Using Your Customized University for all Your Saved Games

We all love to customize our worlds, and the University Life world isn't the exception. More than once we have redecorated the dorms and even the classrooms. Personally, I not only make changes to the city set, but makeovers to the campus characters to give them my own style, according to my little stories. All that makes the University look much better, plus it makes the stay of my sims in it, even if it is for two sim weeks, more pleasant. 

What happens when I'm going to play University Life in a different world? I mean, what if I have been playing in, say, Aurora Skies and suddenly I decide to play a different save, in a different world, like Hidden Springs for instance? The time comes for my sims to go to Uni and - surprise! The changes I did to my University world are not there. Why? Well, simply because, with each new save. the University with all its characters, buildings and original decorations will be restored. 

Wow, and what about the time I spent "reinventing" my University? The question immediately arises: Is there a way to use the same Uni I arranged to mi liking in that other save?  Good news, there is a way, and here I am going to show you.

The procedure is relatively simple, but before I continue, I want to warn you that all changes to the game files involve a risk, therefore is absolutely necessary and recommended that you make a backup of your saved game before moving or replacing any of its parts. If you do so, you'll avoid a headache in case something goes wrong. For me, I like to experiment with my game and take some risks, but if you are not that kind of player, I recommend you not to go ahead. Sure it is only fair to tell you that is totally worth it to try. There is risk, yes, but if you pay attention and proceed with care, everything should be alright.

One more thing, this procedure is absolutely an experiment of mine, is not endorsed by any of the well-known modding experts, or at least not to my knowledge. It's just an idea. Feel free to take it or leave it. The only thing I can say is that it has worked wonderfully for me, and it hasn't caused any problems so far. That said, we'll continue forward. :)

 

HOW TO USE YOUR CUSTOMIZED UNIVERSITY FOR ALL YOUR SAVED GAMES

1. The first step, of course, is to make a Backup of the save you're going to work with. This is, your New Save. For this you go to the Electronic Arts>The Sims 3>Saves>Your New Game Save Name folder. That folder, with the name of your new save is the one you'll need to copy. You right-click on it, copy and paste it on your Desktop or in the My Documents folder; or wherever you keep your important files. That's it, you already have a backup of your game, in case something goes wrong. We suppose it won't, but better safe... ;)

2. Now we go to the save where we have our Customized University world, that is, the save in which we had been playing before we decided to start a New Save. In my case I'll use the Aurora Skies save, which is one of the worlds in which I have customized Uni. I go to my Saves folder again. I double-click on the folder Dylan terminó la Universidad (Dylan finished Uni), which is my Aurora Skies saved game. The name of the game doesn't matter much, it's what's inside the folder that interests us. So, double-click on it and let's see what is inside.

3. This is what we'll find inside the folder. Those are the files of the saved game. The one that interests us is the one that contains the information of our dear customized University, with which we have been playing. I repeat, for me it's Aurora Skies, yours may be a different world, just remember that you have to go to the folder of the save where you have customized your University. Now, the file we are looking for has a .nhd extension. The files with info about the cities (worlds) carry this extension, I suppose it stands for the word neighborhood. We right-click on that file (its highlighted in the image), and we copy it.

Aurora Skies (Old Save) 

4. We go to our new save, for me it's Hidden Springs, we open the folder and see that there is an .nhd file as well of the University. It's the new or default University. it hasn't been customized yet. This file is the one we are going to replace. We right-click anywhere inside the folder, we select Paste and that's, we've already replaced the default University with our Customized one., We can repeat this procedure for every new world save we want, including other saved games (not new) in which we'd like to have our customized Uni. Important Note: Make sure you don't have sims at the University when you do this procedure.

 Hidden Springs (New Save)
 

Important Note 2: In order to carry out this procedure, the new save needs to contain two University files, with the extensions .nhd and ExportDB.package. If the folder with the new saved game doesn't contain these files, it means that the University hasn't been generated, therefore, your sims will need to travel to the University, back and forth. After doing this, save your game. When you look again into the folder, the files mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph will already be there.

It's not necessary to replace both of them, just the .nhd file will be enough.

5. One last recommendation, maybe the most important one: Always save the .nhd file with your customized University in a safe location, since you may want to use it in future new saves. Also, make sure to update this file each time you make a change, this means, replace your saved .nhd file each time you modify something in your University, that way you'll always be up to date. 

And that's all! Now to enjoy the game with your Customized University. I hope I have been clear enough, if there's any doubt, feel free to ask in the comments, I'll reply as soon as I can. Thanks for reading this tutorial, I'll see you soon! ;)