Could be, Sita!  I don't think Miriam's family was in exile in Babylon when Moses met her, but I really don't know where the heck Midian is.  Didn't the Babylonian exile come a lot later, after the Israelites were established in the Promised Land?  

Outstanding!

Way cool!  I needed one of these but didn't know it was here!  And now I do!  Thank you, SnookGee!

gracias

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


Package the lot from the neighborhood screen.

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

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.

This may be a blessing!  If you do catch it, I don't think it can be cured with penecillian! :lol:

For me, one of the greatest benefits from making this silly little garment was that (thanks to Beosboxboy) I expanded my vocabulary with a very useful word: sardonicity.





Glad you enjoyed it!  A sims story, eh?  Hmm... need a clever plot... maybe a detective story...

   It all started one foggy morning when I got a call from Betsy Hawtbaudy, the doll who runs the Home for Incurable Kleptomanics.  That's where the feds lock up the crooks who can't seem to get a handle of basic moral values.  I couldn't guess why the feds would need help from a third-rate gumshoe like me and I wasn't too keen on the idea of working with a bunch of sociopathic loonies, but I didn't want to miss the chance to see Betsy again.  Besides, business was slow and I needed the money.



Now, where I can I find a nice mesh for a 1930's style double-breasted suit and a snap-brim fedora?

Yippee!  We have her at last!

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.

Thanks again, J00wish!  

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

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.

You're welcome, Assiebun.  I've found that I use these quite a bit more than I had expected.  The solid white walls are nice in places that are dark most of the time and normally would be very plain, like garages.

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.

The Smythes
Instant Neighbors


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!



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!

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.

Now let me think...  Would I expect a morally deficient kleptomaniac who can rationalize criminal behavior to have a well-adjusted sense of humor?

Naaah. :lol:

Ah, but you must appreciate the humor in how the rationalization has kept this ancient download topic alive for six months, assuring that thousands more people will see the message and think about it! :laugh:

No?  Ah well.  I tried. :dontknow: