I thought I knew how, but obviously I'm clueless.

I have 10 saved pet packages, but I have no idea how to get them back into my game. I created them in came beginning of last year I think it was. I thought I'd saved them, which I did, but I guess I never packaged them as I don't have them in a sims2pack file, just the package file.

I tired puttin them in all the places I could think of to see them in game .. downloads, packed sims, saved sims, pet breeds, projects (I was gettin desperate), but no matter what I did I could never see them in game.

On that same note, I do have 3 that are more currently made and saved in game, but I have no clue as to where they're saved at. I was able to package one and it put it in saved sims.

Can someone please help me so I can get my cute pooches saved so I can add them back in now and for any future time I might need. I can remake the breed and the various colors if I need to, but I'd rather not have to keep doin it over and over.


If you'd like to see some of my pooches

They go in Pet Breeds, and then they'll be visible as one of the preset templates when you go to create a pet in CAS.

What if they don't show?

Do you remember what you did to save them in the first place? If they weren't saved using the usual method that could explain things.

Honestly, no I don't.

However I just did a little experiment and I just maybe sol *cries*

I unpacked one of the ones I'd packaged (sims2packed) then opened it package in SimPE (call this one Pooch A). In another SimPe, I opened one of the ones I'm tryin to save (call this one Pooch B).

They look wholly different in what info is contained and I don't just mean because of what their looks are.
a) The two resource trees don't list the same things
B) There is a big ole long list of things in Pooch B Age Data that is not in Pooch A's Age Data. The things that say the same name don't give the same type and value.

I guess this means that I am gonna hafta redo them. Ugghhhh, lets just hope that this time I can save and package them correctly for future use.

While I'm on the subject. How easy/ hard would it be to change some of the standard strays so that they would be my breed instead of the ones that come with the game?

It sounds like you maybe saved the Nxxx_Userxxx.package files out of the Characters folders? I dunno how you'd restore them, though maybe Sim Surgery in SimPE could be used?

The default strays are townies that are included in the stealth Pets neighbourhood. So you should be able to just remove that folder from your TS2 install location - the same way you would to stop the Pleasantview townies from spawning in every neighbourhood. Then, I assume, the game would include your custom breeds in the new strays it created when you make a new 'hood.

At least not all is totally lost. I was able to use some of the info from SimPE to recreate them .. sorta. They won't be exact, but at least it gave me a place to start to redo them without tryin to work through the multiple layers of combinations of colors and patterns.

Will this work for saving them?

I went into create a family. I made each one and as I did I clicked on the disk icon at the top left and saved it. Once it was saved I then clicked on the package icon on the middle right side. It told me to name it and give it a description. I got a pop up tellin me it saved them in Packaged Sims. I look there and there are sim2packs there with the pooches names. Does this mean that they're saved if needed for any future installs?

Yeah, that sounds exactly right. You can also save born-in-game pets by using the phone to "Register Breed", which saves them in PetBreeds and makes them available in CAS, so you can package them as sims2packs from within CAS.