Well, you can't have two neighborhoods open at once in any case. If you just want a second copy to film in while you continue to play normally in the original, having two The Sims 2 setups works fine, on the assumption that you aren't likely to want to play normally and film during the same session; but if you want to switch back and forth without closing the game in between, then renaming the files in one copy would be the only way. I don't normally go poking inside the files so I don't know what might be inside each file, sorry. I'm sure somebody does and will be along presently though.

This would be the tutorial for that, I believe.
It's on my to-do list too, but I haven't tried it yet.

Is there a way to see what face template or sliders a Sim's using?

^ No, not really. Only if you use a single template and no other templates/sliders - then you can extract a sim and click templates until you find the identical template.

If you blend them, there's no way to see it or get a list of what's been used, unless you make one yourself while making a sim.

Sliders and templates in TS2 are morphs, so they don't store as individual items. Once the templates/sliders have been used and the sim is saved, the face as a whole is stored in the sim's file. There's really no way to figure out what was used, except for already knowing which templates/sliders were used, and logging how many clicks, etc., studying pictures, and things like that. Figuring out what was used for other people's sims is only guesswork.

You don't need to have the same sliders/templates for a downloaded sim to work, so if that's the issue, no need to worry about that.

If a Sim is based on one of the broken templates, but sliders were used quite extensively in making their face, I presume that Sim's face is still "broken"?

I fear my friend Andrew may be such a Sim. When I made him in CAS on my very first day as a Simmer, I certainly knew nothing about broken face templates. When I made a clone of him in Body Shop, and aged him up to an adult, his face looked a bit different -- less attractive to be honest. I'm not sure whether that means he's based on a broken template, or whether it's just because he's older. After all, I reckon we all look different as adults to how we looked in our teens. Generally we look less youthful!

Of course the "real" Andrew in Veronaville is still a teen -- somehow still a teen after nearly nine years playing him. (I reckon in Real Life you can only be a teen from your 13th birthday until your 20th -- seven years max!) He might stay a teen a while yet -- I won't let him age up to YA until I've got a working university attached to Veronaville.

Yes, it's enough. You only need to worry about the external file name--you don't need to open SimPE and change stuff, for example.

Most likely, but the broken templates is more of a break between the age stages. If you make sure to get the fix for the broken templates, this should hopefully not be an issue when you make sims.

Not sure how it works if a downloaded sim already uses a broken template, and whether the fix would do anything to help with that, though. There's probably somewhere you can read about the fix if you're curious (or someone else knows).

The fixes for broken templates only work on sims who are made with them installed.

However, it isn't really that big a problem on most sims, and the more the base template has been fiddled with, the less it matters. Only the parts of the face that weren't altered during creation have to draw on the wrong template during age-up, and the offspring may or may inherit any of those features. Shocks like the difference between Orion Teen Tricou's teen face and his YA/Adult face are relatively rare with CAS-made and born-in-game sims. They are usually still recognizable as themselves, and often the only significant difference is that the non-adult stages get elf-ears.

Noticeable differences between a sim's faces at different ages aren't all down to broken templates, either. Often it's just a matter of the way the features scale. It's often been observed that pretty toddlers make ugly adults and vice versa, due to this scaling, and though I'm no judge of aesthetics, it's common for my CAS and born-of-CAS sims to have some surprises for me when they go to college and first get their adult features. In Drama Acres, the born-in-game Curian children inherited their father's large nose, and all through their childhood had big noses, but when they went to Sim State they rivalled Cyrano de Bergerac. You could shelter entire armies from the rain or mortar fire under those noses! Rocky, who starts as a child in Widespot, is an ordinary-looking child, but when he grows to adult he's a serious hunk.

So I wouldn't worry about whether Andrew's face is broken or not. As long as you could recognize him in the adult phase, you'll get used to it fast enough.

Once more into the fray of organizing my lots. I've read it can't be done. So to get to a certain lot, I have to go through pages of residential, community, apartment, and college lots - all mixed up. I HAVE gone through the lot bin and deleted ones I'll never use. Seems like there SHOULD be a way to move lots from that big lot group into folders. Like I'm playing my 1950/60's hood, with no business or uni subhood, so I remove my uni and business hoods (ones I have created), and any that are the wrong style. (put them in a file & remove from game) . Wouldn't that work? YET the lot-choosing screen has a "specialty lot" group for college lots; are THOSE lots in C-drive/ Uni EP? I'm guessing that if I delete "in game" these Maxis lots will not be deleted, so if I create a new hood, they will re-populate. I don't like ANY Maxis uni or business lot.

===
I was astonished to see that Mootilda had JUST uploaded some new stuff!
Actually, I saw something about this under "Community" (or Site issues?) but now can't find it.

That tutorial makes it far more complicated than it needs to be. You don't have to do each folder separately. Just click subfolders and select all to rename them all at once.

I think it was an eddy in the space-time continuum.

Do we need to "roll the dice" for pet pregnancies as well?

Yes. It's all the same randomizer. Adoptions, too.

The same randomizer also seems to control the personalities of generated NPCs. If you don't "roll the pacifier" on opening the game, and the game then generates an NPC, they will be Popularity and Aries. For this reason I always open CAS on starting up the game, and let it generate a few Sims.

If one of the Sims who generates that way in CAS is really beautiful, I'll save them to the neighbourhood, but usually I don't keep them. (I'd have many thousands of Sims if I did!)

[mostly] All of the randomizers are determinative- they are seeded non-randomly. So mostly anything that uses one of the game's random generators will not be random.

But of course, it's fixed now by @LazyDuchess for M&G setups:
https://modthesims.info/d/648220/
I use this one which is dll and asi files, but no executable or Rich Presence.
https://lazyduchess.tumblr.com/post/663317554505400320

Apparently at least the gender randomizer was actually seeded properly, though, so it's possible that other randomizers were as well.

Yes, Mootilda mentions this in the thread I linked above:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....504#post3897504
I edited my wording to be more clear!
She also mentioned that the randomizer flaws are only really noticeable when using certain mods- I use the MATY no-regen mods and I always get the same number on the batbox when the game is first booted.
https://modthesims.info/showthread....984#post3905984
https://modthesims.info/showthread....929#post3903929

I move my lots out of LotCatalog all the time and, if I can't decide about deleting them, I just zip them up and leave them. I also zip up LotTemplates in the install files so they won't generate in new hoods.
It helps a lot with load time inside the game for me.

Another thing, since you mention the Specialty Bin, I found a way to put lots in there. I keep my Sunnyside lot templates in there, for example, and lots of my own that I use often. I illustrated it here and Chris contributed a UI fix for that bin that you might find helpful if you use it.

Oh ok, thank you, good to know

I was buying a top and bottom for my sim, and got a message that I "must buy a top and bottom to use it" and did I want to buy it anyway. Something like that. I bought it anyway and put the top AND bottom on him just fine. It is cc. Is that just an odd glitch with some cc or?

I've gotten that message periodically since before I downloaded any CC. I think it's only supposed to pop up when you're buying only a top or a only a bottom, to remind you that you need both with separates, but it sometimes appears even when you've got both in your cart. I think it's just One of Those Things.

Thank you. And not long after I saw this. Can I just ignore this?

^ That often means you're missing a mesh (the EAxis mesh showing on the thumbnail to the right, and either an EAxis mesh or an invisible or EAxis mesh on the preview sim).

It doesn't hurt anything does it? Anything else I mean, besides not using that piece of clothing?