Pleasantview, Strangetown & Veronaville Project [UPDATED]

[uaintjak]

Hi - forgive me for being a total tool, but the thing I download is called Neighborhoods.7z

How do I turn it into a neighborhoods folder?

[BlueSoup]

It was zipped with 7Zip.  I don't know if regular unzippers will work, but you can download 7Zip (it's free) and use that.  it works for rar and zip and such, so it's rather useful. 

[uaintjak]

Thanks Blue.

I dream of a world...a world with an unzip program that unzips everything.  Even me.

[SaraMK]

WinRar handles .7z files just fine, and so do most other zip tools that handle multiple types of files.

The reason 7Zip was used was because it is far superior to any other archive format. Compare: 7Zip got the Neighborhoods folder down to 77MB, WinZip got a horrid 166MB, and WinRAR got 138MB. Not much else to say, huh?

Here is a full list of programs that support .7z files. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7z#External_links

[akatonbo]

Thanks Blue.

I dream of a world...a world with an unzip program that unzips everything.  Even me.

http://www.tugzip.com/

Well, that one probably won't unzip you, but it WILL unzup LZH (what I got it for), RAR (what I mostly use it for), 7z, and any other format I've heard of and some that I hadn't. It doesn't appear to be able to create RAR files, though, so I suppose I'll have to pick something up for that eventually.

(Actually, I think I have 7zip on my computer, from back when I was looking for something for LZH, but TugZip won at the time.)

[jrd]

I use Powerarchiver. Does everything.

It's not free anymore, but I consider it worth the price.

[Evarie]

Great job, SaraMK. Any chance of a non-OFB version? Or at least a simple tutorial for the OFB-deprived?

[SaraMK]

Great job, SaraMK. Any chance of a non-OFB version? Or at least a simple tutorial for the OFB-deprived?

I'm going to try to make one that only requires TS2+NL.

[dadditude]

Did you ever post the cleaned up Uni templates you mentioned, or did I just miss them?

[SaraMK]

Did you ever post the cleaned up Uni templates you mentioned, or did I just miss them?

Not yet. I'm done with the empty ones, so I'll post those in a short while. The cleaned up ones for Uni and NL should be ready today too. The OFB one is the one I don't think can be cleaned up, other than to completely empty it of all sims, because all the playable sims know townies and NPCs. Maxis obviously played that neighborhood extensively to get some of those businesses up to a high level.

EDIT: Posted. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4306.0

[miramis]

I just want to say that I downloaded this the other day and am totally loving it so far, though I'm only in the early stages yet.  Thanks so much, for sharing what must have taken an awful lot of work.

[Morphar]

I fetched this strange thing and I think I like it. My interest is in Sim DNA so I checked
the DNA of some characters, Jill and Johnny Smith, Strangetown and Buttom Sommerdream, Veronaville.
I noticed that the DNA was corrected and that the Smith's was heterozygous and the Summerdream homozygouss.
That is exactly as the corrected code that Starrkist have done in another thread here.
Is it a similar correction or is it the same?

Thank you for making this.

[SaraMK]

I fetched this strange thing and I think I like it. My interest is in Sim DNA so I checked
the DNA of some characters, Jill and Johnny Smith, Strangetown and Buttom Sommerdream, Veronaville.
I noticed that the DNA was corrected and that the Smith's was heterozygous and the Summerdream homozygouss.
That is exactly as the corrected code that Starrkist have done in another thread here.
Is it a similar correction or is it the same?

Thank you for making this.

For Strangetown characters, I used the DNA changes that were posted by baratron in this thread: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1423.0

For Veronaville, I fixed the DNA in whatever way made sense to me. The Summerdream kids are supposed to be adopted, so that is why they are homozygous for their skintone, eye, and hair colors. It would not make sense to make them heterozygous using the DNA of their adoptive parents.

[Morphar]

For Strangetown characters, I used the DNA changes that were posted by baratron in this thread: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1423.0

Do you mean the complete file posted by Starrkist and hosted by Simsbaby at the end of that thread or just the examples for some of the characters posted by baratron ?

For Veronaville, I fixed the DNA in whatever way made sense to me. The Summerdream kids are supposed to be adopted, so that is why they are homozygous for their skintone, eye, and hair colors. It would not make sense to make them heterozygous using the DNA of their adoptive parents.

OK, I don't know Veronaville that well. I checked the wrong guy then. But there are heterozygous people in Veronaville too that you have changed. Good.  You must have put a lot of effort on this. Great!!

[SaraMK]

Do you mean the complete file posted by Starrkist and hosted by Simsbaby at the end of that thread or just the examples for some of the characters posted by baratron ?

Just the info by baratron. I haven't looked at what Starrkist has done, although I'm sure she did a good job fixing the neighborhoods too.

[Skaven]

After downloading and installing the neighborhood, when I go into Pleasantville I get some of the downtown lots appearing in strange locations (middle of the river, for instance) and overlapping on each other.  I have all of the listed EPs.  Did I do something wrong?

[SaraMK]

After downloading and installing the neighborhood, when I go into Pleasantville I get some of the downtown lots appearing in strange locations (middle of the river, for instance) and overlapping on each other.  I have all of the listed EPs.  Did I do something wrong?

Without more info, I would say it sounds like one neighborhood has the same ID as this one. Did you already have some neighborhoods and you just added this one to them? Because that won't work.

There is definitely something wrong if that's happening.

EDIT: When you unzipped the neighborhood, did you make sure that the directory structure (folders and subfolders) was kept? Some programs just unzip all the files and dump them into one folder, disregarding subfolders.

[Skaven]

Thanks for the response SaraMK - I moved all of my existing neighborhoods to a backup folder and yours is the only one in my neighborhoods directory.  Unrar appears to have maintained the directory structure when I uncompressed your file. 

[SaraMK]

Thanks for the response SaraMK - I moved all of my existing neighborhoods to a backup folder and yours is the only one in my neighborhoods directory.  Unrar appears to have maintained the directory structure when I uncompressed your file. 

I don't know what else it could be.

Open the Neighborhoods folder and make sure there isn't anything weird in there, like a second Neighborhoods folder. I just thought of the possibility that you used the "unzip to..." command on WinRAR, which would have created an extra Neighborhoods folder. Although I would have thought that would cause none of the neighborhoods to show up at all, not show up but be messed up.

I guess you could try reinstalling it from the beginning.

[Skaven]

I started over with a download from another source and got the same result.  Both Downtown and Pleasantville have mixed up lots.  Veronaville and Strangetown look okay.  Oh well, it was worth a try.

[ElfPuddle]

Because I'm slower than the average bear.....

I just installed OFB (um, two days ago) and therefore just starting this wonderful project. I know I thanked you before for the work, SaraMK, but the results deserve another thank you! This is what I was hoping for when I first got TS2. I'm yours, forever. 

[dragynphly]

I love this neighborhood! The crappy characters the game generates bug the crap out of me. Especially the townie kids the playables want to drag home from school and especially using the find-a-mate crystal ball... it always pulls up the fugliest people possible from the pool of non-playables. But it's getting to be tiresome to run gardening macros on some of the bigger lots, and I can't call for a gardener because there aren't any.

Does anyone know where there might be a hack or command line entry to generate npc's only? Or a hacked object that you can use to turn sims into npc's? I don't want any of the other craptacular characters, but a few of the npc's might be nice

[miros]

The new version of antiredundancy will create one (1) NPC of the needed type if there aren't any.

[dragynphly]

Thanks miros! 

[uaintjak]

Quick question about fixing Maxis's broke sims...

I know how to correct the DNA of the Strangetown/Veronaville sims, but how do I go about fixing Olivia's bugged pregnancy if I bring her back from the dead?  Also, are there any other sim-related problems I need to look out for?

(I know that you fixed this in your original download, SaraMK, but if I wanted to combine the neighborhoods on my own, how would I go about fixing the pregnancy and any other issues?)