More Awesome Than You!

EMPTY Pleasantview

Download: http://www.box.net/public/q51a8g3pr9

Argon created an even emptier Pleasantview. Get it here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg218734.html#msg218734).

Sick of having Pleasantview's townies and NPCs in every custom neighborhood? Sick of fixing the mess that "DeleteAllCharacters" leaves behind? If you replace your Pleasantview template with this empty template, neither of the above will be a problem anymore. Any time you create a custom neighborhood, it will be completely empty, with no sims at all.

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods
• Make a backup of the N001 folder
• Open the N001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file N001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is N001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the N001 folder.

Repeat the process for StrangeTown and Veronaville, located here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg334133.html#msg334133

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EMPTY UNI, NL, and OFB TEMPLATES

Download: http://www.box.net/public/rhnaxge14b

These are completely empty templates.

Once you install them, any time you add one of these sub-neighborhoods to one of your neighborhoods, no new characters will be added. Very useful if you hate townies, or want to control the number of characters that get dumped into your neighborhoods.

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\
• Make a backup of the D001 folder
• Open the D001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file D001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is D001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the D001 folder.

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\
• Make a backup of the U001 folder
• Open the U001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file U001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is U001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the U001 folder.
• Repeat for U002 and U003

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\
• Make a backup of the B001 folder
• Open the B001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file B001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is B001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the B001 folder.

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EMPTY SEASONS TEMPLATE

Three empty houses come with Seasons. If you want to get rid of them, delete the files in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog

The two simbin families, plus some nasty townies and NPC's, are being dumped into your neighborhoods thanks to the "stealthy" sub-neighborhood that is added to every single one of your neighborhoods.

Download: http://www.box.net/public/d6j78gvmxk

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\
• Make a backup of the G002 folder
• Open the G002 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file G002_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is G002_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the G002 folder.

Empty Desiderata Valley:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg342952.html#msg342952

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EMPTY PETS TEMPLATE

Pets gives you several occupied houses. To get rid of them, delete the files in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog

The rest of the Pets sims come with the neighborhood.

Download: http://www.box.net/public/0g2fvth4pb

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\
• Make a backup of the P001 folder
• Open the P001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file P001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is P001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the P001 folder.

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CLEANED-UP TEMPLATES

Download Links

Downtown (NL): http://www.box.net/public/fmb791itc0

Blue Water (OFB): http://www.box.net/public/x3hvomc3yq

Universities: http://www.box.net/public/7yfr117d9d

Pets: http://www.box.net/public/v87395s8z6

These are templates with only Maxis-made playable sims. Once you install them, any time you add one of these sub-neighborhoods to one of your neighborhoods, no new characters will be added except the Maxis playable sims. That means no townies or NPCs will be added.

Follow the same instructions as for the Empty Templates, but also replace the Characters folders with the ones downloaded from here.

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Clean and Fixed Bon Voyage stuff

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg264144.html#msg264144

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Clean and Fixed FreeTime

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg317272.html#msg317272

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Clean and Fixed Apartment Life

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg369354.html#msg369354

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Clean and Fixed Pleasantview, Strangetown, Veronaville

http://www.4shared.com/dir/2250323/a7d398b0/Temporary.html
http://www.mediafire.com/?dvntyo1mw3x

The three original Maxis neighborhoods (Pleasantview, Veronaville, and Strangetown) come with all the Maxis playable sims plus any townies and NPCs that those sims know. No other townies and NPCs are included. The DNA, memories, and other problems have been fixed. There is also a PleasantviewTownies.rar file, which will let you add the townies back in, in case you'd miss Benjamin Longnose and the rest of the gang.

You're on your own for installing these, but it's pretty easy. The location to start in is C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods


Moderator edit: I added a link to Emma's post with the Strangetown and Veronville templates, added Bon Voyage, FreeTime, and Apartment Life sections, and fixed the broken link in the last section to point to Sysa's download instead.

Need more help?  Check out Jordi's Clean 'Hood Tutorial. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html)  Further, Emma put all of the empty neighborhoods up through FreeTime into one place at this link:
http://www.4shared.com/dir/4323880/c0795b00/EmptyHoods.html

Thanks so much for these...will make my sim life a lot easier.

Thank you Sara!

Did you ever finish the templates that only had the Maxis playables and townies that they already knew? I know you said that it was nearly (if not completely) possible to do so for Bluewater village, and the Downtown in the merged hood is already done that way (right?), but I would really like to have the "trimmed" universities if at all possible.

If nothing else, could you tell me the procedure I'd have to follow to do it for myself?

http://www.geocities.com/saramkirk/nhoods/nhoods.html

That's her tutorial on how to do it yourself. I followed it to trim down the universities and its pretty simple.

Awesome!

* Scurries off to get started!

Actually, I just forgot all about it. I have the attention span of a squirrel.

Uploaded to the first post.

You'll probably also want to delete the unused Sims Wants and Fears, DNA, and Relations. I didn't know that those could potentially cause problems at the time I wrote the tutorial. I'll update it as soon as I can.

EDit: Updated. Let me know if it isn't totally clear.

Just wanted to note that I had to replace my original B001 folder before the new OFB patch would install.

Must be because of the part about the J'Adore Bakery and the Jacquet family being fixed.

Pardon the dark sorcery, but will these be updated for Pets?  :)

Cleaning Pets addons is easier: Backup your neighborhood, let Pets install, save the most-recently-generated SuburbXXX file, keep that, restore backup, add this file.

Noted and appreciated, but I'm wondering whether these templates for the prior neighborhoods need tweaking to work properly with Pets also or can they be used as-is?

Updated and new download locations.

I don't want the pre-made Maxis playable Sims. Is it ok to delete the character files before using the templates or will that leave garbage behind?

You should completely delete the characters folder if you use these templates, as is mentioned in the first post.

the first link provides the totally empty templates (all nice and clean)


the second set of links provides the templates that have the maxis playables

Why? You already have those on your PC…

These have all the other (townie/NPC) sims deleted, which is harder for someone SimPE-challenged to do than to just delete all sims.

Thank you for doing this, and thank you for clearing up my confusion. I missed that top link.

SaraMK: oh good. That is actually perfect for a thing I am doing.

I re-uploaded the empty Pleasantview template. Somehow it had gotten edited out of my post and I didn't notice. Thanks to the person who emailed me about it!

Okay, stupid question of the day:
If I add those templates, create hood X and later on want to create hood Y with all the original Maxis characters, can I then just exchange the templates with the original Maxis ones, create hood Y and still play hood X unaffected  ???

Does this make sence  ???  ???  ???

Rose

Makes sense, and the answer is yes.
The templates only apply at the moment you add a subneighbourhood to your neighbourhood. If you change the templates later (because you want the EAMaxis Sims back), your previously added subneighbourhoods will not be affected.

Great and thanks  ;D

Rose

How Can I spawn female Grand Vampires? I've accomplished everything else that I wanted using the clean templates, but can only get male Grand Vamps to spawn.

Are you using the NPC tree? It has an option to spawn NPCs of whatever sex you want. You need to select "Switch to making Downtownies," then choose options like skintones and sex, and then spawn a Grand Vampire.

I spawned an item that looks like a dead tree. It lets me spawn Grand Vampires in the NPC EP2 part of the menu, but they are all males.

There is another option in the Downtown part of the menu that spawns both male and female vampires , but it looked to me like it was spawning random Sims that were vampires instead of actual Grand Vampires. Those spawned from this part of the menu were all wearing random Maxis clothing rather than vampire clothes. My memory is weak, but I also think they did NOT have Count or Countess as part of the name.

The last option was on the mailbox itself, where spawn Grand Vampyre (sic) was available on the menu. But whenever I try this one, it just drops out of the queue without any Sims at all being spawned. I have no idea why the word vampire is spelled differently in these two places or why I can't get this one to work.

Aren't Grand Vampires slightly different than other vampires in the game? If there is no actual difference, I can spawn the females using the 2nd method above and then dress them correctly and change their names.

I hate townies and so made my entire townie population servos. I wanted the Grand Vampires so that my Sims would have a chance of being bitten as I want that to be random. I have JMP's vampire mods in place but don't understand every rule that goes into it. I got the feeling somehow that the Grand Vampires had a higher chance of biting unsuspecting Sims and so I was trying to put a few of each sex into the game.

Normal vampires do not autonomously bite at all. Only grand vampires will do that. The vampire fixes are critical, but there are no "esoteric rules", so much as that certain classes are outlawed: NPCs cannot be autonomously bitten (BFBVFS from Crumplebottom bites, general endless pool cycling if something else), nor can playables not of the current family (can cause instant death on load of home lot). Everything else, including the townies you want to see bitten, are fair game.

Right, that's the one, but you need to choose the options (sex and skintone, etc) before you spawn them. Here's a visual guide, since a lot of people seem to be having a heck of a lot of trouble with this:

Step 1: Spawn the NPC and Townie Maker (a dead tree will appear).

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step1.jpg)

Step 2: Click on Switch to make DownTownies. A pop up will tell you that you are now making downtownies.

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step2.jpg)

Step 3: Click on Set Gender and choose Male or Female.

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step3.jpg)

Step 4: Click on Set Skin to choose the skintone you want the sim to have.

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step4.jpg)

Step 5: To make a Grand Vampire, click on Generate EP2 NPC. This step is a bit different if you don't have Pets installed. I believe it would be under Special NPC or something like that if you don't have Pets.

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step5.jpg)

Step 6: Click on Grand Vampyre to spawn the sim. A sim will appear next to the dead tree.

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step6.jpg)

Step 7: Click on the dead tree and choose Keep. The sim will vanish. You will need to save the lot in order to keep this sim in your neighborhood. The sim will be lost if you do not save, although you do not need to save after each sim.

(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/howto/step7.jpg)

Thank you for making that so crystal clear. I skipped steps 3 and 4 and went straight to step 5, thinking that just ordering it to make a Grand Vampire would make a random one. I thought the selecting of gender and skintone was for creating the townies, not the NPCs.

Male must be default and that is why I got all males. Thanks again.

One last question. Will "Repeat Last" give you the exact same type of Sim without actually giving you the same exact Sim?

Hmm. Interesting. If you don't keep, does it still create a character file if you save the lot?

For me, Repeat Last has usually resulted in a sim that's identical to the previous one in every way. I don't know if I've just been unlucky or a victim of the game's sadorandomness, but I don't use that option. If I want the same type of sim I just select it again from wherever it is on the menu ("Generate EP2 NPC" or whatever).

Here's a tip/trick: if you usually edit your townies/npcs for personality and interests, makeup, name, or (townies only) clothes, you can do that using your favorite hack before clicking Keep. Saves you the trouble of teleporting that sim back to the lot for a makeover.


It's worse than that, actually (well, what did you expect?!). It creates a character file that's unlinked. I usually save after each sim and if I get a crappy sim I exit without saving.

I'm having a bit of a problem. I followed all the steps for the clean templates, no Maxis characters. I deleted the lot catalog files. Then I created a downtown - no characters. Same with Uni. But when I create a Bluewater sub-hood, I get 2 families in the bin and this for the hood.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/bluewater.jpg)

I have patched pets / unholy hybrid. (Original .exe from CD over the patch .exe.)

Which families are you getting?

OK. Just went and made a new test hood, double-checked all steps to making clean template. I also included this step: BTW This step is not in any of the instruction.html docs.

Made a Bluewater and got same scenario again.
Families in bin; Larson, Gieke. Families on lots; Delarosa, Ramirez, Laandgrab IV, Jacquet, Tinker.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/bluewater2.jpg)
Looking closely you can still see owned businesses.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/bluewater4.jpg)

witch: do NOT delete the lot catalog. All it does is put some houses in the catalog... unless you place them, you never ever see those characters.

What you need to do is replace the template package, and delete the characters folder of that package. This is the only way to get the 'hood with lots intact, and Sims gone. As per the first post.

It sounds more like you deleted files from the Lots folder, not the LotCatalog. LotCatalog only has lots that are in the bin, not ones already placed in the neighborhod. Lots has ones that are already placed in the neighborhood, and you should never delete stuff from the Lots folder.

In any case, you shouldn't be deleting any of the lot files for Bluewater. Those instructions were for PETS only, because Pets puts occupied lots in the bin. OFB does not, so there is no reason to delete them.

I actually used this text "C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog" from your first post, I pasted that into Windoze Explorer, so I assumed it was in the right place?

I haven't deleted anything else except for deleting the character files in the folders that matched the package files provided.

I did go over it all a second time...

Never mind, its 1am here, so I'll try again in the morning.

I also have the Kim and Kat occupied lots in my hood bin, so something's not right.

The Seasons update is now available. Download it to stop nasty-looking sims from being dumped into every neighborhood.

I have a stupido question. Do I have to install the empty Seasons template before firing up the game for the first time. I was thinking that I'll use the new hood as a testing area before I actually make my own sims suffer from freezing or burning. Will the game generate the fugly townies into my custom hood even if I don't play it before installing the empty template?

I'm pretty sure that the ugly sims are dumped into a neighborhood when it is loaded up for the first time after installing Seasons. If you don't load it, you may be okay.

I wouldn't take the chance though. Either move your own neighborhoods out for safe keeping, and let the game regenerate the four Maxis neighborhoods (Riverblossom, Pleasantview, etc.), or at least make a backup of your own neighborhoods.

Thanks for the quick answer :) I think I won't take any chances. I'll install the empty template after installing Seasons.

But if I already installed and played Seasons, then it is not a good idea to delete the characters in the TSData\Res folder, correct?

That does not matter. The only time the templates are called are on creation of new neighbourhoods, and updating of older ones. It doesn't matter one bit what you do with the templates after that.

You still need to delete them. It will only have an effect on any neighborhoods you create afterwards, not on those that you've already created.

Thanks.

Thanks so much for the swift update.  You can imagine my shock when I created a new neighborhood, checked the Characters folder - and saw a bunch of files in it!  Stupid EA.

If I have all the stupid ugly Maxis townies, downtownies, dormies, etc. all zipped up where the neighborhood creator can't find them, do I need to unzip them to make the Seasons installer happy?

I'm just waiting for Ste to say GrowUp is Seasons-friendly and I'll be at EB pronto!

I did not remove the empty templates before installing Seasons, so I would say no, you don't need to do anything.

The ONLY installer that has EVER complained about the empty templates was the OFB patch. The only reason it would ever complain is if something was being updated as far as the pre-made families or houses in the template neighborhoods. The OFB patch did that because one of the houses was seriously glitchy, but normally patches and new EP's do not touch the old neighborhoods.

Besides, it is much simpler to not do anything until/unless the installer does  complain about it. If it doesn't like something, it will pop up an error during installation. Why do any work until then?

Thanks for getting the new G002 up so quickly - I couldn't believe it when I saw those bloody awful families in EVERY single neighbourhood.  Godammit.

For the sake of argument... (And sure, if nobody actually knows the answer, I suppose I'll just have to be brave and test this myself.)

Assume that you've replaced the original templates with clean ones, and don't have any neighborhoods whatsoever (you've deleted the EA threesome or foursome).  That being said, the first neighborhood you create ought to be N001.  Also assume you have the noregen mods in place (at least for the creation process).

So you, the innocent simmer, decide to create in CAS a bunch of themed townies (Fairies, Potterverse, Anime, whatever) that you would like (should it be possible) to appear as defaults in any new neighborhood established.

You create them, moving a single sim onto a lot, and using that one to teleport the others out of the sim bin, and make every last one of the suckers into townies, ending with the original sim being transformed.  (One might be compelled to age certain upcoming townies down to bypass that whole nasty mess with editing relationships in SimPE that would have been necessary had you created CAS "families" with actual relationships beyond roomies such as required by including children).

You save, you exit the lot, and then exit the game.

In theory... you should have a set of N001 character files and a N001_neighborhood.package containing only what you just whipped up.  Maybe?  You then take these lovely files and drop them into the appropriate folders of the Template N001.  After launching the game again, you create a brand new neighborhood.

At that point, do you have the custom townies you dropped into the template alive and well in your new custom neighborhood? 

In theory? Yes. I don't know if anyone actually tested this, though.

All righty.  I guess I'm going to have to work up the enthusiasm to beta test.

Yes, it's exactly like you said. You can create a new neighborhood and replace the Pleasantview one. Any townies and NPCs that are in the neighborhood will then be transfered to every custom neighborhood you create. I did that in my own game, because who wants to create townies over and over in every new neighborhood?

Playable sims will not be transfered over, and it's best to only use Townies (not Downtownies). Some things, such as LTW, turn ons/off, and careers, may not transfer over with the townies, and will instead be randomized.

Does anyone know anything about this, G001_Suburb002 file? It gets added to the G001 neighborhood folder when you install Seasons. It has nothing but Unknown sims with Family names.

Very true! 

If you have both Pets and Seasons, each of your neighborhoods will get two "stealthy" sub-hoods. They are not real sub-hoods, in that there is no new area to visit, but they do stuff your neighborhood full of crappy new sims. This is why you need to download the empty Pets and Seasons templates in this thread. You will still get the two Suburbs files, but they will no longer drag any sims with them into your neighborhood.

Thank you for all this! It is much appreciated. Will you be doing a Maxis Only Seasons Template?

Probably eventually. Right now I'm very busy IRL, so everything for the game is kind of on the back burner unless it's something that SCREAMS needing to be done.

Do you have empty templates for the other two towns that are in the base game? It would be nice to have them empty too with no characters?

You mean Strangetown and Veronaville?

Edit: I do have them, as it turns out. Uploaded here: http://www.box.net/public/g4vy23xec9

I just wanted to say thank you for this. SimPE and my computer do not get along, so this is a lovely way for me to end up with sims that actually use my favourite set of face replacements, and not deal with all the other crap, whether it be sim surgery or properly deleting sims or whatever. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I've finally started a legacy family because of all the work you've done, something I've not bothered to do until now... and any previous attempts at DAC ended in disaster (only in "testing" 'hoods, of course). I was starting with a fresh game yet again due to a harddrive change and wanted to do it maxis fuglies free this time around.
Again, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Is there perhaps a cleaned up Riverblossem Hills Template?

Not yet.

ok, oh, i cant wait i am so excited for it to come out.

I should say thank you first as I've been using your empty templates for some time and never did. So thanks very much - you've made my game much nicer :)

And I have a question. 2 questions really. I installed both Pets and Seasons at the same time. I haven't touched my custom neighborhood yet but I did play around with the new Seasons one, just to see how things went. Can I now use the blank templates for Pets and Seasons? It generates the pests on neighborhood load? If it doesn't work, I do have a backup from before I put seasons in, so I guess I can go back to that and try it. So this isn't so important, but...

Also, I share the game with my family - we have different user accounts but play from the same base files. All seemed fine with loading the blank templates, adding the subhoods to my game, and then putting the Maxis ones back for the others in my family (who want them). I'm just a bit worried about how this will work when there's no real subhood to load? Will putting them back just generate the Pets and Season's sims the next time I load my game? And/or will it mess up the game for the other folk who are using this computer? I think these questions are kinda related - if the first works (it's only on *first* neighborhood load that these extras are generated) then it'll be ok to put them back...

I think :) Any ideas? I would rather put up with the extra sims and pets (even though they're awful and annoying) than completely bork up the game and have to reinstall. But I don't mind testing if it's just going to mean putting back in a back-up :) If that makes any sense at all.

Both Pets and Seasons attach a "stealth" sub-neighborhood to all of your neighborhoods. Unlike the Uni/NL/OFb sub-hoods, these are not new areas to visit, but they're still "attached" to the main neighborhood.

The attachment process happens the first time you load a neighborhood, so if you have not touched a neighborhood since installing Pets and/or Seasons, those neighborhoods don't have the two sub-hoods attached yet.

If you install the empty templates, your neighborhoods will still  get the two new sub-hoods attached to them the next time you load the neighborhoods. The only difference will be that you won't get any of the sims.



The "stealth" sub-hoods are actually not very different from the ones that do give you a new area to visit, so there is no difference in that regard.

The sub-hoods are attached to the main neighborhood when that neighborhood is loaded, not when the game is loaded and not when other neighborhoods are loaded.

Once the sub-hoods are attached, the game will never attempt to attach the templates again to that neighborhood. So, if you use the empty templates and load a neighborhood, even if you re-install the original templates again, that particular neighborhood will stay the way it is and is not in danger of having any of the sims from the templates dumped into it.

Nothing will get messed up for your family members.  :) Again, the game will  only attempt to attach the sub-hoods one time. It does not matter if the templates are original or the empty ones. Loading the game without loading any of the neighborhoods, or loading neighborhoods on another person's account, will not cause them to be attached to your neighborhoods. Similarly, if you have several neighborhoods, loading one neighborhood will not cause them to be attached to another neighborhood that was not loaded.


The templates can't do anything that would make it necessary to reinstall the game itself. Obviously if the wrong templates are used, a particular neighborhood might end up with more or with fewer sims than you wanted, but that's pretty much the only potential danger.

That's awesome! Thanks! no strays in my custom hood and no evil borked twin-parents either. <dances around>

Does the townie tree let you make strays now? Will enabling testing cheats allow this?

Also, if I put in empty templates, will it only affect new custom hoods, or will it fubar my Maxian Pleasantview? I have the no regen hacks in place there already, if I changed the templates, could I take these out?

The NPC tree makes strays.

Existing neighborhoods are not affected by empty templates. Unless, of course, you add more sub-hoods to them after installing the empty templates.

You still need all the noregen hacks, because otherwise the game will start generating ugly NPCs and townies left and right.

unless of course you use default face replacements  ;) 

Thank you so much SaraMK for doing these empty templates. I love using the empty templates and letting townies and dormies spawn using the default face replacements I have. It's so nice to have decent looking townies and dormies that my sims can be friends with and/or breed with  :D

Hi Sara,

You have empty templates for the original Maxis EA default hoods, but do you have "Clean" templates?  I scanned briefly, but I couldn't find them in this thread. :(  Were those accidentally edited out too? Or they never existed?

You have "Clean" templates for the other subhoods (Uni, Downtown, Pets, and OFB).  Did you ever have "Clean" ones for Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville?  If so, do they already include the DNA fixes?


If not, then can I use Dea's templates with the DNA fixes?  In your tutorial to clean up neighborhoods as linked here (http://www.geocities.com/saramkirk/nhoods/nhoods.html), you mention a list of sims for each basehood (Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville).  I am assuming these are the sims we want to keep and all other numbers we should delete.  Is there a complete guide to cleanly delete these sims?  Would I have to follow the Deleted 2: Electric Boogaloo guide? (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=6205.0)

Just so I understand properly, a "Clean" template would contain the Maxis pre-made sims... and any other townies/npcs/etc that they have interacted with or have relationships with, right?

Ste

I'll have to look. I may have copies of the Maxis neighborhoods left over from my merger project that are basically clean and DNA-fixed versions.

You could use my tutorial (the one you linked) with Dea's fixes. My tutorial just tells you which character files to delete from the Characters folder, to leave just the Maxis sims. So, you could do that with Dea's fixed neighborhoods just as well as you could with the original neighborhoods.

Using my method, you would delete the files from the Characters folder, then open the neighborhood file and delete all the unknowns, then clean up Wants/Fears and other dangling crap using the remaining sims' instance numbers to determine what should be kept and what should be deleted. You could, of course, use other methods for deleting them.

Anyway, I'll look for the files. I doubt I would have deleted them on purpose.

That we be totally awesome.  I would greatly appreciate it if you managed to find it.  I don't want to seem totally lazy and greedy and demandy.  Heheh.  But I'm sure you could understand not wanting to go through all of the work if you managed to do this already.



At least I know I can do it this way if necessary.  I have never deleted sims before (ever since I found out it was a VBT to do :P) so I'm very weary about attempting to do it cuz I'm afraid I would majorly screw something up or forget to delete something or delete the wrong thing.  If I have to do this, then I think I would be inclined to follow Pescado's tutorial if that seems to be the safest method.  But then that would require having to create "fresh" hoods, using Dea's fixed version.  Then, I would go into the game and follow the tutorial.  After cleaning them up, then I would have to go back and use the cleaned neighborhoods as the templates now.  Right?


Finally, just to be completely clear about things, in the linked tutorial it says:


These are the files I have to keep, right?  And all other files that you don't list here are the ones I delete.  Now, to do this using Pescado's method, I would actually have to go into the Neighborhood file first, and looking at the ones I should delete, I should make a list of their names, since I think the FFS Lot Debugger lists sims by names, not by instance number.

In anycase, if you do happen to find your cleaned up hoods, that would be awesome.  I'll hold off for now, but at least it's good to know how to do it the proper way.

Thanks again :)

Ste

Well, my method is basically as safe as Pescado's if we are talking about the Maxis neighborhoods, since you would only be deleting sims who don't know each other. But, I would get into the habit of using Pescado's method, because it is both easier and has wider applications.

Right, if you were to use Pescado's method combined with Dea's fixes and whatever bits of my tutorial you think apply, you would need to let the game create the neighborhoods, edit them as needed, and then use them (that is, the ones in My Docs) to replace the actual templates (in Program Files). There are several potential problems with this, the main one being the code that gets added to the files based on what EP's you have. If you ever uninstall any EP's, there is a chance that the game will blow up the next time you try to restart the Maxis neighborhoods, since they will be marked as requiring those EP's. For example, having Pets installed adds the "Learned Behavior" code to the Neighborhoods file. I really don't know what would happen if that code was in there but you uninstalled Pets. Maybe nothing at all would happen, but it seems kind of iffy to me.



Exactly.

Okay, here (http://www.4shared.com/dir/2250323/a7d398b0/Temporary.html) are the files that I found. Let me know if you hate 4shared, since apparently it does not work for some people.

Keep in mind that these were made for the merged 'hood, so they are all heavily modified, with names, dna, memories... all that stuff that I personally felt needed to be fixed.

I assume you can install these okay? All that's included is the Characters folder and the Neighborhood file, so you'd obviously need to keep all the other stuff, as opposed to doing something silly like deleting them.

I also included a separate file, which is a lot stuffed with all the Pleasantview townies, since those were purged out of the modded Pleasantview... in case you think you might miss them.

Many, many, many, a thousand thank yous Sara! :D  Well... I suppose I should offer my thank yous after I've been able to successfully download those files.  Lol.  Since, I'm at work right now, and I won't be able to test out the link until I gets home.  Hopefully I won't have any problems with the 4shared site. *crosses fingers* ;D



Oh, I don't mind at all!  Heck, if there are things that are broked and you went ahead and did all the legwork and fixed 'em ahead of time, then that's even more awesome!!  It means less work for me to do, and more importantly, less things that I am likely to fux0r up if I tried it myself. :P
 


I think I should be good to go. Last night, I used your cleaned up Uni templates.  I installed La Fiesta Tech and the game added 17 new sims.  So far... so good... I thiink.  I didn't have time to check in SimPE, but I suspect that at least 15 of them correspond to the cleaned up sims in the Characters folder of U002 (which only contained 15 character files).  I'm not sure what the other 2 were, but I'll suss around tonite and inspect it.  I made a back up of my game (I make tons of backups) in case something goes 'splodie.  But after several questions around, I was hoping to add La Fiesta Tech and Academie Le Tour to my Sims State.  Theoretically, with antiredundancy in place, and using your clean templates, I should only get the additional Maxis ones added.  And the game should hopefully share profs between hoods.

Anyways, that seemed to work fine so far.  I'll check the sims that were created, and if looks good, then I will add Academie Le Tour tonight, and maybe futz around with adding Strangetown and Veronaville as addition subburbs too! Hehe.  I'm probably heading towards massive BFBVFS, but meh, I've backed my game up, so I can always revert to a smaller 'hood.  Hopefully this won't take too long, so I could maybe, actually get some gameplay in tonight. :D

Ste

ETA: I checked again, I looked in the wrong folder.  The U002 folder of characters had 17 files in it, and that's exactly how many files were added.  Silly me, I was looking in the U001 folder, so of course it didn't match. :P  So definitely thanks again for these, I'm gonna add Academie Le Tour now.  Oh, and I also managed to successfully download the clean templates and the pleasantview townies backup.  So again thanks!
/me mashes the thanks button repeatedly! :-*

Hi again, by the way, adding the empty templates for Pets and Seasons, loading my already created hood and then putting the EA backups back for my family worked perfectly except for one little glitch - thank you.

The one little glitch - I ended up with the Katz family in the bin. I'm not sure if I failed to follow directions properly or what. I don't mind that one so bad - the ones I really wanted to get rid of were the Seasons ones, but it's interesting that the cat lady showed up but the fellow with the dog (I don't remember his name) didn't. So the inhabited house/lot binned Pets family showed in the game but the simbinned characters went away fine :) And no any of them from Seasons. (still dancing)

You must have missed the little note about Pets lot binned families (ones is occupied houses). I should put the instructions more prominently, and closer to the actual download link, since not everyone reads the entire instructions once they figure out the basic idea.

To get rid of the Pets pre-made lot-binned families, do this:

Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog

Delete everything inside that folder (after making a backup, in case you ever want them back).

This stops the game from putting the occupied houses in the lots bin.


This won't help with the ones already added to your neighborhood, of course.


By the way, has anyone noticed how  aggressively EA/Maxis is shoving their sims down our throats? It used to be they merely came from whatever new sub-hood was added with the EP. Now we have to worry about "stealthy" sub-hoods and occupied houses, too.   >:(

The Maxis families in the lot bin are harmless and not a part of your neighborhood files. You can delete them individually in-game just fine, since they're not actually in your neighborhood files unless you plop them.

Good to know.

Still hate them.

Elstone,

Okay, I admit I have absolutely no clue what all your numbers mean... I stared at them for a while, but then I decided that I would just answer the questions you had that I did   understand.

Seasons gave us TWO neighborhoods. G001 is a self-contained neighborhood, Riverblossom Hills, that can be selected from the neighborhood selection screen. I have NOT modded this in any way, so the number of sims in this neighborhood will not change because of installing any of the templates. G002 is a "stealthy" sub-hood that gets attached to ALL neighborhoods (including G001). It contains ONLY the two binned families and nothing else. That is what my empty G001 template kills, nothing less and nothing more. That is why the Seasons families are gone for you.

The Pets families are safe to delete. In the future to stop them from getting dumped into every neighborhood you need to follow the directions I gave to Sagana just a few posts above yours. The empty templates downloaded here will NOT stop the binned Pets families from appearing.

So that's about all I understood from your post. I do not understand what your numbers mean. Are you saying that despite installing the empty templates (all of them) you are still getting hundreds of character files in every neighborhood?

Where you say # of Character Files in My Documents neighborhoods with 'clean'
templates of Uni, Downtown, Bluewater, original base neighborhoods
, let's take N001 as an example. You are saying that  BEFORE you load the neighborhood, you have 170 characters, and after you load it you have 187? This would be explained if you are NOT using empty Pets and Seasons templates. One of them is adding those characters, and I'm guessing it's the Seasons one because that's the one that has 17 sims in it. The Pets one has over 100, I think. As for the 200-------238----------253 numbers, they are explained thus: the game auto-creates certain NPCs as soon as you attach those sub-hoods. For example, adding Uni (as soon as you clicke the button to add it), you would get at least 24 new character files (professors). I'm not sure how many files Downtown and Bluewater would auto-create, but I'm guessing at least a few. You should install all of Pescado's norespawn and antiredundancy hacks to stop some of this auto-creation. You might want to see my post at http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=5861.msg208040#msg208040

I don't know if any of this helps you with your problem. Try to explain again what exactly is WRONG with what's currently happening in your game, because that's the part I'm not really getting. The numbers you posted can be explained  as normal game behavior, but I get the feeling you aren't happy with the numbers... but I'm not sure what it is you were hoping would happen instead.

 ;D

Math is not   my strongpoint, so  numbers confuse me very easily. I tend to assume that if someone posts numbers, it isn't a good thing.

Thanks JM. I'll delete the catlady then as I certainly haven't plopped her.

And thank you Sara. What I did was copy/paste the instructions for that portion of the file to a text program so I could follow them along while I was doing it and missed out the line further down. Now I know for next time but hopefully this hood, with no junk in it, will last awhile.

I do wish EA gave more choices. They should let you choose how many and which ones of these folks you want in your neighborhoods. That doesn't seem like impossible coding to me (but I know from Adam). I had to laugh about you and the numbers. I'm exactly the same way - numbers = trouble in my book ;)

Were we supose to add our own templates after using the 'Empty' template? Which I didn't do, btw. Otherwise I messed up somehow because CAS and Bodyshop crash everytime I try to load either one. Which makes sense, in a way.

*THIS IS NOT PLEASANTVIEW, IT IS A TEMPLATE FOR CUSTOM NEIGHBORHOODS**

I noticed that all the custom Neighborhoods still get a lot of bloat even with these empty templates, like text from families/lots in Pleasantview and a bunch of mysterious 3IDRs and BINXs (which turned out to be bought clothing for wardrobes). So here's my version if anyone wants to use it (only tested with Seasons), I even corrected some of the NPC Sim Descriptions that get imported wrong for new neighborhoods. Both the alien and plant NPCs have SimDNA. For best results, delete the other imported neighborhood files. The templates screw up the NPCs again unless their Sim Description is corrected or removed from the template (the empty templates on this page may be fine, I haven't checked).

oh no sorry, I meant the NPCs like the Grim Reaper, Therapist, parrot, remote control car, Pollination Technician, etc. not the service NPCs. They get generated by the game when it needs one, so you don't have to manually create them if you don't want to.

When I try to d/l the empty templates, they come with and extension of .7z and I can't do anything with them. What does this mean?

WinRAR can unzip the .7z (7Zip) format. You may need to set the file association in WinRAR's preferences/options. If you don't have WinRAR, the freeware 7Zip program will unzip them.

It's only been like...forever, but I did finally get around to testing this myself, and as you say, it works perfectly.  I now have a set of Potterverse townies roaming the wilds (though, it seems in this new neighborhood, it's Hermione that likes to kick people to the curb rather than Voldybear, so far).

I believe Quaxi's site (SimPE) has a link to the 7z program if you want it. I got it but haven't needed to use it with WinRAR installed.

First, let me thank you for doing this for the community.  I've been looking at this thread for a while and decided to finally take the plunge to eliminate the EA Maxis scourge!  Now all the 'hoods and sub 'hoods in my game are properly expunged except for the new 'hood, RiverBlossom Hills.  Are you planning to do that 'hood as well?

So I'm going to try a different way. I have the clean templates and all the townie spawn hacks in place. I have no redundancy. So I was using the townie tree to hand pick townies (exiting the lot if I didn't like the ones I got) and I believe my problem was due to corrupted data related to the memory leak, too much reloading and eventually hood blew up. I restored the hood from a backup made right before the townie creation and decided to just let the game create townies. After all, I do not desire to exit the game and reboot the computer every time the game spews out an adult male in makeup with pointy ears (I had three of those! Not gothic makeup either! What the hell?). So, I figured I'd just let the game generate needed npcs and sim surgery the terrifying ones.
Now, the question is: The game did seem to be generating townies using some kind of odd template. I think this due to some of the repetitions I got. However, the templates were even more bizzare than normal. Should I remove the clean templates and go back to the old one during townie creation, or is the template that is being used residing elsewhere?

These empty templates have nothing to do with the face templates used to generate townies. Besides, replacing the empty templates with the original ones at this point won't have any effect on existing neighborhoods, since they are used only when a neighborhood is created or a sub-hood attached.

Did you download a face-template replacement package somewhere?  Or maybe one of the Maxis downloadable sims that come with a face template (see this (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=7828.0) for a list)?

Normal TOWNIES should not be generated with makeup. Downtownies, however, are based on specific sim templates. You should not attempt to create Downtownies with the Tree, because you will get repetition of ugly Maxis sims, rather than having the game generate fresh sims. Read Jordi's thread about custom neighborhoods for more info.

These were npc type townies, pizza men and such. I wasn't making normal townies but rather npc townies. And they were weird, but not plane-face guy weird. Weird more for things like a specific face type always came with makeup it was a male) and two or three face types always had... get this.. costume makeup. One with the marks under the eyes like a football player (he had eyeshadow on too, the kind that shaded above and below the eye in a light black), one girl with the face paint Titania came with (she had beautiful eyes too...) and twice that pictish paint came up. The same hair styles came up with each facepaint/facial structure type, but the color of the hair varried. The male teen with elf ears always had white base, thick eyeliner and black lipstick with the sholdier length male hair.
You know, like outfits and hair seem packaged together on certain townies and npcs: nannies only have a certain range of hairstyles; that red dress that got into the game due to a contest (the one with the armband and skirt) always has a wavy sholdier length hair, thick eyeliner and red lipstick; there's a guy in the blue disco shirt with a pompadour, that kind of thing. Not just facial structure but a whole stereotype. I've just never seen some of these templates, maybe because they are npc specific and I've never tried to create npcs before.

In Seasons (possibly also Pets) the NPC/Townie tree will use Downtownie templates for NPCs. That is what you are seeing.
Autospawned NPCs still work normally.

Ugggghhhh!

WTF, Maxis?

I think it must be Pets that did this, because now that I think back, I do recall getting a maid who had makeup on, which I thought was odd, but decided it was a random glitch.

I swear someone from Maxis EA must lurk around here and see when the awesome ones fix one of their mistakes, then figure out a way to bornk it (instead of doing it right the first time).  ::)

Yeah, they lurk alright - to see how our awesome modders fix the coding. Then fail to duplicate that without borking something else.

Hi!

There seems to be a problem with the Bluewater cleaned-up template.

Issues:

Tessa Ramirez had no wants and fears upon entering the household (adding want/fear slots using inSim will lead to the slots going black with locks).
When I grow her up to a teen, she doesn't roll a LTW.

I restored the original Bluewater and she went fine

This was tested in 3 hoods.

I have Uni, NL, OFB and Seasons, no SPs

Can you update the Bluewater template, or is there a workaround for this? I want to use this to merge my Riverblossom again (I had to delete it because of this)

Hmm. I've never had that problem, but I'll look at it.

I've never seen black wants and fears. Did you mean blank? There are several causes of blank wants and fears.

Anyway, I'll take a look at it. It hasn't been updated since OFB came out, so it is possible something was changed in Pets or Seasons that could be screwing things up.

The wants and fears are indeed blank when I enter the game (they go black when I attempt to add an extra want slot). It's something like a dangling SWAF (I'm an idiot and I'm scared of fixing it with SimPe without some instruction)

BTW, It's from a freshly downloaded copy of the file, and the problem only persisted on Tessa and not on the other Bluewater people.

I'm installing Seasons this weekend (already have all the other EPs), and want to play Riverblossom Hills with all the Maxis-made sims, then attach your cleaned-up La Fiesta Tech and an empty downtown.  Is there any reason I should also attach a shopping district?  I think I can own and visit businesses in the main neighborhood and in downtown.  What would I be missing if I left out a shopping district?

And thanks so much for these templates.   :D

I am sure someone with a lot more knowledge will answer you, but in my game, I always attach Bluewater Village then I never end up going.  I send sim teens to various Uni's and I have my sims go downtown, but the one time I did go to Bluewater Village (thinking I would have my sim parents buy their sim kids some toys) most of the stores were empty due to the fact that I never play the families in Bluewater.  So I have never bothered to go back.  lol

Anyway, my question (not related to the above) is that I thought I was going to end up with Pleasantville, Veronaville, Strangetown and Riverblossom Hills being empty of sims but just having all the houses and buildings when I downloaded the files that were listed under the empty part.  Not the files further down that said they only had the Maxis playable families/sims, but the one above that.  I have tried three times and I do get the files and I followed step-by-step (no, I did not replace under My Documents, but C:/ProgramFiles/EAGames/etc.) and when I go into the game, I still have families in every neighborhood.  Oh, and I first tried your N001.  When I still had families, I did like Jordi suggested and changed it to N001-bak.  Still families.  Was I misinterpreting something?

I do appreciate all the hard work everyone else has done and I'm not saying anyone here has done anything wrong, but does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?  :-[

If you tell me which families you are still getting, I could tell you where they're coming from. Without that it's pretty much impossible to know.

Most likely you missed the note that said that some of the templates (Pets and Seasons) ALSO dump some families into the families bin, and you have to delete those yourself (my files won't help). That's the thing a lot of people seem to miss.

I think I'll go and clean up the first post so it's more clear.


Sub-neighborhoods do have special coding. The Uni coding is obvious -- mascots and the coach barge in, you can have dorms... etc. The NL sub-hood is the place to find grand vampires, and sims will come to community lots at night. I don't know if the shopping district has anything really special about it. I haven't seen any evidence that it does, but it's possible.

There's no reason to attach sub-hoods that you aren't interested in. I rarely attach a shopping district, and sometimes don't bother with the Downtown either. It's up to you.

First of all, I do have my own neighborhood and when I go into SimPE, it lists the townies I have created so far (I'm not done, there are only about 15 or 16 so far), and some NPC characters such as the psychiatrist, social bunny, a stinky skunk (! - I don't have Pets) and a few others.  So I seem to have done something right so far, I could continue to just simply play my neighborhood, it's just that I wanted to be able to have to option of playing in the other neighborhoods as well.

I'm sure you are probably getting frustrated trying to help people, but I swear I read every post here and on Jordi's thread before I bothered you.  But if you don't want (or just simply cannot) help, I'll understand, afterall, you have a life beyond the sims too and it's not like it's life threatening or anything.  So, please don't help unless it doesn't put you out.  I'll just play my own blank neighborhood and keep trying to figure out what I did wrong.

But in case you or someone else does have time:

Riverblossom Hills:
  Roth - 4 members
  Wan - 2 members
  McGreggor - 1 sim
  O'Mackey - 2 members
  Greenman - 3 members
  Viego - 4 members

In sim bin:  O'Mackey - 1 sim

Pleasantview:
  Goth - 3 members
  Pleasant - 4 members
  Dreamer - 2 members
  Caliente - 2 members
  Lothario - 1 sim
  Broke - 3 members

In sim bin:  Burb - 3 members; Oldie - 2 members

Strangetown:
  Curious - 3 members
  Grunt - 4 members
  Smith - 4 members
  Beaker - 3 members
  Specter - 2 members

In sim bin:  Loner - 1 sim; Singles - 4 members

I have not gone into SimPE and checked out how many sims are listed for any neighborhood except the one blank one.  I checked it at the point in Jordi's thread where he said that there should be 0 or else you did something wrong.  There were 0 at the time I checked.  I didn't think to look at the other ones at that time.  It wasn't until I had made the 32 sims in bodyshop that Jordi suggested and then I thought I would like to put them into Pleasantview.  That's when I discovered the houses were still occupied so I have been putting them in a blank neighborhood.

Before I did this, I completely uninstalled all the games and reinstalled, then downloaded most of JM's directors' cut for Seasons.

If you need more information, let me know.  And please, don't feel pressured, as I said I can live without it and I do really appreciate the time and effort you have spent to help. :)

Okay, you haven't done anything wrong, you just misunderstood what the empty templates would do, and then I misunderstood your problem. :)

The empty templates don't do anything to Strangetown, Veronaville, or the main Riverblossom (the one you can select from the neighborhood screen). So, the fact that you have all the sims there is the way it should be.

Pleasantview should be completely empty if you downloaded and installed the Empty Pleasantview template. However, it will not be empty unless the game regenerated Pleasantview after  you installed the Empty Pleasantview template. If you already had Pleasantview, it won't be affected at all. The purpose of the Empty Pleasantview template is so that Pleasantview's townies and NPC's won't get dumped into newly created custom neighborhoods. The fact that the empty template makes Pleasantview empty is basically just a side-effect, not the main feature.

If you want empty Veronaville and Strangetown, there is a link on page 2 of this thread. Someone else asked about this and I uploaded the empty templates for her or him. Again, existing Veronaville and Strangetown won't be affected. They will only be empty if the game regenerates them after you install the empty templates. There currently isn't an empty Riverblossom available, but you can use the DAC code and then clean things up in SimPE to make it yourself.

Oh, thank you for explaining this. :)  If I want a completely emply Pleasantview to play, then I need to uninstall again, reinstall but before I even open the game, put the empty template files in place, then open the game?  That's how I get the towns with all the buildings intact, but no playable sims, right?

Thank you again for responding so quickly and I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear to begin with.

Edited to ask:

If I put Argon's empty Pleasantview in place (instead of the other empty template) will I still have the houses?  I only ask because when I downloaded his to try, I noticed he had a folder called Lots but there was nothing in it.  If I save the original lots folder, can I put Argon's N001 in then just replace his Lots folder with the original one or will that undo all the work you and Argon did to clean it up?

You don't need to reinstall the game.

Install the empty template(s) first. Then choose one of the options below:

If you don't have any neighborhoods that you want to keep:

Then go to C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

Delete the Neighborhoods folder.

The game will regenerate the Maxis neighborhoods the next time you run the game.

If you want to keep your custom neighborhoods:

Open C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\

N001 = Pleasantview
N002 = Strangetown
N003 = Veronaville

Delete the ones that you want to replace with empty versions.

Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

Copy the appropriate folders (N001, N002, etc) and paste them into C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

Riverblossom will have to be emptied manually, since there is no empty template for it. You will need to know how to clean up the neighborhood file  (SWAFs and so on) after using DeleteAllCharacters.

Download the empty Riverblossom here: http://www.box.net/shared/pj0l8rspi6

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\
• Make a backup of the G001 folder
• Open the G001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file G001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is G001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the G001 folder
• Copy and paste the G001 folder into C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\ like you did for Pleasantview, etc.

As far as Argon's template, I'm actually not sure.

If you want to keep the houses, I would use MY template, not his, since he may have deleted the code for the houses from inside his template.

I wouldn't use DAC to empty G001. DAC seems to mess up subsequent townie/NPC spawning since it leaves a lot of crap behind. Sure you *can* fix it, but why not do it right from the start?

To make your own empty template from scratch:
-Backup G001 (in Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods) or make sure you have the Seasons disk to restore from for future patches
-Delete the /Characters and /Thumbnails subfolders from G001
-Open G001_Neighborhood.package.package in SimPe and delete ALL Sims. Most should now be "unknown". Save and close the file (not SimPE, unless you like waiting).
-Reopen the file, and remove all Sim relationships if any are left. Ditto for all SDNA.
-Save the file.

These instructions should also work for any other 'hood, including the unis, downtown, and bluewater. It also works for the P001 and G002 cloaked 'hoods.

And SWAFs, don't forget SWAFs.   :)

SaraMK and Jordi,

Thanks to both of you, it's a relief I don't need to uninstall and reinstall (all that work I put into creating the townies in Bodyshop for my blank neighborhood (only to read on another thread that if I had put them into a blank Pleasantview instead...).  SimPE is so complicated to me that I think I'll just leave Riverblossom alone for now and play Pleasantview instead.

Hopefully I won't have to pester you guys again (at least not for awhile, anyway  ;))

SWAFs actually seem to be deleted if you first remove all characters. That's why I recommend saving after deleting all Sims, closing the file, and reopening.
Same for memories, if you save after deleting all Sims they're wiped without the need to delete them manually (which is extremely painful in the horrible SimPE memory editor we have since OFB).

Memories and family info are also deleted if you delete sims using SimPE and then reload the file, but SWAFs are not.

Good to know.

One thing I'm not sure about is the Sim Creation Index: in one of Pescado's threads he recommended resetting it, but I've not had any problems with leaving it at its default value.

I was afraid to touch it since I couldn't find enough info about it.

Oops! Sorry! Posted in wrong thread!

/me grabs message and runs

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know that I now have all my houses/lots with no sims!  Thank you  ;D

p.s.   I did try using Argon's but just adding the lots folder that wasn't empty.  Didn't work, still no houses.  So I have yours in now.

A few Maxis sims and a bunch of badly designed Maxis lots. Any suburbs past one university and one downtown are superflous. If you need more game-generated townies for a challenge, adding a Uni works. Other than that, the only purpose for an additional Uni or downtown or any shopping district is to have extra room for more lots. Home businesses and playable-owned community lots can be present in both the main neighborhood and downtown.

I have been slowly creating my custom hood over the last month. I have been using some great tutorials on how to create your own NPC's , Townies etc... I have also used these clean templates.

I decided last night to finally add a downtown, shopping district and a uni. I added a custom downtown since I wanted to make one from scratch, I added the cleaned up bluewater village without any characters they both seemed to be ok. I hit a snag when adding a uni. I've used the cleaned up templates without any charters and followed the instructions on adding.

When I try to add Sims State uni or the posh one (can't remember its name). On the creating screen it loads with the squares being lit up then when that finishes it pauses for a while. Then the top browser appears, the one to select what hood you want to go to, and the bottom browser too with the save, load etc... But it stays on the loading screen but flashes between that and a black screen. Sometimes it will even show the uni campus for a bit and reverts back to the loading screen. With the posh uni I was able to get into it but it runs extremely slow and choppy and also has the issue of the screen going black now and then. I didn't seem to have this issue with the desert uni or a custom uni.

If it comes down to it I will just stick with a custom uni but I would really like to use the posh uni template.  Well I hope this makes sense it is a bit hard to explain what is happening. Has anyone had this issue or have any suggestions.

I think you'll need to use the cleaned up templates for Uni rather than the empty ones.  But Sarah should probably confirm that.

I gave that a try. Still running into the same issue. Can any one tell me what should be in the uni folders? Maybe I deleted something i shouldn't have. i doubt it though since i followed the instructions to the letter.

Silly question: after using these blank templates in the Uni hoods, will they still generate Secret Society Sims like they do with cheerleaders/mascots/professors, etc.? If not, do you happen to know of any way I could manually create a Secret Society again? I looked in the lot bin, but I didn't see any SS lots. :(

In the U00# folders you should have the following items:

Characters folder (empty if using empty templates, or with fewer than 20 sims if using cleaned up ones)
Lots folder (full of files -- do not touch this)
Storytelling folder (harmless to mess with, but no reason to touch)
Thumbnails folder (good idea to delete everything inside, but not necessary)
U00#_Neighborhood.package file (downloaded from this thread)
U00#_Neighborhood.png picture file

The U00# folders can be found at C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\

I have never experienced the problem (extended loading / not loading) that you're describing. Does it also happen with empty templates, or just the cleaned up ones? It is possible, I guess, that an EP edited something and now the template need to be updated, but I haven't seen any evidence of this.

Part of your loading problem could be due to professors being generated. The game will generate 24 professsors when a Uni is created. You can't stop this. However, while this can cause a long pause when a Uni is first attached, it should not cause problems when loading an existing Uni, and should not result in graphical glitches.

The first thing you should try is to put boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true into your startup file, or enter it as soon as you are in your main neighborhood. Then either attach a Uni or enter an existing Uni that has the loading problem. If something weird is going on, an error might be generated.



All the Uni neighborhoods have a secret society lot already, except one. It's the Academie one. Try entering Academie and seeing if the SS lots show up in the bin. They won't show up in any of the other Unis because you can only have one SS lot and they already have them.

All NPCs, including secret society members, are generated on demand (when the game decides it "needs" them... whether you agree or not). The empty / clean templates do not stop NPCs from being generated. However, some hacks may prevent NPCs from being generated. For example, nossregen may prevent you from getting any SS NPCs.

D'oh! I forgot that Academie doesn't have a Secret Society. That's what the problem is. Thanks for clearing that up for me. :(

That's why it's my favorite. I can avoid having any SS sims at all simply by not having an SS lot. :)

Actually, if you want to know the truth, the only reason I had wanted one was because I had accidentally had my Self Sim's daughter (who was going to be the heiress to the start of my new Legacy attempt) get struck by lightning in the hot tub (twice!) and she was killed. Her twin brother (who was best friends with her) failed to successfully plead with the Reaper to save her, so I thought the best thing to use to save her in Uni was a Secret Society Resurrecto-nomitron (they have one of those, don't they?). Ah well; it's a moot point now anyways. :D

Thank you for your help. Nothing I tired worked. I seem to have all the files in place. I even took out my downloads & Mods to see if that made a difference. It's strange how the Desert Uni works fine though.

I tried the suggestion of checking for errors. I got this
Error TS audio music category (Buy) listed twice in category property set.\source\TSaudio music manager.cpp (1651).
This repeats the same for build and CAS too.

If worse comes to it I will just reinstall as I always back up so it's not much of an issue, just too lazy to go through the whole install if I don't have to.

Those errors are normal and harmless, just ignore those.

Which ones are the SS Lots?

Secret Society lots are invisible from the neighborhood view (invisible house! w00t!). Once a sim joins the secret society, they can visit the lot.

If your Uni doesn't have a SS lot, then the lot bin will have some secret society lots that you can plunk down (they are labeled as SS lots). If the Uni already has one, then those lots won't be available in the bin. Also, a new SS lot can be created by turning any lot into an SS lot using the appropriate cheat code.

After updating for Seasons, I started a clean hood, devoid of townies. After creation I checked with SimPe and the only characters that I had were the neighborhood strays (by design).

I start playing the hood. When I finally took some Sims downtown, a Sim named Chase Hayes shows up on the lot. Since I am using TwoJeff's visitor controller, I attempted to ban him, first by banning townies, and then by banning down-townies, but he never disappeared off of the lot.

Opening his file in SimPe, he is the only Sim in the Hayes family. NPC's, professors, and defaults are listed under the Pope family. He is listed as an adult townie, no Uni, is unemployed and has no skills. (I'm pretty sure that standard townies are given random skills and a job, aren't they?)

The best that I can figure is that he is the Mystery Sim that all of my CAS Sims had their first kiss with. :P

So where did he come from? How do I stop any more of these from being made? How can I get rid of him? I don't fully understand the instructions from the thread that discusses using the lot debugger to prep a Sim for delete. I could just kill him off since there is only one of his type, but since I can't figure out where he came from, the game may make another to replace him unless I figure out this enigma.

Sorting by filename in SimPe, he is user #23. If Sims are assigned filenames in the order that they are created, strays were spawned first, then some of my playables, then he was created just after the papergirl was made, but before I finished making all of my playable Sims. IIRC, I created several Sims, moved them into a lot to make adjustments, at which time the papergirl was created and appeared on the lot and this mystery character was created, but did not appear on the lot as far as I know.

ETA: I just remembered that I placed a lot from the lot bin that had a Coffee Bar in it. IIRC, sometimes old NPC's can hitchhike with these. Now that I think about it, ACR complained that one Sim did not have a token when I visited this lot. Is this the possible cause of this mystery Sim? But if so, then why isn't he in the Pope family with the rest of the NPC's, and why is he behaving as a townie rather than an NPC?

If he has a gold gardening badge, then he's probably the gardening club NPC.  They don't get put in the NPC family, they get their own family.  On his SDSC screen, is his family instance 0x7FF6?  That's the gardening club family instance in my 'hoods.

He is normally created the first time you play a lot in a new neighbourhood, which would explain why he's near the papergirl in character creation.  Presumably TJ's visitor controller can prevent the creation of gardening club NPCs if you ban them as soon you go into the first lot, before they have a chance to be created - I never bother banning them, as he only visits once in the neighbourhood unless invited (unlike the gypsy who visits every lot).

If you have a sim apply for membership in the gardening club, you'll get another 2-3 sims created in that family.  They seem to need a group of 3 to assess a lot.

So does your Garden guy show up on comm lots as a visitor? None of the other NPC's do. I don't want him mingling with my playables. No fraternization!

The family instance is 0x7FF6. No badges showing in SimPe though. But he does have an invisible memory of "Get a Bronze Gardening Talent Badge". He is wearing a green Polo shirt.

Garden Club NPC's act exactly like townies. They show up on community lots and interract with everyone.

Thanks for your answers. The unusual behavior had left me totally confused. Now that I know what is going on, I can find a way to deal with it. Since I started my hood in Uni, I haven't had any visits from Gardening Personnel, so I had no idea which Sims might belong in that category.

I did a lot of testing. It's not the templates causing me trouble. I tested each EP and SP and found out its seasons causing me the grief. I read on another forum that someone else had the same issue.

La Fiesta Rech works fine. Sim state Uni will load but the neighborhood screen is extremely slow and choppy and Academie Le Tour gets stuck on the loading screen. Custom Uni's also seem fine.

I really wanted to use Academie Le Tour as I like the layout of the neighborhood and the lots. Is it possible to use this template on a custom Uni neighborhood including lots?

Hi! I'm totally new at this and really ??? when it comes to computers so thanks for your patience and time... I currently have the base game and NL installed, been playing for some time now. I recently bought OFB & Pets and have not installed them yet as I think getting your advice before I do anything stupid is the best thing to do! My question is:

1) I would like to install my new OFB & Pets EPs and start playing my game with the totally fresh neighbourhoods (with the maxis lots and houses but without all the default characters). How should I go about doing that without messing things up? Should I jus go ahead and install OFB & Pets then 'cleanup' the neighbourhoods with your downloads? Or best to re-install everything?

Summary Of My Game:
Currently Installed & Played= Sims2 Base & Nightlife only
New EPs (hv yet to install)= OFB & Pets
Com= imac intel core 2 duo (unable to use SIMPE etc)

Thanks A Million!  :)

There is no need to reinstall your game. :)

Install OFB and Pets one after the other, but do not run the game after installation completes. Follow the instructions I gave and install my empty templates. Then start playing. That's all you need to do.

If you run the game after installing the Pets EP, a lot of characters (including dozens of strays) will be dumped into each of your neighborhoods. So it's very important that you install the empty templates before playing. The Pets (and Seasons) EP's automatically attach a sub-hood (which cannot be visited like the Nightlife sub-hood) to every neighborhood that you already have or create. The only way to stop this is to install the empty templates as soon as you install Pets (or Seasons) and before running the game after installing.

I hope that helps you decide what to do.

I'm pretty sure that Maxis did not include the sc4 terrains for the Universities, so you probably can't create a custom one using the terrain. You could, however, package up the empty lots and put them in a different terrain.

Thanks! :)
1) Do I have to worry about the memories of all the sims, townies,npcs etc from my past few weeks of palying the base game + NL? Furthermore I had quite a number of log errors from that time (had to use the 'boolprop testingcheatsenabled true' just to get into lots, it's sloved now though)... Will that all affect the new installations?
2) Ermmm... Which of your templates should I actually download? (I would like the default playable sims without the townies/npcs/downtownies...)  :-[

Thanks Again!

Your current neighborhoods won't be affected by installing new EP's or by installing empty templates. As alwyas, you should make a backup of your neighborhoods before installing any new EP's.

As for 2), it sounds like you want the cleaned up templates rather than the empty ones. The only difference is that empty templates have no sims at all, while the cleaned up ones have the Maxis playable sims.

I plan to start my game 'afresh' therefore I will still backup, but I won't be replacing any folders with the backup copy... Do I need to replace my current Pleasantview, StrangeTown & Veronaville folders with your Cleaned & Fixed ones 1st (so that these 3 neighbourhoods would be clean and fresh?

This is what I plan to do, do correct me if I'm wrong Thanks...  :)

Replace all my current Pleasantview, StrangeTown & Veronaville folders with your Cleaned & Fixed ones --> Replace my current NL folders with your Cleaned Up Templates for NL (Downtown) ---> Install OFB & Pets --->Install your Cleaned Up Templates for OFB & Pets ---> Run the Game! :D

Thanks Again! I really appreciate it!  :)

If you want to restart (and to play) the Maxis neighborhoods, and you want them to have only the Maxis playable sims (but not townies and NPC's) then you need to replace them with the Cleaned/Fixed ones and then allow the game to regenerate the Maxis neighborhoods. That can be done by removing the Neighborhoods folder from the My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\ directory. When that folder is missing, the game regenerateds the Maxis neighborhoods for you.

So, yes, the steps you posted will be fine, as long as the Neighborhoods folder has been removed or deleted from the My Documents directory before you run the game.

What did I probably do wrong when the following problem comes up:
Sim State university got replaced with the cleaned up version and was attached to Pleasantview.
If you click on an occupied lot - say the place of that artist, Hmhmhm O'Keefe or whatever her name is - the lot info screen pops up with the correct name and lot data, yet no thumbnail or info of the inhabitant.
Feeling brave aka stupid, I intended to load the lot anyway to see what happens - well, the game crashes.

Hmm.

What, if anything, did you do to the Characters folder and the Lots folder?

Lots folder - nothing I suppose, as I can't recall doing anything with it.

Characters - deleted the original files and extracted those from the cleaned-up template.
Would it be a bad idea to simply extract the Characters template folder again and either delete/replace the existing files or overwrite them ... in case I ever wish to leave the currently played merged neighbourhood again ;) ?

Well, you can extract the character files again into the Program Files directory... it won't hurt anything, and might fix things. Of course, it will only fix things for future neighborhoods, not the current ones.

Doing anything to the files in Program Files won't help with the current neighborhood that's screwed up. I don't know what might have caused that. Did you try yanking the sim out of the house? It could be a simple corruption... random. Do any of the other houses crash?

Hehehe, I'm a bad tester - instead of trying different houses, I got rid of the whole neighbourhood (a fresh start of Pleasantview) and went back to my favoruite hood.

But true, I'm going to prevent surprises for future tries with single neighbourhoods and will go double-checking the Program Files folders. :)

Thanks for all the help SaraMK, I did all that you asked me to do and now when I enter my new custom neighbourhood, Guess Who Pops In To Visit...?! Bella Goth! I was totally stunned! But enjoyed it of course!!  :D

If I have the base neighborhood cleared using the Pleasantview template in a new 'hood, and then I add a custom uni or downtown, could I delete the character files for both of those sub-neighborhoods? Or would I need to download the uni, nl, and ofb templates before creating the uni and downtown for a completely empty new sub-neighborhood?

You would need to install the templates. You can uninstall them again after adding those sub-hoods to your neighborhood.

Once a sub-hood is added, and the characters that come with it are dumped into your neighborhood, there is no way to get rid of it. Or at least not without going through the tedious Deleted 2 process with a lot of SimPE work. Custom sub-hoods dump sims into your neighborhood the same as the Maxis pre-made sub-hoods do, so unfortunately the only way to not have a lot of sims added is to use the templates. The only way to get a completely empty neighborhood is to have all the empty templates installed.

Don't forget to have antiredundancy, notownieregen, and nodormieregen installed while adding the sub-hoods. Otherwise the game will immediately begin to create sims.

Okay, I get it now. So I would need antiredundancy, notownieregen, and nodormieregen, plus the empty Pleasantview template and the one for the sub neighborhoods. I would install the templates following the directions, make the new neighborhood and subneighborhoods, and then create townies, downtownies, NPCs, dormies, etc following Jordi's tutorial.

Ha, thanks. Another person and I've been trying to figure this out.  ;)

It's me again...  I have all the cleaned-up templates up to pets and am playing a custom neighbourhood. I recently added Bluewater Village to my neighbourhood therefore the playable sims from Bluewater Village started showing up in my custom neighbourhood as expected. I now own a business in my community lot... The question is:

I tried to hire employees but not only was the list limited, they were all either playable sims from my neighbourhood or from Bluewater V... How do I hire a non playable sim or townie safely? Do I just spawn them with the Townie Maker and hire them as per normal?

Thanks! And Sorry if my question sounds really stupid cos I'm really terrible with computers and technical stuff so I jus want to be extra careful...

I've been playing the cleaned-up combined neighbourhood for several days now, and it has made my gameplay thoroughly enjoyable; HOWEVER, I noticed while mucking about in SimPE that the relationships for some of the Pleasantview sims are seriously messed up (no doubt due to shoddy EAxian programming and nothing to do with SaraMK's efforts at cleaning up and combining the 'hoods). For instance, Lucy Burb was listed as being the sibling of some of the Goth ghosts, and was thus listed as being Alexander Goth's grandparent. Kaylynn Langorak (sp?) is related as Family (unspecified or unknown) to everybody she knows, including Daniel Pleasant, whom she's been boffing on a regular basis (ewwww). These things are easily fixed, and I've already fixed them, but the thing I'm not so sure how to fix is that there are two each of Darleen Dreamer and Michael Bachelor (both dead sims). I've removed all relationships and family ties from the duplicate sims (leaving one of Darleen and one of Michael intact), but I need to know how to go about safely deleting the now-unlinked duplicates and cleaning up general garbage files (I've noticed a few Unknown toward Unknown relationships, etc). I'm still not very clear on how to clean up dangling SWAFs and whatnot. Can somebody either provide clear instructions on exactly how to do this in SimPE, or point me toward a good tutorial (the ones I've found are about as clear as mud)? Many thanks to anybody who can help!

Well, the whole idea behind using the empty templates is to not get the default townies.  If you have notownieregen in your game, you won't get any at all unless you specifically generate them with the Townie Maker or turn CAS sims into townies with the teleporter bush or testing cheats.  If you don't have notownieregen in your game, the game will only generate townies as needed, one at a time,  so it could take a while to get a big enough population to hire.

Either way, if you want more townies you have to make them yourself one way or the other.  Note that the mass townie generator is broken in OFB (and all EPs since), so you'll have to make them one at a time.  The best way, though, is to create a bunch of sims in CAS and then turn them into townies. Many of us do that with the self-sims of other MATY members found here.

I use the empty templates and when I start a new hood, when I have a family moved in, I enable testing cheats and shift click on the mailbox and tell the game to mass create townies (forget what it's under in the menu) and the game then creates around 30 (I think thats how many) different townies (I've even run it twice to have more townies) but I do this before adding any sub-hoods, I sort of remember someone saying that a sub-hood could break it, Uni I think.


I got sick of having to make my own townies a long time ago  :P

Thanks jsalemi and sleepycat! This whole thing about what exactly townies, downtownies and NPCs are is jus confusing me to the max! Thanks for all your help! I'll go create my townies now!  :D

Alright, another dumb question...with the subneighborhood templates, there's one for U001, U002, and U003. I know that when you make a custom Uni without the templates, it gives you the sims from Sim State. Would you need to put all three of the clean templates in for this to stop?

No, you just need to install the one that they're usually being copied from, which (I'll take your word for it since I can't remember off the top of my head) is Sim State.

Okay, thanks! And yes, I'm almost positive the default characters are from Sim State.

Ok, so I already have some families I don't want to lose in Pleasantview, and am too lazy to mess extract them and then mess with them in SimPE. Is there anyway I could get your empty templates and somehow tweak it into N004?

The empty templates don't affect existing neighborhoods. If you install the empty Pleasantview, the only thing that will happen is that NEW custom neighborhoods won't have Pleasantview's sims. Your current Pleasantview isn't going to change.

I get that, but what I want to do is copy the Pleasantview into my neighborhoods folder (as in the one in My Documents) as N004, so that I could start playing in that neighborhood without all the Maxis sims and Townies, and keep playing my old neighborhood as N001, so I'd have Pleasantview 1 (mine) and Pleasantview 2 (empty). Or is the only way to do that to pull mine out and then put in a copy of yours... and then when I want to play my old one to put mine back in and pull the new one started with your base out.

Can't be done (safely) without using SimPE to extract and replace Number ID.

You could, however, start a new game set for the empty Pleasantview. Simply install the empty template, then go to My Documents\EA Games\ and rename the folder The Sims 2 to The Sims 2 - Original (or some other descriptive name), and then run the game. A new game set will be created, and it will include an empty Pleasantview. When you want to play your old neighborhoods, rename the new folder to something else and rename the old folder back to The Sims 2.

Here's how to do it if you want to try doing it using SimPE:

Make a complete backup of your Neighborhoods folder in case you screw up. Put in a safe place.
Add a new neighborhood. Exit the game as soon as the neighborhood is created. Let's say this neighborhood is N004.
Open the N004 folder and open the N004_Neighborhood.package file in SimPE.
On the left side find Number ID, click on it, select it on the right side, right-click on it, and choose Extract.
Save the file on the Desktop or inside a folder so you can find it quickly later.
Open the N004 folder again and delete everything.
Take the empty Pleasantview you downloaded from me, which is a file called N001_Neighborhood.package.
Put the file inside the now-empty N004 folder, and rename it to N004_Neighborhood.package.
Open the file in SimPE.
On the left side find Number ID, click on it, select it on the right side, right-click on it, and choose Replace.
Find the file you extracted earlier and choose it. Save the changes and exit SimPE.
Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001
COPY everything in that folder except the N001_Neighborhood.package file and the Characters and Thumbnails folders.
PASTE the files into the N004 folder.
Rename everything that's named N001 to N004. Including the files in the Lots folder.

This works fabulous!  I made myself a 2nd Pleasantview nieghborhood following these directions and using your empty templates.  I am so loving not having all the idiots wandering around, getting in the way and just making a general nuisance of themselves.

You are my new hero, Thanks!!

I've got a question that may or may not have been answered here.  If it has I've missed it.

Is it possible with the empty Uni templates to add all three Unis to a neighborhood and not have an overflow of professors and NPCs with the anti-redundancy hack?

Not that anyone would have any real reason to do so unless they were running out of Uni real estate.  Which is a problem I may be running into later since I just downloaded that big joined hood of yours.

You can add all the Unis. You will still get at least 24 professors. I'm not sure if it will attempt to create more professors... but it shouldn't. With anti-redundancy I think you will be safe from an overflow of other Uni NPCs as well. Or at least I've never had more than one cow/llama/coach... and I've had multiple Unis before. I just don't recall about the professors.

I can confirm that in my game, which has been reasonably well played game since NL (I rebooted at that time with a fresh clean 'hood, without all the VBTs I had done to make it a potential BFBVFS way back when we didn't know about those things), that after adding two additional Unis (La Fiesta State and Academie Le Tour - I already had Sims State U), using SaraMK's clean templates and Pescado's antiredundancy and noregen hacks, I only had/have 24 professors.

I was very meticulous in noting the number of sims I had in the Characters folder, and then counting the additional number of sims created after adding each new Uni.  The number of new sims matched the number of Maxis EA playables that came with each clean template, no more, no less.  I only have one set (of 24 total) professors.  I have yet to play any households in the new Unis, but so far so good. :)

Oh yeah, and I had 3 of each Uni NPC (mascots, cheerleaders, coaches, etc.) and no new ones were created.  So definitely use antiredundancy and the noregen hacks.


Ste

I'm going to have to re-upload everything to 4shared.... I forgot to access my account last month and I guess they deleted everything from it. I'll do that today, so check back later.

Thanks for reuploading Sara :)

I have the three maxi's hoods attached to Riverblossom Hills, there was something like 700 sims in my characters folder and I was already experiencing some bugs >:(

It's not Pleasantview, and it was never made from Pleasantview, it was generated from scratch (with corrections by me) by the game when it didn't have access to Pleasantview files. It's purpose is to prevent any of the left over unreferenced junk from being copied to new neighborhoods which SaraMK's templates do because it kept the houses. With the empty templates it also prevents the non-service NPCs from getting borked in that new neighborhood. It's been a while since I've seen this thread, so I thought I'd clear that up finally. :-[

I have all expansions except Seasons and I have the empty templates installed. 

I tried to adopt a kitten but the only pets available were a small adult dog and an adult cat. 

I tried boolprop testingcheatsenabled true/shift + click on the mailbox and got an option to create pets but it didn't change.  Is there a way to make puppies and kittens availiable to adopt?

Using the empty templates will limit the number of strays that are in your neighborhood initially, but eventually more strays will be generated, unless you have installed Pescado's hack that prevents this (nostrayrespawn). If you did install it, you will only ever see a few pets up for adoption.

You can spawn the NPC & Townie Creator (a dead tree) using Debug Mode. Activate debug mode, shift-click on a sim, and you'll find it under the Spawn option. This will let you create some strays, although I'm not sure you can make baby  animals with it.

Another way would be to make a pet shop, have a sim buy a bunch of animals, and then put them up for adoption.

I was wondering if I'd have to go that route, just hoped it'd be easier.  Thanks Sara :)

I've been trying this for awhile with no luck. I immediately run into a brick wall with the step I bolded. When I right click the ID Number, Simpe does nothing, no option to extract or anything else. Any ideas? Suggestions? :-\

Are you trying to right-click on the left side of the screen? That won't work.

You left-click on the left side of the screen, then wait for something to show up on the right side of the screen. Then you select it (left-click) on the right side of the screen and right-click on it to get the options.

That's the only thing I can think of that might be the cause of your problem.

Also, are you sure you're in Plugin view?

Okay, I figured it out, I must have needed to sleep on it. I was using Simpe lite...apparently that version must not work for something like this. I uninstalled it and installed the full version of Simpe this morning and it worked on the very first try. ::)

A couple of questions....

1.  Followed instructions and now my custom neighborhood is free from all of those ugly townies and downtownies.  Am I to understand that when I create another neighborhood that I won't have to go through this process again?

2. How can I avoid getting the uglies when I install Bon Voyage?

Nobody knows yet.  First we have to wait for the game to be released, then for the awesome ones to purchase/acquire a copy, then they need to install it and play it, tweak it, play it some more, tweak it a little bit more, play some more, etc.  When they know, they'll tell us non-awesome folk.

Yes.  Assuming you installed the appropriate templates and hacks (you most likely will need all the various flavors of 'noregen' and antiredundancy is highly recommended either way).



As Kyna said, this remains to be seen.  Maxis EA is known for being sneaky and sticking in 'hidden' or 'extra' neighborhood templates here and there.  They aren't always consistent about how they do it too.  So it isn't necessarily all that easy to predict where those templates might be, but for sure, you can count on them being there. :P

From the rumor mill, it looks like there will be one additional, playable family.  At least 3 superspecialsecret NPCs, and who knows what other new, working (service sim) NPCs may have been added (hotel service staff, pickpockets [?], etc.).  Hopefully antiredundancy will be sufficient to curb the addition of extra sims.  But who knows?  If these vacation subhoods are treated as a separate area, they may create a whole set of vacationies (?).  :P


Ste

After a recent crash, I had to redo everything over.

So started the new hood with empty templates, downloaded Bender's Field by Numenor, and plopped it into the hood.

Went into the lot. Strays were created. (I don't have nostrayrepawn).

Made a few families and moved them into lots. After the last family was moved in, I called the pet adoption agency at which time the game lags while making pets for the pound.

I Left the game and checked all the character files. All of the strays have the last name of Bender, and all of the pound puppies have the last name of the household who made the call to the pet adoption agency.

Even though the last names are associated with other families, the strays and adoptables still show correctly as townies.

Although this isn't a big issue, what should I have done differently? Is it possible that since the strays were created when there were no Sims in the hood, just a servo, that it confused something? I don't think the last hood I created had the strays and adoptables associated with family names of existing Sims. ???

When using Inge's teleporter, it would be much easier if the strays were in their own family name. Adoptables could be put under the same or different family name as the strays, or all could be put under the same surname that townies and NPCs get. I just don't want them associated with names of people who live in the hood. After generations of Sims it will get confusing.

You can change the family name with SimPE.
I noticed this too in every custom neighbourhood I have : The strays and adoption family get the same name as the family in play when they are first generated. Idem for the shop pets (the one in the display) : their family gets the same name as the sims who visits a community lot with the display on it for the first time.
I'm always changing the families names to things like "strays", "adoption-phone" etc to help when teleporting sims or pets in.
(I'm also changing some names of my sims' families to reflect changes like mariage...

....whereas I have the problem of store-bought animals getting no first name and no naming dialog. Trepie Thimble bought a dog at Klapaucius's store, it of course random generated to an elder bulldog (why do I always get the random boughts as elders? Why?) named Thimble. Just Thimble. Ok....

You can use the phone to change the pet's name...

I know. I'm leaving Thimble as-is because it amuses me, and he's not long for this world anyways. I just think it is quite odd that I didn't get a random name or a naming dialog on lot-load.

Unfortunately, no one else in the 'hood seems keen on purchasing another animal autonomously. Womrats aplenty, but no more cats or dogs.

I've never had a sim buy a pet autonomously.  Then again, I have Pescado's 'noautopetbuy' in my game, and I suspect maybe you do now too?

I have cleaned templates so what should I do before installing BV?  Can someone walk me through the process?  I really don't want to screw up my game.  Also, I'm planning to get Family Fun Stuff too.  Do I need to do something before installing that?

I will help you because you were polite, but you must also listen to me carefully.  Before you ask a question you should try to look around for an answer on your own first.  In this case there is a very clearly named thread,  New EP procedure - would love recommendations (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9392.0/topicseen.html) up in the podium.  You wouldn't have even needed to run a search for it since it is actually active as recently as today.  Another thing that you may not have read is  the FAQ (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7437.0.html).  You should read that now to avoid being poked with sharp sticks in the future.

Well, I did what you said and went to where you directed my to go.  Obviously, you didn't understand my question.  I'm not that much of a novice that I don't know to remove hacks before installing a new ep.  That's just common sense.  My question was in regards to having  a clean template and then installing a new ep.  And I do look around for an answer before asking a question.  I didn't find an answer to my question.  I'll search alot better next time.

Assuming BV works like the other expansions, when you go add your "vacation destination" it will attach a sub-neighborhood with a bunch of NPCs/townies/vacationers?.  Wether this will be a ridiculously intolerable amount of ugly useless characters, nobody will know until the game is released and tries it.  There also won't be a way to undo this without completely starting over your neighborhood.

I hope and suspect that after a while SaraMK, or someone else here, will get to those vacation neighborhoods and clean them out and post them here

Personally I hate default townies and such. I'll play with BV in a dummy screw around neighborhood that I don't care about.  I'll add it to my main neighborhood when cleaned up templates are released and essential hacks are updated.

I'm sorry! My mistake. The past few days have been really bad, but that is no excuse to take out my aggression on innocents. Again, my apologies.
Obviously the first step is to back up the files. According to the  the sims 2 wiki (http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Main_Page) and more specifically  this article (http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Preparing_for_the_Next_Expansion) any alterations in the program files must be reverted back to their original state or the installer will not complete.  So, the clean templates need to be removed from C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods before you can install BV. After that, you have a choice. You can either put them back into the game and see how it goes, or you can wait for someone else to test it find out if it still works/if something needs to be updated or changed. Either way if you've backed up all of the stuff you care about then you can always go back to a non-damaged state.
I hope that was coherent.

I never remove the clean templates before installing new EPs (or SPs) and I've never had any problems. 


I just did a complete re-install (of everything) the day before yesterday and after installing each EP, I then patched and then set up the empty template(s) and then loaded the game, exited and then went on to the next.

Ditto.

Thank you!  I was going to struggle through doing this myself!  I'm not an idiot (I like to think - I know I'm not awesome, but I don't think I'm an utter moron) but I'm still learning SimPE, so this helped a great deal.

Thank you for your explanations as to *why* you're having us do this as well - it helped me learn the process.

I've been meaning to use the clean templates for ages, now, with a reinstall it's coming to pass. Since there were no Maxis-only templates for Seasons available, I made mine according to the tutorial, you can get them here: Riverblossom Hills (http://www.mediafire.com/?bzmg112xs4c), "stealth" template (http://www.mediafire.com/?09xnmmxeov2).

I don't know if this is an issue or not. I'm not a expert with Simpe and never will be. I only use it to do little changes. When a sim is dead I noticed that in their portrait the background turns blue. After installing the cleaned up templates when I kill off a Sims their portrait background stays the normal grey. Does anyone know if this is an issue will it cause me problems?

I did see this mentions a few posts back but couldn't see any comments. I now have duplicates of Skip and darlenn (if that's her name) it doesn't bother me, just wanted to make sure I didn't do something wrong or it will cause problems.

All help it greatly appreciated.

Is it just me or is the "Clean and Fixed Pleasantview, Strangetown, Veronaville" link not working?

BTW, thank you for these and your tutorial about merging the hoods and your downloadable hood. Without these three forum posts, I'd be driven insane. :P

Are templates just for the playable sims going to be made for Riverblossom and the 'stealth' neighbourhood Seasons dumps on you, as well as clean template with just the playable sims for Bon Voyage going to be made?

I don't mind the playable sims. I just can't stand the townies EAxis made.

There already is an empty template for the Season's stealth hood. In the first post on this thread cleverly called "Empty Seasons Template" in very large letters.
For the Bon Voyage thing I am sure that someone will make an empty template. The game did just come out and I imagine that this takes a lot of effort. We should all appreciate the hard work that SaraMK put into this and her genorosity in sharing it with all of us.

There is a workaround that I have tested to remove all of the unwanted character files that the Bon Voyage stealth hood puts into your game. Pescado taught me this in chat the other day, so he gets full credit for this. I am merely the messenger. I have tested this and everything seems to be working fine so far.
1. Back up N0XX folder. Pay attention to how many suburbs you have attached (suburb01, suburb02)
2. Go into the game and enter the hood. The stealth vacation hood will be created. You'll see somewhere around 60 new character files appear (ZOMG!)
3. Exit the game
4. Go into N0XX folder and delete everything except for Suburb0X (the newest, in my case this was suburb03.package). Replace everything with the backup.

When you add an actual vacation subhood it will add another 14 or so characters. I have NOT TESTED this, but in theory it should work. The only changes that you would make would be to NOT replace the LOTS folder from your backup and to NOT delete the vacation0X.package. I am going to test this a bit today, but I cannot guarentee that it won't break your hood. You might want to do the second part on a test hood before actually attempting it on a hood you care about.

That link removes all sims, including the maxis made families. I wanted clean, not empty. As I've said, I don't mind the playables.

Found out making clean vacation won't exactly be easy without an updated SimPE.

So, SimPE needs to be updated to make a proper clean bon voyage stuff.

V001 contains the 'stealth' neighbourhood. If someone else figures out how to make a clean one, that'd be awesome.

Details? Does Invisigoth's extension of Pescado's method (i.e. restoring from backup leaving in vacationXXX.package, Lots directory, suburbXXX.package) not work? I just tried it but haven't had time to test it properly. Simply loading the hood didn't result in a BFBVFS at least.

Thanks a lot for posting this! I tried this last night (including the second part with the three vacation subhoods), and I haven't had any problems so far. My normal neighborhood loaded properly, and I could enter one of my families and play. I'm a bit reluctant to send them on a test-vacation though because antiredundancy and notownieregen apparently need to be updated because the game spawns excessive tour guides all over the place as well as tourist townies (in a first attempt I killed the Maxis tourists off, but I restored my backup when my game created around 50 new tourist townies on its own ...) :o

Question about the new stealth hood.  Are these zOMG 60 sims that are added... are they all regular townies?

Or... are these sims vacationie locals?

I also noticed, that for each of the 3 vacation lots, they have their own sims as well, somewhere around like 14-16 sims each, give or take.  I am assuming that these are suppoesd to be the vacationie locals...

But then... what are these new 60ish sims?  Are they just completely 'new' regular ole townies that would wander around your main 'hood?  Do they look as fugly as the other townies?  Do they have regular default Maxis EA faces?  Or are do they actually look different?  I'm curious why Maxis EA would bother creating these new stealthy townies... if they are just stupid, fugly looking as usual with same ol boring face templates.  Why clog up my game with moar of the same crap?  :P

Ste

I *think* some of them are regular townies, because I've been noticing some new walk-bys and townies on comm lots in my test hood. Haven't wandered into a vacation hood yet. Some are probably also NPCs for the vacation hoods (bellhops, maids, tour guides, etc).

And yes, they get the fugly Maxis faces.  Time for another mass grave!  ;D

The way I did it was the wrong way. By deleting every sim that I didn't want to use. Yes, it might result in a BFBVFS, but at least it works, but not quite.

The EAxian way of generating them makes them wear random clothes, and random hair. Not the hair and clothes that are appropiate for that region.

Only the NPCs get their appropiate clothing. The locals don't wear their proper clothing, nor do the tourists. They just look like regular people. Okay, so the tourists I'm fine with them being random (because it just looks creepy if they all look the same), but I'd prefer I could tell the locals from the tourists...

Maybe somebody, like Pescado, could make something that tourists would look like tourists (because it's hard to tell the locals from the tourists the 'wrong' way I did it)

HOWEVER, after I looked at the files, opening the actual character inside SimPE, only the playable have pictures. The rest do not. Is it possible that EAxis actually made a way to make characters based on a template they have, however it'll make them still random?

(The stealth hood adds all those sims)

It's possible SimPE doesn't recognize the new NPCs, and thus can't generate pictures for them yet.

/me anxiously awaits getting a version of SimPE that actually works.

So, if the locals get deleted they don't regen with correct outfits? How about the behaviors... the gestures of the region and such? I guess I'd been blithely assuming that they were some type of special NPC (a la the grand vampires) that, if deleted or pulled from the local pool (i.e. moved into a playable family or, far more likely, tragically consumed by a cow plant they were locked in a room with) new ones would spawn as needed.

I haven't played a ton yet, I've been too busy building my own vacation locales, but it seems like I'd see 1-2 locals/lot with the rest being regular tourists without special outfits... is it possible your game just hasn't seen fit to generate locals yet so you're only seeing tourists, hence the randomness of dress, or have you confirmed that they're actually locals?

Finally, count yourself lucky that SimPe even lets you get as far as seeing that they don't have pics - on both my comps SimPe barfs out about a gazillion errors (Warning: Sim Found Twice type of stuff). If I get through all the errors there's a bunch of gobblygook - the BV sims don't seem to register (empty family infos, etc.) and my playable families show unknown members and stuff. I'm hoping it's not truly that screwed up and that SimPe is just not reading it right. Sigh, I tried to sign up for the QA about six weeks ago but never got a response... wish I had it now, I think there's a version out there for testing.

And just for the hell of it, fuck EA for screwing up my neighborhood. I just know I'm going to BFBVFS trying to get rid of the crappy characters I don't want.

Does any one have the Clean/Fixed Pleasantview + townies (yes, I want Goopy and Benjamin Longnose)? The files in the link aren't there anymore.

As I posted earlier, a newly spawned local vacation sim didn't even know the proper bow for his region (Asia). He was spawned with regular clothes - I can handle that, I can move him in and change it, but I have no idea how to make him behave like the local he's supposed to be! ???

My game autonomously spawned like 50 tourists after I killed most of the Maxis tourists off, and they were all dressed normally. When a local vacation townie is created via the Townie repoman's gun he/she also looks totally normal though ... :(

When I signed up for the QA I never got a response either - I noticed I was admitted when I was suddenly able to see the QA subforum. Have you logged in there and checked if you can see it?

You could try the method Invisigoth posted a couple of posts above yours - I tested this yesterday, and my neighborhood is still alive ... ;D

I gave this a test and the same happens to me. I did notice that the Sim will have the vacation memories of being able to do those things, thought they can't do them.

I don't know enough to be able to do much more. I will just have to wait patiently. I'm scared to attach a vacation neighbourhood and visit as I don't want to have maxis tourists and locals. The above fix seems to work, but I'm assuming it won't stop the game respawning more if I visit.

When I did it my idiotic way (deleting the .package files that the sims were contained in...) the locals to the region DID have their actual vacation-ish skills. The slap dance, the chest pound in three lakes, specifically. Just their clothing was wrong, and the hairstyle. Yes, I can change it to normal, but it'd take a long time. Perhaps eventually somebody can force them to wear a certain outfit.

You're talking about the newly spawned local vacation sims, right? How did you spawn them? Did the game spawn them by itself or did you use the NPC and townie creator?

EDIT: I'm seriously confused now. I let the game spawn new vacation townies (it did this by itself after I had deleted the character files using InvisiGoth's method), and those new vacation townies DID know the correct greeting. One of them even performed Tai-Chi by herself. When I tried to convert a normal townie into a vacation townie it didn't work though. What's the sense of this townie and NPC creator-thing then? ???

Anyway, I'm glad that problem is gone. It still annoys me to no end that the game spawned something like 60 or 70 new sims when loading up a vacation hood for the first time, even though I have notownieregen installed ... >:(

They did spawn with the correct behaviours. The game spawned them automatically, but of course I did the bad way of removing them. I deleted the exact .package file for the neighbourhood they exist in, but didn't modify the neighbourhood.package file to remove all referenced to them. This probably will create unlinked, and make my game become a BFBVFS.

And the 'stealth' people? They're added by the stealth neighbourhood. Look in the V001 folder in the neighbourhood templates. It's there, and will add itself whether you like it or not. They're an EAxis screwup.

EDIT:
Upon further testing, using SimPE 0.62 (yep, the Seasons one), and opening the .neighbourhood files AFTER the characters are gone, it's actually editable. It's just very finicky and yells at me. But at least it works.

EDIT Mk. 2:
And created a worse BFBVFS. This time when adding the files. Good thing I made backups.

No, they're not. I deleted the Maxis stealth people after they were added out of their V001 folder, just like I had said earlier. What I was complaining about were 60 - 70 NEW tourist townies that the game had to spawn since I had deleted the old ones. I had thought the game would spawn only as many tourists as needed (with notownieregen), but notownieregen doesn't work for tourist townies yet. :'(

Oh no, I'm really glad that you were able to undo those changes with your backup ... :o

When a new SimPE is out I'll try to make an actual clean stealth neighbourhood and vacationhood.

Oh, I would love you forever for that ... ;D

I just got done with my new vacation townies. I let the game spawn new ones (way too many though), then decided which ones to keep by summoning them to my home lot one after the other and closely inspecting them. They were dressed appropriately using christianlov's clothing rack, given random personalities and so on, the usual stuff I always do with townies. Then I deleted 2 the extra vacation locals and tourists, 55 sims to be exact. My neck hurts and I'm tired, but finally my neighborhood is neat and clean.

And if the game spawns new vacation sims when I load a vacation hood next time (because it detects there are too few) I'm gonna uninstall this crap and wait for the update of notownieregen as well as your empty templates! ::)

Do you actually mean for us to delete everything in our N0XX folder besides Suburb0X? Or just the newest created suburb? Because I was thinking if we delete everything in the N0XX folder (I'm guessing that is the N0XX folder in our "user" folder not C: Drive?) then wouldn't all the Sims, lots, etc also be deleted?
Yes, I admit that I am non-awesome and don't quite understand.

It's probably easier to store the copied N0XX elsewhere, copy the freshly added suburb to the copied 'hood, and then delete the neighborhood-plus-townie spam and replace it with the unspammed-neighborhood-plus-suburb.  The reason for this is that the game looks for the stealth subhood, and if one isn't found it proceeds to add the subhood and then townie-dump.  If the stealth 'hood is found but there has been no townie-dump - if you, say, copied the stealth 'hood to an otherwise clean backup of the neighborhood - the game won't feel the need to do anything more.  Although it will recreate townies and NPC's as needed, naturally.

And yeah.  Just to be clear, do everything in the My Documents subfolder.  Attempting to do this with core game files will cause massive barfage.

Sorry about that, I tried to edit my post. I had actually copied the instructions to notepad but I didn't realize that I hadn't copied all of it, so I didn't have the part about replacing with the backup. My mistake.
In the thread with creating a clean neighbourhood, it tells you to replace the templates in the C: drive folder. I've done that before and nothing bad as happed, definitely didn't experience any barfage.

Now I can make a clean template for the 'stealth' neighbourhood. Expect to see it tomorrow.

I love you so much right now! It was driving me nuts as I wanted to start setting up my neighbours hood, but couldn't because of the shitty tourists the game dumps on you. I was about to go ahead and use the walk around but I was worried that would cause problems. Thank god for people who can do this for us. I'm too stupid to work it out myself.

Quick hackjob. Might work, might not. Same thing for other clean templates. Delete everything in your characters folder (I didn't include the traveller family for this one).

Don't blame me if your game becomes a BFBVFS.


EDIT:
So far so good. No extra townies were created when this neighbourhood was attatched. Time to see if it adds them when going on vacation.

EDIT Mk. 2:
The game WILL generate the tourists when you go on a vacation. They will have random hair, skintones, names, clothes...  and 12 families. Each have 4 sims in it.
The game adds 48 sims to your game. It can't be prevented with notownieregen. They must use a special rule.

Also, each family will consist of:
1 elder, 1 adult, 1 teen, 1 child.

So, this thus far has not made my game a BFBVFS.

And one other thing...

You WILL get INSANE lag when you go onto a vacation lot the first time while the game makes 48 sims.

Here are the three vacation destinations. Same deal with these.
Delete all the characters in A001, M001, T001.

Did not test these for 'working'.

The locals might have different ways of working, so someone else can test these.

The two uploads I've made today are considered in-testing. And I'm not responsible if your game explodes into a BFBVFS.

And I'm not 100% sure I cleaned them the proper way.

Thank you.

I will give this a test tonight. I only intend on using this on the stealth hood, as i can deal with the locals the game throws me. I just wanted to get rid of all the vacationers and make my own, but it doesn't seem possible right now.

One good thing I have noticed face templates work on the vacationers. Well it seems to be working as my tourists are good looking now.

Right now, I don't know if you can make your own vacationers. Perhaps you can, but I'd still prefer to wait until notownieregen (or perhaps it'll make something new like notouristregen, since I do believe they use a differnet code) is updated for BV so that tourists aren't randomly made. But it seems like a one time thing.

This way I could make families that actually look similar, and have the same last name.

I tried this with CAS-sims who were transformed into townies previously. I made them into vacation sims using the NPC and townie gun, but they didn't know their proper dances and greetings. They were in the vacation locals pool, though, because my sims on vacation were able to invite them to a party in their vacation home. Maybe someone will come up with an updated version of Inge's teleporter shrub with a new (working) option "Make into vacation sims"? :D

Ahh, that's the reason why. When a vacation local is created by the game, they get the proper dances, greetings for that particular region. However, if you generate a townie into a vacation sim, they are put into the tourist pool. The tourist pool is unique from the vacation locals pool. In fact, the locals pool has one thing the others do not. If you invite them over in your regular neighbourhood, you can invite them for a few days (and they WILL stay for a few days)

I'm a little lost between tourists, locals, vacations sims etc... Are you trying to say only locals (islanders, mountainers and asian people) can be invited over for 3 days ??
I'm asking because in my game (and without any mod at the time) locals and tourists could be invited for 3 days. In fact it was the only option, apart of talking to them on the phone. (by the way I was disappointed that this new and shiny option was not available for family and friends... maybe some modder could correct that ??)
Maybe I don't understand what you are saying...

Are you sure? When I click on "Make into vacation sim" there are four options - "Asia", "Mountains", "Tropics" and "Tourist", if I remember correctly. I'm sure I clicked on "Asia" (that's were my test-family was staying), and that ex-townie still didn't know the Asian bow ... ???

Are you sure? When I click on "Make into vacation sim" there are four options - "Asia", "Mountains", "Tropics" and "Tourist", if I remember correctly. I'm sure I clicked on "Asia" (that's were my test-family was staying), and that ex-townie still didn't know the Asian bow ... ???
[/quote]

Hmm... I'm totally non-awesome, but what tool are you using to do this? You mentioned the "NPC and townie gun" earlier... I'm not familiar with that particular tool? Is it a debug option or a downloadable thing?

*LOL* That "NPC and townie gun" is the object that used to be the "NPC and townie tree". It's a debug object you can spawn when you enter the cheat "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true", then Shift-click on your sim and say "Spawn" >> "NPC and townie creator". In former EPs a tree appeared next to your sim, now it's a clone of the repoman's gun. You can create new NPCs and townies by clicking on that object, and there's one option "Make into vacation sim" which doesn't seem to work properly, though. Not that I had expected any different from EAxis ... 8)

Can someone test this out for no more vacation tourists/locals regen?  ;D

-Attachment obsolete, use Pescado's mod instead-

Ok, did I understand this correctly? The V001_Neighborhood.zip will give us the locals and hotel NPC's etc but no fugly tourists? The Vacation_Clean.zip will remove all BV NPC's, including locals and tourists? Just wanna make sure before I go installing anything.

The neighbourhood removes: the townies, Hotel NPCs, and those other sorts. The locals were completely in the Vacation_Clean

I'm not 100% certain however, but I know with the V001_neighbourhood, the game generated new hotel NPCs only once (for antiredundancy), as well as only one tour guide. They're not contained in the actual vacation hood, but they're inside the regular 'stealth' hood.

Isn't it odd?

Anyways, I didn't exactly try the NPC and townie maker. My test was solely to make the neighbourhood clean.

Right now, I can't do a 'clean with playables' only, since some of the options that aren't in other clean neighbourhoods (added with BV, i guess) aren't documented in the QA yet, so I don't know what the heck it is.

Ok, thanks :) I might give this a try, I want to throw up everytime I see those Maxis face templates in action.

Me too, please! I'd be forever grateful if someone could post them.

I would also like to add a plea for the Cleaned Up/ fixed Pleasantview template.
SaraMk's original link is now empty.

The G001 folder goes to the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods folder, with the usual instructions (delete neighborhood.package and Characters folder, copy contents of rar into their place).

On another note, I've uploaded the Maxis-only original hoods here (http://www.mediafire.com/?dvntyo1mw3x) (and I have the others as well, if anyone needs them).

anyway to get this in regular zip.  I've already used the temp winrare program over 60 days

Thanks a million, Sysa. You rock.


You can still use Winrar after the trial period. It will nag about registering, but it still works.

Or failing that, try something better: http://www.7-zip.org/

I will give it a try after work tonight.

I just noticed that J.M. Pescado updated his notownieregen hack for no more spawning of excessive vacation sims - does your version do the same thing?

Sysa, thank you.

Ah he must have just done that today... use his instead, mine just erased the entire bhav.

If someone more awesome than me makes a better clean neighbourhood for the BV lots, I'll recommend you use those too. I'll also remove the ones I put on MTS2 (they're the same version!)
However, I did make one with the traveller family inside of the game.
MTS2 has that one (http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=249166)

argon_BV-ocd.rar

Absolutely no pre-made characters and no orphaned clothing collections. Family Ties and Neighborhood Memory have both been replaced with copies from a raw (no templates in the game files) clean neighborhood. That will stop any garbage from being copied over when the two neighborhoods are merged. The V001 folder is a complete replacement (since it has no lots) so just move the original, all others require the character files to be deleted.  ;D



I've got all the other neighborhoods for University-Seasons done the same way (Downtown is a little different, I kept the ghosts because they have tombstones on the lots), and a raw neighborhood with the NPC Sim descriptions corrected if anyone's interested.

(I don't have Pleasantview/Strangetown/Veronaville templates, if any base neighborhoods with lots are in the game files then extra bloat is added to fresh custom neighborhoods, which is what my templates were made specifically to avoid)

Okay, getting a bit bewildered by all the versions and new character types and what they do here, so please bear with me, and thanks in advance: if I install this with just JMP's antiredundancy and notownieregen, they'll be free of any premade characters and the game will create...what?  New NPC's, tourists, locals, all of the above, none of the above, or...?  And will they or will they not be generated using replacement face templates, if installed?

NPCs and 1 Local for each vacation type will be the only ones to get generated, but that's just because Pescado's mod unlinked the call for making new tourists and limited the number for Locals. Yes they will be generated with the face templates ;D

Okay, thanks!

I recommend you use Argon's templates for BV if you want clean, clean, clean. He is definately more awesome than me. If he puts it on MTS2, it'll be better than mine, and mine will be removed.

I do wonder if the ones I did with the maxis playable only was done correctly. Hopefully someone more awesome than me can check it (because I'm definately not as awesome).
I would like to see one with the playable sims, and their relevant memories. Not 100% if I did it at all properly.

I don't post anything on MTS2 anymore :-P

The only playable sims in the BV templates are the Travelers in the family bin (V001 only), the rest are all tourists and locals (which look like they were hacked to make them that way, their memories show up as gossip while newly generated ones are fine).

Question for Argon
It's early morning so i'm not fully functioning yet, so bear with me if this is a dumb questiion :)

Am I to understand that if I use your empty BV templates and notownieregen (which is always in my game anyway) there will be no vacation tourists generated at all?   
If so, I am thinking the vacation areas will look exceedling empty with just our playables present.  I don't want all of the tourists just a few to be realistic.  Will I need to create tourists myself?

I'm sorry if this is a really stupid question. I tried this and it still forces on me the 40 odd vacationer's (not locals, I can live with the locals) Is this mean to be an empty replacement?

You're supposed to have antiredundancy as well, because that's what stops the game from regenerating the vacationers.

Now I am really confused - I was under the impression antiredundancy was to stop the Tour Guide and Charlatan spam and locals, and notownieregen is for the tourist/vacationers.

maybe we need step by step instructions as we have for the other templates at the begining of this thread.

@Anilyn
Empty templates are for either creating your own townies (NPC Creator debug object) or letting the game create a full set from scratch. They won't be empty if you fill them with your own.

@SimFeliz
This doesn't affect the number of townies generated, use notownieregen for that.

Yes, I know - I was having a senior moment - I have been using Sara's empty templates since March.
I really should wake up before I try to think  ::)

I second the motion...this thread has become rather confusing.

Thirded!

I have Argon's empty templates installed and NPC/Townie creator fix and now have all three vacation sub-hoods with no locals or tourists. My problem is creating new ones. I made a few of my own in CAS, spawned the NPC and Townie creator (on the lot with the sims I wanted to make into vacation sims), selected Make Into Vacation Sim -> Mountain -> (sim name). I got a message "(sim name) added to family Mountain" and I saw that this generated another character file... but the original sim is still playable on the lot.

Is there anything else that needs to be done? Is the new character file a clone of the one I made in CAS? I guess I was expecting it to work something more along the lines of the teleporter painting/shrub. Any chance that will be updated for BV?

I'm so sorry. I thought antiredundancy was the one that stopped the tourists. I have notownieregen too, but maybe I have an old version will update. Thank you. next time I will research properly before posting.

Ah crud I think they changed that feature of the npc creator since the last time I played with it, apparently you can't change sims from CAS into townies anymore... I think removing them from a family with SimPE might work.

EDIT: Inge's teleporter (the pet statue) does work, make them a townie then use the make into vacation sim

I wonder if Inge's teleporter or the InSIMenator will still allow for CAS-to-townie conversion...

question for The Awesome Argon:

I don't understand. I just checked out Inge's teleporter (pet statue) and it says it's updated for pets and seasons. How then, will it manage to turn a sim I made in CAS to a Vacation Sim (since there's no indication it was updated for BV)?

Correct, it has not been updated for BV. The idea is to make them a townie before you make them into vacation sims so their names will show up using this (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9684.0.html).

Thanks so much Argon! Thank you! I love you! :D

Found out I made bad backups of the vacation hoods. Stupid me. At least I can backup my downloads folder.
Shows how much I'm not awesome.

You should be able to extract them from compressed.zip on the BV cd(s) so you won't have to uninstall the game. I don't know for sure which disc it's on though.

This thread has rambled all over the place and I'm no longer sure what's available for BV and what's not. :P  Is there a version of the BV hidden hood (I guess it's V001) that adds the other characters (I don't mind the locals or whatver that come with it), but keep the Traveler family from showing up in the sim bin in every hood on the machine?

messages #257 & #258

Thanks, but those clean everything.  I'm looking for one that just gets rid of the Traveller family while keeping everything else. 

Of course, baring that I'll just turn them into townies in the hoods I don't want to play them in. :)

Not sure if this helps or if it's old news by now, but in lieu of an updated teleporter shrub, Insim has been updated for BV and may include options for this (have not tested for this myself).

I think if you just put in the V001_neighbourhood.package, that gets rid of the Traveller family. If you put in the other ones then it cleans out the vacation destination townies and npcs. If you don't want to do that then don't replace the T001, M001 and A001 ones.

Thanks Argon, btw. ;)

[edit] Hmm. Looking at the V001 character folder it has 74 sims in it. Are these the vacation townies and will they be generated as needed by the game? I am guessing that the special NPC's needed are in the relevant destination folders. I can't check myself as I don't have SimPe yet.

Yea, it was those 74 character files that threw me about that.

I am just testing it out now, will report back when I find stuff out. ;D

Did you read the whole thread on Argon's make vacation local (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9684.0.html)?  There's a whole discussion in there on how to do it.

I personally don't like broken Sims in my game ;D Almost all of them are missing thumbnails and have "gossip" attached to their memory tokens (which gets merged into the base neighborhood).

Questions about the individual hoods there.

1) Are those 74 from that V001 (?) 'hood just regular ol' sim townies?  Or are they vacationies/vacation localies (whatever u wanna call 'em)?

2) Are vacationies/vacation localies from those other 'hoods (T001, M001, and A001) also broken (i.e. missing thumbnails and gossip memory crap)?

3) Anyone know if the Travellers' (whatever) family already has any existing relationships with other sims (Maxis EA pre-made townies or dead relatives)?  Or are they a 'self-contained' family (the only sims the know are just each other)?



Ste

The 74 sims are the 3 Travellers and the rest are the vacation townies. Everything spawned as normal including the WOM, Ninja, Tour Guide, Witch Doctor and all the vacation locals you learn crap from. I admit I didn't go to the mountains, as hubby was kicking me off the PC. I really do suggest making your own vacation townies though as mine all had atrocious dress sense :P

Has anyone noticed that the 'NPC and Townie maker' is now the repoman's gun and not the dead tree? :D

Is there a problem with just hitting the garbage pail button on the Traveler family?

Using Argon's clean/empty custom hood, is it suppose to create a neighborhood, N001, called Driftwood in place of "Pleasantville"?

Most probably not. You moved something into the wrong directory, would be my guess.

where are we on cleaned up templates? This thread IS getting a little confusing.  Is it done enough where the original post can be updated?

I will risk that this will get lost in all the BV hoohaw, but I had a problem with the empty BV and a new OFB mac install. I created a new custom neighborhood with empty templates. I created a sim in CAS, created townies, created downtownies, attached the downtown (clean and empty), attached Bluewater village (clean and empty). Then I decided to move my new sim into a  Bluewater Village lot instead of in the main hood.

I played him through the welcome wagon and decided to let him go on the 6pm call for an outing downtown to let him meet some new folks. When he was coming back from the outing downtown, the game crashed to desktop. When I reloaded the game, the new neighborhood (NOO4) did not appear on the main panel. I quit. When I checked the neighborhood folder, NOO4 was in the folder. I reloaded. Still, no NOO4 (just P-view, etc, plus, create custom). N004 was loaded in the neighborhoods folder but would never register.

I was able to create a N005, but have never installed any Bluewater village and never will because I am now completely paranoid that it will make my 'hood unreadable by the game files.

I have had no trouble at all with downtown or any uni. I also had the problem someone reported of Tessa Ramirez having permanent blank want slots when I installed just the Eaxis characters version. I quickly decided I hated all those characters, so that isn't an issue, but I may like to install a shopping district someday. Does anybody think a custom one will have the same issues. I'd really prefer to use the empty one offered here (I hate building!).

I second that!   Please!

I recently asked if Step by Step instructions for the BV templates could be included/added but nothing yet.
It's so easy to make a mistake when you're moving files around.

Well, I moved then on a lot and looked at their memories and they only have memories of 'met each other' getting engaged and married to each other and having Tina. The dad (can't remember his name) has 2 memories of getting promoted though. The kid only has the 'move in' memory. They have no memories of meeting any other sim so I am guessing it is safe to just delete them. I dunno whether they have any other hidden memories, but I am going to just delete them out of the bin. If my game blows up I'll come back and let you know :P I'm not keen on the idea of clean templates for the vacation hoods just yet as I haven't really played enough to see what's what (and who's who, lol) ;D

I are confused then... what is a vacation townie?  How is it different from vacation local?

By 'vacation townie' do you mean to say there is an explicitly different 'family' of townies?  Afaik, the game has a few 'types' of npcs:  service npcs (maids, cashiers, gardeners, etc.), townies (game generated sims that are 'non-playable' at least until you marry or move them in), and downtownies (game generated sims that are supposed to only inhabit Downtown subhoods).  There are a few other extraneous 'types' (ghosts and adoption pool, I think).  But in general, npcs, townies, and downtownies are like the main non-playable type characters.  As in the ones that walk around, and you don't control, unless you marry or move them in (thus, making them playable).

Anyhew... since you are distinctly using the term 'vacation townie' and 'vacation local' separately... are you saying that there are two new 'types' of npcs?  Or... are these terms interchangeable?

I am assuming that a 'vacation local' is a npc that is supposed to live on the vacation lot that you are visiting.  Is a 'vacation townie' an npc that shows up as a 'visitor' to these vacation sub-hoods?  Meaning, these townies are considered travelling tourists as opposed to locals from the subhood you are visiting?

If this is the case, that vacation townies are different from vacation locals... what happens if you use a clean 'hood template?  Will the game generate at least one of each? With at least one local per vacation sub-hood?

Or... if you don't have any to start off with, the game won't generate them, causing your vacation sub-hoods to be virtually empty?


Also... I'd still like to know if the Traveller family is self contained, or if they are linked to other sims?


Ste

The vacation locals are the ones who teach you gestures and special skills such as the tai-chi and hula dance. The vacation townies are the 'tourist' types that are like regular sims, they check into hotels and visit community lots etc. If you invite them over to your main lot however, you can only invite them as houseguests.

About the other stuff, see my post above yours. As I do not have SimPe as yet I can't be 100% certain, this is why I am not using my main regular neighbourhood.

And the 'vacation locals' usually have a specific type of dress.  In the Asian village, they all wear kimonos; in the mountain one, they all look like lumberjacks, with flannel shirts and suspenders.  I know all the women in the beach village have grass skirts, but I haven't played that one long enough to easily recognize the men yet.

The vacation townies/tourists all wear casual clothes.

So in other words, if i only want to get rid of the Traveller family and the vacation townies, I only change my V001 folder with Argon update but do not change the other 3 folders so I would still have the locals created by Maxis?

Uhm, yes. I posted that several times already, in this thread as well as in others ... :D

Yes, that should work!

Thanks, I just don't have the patience to create the locals with the proper clothes so I can recognize them  :P

The traveller family is self contained as far as I've seen. Their only files are 0000, 0001, 0002.
Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

Umm, doh! Shows how observant I am :P

I must stop skimming over threads. I tend to do that when they get too long.

[eta]


No, I think you are right. To have the Traveller family not show up in the sim-bin everytime you start a new neighbourhood, go to:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\V001\Characters
and remove:
V001_User00000.package
V001_User00001.package
V001_User00002.package

Keep them somewhere safe if you want/need to put them back at any time. Do this at your own risk. Don't blame me if this is a VBT to do and your game blows up. :P

Thanks for all the help and advice in this thread. With Argon's instructions and fix, I was able to make my own locals, and I also noticed the new antiredundancy hack would not spawn a local if there already is one. This is convenient because the spawned locals will have random skin, eyes, hair and clothes.
I also tried to make tourists and failed, but then I thought, what good are they anyway? The only thing tourists add to the game is spreading the greetings and dances to other places.
Or am I missing something about tourists?

I've most likely missed a step somewhere, but after installing Argon's empty BV templates, I still get an extra 60 character files when first going on Vacation. I started out with four sims, and before they left, a paper boy, garden club member and a driver were spawned. Now there are 65 characters files for the completely clean hood. Some seemed to be other NPCs - bellhop, tour guide, house keeper, but there are still locals/tourists around and they're wearing mixed up clothes grrr.

Everything else about the clean hoods worked. NPCs are spawned on need, there are no townies, no sims in the sim bin...

Back to the drawing board and see where I went wrong.  :'(

ETA: Do the Family Thumbnails packages need deleting? That's the only thing I can see that I've not done for locals/tourists to be showing up.

ETAA: Ok, my notownieregen was a couple of days out-of-date so I've updated and it works fine now. I still had one "local" spawned though. i think he's a teen and he's wearing some punk clothes in the Asian hood. I guess he's an exchange student  ::)

If you've got lots of locals in your game you don't need any tourists, I think. Tourists are supposed to add realism to the vacation spots, I think - you can make friends with them, beat them up or whatever your sims like to do when they're on vacation. Since you can do the same thing with the locals there's really no need for them in my opinion. Since I installed the new notownieregen hack my vacation hoods are quite abandoned though - this is why I created five tourists for my own game ... ;)

I've been using Inge's teleporter with no problem thus far.

There doesn't seem to be anything to download in the link for the Clean and Fixed Pleasantview, Strangetown, Veronaville.  Is there anywhere else available to download them, or would they need to be reuploaded?

Link on page 10.

Only links I found on page 10 were for BV and Seasons neighborhoods, I'm looking for the originals.

At the bottom of the page there is a mediafire link by sysa, check again

Duh... found it this time, thanks. :)

Tried Argon's update.... everyone is ugly, no indication of my pretty face replacements at all. I must have done something wrong... will try again.

No, that would be what tourists are bad for, and why you would install the antivacationactions hack.  What tourists are good for is MOAR FIGHT!  I have the standard EAxoid tourists in my vacation spots (which I don't mind since I refuse to let my sims make friends with most of them).  For the most part, they appear to hate each other and fight constantly.  This is akin to cabaret.  Hours of entertainment for my playables.

You have to have the face templates in Downloads BEFORE you create your hood or it will use the templates that came with the game to create your townies.

Here is SaraMK's empty downtown template. For installation instructions see the first page in this thread.

Is there a how-to somewhere to correct orphaned clothing collections?  This thread is just so busy and it's got me all flummoxed. :P



These gossip memories, are these the kind that can be deleted by using the Lot Debugger?

When you say that 'their memories show up as gossip' I interpret this to mean that the memories that they have show up as the 'gossip' kind, and all other 'regular' memories must have been deleted?  So, EAxis made a half-assed attempt to clean them up?



Is there a way to fix the missing thumbnails issue?  Have the game regenerate them?

Whew.  This thread has gotten unweildly.  13 pages in and it's a tad confusing to find all the uploads in different posts.  We need an index. lol. :D


Ste

I don't know if there is a tutorial for this, but essentially what you have to do is find the BINX and 3IDR files attached to a collection with the same instance of any empty Family Information that's been left behind. Since I prefer to blow away all the families and start from scratch, I don't have to do any digging ;D


Yeah EAxis made a half-assed attempt at adding them in the game, SimPE shows the token as gossip for the premade characters, any new vacation sims created by the game are normal. I have no idea if the FFS Debugger cleans them out or not, but the tokens are not supposed to be gossip.


I'm assuming their thumbnails were deleted so they could hack their everyday clothing and not have incorrect portraits, though I have no idea why they did it because from what I've seen none of them were generated as locals by the game. The game should regenerate them, but again it's my personal preference not to have anything in my game that's broken to begin with.

How does one identify an 'empty Family Information' instance?  I guess, click on the Family Info?  But what consitutes as 'empty'?  I dont recall if I've even looked at Family Info in SimPE.  Will there be a Family Info resource for each sim character file?

And do you just delete the BINX and 3IDR file?


Do you mean to say that they're supposed to be legitimate memories... but somehow they all got turned into gossip about those memories?

Either way, is it 'safe' to just delete them all (either in SimPE... or hopefully via the Lot Debugger... assuming it can do this)?



So... you wouldn't actually have to do anything really.  The game should just regenerate the thumbnails on it's own?


Finally, your avatar makes me wanna ask, since I recently, finally managed to watch the series finale:

What did you think about the way QAF ended?

Highlight spoilery stuff below for my reaction to the Final Season of QAF:

Personally, I thought it was decent.  I do like how they brought them back together.  I do like how they tied the loose strings up when it came to Debbie's, Michael and Ben's, and Ted and Blake's relationships (Ted coming full circle).  I also like that Emmett ended his relationship with Drew.  I also like that they brought back Hunter (even though I hated his character, it was nice that they worked out the family thing).  I'm glad that Lindsey and Mel got back together and that they decided to move away, even though that was kinda sad.  I also love that Brian grew up, and how he and Justin got back together again, and then had to go their separate ways again.  I thought it was really fitting.  Sure, things were a tad too neatly tied up, and the final season sorta fast forwarded through a lot of character and plot development, but it was still pretty enjoyable.  It was a pretty satisfying series finale.


Ste

For each household in game, there is a Family Information (FAMI) resource, along with a Collection (COLL) resource with the same instance number. And for each piece of clothing in a family's wardrobe, there is a 3IDR (and BINX) that links the clothing's Property Set to the Family's Collection.

When you open a FAMI in SimPe, it just lists the names of sims belonging to that household. To see what clothing items are associated with that household, you'll have to inspect all the relevant 3IDR resources, and search the ones that have a link to that household's instance.

Perhaps the logic is hard to get, so I've put a small tutorial with pics here: http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tutorials/tutorial-ngbh-wardrobe.html

However, if you want to clear an entire neighborhood, and not just a particular household, you're free to delete the 3IDR and BINX resources with instances greater than 0x00007FFF.

Greetings and hi! I'm a non-awesome newb. After reading all of this (and many other posts here, much to my confusion) I think I finally have a plan of attack. What I'm going for is a Cleaned Up game. Not completely empty. Let me see if I got this right:

Installed game (I have all expansions/packs/patches) Sims thru BV.
Moved/backedup old stuff.
Empty EA Folder In My Documents.
Downloaded MATY hacks I will need (the whole pack actually)
Downloaded CAS/Face template replacements (to prevent EAxis fugliness)
Downloaded (this is optional) Custom Defaults for skintones/eyes (more fugliness prevention)
Downloaded cleaned/empty templates for Pleasantview, Veronaville, Strangetown, Downtown, Seasons (Riverblossom + Stealth), and BV (I will have to do Uni, Blue Water myself as the links are gone unless someone has them or I missed them)

backup all hoods

Need to: The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods
Rename N001 to N001-bak to disable it.

clean out uni/bluewater hoods per instructions here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html

install all downloaded hoods (overwriting maxis ones)

Run game.

Game should:
-contain only maxis families/npcs/townies as left in the cleaned hoods (the ones I wanted to keep like Pleasant, Strange, Capulet, Kat, Travellers plus known friends/npcs )
-generate the 48 necessary tourists w/ replacement looks
-generate only 1 townie w/ replacement looks
-generate necessary npcs (and then after as necessary on a 1 per basis)

Be free of BFBVFS!

Ready to test and import more hacks/cc.

Did I get it?

Please delete this reply if necessary but edits to my post don't show up... so....

game will also add the 1 local / vacation hood

I have the B001, U001, U002 and U003 hoods.

Download here (http://www.4shared.com/dir/4323880/c0795b00/SaraMKEmptyHoods.html)

Many thanks!

Are the files that Sysa provided on page ten the cleaned and fixed base hoods? Or are they just cleaned?

If we install the cleaned up Pleasantview, do we still need to have N001 named N001-bak? As I understand it, naming it N001-bak will disable its ability to dump Sandy Bruty, et al, in every new hood but will not disable its ability to generate Pleasantview into an empty My Documents\...\Neighborhoods folder. Is that right or do I have to go back and read all fourteen pages again?

Yes they are the cleaned and fixed. (At least the ones I have) You need to follow the instructions at page 1 of the thread for how to copy them over your orginal N001-3 files (after you back up the old ones or rename em with N001bak or something)

It seems as though the links to the empty templates at the beginning of the thread no longer work.  I got the Downtown and Uni ones from Emma's post a few pages back, and the extra-empty Argon one, but there doesn't seem to be an empty Seasons template.  Does anyone have it?  Thank you.

I have it, but can't find it atm. Will post later :)

[edit] Found it. Empty G001 (http://www.4shared.com/file/29699877/ff305ce1/G001_Neighborhood_EMPTY.html).

Edit: What about G002?  If I understand correctly, those are the random sims that will get dumped into every neighborhood, right?  That's what I'm trying to avoid...  Thank you again.

I have it-but it is the one at MTS2 by Jordi. I don't really like to re-distribute if it is still readily available. Just go over there and do a search for his name.

/me starts wildly distributing all of Jordi's stuff

I would have Jordi, if it was no longer available. Didn't feel right really 'cos you can get it easily at MTS2.

Probably a stupid question, but will you still get the 'camera flying over neighbourhood' effect in the neighbourhood selection screen after installing the empty template?

I have been getting that effect in Pleasantview, the only one that I have worked with so far.

Has anyone else been getting weirdo errors that make no sense when using these templates? I have had squiggly thought bubbles, lost townies, lost families and errors galore in my brand new Pleasantview. I am reluctant to keep playing the hood because I am afraid I am going to get attached and then suffer a premature BFBVFS from which none can recover. But I don't want to give it up because it took days to get everyone settled in and set up with their sync timers & debuggers, etc.

I keep having problems with the Pleasants' house. Every time I play it my computer freezes up or the game crashes (losing all progress).  It's quite frustrating. I have moved them out and back in but the lot remains a constant problem. Every other house plays just fine.

Edited to add: Okay, I was wrong. I am starting to have this problem with other households as well.

I still get the 'floating cam' in all the 'hoods.


I cannot for the life of me get to "Make me a townie..." It only wants to pick other people and not anyone I've created. (Got it!) Thanks BTW: SimPE for BV is now out!!!

Umm, yea, we know: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10496.0.html

Sorry, :-[ I hadn't gotten there yet so I didn't see it.

This link for the cleaned EAxis Neighbourhoods doesn't work for me (http://www.4shared.com/dir/2250323/a7d398b0/Temporary.html) - is anyone else having trouble? Have they been uploaded somewhere else?

I want to start playing Veronaville (for the first time in three years!) but not if it's going to erupt.

ETA: Never mind, found it on page 10!

I have posted an update for the Tutorial on how to create Clean Custom Neighborhoods and Create Townies. It is here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10798.0.html

Hi there. I end up with a N001 called Driftwood too.
As I use a french game maybe I should clean up N001 myself to keep the usual name for the neighborhood. Is there an explanation somewhere that could help me to do that ?

Thanks for any help.

All I know is that driftwood is one of the default terrains that come with the game.

The first post is a bit misleading. Argon's template is NOT an empty Pleasantview, as stated in the original post.


It replaces Pleasantview with empty Driftwood terrain, which is the flattest default Maxis terrain. If you want empty Pleasantview without premade Sims in it, you must use SaraMK's version instead of Argon's.

Oups sorry for that dumb question. I must admit I had a hard time reading all of this and trying to figure out what I was supposed to download/install because my english is poor. I obviously missed things.

Thanks for your answers.

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Thank you! I've been combing this thread for these. I'll be damned if it isn't a morass in here...

Its sad to say it worked for me, but now I have no one in my game, no Lothario, no Goths nothing.  So I have lost them for good.   :(

That is what is supposed to happen when you use the empty templates. That is also why you should always back up your files before you go mucking around with them. If you want to keep the Maxis playable Sims, you need to use the cleaned up templates instead.

Where can I get the cleaned up templates, wait I used the clean up templates, I dont get that.  Perhaps I installed wrongly then.  ???

Which cleaned up templates do you mean?  I did make backups, so I can fix it.  But I am having a blonde moment, and totally dont understand what to do, and have asked and havent gotten a reply yet.

The cleaned up templates include only the Maxis-made playable Sims and the NPCS/Townies they know. The download link for the original three neighborhoods is here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg263971.html#msg263971). Install them like you would an empty template but instead of leaving the Characters folder empty, replace it with the one you downloaded.

Thank you.  I downloaded it and installed it first time around, but the file must have been corrupt cause there were no characters in it, just the neighbourhood packages.

Do I still need to create townies and NPC's then?

It worked for me, but I am getting a funny error, the sims I created in CAS are not working, it keeps on asking me to Cancel, Reset or Delete.

The NPC's created are excellent, all beautifully created sims, so are the townies, I think just one fuglier than others, and for some reason, one of my townies is Bella Goth.   ;D



[attachment deleted by admin]

Okay, Argon did an empty Vacation neighborhood for Asian/Mountain/Island neighborhoods and the tourists/V neighborhood.

Has someone or would someone do cleaned/fixed ones? Someone did a cleaned for the V one only, but I've been having issues trying to make template NPCs with the Maxis ones after my amateur attempts to fix them.

I'm kind of confused about this, I've downloaded both files and installed G002 just fine, but where do I stick the G001 files? Thanks :)

@ tragic: You put them here: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods.

Has anyone using the cleaned templates had problems with duplicate families from Pets, Seasons, and BV in the sim bin?  I can't seem to find anything on this problem.  Can I delete them or is it more trouble than it's worth?

ETA: I am dumb.  I forgot to remove my back ups from the game folders.  Oops.   ::)

If you are using the cleaned up templates, what is the total number of character files you should have in a new neighborhood? I wanna make sure I did it right.

Nevermind, I thought I had used the empty templates, but when my character folder ended up with files, so I THOUGHT I had done the cleaned templates. Nope. I was a mo and forget to delete the characters files on my Downtown and Uni, so I picked those character files up. Der. Starting over.

Also, FYI, the link to the Clean, Fixed templates for PleasantView, Veronaville, and Strangetown is borken.

Sysa posted them here (http://www.mediafire.com/?dvntyo1mw3x) for download.

Ah ha! Thank you :)

Ah! Mmkay. I was just looking in SaraMK's post. Thanks, gynarchy.

I'm curious:
I have done everything I'm supposed to do. However I'm wondering what Npc's will take over for example the police, fireman, mailman, cashier jobs? Will they be pooled from my own created NPC's?
Thanks.
Oh another question: What about the Neighborhood folder in the My Docs folder? I still have alot of "characters" in my character folders. Do I just leave them alone or should I erase them and put the "Neighborhood Package" files in them as well?
Thanks again...

The game will auto-generate NPC's as needed.  Antiredundancy is popular amongst many MATY-ites, but only useful if you have an unpatched BV or want to keep your character count down.  Personally, I prefer the little variety.

And the folders in My Documents are the neighborhoods you play with.  Installing empty templates won't do anything to them.  To clean those up, you need either a massive Deleted 2 binge, or else to junk the neighborhood whole and start fresh.  Remember that starting fresh is exactly what it sounds like; all your current characters and houses will be lost.  Empty templates are mostly there for people who start fresh 'hoods, and don't want to see the same townies/NPCs/extra families dumped in all the time.

Antiredundancy is useful, patch or no patch, because it prevents the game from spawning 3 unnecessary copies of EVERY NPC in the game, including those that have zero sociable value, like social workers, repomans, etc. As a rule, keeping the extra NPC count down will shave hundreds of character files off your game and correspondingly improve your loading times.

I see ok thanks: So..just to be clear. If I delete N001 for example in My docs it won't affect my new hood (N004) correct?
Also, is there an empty Neighborhood.package file for Bon Voyage (V001), the instructions say to "replace this with an empty one". If there isn't one, how do I go about creating an empty hood package file for V001?

Deleting a neighborhood in your documents directory has no effect on your other neighborhoods. To replace a template neighborhood with a "clean template", you need to look in your main install directory. Be sure not to lose the original, as patches may require it. Again, this has no effect on presently existing neighborhoods, but if you create a new neighborhood after that, it will use the data contained in the replaced template.

Thanks JM:

Could someone point me in the direction of a cleaned version of BV that works and won't make my game go boom? I would do it myself, but I'm not as Sims2 savvy as I like to think  :-\. Thanks :)

BV templates by Argon are buried in the middle of this very thread.  Try this post. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg264144.html#msg264144)

Thanks Kyna, I saw that but I didn't get it because I thought it was one of the bugged versions, plus I'm confused as to whither it is a clean version or empty as it says to delete character files. I would like a cleaned version of BV since I want the tourists/locals, just not as many. :)

Ok, I've read this about 20 times now and I think my brain is leaking out of my ears...


Does he mean that if I want the tourists/locals, but not the family that comes with BV, that I need to delete everything in V001 and replace it with the files that I download and not touch A001, M001, and T001?

Yepp that's what I think @ Tragic...but I'd do a backup just to be sure anyway.


I can't wait for the clean Free Time templates lawl...will they be posted here, too? God I forgot how ugly maxis sims were.  :o

I, too, would like less Free Time stealth townies. Is there a tutorial anywhere on how you make the clean templates?

That's a lot of sharing. O.o You can pull the original files off the CDs and save someone a lot of upload time. Browse the compressed.zip to TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods and/or TSData\Res\UserData\NeighborhoodTemplate and pull the files from there. The files are on Disc 2 for FT so you may have to check each disk. Then make backups of all of them.

Then I guess you'd better download µTorrent, (http://www.utorrent.com/) head over to someplace like The Pirate Bay, (http://thepiratebay.org) and start arrrring files.

Why on Earth would you sell disks of the game you're planning to play in the future ::)? Just a question.. ::)
I'm also looking for a way to clean my templates of the FT characters... Deleting their files before loading the game works in a way but I'm worrying about the things I left my hood cluttered with by doing that as I didn't clean the neighbourhood file..

Yepp I tried deleting too and then I like deleted the lot files lol...which I restored - thank god. Lol.  ;D So I'm basically not touching anything until the templates comes out...  :'(

Question: Can I do this for Free Time? I really don't want those Sim Bin families or the various other stealth characters in F002 (what are the others, anyway? All hobby NPCs, or additional townies, or both? 36 files in total. I feel so crippled without SimPE.)

You want a clean stealth neighbourhood, or an empty one?

I want a clean neighbourhood, but with the sims still in it, just no npc's and etc... just with the families only.  How do I do this.

Empty, preferably (F002). I disliked the full FT neighbourhood (F001) anyway, so I doubt I'll play it. Just want to avoid clutter in my otherwise nice and clean neighbourhoods (that I made using these other empty/clean templates).

Note: Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT delete the lots in the neighbourhood folder.

This is an empty template, maybe has some garbage files in it. It might be able to be cleaned better than I can do this.

And again, do NOT delete the lots. I can't stress this enough

Go ahead and delete all the characters, the thumbnails.

You may think that you need to delete the lots folder, but those are needed by the game. The game will use those lots for the special hobby lots that you need a membership card to get into. The game most likely cannot create them on it's own, much unlike the secret society lots.

Both attachments are exactly the same. Just a bug in the forum makes it show two of the same.

Cool, thank you!

How exactly do you make these, if you don't mind sharing? I'm curious, and I like fiddling. (I work as a programmer so I know to take backups and not fuck things up, so no worries. :))

I used the new QA of SimPE that was released today.

Ooh, I hadn't seen that. Thanks.

Potential problem with the empty templates...

While the game will generate a NPC to be the 'hobby' head, and the lots are in the game, the game makes a NPC a member of that club.

In riverblossom where I did some testing (since Rose is most likely always going to be nature enthusastic), I put her into the lot, where the head, and two NPCs showed up. A pizza delivery man, and an exterminator.

If I knew how to, I'd make a 'reverse' stealth hood, which only removes the playable families so I wouldn't need to go with the DELETED path, since if they were burninated to begin with, it wouldn't change the game.

Hmm, so NPCs will become hobby club members? Will that harm the game, though? I mean, unless bus drivers and such start showing up... It would be nice to just get rid of the playables, though. 36 characters aren't that much, compared to other stealth hoods that have like 150 or something insane.

Right now I haven't gotten any bus drivers or NPCs you can't interact with. Thus why it's still testing.

So if I spawn (boolprop) townies BEFORE I go to any hobby lot - will they be used ?
Thanks for the template. :)

Comparing to other empty templates I have, I see they still have a Thumbnails file, but it's only 1k... What's this file for, and will just deleting the original without replacing it be bad?

I'm using no townie regen, nopetregen, antiredundancy. And using riverblossom for my 'test' hood. On a clean install, using my template, it still only used the NPCs, and no townies.

As I said, testing is needed, and I don't have time right now to test it all.

Can anyone tell me, does this empty template actually work? Since IAmTheRad has no time to test it? I want to play on my custom hood so bad!

I'll try it out a bit tonight. I really want to get back to my main hoods too, but I won't load them as long as the Stealth sims are in place. I don't mind the townies as much since there's not that many (but still) but I really don't want the sim bin families.

Naaah I don't want any ugly Maxis Sims lol.

Well the template works for me so far so good. Only Mr. Humble (orwhatshisname) is popping round to bring the PC - but that's okay.
No problems at all so far with the template.  :D

In case you want to create your own iconic hobby Sims (the "head" of each secret lot), the NPC/Townie gun includes this function and it at least appears to be working correctly. You can use CAS to make them and then attach them for each hobby the same way you would BV locals or the gun has an option to generate them on the spot. I made all of mine into townies first with Inge's teleporter before I added them to their respective hobbies but I don't know if that's still required. So far they have made all the appropriate phone calls, visits, and appearances at their hobby lots.

Edited because I left a couple of words out. Dur.

wow that's really cool! how many "hobby heads" do i create then, gynarchy?

10 total, one for each hobby - science, nature, music & dance, tinkering, film & literature, cuisine, games, art & crafts, sports, and fitness.

Wow, Im so excited, I cant wait to try it out!!! ;D by the way, have you tried out IAmTheRad's FT empty template, gynarchy? does it work for you? are those annoying simbin families still there? so far a few have reported that it works with no problems but IAmTheRad did mention that someone could make a "cleaner & emptier" template than his...

I am using an empty template that I made, but I looked at his to make sure I cleaned mine out the right way and they are the same. I haven't had any unwanted Sims appear and no errors are cropping up so at least for me it's safe. The SimBin families are gone and all of the secret hobby lots at least exist, although I haven't spent much time on them - I only popped into to a couple to make sure they would load. Perhaps Argon would be willing to lend his services again to make a super duper cleaned out template.

So I just did a "complete" test with a new neighborhood and everything is a-okay.  ;D I spawned with boolprop 30 townies and then they were used as the sims on the hobby lots - no unusual NPCs like postman or anything. No crashes, no bugs, no glitches.  :D

Excellent. :D

I doubt this is a problem with the empty templates. I noticed the very same thing even without them. Several NPCs showed up as club members, such as the burglar, some custom dormies, some professors and even the cook from Downtown. I have very few townies in my game - maybe five "real" townies and about eight dormies? The rest are all playables, maybe that's why the game even allows NPCs to wander around the club lots? *wonders*

Well yeah, the game basically takes any NPCs it can get and turns them into "hobby-sims"...so my advise would be - if you start off with a complete new neighborhood NPC free spawn with boolprop townies (30 will be generated per batch) and the game will select these - that is if you spawn them BEFORE you enter the hobbylot. It's what I did and as I said - no maid, no gardener, no postman, no nanny...only the spawned ones. If you don't spawn any townies - well logically the game will use those rather "unusual" NPCs.

Yup, that sounds reasonable enough to me. It's good to know I probably won't have that problem in my next neighborhood any more. (I only recreated all of my playables in a new hood five weeks ago, I don't feel like creating a new hood AGAIN at the moment ... *LOL*)

I have a full set of Townies and Downtownies and the game is still adding professors as visitors to the hobby lots, much to my dismay. The last visit to the Science club had the iconic hobby Sim, one townie, and two professors there waiting. I am going to try banning them with TJ's visitor controller and see what happens because I absolutely loathe seeing professors anywhere in my neighborhood. Having the maid or gardener there wouldn't really bother me, but I can't stand the damn professors. *shakes fist*

Did the game spawn these professors or did you custom create/spawn them?

Isn't there a nomeetproffessors hack somewhere that prevents the spawning of profs altogether?

It is by TJ, Jel, but it just stops your sims from 'meeting' professors when they got to class for the first time. It doesn't prevent spawning. However-if you use this hack in conjunction with the visitor controller, then it is as if the Profs do not exist.

The game spawned them automagically when my founder Sim started Uni.


I have TJ's hack that stops Sims from meeting their professors, but AFAIK there is no way to prevent the game from spawning a set of them. If you kill them off, the game will just generate new ones. I don't even have a rational explanation for my deep hatred of them, it just annoys the shit out of me that they pop up all over the place. They are walk-bys on community lots, they show up at my businesses to browse but not buy anything, and now they are turning up at hobby lots. They should be like all the other Uni NPCs and just stay in the subhood, not out infiltrating the rest of my neighborhood like a professor army.

Hi gynarchy,

you mentioned earlier that you custom create your hobby heads...I've been wanting to do that too, but when i observe all the maxis made hobby heads in Desiderata Valley, I notice that some of them are wearing locked outfits (eg: nature, tinkering, fitness, etc).

 is it absolutely necessary that I dress them in these outfits? or i can dress them any way I want? I was afraid that if i dressed them as i liked, it will cause problems for the game (the same way nannies are always elder,and wearing that nanny outfit, how the newspaper is always delivered by a teen, always wearing that same yellow outfit, same goes for the postman, wearing that same blue outfit, etc)

Enter CAS with boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and hold down the shift button and hit "n."

This puts CAS in debug mode, so you can select career and locked outfits for your CAS sim. You should be able to select the locked outfits you want this way.

Oh thanks Jelenedra! Is this bad for the game in any way, though? And would it ruin my game if I dressed these hobby heads in custom clothing instead of the unlocked maxis ones?

I am pretty sure that it wouldn't matter. There are default replacements for npcs available, afterall.  If you're worried, make a backup, which you should be doing regardless.

Thanks :) I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but does anyone know what the Sports & Games hobby head looks like? I've been trying and trying to get those sims in Desiderata Valley to get a membership in sports and games but it just refuses to happen. I want to have a look at them before I custom make my own. Has anyone seen pictures of them?

I haven't even installed the clean hood and I had a burgler, mailman and a professor show up as members. And...this was before I put any hacks in for testing. Hmm... I'm gonna install this anyway as I really, really want a clean hood. *remembers to backup first. not wanting firey balls...he, he*

What about judges, are those separate NPCs or do the hobby heads work as those?

AFAIK the Food Judge is a separate NPC but unlike the iconic hobby Sims, you can't interact with him/her at all. I don't think any of the other contests have a judge but I'm not 100% on that.


The L&P guide shows the Sports Sim wearing the coach uniform with a blue baseball cap and the Games Sim wearing the jumpsuit from the top of the Gamer career.

Thank you, just a question or two, when installing this, do I need to delete the characters as well?  Also will this delete the original player sims?

Hi missaaliyah,

please refer to the first post in this topic on how to install empty templates. You need to manually delete all files in the Characters, Thumbnails, Storytelling folder. Empty templates will NOT delete any sims, they will only prevent the game from spawning new ones.

I borked my game so I thought I would start fresh in the new hood. I'm using the empty template on the previous page, but the game is  still adding characters to the hood. I did the usual delete the character files in c: drive/freetime etc.. and add the replacement empty template.  Am I missing something? Or have a misread and that's not a empty template?

Are you placing the empty template in the correct place? Under program files, not My Documents?

Also, if you plan on adding subhoods, you'll need to empty templates for them as well.

Yes in the correct place. I've always use empty templates for my game. It's just this new hood that won't stay empty.

Are the characters being added Townies or hobby Sims? The game will generate a head for each hobby and a Food Judge if you don't spawn them yourself. I don't think there is a way to prevent them from being created, but if you make them yourself you can at least have control over what they look like.

I would love to add the clean up template that still has the maxis families and the npcs/townies that they know.  However, the link on page one appears not to be working.  Has it been updated or moved?  Is it now on another page.  Its a bit much to read all 18 pages of this thread to find out.  Thanks.

Sysa has a link to the clean neighborhoods in this post (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg263971.html#msg263971).

When I load the hood houses still have familles. I have even checked back to C drive folder and the characters fold is empty, so I'll be damned where the game is pulling them from to create the characters. To be honest I haven't checked if it's adding townies too but I assume so since the character folder has quite a few files. I might just give up on that hood.

You're misunderstanding, the template isn't for Desistetatawra Valley, it's for the "stealth neighbourhood" that adds itself to ALL your neighbourhoods when you first load them after installing FT. It contains two sim bin families as well as some townies/NPCs. Like Cyd Roseland and all those bloody strays in Pets, or Ottomas & Co in Seasons.

Oh Duh! Don't I feel stupid.  :-[

So I'm assuming that my clean neighbourhood template for the 'stealth' hood is working properly.

So far, nobody has said it's made their game unplayable. Maybe now I can take it out of the 'testing' phase.

Go ahead and remove the familytemplates file. It's just the small pictures the game generates for the thumbnails of the family. The regular neighbourhood has this, and it won't destroy your game deleting the one in the FT directory.

Since if you generate townies the game will make those sims as needed, then I assume it's a working as intended behavior...

I'm wondering if A: there is a clean riverblossom with only the playables available. B: there would be a clean 'FT neighbourhood with only the playables avaiable (NOT the stealth hood) c: the stealth hood clean with only playables...

I'll just say the playables avalaible for every expansion... would make my custom neighbourhood easier to make.

IAmTheRad, I have used your empty hood, for a testing new hood. There was zero character file when the hood was generated (I used empty hoods for all the others). So far, I have continuously played one family, which hired other families, and I have seen no problems, definitely playable, and NPCs were generated as supposed to (paper girl, mail woman, etc.) Any specific problems we should keep an eye on? I remember you made it with SimPE QA, right? That's why I'm still cautious and haven't played my real hood yet. I'm waiting for some "official" word. Would you make it with the released SimPE? or it does not make a difference? I really can't tell. It's your (and other awesomarians') call. Let us know. Thank you.

The QA was fine to make the clean stealth hood.
There should not be any difference whatsoever between using the QA and a 'proper' release of SimPE.

Unless there is a HUGE problem with it, which as of yet, nobody has said there's a HUGE problem, then I'm considering it final and not needing to be changed anymore.

So, for now, it's final. It's working as intended.

Sounds good. Thanks.

You mentioned that there might be some "garbage files" in the empty template, I was just wondering if you still thought that it needed more cleaning or if it was completely cleaned?

The thing is I think I mostly cleaned it. Since nobody has really raised any problems with the empty template, I'm considering it final. I'm sure somebody who's more awesome than me might have taken a look at it and if it wasn't as awesome, they would have made a cleaner one.

The game still automatically generates townies, dormies and strays if you don't have the patches to stop those in, right? I'd like some for my Sims to interact with, but making my own would take forever, you know? I just don't like the fugly default ones. :)

If you don't have Pescado's no-regen hacks, then yes the game will generate townies, dormies, etc as needed.

They'll be less fugly if you use default face template replacements.  And if you don't want the standard EAxis names, I recommend a replacement name mod - Jordi has one over at MTS2, and there are probably others around.

Yes, the Charlatan appearing is normal. The game will create NPCs as they are needed but if it matters to you what they look like, you can spawn them yourself ahead of time with the NPC gun. The templates only affect newly created neighborhoods so if you swap out an empty template with a clean one, your already existing neighborhoods will not change.

You could make your own using Deleted 2 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6205.0.html) I suppose.

Oh, you awesome ones, I need help!

I have reinstalled all my games (Base,Uni, NL, OFB, Pets, Seasons). I have installed all the empty templates on the first page of this thread. I have followed everything exactly! When I was finished with that, I put in my hacks notownieregen, CAS face replacements and default eyereplacement of choice and such. Than I made a backup of my TS2 folder.

So, everything should be fine, and I start the game for the first time since I reinstalled and I load Pleasantview. What do I see? All the Maxis created Sims are occupying their houses. At least all the diomonds are floating over the houses. I did not dare to load any lot, in case I would have to make some kind of ajustments now.

When I look in my neighborhood folders (under program files) for the different hoods that I installed the empty templates for, none of the character folders have any files in them. Thats how its supposed to be, but how come I have occupied houses then?
When I look in my neighborhoods/characters folder in My Documents, they are full of files. Where did they come from?

I am quite sure I did everything according to the guidelines on the first page of this thread. What is going on, and can I save my hoods somehow?

Oh, I hope so!

I don't think you did anything wrong - when you reinstalled the base game it added the three original neighborhoods, before you had a chance to replace everything with cleaned/empty templates. The templates don't affect already existing neighborhoods but if you started a new neighborhood it should be empty. If you want to empty out the original three hoods, drag the Neighborhoods subfolder from My Documents to someplace safe (in case you want to put it back at some point or whatever) and allow the game to generate the folder again. This time the neighborhoods should be empty.

Gynarchy, you just made my day! Thank you for that vital information  :D :)

I was wondering if there where any empty templates around for Verona Ville and Strangetown, too? Else, I will try and follow the guidelines that were posted somewhere in the thread and do it myself. But if there were any, I would happily be using them, ofcourse.  ;)

I have the empty Strangetown and Veronaville templates here (http://www.4shared.com/dir/4312838/d24a174c/Empty_Neighbourhoods.html).

Yippedy. Now its working. No Maxis sims in any of the 4 neighborhoods. I haven't checked into downtown or bluewater or Uni yet, but they should be empty too now, is my guess.

Thanks Emma for the download links, I also found Riverblossom somewhere in the thread. So now all hoods are empty, yeah.

The only strange thing is that the 2 occupied lots in the bin that come with Pets have come. Very strange, because the LotCatalog in Pets Program Files is empty, so I can't even delete those. Can I safely delete them from the bin, or will they leave corrupt data behind?

Another strange thing, although I don't mind, is that the name of Pleasantview now appears in english on the selector screen and also the storytelling for that hood is in english. I have a non english game. That is odd, because I haven't tempered with those at all, and for all the other hoods the names and storytelling is still in the right language. Well, never mind that. I am just glad I finally can play again - with my own sims. 8)

Just delete them-as long as you don't place them they should be okay. For next time, to create a completely empty n'hood, you need to look in:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog

The only lots I have left in there are the 4 lotbin community lots-their file names are:

cx_00000002.package
cx_00000003.package
cx_00000005.package
cx_00000006.package

The rest of the files in there-delete. If you don't want the Maxis community lots (2 petshops and 2 petparks) then just delete the lot.

Exactly, thats the thing, I have looked in that folder and it is empty. So I have no idea where they came from, because I emptied that folder out according to the guidelines of SarahMK.

Well, never mind. I'll just delete the 2 occupied lots from the lot bin, as you suggested. Thanks. :)

4shared is good, but it can be a bit pissy sometimes. I've attached the 2 hoods to this post.

Hi there,

anyway to view this thread as 1 whole page?

Any list of all criteria for a sims-free neighbourhood?

Thanks in advance. :)

I'm going to make the master list here. Links will fill in in a few minutes.
You need all of the clean templates for all of your games.
Base (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg218734.html#msg218734)
University
Nightlife
Open for Business
Pets
Seasons (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg120424.html#msg120424)
Bon Voyage (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg264144.html#msg264144)
Freetime (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg317272.html#msg317272)

You also need to go here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7.0.html) and click the link for your latest EP. Click 'hacks,' and then retrieve these.
anttredundancy
nossrepawn
nostrayrespawn
notownieregen
Unzip and place in Downloads folder, preferably subfoldered under 'Essential' or some sort.

And follow Jordi's Clean Custom Neighborhood Tutorial (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html) for installing you new templates.

Remember, if you create a new neighbourhood and minimize and see character files in your characters folder, then something went wrong. Don't continue; see what you're missing or what step you missed.

Oh, and the box.net links are working for me, so I linked to SaraMK's originals.

I actually want to trim off all sims and lots after DAC.

0xCC2A6A34 Sims Creation Index necessary?

What is TTAT  in the neighbourhood package file? I've checked the wiki already. but it doesn't say its function yet.

Since I want the neighbourhood free of sims and lots, should I delete the text lists files as well?

wow, thanks for all the infos... :)

???
"Trim off?"

If you're asking if you can do this to an existing neighbourhood, you cannot. Once a character file is in the game, you can't remove it easily. Lots are easy enough to bulldoze, however.

If you are at the stage of creating the neighbourhood free of sims and lots, I would use empty templates and create a custom hood.  This would be free of lots.  Using DAC will leave residual crap you don't want.  It is easier to destroy the hood and rebuild it with empty templates than to go through SimPE and find and destroy all the extraneous rubbish left behind by DAC.

You can install an empty default hood as well (like an empty Pleasantview), and then simply bulldoze all the lots you don't want.  Presto!  Empty clean Pleasantview, complete with bridges, decor, etc. (to create lag and use up memory needlessly).

Thanks jsalemi, Kazzandra and jolrei for your tips.

With your tips and my searches, I'm glad to have made some empty neighbourhoods and my own custom neighbourhood template and clean and clear up the template directories saving another ~200MB out of TS2 programme folder. :D .

I may be blind but has anyone posted a cleaned version of F001 (Desiderata Valley)?  I have found all the other templates I need but this one eludes me.

P.S. Thanks SaraMK

I don't think anyone's made one yet.  I've been looking for a cleaned version for awhile, too.

I don't believe that will work because some of the character data for them is stored in the V001_Neighborhood file. You could clone the Travellers and recreate them in CAS but you'd have to replace their memories and whatnot if that matters to you. I made clones of them for my merged neighborhood, if I still have them I will attach them.

I'm not sure that I've correctly understood what you're asking, so I hope this post answers your question.

If you want the premade playables but not the townies then you need to download the clean templates, not the empty templates.  The clean templates contain all the playables and the few townies/NPCs/dormies they have relationships with (such as Kaylynn in PV or Crystal Vu in ST).  They contain no other townies, NPCs or dormies.

To regenerate the base neighbourhoods you don't need to uninstall/reinstall.  All you need to do is drag the Neighbourhoods folder out of the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 folder and then start up the game.

While any new townies or NPCs that you create (or that you let the game generate) will use your name mod and face templates, the existing sims will not - although they will use any default skin replacements you may have.

If you have the no regen hacks from Pescado's director's cut in your game, the game will not generate any townies or dormies and will only generate NPCs as required.  You can make your own townies, downtownies, dormies, vacation locals, tourists & hobby mavens in CAS and then use various hacks in combination with the townie and NPC maker (a tree in earlier EPs, a gun in later EPs) to give them jobs, skills, badges, etc, and then turn them into whatever type of sim they're supposed to be - note that you don't have to give your CAS-made townies jobs & skills as the game will do it for you, although it will only give them jobs in the base game careers.  I usually give them jobs, as I want some of the townies and downtownies to have careers from FT and BV.  You can also use the townie gun to generate NPCs.  If you use the townie gun to generate townies/NPCs then you need to save after each one you want to keep, and exit the lot without saving if you don't want to keep the sim that was generated, otherwise your neighbourhood will be clogged up with useless character files.

Nice try, Kyna. Could you move her mouse for her, too? It's sooo exhausting.

 ???


Poor Kyna. I hope she can make up for her minutes of WASTED TIME trying to help someone who doesn't even know what she wants and can't even be buggered to look at a comprehensive list on the same page.

The lulz factor helps to make up for the wasted time.  But I'm scratching my head trying to work out why anyone would want the annoying EAxis townies, dormies and downtownies that none of the playables know anyway.

I'm thinking that if she likes the behaviour of Marsha Bruenig and sims like her and wants to retain them, then she's clearly needs more help than she'll find here at MATY.

By jove, I think I've got it!  I think it wants Goopy and Marsha, but with new face templates and names!  ::)  How this differs from having all new townies generated still has me confuzzled.

Piss off. We don't need your whiny brattiness here.

Wait! Come back!

(http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s216/assmitten/gracie.jpg)

Oh, the lulz just keep getting better.

A quick recap from where I sit:

* gracie says "I know I'm not explaining myself very well, so you need to take the time to read this confusing post and work out what I really want".
* Since her post wasn't clear (as stated by her) I answer what I think her question might be.  I make a point of covering several aspects of the subject, since I'm not sure exactly what her question is.
* gracie then posts, and this time is able to explain exactly what her question is (with the clarity she couldn't find earlier).  And says that my post doesn't answer her question at all.  I thought it was lulzy that even though I'd explained that you don't need to uninstall/reinstall to regenerate EAxis neighbourhoods - and that I'd explained how to regenerate them - she still seems to think that's the way to go.  I think it rather nicely demonstrates the effort she put in to read my post.
* Naturally I go WTF?  Why on earth would you want the annoying pre-made townies, even with different names and faces, when it's their behaviour that's the worst thing about them?
* gracie then claims that even though she has the time to do the lengthy dance of the disks to uninstall & reinstall she doesn't have the time to get exactly the townies she wants by making a few groups of sims in CAS, plopping them on a lot, and then using Inge's cat statue to townify them.  This is because she has one of those life things, which apparently we don't.

I can see at least two more scores on the retar-doh card for that last post, possibly three.

Do you by any chance have assburgers, gracie? Just askin'.

Why? For the love of god....why? Why do we attract these moronic tards?

*Emma sobs into witch's shoulder like the emo kid she secretly is

Gracie. Just go and play somewhere else. Try the TSR forums or the BBS. They love arseholes like you, and if you piss them off you could always start a picture thread!!!!one!!1

* witch awkwardly patpats Emma's shoulder, like the emo kid she isn't  :P

 :D

Dammit, the 'tards iz makin Emma cry!

It just makes me sooo, mmmmmad!   >:(

* jolrei rolls his eyes insanely and jumps up and down in rage.

@ gracie:  your request is pointless.  Trans:  "I want to have all the same townies and NPCs but I want them to be totally different."  If this makes sense to you, you have no cause to criticise our lives.  Your real life is clearly rather speshul and should be kept locked in your head where it belongs.

If you do not use a clean template you get Maxis townies.  If you use new archetypes, they just look different.  If you change the names you get different looking townies with different names.  Hence what you get is different townies.  All you are keeping is the clothing, which is frankly stupid.  Use clean templates and just generate townies using one of several available methods.  That already would have you playing your game happily into fiery ball heaven, and would not have wasted your own and our time. 

In gracie's defense, she *does* know what she wants. The Impossible. You all just didn't read her post right.

What she wants is to change all the faces and names of every Maxis-made playable and townie, but keep everything else the same. For some reason, she thinks either someone else has done all the work, or maybe the custom name mods will do it for her.

Nuh-uh.

The only way to get what you want, gracie, is to edit all the townies and playables by hand in SimPE. And I doubt anyone else wanted to "save the story lines", so you'll just have to do it yourself.

You might want to ask yourself "is it worth it?" Because honestly, how many of those story lines are really that great? And how many of the townies do you need to preserve, to keep those story lines intact?

One could do all that face and name changing with TJ's SimBlender but I think jolrei hit the nail on the head. By the time you've finished, the old townies would cease to be old townies and would be instead new townies. So why waste all the time and effort of changing all the old ones into new ones when you can start with the new ones and get back to your extremely important life?


Don't forget to mention how rude and nasty everyone who tried to help you was! I'm sure they'll throw you the pity party you've always wanted.

So Gracie, how long have you had this secret desire to be repeatedly immolated?

Honestly though, let me see if I have your request right.

"I want all the retarded townies that everybody else wants to get rid of, but I want them all to have new names and faces which would require several grueling hours of painstaking surgery with SimPE, but I think someone else should do it instead of me because I have a life and they don't!"

Is that a fair assessment of your request?   Because if it is, then they have been exceedingly nice in their responses since you deserved a lot more scathing retorts than you have gotten so far.

I interpreted her request as possibly asking to replace the townies, but maintain her CAS families' relationships with townies... although she said that she wasn't that invested in the families. 

Gracie, your way doesn't work, and if you don't mind restarting, (which you indicated in your initial post), then that's possibly the simplest way.  You can also get the game to automatically generate a batch of townies with your default replacements (faces and names) if you want by clicking (or shift clicking, I don't remember) on the mailbox in debug mode.  If you don't want to waste hours in CAS, you can do it that way. 

But otherwise, stop being a whiny twit and leave.

But that's the thing that gets me about this.  It doesn't take hours in CAS.  I make all my own townies, using Hook's randomiser to randomise their features (such as makeup, facial hair, glasses, hats, jewelry), their star signs, their turn-ons & turn-offs, their genetics, etc, and maybe I have it down to a fine art now, but it doesn't take me hours.

Gracie apparently doesn't have the time to make groups of sims in CAS, put them on a vacant lot and then use Inge's cat statue to townify them.  Add a few minutes in SimPE to adjust surnames (yes, you can safely change surnames in SimPE, it's first names you shouldn't change there) and you're done.  It's a heck of a lot quicker than the dance of the disks to reinstall the game - which it seems gracie does have time for. 

And you get exactly the names, appearance & clothing you want for your townies.  You can even give them hair from the custom bin if you want (although it's best to create them with a normal hair colour and then change it in-game to something from the custom bin before you townify them), which won't happen if you spawn them with the mailbox or townie gun.

There's only a couple of townies/NPCs that already have relationships with the playables, and they are included in the clean templates.

Never heard about that before, care to elaborate a little please? Is it a VBT? I have used SimPE to change surnames in the past, I'm pretty sure I never did for first names, but I'd like to know for future reference.

When you change a sim's first name in SimPE, it doesn't change it everywhere.  The sim's first name is also stored somewhere in their character file.  Last time I used SimPE to change first names was when I was playing with Marhis' gender reversed PV, and when sims errored the error messages were coming up with their original name not their new name.

Since then, I've learned that Pescado advises against it (see this thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7881.0.html) for an example), which is good enough for me.  I trust his advice on how to keep a neighbourhood healthy, just as I've trusted his bug fixes for years now.

I have made an empty Desiderata Valley (F001). Instructions for installing are included in the zip.

Download Here (http://www.4shared.com/file/50920551/486e8881/Empty_Desiderata_Valley.html).

Also, I have uploaded all the empty templates available in this thread to this folder:

Empty Hoods (http://www.4shared.com/dir/4323880/c0795b00/EmptyHoods.html).

I haven't got the cleaned templates though, just the empty ones. Let me know if I have missed any of them.

Searched this thread for "greek" and "frat" but found nothing, so poke me if you must for my question. I recently installed the clean templates from this thread and started a new Pleasantview, with attached clean Sim State University & Downtown (so far). My townie & maxis playable-free Sim State has the 2 Maxis greek houses, but of course as there are no members my sims can't get an invite or move into the existing houses. Is there a way to get into those lots so that I can assign some of my dormie population to those houses, or should I just bulldoze those lots and plan to start fresh with self-made greek houses?

Are you able to enter the lots in build mode? If you can, try "changelotzoning residential" (no quotes) in the cheat box.

I'll give it a try. So I change the zoning to residential, use a money cheat or mortgage shrubs to move one person in, then do I change to zoning back so it functions as a greek house? I've never messed with zoning, so really have no clue here.

What I usually do is make a YA, move onto a residential lot, spawn dormies and all that, then motherlode or whatever, move them into the 'greek house', and get them to apply for a charter. I then reduce funds to about §100 and save. Once I have one of my playables in the greek society and moved them in, I turn the placeholder into a dormie. I think it is still part of the Greek Society as it turns up when other playables want to join, but that doesn't bother me too much.

Ok, but if I use the changelotzoning to residential on the existing "greek" houses in Sim State, will that remove the charters already in existence, or at least give me the ability to remove them upon entry? Right now they're listed as already greek, so no new sim can move in without an invite, no matter how much cash they have. Also, I have the buyable Townie & NPC creator, if I spawn adult townies in a Uni hood, would they be considered for the dormie pool? I don't seem to have the ability to choose Young Adult as a spawning age. Clearly I'm new to the whole "add your own townies" game. Thanks for your help!

IMO, I'd bulldoze the Greek House(s) and place a nice fresh lot there. But, I would say that...I only use the Maxis stuff if it has been modified to be playable :D

[edit] Sorry, yeah, you have to have a sim on a residential lot in the uni hood (not in a dorm). Then you spawn 'townies' using the NPC gun and they are dormies.

NPC gun? Sounds like I gotta get me one of those!

LOL you already have it! Just shift>click on the sim in debug mode and select 'spawn>NPC and Townie Maker'. The repoman's gun will then fall at your sim's feet. Click on it and you will see an option that says 'spawn>townies' or something like that. Alternatively, you can shift>click on the mailbox for the same option.

Ah, I never mess around with debug mode, too scared of blowing up my game :-P

Hi, I just installed Freetime and the new patch. As I play my game with clean templates I installed the F001 Desiderata Valley right after, according to tut. No townie and NPC respawn in place. Thanks Emma for your links to the empty templates.  :)

I then started the game and loaded Desiderata Valley - then shut the game down again. I look in the new F001 character folder in my documents and it has 35 characters. Hmm. So I take the character folder to the desktop and start the game again, loading DV once more. Now the new character folder is empty, which I like better.  ;D  Only, I checked some of the character files in SimPe and some of them were NPC's like the grim reaper, some of them were townies (3 of those were food judges).

So, before I do something totally stupid to my game, and destroy all the other things I have done up till now, I am thinking I better check with someone more knowledgable. I haven't played the game with the new FT installation yet - I only loaded DV.

Is it safe to take all those characters out of the F001 characters folder the way I did, even the NPC's and food judges?
I looked in the other neighborhood folders like N001 and N002 and those character folders are empty. So I am thinking I can just delete those in F001. I still want my sims to be able to use all the Freetime things and secret lots and food contest ...

What should I do, please? ???

To check whether your empty templates are working, rename your 'Sims 2' folder to 'Sims 2 main' or something, then run the game to generate a clean install. Once you've done that, don't click on anything, minimise the game to desktop and check your F001 folder to see if there are any characters in there. It should be completely empty. You then load up Desiderata Valley and once it is loaded, check the character folder. It should still be empty. The only way you will have files in there is if you have not installed all the empty templates for each EP you have, or if you haven't followed instructions correctly.

Thank you so much for your reply Emma.

I did what you suggested and there were no characters in the folder after loading the game. Then I loaded DV and checked again - now there are 35 characters   :(

I have succesfully installed all the templates for the other EP's up till Seasons, I have played with that for a while and had no problems. What I did when I installed FT was: patch the game -> get the empty F001 template from your links -> empty out the FT characters folder in program files -> delete the neighborhood package file -> put in the empty neighborhood package file that I downloaded. Load the game... and I got 35 characters in my documents F001 folder.

Did I miss something  ??? I have not installed the F002 package file that I saw in your template links. Is that the reason? I figured I didn't need that one.

Yeah, that's why you have those characters. F002 is the 'stealth' template that adds Hobby Leaders and some other characters that I can't remember off the top of my head. You need to install that too if you want a totally empty neighbourhood.

OK then  :D

Where do I install that package and do I have to delete anything like with the F001? There is no rtfm in the F002 download.
Already figured it out: I do like with Pets, in the neightborhoodtemplate folder.

If I install F002, will I still be able to visit the hobby lots and meet hobby leaders (i.e. they spawn as needed) or will I not be able to use some the FT options anymore??

Thank you for helping me. I obviously realise that every time someone is responding to a question to help someone else, it takes off their own time to play and such. So I am very greatful for all the help I am getting, anywhere! Thanks :)

Yeah things will spawn as needed, don't worry. If you are feeling up to it though, you can either create your own hobby club leaders, or download mine at Laverwinkle Sims (http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php?topic=776.0) </shamelessplug> You need 10 of them anyway. If they spawn as needed then they tend not to use the 'uniforms' and just have regular clothing.

To assign them as Iconic Hobbyist NPCs you need to make them in CAS one by one and leave them in the sim bin. Note their names! Then create a sim, put debug mode on, move him to a residential lot, pause and spawn the NPC and townie gun. Click on the bit that says 'make>Iconic Hobbyist>hobby> and choose the sims name you have assigned to be the club leader. Unpause and it should say 'done!' Do this for all 10 of the hobby sims. Once you quit and save that lot, open the sim bin and the 10 hobby club sims will be gone. That means you have done it right!

Thank you for that tip about your downloadable hobby club leaders - wonderful. I d/l them and turned them into iconic hobbyists. It was easy to do, provided I gave them names that are not used by others in the hood. Otherwise its difficult to choose the right one from the npc/townie gun, as I found out. But in the end they were all gone from the bin, yippedy!  ;D

When I check them in Simpe, they don't seem to have any employment. Will they get that later, or are they working as "volenteers" at the clubs  ;) ?

Thanks so much again for all your help.

Nah, they are all jobless ;)

Glad you got it working-yay!

Emma, I've been looking for this kinda help as well, so I must thank you too lol :).

Emma, you're so helpful, someone should nominate you for Senate!

*Emma laughs at Assmitten

Okay, I have another question, and sorry if it's been covered already...

(If it has, bring it on! I like torture...I'm into light S&M)

Okay, SO...

Do I need to follow the whole "custom hood" tut if I'm not even gonna use any of the pre-made neighborhoods? I plan to DELETE every SINGLE neighborhood I see once I load the game up and then make my own. I'm just wondering if I'm exempt from some of this somewhat tedious process.

Gracias in advance!  8)

Even if you delete the other hoods that come with the game, any custom hood you make will spawn the same townies unless you have empty templates.  So if you made 3 completely different custom hoods, they'll still have the townies that come with Pleasantview (Goopy etc).
Empty templates and making your own townies means that you know they'll be different. So yes, you do have to go through this process even if you're going to delete the default hoods, unless you want the default townies.

Yeah, I figured that was the case, just wanted clarification. Thank you.

If i read this correctly, I can drag my neighborhood folder (from the documents folder) someplace or delete it if say I just reinstalled FT and didn't save my stuff *I did save download folder*, but checked it out to see how it was running.  Please tell me I'm right?  Unlike others that just recently posted *grac..cough, cough*, I would be very grateful for any help in getting this right.  Thank you!

What I would do Zolabee, is rename the 'Sims 2' folder to generate a new one with all the templates you want in place. Once you have enabled CC, quit the game. The renamed 'Sims 2' folder can just be deleted then. You can then replace your Downloads folder in your new Sims 2 folder, load up the game and if you have the Maxis hood empty templates as well as the stealth hood templates you will have an empty Desiderata Valley, Riverblossom Hills, Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville. Of course, if you don't want them you can just delete them. Any subhood you add to them or any custom neighbourhood will be completely empty too. I figure if you are starting fresh then this is the best way to do it.

What I would like to have are the neighborhoods with the maxis playable and the people they know.  When I checked the first of the thread that link no longer works, are they somewhere else or is there another way to get that such as separate downloads - one for neighborhood the other for characters?  And, I understand what you are telling me to do with the rename folder, ect., but do I install the templates into program files before I start the game (after rename) or .... something else?  Thank you, I appreciate the walk though.

You install the templates before generating a new folder..

I think Sysa has posted a link to the cleaned up templates somewhere in this thread...possibly around page 11? I dunno. Have a look anyway.

Okay, what I have done is gone into documents folders and moved all those folders to my desktop then re-installed K&B, but not started the game - so everything should be ready to install templates (of which I will save to desktop folder shortly)? 


Okay, I read the info and have followed instructions from base through and am ready to do Seasons.....

The Clean and Fixed Pleasantview, Strangetown, Veronaville templates have been uploaded to Crazy Town.

http://www.the-isz.com/theisz/index.php?showtopic=695

Which is the Free Time download that will only get rid of the NPC's & Townies of Desiderata Valley?

There's an empty copy of Desiderata Valley one page ago.  Reading is FUNdamental.

Okay, I have installed everything up to seasons.  I also put the cleaned up character files in the character files folder.  I did this in program...   Now, when I go in I should have only Maxis playables & who they know in the neighborhood, but I don't.  I'm going into a completely uninhabited neighborhood.  So, I checked the character files, and they are there.  Any ideas on what stupid thing I did?  I did follow directions, and deleted and redownloaded to make sure....same thing.

Thanks for any help!

Fixed - so don't need help - thanks anyway.

Is there a reason no one has uploaded a comprehensive download of all (empty template only) files through Freetime? And if not, do any of the original creators mind if I do? It was incredibly painful to slog through this whole thread when I was grieving for my broken hard drive :P.

Do what you like with mine :D Jordi won't mind, and I am sure SaraMK won't mind either :) This is why I uploaded them all to my 4shared so they were all together. Didn't think to start a new thread though. Grab/link them from there if you like.


http://www.4shared.com/dir/4323880/c0795b00/EmptyHoods.html

Emma, the third file down, the B001 file, 4shared says the link is invalid. I haven't tried further.

Shit. Thanks witch, I dunno why they keep screwing up.

[edit] Reloaded :)

OK, cheers. That one works now.

I've just worked my way through the entire list and U001 and U003 are also showing off. All the others are fine.

Thanks witch, I'll reupload them now. :)

[edit] Done.

This is the work of many fine people in this community. I upload only to save someone else the time sink of wading through the whole thread :). These seem to be working fine in my neighborhood. I only have the 2 people I created in CAS and the 3 NPC's I've so far created.

Empty templates for Sims 2 through Freetime expansion (including the fake subhoods): http://gethanesims.prismbaby.com/files/emptyTemplatesThroughFT.rar

For pleasantview I've included the "emtpy" one that still creates pleasantview, and the Argon one that's cleaner for use when making custom neighborhoods. I hope I understood that correctly anyway.

sumpsychochic, you just need to rename this file:


to this:


That will prevent the default Pleasantview townies from spawning in new neighborhoods. For more info on creating clean custom 'hoods, check out this thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html).

Sorry - typo on my part. :) The entire folder.

  My thanks to all the folks here who tested these templates out, and/or cleaned them up.  I was looking to start a new game and have all EP's save Seasons, and all the Stuff packs (except Ikea (read I-Kill-Ya)) installed.  Now, If I read this right,

I rename The Sims Folder in My Documents,

Back-up all the neighborhoods from each expansion pack

Delete the Character folder and the ?00?_Neighborhood.package file from each of the EP directories

Place the empty template (IE the ?00?_Neighborhood.package file) that I downloaded into the respective folder for the EP

Start the sims going to generate all the files, then exit.

Then place my saved downloads folder in the new The Sims 2 directory (which contains the Selzi defluglified face templates.)

Go into the game once again and create a sim, plop him/her on a lot and spawn the townie maker.

Then make a batch of townies using the new face templates and the HPs replacement names.

Thanks to you PepsiHamster for asking the question that I was going to ask concerning the hobby masters.

  Now for something totally different.  I am thinking of setting up my old site K & B Designs, and am asking if I could put the files for the clean and empty neighborhoods up their.  I would give credit to all of you who contributed, and claim none for me, save the holding of them  :).  Trying to get them all off of 4 shared, and fishing for them through the thread (23 pages or so Oy!) was a royal pain in the backside, And if I can help anybody else avoid that problem I would feel better.  Not to mention helping out all of you folks in return for doing this for the simming community. 

Birman Kat

Birman Kat, if you want to host the files, that would be great :D

Ok, then I need all the files that I can get my claws into.  I already grabbed the ones that were up on 4 shared, urk...  I hope that I can locate the ones that Argon did for all the neighborhoods, from Base to Seasons, and anyothers too.  I will also need a list of the hacks that are going to be needed to keep the game from going up in a BFBVFS.  I hope that I will not come to regret this offer of help in the future.  K & B Designs  (Read it  Kalico and Birman Kat Designs, NOT Kitchen and Bath)  was originally set up top showcase any creations by my wife (Kalico Kat from MTS2) or myself.  Now I am going to be using it to help anybody else avoid having to slog through over 20 + pages to get the files needed and the methods to use them.


Birman Kat

Well, I have every empty neighbourhood template on my 4shared, including Argon's empty pleasantview and his BV ones too. Which ones are you missing?

I noted in one of Argons posts that he had done all the hoods from base to Seasons done just like his clean hood of pleasentview and the Bon Voyage one.  I would like to get my hooks into those too, to give people a choice of flavor.  Plus if you have any others that have been cleaned (ie maxis only families with now fuglified townies that would be a help.  Sorry if I am not making much sense now.  Been up for almost 36 hours and working on vapors right now.

  Also, went to your spot on Laverwinklesims and DLed  all the hobby masters that you made, Thank for doing that.  Will be registering there when my brain is fully funtional.  Most likely need at least 12 hours of sleep for that.

Ciao fer naio

Birman Kat

I'm not sure if Argon ever released those ones-you could try pming him, but I don't know how active he is here right now. The cleaned up templates are at Crazy Town. Find Sleepycat as she has them linked in her signature I think. I am pretty sure she has uploaded them at CT too.

Will do and thanks.   I want to announce here that K and B Designs is now up and running at http://kandbdesigns.vndv.com/index.html (http://kandbdesigns.vndv.com/index.html)  And has the files that I grabbed all sorted and ready for Download.  I will be working on a Tutorial for the simple folk but that will take a bit longer.  Thanks for all the help.

Birman Kat

Updated my site with some new templates that Argon worked up.  K and B Designs now has all the templates there, and I will be doing up a tutorial soon, hopefully this weekend.  Not to mention I am going to try to get the walls floors, paintings, and such that my wife and I did up too.

Find the templates in the Empty Templates section at K and B Designs   http://kandbdesigns.vndv.com/index.html (http://kandbdesigns.vndv.com/index.html)


Birman Kat

Has anyone done cleaned up Riverblossom Hills and/or Desiderata Valley? If not I will do some. If I can. ;D

If you find any, or do your own, let me know ;D and I will add them to the site for all to download... ;D  I have something important to do this weekend with my son, but I hope to get started on a few tutorials on using the templates, and getting either custom townies, or useing the face templates to get not so fugly ones  ;) ;D

Birman Kat

OK, I will look around, and if I can't find any, will try and do some over the next week or so.

I am not the only one who would say thanks for that one, Emma.  Please check the site in my sig to see if all the files are there and un-zip/rar properly.  I know there have been issues with some unpacking programs and hope that I have been of some help.

Birman Kat

Well I can't seem to find any via Google, so I shall be starting work on those next week at the latest. I'll send them to you as soon as they are done and tested :)

Death to Emma!

*Emma moons Pescado

Could we get a mod to edit the first post to include recent EPs and Emma's soon to be here (hint, hint) templates? Or would it be easier for someone to start a new thread once the new L&P EP comes out?

Well, it would be easier for ME if someone else were to do it.   :P  However, I see the value of having an updated thread; I'll have it fixed up in about an hour.  A shiny new thread when the Apartments 'hoods are cleaned up does sound like a good idea, though.  Are you volunteering?

If someone provides the templates, I don't know how to make them. :p

I'll do them, as Jordi has retired and SaraMK is busy with other stuff. I dunno how long it would take for the test SimPe to be released though. Hopefully not too long as Inge is pretty much on the ball.

Once I have done the cleaned Desiderata and Riverblossom templates I'll post them in this thread and whoever can do whatever they want with them then. ;)

Why not make a new thread, Emma?  Put all the useful stuff in one post with one link and the basic instructions.  You can update it when Apartments gets fixed.  I'll link to the new thread in the FAQ and then lock this thread so it can die.   :P

Is anyone here planning to make an empty template for Apartment Life?

/me scrolls up a few inches

ayup.

Well since Emma's too busy *pfft* PLAYING the game to make clean templates, I'll post mine instead.

Clean Riverblossom and Desiderata (http://drupal.cyjon.net/node/133)

These haven't been extensively tested.  I installed them and poked around to make sure everyone's memories and family trees seemed right.  I tended to err on the side of caution in my slashing.  For example, Desiderata still has 3 social bunnies.  However they are in the Default family, aren't wearing their costumes, and the game makes a brand new social bunny rather than using one of them.  As near as I can tell they are dead social bunnies, and that's too funny to take out.  There are also several unknowns that are almost certainly unidentified NPCs so I left them in.

BirmanKat, you (or anyone) are welcome to mirror them at your site or do anything else you like with them.

Hmm. Someone reported that for the new social groups and witches, it's enough to delete their template character data, then the game will create new ones based on someone's very own templates, and everything should work fine. Would you people agree or am I overlooking something?

Well that's not all...you also need to edit the template because the memories and stuff are still there which eventually will bork your game...as in jumping bug, those weird bubbles with stripes...I wouldn't do it. It's the same with all the templates...deleting all the characters is NOT enough. That's why it's called empty and CLEANED-UP Templates...

...and afaik there won't be any cleaned-up AL template as long as there's no updated SimPE...so just wait and drink rum.

At least that's what I know.

Well, that's why I asked. I became unsure suddenly. So thank you :)

If I knew the process of emptying and cleaning up the templates, then I would do it myself right now.

I just want to get rid of those bloody families.

The new QA version of SimPE is out and is compatible with Apartment Life, you need to download it from their forum.

I don't suppose there is a tutorial for cleaning out a whole neighborhood, or is that the the electric bugaloo tutorial is for?

There is a tutorial here, but I am not sure if it is correct.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html

However, the link to apply for QA status is broken. I applied back when we were waiting for the Bon Voyage version, but never received a reply, so I thought I'd apply again.

Why do people think they're going to get some sort of fancy email?  You apply, I click "approve", you can read the QA forum, and that's all there is to it.  I rarely miss a day checking the applicants so you were probably in the first time you applied - which could explain why you can't click the link any more.

Well, what do you know. I AM allowed to view the QA thread. Yay!

It certainly made a difference when I actually logged in. *blush* Ok, so one of those "senior moments" struck again. However, in my defense, I must say that at the time I applied that application said I'd receive an email. I'm sure things have changed a lot since BV.

I made an empty template for AL if anyone's interested?

Back up E002
Put file in C:/Programs/EA Games/The Sims 2 Apartment Life/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplates/E002
Delete characters.

I have tested this and it seams to be working so far, since this is my first I wonder if I done it right?

Thanks - I'll be brave and test this, once I get back from going off with my mom and kid sister for lunch.

Thank You for the file. I tested it on a hood I created before AL with my own custom townies. I had a total of 33 character files. After placing your empty template in the Neighborhood template folder and starting the game, I still only had 33 character files. Yippee. I created my first family, moved them into their house and it showed 55 character files which I am assuming are the NPCs the game generated and my family.  I shut down the game and restarted. I still have a total of 55 character files. I will open the neighborhood with the QA version of SimPe to confirm if the other character file additions are the NPCs, but I am sure they are.

All in all, so far the empty template for AL seems to work. I will be creating some sims for apartments next to see if the game generates more character files.

Thanks so much,

-Tam

To test this thoroughly would it make a difference if I deleted the E001 neighbourhood located here.
C:\Documents and Settings\Aaliyah\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods

So that the neighbourhoods could be fresh.

Yes you can do that

Is this AL empty template just for custom hoods? I tried it on the new neighbourhood and it was still full of the families.

I might just hope for someone to come along and make a clean template for the base E001 as well.

Are you sure, mine works regardless. Delete the neighborhoods folder and try again.

I'll work on that.

I'll give it another try. I did the usual steps involved with empty templates. Maybe I missed something.

Update : Yes same thing still. Placed the package file in the E001 folder in Program files, Deleted Character files and still a populated hood (deleted Neighbourhood folder in my documents to start fresh). After that failed again as a test I deleted the character files from the E001 folder in my documents and replacing the package there. Strange thing with that is the hood is still populated, but the character folder is empty. I even played with a family for a while and the character folder stayed empty. I'm assuming that's not good either.

I wish is knew what I was doing wrong since it's working for you.

empty templates don't affect already created hoods, like Belladonna Cove (minus certain empty templates like Pets since BDC was created without Pets). To have an cleaned up Belladonna Cove, you need a cleaned up template for E001.


I rid my hoods of the social townies and bin families by backing up E002 and then deleting the neighborhood package file and all the characters. I then put in pre-AL copies of my hoods. The game can't add what it doesn't see.

You're suppose to put it in the E002 folder, the file is to remove the redundant townies and unnecessary families in the sim bin,
The Belladonna Cove empty template is coming, be patient.

Sorry I did mean E002. Ok now I understand I got the impression this was for an empty version of the new neighbourhood for AL. Now I know where I'm going wrong.

For those that only want an empty Belladonna Cove, here it is:

Back up E001
put file in C:Programs/EA Games/The Sims 2 Apartment Life/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods/E001
Delete characters in Characters folder
delete Bella Donna Cove if you already have it in your neighborhoods folder in my documents.

Viola!

Edit:
There seams to be a glitch with the Apartments which I'm unable to fix, this involves owners that don't exist in the apartments.
I do however have an alternative for the fix.

Enter the affected apartments, changelotzoning residential, save then exit, bulldoze apartment then replace.

If we delete all the characters wont it delete all the families, there are 1 or two that I am interested in keeping.

Either delete all the characters or don't delete at all. If you delete everyone BUT the family you want to save you'll get a BFBVFS very quickly. Your precious family will be corrupt because they'll know and remember sims that won't exist anymore.

If you must save them, use sim surgery to clone them into bodyshop and just recreate them.

So, if I put in the template after I install Apartment Life and before loading my custom hood, I should be able to avoid having unwanted new households in my Sim Bin, right? I don't remember what I did for the previous EP.

That's the idea, yes.  :)

I am sorry to ask a stupid question,but what is the difference between the first and the second file you offered,Giggy?

And is it gonna be a problem if i dont delete the characters folder?

There's no point doing it unless you delete the characters folder.

The first file (E002) gets rid of the 89 pre-made sims that are dumped into every single one of your hoods after loading them for the first time when you've installed AL. E001 instead is the empty neighborhood of Belladonna Cove. If you're never going to play there you only need to replace the E002 file. ;)

Thank you, these files for AL work perfectly for me, the newly created Social Townies created with my installed default replacement CAS faces all look much better, not to mention Jordi's name mod, that gets rid of the names Eaxis decides we should have. 

I followed these directions. Checked thrice for good measure, and I'm still getting the two dumb pets families: Kitty condo and forgotTheName. What have I forgotten, overlooked and/or missed.

You need to delete the contents of the lot catalog in P001 to get rid of them.

Is that the one located at C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSDate\Res\UserData?

Edit: LOL. Thanks Emma. I realize now that my question was stupid, because it actually says that at the start of the quote. I hadn't read it properly and I guess I never put two and two together, because the cat lady and the guy with the dog don't actually come with a house, so I had also always wondered why these two were still everywhere. Well, I guess it is clear for everyone now!

Yes it is.

Stupid question: If I use the empty templates + noregen hacks, will I get the "necessary" amount of social groupies? I'm guessing the game needs a few of those or the apartments won't work properly.

And what about witches? Will the game generate them even with the empty templates and all hacks a simmer can have? I don't want them in my game, I hate all the supernatural stuff.

From what I've seen, the game seems to spawn one SG townie per vacant apartment if you play an apartment lot, and none at all if you don't play apartment lots. At least I haven't seen any new townie type sims in my current hood except one garden club member that spawned for the initial greeting-after-move-in. Witches do spawn, so if you don't like them, you will need a hack to get rid of them. I haven't had a look at Twojeffs' updated Visitor Controller (simbology.com), but I'm pretty sure there it has a "Ban Witches" option.

 ;D Thanks Giggy! That was the last one I needed!  ;D


I really hate 'teh uber-ugly' eaxis sims... >:(


... Yes I overuse smileys.

Question, are the pre-made sims in E002 of AL, i.e. does E002 contain the "roomie" sims?

And, if you delete those, then I assume the game will auto generate new "roomie" sims... sort of the way the game will generate dormies when you go to a new dorm in Uni, correct?


Ste

Correct on both counts (AFAIK).

I am experiencing game crashes, even already on loading screen. The whole neighborhood becomes unplayable after it has crashed once. Since I took all downloads out to find the reason, I think it could be caused by something in the installation folder that has been changed. The AL templates were made with a not-yet stable version of SimPe, so they could be the reason. They might be not, maybe something is wrong with my hard disk. Just to exclude possible reasons I'm asking you who use this template: are you experiencing any crashes?

I have been using the template and I have not experienced any issues. The template is actually working great for me and I have created another custom neigborhood and townies.

-Tam

I'm using the empty Belladonna Cove templates, but when I try to bulldoze a couple of the apartment buildings, the game tells me I have to move out the families.  It's weird, the building thinks there is a family in it, but there's no family to move out.  So, I can't move the family the building thinks is in there and I can't bulldoze the building.  What did I screw up?

Ok. So I did just like I was told to with the empty templates (AL) and all and now my game is only generating female townies. Any ideas of what's going on?
I have 38 new female townies that spawned when installing AL and after. Apparently the notownieregen doesn't do much good with this EP? Also, I have ONE warlock and one landlord (a female).

If you had done "just like you were told to", your game wouldn't have spawned any townies at all unless you moved a sim into an apartment (in which case, the game would have generated one townie for each empty apartment on this lot). Notownieregen works as advertised.
Are you sure you really cleaned out your templates?

ETA: As for the female only townies - you don't happen to have the Visitor Controller or Customer Selector and accidently banned males from your lots?

Just curious but is this supposed to include the Kim family in the "Nuclear Nest" house (which is flagged as Pets)? Because I have cleared out the C:\...\Pets\...\LotCatalog folder but this household still appears in the occupied houses bins.
It's entirely possible I've missed something, but I just thought I'd ask about it first.

This is the problem that I'm having.  Used clean belladona templates (E001 & E002), but still spawning 65 character files after creating a new hood.  I've been using clean templates for the longest time (so I know what I'm doing and I can follow directions), but this is really stumping me.  After spawning the 65 character files can I just delete them before creating my sims?

Do you have antiredundancy installed? It's supposed to prevent the game from spawning the social group townies.

I do.  I'm going to dl it again and see what happens.

Edit:  D/L it and I still have 65 freaking files.  This is driving me nuts! 

Can you open the files in SimPE and see what they're supposed to be?

I opened it twice before and I had a few npcs, but I had alot of potato heads.

EDIT:  I think I figured it out.  I opened simpe and went through the list again and saw that they were bv npcs and townies.  I never used a clean template for bv and I'm about to do that right now.  I think that's my problem.

Jelenedra, thanks so much!  The problem was that I didn't use a clean bv template.  Completely forgot.   ;)

Glad I could be of service.

The game will spawn townies when necessary, despite the hacks. Obviously, it needs social townies for the unoccupied apartments, and also for roomies. If you have no apartments, you won't get social townies.

It also bears mentioning that you can reassign your existing townies to social groups using Inge's teleporter cat (AL version, of course). It's working like a charm for me so far: the townies I reassigned have been moving into unoccupied apartments without any apparent ill effects. I have 20 total, 4 in each group.

You could also make your own social group townies in CAS and then assign them to social groups using the teleporter.

Ok...   I grabbed the two empty hoods from giggy, and have a question about them.

Are these hoods cleaned, and empty?  Or are there sims in them?  I need to know this before I add them to the collection I am hosting on K and B Designs.  (BTW  the name and URL will be changing soon.  Preview of name:  The Kats Meow.  Have to change the name, because some meatheads keep emailing me asking where the kitchen and bath stuff is.  D**b you EAxis for using that name.)

Birman Kat

At the risk of invoking the ire of the informed, what is the purpose of a cleaned template hood?

Do "clean" hoods still spawn all the necessary townies/roomies/dormies/etc for gameplay purposes?

i.e. If I don't plan on custom creating every house and every sub-hood and just want to play normally, what would be the difference in going through the trouble of getting all the cleaned templates or simply moving out the EAxis families I don't want?

I have no patience to read all about, but from experience I know that you cannot reuse a lot house where you deleted the characters by cleaning up the hood. A house keeps a lot of information such as relationships and even job info and other details that is specially related to a resident Sim. If you enter a house emptied in the root, the game crash to the desktop (in worst it freezes and you have to hard shut down the computer).
If you are intending to reuse the original game houses, try a clean-up version where the supplied playable Sims are kept. I have a personal version for this and had no problems at all. Both FreeTime and Appartments have something good in it - all the townies/NPCs are the last character numbers (about 70 of each - aarrgh!) and are very easy to delete.
Procedure:

Open the hood that is located in UserData not the template;
This hood is played only to the point that NPCs and Townies are included, so they are the last characters or are in the exactly place where they should be;

Open Simbrowser and cross only NPC and Townies and uncross the others.
Take note of all the character numbers, they should be just a long sequence.

Open Memory and check if Sims have any memory of a townie or NPC and delete it. So far I know that only Daniel Pleasant and Don Lothario contacted Kaylynn Lange whatever. In Appartment, the sisters Cordial contacted some witches. Delete them too, it is very difficult to select only one Sim. Normally you end up by messing up and getting an unknown char.

Close SimPe and delete all the character numbers you took note.

Open SimPe and in Sims description you will have a lot of unknown. There are only 5 Unknown that you have to keep and it is easy to identify them. They are in the lot 0000 (default). All the others are in the lots FFFF and FFFE. Delete all of them, they are only townies and npcs.

Open Simbrowser again and cross all the alternatives. You should see only playable and dead sims, and of course, the game objects (hulas, hummers, bigfoot, etc).

That is it!

By deleting all npcs and townies, you also delete roommates (unless you chose the hard way and keep some that are in the special families - very difficult in my opinion). They will be recreated. If you don't want Maxis roommates or don't have a proper CASFace replacement, create a couple of Sim families, move them to an empty lot and make them all to townies. Inge Jones has a teleporter for appartment that works feilfree.
Those user-made townies will be chosen as alternative for roommates (still didn't test) as logic supposition.

In the case of someone that had a problem with clean templates - probably you deleted the main residents of an appartment and didn't properly deleted the fictitious resident of the other appartments. They are just visitors, with a new classification - roommates. Never try to select them when playing, they get back the status of visitors and you start to get messages that it is too late and they have to leave. So they freeze. They are really Non-playable.
 

It's really quite impossible to tell what you mean by 'normal' gameplay.  As far as I'm concerned, my way is normal and all others are freaky. :D
The purpose of empty and cleaned templates is mostly all about the townies.  If you like the townies that EA ships then you don't need clean or empty templates.

If you're mostly concerned with cleansing yourself of the playables then you can obliterate them as per the Boogaloo thread, or you can just make them into townies.  Just don't EVER delete them from the sim bin.  I would not recommend taking the advice of people who have no patience to read.

For the purposes of gameplay, in a completely empty 'hood townies and NPCs are generated as needed.  If you install noregen hacks, that usually means a minimum, as in one.

haha, for the purposes of my question, let's define "normal" as "un-tampered-with".



Ahh, I see.  I typically need townies, otherwise such wants as "have 20 simultaneous lovers" would go unfulfilled since I only make one or two families.

However, I went ahead and installed all the clean templates, just to see what would happen (I'm impatient) and then used the mailbox to batch create townies and downtownies to populate my hood.

I now have a new question...although I think it may actually belong in another thread at this point, but it's almost related:

How will an empty hood handle social groups and what the heck are social groups anyway?

Well, wiping out several hundred townies and NPCs would qualify as some serious tampering, so it would seem this is pretty far from your normal style of play. :D

Installing the empty templates just gives you a blank slate for your neighbourhood.  How you choose to fill it is up to you.  Everyone needs townies, but there are nearly as many ways to make them as there are players.  For more opinions about different ways to populate your pristine new 'hood, you can search or start a thread.

I don't have enough experience with social groups to advise properly, but you can stimulate the game to make some if you play apartment lots and try to get roommates.  You may or may not like the townies the game makes for you, if you allow it to generate them.  Of note, there is currently a thread in Podium about the non-random generation of social group townies.

I haven't seen an answer to this, but I have the same issue.  The Belladonna Cove apartment buildings that came with MAXIS Sims in them can't be modified, deleted, etc. even after using the clean, empty template.  It says there is a family there (no name) and gives the amount of family funds.  Is it okay to remove some of the Lots in addition to the Character files in the Userdata/Neighborhoods/E001 folder when creating a clean, empty E001 neighborhood?  I don't use SimPE much, but I assume there is a way to identify the Lots that were pre-made with playables? (Or maybe someone can tell me another way.)

EDIT: I was wrong - the lots can be modified.  Changelotzoning works.  Once the lot is changed to Residential, it can be bulldozed.

When a family moves into an apartment building, that lot is cloned.  The cloned (occupied) apartment sublot gets the same name as the (unoccupied) apartment base, followed by the family number.  So, you can easily find apartment sublots in SimPE by sorting the Lot Descriptions by name and scanning down for nearly-identical names.  Once you find one, the plugin view will tell you whether the lot is an apartment base, an apartment sublot, or some other type of lot.

However, I'm not sure that it's a good idea to just delete an apartment sublot, since the apartment base contains information about each of the (occupied) apartment sublots.  There's a possibility that EA's code isn't checking for non-existent sublots.  It's clear that they aren't checking for non-existent families in apartment sublots... this is why it shows a family with no name.

To fix this properly, you should delete the apartment sublots and also clear the array of sublots from the apartment base.  Anything else risks corruption.

The easiest way to clear and delete the apartment sublots might be to move the families out of the apartments in-game before starting the "clean and empty" process.

Did you save and exit after creating townies?  Did you wait until the game said it was done making townies?  It takes a bit of time for them to all generate and the game will continue marching along in the meantime (this is why you use the Synch Timer to reset the lot time and prevent unwanted paperboy spam from happening)

You would just make new townies. The old ones would still be in the neighborhood. No getting rid of them unless you kill them.

The paperboy doesn't mess things up, but there's no reason to let him spawn unless you really want a newspaper

Wow, had to find this on page 22 of a 26 page thread.  lol  Any chance of getting this linked in the first post?  Also...this is the template I need for AL, right?

That prevents AL from dumping unwanted sims in the simbin, and doesn't add precreated social townies.  Belladonna Cove is untouched.  If you want to prevent premade idiocy in your 'hood, then it will work.  If you want to use Belladonna Cove, emptied, then you need an E001 clean/fixed file.

Ah, then, it's exactly what I need.   ;)  I'm making a new custom hood and I want to avoid all the stupid premade maddness.  I used to use deleteallcharacters, but I have since learned that it corrupts hoods.

Fixed!  It was on page 23, not 22.   :P  Thanks for pointing out the need for an update.

EMMA!  Weren't you going to make a shiny new thread for this stuff?

I tried using the empty Belladonna Cove, and was having the same problem with the previously lived-in apartment buildings still thinking there were still families living in them...  So I tried emptying BDC out myself, but I'm not sure if I did it right.  Basically I let the game generate a BDC with all the characters, went in and moved everyone out of the apartment buildings (to the sims bin), then shut down, deleted all the characters in the E001 folder in My documents, then restarted the game, loaded up Belladonna Cove again, saw that everything was in fact empty (including the apartment buildings where people had been living) , then shut down again.  Deleted all characters in AL Userdata -E001 -Characters, replaced the E001 package file with the E001 from my documents, deleted the Neighborhoods folder in my documents, then booted the game back up again, and checked the newly made Belladonna Cove.  And it seems ok so far, everything is in fact empty...  But I have no idea if that's how I was supposed to do it, of if my method will eventually bork everything.  I tried to find a tutorial, but the only one I came across described how to clean and empty things, using the already cleaned up / empty templates.  Oh crap, nevermind, having just looked at the file in SimPE I'm thinking I have to edit the file as well...  Do I just delete stuff like sim description, sim DNA, etc.?  Are there instructions somewhere?  Something tells me I'm in over my head here, ha.  Alternatively, if someone who knows what they're doing wants to re-empty it after moving the families out of the apartments first, I think that'll fix the glitch. 

And speaking of which, is there a cleaned up Belladonna Cove kicking around?  With the Maxis playables, but all the extra characters deleted?