I'm totally confused about the Clown Catchers (CCPlugin) downloadable that was in my game upon installation.

Since I do not have Livin' Large installed, the Tragic Clown does not exist in my game. So I assumed it would be safe to remove this downloadable from my game.

Looking at the official installation file for this downloadable, however, I can see that it doesn't just install that CCPlugin FAR. It also installs an update to the Phones.iff in GameData/Objects (so you can actually call the clown catchers -- makes sense), and it also installs (an update to) the Roaches.iff in the ExpansionPack folder!

I can't find either of these latter files, however, in my installation.

What is that about?? What do the roaches have to do with the Tragic Clown? 😶

And what other mods are using this downloadable, potentially (if any). Would it be safe to remove it from my game, or is there something that removing it would break?

Expansion Pack is the folder for Livin' Large, so if you don't have Livin' Large, of course you won't have that folder.

I've never seen the Tragic Clown, even though I'm running The Complete Collection; I guess I take too much care of my sims. :-)

Why don't you have Livin' Large installed?

Very simple: I have no need for it. 🙂

If I was playing a Sims game with horror or science fiction elements, then I'd consider it, but for now I prefer a straight Sims game, with no Bonehilda, no UFOs, no weird science experiments, zombies, and genies, and and no Grim Reaper. Simply the Sims base game experience expanded.

What's weird is that the Clown Catchers installer will actually create that ExpansionPack folder, and install cockroaches into the game. I don't understand why. 🤔 How are the cockroaches connected with the Tragic Clown?

If you never buy his portrait, you'll never see the Tragic Clown. He only comes if you buy his cursed/magical portrait painting, and hang it on the lot.

But if a sim looks at his portrait, they'll be cursed forever to be haunted by him whenever they're feeling down. The only thing that gets rid of him permanently is calling the Clown Catchers (the Sims version of the Ghostbusters), or selling his cursed/magical painting.



"If there's something strange [i.e. a magical clown] in your neighbourhood, who you're gonna call? Clown Catchers!" 😆

If you don't have Livin' Large installed, then his portait is harmless -- just decoration.

By the way, someone really needs to make a mod for the Clown Catchers addon that plays the Ghostbusters theme song when they arrive to capture the Tragic Clown! 🤣 Maybe even reskin the Clown Catchers to look like the Ghostbusters! 😂

That was the original intention, except Maxis couldn't afford to license the Ghostbusters franchise just for this bit of fun. But we, fans, can restore it to their original vision. I'm surprised no-one has ever done this. I think they were secretly hoping for it. 🤭

Even better: since the Ghostbusters (Clown Catchers) get rid of any object in the house that is cursed after they capture the ghost, we could create a whole range of duplicate, haunted (decorative) objects for the game that the clown possesses. The player doesn't know which object is cursed, and which not. So there's more reason to call the Ghostbusters. 😂

This way, we can create a whole Ghostbusters mod for the game -- for anyone who wants to have this bit of fun in their game. 🤭

I'm game for it, and happy to help create it if anyone's interested.

Come to think of it, we already have everything we need! Even the base skin for it:



Put a Ghostbusters logo on these uniforms, or the groundskeeper uniform, and you've essentially got it! 🤭

By the way, this may not have been entirely intentional, but Maxis also provided us with an X-Files / Men in Black cameo opportunity in the game. The Clown Catchers are a woman and a man, wearing black suits.





They strongly resemble Mulder and Scully.



And we have an object in Livin' Large, the telescope, that gets your sim sometimes abducted by aliens -- to be returned at an unknown time, changed.



Put two and two together, and when your sim gets abducted, you could call Mulder and Scully to investigate, and they could return your sim unchanged early.

These kinds of creative scenarios were the whole point of Livin' Large when it was released.

...Huh! I thought the Tragic Clown came with the base game! I suppose that's what I get for my "base" game being Deluxe (base game + Livin' Large and a few other things).

Yep. No, all the weird and whacky, random stuff in The Sims 1 came from Livin' Large.

House Party introduced the mime, but he's not really all that weird, just a party-crashing entertainer and a thief.

I can't remember which version of the game introduced Claire the Bear (definitely not Livin' Large, it could be the base game), but she is by far the weirdest character in the base gameplay. And she was made that way on purpose -- to make wild animals causing a mess in your backyard more interesting than just racoons invading your trashcan.

(As a kid, I was never sure if Claire the Bear was actually a bear, or a human being, a sim, dressed up in a bear costume. In some ways I am still not sure. 😅 But the interactions with her are sure hilarious.)

But apart from Claire the Bear, there is not much at all that is strange in the base game, and its expansions (House Party, Hot Date, Vacation). It's all pretty well balanced, and consistent in terms of the story and game world.

I think it was the silly step on part of Maxis to release Livin' Large first, and then the later expansion packs, and later to bundle the two, that made most people think that Livin' Large was part of the core gameplay experience. It never was. It was a conversion of The Sims into something that can tell more fictional stories (mostly horror and science fiction, but some magic and other themes as well). And it added pop culture references to the game -- creating some iconic, wildly imaginative Sims characters in the process (like Bonehilda, or the Tragic Clown).

But yeah, the Deluxe that installs Livin' Large and the base game is what it says on the packaging: base game plus "expansion" (actually conversion) pack.

I wrote a breakdown/guide for the community on the release of the original game, and the expansion packs and their design/role here:

https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=685324

Actually, I'm wrong: Bonehilda was introduced in Makin' Magic, as part of the magic-themed conversion for the game. (Although she might as well fit with the Livin' Large NPCs.)

Livin' Large includes characters such as Santa Claus, Servo the Robot, Sunny the Tragic Clown, the Grim Reaper, and the Genie, as well as many peculiar objects with strange and unexpected properties (such as the Crystal Ball):

https://www.aboutsims.com/2013/07/t...ving-large.html

(As well as mad science experiments and zombies, alien abductions, exploding gnomes, et cetera.)

Much of the more normal content from Livin' Large actually made it into House Party -- leaving Livin' Large only for the weird and whacky stuff, essentially.



There are only two items that don't really belong in Livin' Large, and that were never ported to the other expansions: the electric guitar (which should really belong in House Party), and the romantic heart bed, which should really belong in Hot Date (and which I successfully ported).

So the electric guitar remains as pretty much the only normal item in Livin' Large that was not ported to the later expansions.

Mystery solved! ✅ Maxis had a habit of packing other, smaller addons into the downloadables that no-one would download just by themselves. So the cockroaches were added to the game with the Clown Catchers download, and the "UnSnacker", the fix for the sims not being able to pick up the snack object after it has been put down, was originally bundled with the Slot Machine.

They're not related, they were just bundled with the items in the installer, so that when you install the item, it also installs the other item/fix.

This is sneaky practice, and today it would be considered a malware practice, but in the early days of the Internet there were still no rules against this, and people had no clear expectations as to what an installer could or could not do. And since the installer came from the official Sims/Maxis website, people trusted it. Maxis used this to install updates and new features to the game after release, and before the next expansion pack.

...I never interpreted Deluxe as especially odd, but I wonder if that's because--outside of the stuff out of my control, like the existence of the Grim Reaper--I mostly didn't interact with Livin' Large specific items and features. I used the experiment table many a time and liked having Santa come, but other than that I avoided the tragic clown, maybe used Servo once for the novelty, and never really did the genie or crystal ball (or even pleaded with the grim reaper! I mostly just let Sims die!).

I guess I was really out here just playing Deluxe like it was the base game with more outlandish interior decorating available.

Yep. 🤭 Most people think that the Grim Reaper was part of the core Sims gameplay experience, for example. That's actually not at all the case. He was introduced in the first conversion pack, Livin' Large, and he could be skipped altogether. I actually never saw him in my entire childhood -- didn't even know he existed in The Sims! 😂 And I had expanded my game 3 times!! 🤭 (None of my siblings and friends knew about him either.)

The only character from Livin' Large I heard about as a child was Santa Claus. It was like a legend floating around on the web, like a hidden easter egg, that in certain situations Santa could appear in the game.

I started The Sims with an unusual combination/bundle at the time: The Sims and House Party. So I never had the need to go back to Livin' Large. In retrospective, I think the reason they pushed Livin' Large so much with the original Sims game in bundles was so that they could sell enough copies of it -- because it wasn't all that popular with the player base. After House Party and Hot Date (actual expansion packs to the core gameplay experience) were released, few people were actually interested in buying Livin' Large. (And given its random theme, that's understandable.)

Livin' Large was Maxis' first experiment in releasing an expansion/conversion pack for the game.

But the later conversion packs, like Unleashed and Makin' Magic, tied in with it, and brought some of its relevance back. If you're playing a fantasy themed Sims game, then I think having and installing Livin' Large makes a lot of sense. (It adds more features and variety to the fantasy-themed gameplay.)

If you're looking for the core Sims gameplay experience, though, then I recommend skipping it.