More Awesome Than You!

Is there a tool that allows you to package lots and sims and/or sim families without loading up the game? I suspect not, or that it might be a VBT to try due to memories, etc.

Also, seems like in Sims 1 there was a Lot Manager tool that let you see the thumbnails of lots, handy for mass deletions outside of the game. Anything like that for Sims 2?

You can package a sims from Body Shop, but that only packages his appearance, genetics, clothes, makeup etc.  The only way to package sims family is from the game.  And that's with the caveat that your family must be totally virgin.  It cannot have met anyone, not even the paperboy (which happens quickly), or an incomplete version of that character file will be included along with the package (I think JM calles them stubs).

That's my understanding anyway.  I expect someone to jump in here and say it's a VBT, even with the caveat.

You can also do SimSurgery with SimPE to copy a Sims appearance.  You could do SimSurgery on each person in your Sim family and make duplicates of the whole family with BodyShop, move them into the game and pack them up.

I think if you open up each lot file in the LotBin (My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\LotCatalog) with SimPE, you can see a view for each floor and a front view (the jpg resources, not the Texture resources).  After closing the file, you can delete it.  Do not attempt this on the files in the My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001\Lots folder.  Bad things will happen.

If you package existing sims using SimPE, then when you open Body Shop, make sure you make a clone of the clone, and package that one. Unless something has drastically changed, doing it any other way causes weirdness.

No nothing's changed, shit still happens.  When you clone with SimPE, the file sizes are much larger than Bodyshop clones so something else would seem to be getting saved when you use SimSurgery.  So recloning with Bodyshop is a Good Idea.