Simblesse Oblige

Bedawyn · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:48 pm Post subject: Building on Away Lots

I used to prefer the trial-and-error/test-on-my-own method, but I've had so many problems with my game, I'd playing it safe and asking first now.

I'd like to move my Simlogical hospital to one of the Studiotown lots to free up more residential space. Has anyone tried this before? Am I likely to have trouble getting my medical sims to show up on the lot? Or having the wrong NPCs show up? (I actually won't mind the paparazzi showing up.) Any lot-specific problems I should be on the lookout for?

I'm also thinking of rezoning Pet Paradise as residential and adding a couple of apartments on the second floor. But I'd like to keep as much of the pet mall operational as possible. I already have the Simslice at-home cat adoption bins, but I don't have the dog bins. I'm not sure what the pet trainer does that's useful but I'd like to keep the pet show judges. And I already have some pet treat displays that I think are supposed to be at-home-able. If I save the lot elsewhere, rezone it, then copy the saved lot back, will I be able to save the buildings? What problems am I likely to run into?

Sigh. I want a new map so badly. Or to be able to rezone Downtown and Studiotown lots, one or the other.

I have plenty of small single family houses and even garden-style apartments. But I really want one, just one, big lot that I can use for a modern, urban-style apartment building. And all my big lots are being used for more important things -- or at least as important things that I can't figure out how to move. It doesn't help that there's only one other urban-style building on the lot, and it's down where the Hicks used to be. So a big apartment condo would look out of place pretty much anywhere. At one point I'd decided to bulldoze the pet shops and put the condos there, but I'm actually using the pet shop these days.

I don't suppose there's a hack I haven't heard of that would let me move people in to Studiotown? I could theoretically get rid of a couple of those lots.

bluesage · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:22 pm Post subject:

This can be done relatively easily,

but you`ll want to replace mailboxes, phones and portals. yes

http://simblesseoblige.com/viewtopic.php?t=906&highlight=portal

André · Member Joined: 18 Dec 2010 Posts: 377 Location: Brasil

It seems to be an interesting project have commercial and residential lots at the same time!
I also love to have houses on Vacation island, like in Sims2.
Well, if you success please show the results.

bruja · Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:08 pm Post subject:

Bedawyn, as someone who keeps setting up new hoods, I'm wondering why you want to have so many families in one hood. Perhaps you need this for your style of play?

I know that some players' games start to have crashes when there are too many sims living in the hood.

A few years ago, Yersinia felt that her game was suffering from this problem, but she had put so much energy into each family that she wanted to keep them all. And she wanted to have the relationships of her sims with away lot sims kept intact. Also, she wanted to retain her commercial lots as built.

She knew which families she wanted to keep in the old hood, and which families she wanted to "send on migration" to a new hood.

I suggested that she might try to copy the whole hood onto her desktop, rename it to UserData10 or some other number she didn't already have. I think for safety's sake, we also decided that she should repeat this step, and name the second copy UserData11.

Then she moved the 2 new hoods (the renumbered copies) into the game. She opened Userdata10, evicted the families who had "migrated", then deleted them. (Her original hood was still intact in case something went wrong.) Then she opened UserData11, and evicted, then deleted all the families who had "not migrated".

As far as I know, she had no trouble.

I copy and rename hoods all the time, and have never had any problems.

Bedawyn · Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:49 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'm actually pretty clear on how to turn it residential, that's not the problem. I'm just worried about keeping the pet mall operational while it's residential, since if I can't do that, there's no point in doing it at all.

I actually don't have that many sims in my neighborhood -- only a couple lots with big families, and half of my houses are unoccupied (because they're in permanent states of construction and I haven't found the right faces for the sims the houses are intended for). I just love designing multiuse and multifamily lots. But I do actually play enough that I want the houses to be livable and the inhabitants to keep their relationships. For a while years back I was running different neighborhoods for the sake of more land, but I have so little time to play, that splitting the effort like that, I never got _anywhere_. Since I had to rebuild my whole game after the corruption I'm still recovering from, I'm not inclined to spend the time on another neighborhood.

I'm also picky about my neighborhood map. I've got the hospital on a residential lot now, and I could probably fit the condos on another nearby lot, especially if I just pasted in a lot 00 and played with the map edit. But they would just look wrong, being on the edge of town, across the street from my cabins in the forest. Urban buildings should be in urban settings. That's the real reason I want to move them to Studiotown. Of course, then they be surrounded by ghastly pink and yellow...

If I could bring myself to bulldoze the pet mall, I could put either the condos or the hospital there and solve half the problem. But I've finally after all these years got the pet mall to a point where I'm almost happy with it, so I don't want to have to start all over putting the pet shops elsewhere.

Bedawyn · Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:55 pm Post subject:

In other words, I don't need more space for sims to live in, I need more canvas space. For the painting I'm already working on. A new neighborhood would be a different painting, and therefore beside the point.

bruja · Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 6:27 pm Post subject:

Raeven · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 3751

Bedawyn, unless I am misremembering bulldozing is part of the rezoning process so you'll need to rebuild that building anyway. I have done some fiddling about to get around that sort of thing but I can't remember all of the steps required and it does not leave the lot as stable as simply starting anew. Something to do with the setting and whatnot on the carportals when the lot is initialized.

Bedawyn · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 12:32 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Raeven! That's exactly the kind of info I was hoping for.

I was originally hoping to avoid the bulldozing by pasting a saved version of the lot back in after the rezoning/bulldozing process. But jogging what I can of memorg, I vaguely remember having problems every time I've tried to build residential on a lot that started out community, or community on a lot that started out residential -- at least everytime I've tried to do something more creative than rezone and build on the original lot. Problems that don't simply resolve with the right portals and phone lines. So I'm reluctant to start that whole hassle over for a project that I only want to do because the one-story structures seem to cry out for second-floor apartments, not because I actually need the living space. Since I had to replace my Townies, I'll probably just wait till I've gotten attached to some of the new ones and really want them to have apartments before moving forward on this. I may end up keeping it community to avoid all these problems and just using other tricks to assign the apartments to Townies. That's been a different kind of hassle on the Downtown lot where I have four Townies living, but there'd be fewer distractions on the pet mall lot and there are a lot more apartment objects available now then there were when I first set up by Old Farm Condos. That might be the least hassle-licious way to do it, if not quite as happy-making as having it really residential/mixed-use.

Raeven · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 3751

My pleasure, glad I could help some.

You've been able to use the Simlogical apartment system on away lots successfully? That's outstanding! I always meant to try it out (and even added the apt hack coding to some objects intended for Away locations just in case it DOES work).

You set the permissions each time you load the lot up (using a buy/build mode patch) I assume? I am under the impression that the lots initialize anew each time (which would wipe out the permissions you set up last time) - finding out differently would be quite cool.

Bedawyn · Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 12:07 am Post subject:

Not quite. I set up the Old Farm Condos downtown looooong before there were enough Apt Hacked objects to want to use it. I did use the 4-key doors though, and on my Old Town apartment, the juniporter bush to summon the Sims who are supposed to live there. Yes, everything has to be set back up again every time I enter the lot. I wouldn't say it's successful; it's extremely frustrating to play, especially with all the other distractions and slowdowns on an Away lot. But my simulation-building heart needed it, and I'm looking forward to working my way back around to that lot now that there are more apt objects to refurnished with. I'll let you know if they work!