I just want to know why advanced simmers recommend you clean lots each and every single time they were played, even community lots, I don't know anything about the background in the sims 2 game. All I know is what I see, people said something about lot references?

And? Do I need to bulldoze and replace a clean lot each and every single time I move a sim out and move another family in? I usually move lots to the bin before they were played anyway, but not all the time, because I think there is a limit to how many lots show up in the bin.

All I noticed that moving another family into a regular house lot is that the leftovers are still in the fridge from when the last family lived there. I need to know why people recommend cleaning the lot every single time, when from what I gather is a vary complicated process that needs to take play outside of the game itself.

Usually I just keep playing and moving sims in and out of the same house, especially if it's a house that came prebuilt in one of my downloaded neighborhoods.

Problem is my lot bin is quite crowed and I don't like or want to need to keep the lot clean and I don't want to need to rebuild the same projects over and over again, I don't keep blueprints on anything I build and I don't currently have any issues with any of my neighborhoods loading yet.

Literally no one says you have to clean the lot every time you move sims out of it. Moving sims out is different than moving the lot to the bin. You also don't have to rebuild lots, once you move a lot to the bin it's there forever, there's absolutely no reason to have multiple copies of it there.

Leftovers is a "memory" item associated with the house number (not family number in this case). So it remains. Other "memories" are amount of groceries and familiar NPCs. They are harmless. You can't really play and leave a mark a community lot, other than assigning NPCs to it when they are called for.

Rebuilding a lot takes a lot of real-life time and "creativity", and placed furniture is brand new making it unnecessarily more expensive for the new family to move in.

https://modthesims.info/t/609188

This is what I was referring to, and I never did it, because I don't want my game to turn into even more of a chore to keep running then it already has, I appreciate the ones who discovered this but personally I will never do it even though I heard it causes errors for not doing.

it's too much work and no fun at all to do each and every single time, and how am I suppose to keep a track of what lots I did actually play and didn't it takes all the fun out of the sims 2 for me completely

(edit) this goes with transferring any lot into another neighborhood according to this tutorial, but I'm confused, because I don't want to do this every time I want to put a lot into the bin to transfer it to another neighborhood, it's just too much work in my opinion and I can't remember which houses or community lots I played and haven't played because I can't remember.

It's not like I can remember each and every second of my life since the time I started playing the sims 2

Maybe CH's lot cleaning tool combined with his auto tool ("Method Two Automatic" in the tutorial) could help a bit.

https://modthesims.info/showpost.ph...31&postcount=35
(read the text file in the zip file for how to use it - I don't think it's intended to use on lots with sims currently living on it)

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If you reuse a lot, you may at the very least want to run CH's lot cleaning tool (the ingame one) through it before moving in a new family - it removes/resets any stuck controllers, etc.

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I'd rather clean up lots than rebuild them (probably have to when I get to the point of rebuilding my old story hood). Got too much CC and too little patience to spend 3-4 hours trying to remember what goes where, than spending +/-10 minutes in SimPE for each lot (some were lived in and/or still have sims in them, I have no way of moving those out without some trickery...)

But when that's said - people have managed without these tools for several years, and have played the game without cleaning their lots, mostly without any issues. I've moved countless unoccupied lots to the bin without cleaning them first - there weren't tutorials or tools for it when I first started simming, and back then I had no clue it could be bad. As far as I know I've had no issues with it (but I don't know whether I've played any of the lots for long enough to find an issue stemming from this).

Nobody is saying you -have- to clean the lots. It's a personal choice. If you start to experience issues with the lots, then it's probably a good idea to do something before the neighborhood starts exploding. If everything is working fine and you can't be bothered, who's to say you have to do it? It's your game.

If you want to upload lots, package them for safekeeping, or move them to a different neighborhood, then you may want to consider cleaning just to be on the safe side, but it's up to you.

You only have to do that if you put a lot that was lived on into the bin. If you plan ahead and bin all the lots you build before moving any sims into them, you never have to do that.

All lots have sim references, even unplayed with blank lots. Those are fine.
But if you move sims in it gains a lot more references. Now if you take that lot and move it to another hood you are taking references from one hood to another, this is thought to be corrupting. If you look at my lot cleaning tutorial I added a picture of a Maxis bin lot before and after cleaning. Maxis has moved sims in and out of lots.
But if the lot you are using is staying within the same hood then the references belong to that hood.
people argue over all of this of course, as to its harm or not. To be safe I would not move a used lot between hoods without cleaning it first, but if it's staying in the hood I move sims in and out without cleaning-unless I feel there is a reason to clean it. Say if the lot seemed buggy.



No.
And you can place many many lots into the bin, I have no idea of its limits.
However many lots in the bin will lag and slow down your game.



Most of us don't recommend cleaning every time, but it certainly won't hurt. if you like your game to be as clean as possible and it makes you feel better then clean it, but I don't think you have to if it's kept in the same hood.



Maxis lots are stuffed full of references if you see my tutorial. They also deleted sims and graves and did all kinds of things to the game. This is why each premade hood ships already corrupted. It's worth cleaning all Maxis lots before use.




No need to stuff the lot bin. You can save lots to file or you can make a hood and place down all of the lots and empty the bin.

Also, cleaning a lot is very easy. Check out method 2 on my tutorial. https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=609188
method one is manual, method 2 is more auto cleaning.
Open Chris Hatch's updated lot compressor
Find the lot
Tell it to clean
Boom-done.

I do have these 2 mods that automatically when combined fix stuck sim controllers, and 2 other things I forgot automatically, do they help with this? Primarily :No Sim Loaded mod"

BO's and Leefish's site:



BO No Sim Loaded:
http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/thread-1665.html

BO No Trash Memories:
http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2396

(edit) I don't know exactly what they do but I use them and my game seems to work fine so far and I 've used them all for more than 4 years

No, those mods have nothing to do with this and also they don't fix corruption.

Can I just add that it's completely okay to not do the various things simmers have found clean/fix up the game? Nobody has ever said you must do these things. I'm positive there are tons of players who never do a single thing to prevent or fix corruption, never download a single mod, do all of the VBTs, etc. If maintenance to clean up the game bores you or you feel is making the game less fun for you then simply don't do them. If you can spare the time and patience, do them. I personally prefer having a clean game and not taking risks on mucking something up, and yet I know exist people who try to corrupt the game on purpose.

Play however you want to play, do what you want and don't do what you don't. Enjoy your game your way. All of these things "advanced simmers" have discovered should merely serve as reference points, tips & tricks and so on, not seen as mandatory requirements to playing a game.

I completely agree with this. However, I agree because I do not necessarily care that much about my game. I boot it up every once in a while to start a new plot and (so far) never finish it. I play the game out of nostalgia and real-life boredom, though something always pops up and makes me steer away from the game for another few months. Spending countless hours CC shopping and code-upkeeping would definitely make me not want to return to play the game, like, ever - only because I spend so little actually playing it.

I do find it funny how I used like 16 different RAM and registry cleaner tools when I was a kid, spent so many hours upkeeping my OS and whatnot, and nowadays, I just want the damn machine to show me what I'm looking for - and if it can't do that, then I make an assumption that my phone will probably do a better job. Same goes with the game. And that recent thread about corruption when deleting Sims was pretty liberating for me. No Sims d*leted yet in my game so far, but things may change real soon for me, who knows. Strangetown's about to become Strangertown.

I read somewhere and I don't remember exactly where on the internet that Advanced SImmers and modders and programmers say refusing to clean lots will cause errors eventually but as long as my neighborhood and all my lots still load I'm not going to worry, before I learned about neighborhood corruption I would delete sims and had no mods to prevent corruption also I used the default maxis neighborhoods in which are said to be corrupted from the beginning,

also made my own neighborhoods and turned them into cities and before I could actually enjoy them, not sure what I did but I used to never use the hoodchecker, and I would constantly delete sims from the bin, then somehow my neighborhood would not load anymore it would just enter a loading screen but never load, no matter how long I waited for it to, until that happens I won't worry about cleaning lots especially if I'm only using them for the same neighborhood

The sims 2 is a broken game from the beginning, even natuarly playing the game without adding mods might cause it to break, however if you want your game to last as long as possible I suggest you listen to every single advanced simmer that knows these things but know that the neighborhood will not last forever after the 32767 Character Files Limit this included both dead cats and dogs, and sims and alive sims. It is said you won't ever be able to play that hood again anyway unless you reset it from a previous load status. and never delete sims, I can't be certain but I think deleting multiple sims from the bin caused my hoods to not load anymore combined with never using mods or hoodchecker before I learned that's all


If my lots start not to load anymore then I'll be sure to clean them but at that point I might just play the sims 3 instead

^ Honestly, my TS3 game tended to break more in a single sitting than my TS2 did in a full year of playing, let alone in all the time I've played (minor fixable/one-time bugs excluded). For all the supposed issues the vanilla TS2 game has, TS3 probably has tenfold more. Couldn't keep a save for more than a few days, and then it became unplayable, with sims turning invisible, going through the floor, or the saves going corrupt, or various other issues. (TS4 is filled with bugs too, but at least the saves don't go corrupt the same way as TS3).

Even back when I almost went out of my way to break the game (more or less knowingly) as a somewhat-noob, I didn't have neighborhoods going up in flames. I've got one neighborhood that's been semi-unplayable on a couple computers (one computer refused to run it but I have suspicions what was wrong there, the other has opened it but there were already pink-flashy and crashing issues, and I went from a possibly not properly patched CD version to UC, I'm not sure - so most likely not the neighborhood in itself), but mostly I think that's just down to being stuffed with too much CC and technically 9-ish years old (made it in 2007 on my first computer, last played it properly in 2016 on my main simming computer that sadly gave up a year or so later). I know I've done a few shortcuts here and there, and definitely not properly cleaned a single lot, so it's likely to have bugs, but I haven't seen a lot of issues. I've been kinda lazy with the maintenance - backuping was pretty much the only thing I did up until 2016 (but quite often, usually after any large changes). Planning to redo the neighborhood, though. That thing was quite a mess in the end, with several projects going on, some abandoned and others waiting way too long to happen.

I think I had to restore that neighborhood from a backup (on that computer) just once (still not sure it was necessary, but something had happened betweeen one load and the next, and I wasn't sure what). When I loaded it up, everything was flashing pink (on the scale of my new computer), which was NOT something it ever did on startup. The backup worked fine, no pink-flashy soup or anything. Still a mystery... It would occasionally do pink soup, but more in the gradual "after 3 days of playing without saving, or after heavy snowfall, or long photoshoot in the 5-floor CC-heavy hospital lot" kind of vibe where it started out with a few items and then spread.

Point is, you can get pretty far even if you don't clean the lots or use all the tools, but they can also be good to have if you happen to end up with issues. Whether you should always do it depends on how well you want to take care of your game, and how much time you want to spend on all of it.

If you play generational and want to take care of families and the neighborhood for a good long while, then maybe it's more beneficial to clean up a bit than if you (like me) play more surface-level, and don't let sims mingle too much. For the pictures and storytelling I prefer to do, my sims rarely get past the first day, so a lot of the potential problem files probably never get created in the first place (If any do there's most likely a smaller number, so less chance of things getting buggy).

The Sims 2 is actually more robust than you think, so worrying is only going to diminish your enjoyment of a good game. Like simmer22, I've had more issues with The Sims 3 than I can count in my 9 years with it and hardly any with my 15 years with The Sims 2. Yes, it's good to keep things clean if you want to play a save longterm, however, if you find that's taking away your enjoyment then just do what you find fun and don't worry; the HoodChecker can help, SimPE can help (if you're comfortable using it), and anti-corruption mods can help. I'm talking about the game overall by the way, not just the lots. Stay clear of VBTs if you can, but don't stress over them; what's important is your enjoyment. Making regular backups of your hood can also ease worry.

I agree that ts3 seems to break much quicker than 2. The sheer number of times my mom has peered over my shoulder and asked how my playing was going only for me to respond "I'm not playing I'm fixing it"

I don't think anyone should play in fear of corruption lurking around the corner or expecting it to happen. But as I mentioned in my earlier post, I just prefer to not take risks

The Sims 2 is indeed a lot tougher than people tend to think.
I have played a vanilla hood for years without any mods. It did vanish into space eventually, but I did do a couple of things, eg. moving lots with sims in them into the bin and back into the hood again (the lots were just a bit in the way of a new street of shops I was building).I never deleted sims or graves, but the hood did last a very long time - at least 5 years, and I played it for many, many hours, dealing with Insomnia at the time.
The game does actually have some built-in protection -eg. sims cannot interact with dangerous NPC's like Mrs Crumplebottom without using cheats.
I don't clean lots before putting them into the bin. I clean them when I put them in a hood again, which will be another hood. If I forget, so be it I do make sure to clean lots I upload here, that is the most important cleaning one has to do.
The one thing I think one can do, if corruption worries you a lot, is to run the Hoodchecker once in a while.

Speaking of lots is it ok to move the lot to a different street even if it's occupied, I don't mean putting it into the bin than placing it but moving it with the move lot tool, even with a family in it?

Yes it's okay to move the lot around the same hood with the move tool even if occupied. I've never had any issues doing so, if I ever need to move a lot to somewhere it fits better.