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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 14th Aug 2018 at 4:31 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default "Clean" Hood issue.
Recently, I deleted a older hood of mine because I was ready to start new. I put all of the lots i made into the sim bin as well as 8 sims on a lot and 1 sim on a lot. I wanted to move them to a fresh clean hood and start over.

Well, I meant to open one of my custom hoods but accidentally opened Veronaville. I deleted that hood since I didn't want that template. I opened River Bend, which I downloaded here. Put my 9 simmies back as well as made 4 more.

Well, I had my college sim call the campus directory and I was annoyed to see all the maxis dormies were there. I opened SimPE and saw not only all the maxis dormies, but townies and even my older deleted sims from my last hood.

How can I ensure that I get a nice clean hood when i open river bend this time? I would really like to save my 12 young adults. The one single adult doesn't matter. I would also like to save the lots I worked so hard on.

I do have anti redundancy, no townie, and no dormie respawns. I have also renamed Pleasantviews folder as N001-bak

So, with at info I have these questions..
1. If anyone happens to know, how did I cause all these townies to generate in my new hood?
2. Why are there old sims from my previously deleted hold in the sim browser for my hood?
3. Can I save my 12 YA sims and all my lots?

I am happy to provide more info.
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Instructor
#2 Old 14th Aug 2018 at 5:00 PM
To get rid of the maxis dormies, aside from the no dormie respawns, you'll also need clean templates for the Uni hoods. Replacing the folder U001, U002 and U003 with these you will only ave the playables. If you wish, instead, a game completely free from any maxis playables, use Jawusa's clean templates.
You'll also need few more mods to get rid of the maxis townies/downtownies:
-This is a ready townie pool replacement; I don't know exactely why, but sometimes it happened in my game that the townies spawned were the ones from Pleasantview (although I'm quite sure I had the no townie gen). Erasing the content of The Sims 2/TSData/Res/UserData/NeighborhoodTemplate/N001 should fix that.
-A similar issue happens in Downtown, where the game gets the downtonies from a game folder, spawning always the same ones. Using this hack should prevent it.

For the second question, I was talking about it with another simmer yesterday, but my theory is that sometimes the game mixes up the neighborhood info when assigning the Neighborhood ID - for instance, if you have Pleasantview (N001), Strangetown (N002) and Veronaville (N003). You decide to delete the last one and create a custom neighborhood, the ID would be N003, the same as Veronaville - now, this is just my speculattion, so I don't now how true it is, but I guess that's the reaso why yo have data from the old hood. Maybe deleting the neighborhood manager can fix it?

To save the Sims, you can extract their cloner with SimPe, using the Sim Surgery , and then recreate them in a new hood. For the lots, if they are unoccupied and no sim has lived there, you can just place them in the lot bin - otherwise, you can follow this steps.

If you wanna start from scratch, I leave you few tutorials about completely clean hoods (they are more or less the same, choose the one you prefer):
http://www.woodensimolean.com/MakeYourOwnDefaults
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...ic,10798.0.html
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,5861.0.html
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 14th Aug 2018 at 5:16 PM
Thank you so much Drew for all your info. I should have mentioned this but the two templates I used for my main and uni hood are ones I've downloaded from MTS.

Your comment on the numbering system and it being labeled N003 is interesting. My old hood I deleted that had zero issues and no maxis townies or dormies was N004. I do not have Veronaville or Strangetown hoods anymore, I deleted them ages ago.
Instructor
#4 Old 14th Aug 2018 at 5:23 PM Last edited by *_Drew~ : 14th Aug 2018 at 5:34 PM.
Glad I was helpful.

What about this hood you just created? Which one was the ID number?

As I said, It's just a theory, but I've started thinking about it when in one of m custom hoods I suddenly found Komei Tellerman, Goopy Gilscarbo and co. even thouh I had the mods that should prevent them from spawning.

In any case, if I was yo, I'd clone the YA and the lots and start from scratch - as painful as it sounds, it should be easier than fixing your current hood.

EDIT: have you tried running the hood checker ? Might be helpful for the "ghost references"
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#5 Old 14th Aug 2018 at 5:36 PM Last edited by maxon : 14th Aug 2018 at 5:58 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
Recently, I deleted a older hood of mine because I was ready to start new. I put all of the lots i made into the sim bin as well as 8 sims on a lot and 1 sim on a lot. I wanted to move them to a fresh clean hood and start over.

This is the problem

Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
Well, I meant to open one of my custom hoods but accidentally opened Veronaville. I deleted that hood since I didn't want that template. I opened River Bend, which I downloaded here. Put my 9 simmies back as well as made 4 more.

This is probably unimportant

Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
Well, I had my college sim call the campus directory and I was annoyed to see all the maxis dormies were there. I opened SimPE and saw not only all the maxis dormies, but townies and even my older deleted sims from my last hood.

Having moved sims in lots, that's what you'd expect

Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
How can I ensure that I get a nice clean hood when i open river bend this time? I would really like to save my 12 young adults. The one single adult doesn't matter. I would also like to save the lots I worked so hard on.

So, with at info I have these questions..
1. If anyone happens to know, how did I cause all these townies to generate in my new hood?
2. Why are there old sims from my previously deleted hold in the sim browser for my hood?
3. Can I save my 12 YA sims and all my lots?

I am happy to provide more info.

1. They came with the lots you packed up with sims on them - that's what the game does. It preserves any existing relationships between your sims and sims they knew in their old hood by making dummy copies of them. It doesn't matter that the lots were otherwise empty, it's the presence of those sims that caused this to happen. Those dummy sims are no longer playable but they generated in your hood when you placed the lot. That's why people are advised not to move lived in lots between neighbourhoods (apart from the corruption issues).
2. See above - same reason
3. The only way to do this without this issue of generating dummy sims and corrupting your neighbourhood (yes, you did that too) is to extract the sim likeness in SimPE and make the sims anew in Bodyshop-CAS. If you make notes about their personalities and memories, relationships and family ties, you can more-or-less recreate the sims by editing with SimPE and, to a certain extent, by using SimBlender or something similar.

Incidentally, ideally you should have cleaned the lived-in lots you moved too.

Edit: just read this
Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
My old hood I deleted that had zero issues and no maxis townies or dormies was N004. I do not have Veronaville or Strangetown hoods anymore, I deleted them ages ago.

If your original hood had no dormies and townies, the likely explanation for the presence of said downies in the new hood is that the template you are using has them - or you don't or no longer have empty templates installed. The no regen hacks you mentioned only come into play once you start to play the hood and are there to prevent the game making any new townies/NPCs/dormies not to prevent them spawning on hood creation - that's what empty templates are for. Which hood templates are you using there?

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#6 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 1:08 AM
@Maxon, I do understand I will have to use SimPE to clone my 12 sims and recreate in CAS. That's not a big deal. I wish the game didn't give you all these options if they are bad for the game in the long run. But oh well. I also was given a way by Drew to clean my lots.

Here is the template I am using for my main hood. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=440974
This is my university template https://www.thesimsresource.com/dow...ving/id/482818/

Thank you for your input too!
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#7 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 1:41 AM
Quote:
I put all of the lots i made into the sim bin as well as 8 sims on a lot and 1 sim on a lot. I wanted to move them to a fresh clean hood and start over


I havn't read over the thread and am probably repeating someone but-

Never move sims between hoods, that corrupts the hood you take them from and corrupts your new hood.

You have to extract the sims likeness in SimPE then open Bodyshop and clone them. Delete the extracted sim and keep the clone.

You also want to clean all of your lots. Do not use lots with graves, move those onto another empty lot first.

I would be extremely hesitant about using a hood from TSR.
Edit: okay so just a map not a hood by the looks of things, that should be okay. When you said hood I was thinking a hood with lots and sims.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#8 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 2:36 AM
@joandsarah77 I will definitely not be doing that again. I should know better too...

So, with all the information I have it looks like these will be my next steps. Please let me know if I am incorrect somewhere.
1. Extract and clone sims with Sim Surgery in SimPE 2. Use the method shared above to clean my lots
3. Make new hood in the neighborhood screen.
Questions about step 3: The only hood I have right now is my current townie spawned hood. It is labeled as N002. Pleasantview is unviewable and named N001-bak. Once I extract and clone all my needed sims and save my lots, do I need to delete my old hood before making my new one? Also, does the N001, N002, etc. numbering system have an effect?
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#9 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 3:46 AM
1. Yes + if you want to recreate these sims as being very similar to your old ones you will want to jot down things about them. When I did this I put down hobbies, interests, personality, skill points so I could set them up being as close as possible to how they were before. The clones will be brand new sims and as such will have all those things randomized. It's up to you to set them up to how you want them.

2. Not sure where above lot cleaning is mentioned, but I have a tutorial up on that. Chris hatch's add-on to lot adjuster is the easiest way.

3. What you do next depends if you want all townies, some townies or no game generated townies. The numbering system does have an effect, you can't have hoods that share a number. Yes, delete all that you don't want. You can also leave them, the hood you made will have a different number. Not only that but you can have multiple sims 2 folders, so if you still want a game made pleasantview with all the townies, and a separate download folder you can have that too. Sims 2 is very pliable.

4. make sure to backup so in case anything goes wrong you don't lose anything.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#10 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 11:16 AM
Those hoods are ok - they're just terrains, neither has any occupants. I'd say then Tcbandie that you must not have (anymore) empty templates in your game and that's why you saw the Pleasantview townies in your new hoods.

If you want to generate a hood without townies you need to either use empty (and clean) templates or another possibility is downloading an already existing hood with resident sims but no townies (my Polgannon would be an example of that). Using a neighbourhood like that means that your no-regen hacks you already have will prevent (or circumscribe more like) the generation of Pleasantview townies. This second is probably not what you want to do though. There are various methods to produce empty templates.

Another possibility is to get someone to create a neighbourhood for you with empty templates and then download it from them. In this instance, I would do that for you if you like. Tell me which map you want to use and I can create (River's Bend - nice looking map)?

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#11 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 7:56 PM
@joandsarah77 I will look into Chris Hatch's add on for lot adjustor. And I have an N001 (picture taking), N001-bak (Pleasantview), N002 (the hood I messed up), and N004 (lot building). If I deleted N001, N004, and eventually N002 when I get my lots and sims saved, I'm wondering if it will screw up the new hood's number.

@maxon, I feel stupid but I am apparently confused about the clean template stuff. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but wouldn't River Bend (main neighborhood terrain) and Small Town Living (university terrain) both be "clean if they are just simply created in the game from scratch?


Sorry, for some reason I'm having a hard time comprehending this...it's more advanced than I've had to get for the game.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#12 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 9:15 PM
Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
@maxon, I feel stupid but I am apparently confused about the clean template stuff. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but wouldn't River Bend (main neighborhood terrain) and Small Town Living (university terrain) both be "clean if they are just simply created in the game from scratch?

There's a difference between a terrain (which is what River Bend is) and a hood proper which is created by the game when you load it for the first time.

I'll try to explain.

A terrain is just a ... terrain. That is to say, it's a file that describes the ground and the roads and anything else related to the - maybe geography? of the hood. It's not an actual playable hood - just the starting point for a playable hood. It contains no sims, just geography.

When we talk about a neighbourhood (in this kind of context), we're not just talking about the terrain but about everything else that makes it a hood as well. This includes the lots and some coding but, more importantly, also the sims.

When you create a custom hood in the game, it takes a terrain (doesn't matter which one) and then, in the process of loading the hood for the first time, adds all sorts of other stuff including sims - from the templates.

Thus a full neighbourhood is filled with sims plus various bits of coding plus the terrain.

Whereas a terrain like River Bend is just the terrain - the ground and roads. It has no sims and is not a full neighbourhood.

So better names for what we're talking about here might be 1. Terrains and 2. Full Playable Neighbourhood.

The default neighbourhoods are different from this because they've been set up as playable right from the start. Similarly, playable neighbourhoods - like my Polgannon - are similar to the defaults in that they are already in a playable state and all you have to do in this case is drop them in your Neighbourhoods folder. With something like Polgannon what I did was create a custom full neighbourhood on a custom terrain and loaded it up for the first time. Because my AGS was set up to create a neighbourhood that used empty templates, there are no original Plesantview townies and NPCs in it and it stayed that way because I use the noregen hacks as I set up the various households (i.e. played it a bit).

What this means if you put Polgannon in your game is that your game recognises it as a full neighbourhood that has already gone through the loading process for the first time. The game therefore DOESN'T attempt an initial set up routine because it's already been run in my game. So it doesn't call up and use the templates to add the regular townies and NPCs to the neighbourhood. If you also use the no regen hacks, the game will continue to not add NPCs and townies (unless it needs a specific NPC and then it will make only one).

Conversely, with something like the River Bend terrain - you put that into your SC4Terrains folder (not the Neighbourhoods folder because it's not a neighbourhood). When you use that terrain to create a neighbourhood for the first time, the game then goes through the process of converting into a neighbourhood and brings in all the NPCs and townies from your templates to populate it (empty templates prevent this happening) and adds the coding that helps the game recognise it as an initialised neighbourhood. The game goes on to create a new folder for the new neighbourhood in your Neighbourhoods folder. You will notice that the terrain is still available in game (and in your SC4Terrains folder) to create a new neighbourhood - you can have as many neighbourhoods as you like using the same terrain.

Does that help?

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#13 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 9:33 PM
Ah ok. I think I get you now. So even though Pleasantview is N001-bak, that isn't going to stop it from loading those batch sims to it playable when I create a new hood. So, because I don't even play Pleasantview anyway, could I just delete that neighborhood and would that fix the issue?? Then it would have zero neighborhoods to pull from with "batch sims". Will doing this also keep my uni hood empty of batch sims?

Would this method fix the issue for my uni and main hood?
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,4306.0.html
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#14 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 9:36 PM
Quote: Originally posted by tcbandie10
Ah ok. I think I get you now. So even though Pleasantview is N001-bak, that isn't going to stop it from loading those batch sims to it playable when I create a new hood. So, because I don't even play Pleasantview anyway, could I just delete that neighborhood and would that fix the issue?? Then it would have zero neighborhoods to pull from with "batch sims". Will doing this also keep my uni hood empty of batch sims?

No sorry that won't fix it - what you need to do is make the COPY of Pleasantview in the game files into an empty template. The game doesn't copy the Pleasantview in My Documents because it might have been deleted by the player (I deleted it in 2005 for example). It uses the copy in the game files. That's what empty templates are - empty copies of the neighbourhood stored in the game files. Be warned, it's not just a case of simply deleting them.

Also diagram - if that helps
Screenshots

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#15 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 9:50 PM
@maxon, thank you for the diagram. I know it seems like you are speaking to a brick wall here. So I saw Jawusa has http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=615468 and http://modthesims.info/showpost.php...835&postcount=3
By putting these into my game as clean empty templates, this should stop the game from creating those batch townies and dormies..correct?
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#16 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 9:59 PM
Looks like it - I don't use those particular templates myself but Jawusa is a reputable maker of neighbourhoods and templates. Make sure you follow the instructions carefully. Also remember there are quite a number of templates for different things (townies, NPCs, downtownies, students, pets (strays), vacation locals, hobby mavens - plus the stealth hoods). You will need an empty template for all of them to prevent everything getting generated. MIss one and you'll find a whole pile of sims or pets in your neighbourhood. It's always worth running a test neighbourhood first.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#17 Old 15th Aug 2018 at 10:57 PM
This is also why I said 3. About the sim set up. For example, somebody might have empty templates for Pleasantview townies but still have stealth hood and BV townies. There are over 300 NPC's that the game can make, drawing from quite a number of templates. Always consider your first hood to be a test, not the real thing.

Link to my tutorial, which has the link to his add on. http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=609188

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#18 Old 16th Aug 2018 at 12:27 AM
@maxon and @joandsarah77 so I pasted all of the clean and empty hoods into the different folders for the main hood, business, downtown, and university. I created a test hood as well as all the different sub hoods. I checked my characters folder at the end and voila! It came back as empty. So thanks to both of you and Drew, I can finally get the clean and empty neighborhoods and sub hoods.

My sims have already been extracted using SimPE and are ready to finish the process in Body Shop.

For the lots, I will follow the cleaning steps that have been given above. Hopefully after that I am ready to go!


Quick question out of curiosity: Now that I have empty templates for the University, Shopping, and Downtown hoods. Could I create the original Bluewater, Downtown or University for a sub hood and now have it as empty of sims but with all the lots?
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#19 Old 16th Aug 2018 at 2:39 AM
It won't be empty of sims since the sims are playable's not townies. There may be an empty one around for download though.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
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