I want to move some houses from one neighbourhood to another. I know you shouldn't move occupied lots, but is a lot safe to move if you've had sims in it and played it for a while then moved the sims out?

Also, if you have custom content on the above lots and you use the Sims2Pack Clean Installer to reinstall them, does that protect you from having any bugs/dodgy stuff carry over with the lot?

I believe you need to remove the off world loiterers. Read this: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...Hood_Corruption

"Bin empty lots that have been lived in without getting rid of the off-world loiterers. [Pescado's Lot Debugger has an option to do this but it will only appear when off-world loiterers are present] "

I would not do it. I did that when restarting my hood, and it was corrupt within weeks. It might be fine, but is it worth that risk? For me, it's not. I rather rebuild the lot in a safe hood and bin that.

Your replies upset me so much, that was what I was going to do, to package lots in 'hood that's getting wonky and moving those lots into a new 'hood... Now I realize I shouldn't do it. So much work with rebuilding and decorating, all wasted

But is it safe to extract Sims (thru Sim Surgery) and placing them into new 'hood? I have 103 Townies/Downtownies I wish to see in new 'hood, so I'm thinking of moving them all there, but should I?

If you use Sim Surgery on new Sims to make them look like old Sims, that is okay. It is not okay to put the original Sims with their memories and relationships in a new neighborhood.

No, no, I only wish to use the appearance and names, memories and relationships I don't bother with. I put too much time and effort in customizing the appearances of those townies to loose them just like that. So I figured I'll extract my Townies, along with some playables I wish to play again from the start, and install the Sims packages into new 'hood. I never heard Sim Surgery keeps memories etc, so those will be completely new, fresh Sims, right?

Weren't you using Igne's Stay-Things Shrub?

Lots lose all of their furnishings when a sim moves out (unless you have a mod to prevent that). I believe that EA did this to try to clean the lot so that it would be safe to use in another neighborhood.

We don't know for sure. It is definitely safer to share lots which have never been occupied.

However, I believe that EA is trying to clean the lot when EA deletes all of the objects on a lot when your sim moves out. Those unfurnished lots may be safe.

If you use a mod to keep any of the furnishings (like the Stay-Things Shrub or the new mod that just keeps built-ins), then the lot is much more likely to be unsafe, especially if it contains objects which have references to sims.

The Clean Installer can be used to remove sims from a packaged occupied lot, which is much safer than installing an occupied lot. However, this has some of the same problems as the Stay-Things Shrub: some objects retain references to sims, which can cause problems when the house is moved to another neighborhood.

The Clean Installer can also remove CC from a Sims2Pack. This doesn't remove the object from the lot, but most CC objects will either disappear from a lot, or revert to an original object, if the CC doesn't exist in the current save game. Unfortunately, some objects will crash a lot if the CC is removed; some of Maxis Monkey's objects are like this.

The Clean Installer will not remove the following from a lot:
- Objects which contain references to a sim.
- Objects which should only be on a lot when it is occupied (such as controllers and other hidden objects).
- Off-world loiterers.

Yep, it should be fine.

If you extract sims with sim surgery/SimPE, put the sim file in the SavedSims folder/Downloads folder (a place where you can find them and delete them after). Then run Bodyshop, find the sim, CLONE them, and the CLONE is safe to use ingame or pack for uploading. Remember, the CLONE! That is, the random 8+8 digit file that appears in SavedSims when you save the sim to the bin. You should delete the files you extracted with SimPE, as these are NOT safe to keep in the game. The random-digit files might be safe to rename, although I've never tried that...

The sims extracted directly from the game will have traces of various stuff, memories or whatever. But if you pack these files for uploading you'll notice they won't save the CC items, only the sim file (and the wrong one with the sim's name in it, not the 8+8 digit file). These might potentially be harmful both in a new neighborhood in your own game, and in other people's game because the sim isn't cleaned up properly.

You can always edit relationships and such when you've got the clones in your game. For most people, the most important thing to save is the sim's appearance and to not bork their games.

As for houses I have packed them with the sims in, and then cleaned them up with the CI, leaving out the sim files when I reinstalled it. The best is to only install the lot file (that is, if you have all the necessary CC in your game already). I won't say it's completely safe, but I always plop them in a test 'hood before I put them into the game I use, and I always clean it and delete or replace stuff that might cause troubles. That's by the way the method I use with any houses I download, as in my experience people tend to forget to clean them out properly. Stray mail, newspapers, food, plates and other items have been left after they've packed it. Graves and urns might also ship with the lot, although I've never seen that. Portals and whatnots might also cause problems. Also, some people are completely unable to remove mailbox/trachcan recolor files. These give me a headache every single time! I don't have a lot of experience with lot debuggers, but it's probably a good idea to learn how they work...A good idea for house uploaders: Take the pictures in a CLONE of the lot, not the one you actually pack and upload. Saves lots of troubles for the downloader.

What a useful thread and in the right time, as I began rebuilding my most favorite 'hood that shows signs of corruptions. Thank you, everyone!

I did, in the first re-creation. In the second I rebuilt all residential lots and owned businesses from scratch in a completely empty hood, and only binned 2-3 community lots from the other hood. That hood showed the exact same problem as the first one (weird items in inventory, remember?) in about the same time-period (sim-life-wise). I just didn't bother posting it since I already knew it was bad. Haven't decided yet if I want to do hood 3.0 or what I'm going to do. Not feeling overly motivated atm given that my hoods keep going boom despite not doing things that are known to cause it, and my game constantly hates me.

It might be the lots, it might be something else. I think it is, because it's the only thing I can think off. Given that you can corrupt lots by having your Sims bring certain items in inventory, it seems logical that it would be the same if you bring it with the lot. Not using Shrub is probably better, but I wouldn't bin used lots any way. I'm tired of starting over =P

Unfortunately, we have never determined why your neighborhoods are becoming corrupted. You originally had a theory that it was the Stay-Things Shrub, which made some sense to me.

I believe that mods like the Stay-Things Shrub can cause problems with specific objects. But, I'm not convinced that an occupied lot which was completely emptied by the game can have problems, unless it has CC which holds onto sim references.

Certainly, we can all agree that it is safer to use lots which have never been occupied, which is why I try to build in a neighborhood which is completely empty of sims.

I am rather convinced the first hood went boom due to stay things shrub, but in the second I did not use it. The binned community lots were never owned, which I thought would be fine but apparently not. But you know far more than I do, so if you think emptied lots are fine they probably are To me, it's just easier to rebuild the lot than it is the hood, since I do take it so seriously and end up taking months to get back to the same point as I was before.

I hope my blabbering has been remotely helpful to you, Charity. I'd take Mootildas word over mine, but perhaps it gave some sort of thought-help =)

Hmm, looks like it might be safer to redownload the original lots and take screenshots of what I changed. Lots downloaded from here won't have any dodgy stuff like off world loiterers, right?

Thanks for the answers.

As much as I wish that were true, I don't think that's the case. Download moderators do not check and test every single upload, so if things look okay then it goes through. A lot of people seem to play test the same lot they upload, and as simmmer22 mentioned, they forget things. I downloaded one from here with an empty plate sitting on a table. I doubt all of them know to clear off-world loiters, nor what objects need replacing after then have been used. Since they play-test on the same lot, we know they used the stay-things shrub (which we know isn't always a good idea).

After my hood 2 and 3 went boom I've become crazy paranoid about these things. From now on I think I'll place all lots in a whatever-hood, and rebuild them in a clean one. A tip for doing that; use collections. I found it helped a lot when rebuilding all my lots. Because of all the crap I have, finding an exact item is often time-consuming, so I found it saved more time to place everything from the house in a collection file than to try to locate everything later.

Do used community lots attract off world loiterers, or are they safe to move?

If a lot is showing dodginess/corruption and you restore a backup from when it was okay, that should fix everything? Basically, I want to make sure that I never have to remake my main hood again, so I'll backup when it's brand new and bugless.

I'm rebuilding my 'hood, at the stage when I just installed all the lots I want and that's it.
Just out of curiosity, I ran Hood Checker. It fixed a bunch of something related to the Tricous, Incorrect Subject Instance (how did they sneak it, I'm using empty templates and added Downtown is a custom one..).
Then I ran the checker again, this time with an option to show me all memories, even valid ones and under Valid Memories it gave me a long long list of data related to the only four lots I moved from previous 'hood to this one, no hacks in them, Sims never lived in them, even in old 'hood (at least I'm sure for my game, I downloaded those lots, not built myself).

It goes like this:

Valid: Lot 0x0012 Circle Rd 1: [Invisible] Token - Apartment - Object Copies
Valid: Lot 0x0012 Circle Rd 1: [Inventory: 1957] Memory (0x004A9B01)
....
Valid: Lot 0x0012 Circle Rd 1: [Inventory: 2093] Memory (...)
That's 136 lines of data just for one lot!
Almost just as much of these inventory/memory stuff the other three lots have got too.

Three other downloaded lots has under Valid: [Invisible] Token - Lot - Food Unit info

I'm beginning to understand why players prefer to build their own lots. But I'm horrible at building...

The "Incorrect Subject Instance" errors are a bug in the EA code for attaching neighborhoods, which the HoodChecker will fix for you. However, it sounds like those "empty" templates aren't exactly clean; why would an "empty" template have any reference to the Tricous at all?

Would you mind attaching the HoodChecker report, along with the names or number of the 4 lots that you moved? I'd be very curious to take a look at these. Thanks!

I checked and indeed I left a template for Nightlife that has the Tricous and Rainelle, damn! Oh well, I guess it won't hurt, I'm not going to bring them from the dead anyway for this neighborhood.

Couldn't figure out how to attach a txt file, so I put it into RAR.

Where can this be found? I couldn't find anything like it.

Thanks for the report. I must admit that this doesn't look right to me at all. It seems very odd that a lot would have inventory items. I'm going to do some research to see whether I can figure out what these are.

[Update:] Here's what I've learned: apartment sublots have inventories which include various objects. E001 (Belladonna Cove) is the only shipped neighborhood which has these memories, and only for apartment sublots, not for apartment base lots or any other kind of lot. A quick check seems to indicate that different apartment sublots for the same apartment base lot do not have the same set of inventory items. This makes me believe that these items may be the items which are considered to be "owned" by a specific occupied apartment. For example, the Sentinal Apartments sublot for the Cho family has a crib and a stuffed animal in the lot inventory.

Since I don't recognize many of the objects in your HC report, I'm assuming that they are CC. The question is why is the game treating your lots like apartment sublots?

BTW: You can include your CC in the SimPE Simantics Resource Finder search by going to Extra -> Preferences -> System Folders and ensuring that Savegame points to your save game, then going to Extra -> Preferences -> FileTable and clicking on "Add downloads folder". Your downloads folder will be added under Advanced Settings; make sure that the line "Recursive folder: (SaveGameFolder)Downloads\" is checked. Note that this won't help you if the CC was in the downloaded lot, but not in your Downloads folder.

Okay, this is really noobish, but what ''are'' off world loiterers?

When you phone someone, the game actually teleports them to your lot temporarily. However, you don't see them because they are off of the lot and therefore invisible. These are off-world loiterers. There are other situations where this can occur as well... any time that a sim is on your lot, but not visible.

You can even select them via certain mods when one of your sims is on the phone with them.

Off-World Loiterers are different from Invisible Sims, correct (like at vacation hotels, when people are arriving to the hotel via the sidewalk's portals)?