More Awesome Than You!

Something weird is going on with my game. 

I played yesterday and everything was fine.  But today when I load it up, half my neighborhoods are missing.


Strangetown and two customed neighborhoods are gone. 

Also, when I click the arrow on the Neighborhood selection screen, instead of showing more
neighborhoods, it gives me Downtown as an independant neighborhood to play. 

I've looked in My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods folder and all the neighborhoods are
there, but they aren't in my game. 

Sadly, the last babckup I did was just before I installed Family Fun last month, and after it installed with no problems, I deleted the back up. 

Upon advice from someone at the LegacyChallenge mailing list, I backed up the copies of all the neighborhoods in my Neighbohoods folder and deleted them, and then reset N001, N002, and N003.   This did restore Strangetown.

So then I copied the backed up versions back into my Neighborhoods folder, but when I restarted my game, it went back to showing Pleasantview, Veronaville, the one customed neighborhood and that strange independant Downtown. 

I'm at a loss for what to do next or if anything can be done.  It's quite apparent that something in the folders I'd backe dup is corrupted because it refuses to read them, even after the reset was successful. 

Is there anything else I should do or should I just reset again and start fresh with all-new everythings? 

Did you uninstall an EP or Pack recently? When I uninstalled OFB I lost Veronaville and Strangetown. JM called me stupid for pulling a stupid and corrupting my files by uninstalling something.

I had to uninstall EVERYTHING and reinstall everything from scratch.

No, I haven't uninstalled anything. 

I also haven't downloaded anyting new in about a month and since the last family I played was my Legacy family, I wasn't using cheats. 

I'll be honest, this has me totally baffled.   

Did you delete the groups.cache from the Sims folder before you put in your backups? I think that helps for a lot of things...

Yes, I did that, too.   :-[

I had something similar happen (can't remember why now), and I recovered by renaming my 'The Sims 2' folder in My Docs, and loading the game and letting it rebuild the default neighborhoods.  Then I copied everything back to the new directories except for the 'neighborhoodmanager.package' file (or some similar name) found directly under the Neighborhoods folder.  That seemed to to the trick, and my neighborhoods were all fine after that.

You renamed the entire "The Sims 2" folder? That doesn't mess  up your game any?     

The groups.cache applies to the thumbnails in BS (I think) and deleting it just causes BS to have longer load times.

No, that's a different file (cigen.<something>).  Groups.cache keeps track of where things are in your directories (among other things) to speed load times, and is notorious for getting corrupted.  Deleting it solves a wide variety of problems, and if it's not there, the game just rebuilds it the next time you fire it up.

The sims folder in your my documents is different than the sims folder in the program files.

The my documents sims folders are for your specific game. Renaming it just causes the game to restart from scratch. Then you can put your backups in place over the newly repaired neighborhoods.

Well, I tried this, since it's the only thing I have not tried. 

However it did not work. 

As soon as I put the contents of the re-named folder back into place and tried my game, it went back to show the same ting as last night (Pleasantview, Veronaville, one custmed neighborhood and Downtown).

I have come to the conclusion that something in the neighborhood files for Strangetown and the two customed neighborhoods I lost must be corrupted, as trying to readd them only recreates the problem. 

Try it one more time, and this time only replace the contents of your neighborhoods once at a time.  IOW, let the game rebuild the files, and then only put back the contents from your saved N001 directory (Pleasantview).  Then load the game and check it.  Do the same for N002 (Strangetown), and so on.  Since since it won't make the custom directories, once you have the base neighborhoods back and working, just create dummy custom neighborhoods and add you originals back one at a time. 

Make sure you don't overwrite the neighborhoodmanager.package file in the root Neighborhoods directory, though -- that's what usually becomes corrupted when neighborhoods disappear.

Actually, and I really hate saying this because you've been really nice and helpful, but I already tried that... about two hours ago. 

The game refuses to acknoweldge Strangetown and one of the customed neighborhoods as being there at all.  And the other one is apparently causing the thing with Downtown showing up as a neighborhood.
 

Well, then it sounds like your neighborhoods are hosed for some reason, and it may be time to write them off and start again from scratch...

Yes, I believe so, too.  Thank you for the help, though.  You were very kind to not only offer advice but stick with me like this.  Thanks for that! 

I'd just like to add my thanks to everyone for their help with this.  We were all hoping today that all was not lost, as we were all enjoying immensely the stories that ChillyzGrrl was telling.  The fact that she had almost reached the end of her Legacy just makes it hurt all the worse. 

(((ChillyzGrrl)))

 :'(
Ivy

As a last resort, SimPE has an option called Fix Neighborhood Uid's. It is specifically designed for the "vanished neighborhood" problem. However, it has a huge warning label on it. It might work, but it could just as easily make things worse (but in your case, I don't see how...). It did solve the problem for me one time, which is why I'm suggesting you try it.

The option is under Tools > Neighborhoods on the top toolbar.

Just in case you made the same mistake I did renumbering my hoods....  Did you renumber everything in your hood files?  You can't just renumber the hood folder from N001 to N004.  You have to renumber every single file in it.  If the files are a mix of numbers, something odd is bound to happen.  Here's how to renumber thoroughly just in case.

Zythe on TSR - post 1136 in the maple valley thread - http://forums.thesimsresource.com/showthread.php?p=3042279
"I found a quicker way to mass rename! Yay!

The easy way to do this is:
1) open a command window (Start - run - cmd)
2) go to the folder (cd "My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N004", enter)
3) type this command: REN N004* N00Y*
4) go to the first subfolder (cd characters, enter)
5) repeat 3
6) go to the second subfolder (cd .. , cd lots, enter)
7) repeat 3
Cool go to the third subfolder (cd .. , cd Storytelling, enter)
9) repeat 3
10) go to the last subfolder (cd .. , cd Thumbnails, enter)
11) repeat 3

With "Y" being the number of your choice "