Gosh, this is complicated! I guess I got lucky - for the multi-PT download that I have, the creator explains exactly what to delete and what not to delete if you want to remove the mod and use a different multi-PT mod/go back to just having one PT. The mod itself, which is the bit you delete, is named multi-PT-[creator's name] and the files that you have to keep, that correspond to the PT's themselves, are all named [PT's name]-[creator's name]. I always assumed that everyone did it like that, and explained it, but as that's not the case I'm glad that you guys are trying to make it understandable for people! :-) I hope your hoods are OK, ganzania.

gazania, I added the line about BHAV's and OBJD to my LJ, but have no idea what they are. I've heard of BHAV's before and that is it. But Mootilda said you can remove the BHAV's so yeah I'm even more confused now as I thought template 1,2 and so on would be the PT's. I'd be leaving it all alone too.
Also I believe Boiling Oil is a guy. He calls himself a grumpy old man on simbiology.

Yea that's how I have done it several times when I used different multi-PT hacks.
Just remove the hack. Not the PT's and there eyes, skin if they are custom.

I believe that I've come up with a good simple method for finding the one and only package to delete: size! The selection mod should be tiny (1K? 10K?), whereas the user data should be much larger (100K? 300K?).

I've decided to devote today to multi-PT mods. Anything that I learn should also be applicable to multi-Plantsim mods, but if I have time I'll try a few of those as well.

Questions that need to be answered:
- When is the PT added to your hood? When you run the game? When you open the neighborhood? When a sim is abducted? This will help us to determine whether all of your neighborhoods (even those that you haven't played) are affected by these mods.
- Is my size criteria valid? I came up with it in the shower this morning and haven't had a chance to confirm it; I'm just going on my knowledge of what's in each package.
- Can the PTs be moved to your Characters folder? If so, I will recommend this method, since it will make it harder to "accidentally" delete the extra PTs. The Hood Corruption article already warns people against deleting anything in that folder.
- If the PTs can be moved to the Characters folder, will this allow SimPE and the HoodChecker to find the PTs?

Does anyone have any other questions that they want me to research?

Sorry, that was meant to be a note to modders, so that other people could help to determine which package to delete. I've been trying to come up with a simpler algorithm for non-technies and I believe that size will work; I just need to confirm it and you can get rid of the technie talk and discuss size instead.

Ideally, creators will tell you which package can be deleted, but I think that it's good if users can check for themselves.

gazania, it sounds like you may have accidentally done exactly the right thing. Unfortunately, the naming convention of template / PT is not standard. A "mod" is anything which changes the behavior of your game. multi-PT mods qualify as mods because they change the behavior of your game. A "hack" is the same thing as a "mod".

Let me do some research today and then we'll try to come up with some simple language that will explain things to non-technical people. I'll definitely need your help in coming up with a reasonable explanation, since I think in techie. Does that sounds like a reasonable plan?

Mootilda, I can corroborate your thoughts on the package size: I switch between one of Fwiffo's multi-PT mods and one of my own making. Both Fwiffo's and my selection mod are 1k in size. Fwiffo's PTs are between 554kb and 561kb and mine are between 191kb and 210kb (no idea why mine are significiantly smaller, especially as mine use custom skins).

Thank you. If anyone finds a multi-PT or multi-Plantsim mod which doesn't follow this rule, please let us know.

Could be something as simple as compression. Did you compress yours?

It could also be quality of the textures. If your largest texture is 512 x 512 and Fwiffo's are 1024 x 1024, that would make a huge difference to the size of the package.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First suggestion for wording:

When you open the compressed file (Zip, RAR, 7Z) for a multi-PT or multi-Plantsim, you will find a number of package files. One of those files will be significantly smaller than the others (approximately 1K). If you decide to remove this CC, that is the only package which can be deleted. All of the other packages must remain in your Downloads folder to avoid neighborhood corruption.

I DID do it right all along? (Well, maybe I shouldn't have pulled out the character files. But I did put them back before playing again, and it seems the thumbnails are OK.)

Wow. Time to play the lottery. But I think it will be a while before I switch multi-PTs again! For better or worse, I'm sticking with my current ones, and will not remove the old ones.

As luck would have it (?), because of past mistakes in my Simming life, I reset all my neighborhoods around the same time this time. I reset every three years. If I am playing Sims 2 in three years, just reset all of them at the same time next time! Then I can get rid of the old PT files.

I think that one source of confusion for PT newbies is the word "template" that some creators put in their files. Many (well, some ... like this poster here), associate the word "template" in the same vein as facial templates. And like facial templates, many may think, "Ooh ... I can remove these at will". Many don't pay attention to the fact that the PTs are NOT interchangeable like facial templates, and that those names count! JohnSmithPT is one PT. JimmyJonesPT is another. Too bad there wasn't a way to use generic names (PT1, PT2, as opposed to unique names) and have the new PTs simply take those over, but then I guess the thumbnails and Family Bin templates would be messed up.

Yes, template is a misnomer. These are actually new sims in your neighborhood. All of the rules about deleting sims apply. That's why I would like to see whether these packages can be moved into the Characters folder.

I believe that it would be possible for new PTs to take over the job of old PTs. Creators would just need to ensure that they use the exact same SimIDs for each set, and that each set has the same number of PTs. That may be too restrictive for most creators.

Y'know, after the initial shock, some may find that tiny template file to be pretty interesting.

If you want to "mix up" your alien race ... maybe include the pointy-eared ones from one creator and the button noses from another ... it sounds like you just save the old template file somewhere (maybe make a note to yourself that you MUST change template files when switching Multi-PTs), and when you're saturated with pointy-eared aliens, put the old file back in (after removing the newer template file and storing THAT somewhere), and behold! Button-nosed aliens to your heart's content! Switch as desired, but always remember to leave ALL character files in there for the smoothest transition.

Sounds kind of fun, actually, once you get the hang of this!

I looked at the size of BoilingOil's mod versus the Multi PTs to see about size to see if size could be an indicator (he has them clearly labeled thankfully). The Multi PT mod itself has a package size of 569 bytes and one Multi PT named Lelestra Entassah has a package size of 202 kb. Another Multi PT named Syrinna Impregnata has a package size of 183 kb.

One thing I run into in SimPE is that they do not have named character files. I have a bunch of "Unknown" files in SimPE that I don't know if they belong to the Multi PTs or other Sims in the game.

Sounds right; 569 bytes is less than 1 KB (1000 bytes).

Let me see whether this can be fixed by moving the PTs to the Characters folder.

Nope, no compression on my files. I checked the skins on mine (Fwiffo's uses the default skintone) and they're all 1024 x 1024 textures, so I'm still mystified. The only possible thing I can think of that Fwiffo's PTs have some extra data or information in them that ones made using Simgaroop's tutorial don't.

(Just checked: Fwiffo's PT 14 has 31 items in their character file; my PT 198 has 22 items. The differences are 2 less GMDC, 2 less GMND, 1 less IMG, 1 less TXMT, 1 less GZPS, 1 less CRES, 1 less SHPE. I have been using my multi-PT file for over three years with no issue, though, so it doesn't appear that these missing parts affect it in any negative way.)

I'm going to post the results of my tests here, and update as I do more tests.

PTs are added to your neighborhood as soon as you enter it. You do not need to have entered a lot or saved a lot for the sims to be added to your neighborhood. This means that you should not remove PTs regardless of whether they have children in the neighborhood. However, neighborhoods which are in your Neighborhoods folder but which have not been played at all will not have the PTs.

If the PT files are moved to the Characters folder:
- HoodChecker can't find them (probably because it's looking for specific file names; this should be easy to change).
- SimPE can find them and correctly finds their names and other information. Thumbnails show up in SimPE once they are generated in the game.
- In-Game:
- - PTs are correctly added to the neighborhood.
- - PT parent is properly assigned on abduction.
- - Birth and aging of resulting baby function correctly. The correct PT appears in the family tree.

However, we probably don't want to move the PTs because we want them to be available to all neighborhoods, not just one.

If the PT files are copied to the Characters folder:
- HoodChecker can't find them (probably because it's looking for specific file names; this should be easy to change).
- SimPE can find them and correctly finds their names and other information. Thumbnails show up in SimPE once they are generated in the game.
- In-Game:
- - PTs are correctly added to the neighborhood.
- - PT parent is properly assigned on abduction.
- - Birth and aging of resulting baby function correctly. The correct PT appears in the family tree.
- The PT in the Characters folder overrides the PT in the Downloads folder, which is exactly what we want. Any changes will be made to the Characters version and the Downloads version will remain unchanged.

The advantage to having the PTs in your Characters folder is that you are less likely to inadvertently delete them. They will more obviously be a part of your neighborhood.

The disadvantage is that you will use more space if you have multiple versions of the same file. For some people, this is a major concern; for others, it is a non-issue.

If we put a copy of the Multi PTs in the Character Folder, do we also leave a copy in the Downloads folder? (The reason I ask is I'm not sure if the selector mod would know to look in the character folder for the PTs at the time of abduction).

Please don't try that until I confirm that it works correctly and will not cause any problems.

To answer your question: I do not believe that the selection mod requires the user data to be a specific folder. It's just user data. I believe that a package in the Downloads folder will override the package in the Characters folder, but I'll have to check whether that's true or not. It would be better for us if it worked the other way.

WIdget, Phae, Katu all 1KB; Hat's even less. Don't know why my SINGLE plant sim replacement is 227KB - that can't be just the default replacement. And I've noticed that some of my abduction offspring are NOT showing the father on the family tree, so I must not have correctly identified the bits to remove when changing out a default replacement. And I only have a few default that gave directions, and labeled the "removable" bit clearly.

I will edit my LJ message later to make it clearer as to what people should do. The word template totally threw me off, but size sounds like a fool proof (I hope) indicator of what can and can't be removed.

Yes, I believe that size is the right criteria. If anyone has problems determining which file to delete, perhaps they can post a link to the multi-PT or -Plantsim here and a modder can verify which package can be removed.

We could even keep a list of all known multi-<x> mods with the package name of the selection mod (the small one that can be removed). Anything to help people avoid corrupting their hoods.

I have Almighty Hat's Multi-PT mod in, which also includes a change to the abduction memories. Here are her instructions, and the name of the multi-poli-tech mod file is: MOD Stolen By Fairies Multi PT by Almighty Hat.package

Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial about making a multi-PT mod? This would be very helpful for my testing. [Update: found it: http://www.modthesims.info/showpost...90&postcount=22]

Excellent. This is really sounding like the right approach. Also, I gather that it is easy for non-techies to understand and to check.

Why not? That doesn't sound like an outrageous size for a default replacement. If you'd like to give me a link, I'll check and make sure.

That's really unfortunate. It may mean that taking out the PTs even briefly can corrupt your neighborhood. I'd have to look over the steps that you performed again, to see whether I can figure out what went wrong.

http://simgaroop.dreamwidth.org/39709.html
I followed this one when I made my own, and I could have sworn that I read about the not pulling the sims themselves or the skins/eyes there. Aparently not. So I must have seen that at some other place.
My guess is that the label "template" in the multi-PTs is because fwiffo named it just that, I guess s/he meant template as in anyone can change this to their liking?

I think it would be better if creators simply packaged their PT-sims plus any custom skins or eyes in a folder labelled "never delete from downloads unless you are about to reset your neighbourhoods"

Otherwise, I would find the wording "Dont delete the sims" easier to understand. All mods I have looked at have had the sims labelled fairly intelligently and I would not be confused. Number checking would be confusing.

That's great. My advice about size is for those people who cannot tell which package is which.

So, from my research yesterday, here's my suggestion:

When you install a multi-PT mod, install all of the packages into your Downloads folder, as directed.

You can also copy all of the PTs into the Characters folder for each of your neighborhoods. Do not copy the selection mod, which is the smallest package in the set. If you create a new neighborhood, copy the PTs into the new neighborhood's Characters folder as early as convenient.

When you uninstall a multi-PT mod (and if you have followed the above advice), remove all of the multi-PT packages from your Downloads folder, but leave the copies in your Characters folders.

This has some obvious benefits:
- The character files for the PTs are in the "correct" location, along with all of the other character files for your neighborhood.
- You will be less likely to accidentally delete PTs that have been used in the neighborhood, reducing the likelihood of neighborhood corruption.
- When the game modifies the PT, it will only modify the version which belongs to the neighborhood. This means that there's less chance of cross-neighborhood contamination.
- When you backup your neighborhood, it will contain all of the necessary character files. There's no need to remember which multi-PT mods you've used.
- When you install a new multi-PT mod, you will not accidentally corrupt your neighborhood.
- Your PTs will be better handled by SimPE. Less "Unknown" sims.
- The newest version of the HoodChecker will recognize your PTs, so that it will be easier to see real problems with missing character data.

There is one disadvantage, but it's a minor one:
- You will be using more space, since you will have duplicates of these character files. Of course, your neighborhood is already using a bunch of space for all of your sims, the additional space requirement is minimal.

This advice should hold for any mods which contain character files. That includes multi-Plantsim mods and some of the mods which give you access to new animals in your game. If you are unsure whether a mod contains character files, ask the creator, or run the HoodChecker and see whether it warns you about missing character files in your neighborhood.

That sounds like useful advice Moo - will the same strategy work for the animals? Also, now I think about it, as you may remember I only have one neighbourhood - do you think copying PT files to the neighbourhoods characters folder means I could delete the original copies in Downloads?

Does the HoodChecker warn you about those animals? If so, then this technique should also work for them. If you'd like me to check, please give me a link to the animals, so that I can do a quick check.

My research indicates that having only one copy of the packages in the Characters folder works correctly. There should be no problem removing the copy in your Downloads folder.

However, my advice is to keep the original copies in the Downloads folder. If you have the selection mod in your Downloads folder and the game cannot find the sims that are referenced in that selection mod, there could be problems. I understand that you only have one neighborhood and do not expect to create another, but it's just safer to leave the original packages in Downloads until you remove the selection mod.