It's so hard to get decent help nowadays!

If you are interested Krystal, I have saved my families before playing them, so I have a clean copy of them.  I have a family of 8 unrelated girls, every one prettier than the other.  They all have default skin, hair and eyes, so whatever you choose as default in your game would be picked.   

I also have a family of 8 unrelated males, but I'm sure you don't want that !  Another family is 7 teens, 5 girls, 2 boys and an adult. I have named them the Brains, the Brawns and the Bambino family lol.  They formed the basis of my new townie population.

Haha he sounds like one of those visitors sims that spends most of the night playing chess on your lot and then leave in the wee hours of the morning, while you are sleeping

Pescado's mail is delivered on the back of a donkey, a very old one me think

My  coworker is currently in this type of pickle.  His wife just got a better job that pays about 800$ more a month.  They are currently receiving subsidized day care and pays about $300 a month.  Well they just had their annual review with the day care agency program and because of the new job, they were told their daycare would go from $300 a month to $1200 a month!. 

His wife is in tears.  She will have to quit a better paying job that offers her more prospect for the future because they simply can't afford it.  How mad is that?

I have the perfect house for the Chavs

Terbain Tower : http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/cmid_784901/sims2/lots


That sounds a lot like the way I played the Broke household, apart from the different fathers bit.   She raised all her kids to adulthood and then she was old and gray.  She never got to marry.  I felt really sorry for her!.

So I'm pretty sure I could do this challenge, except this time I wouldn't pick a family sims.  Sounds well suited for a romance sims however.

Sounds like an old simwife tale to me.  I am convinced it's simply random. It could also be that their random generator suck.  Not all software random generating routines are equal

Kristal why don't you just made yourself a bunch of new townies.  Or create a new family of roomates, put them on a empty plot with a phone and computer.  I spent something like 4 days trolling the net, looking for good looking sims to put into my game (lyran.net and MTS2 were my main source).  I don't just put them in my game. I extract the content of the file into a folder, load them up in BodyShop and remove all the custom content (they would be appalled seing all their hard work being discarded no doubt), replace them with default skin, hair and eyes (not Maxis) and then create them in CAS. 

Just think of it as immigration

I think Jase should get some lessons from Pescado.  I'm quite certain he doesn't give a crap what peasants says and he will make them know in no uncertain terms they are idiots too (and entertain the rest of us).

I'm aware of that.  I even posted on her thread at MT2.  She said that was only supposed to happen when you wrote a novel, but not for the other options.  She had me test a couple of things, but didn't post back after I posted my results.  It was weird.  My sims would speed up as soon as the computer would appear in their queue, even before they touched it. It drove me batty.  But i'm wondering if that's the sole problem because recently they have been speeding up without interacting with the computer at all. And when I tried to purchase a cell phone, the game would jump.  In any case, i've removed her hack.  It was a very nice hack, but there is only so much I can take, and she isn't giving much support for it.  And to be fair it might not be her hack at all but a conflict. 


It's so hard to find a system that works.  For now I have  my folders structured the same as Maxis.  Genetics (eyes, skin, hair), Buy (Bedroom, Bathroom, Living Room, etc), Build with all the subfolders, Clothing and subfoldered by sex and then by type. Every set has it's own folder within that structure, every d/l house and every d/l sim    For each item I download I also include a jpg of the item.  I also try to update the genetics for my eyes, fix the categories for my clothes and would correct the hair bins and genetics (if I knew how). It's ardous and time consuming and you can see why I spend so much time at it!  And it's not perfect so I keep tweaking.

Wow that's cool.  Has that feature been removed?

I've resorted to scanning my files with a duplicate finder.

I swear I spend as much time with the download folder than I do playing.  Yesterday I spent the better part of the evening sorting through my hack folder.  I am having this really annoying bug where for no apparent reason, my sims start running instead of walking.  I suspect it's some kind of hack conflict.  I first noticed it with Monique's computer.  And also yesterday it looked as if time has slowed down for my sims.  The animation looked normal, but time was creeping ever slooooooowly by.  The days seem to last forever. So there is something going on.

So what happened that he removed it from downloads?  Too many people whinning and bitching ? 

I'm exactly the same Zephyr.  Glad to see I'm not the only anal retentive around

I NEVER use the simsinstaller for anything whatesover.  I extract houses to folders and do the same for sims.  This way I can keep all the files together for quick removal.  The only drawback is that I get duplicate files since the packages I install are occasionally already in my download folder.  But then, that's a problem with simsinstaller too.

Lol, The guy who wrote Sime File Maid and Pescado are cut from the same block.  I got quite a laugh reading his page and the EULA.  What does this program do that makes it worthwhile to have?

Or for people who are scared about fiddling with files and happen to use XP, they can create a new user and call it something like "vanilla houses" and use that to build their houses.  It's fool proof.  Although I suspect this advice is better suited for the exchange, as everyone here seems computer savy.

I'm very disappointed with Maxis, maybe not surprised but disappointed.  Makes me ever so thankful for the modders here and elsewhere.  Imagine if we had to reply on Maxis for correcting all the bugs the Modders have corrected.  We would probably have given up on the game long ago.

I'm not familiar with the holiday booster pack.  Can it be un- installed? 

Try moving the download folder to your desktop to see if BS will load.  (Don't forget to move it back after) It could be something in there that's causing a problem.  Or, if you have XP, try creating a new user and see if the game will load. 

If it's not the download folder, and you can't un-install the booster pack, then your only other alternative will be a re-install.

I didn't realize I was dis-agreeing lol.

Anyway, just how widespread is this knowledge about the dangers of importing family lots? I know that I learned it from one of Pescado's post.  I suspect that the majority of players have no clue of this, as it looks like it works.  And unless you actually load up SimPE and take a look at the result chaos, or notice that your character files have suddenly tripled in size, you'll never know or suspect.

Maybe we ought to make more noise about this, create big scary threads on the exchange so that Maxis sits up and notice.  I don't even know if they are working on this problem.

I imported a community lot into my game and spent some time customizing it.  I also played with the zoning and changed it to a residential lot and then back to a community lot.  However I noticed recently that even though it's classified correctly as a community lot, it's missing the phone, but does have the garbage can.   This makes it impossible for me to return from the lot by taxi and I think it messes up other things as well.

Is there any way to get the phone back?  And while I'm at it, can you get the garbage can back, if you were stupid enough to delete it on a residential lot.

I don't get what you don't like Mutant.  The business will be home based, as on a home lot, but I'm assuming your customers will be just townies or whatever the equivalent is.  Obviously they won't be your family or pc's you control.  So you will have a steady flow of customers going through your premises.  How is that different from "a community lot that I can live on and run a business".  There are residential homes downtown, so I've always assumed you could live there if you choose.  Never tried it though.  So many you could have a business/home there too.  All speculation at this point.  But I don't see this expansion being vastly different from what you envisioned


No way I could pass up on an expansion.  I'd be too frustrated by all the new and custom content I'd be missing out on. 

And what is Canada?  chopped liver?

No don't answer that ....

Could it be that it's something else that's causing the crashing? Maybe we are barking up the wrong tree.  I never use custom terrains myself, and do not recall ever clicking on it accidentally.  And why would opening the terrain catalog cause something to happen to the lot.  That doesn't make sense.  Maybe some modder with a good understanding of the game mechanics could explain that one.

But I've had your problem plenty of time.  Lots not willing to open after being transfered to a new neighbourdhood.  But then I had that happen to a lot for no particular reason that I could see.  Opened fine one day and not the next.  No changes were made apart from adding some mods.  I removed the entire download folder and the problem was still there, so it wasn't related to a custom object.  And then there were the university lots that just refused to load.  They were in a brand new game.  Pescado said you couldn't just move sims into a university lot, you had to open the lot first (or something like that).  But still it wouldn't load.

So lots of things seem to cause a lot not to load.  I wish my log file would be of more help, but it's so full of crap, that it's impossible to find the actual error.  Another reason why I should clean out my download folders.  All those errors bug me.  Although some of those errors are present in a brand new game with an empty custom folder, so  <shrug>.

Myth, There is no easy way to do what cwykes is asking.  Importing an existing family amounts to dropping a time-delay nuke in your neighbourhood. 

The cleanest way to import a family is to create a copy of your sims through Sims surgery and then recreate them with CAS and modifying them with SimPE.  Even then it won't be exactly the same character as Cwykes mentioned, like a clone of a person. Looks the same but isn't the same.

What I did in the past, and gave up because it was just too long, was to export the family to a new blank neighbourhood.  Delete all relationships and memories of other sims manually and then repackage the file until there are no other "extra" character included.

What I am doing now is before I actually play a family, I put them on a empty lot and then package them.  This way if I ever want to use them in a different neighbourhood, I'll be able to.  It's rather limited, as it won't include the children born in the game or all the things the sims have accomplished but until this problem is fixed, it's the best I can do.

It might be a problem with their site, hard to tell.  From my limited experience with megaupload, I think the service sucked.

Try a download manager that can resume downloads.  Although I don't know if that works with megaupload.  There is no point in beating your head against the wall until you've established that the problem is on your end.  Try downloading from other sites to see.

Found another hair by the same person who did the pony tail in my first link.  She is really awesome

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=108801

Don't know about animation or bins, as I haven't tried it yet, but the hair looks great.

Isn't that what the cow plant is for ?