relationships.  But that can easily be fixed in SimPE as well.

[Ness]

Blue's method involves stuffing the entire neighbourhood into one lot (including any known townies and NPCs) and then lot binning that one lot.

It's a bit of work, but is explained in detail on the site Blue linked.

[BlueSoup]

Pescado did the same thing I did in his game, so what's good for him is good for me. 

[dadditude]

Thanks so much for the link. This won't necessarily make the process any easier, but at least it will make it work! Now I just gotta sit myself down and actually do it. After that, the only hard part will be moving the empty houses (package them in-game, then use Sims2Pack Clean Installer to strip out everything but the lot segment) and then laying everything back out. The decorating is gonna be a b*tch - Maybe I'll just say that a forest fire wiped out all the trees. 

[dadditude]

Ok, followed the tutorial and everything worked just right. Now I'm trying to get the storytelling copied over from the "real" strangetown and veronaville to my new strangetown and veronaville, but I am having no luck. I can copy the text of the stories over with no problem whatsoever, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the pictures to move over. Any of you folks have any suggestions?

[BlueSoup]

Umm...the only way I can think of is to just copy the entire storytelling folder to the new neighbourhood, but I don't know if that would copy it to the right families or not.

[Dark Trepie]

You know, I think I'm gonna try this.  Not on my current three Maxis hoods though.  I'll just make copies of the three.

Gonna keep Pleasantview as the main hood.  Strangetown will become the Downtown.  And Veronaville can become the shopping district.

This is gonna be fun.

[syberspunk]

Hrm.... interesting. If I ever feel sadisticly bored, I might try this myself.

A quick question tho... can you package the empty houses that each household originally lived in? Like say the Spectre and Grunt houses, to keep their structures intact? And then install those into your new, consolidated neighborhood?

I mean package them separately, after you've done the whole 'move all neighborhood sims into one lot' deal. Empty houses should be safe to package, right? I don't know if there is a way to do this to keep all the furniture intact. Perhaps you could go back into the empty house, refurnish and redecorate and then package. You also might have to delete any tombstones or urns? I don't know about that either. But at least you could keep the original houses that each family lived in. This should be doable without bringing along all the extra characters, no?

Also... a question about this whole method. This procedure works because you are bringing along all the playable Maxis sims, as well as Kaylynn, and thus these are the only sims that have had any pre-built interactions or memories of each other. Because of this, each packaged lot won't bring along multiple duplicate character files and what not, right?

In other words... the problem with lotbinning individual families is that each member of the family will bring along dupes of characters that they interacted with. For example... if you packaged the Goth family, all 3 of them will probably bring memories of Don, Dina, and whomever else they may have interacted with. As a result, you may end up with 3 garbage dupes of Don, Dina, etc. But using this method, since you package Don, Dina, and everyone else... the game actually has a sim to refer to and doesn't create the garbage files. Right?

Ste

[akatonbo]

Empty lots are safe to package, yes. Doesn't matter if they were previously lived in, though I'm not sure about tombstones/urns. If you want to keep them furnished the way they were, get over to The Laden Swallow and pick up Inge's Stay-Things Shrub. (Just be aware that fridges will need to be replaced as they stop working properly after you stay-things them.)

And yes, the idea is that, by moving all of the playables onto the same lot, plus any townies they have met, you eliminate any references to outside Sims when you package them up, so no dummy character files come along.

By the way, Lazlo Curious has a crush on townie Crystal Vu at game's outset. I don't think he has any memories related to her, but she is in his relationship panel, so it's probably a good idea to include her with the rest of the Strangetown crowd. Can't remember if there are any others. Best to check relationship panels. (And of course, you essentially can't play in the neighborhood at ALL before doing this -- it has to be a clean one -- unless you are willing to include a LOT more townies when you move them.)

The real question is, what about memories of dead Sims? The Curious brothers, for example, have memories of being taught toddler skills by their dead parents.

[BlueSoup]

Fridges should be OK if you pick up the stay-things shrub, and the shrub global fix, both are located in this thread.  Either way, it's just a fridge and can be easily replaced.

I've already done this once and it turned out mostly fine.  The only thing I found was that Pascal's birth happened immediate upon relocation to his new lot in the new neighbourhood and it was not an alien baby.  There is a way to fix this or to make it so the pregnancy doesn't get all screwed up, but I'm not sure what it is - Pescado didn't bother to tell me since I had already saved it. 

The website instructions I followed didn't take any of the graves into account, and I really want those, so I plan to do this all over again.  This time, I am going to move only the Strangetown Sims to Pleasantview, and then do terrain surgery on Pleasantview to get a different terrain.  The reason for this is simple:  Trepie told me he recalls graves only in one lot in Strangetown, so I can move all of the Strangetown Sims to that lot, whereas I can think of three in Pleasantview that have graves/urns.  I did add all of the townies to the lot too, before I moved them, just in case (except Bella, actually).  This time I am going to go to each house and make sure I don't miss anything with graves and relationships, and I will take only the Sims that have relationships with the playables.

My house may be going offline in the next day, so this is just a project for something to do. I'm so tired of having these fresh clean 'hoods with no one in them and no history, so I thought this might make for something interesting especially seeing as I've never played the pre-mades before.  I'm having a hard time thinking of what to do first lol!

[ElfPuddle]

syberspunk, before changing anything in the homes, I copied the houses in the neighborhoods and pasted them into the Lot Catalog folder. Then I changed the name of each home so that it matched the format of the houses already there. I made them all read only, and now I can have an entire neighborhood of Goth's house. All the furniture remains the same, but the characters, graves, and urns are gone. Just a thought

[syberspunk]

Hey... cuz I'm lazy and weary about toying with that kind of stuff in SimPE (modding BHAVs is so much easier... ) would anyone, who completes this project successfully, be willing to archive their hood and characters files and upload it somewhere for the rest of us lazy folk to just download? Pwetty pwease?   

Also...

syberspunk, before changing anything in the homes, I copied the houses in the neighborhoods and pasted them into the Lot Catalog folder. Then I changed the name of each home so that it matched the format of the houses already there. I made them all read only, and now I can have an entire neighborhood of Goth's house. All the furniture remains the same, but the characters, graves, and urns are gone. Just a thought

Can you explain with a little more detail what you mean by 'copied the houses' and 'changed the name ... so that it matched the format' and what not? Sort of a how-to for dummies like me kinda thing? Or point me to a tutorial that may already exist on how to do this? Thanks.

Ste

[BlueSoup]

Ste, when I complete this and if I'm happy with it, I'll be happy to upload it somewhere for you to download.  But I am prolly losing my Internet for the next couple of weeks so it will have to be after that.  Also, it will be only Pleasantview and Strangetown on a custom terrain (one I've downloaded from either MTS2 or TSR).  Sound OK?

[ElfPuddle]

Well, I won't be home to look for certain until much later tonight (like 7ish hours), but for now....

When you open the Lot folder inside your N001 folder, you'll see the files for each house in Pleasantville. Let's pretend they're called 1_58539 , 1_58540, 1_58541, etc. (Pretend! Those aren't the names and I can't see my game folder from here. )
Copy all of those files and paste them into your LotCatalog folder...highlight, right-click, hit copy...
All the files that originally came in the LotCatalog have names like (again, Pretend!) 000000x00000159 . I changed the names of the houses from Pleasantville from 1_58539 to 100000x00058539. The "1" at the front to remind me which neighborhood it came from and the "58539" to tell me which house in that neighborhood (not that I know which number is which house, but it can't hurt to be organized). Repeat the process for each neighborhood.

This could be done for any neighborhood at any time, and will save the house as you last adjusted it. When I get home (if I'm not dead tired by then), I'll post a better tutorial. Until then, I'll bask in the glory of being needed. Thanks.

[akatonbo]

You could always solve the problem with Pascal's baby by letting him give birth first -- accelerate the pregnancy, or just play the family CAREFULLY until he pops (take away the telescopes so Vidcund can't get abducted yet, and avoid letting anyone in the house interact with anyone you don't already plan to bring).

[ElfPuddle]

Hooray! I'm home early!!!!

As promised, the brief and simple tutorial on copying decorated/furnished houses.
Please note that I do not know how (because of the lack of SimPE skills, I'm sure) to tell one house from another. I do this for entire neighborhoods. If YOU know how to tell which lot is the particular one you want, feel free to do this for that one lot.

1)   WITHOUT STARTING THE GAME, open your "The Sims 2" Folder.
2)   Open the appropriate neighborhood folder (I'll be using Pleasantville-N001)
3)   Open the Lots folder. You'll notice that the files are named N001_Lot11, N001_Lot16, N001_Lot18, and so on. Select all the files, right-click, and copy.
4)   Close the Lots and Neighborhood folders and open the LotCatalog folder. You'll notice that the files are named cx_00000001, cx_00000002, cx_00000003, and so on.
5)   Right-click in the folder, and Paste the files you copied from Pleasantville into the LotCatalog folder.
6)   Now the tedious bit. Select the first lot from Pleasantville (N001_Lot11) and Rename it cx_10000011. The "1" at the front tells you that you've copied this lot from neighborhood 1, and the "11" at the back tells you that this was lot 11. Select the second and rename it cx_10000016 (neighborhood 1, lot 16),  and so on until you've renamed every copied lot.
7)   Repeat the process for every neighborhood whose lots you want to move easily. Remember to use the neighborhood number at the front and the lot number at the back. (Veronaville's lot 128 becomes cx_30000128.)

I don't really know if the numbers actually matter. Could you change the lot names to cx_0000000123456 ? I don't know. I know so very little about how the game reads things from my files that I wanted to keep my copy process simple and as similar to the original as possible.

If you change your LotCatalog folder to read-only, then when you place the Goth house into your custom neighborhood in-game, the Goth house remains in the catalog for future placement....so your entire neighborhood could be filled with identical homes.

Copying the lots directly from the neighborhood Lot folder will allow the houses to keep all furnishings (even fridges!) and decor. All character files and similar items (tombstones, urns, etc.) will not be copied (they're in a different folder).

I am NOT responsible IN ANY WAY for you totally f**king up your game. Attempt at your own risk!

[Chesspieceface]

So... I'm not sure I understand this.

I've been playing on a 4th neighborhood I made by binning every stock Maxis in the 3 default hoods and placing them in teh fresh one.  So if I am following this, the neighborhood fil;e sare now filled with a ton of dupe dummy files that got brought to preserv memories and things.  So, how bad is this? and is there anyway to repair this without nuking all my new custom chars relationships?

[BlueSoup]

Yes, you've created a ton of duplicate files by doing it that way.  There may be a way to fix it, tediously, through SimPE, but I'm not totally sure how you'd go about doing that, especially without also going blind in the process. 

[Chesspieceface]

So what is the consequence, if any , of this?

[BlueSoup]

BFBVFS?  Eventually.  How many generations are you into the neighbourhood? 

[Chesspieceface]

Not even one... Hrm...


If I perform the moveout process on LOAS on my whole neighborhood and then bin all the empty lots, and put it all in a fresh neighborhood, will all the dupes be gone?

[syberspunk]

Not even one... Hrm...


If I perform the moveout process on LOAS on my whole neighborhood and then bin all the empty lots, and put it all in a fresh neighborhood, will all the dupes be gone?

Probably not. Most likely, this may even further exacerbate the problem. Your sims have references to all these other dummy files. So... even if you stick them all into one house hold, they will most likely bring all the dupes, plus any new relationships that may have developed if you have played this consolidated 'hood at all.

For example... if you binned Don Lothario by himself and stuck him into this new 'hood, he probably brought copies of the Goths, the Calientes, and Kaylynn. The references that he has are in now way connected to the binned Goths and binned Calientes. They in turn will have brought dupes of Don that isn't connected the Don in your 'hood. If you had them interact with each other in this new consolidated 'hood, and then bin them all a second time, even if you move them all into an empty lot, you may prevent new dupes, but they most likely will still carry along with them the old dupes. You would have to clean up those references with SimPE first if you really wanted to salvage this. But I think it'd be much easier and less painful to just download Blue's 'hood Or going the route as described in the link she provided.

Ste

[Chesspieceface]

Hm, thank you.  How do I go about 'disinfecting' my custom sims if I wanted to move them to a cleaned up hood?

How serious is this really?  What is the risk level?  The neighborhood seems to load fairly quickly.  I don't really tend to have a lot of generations as I usually keep my sims adults perpetually.  Is this worth borking all their relationships to the Maxis chars to clean up ?