To avoid Necromancy I'm simply quoting the bit that interests me.  I would like to move occupied houses into the lot bin without destroying my TS2 game.  Donkeys years ago (2005) J M P wrote:-

DO:
Evict families from an OCCUPIED lot to create an UNOCCUPIED lot.
Install UNOCCUPIED, lots that are clean of hacks.
Package UNOCCUPIED lots in a clean, hack-free environment.
Move an UNOCCUPIED lot to your Lot Bin.
Move an UNOCCUPIED lot from your Lot Bin to your neighborhood.
Install Bodyshop packaged template sims.
Extract To A Bodyshop package, an existing sim via SimSurgery in SimPE.

DO NOT:
Install OCCUPIED lots.
Package an OCCUPIED lot.
Move an OCCUPIED lot to your Lot Bin.
Move an OCCUPIED lot from your Lot Bin to your neighborhood.

This should be simple enough: Occupado = Bad! There are basically no exceptions, unless you consider both your source and destination neighborhoods disposable.
 
Does this still apply in 2010 now that TS2 is complete?  (I have the complete set of EPs, SPs and EA patches).  I am using the Megahood and just want to move occupied homes into other subhoods (not Universities).
 

Just for your information.

Mmm...is that you granting me permission to do so?  Did I miss something?

It used to be that the Podium was the place to ask questions to JMP - not get torn to shreds over spellings by people you weren't even addressing the question to. Which brings me back to the real issue in hand;

Is the AL situation with character files so dire that the best advice is to delay playing that EP until a fix is posted, or is it a minor problem, that really depends on how good/fast your pc's processor is?  I estimate that with nothing restricting spawning, it would still take several months of non-stop play to reach the maximum number of character files; I remember you (JMP) saying as much in a thread that must remain dead somewhere around here.

Methinks I see attention seeking fuckwits who think spelling a word is more important than understanding the context and meaning of the sentence it forms a part of.  I can remember when idiocy in Maty was restricted to the Idiotboard.  How on earth did it spread into the Podium?  No wonder I don't post here anymore! Oh the irony!

The too many character files issue seems to come back with each new EP.  JM did a fantastic job fixing it last time, long before EA launched their patch.  No doubt he'll do the same again.

I set my neighbourhood up so that the houses are laid out beside each other so that I can play them in rotation, always clicking the next house on the right and playing each house for just one sim day that might include one visit to a sub neighbourhood; playing one house usually lasts about 60mins real time for me and is about as much time as I can spare when I play.  There are currently 20 houses, and one Uni frat house in play in my custom neighbourhood.

Effectively, 1 sim year endures for the rotation of the 21 homes in the neighbourhood, starting with the Uni frat house, then house 1, then house 2 and so on, ending with house 20.  During playing a rotation, any significant events are photographed and entered in the family album, with the entry starting with the rotation (year) number.  I am currently playing the 71st rotation which is of course, the 71st year. 

I started this custom neighbourhood with just one house and expanded as the offspring and their friends graduated out of uni and set up home in the neighbourhood.  I use the lot synctimer to guide me.  I don't do any other notetaking, as I enjoy playing more than recording details. and time constraints don't permit me to do both.  I thought about using a program to log the family tree, but heck I rarely ever play beyond a 3rd generation.  By the time I get there, its time for a new EP and for me that usually equates to starting a new neighbourhood.

I do enjoy looking through the founding family's photo album to see how much or how little things have changed in the neighbourhood, who's still alive and who didn't make it.  It's also interesting to see how the family members have grown up and moved on;  I really like that aspect of TS2, which echoes much of what happens in real life.  Using the rotated year system helps to place events on a timeline, and makes the passage of time seem more real, especially as I tend to use the album to record facts rather than to tell a story.

I keep the recording simple to reduce paperwork and allow more gameplay, but I recognise that some players get just as much enjoyment recording the details as others do from playing the game.

Thanks for your help.

When you move out a family from a lot in the neighbourhood screen to the neighbourhood bin, do graves and urns left on the property get sold along with all other remaining property on the lot? I have a couple of ghosts that I would like to leave at the lot so that they can continue to haunt it when a new family moves in.

Jordi, my aunt has red hair and red brows and brown eyes - and she, like myself is nubian rather than negro, thank you.  (Get with it son!) Her daughter (my cousin) also has blondish red hair.  In fact many of my maternal cousins have brown/auburn hair.  Possibly due to the fact that one of my great grandmothers was of Spanish origin. My hair was jet black - just like my paternal relatives, when I was younger, but close up  you can see I have orangy hair ends, reddish brown streaks - and wait for it - strands of blonde too.   Of course,  I dye it a darker brown to stop people staring at my hair while they talk to me - I could tell what they were thinking before  - "is it a trick of the light or is that a marmalade cat on your head?"  

There are nubian children with green, blue and grey eyes.   Not common, but they do exist and of course the gene/trait runs in families: I have taught and know of several.  

I use a set of default skins that make me happy - they might be Spookymuffin's version of KSK's skins http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=215889, but I too am not sure because there is no creator's name on the defaults.  

ha ha! 

One good thing about Seasons is that toddlers are finally aging with randomised lotbinned hair.  Hooray!  Hence my *hidden number of gigs* of hairstyles.  Not to mention the fact that hair can finally be matched to outfits.  Barbie doll anyone? 

I would love to get down to 1 GB but even I accept that that isn't going to happen: downloading is now part of my DNA.

*nods head* People never had it so good - and to think they all complained about it!  Now here we are begging for its return.

Food poisoning works well. 

When I had only TS2, Mercutio in Veronaville ate bad food and seemed to walk by every house I loaded.  Invited in, he would constantly run to the toilet and vomit.   When I finally played his home, I sent him to bed. He climbed out a few seconds later, curled up and died. 

Find out what's in the code for food poisoning and unleash it :-)

I took the advise of the Wise One here and deleted everything without a name to start with.   Then I got truly organised and put all items in their creator's folders except the big global ones like ACR, Insim and InTeen. 

I download  on these principles:

1. Non-global hacks that add to gameplay.
2. Modded objects that DO something and can be sold as part of a business (OFB)
3. Beautiful hair - Because.
4. Themed clothing - I play historical lots.  But even there I had so much I took out the folders and stored them in a separate harddrive with the view that if I really needed them I'd go back and choose just enough to play with.  JM rightly pointed out that you only really need enough clothes for your sims to wear - if they're not wearing them why clog up your game?

My last big cull which was done around OFB was when I decided if an object didn't add to the game play then I shouldn't have it.  I also decided that furniture recolours just took up space and if I really, really had to have them then I would have to go back to the source to download it.  Needless to say, I don't have many recolours.  Naturally, if you are a keen builder that would not apply to you in the same way.

Now that I am sorted and organised my downloads folder is a slim 2.10GB and my game loads quickly.  An afternoon (or two days) spent sorting pays dividends.

Personally, I think it's much easier to start with an empty Downloads folder and put in new labelled folders the stuff you want to keep, than it is to start deleting stuff in Bodyshop or CAS - its too time consuming (and its bloody boring).  Plus rebuilding your Downloads folder is like going shopping - it's fun!

I just did a mini-cull with Seasons, because I had to remove hacks anyway and I put the extracted stuff (mainly historical downloads) I will need to use later in folders on a separate hard drive. I also deleted all the downloaded files that I'd already extracted stuff from - they were just taking up space and I don't know why I was hoarding anyway.

My final recommendation: go for a  brand new slimline Downloads folder - don't waste your time deleting.

Hi Witch!

Uh!  Telling all my secrets! Lol! 

Thanks Venusy - shows how long I've not been here - and how much attention I really pay to the website - shocking!!

Shadeaustar:
  I agree: I tried out stuff from FeeEssen a while back from her old website, but took them out because some of them were disproportionately large and looked wrong, or covered too many squares for my liking.

J. M. Pescado:
I knew I'd never get away with praising someone else's work here    However, I wouldn't know good programming if it came up and bit me on the bum - so I bow to the Master on that one.  All I know is nothing horrible has happened to my game using her hacks...so far anyway.

J. M. Pescado:
Anyone who comes here regularly knows exactly what you will do to them and it.  

On a side note, have you ever considered separating the cleaning function from macrotastics.  I am a control freak - but not to your level, so I don't use macrotastics.  However I miss being able to just click on a sim and have them go clean up.  It's a pretty please request and considering you still haven't given me my placebo thank you button, it's the very least you could do.   And I know how much you hate smileys - don't make me send more!

Katy's stuff at pc sims is good if you're looking for custom items to sell in OFB.  I like her toddler range, which has the toddlers doing the bulk of their own looking after - from eating, toileting, bathing and energy building.  I agree that sometimes it's too easy to gain skill points with her items, but there is so much more to TS2 than just skill-building. 

As for the banking system - I'm a Monique addict, so I'll stick to using Monique's pc,  which combined with JM's money orders covers most sim banking needs.  The only part of Katy's banking system that really caught my eye was the purse and its 'steal' function.  I might try that out if it works independent of the rest of the banking package.

I'm surprised Matyites don't know Katy - her downloads are all free and include functional weather, fishing and farming animals.  The downside to her downloads is the written English - because it's not her first language.  However it seems she is getting help with that too now. 

As for the girly colours and long titles...each to their own.  The programming is good and that's what really counts.  Her hacked downloads are non-global and are easy to use.

(Bloody Matyites...always hating on Non-Awesome modders - grow up!)

I don't know about here, but Squinge has one over at the InSIMenator.net

JM, in my game the vacation days weren't shown for any employees on the control menu.  Typically, even though Sim X has just given birth and officially received 3 days vacation, nothing appears on her control panel and her work car arrives as normal and she goes off to work.  To make matters worse, when Sim X misses her work ride, she gets the warning about missing work and the vacation day pay notice at separate times during the day.  Was it just my game or is the whole thing buggered? 

I don't have that neighbourhood anymore and I haven't set up any businesses yet, so I can't retest this at the moment. 

I turned the whole 1 day = 1 year on its' head.  Now my sim year constitutes 1 round of rotated play on each of my lots.  Basically I play 1 day at each lot until I'm back to the beginning.  Each of my lots have a door number, so it makes it easy to sequence. 

My last neighbourhood (which is now deleted) I had 23 base hood lots and 7 Uni lots.  Playing 1 sim day at each meant that by the time I returned to Lot 1, so much had happened on each of the other lots that indirectly/directly affected sims on Lot 1, that it truly felt like a whole sim year had passed. 

This gave me the brain wave to schedule in regular events (like when to go Downtown, have group outings, date night, play a business lot, celebrate seasonal events etc) and add it to the rotation.  I deliberately set it up so that Christmas would not always happen at the same lot.  I obviously had way too much time on my hands!  It was fun to play, though.

I asked about lot sync a long time ago; the trend then was to send teens to Uni when they had 7 days left to becoming an adult.  People then played 2 semesters = 1 sim day.  Uni would be finished in 4 sim days and they used the usual mods to help them get through it at speed (TJ's clock and JM's College Adjuster).  That worked fine for me, until the most recent version of Inteen, which allows for full living privileges on campus (sims age, can get married, wed, have babies and kiddies can go to school etc); with non-YAs on campus aging at a daily rate I started to play 1 Uni day = 1 sim day. This suits me as playing Uni for any longer than 1 sim day makes me want to do bad things.  I don't mind the age discrepancy now, as I wouldn't play at all if I had to spend four times as long at Uni as I do in the base neighbourhood.

Am I right in saying that Inge's mortgage shrubs charge 1% interest?  Monique's computer charges 3% with a whacking great fine for missed repayments added onto household bills.   I think that's why I stuck with Monique's. 

I used her computer to help families purchase most of the Nightlife Downtown lots for OFB.  It was hard trying to break even;  many of the lots cost over $100,000, so even after using all the money perks, loads of money was still owing, with interest accumulating in the $1000s. 

Once sims break even financially, it feels like I've clocked the game and there's no challenge left in it for me.  So I try to make it as financially hard as possible.

Loans are personalized on Monique's computer system.  There is an option to check on other sims' accounts.  It's with the option 'check my account'.  If hubby took out the loan, only hubby's account will show the debt.  His wife can take out a separate loan.  Until she does, she will remain in credit.

The reason the ATM and the Computer show up on the HCDU is because they are using the same files to consistently calculate each account.  No point in Monique's ATM saying Sim A owes $1000 and then Monique's computer not knowing anything about it.

I think that one of Monique's computers must be on a lot for the interest accumulated dialogue to show up.  Try buying one for your poor family and then check the debtor's account.

I've heard good things about Inge's mortgage shrubs but I've never used them.

Hi Ste,
I''ve been using version a version of hardergrades made 17th March, which didn't flag up any problems on the HCDU.  But v 2.11 flags up a Bhav with the current version of Inteen.  Are they compatible? 

Sandi

Monique's computer will remember how much they owe, whether they have it on the lot or not.  It will keep charging interest.  The only way to get away with the money is to remove the mod from your Downloads folder...otherwise the debt follows your sim forever... Even visiting sims interest charges are flagged up on residential and community lots.  One nice thing about Monique's banking system is that no matter how much you owe, you can always borrow more!

There's no risk in moving out with newborn babies - although recently I had a sim move out straight after giving birth to twins (early release from prison); when she moved into her own home with the twins she gave birth again - to another set of twins!  I'm sure it was just a glitch, nothing more.

Did you try installing them one after the other without playing any of them first?  Did you get the Patch update message after each EP was loaded? 

Re uninstalling - I know it's an obvious question but did you go into My Program File and delete the EA folder there?  There'd be one there for each EP and for FFS if you have it.  Using Maxis's uninstall leaves the My Programs/EA Folder/The Sims2/all other EP files intact.  You may well have a corrupted file that's messing everything up.

From what I remember of manual uninstalls, there are a couple of strings that have to be deleted in Regedit, but for the life of me I can no longer find the link to do this on EA's tech support board.  They probably removed it because it is a bit risky going into the Run mode to delete things...and instructing BBSer's to do that is like giving matches to a baby.

If all else fails,try phoning EA and speaking to someone.  If they can't fix it over the phone tell them you want your money back because one of your new games must be faulty and you've been stressed out trying to fix it yourself.  Expect vouchers in the post!