Insimenator.org

The Smythes
Instant Neighbors

(http://www.sunsims.com/thesims2/images/ts2screens/n024/smythe/smythe_0001_the_smythes.jpg)
The Smythes are a very happy, well-adjusted family.

Harold Smythe graduated with a degree in economics and is now a junior executive in his company.  His wife Betty has a degree in art but hasn't pursued a career yet; she has been too busy raising their three children!


(http://www.sunsims.com/thesims2/images/ts2screens/n024/smythe/smythe_0002_the_house.jpg)
They live in a large upper middle class home.
It's an occupied, mostly furnished 3x3 lot that you can plunk down in your neighborhood.

Befitting Harold's income, they have a rather large upper middle class house.  Four bedrooms, four baths, one-car garage.


What This Is

It's an occupied lot made entirely with Maxian content.  I used some half walls so I think you'll need Open For Business installed to make the whole thing work, though if you use Clean Installer it should still work with any version of The Sims 2.

The house is mostly furnished.  At least there's a bed for everybody.

The house is occupied by a family of five, all of whom are wearing Maxian clothes.  The clothes might be from the original game, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Family Fun Stuff, or Glamour Life Stuff.

The download includes only the lot segment and the family.  All the outfitting and stuff should be pulled in from your existing game.


Where It Came From

The question came up on the adult site whether it might be possible to build lots with some nice neighbors to help populate a new, empty neighborhood.  This was my first experiment with doing that.  A few folks have already play-tested it and report that it works, so here we are! :D

You can drop this household into your game and never even play them if you're not so inclined.  They'll provide some nice, well-adjusted folks to walk by your house and befriend your sims and their childen.


What I Did

I created the family in a completely empty neighborhood.  None of the Smythes has ever met anyone outside their household, though all of them have seen the papergirl.  That's important because it means they won't have memories that clutter up your neighborhood with "unknown" sims.

I used the Insimenator to tune up the characters' personalities and give them a reasonable set of skills.

I tried to be careful to build the house exclusively with Maxis content, but it still didn't work as I had hoped.  I am now convinced that the only totally safe way to build a house and avoid including custom content is to have a separate, "building" version of the game with zero non-Maxis content.

After building their house and partially furnishing it, I exported the lot.  Then I used Clean Installer to eliminate everything in the exported file except for the lot segment, the characters, and a catalog filenamed "Smythe."  (I don't know what's in the catalog but I figured it couldn't do much harm.  Apparently it doesn't.  It might be their clothing chest.)


What's In The Zip

The zip file attached below contains a .Sims2Pack file with the lot segment, the characters, and the "Smythe" catalog (whatever that is).

If you install the lot, and if you have all the same expansion packs that I do, everything will fall into place.  The characters should be dressed the way they're shown here and they should have the appropriate family relationships, skills, personalities, and everything else.  And they shouldn't cause any "unknown" sims to show up in your neighborhood.


Expansion Packs

I have installed all the expansion packs and stuff packs up through Open For Business, and nothing after that.  


----------
Downloaded for personal use only.  If you upload this lot to the EA Exhange or some other wretched place, your great-great-great grandmother will rise from her grave to slap you silly.

That is a sweet idea, Chairman Greg. Thanks for sharing.

Nice Job

You're welcome, Lewis!

I'm curious about whether this works for everyone.  They ought to come into your game with their relationships and personalities intact, but the proof is in the game play. :D

Yay! I had tested it (from the Adult site) and they worked wonderfully. They came over, played with the dog and visited while making friends. No glitches to date!

aren't occupied lots supposed to seriously bork your game?

i download it. the family and house look really nice i want to try it too.  good thing i have ofb. thanks for uploading

I agree! I'll try it. Thanks!

this is a good idea. I will try them out too.

Oh Excellent Idea
I like their look, simple ordinary folks.
I like the idea of having plopable neighbors.
I like the house. Its large and roomy and simple yet looks playable.

Thank you very much, I will be trying this in my game today.

Thank you....they look great and I'm going to try them too.  My PV could use some new blood :)

Yes, although the hazard is often absurdly over-dramatized.  The issue with occupied lots is that if the sims have memories of other sims in their original neighborhood, that will create a lot of "Unknown" sims in your neighborhood.  Lots and lots of "Unknown" sims can lead to problems like having scripts time out; your sims may find that they can't use the telephone.

This is an experiment with fixing that problem.  These sims were created in a neighborhood that had no other sims and have never met anyone outside their immediate family.  (Though all of them saw the papergirl as she walked by.)

The greater danger is installed any lot--occupied or not--that contains anything other than the lot segment.  Do use Clean Installer when installing any new lot in your game.  If there's anything besides the lot segment (or in this case, a family who you know have never met anyone), then while you are in Clean Installer, select only the lot segment to be installed.

Thanks again, J00wish!  :D

And thanks to everyone else who is play-testing this one!

And by *anything* you mean.... Custom content, etc...? For someone still learning on what to look for can you give some examples? Also... If I wanted to create my own (and you know I do) ;) what are some great tips? Are there any custom content that is okay (such as Custom Sims, etc...)?



Yay for praise! *does the Rocky dance in Gothplague's sexy new heels (http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=64462) and falls down the steps*

Nice job thank you.

This will be the 4th lot with a family that I get for my game, and I´ve never met those problems you´ve mentioned. They had some memories of unknowns, but it all stayed in their own little head. Or at least in their memories.
So I´m giving the Smythes a good start in my Riverblossom Hills, where they all start. Thanks!:)

J00wish - The really biggest potential problems with installing a loaded lot that I can think of are:
[LIST=a]

• incompatible or unwanted game hacks -- Could mess up your game play or even crash your game.  That's why I took all my lots off line.  Every one of them had old versions of game hacks embedded in it.  Ick.
  
  You also could possibly see game hacks that you don't want.  F'rinstance, someone who has kids at home might want to keep adult hacks out of the game.
  
  
  
• unknown sims -- Mostly it's a problem with memory clutter, and not a problem until it gets to be extreme.  
  
  One of the primary symptoms of too much memory clutter is when your sim can't use the telephone to make a call.  That's because when you tell a sim to call someone, he loads a little catalog of everybody he knows.  If there are too many people on the list, he'll jump out of the routine instead; or if you have the Testing Cheats enabled, you'll get a seemingly endless list of error messages.
  
  It can also slow down your game as your sim has to sort through more and more memories.
  
  I have experienced both of these, but your experience might be different depending how you play the game.  My primary viewpoint character (the infamous ne'er-do-well Gregsim) is something like 200 days old, has lived in dozens of households in his home neighborhood, and has sired dozens of woods colts that have gone on to produce their own offspring.  In my game, he is the sim most likely to suffer from memory clutter, which is too painfully close to real life! :laugh:
  
  
  
• ID conflicts -- You might install something that has the same internal ID as something else that you already have installed.  Suddenly your favorite sims might look funny, a hack stops working, or your sims begin to exhibit inexplicable behavior.  
  
  
  
• Stuff you don't want -- When the game packages a lot, it adds in every recolor of every object that has ever been on the lot.  That's a relatively benign problem other than the annoyance of having to clean out a bunch of stuff that doesn't appeal to you.  It could be a more serious problem if the lot contains versions of things that you don't want to see, or don't want your children to see.
  
  There's always the risk that if you install lots and lots and lots of stuff, eventually you'll hit a memory overrun and your game just won't run.  I've heard of this happening but it seems to be very infrequent.  Removing some downloads invariably solves it.
  

In all those cases, you end up stuck with spending hours to hunt down and delete the unwanted content.  Delphy's Download Organizer is a great help in finding things that are lurking among your tens of thousands of downloads.

The fix for the memory overrun problem is to get into SimPE and edit the sim's memories.  Get rid all memories of unknown sims and any other mind clutter.  (Ancient gossip is never essential.)


As a general rule, I'd suggest that you always use Clean Installer and if you don't know what it is, don't install it.

First of all.... Greg, you rule! I appreciate the time and effort you put into explaining this. I cannot thank you enough! *hugs*

My only question left is really a n00b one. If I create a lot and family for the sole purpose of packing up and using as family starters do I have to remove the mods and any custom content in folders when creating them? Or will the custom content ONLY matter if I select it to use on the lot? Sorry if this is a silly question.

To create a lot JUST to package with a family:
1. Create lot. Make sure it's ONLY maxis content used.
2. Create family. Again, make sure ONLY maxis content is used.
3. Move family into lot and save without seeing visitors.
4. Package lot and family (will this work by selecting lot?) from neighborhood profile.

Is that about right?

Also, is it better to create a storyline for these neighbors? I have yet to do that for any of my Sims. It's a weak point. ;)

Again... thank you for EVERYTHING!!!!!

Odessa

Yup, steps 1-4 sound just right.  Don't forget also:

5. Quit the game.
6. Double-click the exported lot so that Clean Installer will open it.
7. Select "Lot segment only" in Clean Installer.  Then click On the boxes next to the family members and their catalog.  (This eliminates hacks and extraneous content.)
8. Save with an informative file name.

They idea here is to create a version where the only embedded content is the family members.

That will create a much smaller, leaner, safer .Sims2Pack file; and that's the one you should zip up and post.


The one thing I did differently was between steps 3 and 4, I tuned up the Smythe family's personalities, relationships, jobs, and skills.

Addendum: To be precise, here's where you package the lot in step 4:

(http://www.sunsims.com/images/misc/package_lot.jpg)
Package the lot from the neighborhood screen.

Make sure to select "Package lot to a file."

linda...

gracias

Good Job

Thanks Greg, good work and a great idea. Thanks for sharing the Smythes with us all.

you are a god! I love it and it works great. I put them in after  having to uninstall and reinstall my game due to corrupted files (me and my hacks) and they work great. Thanks for the prefabricated family.