More Awesome Than You!

I have Sims who are able to go to the hobby clubhouses, but I'd like to be able to throw in a static energy sculpture so they don't get home (at the same time they left) completely dead tired.  I've looked where I know to look, but haven't seen anything like this for FT.

I haven't tried it, since I don't hang out in the clubhouses ever, but does the dormspecifictools cheat not work there, like it does everywhere else?

There is a thread in the peasantry about editing the lots, but it's not as simple as that.

It's not a perfectly clean method, either. I've been working on something shinier. It's just been pissing me off, and I had a bad weekend.

How about:

1) Backup your neighborhood
2) Create a new community lot with the same attributes as the hobby lot that you wish to edit: height, width, U10, U11 (I think that's enough...)
3) Copy the hobby lot package to overwrite the new community lot package
4) Edit the new community lot until you are satisfied with it
5) Backup the new community lot package
6) Restore from backup and replace the hobby lot package with the new community lot package backup.

Please note that I haven't tried this method, and I don't currently have Free Time installed so it's difficult for me to test it.  That said, I have used this method effectively in the past for editing other community lots.

I did see the thread in Peasantry, but it seemed to be in debate whether or not that was the way to go.  It's also way more steps than this old lady would want to attempt.  Was looking for something quick and dirty.  (as with most things in life)

That's basically what I was doing, and that works. However, I have this theory that you can change any existing lot to a hobby lot. So far, I can get about 80% of it to work. I suspect, however, that the 20% that's off is something extremely easy to fix. I think I forgot in all my trials last week to change the dimensions in the lot descriptor file to match the new lot (I was doing Dreamy Fields, getting it to reference a 1x2 basketball court I already had. Was showing up in the member sim's Walk to... menu, and not in the non-member sim's Walk to... menu, but stalled on the loading screen when actually walking to.) Then came crappy weekend in which I honestly didn't want to do anything that involved more than two brain cells.

Has anybody tried this? Maybe I will tonight. A lot of my sims are well off, so they could afford to donate a few objects to the hobby places. I was hoping the games lot would have a poker table but then I realised that it came with Nightlife.

But now to the stupid question: How would I have to do it?  I never used the cheat because I always changed the dormers by rezoning them before any sims moved in. Don't I have to save and leave the lot before the cheat works?

Read my thread in Peasantry. No, just doing the dormspecifictools cheat doesn't work, because you can't save while a lot is a secret hobby lot. It stalls into oblivion. You have to do the changes while it is zoned as a community or residential, then save, then basically overwrite the lot description file (using SimPE) with the old one.

Of course, that raises the issue of how you are getting to the lot. I had (in my tutorial) been doing it by having a sim visit and then changing the lot's type. Per Pescado, this is a bad thing (not a very bad thing, but bad nonetheless). He did a rather longer method involving terrain surgery and lots of cleaning which works, but I want to be able to set them to different sizes as well. Hence my current experiment. Should have time to smack things into submission between tonight and tomorrow.

I read the thread, but it seems a lot of effort if you only want to stick in one object, change floors and wallpapers or turn a shower the right way round, especially since I am in the middle of replacing all the ugly hobby instructors. The worst is that apart from the instructors none of the other hobby sims turn up. There are not that many. Instead all the NPCs I never bothered with, waiters, professors and students come to these lots. I have about 850 sims in Pleasantview right now, there are 100 - 150 which belong to university, most of them still in their original ugliness. Plus the service sims. To change all of them I have to go into sims mass production.

The build/buy mode enabler that I made for BV works with Freetime, and build & buy mode are enabled at the hobby clubs.  You can get it from this thread - http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9923.0.html.

That is fantastic!  Thanks for letting me know.  Still trying to test out so many hacks, figured this one wouldn't work.  Glad I was wrong.   :)

Enabling build/buy on hobbylots is meaningless, because the main problem is that you cannot normally LOAD them in the first place without HAVING SIMS ON IT, and saving the lot in a state when there are SIMS on it will likely produce a borked lot filled with residual trash, like orphaned invisible and/or visible cars and travel controllers. The dorm code would work just fine, so you don't need any special objects to enable build/buy at all, but the problem is, YOUR SIMS WILL BE ON THE LOT, towing all their invisible travel garbage which will become dangling gibberish when you then leave the lot and reload it again.

To avoid this, the lot needs to be loaded in a pristine, Simless state, which cannot be done with any hacked object.

Would this be true even if you only turn the shower the right way round (on the arts and craft hobby lot) or retrieve food from the inventory? And how would you save the lot differently from just leaving with your sims? I was thinking about taking objects to the lots in the inventory and removing them again before leaving it because I did not think that any build mode changes would be saved.

It doesn't matter what changes you make, what matters is the fact that the invisible changes, namely, the way your sims GOT there, is ALSO saved. However, the game will NOT actually save the lot when you LEAVE, as is typical of community lots, so the lot will not remember that your sims have left. These residual objects then remain there on the lot, and cause problems. Freakydeak building procedures like this will cause your game to later freak out in unexplainable ways down the line.

NORMALLY, when you visit a hobbylot, and subsequently leave, NOTHING ON THAT LOT IS SAVED. If you desecrate it utterly, perhaps by letting Brynne run around there, it will be restored to its pristine state, like any other community lot, when you leave and return. This prevents your transit from being recorded on the lot. However, if you use cheats to save the lot while you are present on the lot, it will record undesirable features, like your car (or invisible walking car), and your sims, into the lot file. These should not be there, and ordinarily would not be there, in a properly loaded and saved lot. This is why you should not save community lots while you are visiting them.

You cannot access your inventory on a HL. You'll have to use the dorm cheat to buy stuff after arrival and to sell it before you leave if you don't want to lose the money. On the plus side, you can sell all the crap on the lot for extra cash.

That's if you save the lot.

I have been using the dormbuild cheat to edit hobby lots while my sims are there, with no intention of saving.  My sims aren't going to miss the few simoleons I spend editing it to make it usable - such as adding BUY toilet paper to the bathrooms.

That being said, all of my visits to hobby lots have been to check them out, without repeat visits (since I discovered they suck so much, and are not worth revisiting).  I haven't even visited some of the hobby lots yet, and have no intention of doing so, as I don't expect they'll be any better than the ones I have visited.

Well, if you don't save, then you're fine. But if you revisit, you'd have to make the same changes again.

I was going to try out Bimbelina's buy/build mode enabler, which gives you access to the inventory. I was about to do that last night when my C: partition decided to go AWOL. Now I am merely distracting myself from the unpleasant thought that most of my data may be lost. I was also planning to burn my downloads on DVD's over easter...

A great big phat DITTO to that! Ugly, useless, thrown-together-at-the-last-minute hobby lots. Urgh.

I like Emma's idea of a nice club for the dance competition, for instance. Surely the cookery contest could also be done elsewhere? Are there any other special features of the other hobby clubs? Or do they only provide the near-to-useless hobby mavens?

I've made a community lot for cooking contests already..works just fine. Cooking contests don't have to be held on the crappy hobby lot, thank goodness. It's only an ickle 2x2 lot, but I'll upload it to Laverwinkle if anyone wants it?

/me does his best Horshack imitation, waving his hand in the air going, "Ooo, Ooo, Ooo!"

Here ya go (http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php?topic=772).  ;)

Even the custom ones I made are unexciting. Pretty, but unexciting. I don't care for lots that contain just my sim and one other creep. I like lots packed with new people to meet. My nature lot is the only one that I've been back to visit, and that was just because it was part of my future storyline.

Oh, and from the preview pics we've been given of Sims3, they have the same unimaginative designers make homes. Ugly, cookie-cutter lots with bad rooflines. Bah.

Sounds fantastic that you can have the features from hobby lots on normal community lots - is it possible to get some advise on what you need on them? Certain objects?

You can put on them what you like-they don't need any specific items, but it is a good idea to have items that relate to what hobby lot they are supposed to emulate. The only differences will be, a) you don't get the hobby mavens. They are crappy anyway, you aren't missing out on much, and b) you won't have any of the career rewards that are available on the hobby lots.

I still have Seasons on my other computer, so if someone's interested, I could make empty community lots of various sizes with all the rewards (except for those that came with BV/FT, obviously).