Empty and Cleaned-up Templates. [UPDATED]

[SaraMK]

If I have to do this, then I think I would be inclined to follow Pescado's tutorial if that seems to be the safest method.  But then that would require having to create "fresh" hoods, using Dea's fixed version.  Then, I would go into the game and follow the tutorial.  After cleaning them up, then I would have to go back and use the cleaned neighborhoods as the templates now.  Right?

Well, my method is basically as safe as Pescado's if we are talking about the Maxis neighborhoods, since you would only be deleting sims who don't know each other. But, I would get into the habit of using Pescado's method, because it is both easier and has wider applications.

Right, if you were to use Pescado's method combined with Dea's fixes and whatever bits of my tutorial you think apply, you would need to let the game create the neighborhoods, edit them as needed, and then use them (that is, the ones in My Docs) to replace the actual templates (in Program Files). There are several potential problems with this, the main one being the code that gets added to the files based on what EP's you have. If you ever uninstall any EP's, there is a chance that the game will blow up the next time you try to restart the Maxis neighborhoods, since they will be marked as requiring those EP's. For example, having Pets installed adds the "Learned Behavior" code to the Neighborhoods file. I really don't know what would happen if that code was in there but you uninstalled Pets. Maybe nothing at all would happen, but it seems kind of iffy to me.

These are the files I have to keep, right?  And all other files that you don't list here are the ones I delete.

Exactly.

[SaraMK]

Okay, here are the files that I found. Let me know if you hate 4shared, since apparently it does not work for some people.

Keep in mind that these were made for the merged 'hood, so they are all heavily modified, with names, dna, memories... all that stuff that I personally felt needed to be fixed.

I assume you can install these okay? All that's included is the Characters folder and the Neighborhood file, so you'd obviously need to keep all the other stuff, as opposed to doing something silly like deleting them.

I also included a separate file, which is a lot stuffed with all the Pleasantview townies, since those were purged out of the modded Pleasantview... in case you think you might miss them.

[syberspunk]

Okay, here are the files that I found. Let me know if you hate 4shared, since apparently it does not work for some people.

Many, many, many, a thousand thank yous Sara!   Well... I suppose I should offer my thank yous after I've been able to successfully download those files.  Lol.  Since, I'm at work right now, and I won't be able to test out the link until I gets home.  Hopefully I won't have any problems with the 4shared site. *crosses fingers*

Keep in mind that these were made for the merged 'hood, so they are all heavily modified, with names, dna, memories... all that stuff that I personally felt needed to be fixed.

Oh, I don't mind at all!  Heck, if there are things that are broked and you went ahead and did all the legwork and fixed 'em ahead of time, then that's even more awesome!!  It means less work for me to do, and more importantly, less things that I am likely to fux0r up if I tried it myself.
 

I assume you can install these okay? All that's included is the Characters folder and the Neighborhood file, so you'd obviously need to keep all the other stuff, as opposed to doing something silly like deleting them.

I also included a separate file, which is a lot stuffed with all the Pleasantview townies, since those were purged out of the modded Pleasantview... in case you think you might miss them.

I think I should be good to go. Last night, I used your cleaned up Uni templates.  I installed La Fiesta Tech and the game added 17 new sims.  So far... so good... I thiink.  I didn't have time to check in SimPE, but I suspect that at least 15 of them correspond to the cleaned up sims in the Characters folder of U002 (which only contained 15 character files).  I'm not sure what the other 2 were, but I'll suss around tonite and inspect it.  I made a back up of my game (I make tons of backups) in case something goes 'splodie.  But after several questions around, I was hoping to add La Fiesta Tech and Academie Le Tour to my Sims State.  Theoretically, with antiredundancy in place, and using your clean templates, I should only get the additional Maxis ones added.  And the game should hopefully share profs between hoods.

Anyways, that seemed to work fine so far.  I'll check the sims that were created, and if looks good, then I will add Academie Le Tour tonight, and maybe futz around with adding Strangetown and Veronaville as addition subburbs too! Hehe.  I'm probably heading towards massive BFBVFS, but meh, I've backed my game up, so I can always revert to a smaller 'hood.  Hopefully this won't take too long, so I could maybe, actually get some gameplay in tonight.

Ste

ETA: I checked again, I looked in the wrong folder.  The U002 folder of characters had 17 files in it, and that's exactly how many files were added.  Silly me, I was looking in the U001 folder, so of course it didn't match.   So definitely thanks again for these, I'm gonna add Academie Le Tour now.  Oh, and I also managed to successfully download the clean templates and the pleasantview townies backup.  So again thanks!

* syberspunk mashes the thanks button repeatedly!

[Sagana]

Hi again, by the way, adding the empty templates for Pets and Seasons, loading my already created hood and then putting the EA backups back for my family worked perfectly except for one little glitch - thank you.

The one little glitch - I ended up with the Katz family in the bin. I'm not sure if I failed to follow directions properly or what. I don't mind that one so bad - the ones I really wanted to get rid of were the Seasons ones, but it's interesting that the cat lady showed up but the fellow with the dog (I don't remember his name) didn't. So the inhabited house/lot binned Pets family showed in the game but the simbinned characters went away fine And no any of them from Seasons. (still dancing)

[SaraMK]

The one little glitch - I ended up with the Katz family in the bin. I'm not sure if I failed to follow directions properly or what. I don't mind that one so bad - the ones I really wanted to get rid of were the Seasons ones, but it's interesting that the cat lady showed up but the fellow with the dog (I don't remember his name) didn't. So the inhabited house/lot binned Pets family showed in the game but the simbinned characters went away fine And no any of them from Seasons. (still dancing)

You must have missed the little note about Pets lot binned families (ones is occupied houses). I should put the instructions more prominently, and closer to the actual download link, since not everyone reads the entire instructions once they figure out the basic idea.

To get rid of the Pets pre-made lot-binned families, do this:

Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog

Delete everything inside that folder (after making a backup, in case you ever want them back).

This stops the game from putting the occupied houses in the lots bin.


This won't help with the ones already added to your neighborhood, of course.


By the way, has anyone noticed how  aggressively EA/Maxis is shoving their sims down our throats? It used to be they merely came from whatever new sub-hood was added with the EP. Now we have to worry about "stealthy" sub-hoods and occupied houses, too.   

[J. M. Pescado]

The Maxis families in the lot bin are harmless and not a part of your neighborhood files. You can delete them individually in-game just fine, since they're not actually in your neighborhood files unless you plop them.

[SaraMK]

Good to know.

Still hate them.

[SaraMK]

Elstone,

Okay, I admit I have absolutely no clue what all your numbers mean... I stared at them for a while, but then I decided that I would just answer the questions you had that I did   understand.

Seasons gave us TWO neighborhoods. G001 is a self-contained neighborhood, Riverblossom Hills, that can be selected from the neighborhood selection screen. I have NOT modded this in any way, so the number of sims in this neighborhood will not change because of installing any of the templates. G002 is a "stealthy" sub-hood that gets attached to ALL neighborhoods (including G001). It contains ONLY the two binned families and nothing else. That is what my empty G001 template kills, nothing less and nothing more. That is why the Seasons families are gone for you.

The Pets families are safe to delete. In the future to stop them from getting dumped into every neighborhood you need to follow the directions I gave to Sagana just a few posts above yours. The empty templates downloaded here will NOT stop the binned Pets families from appearing.

So that's about all I understood from your post. I do not understand what your numbers mean. Are you saying that despite installing the empty templates (all of them) you are still getting hundreds of character files in every neighborhood?

Where you say # of Character Files in My Documents neighborhoods with 'clean'
templates of Uni, Downtown, Bluewater, original base neighborhoods
, let's take N001 as an example. You are saying that  BEFORE you load the neighborhood, you have 170 characters, and after you load it you have 187? This would be explained if you are NOT using empty Pets and Seasons templates. One of them is adding those characters, and I'm guessing it's the Seasons one because that's the one that has 17 sims in it. The Pets one has over 100, I think. As for the 200-------238----------253 numbers, they are explained thus: the game auto-creates certain NPCs as soon as you attach those sub-hoods. For example, adding Uni (as soon as you clicke the button to add it), you would get at least 24 new character files (professors). I'm not sure how many files Downtown and Bluewater would auto-create, but I'm guessing at least a few. You should install all of Pescado's norespawn and antiredundancy hacks to stop some of this auto-creation. You might want to see my post at http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=5861.msg208040#msg208040

I don't know if any of this helps you with your problem. Try to explain again what exactly is WRONG with what's currently happening in your game, because that's the part I'm not really getting. The numbers you posted can be explained  as normal game behavior, but I get the feeling you aren't happy with the numbers... but I'm not sure what it is you were hoping would happen instead.

[SaraMK]

No, no, I was complimenting you for helping my game so nicely and showing you what a difference it made to cut the numbers of sim character files!

 

Math is not   my strongpoint, so  numbers confuse me very easily. I tend to assume that if someone posts numbers, it isn't a good thing.

[Sagana]

Thanks JM. I'll delete the catlady then as I certainly haven't plopped her.

And thank you Sara. What I did was copy/paste the instructions for that portion of the file to a text program so I could follow them along while I was doing it and missed out the line further down. Now I know for next time but hopefully this hood, with no junk in it, will last awhile.

I do wish EA gave more choices. They should let you choose how many and which ones of these folks you want in your neighborhoods. That doesn't seem like impossible coding to me (but I know from Adam). I had to laugh about you and the numbers. I'm exactly the same way - numbers = trouble in my book

[Standardliving]

Were we supose to add our own templates after using the 'Empty' template? Which I didn't do, btw. Otherwise I messed up somehow because CAS and Bodyshop crash everytime I try to load either one. Which makes sense, in a way.

[Argon]

*THIS IS NOT PLEASANTVIEW, IT IS A TEMPLATE FOR CUSTOM NEIGHBORHOODS**

I noticed that all the custom Neighborhoods still get a lot of bloat even with these empty templates, like text from families/lots in Pleasantview and a bunch of mysterious 3IDRs and BINXs (which turned out to be bought clothing for wardrobes). So here's my version if anyone wants to use it (only tested with Seasons), I even corrected some of the NPC Sim Descriptions that get imported wrong for new neighborhoods. Both the alien and plant NPCs have SimDNA. For best results, delete the other imported neighborhood files. The templates screw up the NPCs again unless their Sim Description is corrected or removed from the template (the empty templates on this page may be fine, I haven't checked).

Backup & Delete Pleasantview (N001) from:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

And copy N001 from this file to there.

Neighborhood should be completely empty, no bought clothes, wants/fears,
unneeded SimDNA, lot discriptions from Pleasantview, etc.

NPC Sim Descriptions were also corrected to reflect what the default
neighborhoods and imported neighborhoods had in them. This avoids
Mrs. Crumplebottom being treated as an adult male by the game
among other things.

[Argon]

oh no sorry, I meant the NPCs like the Grim Reaper, Therapist, parrot, remote control car, Pollination Technician, etc. not the service NPCs. They get generated by the game when it needs one, so you don't have to manually create them if you don't want to.

[TizRus]

When I try to d/l the empty templates, they come with and extension of .7z and I can't do anything with them. What does this mean?

[SaraMK]

When I try to d/l the empty templates, they come with and extension of .7z and I can't do anything with them. What does this mean?

WinRAR can unzip the .7z (7Zip) format. You may need to set the file association in WinRAR's preferences/options. If you don't have WinRAR, the freeware 7Zip program will unzip them.

[Shivani]

Yes, it's exactly like you said. You can create a new neighborhood and replace the Pleasantview one. Any townies and NPCs that are in the neighborhood will then be transfered to every custom neighborhood you create. I did that in my own game, because who wants to create townies over and over in every new neighborhood?

It's only been like...forever, but I did finally get around to testing this myself, and as you say, it works perfectly.  I now have a set of Potterverse townies roaming the wilds (though, it seems in this new neighborhood, it's Hermione that likes to kick people to the curb rather than Voldybear, so far).

[Lorelei]

WinRAR can unzip the .7z (7Zip) format. You may need to set the file association in WinRAR's preferences/options. If you don't have WinRAR, the freeware 7Zip program will unzip them.

I believe Quaxi's site (SimPE) has a link to the 7z program if you want it. I got it but haven't needed to use it with WinRAR installed.

[missangelica]

First, let me thank you for doing this for the community.  I've been looking at this thread for a while and decided to finally take the plunge to eliminate the EA Maxis scourge!  Now all the 'hoods and sub 'hoods in my game are properly expunged except for the new 'hood, RiverBlossom Hills.  Are you planning to do that 'hood as well?

[sara_dippity]

So I'm going to try a different way. I have the clean templates and all the townie spawn hacks in place. I have no redundancy. So I was using the townie tree to hand pick townies (exiting the lot if I didn't like the ones I got) and I believe my problem was due to corrupted data related to the memory leak, too much reloading and eventually hood blew up. I restored the hood from a backup made right before the townie creation and decided to just let the game create townies. After all, I do not desire to exit the game and reboot the computer every time the game spews out an adult male in makeup with pointy ears (I had three of those! Not gothic makeup either! What the hell?). So, I figured I'd just let the game generate needed npcs and sim surgery the terrifying ones.
Now, the question is: The game did seem to be generating townies using some kind of odd template. I think this due to some of the repetitions I got. However, the templates were even more bizzare than normal. Should I remove the clean templates and go back to the old one during townie creation, or is the template that is being used residing elsewhere?

[SaraMK]

These empty templates have nothing to do with the face templates used to generate townies. Besides, replacing the empty templates with the original ones at this point won't have any effect on existing neighborhoods, since they are used only when a neighborhood is created or a sub-hood attached.

Did you download a face-template replacement package somewhere?  Or maybe one of the Maxis downloadable sims that come with a face template (see this for a list)?

Normal TOWNIES should not be generated with makeup. Downtownies, however, are based on specific sim templates. You should not attempt to create Downtownies with the Tree, because you will get repetition of ugly Maxis sims, rather than having the game generate fresh sims. Read Jordi's thread about custom neighborhoods for more info.

[sara_dippity]

These were npc type townies, pizza men and such. I wasn't making normal townies but rather npc townies. And they were weird, but not plane-face guy weird. Weird more for things like a specific face type always came with makeup it was a male) and two or three face types always had... get this.. costume makeup. One with the marks under the eyes like a football player (he had eyeshadow on too, the kind that shaded above and below the eye in a light black), one girl with the face paint Titania came with (she had beautiful eyes too...) and twice that pictish paint came up. The same hair styles came up with each facepaint/facial structure type, but the color of the hair varried. The male teen with elf ears always had white base, thick eyeliner and black lipstick with the sholdier length male hair.
You know, like outfits and hair seem packaged together on certain townies and npcs: nannies only have a certain range of hairstyles; that red dress that got into the game due to a contest (the one with the armband and skirt) always has a wavy sholdier length hair, thick eyeliner and red lipstick; there's a guy in the blue disco shirt with a pompadour, that kind of thing. Not just facial structure but a whole stereotype. I've just never seen some of these templates, maybe because they are npc specific and I've never tried to create npcs before.

[jrd]

In Seasons (possibly also Pets) the NPC/Townie tree will use Downtownie templates for NPCs. That is what you are seeing.
Autospawned NPCs still work normally.

[SaraMK]

In Seasons (possibly also Pets) the NPC/Townie tree will use Downtownie templates for NPCs. That is what you are seeing.
Autospawned NPCs still work normally.

Ugggghhhh!

WTF, Maxis?

I think it must be Pets that did this, because now that I think back, I do recall getting a maid who had makeup on, which I thought was odd, but decided it was a random glitch.

[stormygsa]

I swear someone from Maxis EA must lurk around here and see when the awesome ones fix one of their mistakes, then figure out a way to bornk it (instead of doing it right the first time). 

[witch]

Yeah, they lurk alright - to see how our awesome modders fix the coding. Then fail to duplicate that without borking something else.