Selling House And Leaving Furnishings

[Simgoose]

I read some where (very late at night) that you could move families out, but still keep all the items in the house, eg. Furnishings, plants, etc
I have a house that has a few sims in it... and its pretty much the same way it was when I built it, and I want to move another family in.
And move them out.
And i believe there is away that a dialog box can come up with a mod or something to ask if you wish to keep the items.
Is this possible, I have done a search her and MTS2 etc, but no luck, not sure what to search for.
Regards.

[notveryawesome]

There's a shrub from simlogical that allows you to make the objects stay when you move a sim out of a lot. It's called the Stay Things Shrub. To find it, just scroll down the page that I've linked here.

[MsMaria]

I found this quote from Pes. May not be applicable to the T, but pretty close.

The Ingelogical shrub leaves attributal garbage on objects causing their costs to become corrupted. The "clean" way to do it is to backup the lot file, then after you move out, revisit it in build mode, save it, quit, and restore it back.

[Simgoose]

thanks heaps for your help notveryawesome, in this post and others. 

[Jelenedra]

So, how does one know if they are saving the right lot?

[J. M. Pescado]

So, how does one know if they are saving the right lot?

Well, let's say there are 30 goblins in a room. One of them is the chief. How do you know which one is the right one?

Simple: Cast fireball into the room.

[Jelenedra]

Is that your roundabout way of saying, save all of them?

[amjoie]

This won't work for Macs, but it does for the PC:

What I do is to save the house/occupants to a file. Quit the game. Then use Clean Installer to install only the lot by using the button on the upper right corner that says something like "lot only."  The lot will still have all the proper furnishings once installed, but you already have those items in your game, so the objects don't need to be reinstalled, again. And, of course, you DON'T want the sims installed. So "lot only" is the easiest and safest way to go.

After installing, start up the game. Now you will find the fully furnished house in your bin, ready to put back on the lot for the next family. And, (if you have the right EP) because the house is empty, it will still remain in the bin, even after you put a copy of it on your lot. So you can reuse the same house over and over, fully furnished. (I can't remember if that "stay in the bin" feature was Nightlife, OFB or Pets, because I have all expansions.)

Note: Just remember the house will be exactly as it was when saved to a file. So unless you want food on the counter and unmade beds for your new family, have your current occupants tidy up before you save.

I use this method to keep a copy of all my fully furnished houses, just in case a lot ever gets corrupted or burned to the ground. If/when it does,  I can always move my sims out of the corrupt/destroyed lot, give them the same house on a different lot, and pretend nothing happened.

[Simgoose]

yeah thats an awesome way of doing it... its not a hack... but it works well.
only draw back is that u have to exit the game and then run the Clean Installer.
But thats a good way of doing it.

[amjoie]

If, on any given day, when you are ready to quit the game, anyway, you do a quick check to see if you want to save any house for posterity, you will have already gone through the process long before you need to move out a sim. Just be sure to install it on the same day you save it, so you don't forget the next time you want to play.   

Of course, if thinking ahead like that will fry your brain, then wait until you actually want to move a sim out, and quit the game at an inconvenient time ....     LOL

[J. M. Pescado]

Don't mess with the "package" method. That does funny things to the lot instance ID and will eventually run your game out of lots if you keep doing it.

[witch]

Damn, I was hoping that would be an easy answer. Lately I've got into the habit of building the lot/business and furnishing it before the sims move in. I package it whilst empty. Is that bad too?

[amjoie]

I need an explanation of that, Mr. Pescado. You were a bit too cryptic. 

Are you saying for each package I put in the bin, I lose a potential empty lot? Or is it when I put a packaged lot into the hood, that I lose an empty lot?

Is it a lot lost for each neighborhood individually, or all lots across all hoods in the game?

Would I solve the problem if all houses are used only in the hood in which they were created?

Is there a way to fix the messed up lot instance ID?

Does the messed up lot instance ID get corrected when doing a fresh install -- and if so does it stay corrected if I put an old hood back into the game?

Where does the lot instance ID reside? Is it in the lot catalog, the neighborhood manager, or deep in the bowels of the game?

How many lots do I have, before I eventually run out?

Please give me the skinny on exactly what is happening here, in order for me to understand why my favorite method is officially "not a good thing."

[Pyromaniac]

I'm a tad confused as well.

I always build lots in 'construction mode' instead of moving Sims in to do it, and after I'm done furnishing the lot, I go to the neighbourhood screen and move the furnished house back into the lot bin. If I proceed to take the lot out of the lot bin to place into the neighbourhood, I have both a packaged lot in the bin AND one placed in the neighbourhood. Both are fully furnished and ready-to-use.

If there's a problem with this method, I haven't encountered it. 

[amjoie]

I have both downloaded other people's incredible houses (which are beyond my capability to build), and put my own fully furnished houses (which are beautiful, but not architecturally spectacular) back into the game, ever since I first got Sims 2. I have filled whole hoods with these "introduced" houses and played the hoods with no problems. I have transferred empty houses from one hood to the  next with no problem. I'm talking transferring whole hoods of empty houses via the bin. I have never run out of lots, regardless of how jam packed the transferred hoods were. So this is not making real sense to me ....

BUT, I have also reinstalled the whole game from scratch with each expansion. And I have started over with hoods several times, because I made some of the early VBT mistakes before they were discovered as mistakes. Before the days of empty templates, I wiped hoods of townies and when I found out that was a problem, I nuked the hoods and adopted the empty templates. I have started over so many times. Sigh. The only saving grace is that I could recreate my favorite part of the hoods, because I had saved the houses, and I could use the templates of my Sims to make new families. So there was some continuity.

Now, if I cannot even save my own furnished houses or download other people's architectural creations ... well, I guess I would have to say there comes a point that "safeguarding" the integrity of the game is choking the enjoyment of it.

At this time, I am inclined, unless dramatically convinced otherwise, to just continue packaging my houses and downloading houses. If that causes me to run out of lots in the far distant future (although I haven't had it happen yet, and don't see how it could), at least I have enjoyed the game in the meantime. After all, I can always fresh install and start completely over, as a last resort.

But despite this almost "back against the wall, dug in" attitude, I am still willing to be taught. So I am eagerly awaiting an answer by his awesomeness ....

[notveryawesome]

I've run out of lots before. The new ones that you unpackage just sit in Teleport forever.

[LadyLiberty]

notveryawesome, have you an idea of how many it took to get that response?

[notveryawesome]

Nope, no clue, but I did have a LOT of them (forgive the pun). I'd be interested to find out what the lot limit is, myself, to prevent this problem in the future.

[amjoie]

I was told a very long time ago that anything left in the teleport folder should periodically be deleted. I've done that for ages, and never had a problem. What I have noticed is that some houses don't install properly, and those are the houses that seem to be left in the teleport folder. The ones that install correctly, I think, are automatically removed.

So, I am not sure that you ran out of lots simply because your teleport folder was full ....

When you ran out of lots, was it in every hood, or just one? What happened, that let you know you ran out? Were there no more empty lots, or did houses not place anymore or

What did you do to solve the problem?

[Jelenedra]

So, how does Mr. Pescado save his houses?

[amjoie]

He backs up his lot folder.

But that isn't the issue, as far as I can see. Packaging does more than merely saving houses. Just saving the lot folder won't necessarily fix the problem if a lot is in the process of corrupting, for instance. And if you are confined to only saving the lot folder,  it precludes even the possibility of downloading someone else's houses.

I am still waiting to hear a further explanation from Mr. Pescado. He has been noticeably silent, regarding this thread. This is a serious matter, and I think it deserves serious answers to my questions. 

[notveryawesome]

I was told a very long time ago that anything left in the teleport folder should periodically be deleted. I've done that for ages, and never had a problem. What I have noticed is that some houses don't install properly, and those are the houses that seem to be left in the teleport folder. The ones that install correctly, I think, are automatically removed.

So, I am not sure that you ran out of lots simply because your teleport folder was full ....

When you ran out of lots, was it in every hood, or just one? What happened, that let you know you ran out? Were there no more empty lots, or did houses not place anymore or

What did you do to solve the problem?

I've no idea what actually went wrong. I installed some new lots and then noticed that they weren't in my lots catalogue in-game. Later, I tried reinstalling the lots, but Clean Installer kept telling me that the nonsensical alphanumeric filenames were already in Teleport, so I opened the Teleport folder only to find that there were lots and lots of lots in there that still hadn't made it into the in-game catalogue. I removed them from Teleport, re-unpackaged the lots, and the same thing happened - nothing new in the lots catalogue, but many left in Teleport. At that time, I had A LOT of lots in my catalogue, so, based on my troubles, I assumed that there was a finite number of lots allowed in the catalogue, and that I had reached it. I've since reinstalled my game and am being extremely selective about the lots that I install. So far I've not had any more problems.

[amjoie]

Oh. Well, that isn't what I would call running out of lots. In a brand new game, fresh installed, I have had lots that would not install properly and stayed in the teleport folder. Other lots would install. It doesn't matter how many lots are already in your bin. You could have no lots in the bin, and have the same thing happen. Some lots, I think, just don't get saved correctly by the game.

I had more problems with this back a few expansions. Things from before OFB can still be problematic. Since OFB, my lots (whether my own or downloaded) have a much higher number of successful installs.

But I don't think this is what Mr. Pescado was talking about. Well, I don't *think* it is. He hasn't explained further, so no one can be sure, can they ....