More Awesome Than You!

okay I know there are a few post covering this topic but before I cause a BFBVFOS by doing something wrong I would like to go over the process of "restarting" not reinstalling a neighborhood so bear with me.....From what I have gathered I would go to mydoc/eagames/thesims/neighborhood/ and select whatever neighborhood I want to restart....send it to my, say desktop, close out of my docs and restart my game...( I have all eps and a patched game)....this will cause that neighborhood to be "regenerated".....yes...no....maybe so?   Or do I have to remove the "whole neighborhoods" folder and thus restart all neighborhoods back to square one....? What game disk would I use to fire up my game after I moved the selected neighborhood out....the orginal one or nightlife? Also if I want to "restart" a custom hood....does this method work for those too? That's the questions I have so far....any help will be greatly appreciated!!!   tgdrysix
                                                                                                                     

You cannot "restart" a custom neighborhood - this only works for the Maxis ones. If you want to re-start a custom neighborhood, just start a new hood the same way you started the old one - "create a new neighborhood". You would use the same disk you always use to start the game (so that would be NL if you have NL).

The method you outlined above (moving a hood to desktop) will not regenerate a new 'hood.  The neighbourhood you remove will simply be gone from the select screen.

If you move your ENTIRE The Sims 2 folder from your document folder to another location, then yes, the game will generate a brand new set of the now overly familiar neigbhourdhoods.

If you want to start a new neighourdhood from scratch you can do what Simmiecal said.  You will have a blank canvas, a terrain based on whatever template you choose when you created the new 'hood, but no houses, no characters, no townies, no NPC's (they will be generated later).

If you want to start over with one of the pre-made neighbourdhoods, use my first method.  You can also do a DELETEALLCHARACTERS in order to get rid of all the pre-made characters, townies and NPC's.  It's the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb.  All the people are gone, but the buildings remain.

Oh and you always use whatever disk from whatever expansion you have installed.  Messing around with game files will never impact that in any way.

Hopefully I am making some kind of sense :)

I think what you are asking is.... because I am wondering about the same thing..... when reinstalling a neighborhood such as Veronaville to it's original content, when restarting the game, so as not to create a BFBVFS, and reinstall the original content, is this the correct procedure and which disk do I use... sim2 original or NL?   ???

So from what I'm gathering from your reply is I can't just restart (regenerate) one neighborhood I would have to restart  ALL of them by moving the entire "thesims" folder to my desktop not just the neighborhood ones?

And I pretty much figured I couldn't do that with a custom hood but I felt I'd better ask just to be sure.....I told you it was a dumb-ass question....fair warnings were given....lol !


 tgdrysix

Ha Ha made you post !!!!! tgdrysix

yes regenerate all the hoods (that come stock) then remove the ones you dont want by replacing your backup copies.

step one: move the entire sims2 folder to your desktop
step two: fire up the game
step three: quit game
step four: remove the hoods you dont want that were generated by firing up game
step five: put back all the stuff you want i.e. the hoods, downloads etc from the sims2 folder you moved in step one.

step 3 1/2: copy  the fresh new Neighborhoods folder (containing all 3 maxis hoods) to another location so that you can just replace hood(s) with a copy(s) from that set.


handy for those of us who restart alot  ::)

Oh man nothing is ever easy is it ?!  Okay well thanks for the info....not sure if I'm ready to get into that mess of moving stuff around and putting stuff back in....it will be my luck I put the wrong stuff in the wrong place and for sure cause a BFBVFOS.....again thanks! tgdrysix

You can also simply rename your Sims2 folder to, say, TheSims2 version 1, and then you will still be able to generate a complete new set of folders and neighbourhoods, but it saves the bother of moving your folder to the desktop. 

The only folders that won't automatically regenerate are Saved sims, downloads and Packaged Lots.  You will need to either make new ones or, if you want to keep the same custom content, just copy them from the old sims2 folder to the new one.  However, if you have custom terrain paints in the old Downloads, I'd suggest you don't copy them unless you are REALLY attached to terrain paints!

Well this sounds a bit less complicated....But just so I'm understanding correctly.... after I rename the "thesims" folder ( to something else)....I just start up the game and it will regenerate a new "the sims" folder?  then I would exit the game and go back to the orginal folder and copy the downloads, packaged lots and saved sims... to the newly regenerated "the sims" folder?  Sorry to be so dense but I just want to make sure I understand the steps before I go mucking around with my game....thanks again, tgdrysix

I fail to see how that is less complicated...

but yea, thats what you would do.

It saves the bother of moving the whole folder to the desktop.  It also means that you can switch between each folder simply by renaming them, and thus you can play either your old Pleasantview etc., or your new one.

And if you wish, you can theme your new set of folders, and only put in custom content that fits your theme.

Ok I kinda see what you are saying but not really. I mean click on the file and move it, versus click on the file and rename it...

Its pretty much the same amount of steps either way. But whatever works for ya! :D

Well, I actually have four different sims2 folders in my game (Sims2 Play is the original, then I have Sims2 Hist(orical), sims2 Build and Sims2 Test (that's for checking out old hoods I might want to play again to see if they work ok.)  The Build folder is vanilla apart from a few walls and floors which are from FSF sites and has no hacks in at all because I don't actually play in that folder.  I also use the Test folder for checking out houses I've made or cleaned up (ones I've built in game) to see how well they work.

I've also got several Pleasantviews in the Play folder, which have been renumbered with Oscar's Renamer!  Just in case I want to play them again............  Whichever Folder I want to play, I just remove the additional label after renaming the one I've been playing back to it's own name, and so far I've had no problems at all - and if I accidentally forgot to rename any of them back to TheSims2, I'd just get another set of game folders! ;D

This is exactly it Tgdrysix. 

??? ???

lol that's his name

BTW Tgdrysix, it would be helpful if you told us exactly what you are trying to do.  Then you would get a more specific answer

Thanks, I should have looked back up to the top of the page!!!!  (I thought it was some cryptic comment that meant something LOL!!!!)

lmao, he/she thought my method was complicated? Even I got lost there for a second Zeph!

*just a second though...

Well, it's only Inge's method of running a clean install for house-building, plus a couple of other installs for different sets of downloads!  And I just had so many versions of Pleasantview littering my second HD that I decided to check them all out, find the most up-to-date of each that was still working OK, then renumbered them so they can stay in the same folder with everything else!  Bonus was, I was able to delete loads of unnecessary Back-ups and saved quite a bit of disk-space!

*whispers....tgdrysix is a her.....first few letters are my initials....and the six stands for how may kids I was crazy enough to have (kinda like my badge) ;D!

 ....  well the reason for starting this post was because I was thinking of restarting my pleasentview hood which has almost 600 character files ( it still seems to be going okay....knock on wood) but with the new ep coming out soon .... well I thought maybe I should start that hood fresh so I don't blow up my first pleasentview....I have alot of time invested in it and am still only on first generation kids....almost got them all out of uni....have 8 more to go...had over 40 in there at one time.....it's a long story and I don't get much "playing" time with my real life crew running around.....anyway I was looking for a quick simple way to restart that neighborhood so I would have a fresh one to add the new ep to, cause with the number of character files I have in there already the new ep may add more than that neighborhood can handle....just wasn't sure if I wanted to chance it....still have alot of playing to do in that hood. And again thanks for all your help.... I just have to decide if I want to move things around, rename files or just let it ride.... :-\ Tgdrysix

Well in that case I would make a backup copy of the hood and keep it someplace safe, and keep backing it up every so often if I continued to play it, and especially I would take all my stuff out that I wanted to keep safe from the big fiery ball when a new EP is installed.

Also worth removing some of the townies and dormies.  But make sure you get all the memories of other sims who have met them and remove them too.

Tgdrysix  I have just this moment finished making pristine clean new Maxi neighbourhoods.    I backed up my game, moved the Neighbourhoods file out of the game to my desktop.    I restarted the game.    It generated all three Maxi hoods.   All my custom content is still there.   I quit the game.   Went to my neighbourhood folder on the desktop and moved my Custom hoods from there into the newly generated Neighbourhood folder in the game.    I restarted my game and went in to look around.  Everything is there.
You can do this at any time and end up with nice clean unplayed neighbourhoods.   Just enjoy your gameplay until something happens when you need or want to have clean Hoods.    It does work extremely well.    No worries.

  :)

Inge's method of renaming is quicker, though.

when you "backup" your hood were do you put it or rather send it?  do you backup just the neighborhood folder or thesims folder?  cause yeah I'd like to prevent the bfb from blowing up this hood ! tgdrysix

I put mine on my second hard drive, but if you don't have one, somewhere else in you My Documents folder is fine.  If you use SimPE to make your back up for you, it just puts it into the EAGames folder, so I'd guess if you put your back up in there in a folder labelled Back Up Folder, it would be OK and hard to lose!

 I'm not awesome enough to use Simpe to remove memories and such....which I probably need to brave it and download cause before I KNEW it would cause a bfbvfos...I moved the pleasents from pleasentview into a brand new custom hood I made....lot,house, and pleasents.....yikes :o!  I hadn't been playing the sims2 for very long and I certainly hadn't stumbled across this site....and well I made a big boo-boo....I was setting up this neighborhood for nightlife....and well I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't mess it up too badly....I haven't been there recently to play that hood been stuck in pleasentview trying to get pass my first generation there before I move on to strangetown and then my new custom hood...so much simming to do so little time !  ::) Tgdrysix

* I do have the no regenerate townies/downtownies hack installed to help keep the numbers down *

 I would back up any files you wanted to make sure you don't lose.    I made a copy of my neighbourhoods,
my saved sims, my project folder, my downloads.   I just have a folder sitting on my desktop called back-ups.
When I make new backups I just put them in a folder with the date I made the backups, and then move the new folder I just made into my Back-Ups folder on my desktop.   You can put them wherever you want them to be.    Some people put their back up files in their Documents folder.  I just find it easier to leave them on my Desktop.    If you back up the  Sims2 folder, you will back up the entire game.   That's not really necessary unless that's what you want to do.

Since we're talking a lot of Gigs here, make sure when you do your second back-up that you either overwrite or delete the first one, or in no time you'll have no Hard Drive Space left!

If you are going to fix the Pleasants, and they had been out and about, you may need to remove their attraction markers (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=cc41e04f9e13da6fac87eb4be6794b07;topic=2885.msg83161#msg83161) too in the neighbourhood memory editor. I had deleted a bunch of sims, then I started getting 'Missing neighbor for data access' error messages in debug mode. Big thanks to Ancient Sim who told me how to fix it.

Attraction markers are a pain, you have to make sure you get both the attracted and the attractor's markers!  Takes forever with some sims!  But you know if you haven't got them all, your sim will be unable to pee, shower or bath!   (Same applies to the sim they were attracted to!)

Glad you mention this cause I just checked and I did have a backup copy that I forgot I made ....probably before I installed nightlife....so I would delete this old one to be replaced with the more up to date copy, right? Thanks again for the info!!! Tgdrysix

I haven't a clue to  what you are referring to with "attraction markers"? What exactly are these things and if I actually don't "play the Pleasents" do I really need to be concerned? If so how would I fix this? I don't have SimPe.... I haven't really gotten "into" playing the hood I moved them to, I orginally set it up to play when nightlife came out but I've been stuck playing Pleasantview instead.  So I'm not really attached too much to that hood yet though I do have some sims I'd hate to lose....like Jamie and Adam from the mythbusters! I was just trying to get my Pleasentview to a certain level before I moved to my other hoods cause it had set idle for so long! Anyway thanks for the help and suggestions, tgdrysix

Attraction markers work both ways, if one of your sims is attracted to one of the Pleasants, but for some reason only one of them gets the memory, or the memory is corrupt (ie, has no token) then it can cause real damage to your sim, and the first you know of it is whn they can no longer use the bathroom, either to pee or to wash!  So, if that happens and you don't sort it out, you end up with a very miserable (and if you don't use cheats and hacks) a very dead sim!

Well, Tgdrysix, if/when you get SimPE, you'll recognise the 'attraction markers' once you see them. One has an icon thingy, these are attraction tokens that shows 'Was Attracted to [insert name]' and may have more than one even if it was for the same sim, so it's easier to track down to delete. The other just says '[invisble] Token - Attraction Marker'. There is only one and from what I understood, it's for showing somebody was attracted to your sim. I gather it's created when some random sim do that 'pssh' sound, point at your sim and make a 'call me' sign while hearts floated about. It doesn't say who it was, and can cause some problems like resetting your sim e.g. you direct another sim to interact with the afflicted sim and the action drops out of the queue faster than you can put it there, nor can the afflicted sim do anything because, well, the action drops out of the queue faster than you can put it there :P. So you could end up with a miserable and eventually, very dead sim, like ZZ said. Basically, you can forget about playing that lot until you fix the problem.

Like I said, that's only if they had been out and about (or they had been entertaining at home) since you got NL, as there's a chance some other sims had checked them out. There's a thread here about deleting memories (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=402.msg13392;topicseen#msg13392). There's also one for adding memories (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1485.msg50263;topicseen#msg50263) if you are interested. You might want to consider getting the Memories editor enhancements for SimPe (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2590.0) (great stuff ;D) from Peasantry if you decide to get SimPE. Either way, if you had lot-binned any one, it might be a good idea to fix them if you want to keep them :).

Pity the Patch makes no mention of having fixed that!  Why do they need memories of attraction to unknown sims anyway?

Now, sensible memories for fulfilling a want - i.e. "Buy a computer"  - memory:  "Bought a computer" - would make sense and shouldn't cause any problems, although I suppose if they started telling every sim they met it would need de-spamming!  And why they need an invisible memory for eating an unknown meal is totally beyond me!  I mean, maybe having Lobster Thermidor followed by Crepes Suzettes is memorable, but Mac and cheese followed by gelatin?  Just how memorable is that?

Maybe the tastes or textures clashed :D. How about those burned their food ones? What, like if they burned it once, they'll never burn it again ???.

They seem to do it a lot when the fridge is getting empty! ;D

I guess I will eventually have to get SimPe but I think a newer version is in the makes so I'm holding off until then....no point in downloading something that will have to be updated in the near future....oh wait isn't that what we have to do with the sims everytime a new ep comes out??? ... :(   Never mind....  :-\.... Tgdrysix

Well, with SimPE, you don't always need to update every time a new version comes out unless you actually want some of the new features.  And since it takes a while to find your way around in it, the sooner you start the better, in my opinion.

There's always a new version of SimPE about to come out.  It's updated quite frequently.

Edit:  What I was trying to say (but didn't make clear) is that there's no point in waiting for a new version, might as well take the plunge now.  Because as soon as one new version comes out, then the one after that will be "coming out soon" again.

But if the one you have works for you, and you don't need the new features, why waste time downloading and installing each new edition?  (Also, they sometimes totally screw things up and have to issue yet another one a couple of days later, by which time you've already used it and something has gone very wrong!

 I'm in no real hurry to "play" the neighborhood that may have issues.... cause I did something I shouldn't have but didn't know at the time I shouldn't have....so waiting for the most recent edition of simpe to come out wouldn't be a problem but getting any version to familarize (sp?) myself with the program wouldn't be a bad idea either unless the  newer version is completely different from the previous one...does anyone know if this will be the case? Tgdrysix

Well, they never have been in the past, except when they brought in the new interface (although mostly it just does the same stuff as the Classic, but with a few additions for NL), and if you familiarize yourself with one, then you shouldn't have problems with a later version.  It's mostly a matter of knowing where things are and what can, or cannot, be done, so I think if I were you I'd go ahead and get it now and give it a go.

Aye, there's the rub.  I know how to do a few things, but there's so much in there, and the tutorials seem to be only for the simple stuff.  Does anyone have links for explanations of the not-so-simple stuff?  The thread in MATY for changing the DNA of Strangetown is especially good.  Thanks to whoever wrote it!  :-*

I think the best thing would be to list the stuff you want help with, to give people an idea of what will be useful to you.

Okay so  I went ahead and downloaded Simpe....and installed it....haven't got brave enough to open it yet....any words of encouragement for me? :-[ :-\  Any words of wisdom...pieces of advice....(feeling like a sim would who's fixing to look in a coffin)!!!! Tgdrysix

Whatever you do figure out the backup part first :)

Yea that would probably be a good first step..lol....I do have a pretty recent backup file from just a few days ago but I've done a bit of playing so I make refresh it! Thanks for the suggestion  ;D...Tgdrysix

*....goes off to open the lid*