Life Stories Neighborhoods, Safe to use in TS2?

[Kralore]

I was wondering if it would be safe to use the 2 lifestory neighborhoods in TS2.  What I did was, play both stories to get them to freeplay mode, I then used deleteallcharacters on the hoods, and then deleted all the houses from the hoods. Will it be safe to transfer them over to Sims 2 as subhoods using the "Merging neighborhoods" tutorial?

[Flamingo]

I'd imagine that you'd need the content in Life Stories that wasn't in TS2, but aside from that, I really don't know.

[SaraMK]

I have a tutorial somewhere about moving the neighborhoods into TS2, but what the heck would you want to move them for if you've deleted all the sims and the houses?

I mean, you've basically just made completely empty terrains, right? Why not just grab the terrain files out of the SC4 Terrains folder?

It is safe to move them, although you need both NL and OFB installed, otherwise you will most likely get crashes... although maybe with completely empty neighborhoods you won't. Also, you'd need to go into SimPE and purge all the dangling SWAFs and other crap left over from the deleteallcharacters.

If you really want a tutorial, do a search for my username and Life Stories or something like that.

[Kralore]

but what the heck would you want to move them for if you've deleted all the sims and the houses?

I was mainly thinking that removing all the sims and houses would reduce the chance of any serious problems when running the hoods in Sims 2.

I mean, you've basically just made completely empty terrains, right? Why not just grab the terrain files out of the SC4 Terrains folder?

That's actually the problem LOL, for some strange reason EA included 3 versions of the Riley's story Four Corners hood terrain and thats all, no other terrain files are there. There is no terrain file for Vincent's Bitville hood.  I also like the idea of the hood having all the existing hood decorations.

I had a feeling I was missing something and it was deleting the SWAF's etc that you mentioned.

[Lana B]

If you've got SimPE, why not just use terrain surgery?

[Zazazu]

I mean, you've basically just made completely empty terrains, right? Why not just grab the terrain files out of the SC4 Terrains folder?

That's actually the problem LOL, for some strange reason EA included 3 versions of the Riley's story Four Corners hood terrain and thats all, no other terrain files are there. There is no terrain file for Vincent's Bitville hood.  I also like the idea of the hood having all the existing hood decorations.

I had a feeling I was missing something and it was deleting the SWAF's etc that you mentioned.

That doesn't make sense. The hood can't exist without the terrain file, I believe. Can you list which files you see?

*resolves to acquire Life Stories soon*

[Gwill]

* Gwill notices the use of the term "acquire"

[Kralore]

If you've got SimPE, why not just use terrain surgery?

I don't believe there is an actual "Terrain Surgery" tool similar to the "Sim Surgery" tool.  Simpe does let you edit the NHTR values to change things in an exsisting hood though.  One thing I might try is to create an empty custom hood in Sims 2, Export the NHTR and NHTG resources from the Lifestories hoods and import them into the empty custom Sims 2 hood and see what I get.

That doesn't make sense. The hood can't exist without the terrain file, I believe. Can you list which files you see?
*resolves to acquire Life Stories soon*

The sc4 terrain files are used one time only and that's when a neighborhood is generated from them. Once the hood is generated those sc4 files are no longer used or needed.

Sims 2 and Lifestories don't actually use sc4 terrain files when they put the pre-made hoods in your game (Pleasantview, Strangetown etc). The hoods are already generated from the sc4 files on the install cd/dvd.

[Kyna]

There's a tutorial in the War Room on how to do neighbourhood terrain surgery using SimPE.

[Lana B]

There's a tutorial in the War Room on how to do neighbourhood terrain surgery using SimPE.

Thanks Kyna. I did a search for terrain surgery and got zero results which puzzled me as I have done it several times using that tutorial.

[Zazazu]

* Gwill notices the use of the term "acquire"

Ah, original included no quotes, hence EALink got a little action from me last night, though I did do the whole cracked .exe thing again. I only would "acquire" a SP, and so far none have had any actual content to make me even want to do that.

[Kralore]

There's a tutorial in the War Room on how to do neighbourhood terrain surgery using SimPE.

Thanks for the link,  I'm going to try a couple different methods of getting lifestories hoods into Sims 2 and see how they run.

[Alexx]

Yes it's absolutely safe.All you need is deleteallcharacters in Life Stories - Free Play Hood and then put N002 folder from LS to TS2.
I started playing more then month ago with N002 hood in TS2 and only problem is walls and floors in LS houses that I needed to
replace.
P.S. And of course before deleteallcharacters in LS you must move out all sims from their houses to hood family bin.