Hey guys!

I have played sims 1 all my life, it's always had a special place in my heart. But I'm late to the game when it comes to mods.
I have recently installed a bunch of item mods, however most of them are only available in the game on residential lots and not on the community lots?

I have tried to do a deep dive search on how to convert the items so they can be used in both, but it seems a lot of the previous ways are now obsolete.

Does anyone have any recommendations or know how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!!

Just to be sure, do you mean the objects just don't show up in the catalog on community lots, or do you mean it's something like a bed or shower that wasn't meant to be used there and you want to change that?

I haven't tried it yet, but I believe SimOrganizer is a utility made just for this -- for re-categorising objects in the game:

https://beyondsims.com/games/sims-1/downloads/

I think to make them work in the Downtown and Vacation buy modes, you need to add additional flags/categories to them. You could study a Downtown or Vacation Island only object, and see what setting makes it show only there.

Sorry, yes! That is what I meant. For an item I downloaded for example though, being the security camera, I wanted to use it on a restaurant I was making downtown but it is only available in the residential catalogue.

Yes, you will need to change its flag/category, so that it shows up in Downtown buy mode as well, or only there.

Okay, so I just gave it a shot, and yes, SimOrganizer lets you easily do what you wanted to do. It was built for this purpose:



Whatever object IFF you're working with, it needs to be extracted from the FAR archive first, but yes, you can edit an object using SimOrganizer to turn on the necessary flags so that it will show up in your desired type of lot. (I would recommend backing up your game files beforehand, just in case.)

The options in the "Room" pane under "Catalog Sorting" control the object's appearance on a residential lot. The rest are self-explanatory ("Downtown", "Vacation", etc.).

I gave it a test using the electric guitar:



The object showed up and I was able to place it on the Downtown lot. When I visited the lot in live mode in-game, the object was still there, where I put it on the lot. ✅ However, my sim was not able to actually use the object. I'm guessing there are some other flags that need to be changed as well for the object actions to work in Downtown? 🤔 Or it could be due to this object's programming.

So this works for decorative/stationary items, but I'm not sure about active items that sims can use. For that you may need to edit additional flags in the IFF file.

By the way, if anyone has trouble running SimOrganizer -- if you get an alert about the "MSVBVM60.DLL" file missing -- then you need the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime to be installed on Windows. You can find a community packaged, comprehensive version of it here (since Microsoft no longer provides/supports it):

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vb6extendedruntime/

Another program that will let you change an object's category is SimCategorizer, by SimWardobe, which is available at Sim Crazy.

As you've discovered, though, making objects functional Downtown requires more than just making them available in the catalog. Lights and decorations and so on work fine, but you can't skill Downtown unless you have a mod that allows your sim to gain skill points away from home (SimSlice has one on their Programs & Patches page) or if the object has been hacked to allow it; SomeSimThings has community-lot-enabled exercise machines and a charisma-gaining mirror at https://www.somesimthings.com/Skill/01Skill.htm.

Yet another option is the Maxis program Hot Date Object Organizer. It ONLY works on home lots and Downtown, not any of the other neighborhoods (Vacation lots, etc.), but I still like it because sometimes that's all I need, and it has a very simple interface. You can get it here: https://www.thesimsdepot.com/sims-1...ol-stuff/tools/

A security camera sounds like a decorative object to me, so I don't THINK you need to worry about whether it functions or not, so you should be fine if you just recategorize it to show up Downtown with any of these programs.

Hello!

Thank you so much for testing it for me!

I downloaded Sim Organiser and Sim Categoriser and tried them both, but on all the items I tested it on none of them showed up downtown or anywhere else for me

I'm wondering if I have done something wrong - When I go into the program all the CC's are loaded already on the left hand side, I select the one I want to change the flags for, change the flags and click save. They should then update in the game I'm guessing? Have I missed a step at the start? I have been trying to change Cinema decor to make a downtown cinema (signs, posters etc) but changing the flags to any of the downtown options on the items doesn't work for me.

Any suggestions? Thanks so much!!

These are the steps in SimOrganizer:

(Before you start modifying the game's objects, make sure you have a backup of them.)



1. Select the IFF file for the object in the "Select a file" pane on the left.

2. Select the object you want to modify from the "Select an object" pane below it. (The name, image, and description will change at the top, in the "Properties" pane to show the object you selected.)

3. If you want to add the object to Downtown, in the "Catalog sorts" pane in the middle, tick a checkbox for a category in the "Downtown" section.

4. Click the "Save" button.

The object should now show up in Downtown buy mode in the game, in the category you selected.

Note that if you're running a recent (post-XP) version of Windows, and your game is installed in the Program Files folder, then Windows permission issues may be preventing these programs/tools from being able to write to the game's files (save).

If that's the case, then you have two options: either copy/move the files you want to modify to your desktop or the C drive, and then load them up in the software to edit them (you can add and remove folders in SimCategorizer by clicking the "Modify Folders..." button), or give the program administrative permissions to write to your computer (right click the shortcut/EXE, select the "Properties" option in the context menu, click on the "Compatibility" tab, check the "Run this program as an administrator" checkbox under the "Settings" heading, and then click the "Apply" button).

Yeah I'm willing to bet it'll be fixed by running as Administrator. Almost every Sims-related program I use has this issue.

Thank you all! This works! Although it only worked on my PC with SimCategoriser with the run as administrator settings, not for SimOrganiser. For some reason on my PC it freezes SimOrganiser with this ticked off. But I'm not complaining! It works a treat on SimCategoriser now

You guys rock.

What I do with older programs like this (Windows 98/XP era) is I install the game/software directly to the C drive instead of into the Program Files folder. This way I avoid all the senseless permission issues with Windows. Modern Windows just doesn't make any sense. It creates all sorts of problems for the user and software, for no good reason.

So my Sims installation is always installed to "C:\The Sims".

You can also create a "Games" folder on the C drive, and install all games there: "C:\Games\The Sims".

Note that a lot of gamers these days install their games onto a second drive (D). While this works for modern games, it actually often causes a big problem for games from the Windows 98/XP era. They most often expect to be installed specifically on the C drive.