Sims 1 Installation

About Houses

• Within the Maxis/The Sims directory you will find a folder called UserData. If you have any expansions packs you may have UserData 2, possibly up to UserData 8, folders. These folders relate to the different neighbourhoods in your game. Therefore, UserData is Neighbourhood 1, UserData 2 is Neighbourhood 2, UserData 3 is Neighbourhood 3, and so on.
  
  
• Within each UserData folder there are several folders listed, one of which is Houses. This is where you need to extract the House##.iff file to for the Neighbourhood you want. You will be told that the file already exists and do you want to replace the file. Say Yes, and the new house will replace the vacant lot, or any house that may have already existed there. Be aware, that if a family was living in the house, that family will be lost. Also, for Unleashed users, if a house is on a lot previously zoned as a community lot then you will need to rezone the lot to residential before installing the house. If you do not do this, then the house will appear but you will not be able to use it.
  
  
• If you haven't been able to download all the items in the shopping list, don't worry. When you select the house you will simply get a message saying that some objects are missing. You can simply replace these with items you do have.

About Objects

• Any objects (.iff or .far files) that you download should be extracted to the Downloads folder within The Sims directory. The structure should look something like this:- C:/Program Files/Maxis/The Sims/Downloads. For Downtown or Vacation Lots you may need to categorize the items. My preferred method for doing this is to use SE Object Maker from http://www.simenhancer.com. It's a fantastic program. As a side note I'd also recommend that you get Sim Enhancer 3d from the same site. Before I got this program, I had multiple crashes and corrupted files in my game, now I can fix these problems with this program without losing all my houses. It changed my life!!
  
  
• Any walls (.wll files) that you download should be extracted to the Gamedata/Walls folder within The Sims directory. The structure should look something like this:- C:/Program Files/Maxis/The Sims/Gamedata/Walls.
  
  
• Any floors (.flr files) that you download should be extracted to the Gamedata/Floors folder within The Sims directory. The structure should look something like this:- C:/Program Files/Maxis/The Sims/Gamedata/Floors.

Sims 2 Installation

• Very simple - Just open the zipped file and double click on the packaged lot file and it will self install into your Lots and Houses Bin.

• Of course, nothing is ever that simple! So:
• If you are installing custom made objects or house package files that contain custom made objects you will need to download and install the CEP: Colour Options Enabler program, which can be found here. This will make re-colours work properly in the game.

• There are no hacks in my game so all lots should be safe. However, if you are installing houses that contain custom objects then you might want to use Sims2Pack Clean Installer, which you can find here. This useful program will allow you to see the files contained in the house pack file so you can choose what you install into your game.