A Way To Organize Your Lot Bin!

[Zirconia Wolf]

***Note: this is mainly only about the Lot Bin in base, shopping or downtown hoods. Colleges are a different animal & have their own Specialty Lots (like Dorms) & other rules about what can/can't be placed there. Still, lots you have packed up from a College town (like Student Unions or Libraries) will be effected, as these will show in your regular Lot Bin too!***


I will say from the get-go that this was NOT my brainchild, as much as I wish it were! It was actually proposed as a speculation by ZepherZodiac over on TJ's Simbology site & things snowballed from there. (I'll post a link to the original thread at the end of this post, but since it tends to wander a bit as threads like to do, I will post the upshot of it here in my own words first.)

Does it drive you nuts that that stupid Lot Bin displays stuff in a seemingly random way, with no regard to what's a residential lot, what's a park or what's a shopping mall?

Well, be driven insane no more! Now you have the power to get that stupid bin to group things the way YOU (not some turkey at Maxis) want! The secret? It sort of depends on what EP/SPs you have...

For Games With Nothing Higher Than The Glamour Life SP

First get a paper & a pen. Now go into your game & write down the lots in the order they appear in your lot bin. Exit the game & go to your LotCatalog folder. (My Documents\EA Games\Sims2\LotCatalog)

Believe it or not, this is one time Maxis used their brains; the lots actually appear in the Lot Bin in numerical order! (Lot cx_00000005 will be the one right before cx_00000006, etc etc...)

To change how the lots show up in the Lot Bin, you just need to renumber them! (Backup the LotCatalog folder first if you feel better about it.)

This works brilliantly (yes, I have done this) & you can get as fancy as you want. For instance, I changed the 3rd digit in the file name to 1,2,3,4,etc if the lot was a resident, park, restaurant, store,etc. (Other people have used systems that include altering other digits according to price & other factors, but I haven't got that deep...yet! )

For Games With Pets Or Later Packs

Virtually the same as above, but with a twist: the lots will load in reverse numerical order & the date the file was created is now a deciding factor in how it's "ranked" in the bin. So if you make/package a new Community Pool (for instance) after Pets or higher is in your game, that lot will ALWAYS show up at the front of your Lot Bin, despite whatever you try to cleverly renumber it to.

The easiest way to deal with this I found was to run DJ's Compressorizer on the LotCatalog folder; after being "compressed" all your lot files will have the same "born on" date & you can get back to organizing your Lot Bin to your liking. Note that this will remove the EP/SP icons from Pets-and-above Maxian lots. So if you really have a thing for icons on your lots I don't know what to tell you. (Since Delphy's Download Organizer- which I love- hates compressed files, I only used the Compressorizer on the LotCatalog & not my Downloads like it was originally designed for.)

A Strange Alternative Idea

This totally doesn't fit my playing style but it might yours so here goes: a few players have created a Hood solely to store all their lots in. Once set up, they have then deleted everything in their LotCatalog, which (obviously) leaves an empty Lot Bin. When they want to place a lot, they go to their "Lot Hood", place the lot in their Lot Bin, then go to the Hood they want the lot in & place the lot.

That's waaaay to annoying for me, but apparently it speeds up load time on lower end computers. Thought I would pass it on in case it appeals to anyone else. (The idea of a separate hood to test/create/tweak lots in IS something I liked however! )

As promised, here's the link to the original Simbology thread:
http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php/topic,263.0.html

-ZW

[Zirconia Wolf]

(Didn't want to add this to the first post as it was pretty long already...)

Here's a list of the EP/SP order-of-release, if you are wondering:

- Sims 2
- Happy Holiday Stuff
- Sims 2 Holiday Edition (Base & Happy Holiday Stuff)
- University EP
- Nightlife EP
- Open For Business EP
- Family Fun Stuff
- Glamour Life Stuff
- Pets EP <<<<<< (The one that changed the Lot Bin & other stuff)
- Seasons EP
- Celebrations Stuff
- H&M Fashions Stuff
- Bon Voyage EP
- Teen Style Stuff
- Free Time EP
- Kitchen & Bath Stuff

There is also an Ikea Stuff pack & an Apartment Life EP coming out, but I am not 100% sure when/which will be first & will update this info when they are released.

Also not sure about where all the Sims 2 Deluxe fits in to this, but I think it has everything up to Nightlife included.

Please feel free to tell me anything I have overlooked!

-ZW

[Greg]

That's neat! It would be nice not have to scroll through all those old lots to see new ones that I have just installed.

[Miros1]

OOH! I'll have to add this to SimText!

Probably the EP will be out before the SP.

[Hokieman]

See Greg, there is a reason to install Pets!!

[Greg]

Aha! I don't have Pests installed or anything later, so that might explain the lot incompatibility problem that I ran into with the Converted Power Plant. (But I still haven't tested installing that lot with Clean Installer, so don't take that one to the stonecutter yet.)

[Miros1]

But you want your toddlers to maul, err, hug their pets! It's killer cute! They can eat dogfood too, so you can lock the nannies in the bathroom and prevent kitchen fires.

My nannies have been lobotomized, so they just sit on the couch watching cooking shows unless the baby crawls over and asks for something...

[Greg]

I'm sure it would be fun to watch toddlers hugging their pets but is it worth it to have everything else that comes with Pets in my game?

[Hokieman]

Pets is an expansion pack I could have done without as far as the pets go. There are other redeeming qualities in the EP. A few new build options comes to mind. I just ignor the pets part anymore. For the few pets on the lots that came with the EP. I played them until they died and then didn't adopt anymore.

[Greg]

Does Pets come with any odious features that you can't ignore? (Like the vampires and Mrs. Crumplebottom that came in with Nightlife.)

[Hokieman]

Outside of dogs that keep digging holes in the yard, I really can't think of any. The occasional dog or cat fight in the yard doesn't really affect anything except sims stopping what they're doing to watch. You have to make sure you lock doors to control where they go - for some reason, NPC pets tend to ignore locked doors sometimes. Pets don't go to Uni lots.

The funniest animal though didn't come with Pets. It's the penguin from Seasons but he/she acts like a NPC and you can't get one to live with you.

[Miros1]

The most annoying "feature" is the huge number of strays that Maxis thinks appropriate. You will want to use the Pets part of my "No Ugly Townies" tutorial to get rid of the strays (but leave the adoptables) before you inflict Pets on an existing 'hood. Otherwise you end up with puddles of pee all over your yard, followed by a weed infestation.

In addition, you'll want TwoJeffs' Visitor Controller (to keep the neighbor's pets home unless your pet needs company and keep the wolves away) and some sort of stray regeneration preventer. I think Inge has a No Stray sign, but they pee or dig on the edge of the lot before they leave, just like Sims 1, so I prefer TJ's hack. If you can't find the regeneration preventer, the number of strays is much, much lower and your Sim might accidentally develop enough of a relationship with one to adopt it.

The Pet Control officer is much less annoying than the Social Worker, and only comes under conditions that are similar to true pet abuse. You can still adopt pets after some have been taken away.

The scratching is slightly annoying -- but if you don't update your custom items for Pets, older custom content is safe from being scratched to bits! A hack that prevents scratching objects in use would be a good idea too. I've heard horror stories about pets scratching the baby crib while the baby was in it...

You will need one bathtub that you can bathe the dogs in, or a water wiggler (from an OFB toy making bench) so they can clean themselves. Toddlers don't care if the dog has BO, but everyone else in the family does! Also, the pet doesn't care if the toddler has a dirty diaper.

It really doesn't take that much "training" to teach your pets to be socially acceptable. Just praise them for eating their own food, sleeping on their own bed, chewing their chew toys, peeing outdoors or in the litter box, etc. and they will quickly learn to behave the way you want. There's even a little arrow that pops up on their icon in the family bar to tell you when they've done something "praiseworthy" or "scoldable."

I rarely have to scold pets from the adoption service. Only pets that have been deliberately trained to sleep on the human furniture or eat human food should need to be scolded. Don't play the Kat family or Danny and Sarah Critter unless you want to put a plate of food on the floor to get the mistrained pets to eat before they starve. Follow this with a scolding they won't forget! Once you've "broken" the training, they'll start eating their own food when hungry, and you can just praise them from time to time. I also believe you need to scold those pets to make them scratch their scratching posts instead of the furniture.

In terms of peeing outside... Unfortunately, right outside the door or by the mailbox is "outside" to the pet, so you end up with puddles in undesirable locations. I think there's a fire hydrant they'll do their business on, which is more attractive to the pet than the "used before" marker the game leaves after you mop up the mess.

There are hacks that can get rid of the "used before" marker, as well as anything else on that square, so use it carefully!

Sims do seem to get obsessed with their pets (get puppy, get kitten, get puppy or kitten, get pet, get birdcage, get womrat cage, get job for pet, play with pet, train pet, pet gets promotion, etc.) There are hacks to reduce that too.

The wolves can spread werewolf disease, so don't pet any large dogs with glowing eyes! Wolves are attracted by trees and babies, but I'm usually keeping an eye on the baby and don't see the wolf.

You need a collar for your dog or cat, which must be bought at a pet shop. If your pet gets unhappy enough to run away (without starving or other conditions that would trigger a visit from Animal Control), you can call the Police and have a good chance of getting the animal back.

Pets do have life insurance and gravestones. They can be brought back from the dead with the Grim Reaper phone.

Did I forget anything important?

P.S. The penguin is even neater than Claire the Bear from Sims 1! He'll come right in the house and wave at your fishing trophies!

[Zirconia Wolf]

The only other "Pet Tip" I can think of is that if you decide to place a pre-made pet shop (or make your own) you may want to get rid of the Dog/Cat bins.

I found that- even with a no stray respawn hack- the darn game still generated two new strays (1 dog & 1 cat) when I had a Sim visit a pet store with Dog/Cat bins!

This was after I had very carefully used Inge's Teleporter to make all the default wandering strays into phone-pool pets. I guess the "sample" pets in the Dog/Cat bins have to be wayward stays, for some lame reason...

-ZW

(If you are wondering why I did the "pet adoption conversion" thing, it was part of an experiment in default replacing I tried. I was actually hoping that making all the default strays into part of the phone pool & then replacing their "homeless" character files in the P001 folder with their new phone-pooled character files would let me have all the Maxian default pets, but only as all phone adoptable ones. Needless to say, it didn't work. It didn't blow up my PC or anything, but I just couldn't get the "phone conversions" to stick. This is why I am not a modder I suppose! Still, I thought it would have been a kinda cool idea...)

[Greg]

I'm getting the impression that despite their promises not to, Maxis still programmed strays to be as obnoxious in The Sims 2 as they were in The Sims.

[Hokieman]

The penguin is funny! I thought I was gonna die laughing the first time I saw him waddle by.

Build a snowman and watch what happens every time he comes by. I love that too!

Or better yet, leave a fish out in the yard.

[Zirconia Wolf]

I'm not sure if it's the obnoxious behavior Maxis insisted on given most of them or my feelings about the whole abandoned animal thing in the first place (most likely a mixture of the two) but yes, I prefer my game set up to have pets available via a phone call or house-merge (created in CAS) rather than as wandering strays.

I also find that the cheats to control & cancel pet actions are an invaluable part of my UserStartUp Cheat file!

-ZW

[Miros1]

Originally Posted by Hokieman

The penguin is funny! I thought I was gonna die laughing the first time I saw him waddle by.

Build a snowman and watch what happens every time he comes by. I love that too!

Or better yet, leave a fish out in the yard.

I've seen the snowman interaction. My Sims either mount their fish for wall display or put 'em in the fridge. I guess I'll have to sacrifice one for penguin cuteness!

Originally Posted by Zirconia Wolf

I'm not sure if it's the obnoxious behavior Maxis insisted on given most of them or my feelings about the whole abandoned animal thing in the first place (most likely a mixture of the two) but yes, I prefer my game set up to have pets available via a phone call or house-merge (created in CAS) rather than as wandering strays.

I also find that the cheats to control & cancel pet actions are an invaluable part of my UserStartUp Cheat file!

Like the Maxis-supplied Townies and Dormies, I suspect random generation gives the strays better personalities than what someone in California trapped in a cubicle can think up.

The abandoned animal thing bothers me too. If a pet runs away and can't be found, that's one thing. But over a dozen animals created just to roam around tipping over garbage cans and dig holes in people's lawns? No thanks!

Yes, those cheats are invaluable... Let me find them...

boolProp petActionCancel true
boolProp ControlPets on
uintProp maxTotalSims 50
uintProp maxTotalHumans 35
uintProp maxTotalPets 15

You still need Jordi's LotFullOSims to make the last 3 work correctly...

[Greg]

Do you get the impression that someone at Maxis must live in a trash dump in Antarctica?

[Sita]

Oh the other yuck thing about Pets is the werewolves... just nother excuse for them to use a funny walk animation and a strange skin which doesn't seem to work with custom skins and shapes - which I mostly use anyway. SO my Sims mostly have as their pet hate either Vampirism, zombie or werewolf...

[Greg]

I had forgotten about werewolves. Yup, that is sufficient reason for me not to install Pets; don't want 'em in my game and don't want 'em cluttering up my disk drive.