tl;dr - After merging a save file with a .world file and importing it into the game I find that all objects on lots that were already present prior to merging are gone. This includes everything from furniture, trees, plants and windows and doors. It makes no difference if it's custom content, base game content, store content or content from an expansion pack. It's all gone and only the walls and roofs are left...

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So.. I've had this town that I started working on in.. I don't really know when it was, 2021 or 2022 or something, at a time when I could still use the "Edit in game" function from Create a World. Back in the day when everyone was on Origin and the world was bright and full of sunshine.. but then came the EA App..

Anyway, what I'm trying to do now is.. I've been building lots of houses on lots now for this town, saved them all to bin and in a save file, but..

..that never felt good enough, I wanted them to be a part of the actual world file, so... I searched the forum and found some threads (these are my sources)..

https://modthesims.info/showthread....5#startcomments

https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=416989

https://modthesims.info/showthread....5#startcomments

..read them and put what I found together in this method.. some of the below is just copy/paste from the sources, I did not necessarily write this myself. Just put it together trying to figure it out.

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IMPORT SAVE INTO WORLD FILE.
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Before starting: Create a temporary work folder to save all files to be worked on.

1. Open CAW. Make a new world, large 300 flat map. Save it and close CAW.

2. Open S3PE. Open the .world file that you just made. Choose Resource> Import> From package, and browse to the world you want to open- for example, Bridgeport.world or France.world.
It can be any INSTALLED world, you can't really use a S3Pack for this.
Click replace duplicates, use resource names, and compress- choose NO if it asks do you want to autosave. Click okay, and let S3PE import those files.

3. When it has finished, delete the following resources if they are present:
WPID 0xF609FD60 and UNKN 0x296A6258. (Island Paridiso and city resource)
Those files give the world its identity and type, so you do not want to copy those. (Exception- you might want to keep the city resource if you wish to make an amended version of Bridgeport, or the vacation resource if you with to make a vacation replacement world. See this thread for more details.)
Save your world in S3Pe- just click SAVE not SAVE AS.

4. Find save file you want to import. Open in S3PE. Export resources to work folder. This exports lots, houses and households (sims).

5. Open CAW and open the base world you want to import into (the one saved in point 3).

6. Remove lots layer and save as new version witout lots. This creates a file with only landscape, roads and 'Create a World' objects. Then back up this file.

7. Open S3pe. Import resources exported in point 4 into file saved in point 6. This should combine landscape, roads and world objects with lots, houses and households...

8. ((Check for resources WPID 0xF609FD60 and UNKN 0x296A6258 again. If you don't want them, delete if present. )) Then click save (not save as).

9. Open in CAW to see if it works. It may take some time. Save as new world with new name.

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Everything looks fine up until point 9, I get lots of blue lots. If I wait around and move around the town, the lots load in eventually and replace the blue lots with actual lots and everything looks fine. I save as, export and import the world into the game to test it..

..and here begins the story of my test sim Archie. She just heard about this new town, again, since she lives in a time loop doing the same things over and over again, and so she eagerly and happily bought this new little house and was excited to move in.. except..



..that when she set foot on her new lot, she found something odd about her house. There was no front door or windows! She took a walk around the yard, but there wasn't single door or window to be found! And even if she could've walked inside, she would've found that it had no furniture either.. and also, the scrubs, plants and trees that should be on the lot, weren't there either..

After, disappointed and confused, taking a walk around the neighbourhood, she found that this was true for all the lots there.. no doors, no windows, no trees, no furniture, just empty shells all over the place..



..and from a distance, some of the buildings didn't even look like buildings at all...



..now a little terrified and still confused, she decided to head to the local neighbourhood dog park to unwind and take a breather, but.. what would otherwise have been a vibrant park with trees, bushes, maybe some fish in the pond, a small playground and some dog houses where now just as empty as everything else.. was she just having a bad dream, or was this for real?

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So yeah, basically, this is what I'm left with when opening the world in game.. all the old lots that were part of the world already are now empty shells without any objects, just walls and wall/floor coating. No doors, no furniture, no trees, etc...

As for the mangled look of some of the buildings, that can be fixed, as mentioned in one of my sources above, by going into the lot from Edit Town mode and planting a tree there or doing some other minor change and the lot will look fine, so that's not the most major problem...

...what I'm really wondering about is where all the furniture, doors and windows went..

I'm puzzled by steps 4 onward- why are you deleting lots them adding them again?
Are you trying to import families into a CAW world from a save file?

I suppose that would be to not create duplicates of the lots. I'm deleting the lots already present in the world file, then importing them from the save file. Of course, I don't know if this is the right way or the best way, I'm not an expert. Just trying to figure out something that works.

I'm not trying to import families or households, only the lots and buildings.

In that case, save the lots to the library, then open up your world in CAW and EIG, and add the lots to the CAW file that way.

..but... my reason for doing it this way is because EIG doesn't work due to the EA App. If I could add lots using EIG there is no way I would have tried this method.. unless EIG suddenly works again now...

Oh apologies, I hadn't cottoned on to that. What I would try then is to put the lots on one layer then splice that layer into your new world.
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=429946

Ah, thanks for that method.. that might work.. I hope..

However, since my source originally comes in the form of an .nhd (save) file, and since, when trying to import that .nhd file into a world file and then saving it already produced the weird looking houses from a distance, I wasn't sure at first what to use as the source to splice the new layer from..

..but I think I might have found a way for that too, by importing the data from the .nhd file into a completely flat world. It looks weird, because everything floats up above ground, but so far it didn't reproduce the mangled lots look as seen in this picture:



..but, since I've had quite a few disappointments already trying to figure out this mess, I'll be sorry to say that I'll consider everything I do simply an experiment and that I won't keep my hopes up for anything until I actually see something that works... as a precaution of sorts to try to not lose anymore of my sanity with this project.. :P

Ahh, yes it's tricky from the savegame file, sometimes you can repair the lots a bit by picking them upand placing them back. If you get a good method for this maybe you could write it up as a tutorial here. The only real method we have is CassieJ's in that thread you linked.

Yeah, it would've been cool to put together something like a tutorial for others to use, but unfortunately the splicing method also gave the same results..



I moved my testsim Archie into the same house as before, and.. nope, still no windows, doors or furniture. It doesn't even have the pillars to hold the balcony up..



For reference, this is what it's supposed to look like. This screenshot is from the save file. This house, and all the houses in this area is part of the 'old town', which I finished while still using Origin, so this one is actually part of the .world file, so in a way there would be no need to re-import this particular house and the other ones like it. The problem is of course with everything that was built since then and that isn't a part of the .world file...

Also, I should remind myself to probably change the texture of the pillars. I actually sat there waiting because I thought it was a texture that didn't load, but it seems that for some reason a long time ago when I actually built this little house, I chose the texture to look just that grey and bland. I probably thought it should resemble concrete, but from this angle, it doesn't fit with the colours of the rest of the house.



And just because, here is a close up of my test sim Archie outside the lot that she lives on in the save file. I only save here after building, not after playtesting, so Archie always stands like this, examing the surroundings every time I load up the save file. :P

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So.. I think what happens with that makes the lots lose all their objects attached is something that happens during the process of importing the save file into the .world file, or somewhere in between points 4 - 7 of my original post.



Something must go wrong during these points.

It's probably a stretch, and is going to be tedious, but I'm just thinking 'out loud'. For every lot I have built on, I have always saved them to the library - in game. These lots are then saved as .package files with a name consisting of some string of letters and numbers such as 'ebf_0x6d9200d45419bcd0' (the last thing/lot I saved to the library).

Now.. since lots in CAW are stored as .lot files with file names such as 'ADO Arena_6d9200c6b4870910', I'm assuming that they are somehow structurally different from the lots stored as .package files (the lots that are loaded into the save when actually playing the game)..


...but, and this is where I think it's a stretch, and likely not very possible to do, but what if there was a way to somehow directly and one by one convert the .package files to .lot files and that way individually import them into the .world file, say by using the splicing method I already tried..

It's probably not doable, and much to tedious, but it's my best thought at the moment...