More Awesome Than You!

I have a neighbourhood that I've been playing on and off ever since the base game came out and when the uni ep came out I added one of the standard Maxis unis to it. Later on I decided I'd rather have a custom uni and added a second university hood to the game.

Is it safe for me to delete the first university hood? All the professors and dormies from that hood appear in the second uni hood so I assume they are shared between the two, are they specifically linked to the first uni hood though?

Yes you can delete the university. all the students, NPC and professors will remain in the game.
If you used dorms in the deleted university and dormies already moved in they'll retain the previous information about their room and will not re-appear as residents in the new nuniversity. If you had several dorms the game will create new dormies instead of reusing the existing now homeless ones.

Unless you use Pescado's nodormieregen hack, which stops the game from making new ones.  Very recommended, especially if you're going to delete a university.  Also, before you delete the uni you should go to any dorms in it that have playables in them and move the playables out to the student bin first.  Then you can delete the uni.

TwoJeffs college dormie controller also reuses existing dormies first, and gives you the ability to choose the gender.  You can find the original over on inteen, or Ste's modified version that includes Pescado's noundeaddormies here in Ste's forums.

Thanks for the advice. I was worried that deleting the uni might delete the sims and cause problems and I hadn't thought about moving the playables that came with the 'hood to the sim bin (like the Greek House people) so it's a good job I checked. I have both those hacks you mentioned jsalemi already so I guess I'm good to go!

I'm assuming this resets the dorms (removing non-playable residents) and avoids the issue of non-playable dormies thinking they live in a dorm at a uni that no longer exists, making them show up normally in the new uni.  Is this right?

Yup, that's what it does.

fyi - It wouldn't have deleted the sims.  When you delete any sub-hood, playables just get dumped in the simbin.  You need to clean up potential messes though, like dormies in dorms or owned businesses in a sub-hood.

That's really good to know actually, I might consider deleting the downtown in that neighbourhood then since I never use it!

Actually, I don't think the game will let you do that. Once you assign a downtown, a bunch of special sims are added to your hood (downtownies, Grand Vampires, Mrs. Crumplebottom, etc).  Since they're restricted to downtown, they won't end up in your regular hood if you delete it.  So the game just won't let you delete the last downtown.

Same with universities -- once you add them, you have to have at least one left in the game.  You can't delete the last one.

If you never use the downtown, it's not really harming anything to leave it there ignored.  Maybe it increases your hood loading time by 30 seconds. :)

I guess you could get rid of the Downtown by uninstalling Nightlife, but I've no idea what sort of mess that would leave behind.  Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should! I downloaded a hood with uni and downtown when I only had base game and OFB.  The main hood loaded with all the playables from the downtown and uni in the simbin.  I wasn't that worried about causing problems, I just wanted to see what it looked like as best I could. 

If it's adding to the loading time, deleting lots might help. That's safer than deleting sims.  As long as they aren't owned businesses that is....

And don't forget, if you have OFB all of the downtown businesses are buyable, too.  So if you're running out of space or new businesses in Bluewater, you can plop more businesses in downtown, or buy the ones there.

So, I got tired of La Fiesta Tech, so I moved my playable students to the sim bin to close out the dorms.  I loaded Academie La Tour, making 2 universities on my hood.  I moved my playables in, and then went back and deleted LFT.

It appears that my dormies from the LFT do in fact show up in ALT, but are seemingly unable to claim dorm rooms.  They just do walk-bys.  They are otherwise available for any interaction.

I created a batch of new dormies using the mailbox and the new ones are able to claim dorm rooms.

So what's wrong with the previous bunch?

Maybe their dorm room flag didn't get entirely cleared.  Or the game is being sadorandom, and just not picking them.  Or, it could just be that their character #s are too high if LFT was the last uni you added, and your custom dormies got slipped in at lower numbers, so the game never gets to the LFT ones.

Do you use TJs dormie gender controller?  The latest version is more random at picking dormies.  Even if you don't select a particular gender, it'll grab a random dormie from the available pool, rather than just the next unassigned one.  Maybe worth a try?

I suspect it's a "not cleared flag" issue, since the dormies actually show up as walk-bys.  They behave as if they already are resident somewhere else (no attempt to walk in and take a room).  Additionally, if I move them in using the teleporter shrub, they still can not claim a door, which may indicate a stuck flag.

Jolrei, I just had a thought-did they ever get pledged as Greek House members?

No - no greeks.  It's a bit odd - there are about 20 of them and only 5 were in a dorm (I only had the one playable student).  However, this seems to affect all of the former LFT students.  None of them seem able or willing to move into a ALT dorm.  I created some new dormies for ALT, just to test, and the new ALT dormies move into vacant rooms just fine.  The old LFT dormies can do any other interaction (invite over, ACR stuff, go on date, etc.).

Meh.  I'm just going to play it and see if it implodes.  It's become more or less a test hood anyway.

I need moar townies in the main hood, in any case, so the former LFT dormies can be graduated and phased into the main hood.

When you evict/graduate last playables from dorms, the game does not erase dorm key tokens from dormies' memories. So even if the old dorm is gone, the game thinks that old dormies are still assigned to dorm rooms. So they will not show up to claim rooms in a new dorm.

To reuse old dormies in a new dorm, open Neighborhood/Memory in SimPE, and remove [invisible] Token - Door Key from their memories.

Edited for typo.

Rock and roll.  Cheers, M'lud.  I guess I'll have to get on the SimPE QA list after all.