More Awesome Than You!

I have backed up my custom made neighbourhood using SimPe

I have made a clone of the hood using the Bulk Renaming Utility.

I wish to use the new hood for testing purposes, mainly genetics.

Loading the game and going into the hood, everything appears fine...but are there some VBT's that a nonawesome person such as myself is not aware of, that can turn my main playable hood into a BFBVFS?

Yes. Don't even think about it. What happens when you "clone" a neighborhood by file-copy is that all the internal GUIDs are the same. This means you can't load both neighborhoods at once without crosstalk and enborkination. DO NOT DO THIS!

Thats what I was afraid of (deletes cloned hood and reloads backup main hood)

Thankyou for the extremely prompt reply

What if only one of those is in the sims2 folder at a time, then will it work?

Do not back up with SimPE and expect to be able to restore from it.  That was how I got my first BFBVFS.

That isn't cloning a hood, that is restoring backed up versions of hoods.

Please explain what you mean by crosstalk.

Let's say I have a neighborhood and a clone of that neighborhood in the game at the same time. If I kill a sim in the clone, how does that affect the original neighborhood? If two sims get married in the clone, how does that two sims in the original? What does it do to the files?

Basically, I want to know what degree of VBT thing this is. No offense, J.M., but your declarations of VBT are always delivered at the same intensity, so I don't know if this means immediate corruption or if it -might- cause problems. I've had a couple of other things done in the neighborhood that were delcared VBT, but haven't caused any visible issues with over a year of playing in the same hood.

Well, you know how Crumplebottom is a single file, right? And that any attempt to modify Crumplebottom's state from within the game results in a BFBVFS? Same idea. Bad Things Happen.

Just because you are a dumb, unobservant Orikes does not mean there are no problems. I bet I could pull open your files and immediately spot tons of gunk you've caused as a result.

Is this different than pulling another copy of a Maxis hood and renaming it so you have 2 or would it be the same thing?

I'd like some clarification, too. Are we talking about copying the N006 folder to another folder named N009, for example, or are we talking about copying a single package, like one of the suburbs, and attaching it as a subhood to the same neighborhood? The latter definitely seems like a Bad Idea, for exactly the reason that you have two files with the same database ID open simultaneously. But does  having two different neighborhood folders with identical contents do the same thing? Does the game actually open all neighborhoods simultaneously?

If so, that's some monumentally stupid programming on EAxis's part. Although that *would* explain the slowness in loading...

If I start the game and then exit without ever entering a neighborhood, all neighborhood packages are modified.  This seems to imply that EA opens and modifies all of the neighborhoods at the same time.  Very stupid programming indeed.

Very similar to what happens if I enter a neighborhood and then exit without ever playing a family within the neighborhood:  Many of the character files are changed.  Dumb dumb dumb!

Talysman, I was refering to your first description using the Bulk Renaming Utility to rename all the files within the copied directory. But if the game does open other hoods at the same time, then yeah I can see how cloning the hood this way would be a VBT.

If I wanted to clone it for testing purposes, then I could probably use Fourcats idea of taking the hood you arent using out of the Sims 2 folder, but if at any time I forgot to do this then... boom, so probably not worth the risk

You can also move the folder over to a separate account (I'm assuming you are using Windows). All my test stuff is done on a clean account. No remembering to remove things needed.

Pescado, I picture you as the highly strict parent going over a room with a pair of white gloves to verify that everything is completely clean and spic and span. I'm guessing you could find gunk in pretty much anyone's game. :)

I very well may be a dumb, unobservent Orikes, but nothing I've done has yet affected my game play, which is what actually concerns me. I did remove the dummy cloned hood, though. I'll only use it in another account on my machine when I need it.