Tutorial: Clean custom neighbourhoods + townie creation (updated for Seasons)

[miros]

My issue was that there was no premade Maxis Neighborhood to use anymore. No buildings, no nothing. And I want all those lots, but I don't want the characters.

I installed Bluewater Village and Downtown in a throwaway hood so I could pack up all the lots for use in other 'hoods.

Edit: I then open each package with Clean Installer and delete all the Sims, leaving the empty lots.

[kytyngurl]

Just to doublecheck...

I'm going to be doing a custom 'hood tonight, no townies. I'm looking at the most recent walk-through for this (the one a page back) and I'm wondering one thing (and sorry if someone already said something about it and I stupidly missed it):

What about Pets? Is there a safe way to a) Keep the pets npcs/data in the game or b) restore it later? Is having no strays due to deletion in SIMPE a VBT? Am I going to have to uninstall Pets before cleaning everything up and re-install it later?

*goes to re-read the walkthrough a few more times before she tries this tonight*

[Magicmoon]

I did the whole clean neighborhood thing using the empty templates. But I wanted a few of the special characters. I used the mailbox to spawn a dead tree which allowed me to spawn some of these.

But the Grand Vampyres (sic) are strange. I can only get males. And some of these are dressed strangely rather than having the regular vampire costumes.

Is there a way to spawn a few Countesses?

Also, I removed nostrayrespawn from the game for one load session so that it would generate the original strays for me. Then I replaced it because I don't want more strays after these are "used up".  Does doing this also spawn the Leader of the pack? I ask because in my old hood he showed up on most lots to put my Sims into aspiration failure. But I've been playing several days now without seeing a wolf so I need to know whether I need to add them manually. I saw the skunk immediately in the game, so I know that was spawned.

[V]

I believe that it does spawn the Leader of the Pack when you take out the nostrayrespawn and then put it back later. I did this for a 'hood I created and made townie-and-stray-free (the bad way, shhhh). First, however, I played the 'hood for a few weeks with the nostrayrespawn in place and enjoyed the dearth of strays and their annoyances. The only reason I took the nostrayrespawn out temporarily was because I wanted to get the LotP for a specific sim. Well, also I was ready to learn to deal with all the strays again.

Actually I think that I left the nostrayrespawn out for a few sessions before I remembered to put it back. I remember that the first time that the LotP came onto a lot the game froze for a few minutes to create the character. The game also froze when I called the adoption agency to adopt a pet (so that it could create the adoption pool, I'm sure). After I had those characters I put the nostrayrespawn back into my downloads folder and all has been well for the time being.

[Chienne]

What about creating a new hood with the "New Hood" button?  BTW, I'm getting more and more corrupt Groups.cache and Accessory.cache files since installing Pets... so if your game suddenly quits loading past the first splash screen -- just delete those and all will be well!

Oh, thank you, thank you!  I've had this happen half a dozen times, and each time I uninstalled and reinstalled Pets.  The next time it happens, I'll try your idea.

[angelyne]

I tried this method and it worked pretty well.

I followed all instructions and installed all the blank templates.  I loaded the game, and created a character which I installed in an empty lot.  When I went to look at my character folder there were a dozen or so files there.  The files where the strays.  I haven't figured out how to remove them.  I might just keep them, because how bad can a few strays be? <cross fingers>

Anyway, the one thing which makes me wonder was the additions of 4 unknown characters.  The character files are missing, but something is pointing to them in the neighourhood file.

Anyone noticed those?

[miros]

The Unknowns are stuff like the Grim Reaper and the RC car.

[angelyne]

The Reaper is there and accounted for.  Dunno what the RC car is.

[myskaal]

I have no idea where the Unknowns come from either.

I did the same - clean hood with empty templates, made my peoples and counted the character files as they were made. No room for unknowns.
So I load up SimPE: the Grim Reaper, Crumplebottom, the Hula dancers, and the Therapist are all accounted for with their names and thumbnails. There are no unknowns in the hood at this time.

So I load back up and start to making my townies/downtownies. Carefullt watching the character folder. All created townies accounted for - no room for unknowns.

Close it all down, have a peek in SimPE. I now have a few unknowns. hm. Oh well - I decide to play a bit. So after a few sim days go by I decide to have a peek in SimPE again.
At this moment I have 12 unknowns.

All the strays are showing up in SimPE with names and thumbnails. All the adoptable pets are showing up in SimPE with names and thumbnails. All the townies and downtownies are showing up with names and thubnails.

Unknowns leave me baffled.

[angelyne]

so the number of unknows is growing ?  Hmmm, that's a real worry.  Sounds like BFBVS in the making

[Kyna]

One of the unknowns is the remote control car, one is the robots (apart from servos) and I have heard that the 3rd one (added by pets) is the wormrat cage.

If you look in the unknown's memories in SimPE you'll see they have gossip memories if you haven't used the lot debugger to clear all gossip.  This may help you to track down where that particular unknown is, and what object is creating these unknowns.  12 does seem a lot. 

At one time I had sentrybots in my front yards to zap gnome stealers.  I noticed in SimPE that the second unknown had gossip memories that related to activities that had happened in the front yards of the lots they were at, such as promotions, first kisses, etc.

[jrd]

Unknowns:
-Remove control car
-Riding robots
-Flying robots
-Birds

And if you use the echo carnival set one more is added. I think this is the clowns.

[angelyne]

Ok, so they are harmless? Just not recognized by SimsPE as of yet?

BTW, thank you for the instructions.  They worked quite well, apart from one bit, but that was due to my own stupidity.

I am toying with the idea of keeping the downtownies and just doing a massive makeover spree using sims surgery and just regular fidling.

Right now I am using SimsPE to export all my current characters and recreate them all in my new neighbourhood.  I wonder if I could simply zap all the memories from some of my characters, save them as a family, and then import them in the new game.  I know this method doesn't bring along any extra character files, but could it have unforseen negative effects?

[myskaal]

When I saw someone mention the wormrat was an unknown I figured the bird had to be one, too. I wonder if some of the others are the Leader of the Pack and maybe wolves?
I haven't played enough with Pets to know how any of that really works yet.


And yes thankyou, Jordi, for this tutorial and SaraMK for the empty templates. baaaaah!

I won't touch the question about importing a family. Someone who knows what they are talking about will probably answer that

[jsalemi]

No, the LotP and the wolves are actual characters.  You can actually 'tame' and adopt them, though they'll still keep much of their wolf-like behavior.

[selzi]

Thank you for the great tutorial! I just followed your instructions and set up a fresh and clean neighborhood. I even downloaded some new CAS faces and was getting ready to create some downtownies via the NPC and townie tree when I noticed a strange thing: When I create downtownies the game seems to spawn some "premade" faces which look totally different from my CAS replacement faces. In fact I even recognized some of the "standard downtownies" being spawned. How can that happen when I deleted all their characters and replaced my CAS faces with prettier ones? Are those ugly downtownies somewhat "hardwired" in the game?

I think I'll switch over to making normal townies for the moment - they ARE using my CAS replacement faces.

[SaraMK]

How can that happen when I deleted all their characters and replaced my CAS faces with prettier ones? Are those ugly downtownies somewhat "hardwired" in the game?

Exactly.

Make townies, and then use the Teleporter Shrub to turn them into Downtownies.

[selzi]

Make townies, and then use the Teleporter Shrub to turn them into Downtownies.

Thanks, I'll do that! I noticed the same thing happens when I create NPCs via the NPC and townie tree. So what, I'll just wait for my game to create the NPCs when needed.

[blubug]

Interesting. I have no more ugly townies when I used this tutorial and CAS replacements. All have pretty, upturned noses instead of the flat ones I used to get before. They had to be regenerated of course.

[suziblue]

I am not awesome-this method is not working for me.  I have pets, and the only custom material I have installed right now is the Pets director's cut.

Whenever I attempt to create a new neighbourhood after renaming N001, the game quits and the invisible "Pets" neighbourhood becomes visible (I can't do anything with it though).  I get a whole new N001, defaut townies and all.

I, too, must be unawesome. The same thing has been happening for me. Multiple times. Have reset and retried using empty templates and renaming.

 BUT wait, right in the middle of posting this this reply I went back and did yet another re-read and lo and behold --- I am truly unawesome. I must confess I read the directions wrong.

This may have happened to you, too, Zerthimon. Did you perhaps change the name of N001 in .../My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods instead of C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods?

Although it pains me to admit it, that is what I was doing wrong. As soon as I fixed that little problem it worked beautifully!      So Thank You Jordi!

[Nadira]

Thanks to these wonderful instructions I do not have problems with creating a clean NBH  but
after carefully reading through all posts, I just want to clear things a final time for myself concerning custom Campus-subNBHs.

If I understood correctly there is - at the present time - no way to get a clean Campus?
Empty templates do not work according to JMP (besides - the link seem to be broken, there is only an unusable .7z file there)
and renaming the U001 file does not work either (at least for me, I tried several times and each time 97 characters were created).

No other way out?

[jrd]

As far as I know there is no way to absolutely prevent the Service NPCs from being generated while creating a campus, as well as at least one dormie.
So that means as an absolute minimum you get the following Sims:
24 professors (one male, one female for each major)
1 cow mascot
1 llama mascot
1 cheerleader
1 food server
1 sports trainer
1 dormie for the SS
----------------------+
30 Sims

If you do not have antiredundancy and no dormie respawn, you will get more. 3 of all (non-Professor) Service NPCs, and IIRC 20-odd dormies.

The empty templates work for me. I always add an empty U001, U002, or U003 to my 'hoods.

[SaraMK]

Thanks to these wonderful instructions I do not have problems with creating a clean NBH  but
after carefully reading through all posts, I just want to clear things a final time for myself concerning custom Campus-subNBHs.

If I understood correctly there is - at the present time - no way to get a clean Campus?
Empty templates do not work according to JMP (besides - the link seem to be broken, there is only an unusable .7z file there)

What do you mean "unusable .7z?" You simply need to unzip it with WinRAR. It's a fairly standard compressed format, like .rar and .zip.

Jordi covered a lot of this, but anyway....

JMP is slightly misleading. Empty templates work far better than not having empty templates installed. It is true that Uni will generate a great number of sims even with empty templates installed, but at least they will not be the ugly default sims that would normally get dumped into your neighborhood as soon as a Uni is attached. Instead, they will be generated as needed (professors generated immediately, dormies when room in a dorm is available, NPC's when needed, etc). If you don't use the empty templates, the second you attach a Uni you get 3 cows, 3 llamas, 3 coaches, and 3 of every other crap, plus dozens of nasty-looking dormies, dumped into your neighborhood.

Here's what happens when all of the available empty templates are installed:

Create a custom neighborhood = ZERO sims are in the neighborhood. ZERO pets, too.
Attach Downtown = ZERO sims in the neighborhood.
Attach Bluewater Village = ZERO sims in the neighborhood.
Attach a Uni = ZERO sims in the neighborhood.

See? Everything that can be attached is attached, and there are NO SIMS. Period. Any sim that the game generates after this point will be a unique sim, and will be generated as needed. Of course, the game thinks it needs 24 professors... nothing you can do about this kind of nonsense.

Here's what happens once you actually play the neighborhood, assuming you use all the "stop crap from being generated" hacks, which is to say notownieregen, nossrespawn, nostrayrespawn, nodormierespawn, and antiredundancy.

Moving in a family of two sims and playing for 2 days without leaving lot = 2 playable sims + paperboy + gypsy + mailman + bus driver = total 6 sims

Sending an adult sim in a taxi to a community lot for 6 hours = 2 req'd NPC's (clerk, bartender) generated = total 8 sims

Sending an adult sim in a taxi to a Blue Water community lot for 6 hours = 0 sims generated (same clerk reused) = 8 sims total

Sending an adult sim in a taxi to a Downtown community lot for two days = 5 req'd NPC's generated (cook, waiter, host, dj, grand vamp... same bartender reused) = 13 sims total

Sending a teen to Uni  and moving into an 8-room dorm = 1 req'd NPC created (cafeteria worker) + 24 professors generated = total 38 sims


I think Pescado might need to tell us what precisely he meant by "do not help," because his definition may be different than mine. I personally think that having the game generate fresh NPC's only as needed is a huge help. Using all the hacks mentioned in this post can keep your NPC/townie population very low indeed.

So, honestly, I don't know what you people are doing wrong. If you installed empty templates and you are still getting 97 (or however many) characters dumped into your neighborhoods, you forgot to delete everything from the Characters folder. Try reading the instructions again.

[Nadira]

Jordi:
Thanks for your help! So my problem seems to be that I cannot get at the empty templates yet (except your upload of the pets template, which works perfectly for me).

SaraMK:
When I come upon a file I do not know I usually test if anything on my PC will open it - and I am very familiar with .rar and .zip files. But .7z is unknown to me, and my WinRAR simply does not recognize this format (keeps telling me its an empty file). So I need your help how to set on this problem!
Besides - I read ALL instructions VERY carefully (and yours are very precise - thanks for the great amount of work you put into this project - and would even help a complete dummy to do it right - which I am definitely not), but as I cannot get at the empty templates, I have not even arrived at the point of deleting anything in the characters folder ...

[myskaal]

Are you able to to right click on the file, select open or open with, and then choose WinRAR frmo the list? If so you should be able to check the use this program every time box and have it recognized from then on.
Odd that it is unrecognized!

___

A double checking for stupidity question regarding the clean templates: Do the old game hoods need to be restored before updating to a new XPack or Stuff pack?