The Sims 4: Into the Future Conversions Stuff

The Sims 4: Into the Future Conversions Stuff is a custom stuff pack developed as part of the DzMD product line-up for Dozerfleet Labs, designed to work with various existing official DLC packs of The Sims 4. It was in the process of assembly since December of 2017, but with a promo for it released to DeviantArt a year later, on December 10th of 2018. Around mid-to-late June of 2020, a revised version of it was released to the Dozerfleet Labs blog on Blogger.

While DzMD mostly specializes in making character and story packs, Into the Future Conversions Stuff is the first non-story-specific custom DLC pack to focus on developing an entire theme, rather than an single narrative. The second such pack to follow was the much larger The Sims 4: Oughties Big Rapids Living Stuff in 2019 and 2020.

This custom DLC pack is intended to augment the Swappernetters Story Pack Series almost exclusively; whereas Oughties Big Rapids Living Stuff intends on recapturing the Dozerfleet founder's experience of attending Ferris State in a nutshell, across a span of several years.

As a consequence, unlike with OBRL, ITFC has very little original content. It instead takes content from The Sims 3, primarily from its Into the Future expansion pack, and converts that content into playable content for The Sims 4. Content, where noted, is borrowed and adapted from other Sims 3 packs. Whatever Dozerfleet Labs could not directly adapt, other artists' adaptations are linked to on the blog, in order to complete the set.

Official description
The DeviantArt ad describes the pack this way :

Feeling nostalgic about The Sims 3: Into the Future, but not enough to go back to playing it? If you started with The Sims 4, why should you have to?

You can now recapture the aesthetic of TS3:ITF inside of Sims 4, just by downloading this free packet of content conversions!

Development history
The pack was pursued beginning in 2017, as a way to take beloved aspects of aesthetic for Swappernetters that were possible in The Sims 3 with all expansions, and make Sims 4 equivalent scenery. That way, the Twirlflame Trio would be able to be represented in storyboards from either game; and not need to have just one game depict them.

However, this desire to convert a few textures, namely the bar walls, soon morphed into an ambitious undertaking to learn how to convert Sims 3 objects to Sims 4. Alas, Into the Future expansion pack items proved especially difficult, and the UV mapping setup for many of these objects was far more complex than what The Sims 4 normally can accommodate. Glass and other material mapping in Sims 4, in some respects, is a step down - even by Sims 2 standards!

When some objects proved too difficult for staff to adapt, Dozerfleet Labs abandoned the prospect of clothing and hair conversions. Attempts were also made to take a custom vehicle mesh by Fresh-Prince Creations of a white 1998 GMC Sierra, and convert that to Sims 4 so the Phaemer Village Peackeepers could have The Paula in either game. Yet, these early attempts to adapt Time Capsule's iconic truck were an abysmal failure.

A larger version of the pack was initially offered on DeviantArt. However, the pack shrank in size after adapting some of its contents to Mod the Sims led to flagging for quality issues. These issues were fixed for contents that could be fixed. Other items that were not so easy to conform to MTS' ever-increasing quality standards, however, were voluntarily removed.

The pack's earliest forms took shape in late 2017; though promotional artwork for it wouldn't reach DeviantArt until a year later. The smaller, reformed version of the pack with less content but repaired quality issues with remaining content was added to the Labs blog in the summer of 2020. These issues would have been addressed sooner; but that time had been instead committed toward development of Oughties Big Rapids Living Stuff.

Sims
In spite appearing in cover art due to the futurist theme, the cast of Swappernetters is not actually included in pack contents.

Discontinued objects
The following items were beyond Dozerfleet Labs staff ability at the time to convert without significant quality issues, and were thus removed from later editions of the conversions pack.

Linked content
Most of the original upload's objects are no longer supported. Items removed for quality issues are noted above. Others were removed because TheJim07 at Mod the Sims produced superior conversions. Instead of trying to out-do his work, it was deemed easier to link to it and promote it. However, TheJim07 couldn't re-create everything from Into the Future. Other creators are linked to as well, to overcome this.

Reception
In spite of being much smaller, and more dependent on other artists, ITFC by July 22nd of 2021 was measured to have been leaps and bounds more popular and successful with the downloading community than OBRL was. The full package of Oughties Big Rapids Living Stuff on MediaFire directly in The Merre Edition has only been downloaded about 38 times as of July of 2021. Stripped of the rest of the pack, North Bond Hall alone has garnered 1,234 downloads from Mod the Sims in that time.

However, ITF standing on its own as a pack on the blog has garnered 1,696 downloads in that same measuring time, not counting the downloads of content linked to by other artists with a tie-in theme to complete the theme. The solar panel floor tile conversion by itself on Mod the Sims by that same measuring date has garnered an additional 2,136 downloads. The bar wall conversions stripped from the pack and hosted on MTS in that same time have been downloaded a total of 3,713 times. In that same time, the futurist terrain paint has garnered 1,035 downloads on MTS. The solar panel roof conversion on MTS in that time has garnered 4,133 downloads.

Trista Clarion's house from Swappernetters having been renovated in season 2, depicted with the pack, by that same date on MTS, has been downloaded 414 times. This is paltry compared to other real estate. Anarteq's rental residence in Anarteq: Guardian of the Soo on MTS by that same date had been downloaded 504 times. Erin Flippo's house similarly gathered a total of 563 downloads.

For further comparison's sake, in that same time on MTS, Lenny Drae's RV home park from before the events in Volkonir garnered 2,610 downloads. The similarly-themed Will Boyd house re-created from Far Cry 5 for The Sims 4, by that same date, had garnered 1,247 downloads on MTS and 1 download from MediaFire and the Labs blog.

While far less effort was put into ITFC than OBRL, nostalgia for Sims 3 won out over Big Rapids curiosity for most casual Sims players.