Making clean packaged lots

[Frankenbeasley]

Okay, after reading several threads, posting one of my own (thanks for the help, everyone) and reading JMP's judgements in the Building Contest, I came to the conclusion that far too many of my lots were on dodgy terrain and were also chock full of extra crap. I have decided to start again with a new neighbourhod (after reinstalling the EA folder).

I want to save a large number of my Sims because they are a) Awesome and b) the result of a lot of gameplay and I can't be arsed to send another 20 Sims through their whole lifecycle again. So, I am currently in the process of packing up my favourite inhabitants to provide me with a core colony population (perma-plat, maxed out Sims who I know are good genetic stock). The Sims are going in to individual lots which I know are flat (no more warped roads for me).

What I am planning to do is package them up to my HDD, then re-install them with Clean Installer, getting rid of the memories and so on, to a new, flat neighbourhood. Then I will re-package them to the HDD, remove the EA folder and get the game to generate a new one, and re-install the clean packs.

Considering that my aim is to produce the cleanest and most useable core population for a new neighbourhood (one that I can use again and again) I want to know if I am performing unnecessary tasks by doing this? As far as I can see, this is the only way I can guarantee to have a set of packaged lots that are as small as possible in file size and as clean as possible for placement.

Please tell me if I am being too anal about the task I have set myself. Ever since migrating here from the BBS, I have been trying to make my game more Awesome.

[BlueSoup]

If you like all your Sims and don't like the neighbourhood or the lots anymore, there's a couple of things you can try instead:

1.  Moving all your Sims to the Sim bin (not the lot bin), deleting the lots and then doing a neighbourhood terrain surgery.

2.  Package all your Sims in one lot (everyone they know, graves if you wish, etc.) and then package that to disk.  Make your new game and then import them in.  That's easy enough to do, and there's detailed instructions on www.lifeofasim.com

[vaughje]

Please tell me if I am being too anal about the task I have set myself. Ever since migrating here from the BBS, I have been trying to make my game more Awesome.

lol, I'm sorry I don't have an answer for your actual question, but this makes me laugh.  I thought the same thing when I started looking around here, and it became so consuming (thank you OCD!) that I burnt myself out.  I now enjoy a flashes of "opps" here and there and don't let it bother me much anymore.

[Frankenbeasley]

Thanks, BlueSoup. That will definitely come in handy in the future. However, I actually want to destroy all the family relationships.

Some of the Sim families go all the way back to before the first EP came out and now everybody is getting a little close-knit. Additionally, there have been a lot of bad marriages over the years where good genetic material has become inextricably mixed with bug-eyed freaks. I want to salvage the decent 'breeders' and cut out all the ex-townies and NPCs as well.

Furthermore, my lots, which are mostly in the form of floating spaceships, were created before I understood many of the rules of Awesome construction. What I want to end up with is a whole bunch of single Sims with no family connections but with their degrees and cash and talent-badges and all ready to start populating the neighbourhood.

The only exception to that is one lot with 8 elder, perma-plat vampires that I can use as decent nannies and educators right at the start. Once I've got this done then I can have a decent stock of starters for any future neighbourhood shenanigans.

[rohina]

Your other option is to extract them with SimPe and Bodyshop, then you will have them in CAS, without memories, and you can use boolprop to give them their skills and personality points back. This will also have the effect of wiping their memories and family relationships, plus you will have their templates in CAS and can reuse them at will.

Tutorial here - very easy to follow:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=94489

[J. M. Pescado]

Some of the Sim families go all the way back to before the first EP came out and now everybody is getting a little close-knit. Additionally, there have been a lot of bad marriages over the years where good genetic material has become inextricably mixed with bug-eyed freaks. I want to salvage the decent 'breeders' and cut out all the ex-townies and NPCs as well.

Heh, I wouldn't say they're "inextricably" mixed. I've been exploring the entire "extrication" thing and it's definitely possible to get better-looking sims through a selection technique:

After a baby is born, using Simsurgery, extract the parents in SimSurgery. Then start a new "junk" neighborhood, or use one you already have for this purpose (this neighborhood is doomed to a BFBVFS), and fire up CAS there: Load up both parents, and use "create a baby". Select the appropriate gender and "adult" to get their final appearance, then mash that "generate" button until you see a face you like (ignore eye/hair color). Save that sim (enter whatever in name/personality/asp/etc), delete the parent sims out of the family, and save the family.

Open up the junk hood in SimPE, select your designer sprog, and open his "clothes" file. Select his "Facial Structure", extract it, then open up your original "generic baby" from the original neighborhood, and overwrite facial structure there with your newly filtered facial structure. This will give you a broodling that is definitely the spawn of the original parents, but you can filter out which appearance you want, whether you want not-so-ugly, or more-ugly.

[rohina]

And here I was thinking God does not play dice.

[J. M. Pescado]

And here I was thinking God does not play dice.

"Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded."

[Frankenbeasley]

Thanks JM (hope you don't mind me being so familiar). What with this and the info from BlueSoup I can see that my new neighbourhood is going to require more work than I had originally planned on but it also offers the possibility that it will begin to approach the foothills of Awesomeness.

SimSurgery, eh? I have no idea what exactly I can do with it and I know it will probably be rather a dry process in reality... but I do like the sound. As soon as I saw it I started to think about slicing off the more repellent features of some of my Sims....

[J. M. Pescado]

SimSurgery is only useful for extracting sims into bodyshop templates. The import function seems to have never materialized, so you can only clone existing sims in your neighborhood, a not-terribly-useful process. Some less-informed individuals have suggested the utterly poppycock idea of ACTUALLY CREATING THE TEMPLATE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, but, as we all know, once you get a sim INTO your neighborhood, you're not getting him OUT of it, which thus defeats the point. You can't go creating junk-sims willy-nilly unless you want your neighborhood to explode!