Transfering sims to new neighborhoods?

[~Iris~]

Hello.  I remember reading something about this a while back (just don't remember where) and want to know if it is possible to move sims from one neighborhood (say Pleasantview) to another (Veronaville or custom).  If so, how would I go about doing this?  Thanks.

[morgan]

I believe you have to move your family out of their house so they are in the bin, and I believe they are listed as potential in all the neighbourhoods.

Errm.....I'm probably not making myself very clear there.

[Sleepycat]

you can move their lot to the occupied lot bin and it will then be available in the occupied lotbin in the other hoods but moving sims between hoods is a very bad thing to do because Maxis/EA didn't do it right - you end up with a lot of junk character files that end up causing all kinds of problems.


as an example
if you have 5 sims on the lot you wish to move and those 5 sims have met 5 sims each (dosen't matter if they are the same 5 sims) you will end up with 25 junk character files in the new hood...


If you packaged the occupied lot to a file and install it with clean installer you can clean it out of the tag along character files and then you can use SimPE to clean up the memories of your sims. It's a pain in the butt but it's the only safe way to move sims between hoods.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Iris - as other mention above, you would need to export the lot with sims still on it to a file by clicking the * on the pop-up for the lot in the neighbourhood view.

This file would then be located in the PackagedLots folder:

   My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\PackagedLots

when you export a lot with Sims on it, the memories are not properly terminated or deleted by the game.  You would need SimPE to resolve this problem, the method is detailed in this sticky:

   How do I delete the memories of a Sim?

It isn't easy or fool-proof, and has lots of room for human error to creep in and spoil the fun.

[ancienthighway]

Wouldn't using SimPE to extract the sim, then BS to package it wipe memories?  You could always use CAS and InSim to set family relationships back to what they were.

Follow this tutorial.

[BeosBoxBoy]

ancienthighway - that would be another approach I had not considered, and probably the better method. far less chance for human error to make the work fruitless.

[XPTL297]

There's a very safe methode to transfer Sims from wherever to wherever, but you will have a totally empty Sim. (S)he will keep only the original appearance or any change you made to him, but will loose Zodiac Sign, Family relationships, job, and all the game data as you know of.
I have been studying this almost from the beginning and made several trials.
The end result is that:
You just identify the character number of the Sim you want to transfer.
Copy this character name and include in the hood you want him to be.
Change the Hood nr., i.e. N001_User0012 to N012_User00XX (XX must be a number unique in the target hood, it is anyway not possible to rename a file when another same name already exists).
Done this, launch TS2 and just enter the target hood without doing anything.
Quit the game again and open the Target hood in SimPe.
Find the new added character by opening the Default family in SimPe. He will be landed in the default file because he is not alive or dead, just undefined.
Open the Townies family and include his(her) name in there, and delete the same name out of the default family. (S)he will be now a Townie.
Afterwards you can play normally, but you need somehow to summon your Sim in a playable lot wherever in the hood.
This Sim will have wrong gender (if it is a female, she will behave like a male cause ALL Sims transferred will be Adult Male, no matter what they were before (A woman, a teenager, a child or maybe Toddlers or Babies (never tried to transfer lower than children before so I don't know, probably)).
You will need at best the Insimenator to make the corrections.
If you transfer a child (he will enter the game as Adult Male), you will need to pause the game to make whatever correction, cause as soon as you age a child (or teen) to the correct age, the game will assign them School Grade F and the social worker will appear immediately and take them (very good if you want to transfer kids for adoption. The adoption will give them all the necessary game data.

The good with this new methode is that you can transfer a bunch of Sims and make all the operations at the same time. If you want to transfer the whole family, you can rejoin them at one batch.
As for now, the Insimenator is unavoidable and if you don't use it, start to reconsider.

I'm still trying to simplify the methode but it is quite impossible for now, cause it would be necessary a new object (maybe a suitcase) where all the info kept on the lot could be transferred to it, individually, breaking all the connections with the previous hood. Ideal would be a new routine like the family connection option of CAS. You just could get a dialog exactly like in CAS to rejoin who is family to who before entering the new home.

Hope it helps.  Suggestions and new know-how are very welcome once it seems I'm alone in those worries.

[Sleepycat]

Wouldn't using SimPE to extract the sim, then BS to package it wipe memories?  You could always use CAS and InSim to set family relationships back to what they were.

That is the way I would do it. I've been extracting my favorite born-in-game sims for a while now so I can put them in any hood I want without problems.