The hidden lots in BV

[Argon]

So I was screwing around, trying to figure out how to unhide the secret society lots (which I did) and so I'd thought people might appreciate these:

To unhide lots, subtract 0x00000010 from the value in U0 of the Lot Description in SimPE, works in reverse for hiding lots too.

A001 template:


M001 template:


T001 template:

[J. M. Pescado]

Concerns over hiding the lots in BV are, strictly unnecessary, since one does not need to see the lot to access it. Just type "loadlot <LOTNAME>", with <LOTNAME> in quotes if you have spaces in the name, and the lot will load. The TRICKY part comes in trying to SAVE such a hidden lot after modification: The save button will be disabled. If you manage to enable the button to click on it, the game will hang while saving. The only way to resolve this is to turn it into a different, saveable lot type with changelotzoning (which would reenable save), then save and quit, and reverse the change manually in SimPE. If you try to trick the game by changing the lot type to reenable save, selecting that panel, and then changing the lot type back in-game, then hitting the still-available save button, your game will hang.

[Argon]

Eh? I was just bored and wanted to see what they looked like.

Edit: although it would be useful for deleting an old secret society lot if you wanted to use a different one.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you're already going to find and open the lot in SimPE and perform bitwise arithmetic, you could just incinerate the Lot Descriptor entry entirely and delete the corresponding NXXX_LotXX file. It would be a lot less work and not involve starting the game up again to complete the process at all.

[cwykes]

Can't you just change the lot type in SimPE rather than messing with the number?  Lot type is a drop down box on the lot description screen in my version of SimPE.   I changed a normal lot into an SS lot that way and my tester said it worked...

[Gwill]

Is there an easy way to extract these lots for placement in a completely clean custom made vacation neigbourhood?

[jsalemi]

If you unhide them, you can probably package them and then move the copy to the lot bin.  I did that with some Bluewater lots I wanted to put in a custom business hood.

[BambuLimey]

Is there an easy way to extract these lots for placement in a completely clean custom made vacation neigbourhood?

C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage\TSData\Res\NeighbourhoodTemplates\A001\Lots\A001_Lot70.package (Asia)

C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage\TSData\Res\NeighbourhoodTemplates\M001\Lots\M001_Lot30.package (Mountain)

C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage\TSData\Res\NeighbourhoodTemplates\T001\Lots\T001_Lot2.package (Island)

Copy (NOT Move, or Cut) these 3 files to:

C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims2\LotCatalog\

Now, look at all the other files in that Lot Catalog directory. See how they are all numbered cx_00000nnn.package, where nnn starts at 0 and increases sequentially?

Rename the 3 files that you have copied to the next 3 numbers in the sequence

Example, my lot catalog went up to cx_00000251.package

so I renamed the three files to
cx_00000252.package, cx_00000253.package and cx_00000254.package.

YOUR NUMBERS WILL BE DIFFERENT - it's the next 3 sequential numbers from your highest numbered file, that you need to rename to.

Start your game. The lots will be in your Lot Catalog. Only place them in custom vacation subhoods.

[Gwill]

Thank you, will try that as soon as I get home.

[Sleepycat]

theres a tutorial story on the exchange about how to make your own secret vacation lots. I copied it to save it in a text file. heres what it said

how to make your own vacation secret lots


While you are in the neighborhood you want to add your own vacation destination to, click on the "Create a Vacation Destination" button up in the top left hand corner. Where it says Create a Vacation, go to the bottom - circled in red - and pick the the type of template you want for a Vacation Destination. You can choose The Islands, The Mountains or The Far East. Now just remember which destination you are going to work in, because this will determine what type of Secret Lot you are going to be building.

Set up your Vacation Neighborhood the way you want it. Add some decorations like trees and rocks that match the type of destination you picked. Don't forget the waves along the coastline if you are working on an Island.

Now pick a spot you would like to put your Secret Lot in. Any place in the neighborhood is fine.


Just use a small lot template. These lots do not have to be that big. Make sure you make the lot a "Commercial lot" at first. You might want to have the phone out front.

This one here I made was for the Islands. It's a Mysterious Hut where the Witch Doctor lives. When you are all finished building and hiding your lot, the game will automatically spawn the right Secret Lot NPC when your Sims finds the right map and goes to visit the lot.

Make sure that in the Island Vacation Destination you put in appliances so your Sim can help out and repair them. This one here only had a microwave.

The Far East needs a Tea Table so your Sim can serve tea to the Wise Old Man.

The Mountain Destination will need some type of radio so they will be able to Slap Dance with Bigfoot. Add in what ever else you like. As my friend Polly mentioned, "Bigfoot's lot could use a bathroom". Might be a good idea to add these to any of the Secret Lots you make yourself. Your Sims might need to spend a long time on the lot before they get what they came after.
Now, go back through the lot and make sure everything is there that you need. Once you do the next few steps, thats it, you will not find your lot again and can not get back in to change things.

Now we are ready to hide the lot. Bring up the cheat window by pressing Control, Shift, C. Type in the cheat box changelotzoning secretvacationlot just like that. You'll know when the cheat worked because 1. You will not get an error message and 2. The option to save will now be grayed out.

Exit to the Neighborhood view - "Oh NO! The lot is still there".
Don't worry. Just move the lot into the Lots and House Bin, now go and move it back to where you had it.

Poof! It's gone, never to be found by you again. All you need to do now is get one of your Sims to find the map.
( I would delete the copy that gets saved in the bin now. You really can't have 2 Secret Lots in the same Neighborhood)

Have fun making your own Vacation Destinations. Now they can all have Secret Lots custom made by you.
A special thanks to Polly and Andy for Wondering how this would work. They gave me the idea to test it out. ~dlgo1012

[witch]

If you're using a camera hack where you can see the whole hood you can just turn the terrain round to find the secret lots. I haven't tried going in to build but I imagine it would work.

[MutantBunny]

It would be really nice if we had the option to see the lot when testingcheats were enabled. I'd like to be able to see my secret society lots too. The real question I guess, since EA will never fix that, could a hack be made to give us that option?

Bigfoots home is so sad! I want to remodel for him.

[sloppyhousewife]

Okay, the building and hiding part was easy enough. But I'm wondering whether the game will generate a map to a new hidden lot? All I have found after hours of Dig For Stuff are the maps to all three original hidden lots (Burrow/Mysterious Hut/Pagoda i.t.S.), though I haven't attached any of the Maxis destinations to my neighborhood. Are these maps used for every hidden lot of matching type (e.g. Pagoda map leads to every hidden lot on a Fear East type destination)?

Of course, I could just book a vacation to try and find out, but I don't want to risk my sim to learn unwanted gestures before I'm sure about the hidden lot thing. So, has anyone else done it already and can tell me more ?

[Gwill]

I did a quick and messy experiment in my test hood, making custom secret lots and sending some sims to explore them.  I didn't check what the maps said, but they certainly worked.

My eastern and beachy secret lots worked fine, there was no bigfoot on my secret mountain lot, but that was probably because I used the wrong kind of stereo.

[J. M. Pescado]

My eastern and beachy secret lots worked fine, there was no bigfoot on my secret mountain lot, but that was probably because I used the wrong kind of stereo.

Missing Bigfoot is a known issue. You can either resolve it at visit-time with the new debugger's "Reset Bigfoot Controller", if you added a Debugger to your Bigfoot Lot, or by waving the new Magic Wand before saving the lot while constructing it.

[Gwill]

Adding the debugger was half the reason I decided to build my own Secret lots to start with.   Will give new shiny a go next time I feel like doing some testing.

[J. M. Pescado]

Now we are ready to hide the lot. Bring up the cheat window by pressing Control, Shift, C. Type in the cheat box changelotzoning secretvacationlot just like that. You'll know when the cheat worked because 1. You will not get an error message and 2. The option to save will now be grayed out.

Exit to the Neighborhood view - "Oh NO! The lot is still there".
Don't worry. Just move the lot into the Lots and House Bin, now go and move it back to where you had it.

Doesn't the problem with this approach mean you thus can't save the changes you made to the lot because the Save option is broken?

[cyperangel]

yah, you wanna save the lot before changing the lotzoning to something else.

The rest of it works fine though

[SnootCB]

The loadlot cheat isn't working for me.  What am I doing wrong?  For example, in Three Lakes neighborhood view I typed in loadlot "The Hidden Burrow", and also several variations ("The Burrow", "Hidden Burrow", Burrow, Hidden, etc), but nothing happened.  Or rather, the only thing that happened was the game complaining about an unknown command.  Do I need to be on a lot in the first place?  Or in the main neighborhood?  Or is the name of the hidden lot not "The Hidden Burrow"?  Does it make a difference that I had debug mode on at the time?  Sorry for all the questions, but I've never used this cheat before.  I would like to be able to remodel the hidden lots just a bit though.

[J. M. Pescado]

yah, you wanna save the lot before changing the lotzoning to something else.

But if you save the lot BEFORE lotzoning it, the lotzoning won't save because you can't save the lot again. If you try the lotzoning change while the save button is still available, and then click the save button while it's still there because the UI hasn't refreshed, your game will hang.

[Gwill]

yah, you wanna save the lot before changing the lotzoning to something else.

But if you save the lot BEFORE lotzoning it, the lotzoning won't save because you can't save the lot again. If you try the lotzoning change while the save button is still available, and then click the save button while it's still there because the UI hasn't refreshed, your game will hang.

Normally it shouldn't work, but it did.  I did make the mistake of changing zoning before I saved one time, and had to do it all again, but once I finished the whole lot, saved and then changed zoning, it worked fine.  The zoning worked and stayed.

[J. M. Pescado]

You're certain it actually stayed as recorded by SimPE? Because if changelotzoning can affect the game WITHOUT saving, that sounds dangerous.

[cyperangel]

well, i made a secret lot, and tested it last night, and what i did was the following

Make a commercial lot. Build whatever needed to make the secret lot function, like stereo, tea set etc. As mentioned in the post above.

Then save, changelotzoning (then save button goes grey if you click on buy mode nd back to build) Then exit to neighbourhood view, move the lot to lotbin. Then place it whereever you want it to hide.

I then went to regular hood, loaded up Test Testesen, and went ona vacation to the new vacation hood, and since i had already dug up the map, i went straight for the secret lot. The hermit (was a far east vacation) was hovering as usual when i entered the lot, so it clearly worked.

And yes, i saved before changing lot zoning to secretvacationlot.

[Lady Moiraine]

saved and then changed zoning, it worked fine.  The zoning worked and stayed.

This worked fine for me also.

There 's been a lot of different suggestions on this thread but I'm not understanding them totally.  I want to unhide the secret lots and make them residential.  How would I do that?  Would just being on the lot then typing in changeLotZoning residential work?  But being unable to save seems that would not allow the code, or when the sims drive away in the taxi, does that save the new code?   And will the house be visible and playable afterwards?

[Gwill]

My eastern and beachy secret lots worked fine, there was no bigfoot on my secret mountain lot, but that was probably because I used the wrong kind of stereo.

Missing Bigfoot is a known issue. You can either resolve it at visit-time with the new debugger's "Reset Bigfoot Controller", if you added a Debugger to your Bigfoot Lot, or by waving the new Magic Wand before saving the lot while constructing it.

I just tried my second attempt at a secret mountain lot (in a new neigbourhood) and I'm still having MIA bigfoots.  I tried the debugger but nothing seemed to happen.  How should it work?  Should the bigfoot arrive immediately, or should it be there next time the lot is loaded?  I tried going back to the lot several times; still no bigfoot.