More Awesome Than You!

My apologies for bringing this up again.

Over at TSR, someone came up with a "fantastic" way to clone houses (http://193.45.143.17/showthread.php?t=291319). I pointed out that this method was likely to make said person's game explode in a BFBVFS, pointed them at Can I Move The House? (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=124), and suggested a better method involving Inge's Stay-Things shrub.

Someone else followed up to ask: Am i missing something? Wouldn't it just be easiest/safest to package the lot from the neighbourhood screen, then remove the people from the house/lot with the clean installer and install it.

I just want to know if this is a feasible idea, or completely impossible - can you remove families in the Clean Installer? Even if you can, could there be consequences for not "resetting" the house by moving the family out first?

No, you can't move families with the Clean Installer.

But you can plant the house with the family inside, move the family to the family bin, exit, and activate the Clean Installer, if you don't want hacks.

About the custom objects, they are always signed with an asteric (*). Just enter the house, remove object that you don't want (sell), then throw it to the trash. It includes walls and floors.

Now, after you "cleaned"  the house from unwanted hacks/objects, you can package the house. You will find it in the folder "packaged lots", in my documents/EA/TS2/packaged lots.

You can install this house as many times as you want. I do it all the time, but with my own built house.

Right. That's really all I wanted to know.

I dread to think what kind of damage packaging an OCCUPIED lot then trying to install it multiple times would do to the Neighbourhood. Would you end up with several copies of the same family with the same connections, and the game not knowing which copy of the family is which? Or would it just not let you install it more than once?

I don't suggest you to install a house with a family in it, even twice only. You will produce duplicated sims, and it can damage your game.
Besides, it's  more fun to create new sims in the CAS...:).

I downloaded once Lyla Grunt family, somebody revived, and by mistake planted the house in Strangetown. In Lyla's house, the General was already an elder, and Tank was a zombie. I looked at the SimPe, and Tank (still teen yet) indeed was an adult  zombie, and the General (still adult yet) was an elder. Even when I moved the house to the lots bin, the characters remained the same.
I had to restore previous saved neighbourhood, to return things to the beginning.

From then on I never download houses with families in them. Only empty houses. But if you are more than interested in the house you downloaded, do as I said above - no cheats, no tricks, just little more work...:).

It just occured to me that it might work to make a totally new neighborhood, put an occupied house into it, evict the residents and then package the house back up for installation in a regular neighborhood. This new test neighborhood could then be deleted. Easier than the TSR person's method and less likely to bugger up everything. Krishna on a toasting fork, their method is ridiculous!

Actually you can remove a family from a lot with clean installer, just remove the family file (shows as a collection)  and the "person" files.  I don't know if this would have any adverse effect on the lot by not resetting it when a family moves out, but it is possible to download or package an occupied house and install an unoccupied house.

On my version of the Clean Installer, the icons in the top right-hand corner have an option to "install lot without family". I've never used it, but it sounds useful.

I've used Clean Installer to remove families from lots and not had a problem yet. I did the same thing Jorenne did.

Oh sure, use the easy way...  ;)

Well, your idea wasn't bad either.  :P So there!

Haha, thanks! CleanInstaller really is the best and easiest way, although if someone is completely determined not to use it for some bizarre reason, my hypothesis is a hell of a lot better than forcing the game to shut down while it's in the middle of doing something. Gads. Mulitple copies of unlinked sims AND the possibility of corruping other game files!