Over the course of the original sims lifespan, Maxis had released early forms of free DLC (Downloadable Content) for free on their website. Listed as ‘Get Cool Stuff’ players were able to download free families, objects and skins to use in their game. Whilst skins and objects are easy to integrate into your game, lots and families are harder, especially if you had the original base game that had no support for multiple neighbourhoods.

This meant if you wanted to use the downloaded families, they had to overwrite an existing lot in the neighbourhood, which would replace the family on the lot. Livin large mitigated this by allowing multiple neighbourhoods, but Unleashed went one step further and expanded the neighbourhood to accommodate a large amount of lots.

One thing that bothered me with Livin Large was the Mashuga family, who up until Unleashed were the sole residents of neighbourhood 2. Maxis intended for you to create and move in sims to keep them company but personally i’d rather have all Maxis sims in one hood.

Playing Sims 2 for as couple of years I came across multiple projects that seek to combine multiple neighbours into one ‘Megahood’, where pre-made neighbourhoods could be merged into one large neighbourhood. This took advantage of the sub-hoods introduced in the Open for Business expansion pack. For example Pleasentview would be the main neighbourhood, with Veronaville, Strangetown would become sub hoods, known as shopping districts in the game. You could even do this with hoods introduced in later expansion packs, and hoods that shipped with the Sims stories spin-offs. By doing this you could have one large hood where different sims from different hoods could interact with each other.

I wondered if something similar could be done for the original sims.

For this we need to be using The Sims with at least Unleashed expansion installed, since the increased lot slots were a requirement for this. Livin Large is also a desired expansion to have, solely for the Mashuga family. In order to have all Maxis families and lots in one hood, we need to move a couple of files around, unfortunately since the game lacks these tools we need to resort to trusty Windows Explorer. As always make sure you back up your UserData folders. The goal is to have one large neighbourhood with all Maxis made houses and families

To keep the neighbourhood appearance as genuine as possible, since we will be exchanging lots that may have a different size, some lots may overlap onto the world or another lot, we can use the map_edit tool to overcome this.

Download Links

Since the original Sims website was removed a while ago, all of the Maxis downloadable files were no longer obtainable, however they can be downloaded using the below links;

https://archive.org/details/thesims1getcoolstuffcontent

SimEchoes Archive

Phase 1 – The Mashuga’s

We want to transfer the Mashuga family from hood 2 to hood 1. If the game is running, exit the lot and go to the hood screen. Then alt tab out of the game. The Mashuga’s reside in Lot 9, but this clashed with the Hatfield family who also reside on Lot 9, so we move the Mashuga’s to a vacant lot. The ideal lot found is lot 52, because the lot size is identical (2646 Sq Ft) and has two roads perpendicular.

To do a lot swap we need to temporally suspend the game by using alt-tab, then navigating to the game installation directory to manipulate the files

The lot will be vacant, here’s what I did to import and migrate to another lot;

1. First exit back to the nhood,
2. Switch back to nhood 2
3. Enter the Mashuga lot with family moved in,
4. Save the lot, regardless if any changes or any time has elapsed, we do this so the game generates an export file.
5. Exit the lot back to the nhood screen
6. Alt-Tab out of the game, and navigate to the game userdata 2 directory, then open the Export folder
7. Copy the Mashuga.FAM file and paste it into the Userdata/Import folder, Has to be Userdata not userdata2
8. Alt tab back into the game, the import button should be lit, switch back to the nhood 1 and press the import button
9. The game will import the Mashuga family into lot 9 an will replace the family on that lot, this is temporary as we will be moving them to another lot.
10. Verify the lot works by loading the lot
11. Evict the Mashuga family from lot9 by clicking on the Evict button, this will move the family to the lots and houses bin
12. Move them into the empty lot 52
13. Save the game and return to the nhood
14. In the Userdata2 folder, enter the Houses folder and copy House 09 file to the desktop, or to a temporary folder.
15. Rename that file to House52 and copy it to the directory userdata/Houses. The Userdata folder is the first nhood, with userdata2 being the second nhood.
16. Alt tab back into the game and switch to hood1, or hood 2 then hood 1 if your are already on the first nhood.
17. The Mashuga house will appear on lot 52 Ridge Road.
18. Enter the lot and the family should load near intact, if there are any red circles on the sims, click on them and they should spawn near the mailbox.

The Mashuga family should now be fully playable.

Phase 2 – Preparing for the Maxis refugees

Here is some information about the downloadable Maxis families

The Valentino and Maximus family have no clashes and can be imported into a stock maxis hood without any issues. The Hatfield family can be imported and will replace the old Mashuga house, but since we have teleport-ed them to lot 52, that wont be a problem. The Jones family can also be imported without any issue on hood 1 also.

The Problem is the Snooty Patooty family. If you imported the family into the stock first nhood, it will replace the mansion on lot 2. We don’t want this to happen, especially since its a really nice house. We’d want to preserve it so like the mashuga house we can move it to another lot. However lot 2 is quite a big lot and if we were to migrate it to another empty lot we would have an issue where the lot would overlap another lot. This isn’t an issue when playing the game but looks funky on the hood screen.

After experimenting with multiple empty lots and using the map edit tool to change the lot boundaries, the ideal lot I found was lot 79, Crumplebottom Court. It’s not ideal but it does blend in with the other lots adjacent.

1. Similar to the Mashuga lot moving processes, alt tab out of the game
2. In the Userdata/houses directory, copy the House02 file and paste it to the desktop
3. Rename the file from House 02 to House 79
4. Paste it into the same Userdata/houses folder, overwrite if prompted
5. Alt/Tab back into the game, switch between hood 2 and 1 to refresh the screen
6. The lot should appear but looks a bit… iffy. This is because the lot is a lot larger than the lot it has replaced, fortunately we can do something to amend the lot data using the map_edit tool
7. Enter lot 79
8. Hold Ctrl Shift C, in the command box, enter “map_edit on”

This puts you into the map editor mode, were you can select the tiles we are able to edit, this also controls which roles appear on the hood screen. Thankfully this lot is quite large and has a lot of editable space.

The shaded/red square tells the game that the tile can be user edit, whilst the white parts tell the game this tile is off limits and cannot have objects placed on it. You will notice both sides of the lot are unshaded, along with the road at the front of the house, which should give you an idea how the map edit works.

For this lot, we want to section off the rear, so the map on the nhood screen wont bleed onto the road (technically the map is the wrong way round compared to the nhood screen, but this wont affect the game stability and is purely for cosmetic, you will however lose the ability to place objects in this area but since this is a huge map that should not be a huge issue, also the carpools will continue to function normally)

Once you are happy with the map, hold Ctrl Shift C and enter map_edit off to disable the map editor, and then save and exit back to the hood. You must save the game by using the save button (floppy disk icon) first, then press the neighbourhood icon, if you just press the neighbourhood icon you will lose all map editing changes, the game wont even ask if you wish to save. I think this occurs because no new items have been placed on the lot or no game time has elapsed, so the game thinks no changes have been made to to the lot, despite editing the map parameters.

Once you hare happy with the changes, we can go ahead with importing the Snooty Patooty family

Phase 3 – Importing the remaning Vacant lots

Migrating the remaining vacant lots from hood 2

The second hood contains 2 vacant lots which we can import into the first neighbourhood, however there are a few clashes that we nee to solve before we can migrate them to hood1

1 Sim Lane

Lot 65 seems to be a good fit

• Alt tab out of the game
• Goto Maxis/Userdata2/Houses
• Copy House01 to the desktop and rename it to House65
• Copy an paste House65 to the UserData/House directory, Overwrite if prompted
• Enter the lot, once loaded enable the map edit tool (map_edit on)
• for this lot I would unshaded the hilly areas at the back of the lot
• Once everything is correct, turn off the map edit tool (Map_edit off)

Lot 7

We can move this lot onto lot 50 Ridge Road

• Alt tab out of the game
• Goto Maxis/Userdata2/Houses
• Copy House07 to the desktop and rename it to House50
• Copy and paste House50 to the UserData/House directory, Overwrite if prompted
• Enter the lot, once loaded enable the map edit tool (map_edit on)
• This lot you can unshaded the right side, near the patio next to the road.
• Once everything is correct, turn off the map edit tool (Map_edit off) and then save.

The ‘Other’ Lot 2 – The Agent Household

There is another Maxis download known as the Agent house, however given the size of the house and lot, i’m not sure on the best way to integrate it into the hood. This lot also occupies lot 2 so it would conflict with the mansion from the original game and the Snooty Patooty household.

Lot 67 seems to be a good candidate but requires a lot of map editing.

There isn’t much room to cut away before you start selecting tiles that are already occupied. Still it’s not too visible from the hood screen, only the white tiles can be seen overlapping onto the road.

That’s it! i’m not sure if there were any additional lots or families released by EA/Maxis for the original game but we at least have a vacant lot on 51 Ridge Road for future use. Unfortunately with the original sims you are quite limited on how lots can be placed in a single hood, in addition to the quantity of lots. Looking at the game files it seems theirs an engine limit of 99 lots, with many being used for commercial lots. Strangely lots 11-20 are unused by the game, with the Downtown lots start from 21 -30. Maybe there’s a way be can unlock and access these lots and find a way to map them on the main neighbourhood screen so they’re accessible by the game.