Custom Content Included Files

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Files Guideline: Custom Content Included Files

Appears in: General Guidelines, and Lots & Housing

Possible Assessments

Category	Title	Description
General Guidelines	Included CC not allowed	There is content included in the archive that is not permitted, as per the original creator's policies. Please remove those item(s) and make it clear in the main text that the item(s) must be downloaded separately. Note that content from any TSR Featured Artist may not be included here, as per TSR's terms of use. (TS2 excluded)
General Guidelines	Unnecessary included CC	There is content included in the archive that is not required for your upload to function and appear as it does in the photos/description. Only content which is required may be included. If including items from a multi-item set, only include those items which are required for your upload; do not include the entire set.
General Guidelines	Included CC not labelled	There is CC included in this upload, but it is not clearly labelled as "included" in the CC credits.
General Guidelines	Correct	All of the included content appears to be correct. However, please note that MTS staff do not check the policy of every CC creator. It remains your responsibility to follow the policies of CC creators, and failure to do so may result in your uploads being edited or removed by MTS staff if there are problems.
Lots & Housing	Missing terrain paint	It appears that custom terrain paints have been used on this lot but they are not present in the sims2pack. Please do not remove custom terrain paints from lots as it can cause crashing for downloaders.

General Guidelines

Included CC is any content made by another creator which is packaged with or attached to the files of your upload. Usually this is either CAS/Bodyshop items included with a sim or build/buy items included with a lot. Not all CC can be included in MTS uploads. If including CC, please ensure the following:

Content may only be included if permitted by the original creator's Terms of Use
All included CC must be required for your upload to function and appear as it does in your pictures/descriptions. Double check. Do not just include content that you think might be used, or that you recommend but which is not required.
All included CC must be credited fully, following the same guidelines as any other required CC. See the guidelines for Custom Content Credits for full details.
All included CC must be clearly labelled as included. This is so downloaders are aware of what content they will be downloading. It is fine to either individually label certain items as "included", or to list all included items under a header such as "included CC", as long as it is obvious which CC is included and which is not.

Additionally, please be aware:

If including items from a multi-item set, only include those items which are required for your upload, not the entire set.
It is your responsibility to ensure that the original CC creator allows their content to be included with uploads. If you have violated a creator's stated policies by including their CC against their wishes, inadvertently or otherwise, you must remove the offending items from your upload as soon as you become aware of the transgression. Failure to respect the CC policies of other creators may result in your uploads being edited or removed by MTS staff if you do not address the issue in a timely manner.
If MTS staff happen to see any content which we know cannot be included, we will alert you via a CR, but you should not rely on this to catch everything, as we are only human and not a walking database of every CC creator's policies.
Do not include any items by TSR Featured Artists (FA's), as this violates TSR's terms of use. (TS2 excluded)
Do not include any pay content, including Patreon exclusives.
Err on the side of caution. When in doubt, don't include it.

Cleaning files to remove unwanted CC

Sims2packs and sims3packs may included embedded CC which you may not wish to include. To learn how to remove these, see the tutorials below.

Including CC that you made

If you have previously uploaded the content elsewhere, then you may include it following the guidelines above, including the crediting guidelines. If you have made content specifically for this upload which you are not uploading elsewhere, see Other Content Quality

Manually including CC

If you wish to include CC along with an upload but not as part of a sims2pack or sims3pack, it should be added to the zip/rar in which you attach your upload. Though permitted, generally we don't recommend doing this unless necessary (either due to requiring many CC items which are complicated to download, or if the download link from the original creator is broken). All of the same rules apply for this method as above. However, you must also ensure you do not include any items which were originally uploaded to MTS unless those items are no longer available anywhere from the original creator.

Including CC from a dead site

With TS2 in particular, many creators' sites and old forums have ceased to exist. This is a sad loss for the community, but also makes crediting CC from these dead sites a problem. In these cases, we do not require a functional link to the download (since this is obviously not possible) and the item may be included with your files, even if the creator's original TOU did not permit this.

The items must still be credited. See Custom Content Credits for further details about the crediting requirements in such cases.

Such CC may be included either as standalone files within a zip/rar/7zip, or as content included within a sims2pack or sims3pack.

The Sims 2 Guidelines, apply in addition to the above General ones.

Lots & Housing

Terrain Paints: Do NOT remove any terrain paints from your sims2pack. This is the one exception to the non-redistributable policies/pay/must provide credit rules. If you remove terrain paints from a lot it can cause it to crash for downloaders. Due to this, all terrain paint creators should expect their content to be included no matter what. Please provide a link and credit for these items whenever possible, but if a terrain paint is not clearly marked with a creator's name/website, you may still include it and it will not be grounds for rejection.
TS2 Store Content: Since the TS2 store is no longer available, TS2 store content that is required for your lot may be included with the lot upload. This does not apply to preorder content which came on discs.
Do NOT include the CEP, CEP Extras, lighting mods, shaders or hacks. These require specific install instructions and some are dependent on other mods.

Tutorials - The Sims 3

Cleaning files for upload

If you are uploading a lot as a .sims3pack file, other build/buy content that you have used may be included if that content is also in .sims3pack format.

To remove any content from a sims3pack:

Download and install CUSTARD
Open your .sims3pack in CUSTARD
Untick any custom content files you don't want to include
File > Save As and save your file with a new name.

Tutorials - The Sims 2

Cleaning files for upload

Before uploading your lot or sim, you must scan it with the Clean Installer. Many people do not realize that by having custom content in your Downloads folder, it can attach itself to your sims2pack files -- even if you didn't use that content in your upload!

Lots with sims: Only upload lots which have never had sims on them. Lots which have had sims on them at any time before the lot was packaged (even if you have moved the family out) should not be shared, since downloading such lots may cause save corruption. If you want to play-test your lot before uploading, create a copy of the lot and play-test on the copy.

The image is demonstrating using a sim in a sims2pack but the same works for lots - uncheck the unwanted content (in our example two unwanted meshes are being removed) and then click Save As and save a new sims2pack file with a new name.

Never save over your original sims2pack file - there's a bug in Clean Installer with that and you'll just end up with a corrupt file.

For more information on using Clean Installer, please see this tutorial.
If you are having trouble using Clean Installer, including errors or issues with empty packages, please see MTS's Clean Installer Support Forums for help.

Using a Mac? On Vista and it won't run? Your options are, unfortunately, pretty limited:

You can ask a friend who can use Clean Installer to clean the lot for you (and hope they do it right).
You can take out your Downloads folder when building lots and make them with no custom content.
Another option is to have two or more different Downloads folders that you swap in and out as needed -- for example, one with everything you need to play your game, another one with just a few wallpapers for building simple lots, another one with medieval items for building castles, and so on

If you are in this situation, we're sorry, but we cannot risk people's games just to allow people to freely upload randomly-CC-filled lots.

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