More Awesome Than You!

After messing around with pets the other day I decided I was ready to start adding hacks back in so I deleted N001 and copied it back from programfiles/eagames....

When I started again everything seemed as usual but I noticed that the premades that came in houses were missing?  The comm lots were there but the cat lady and the family with the dog and cat were gone.

Do I have to do something different when restarting a premade hood now?  Is there any way to get them back short of uninstalling and reinstalling the ep?

Did you delete "Groups.cache" along with N001?

I usually go the copy, paste, and overwrite route than actually deleting stuff. I'm sure the premades came w/ new data and whatnot, which may have been deleted when you deleted the entire N001 file. Just my guess.

Well, of course they're gone. They get added to an existing neighbourhood, just as if you installed a downloaded lot with sims in it. If you had other neighbourhoods at the time you installed pets, I'd expect the families to have been added to those too. As such, if you're careful, you could package those up and save them as an archive for use on new neighbourhoods. Just make certain that the files are clean and only have internal relationships etc.

It's possible that Maxis included a master set in the Prog/Pets directory, but I'd doubt it. I really can't see them meddling with the Prog/Original files however, since it would cause big trouble if you uninstalled.

Am I wrong on any of this? I don't have Pets yet, but it sounds right to me.

Related question, if I take out my custom hoods and only leave in the default hoods (N001, 2, 3) then install pets, the premade families will not show up in my custom hoods b/c they were not in the Neighborhood folder when I installed?

As far as I recall no binned families ever show up in a custom hood, they only show up in premade hoods including bluewater, downtown and the universities.

There is a way to get those characters back and placed in your hoods but its a little bit time consuming, however if you really need an explanation I would be happy to spell it later on this evening when I get the game and folders all back in front of me. It basically involves regenerating the base hoods by taking out the entire hood folder, finding the binned characters and copying those over to your hood folder that you took out. But again you need to make sure that those families dont have any memories or relational ties, you could test this by generating the hoods, placing the families and looking at their memories (and then doing the process again to get clean characters) or you could check them out in simpe without placing them at all.

Not true. My Pets premade families and house + families appeared in my Stillwater neighborhood.

seriously? I have never encountered that before. Was this a hood that was in prior to installation and it added the premades to it, or is this a new hood you created after installation and it added the premades to it?

Hmm, it was a hood I made before the install. That must be it.

okay, so when you installed pets, you didn't remove your custom hood you just left in in place?
Did you have the default hoods there also (N1, 2, 3)?

*nods* I had recently reinstalled the entire game, I had a massive total of 0 play hours in. I had just built a house. So, I wasn't too worried about anything getting fubared.

Still another question, is it ok to delete the premade pet sims directly from the bin? If I understood correctly doing this is normally bad, but since I have never played them or any lots they visited they shouldn't have any memories or such.

Well, I am still confused  ??? because I have done this method since base game - deleting N001 and copying it over from the program files when I wanted to start from scratch.  All the Sims in the bin are always again in the bin and I have never had anyone disappear (the Burbs, the Oldies and then the Larsons and Gieke with Bluewater).  

I am assuming that the problem is that these are not just sims in the sim bin but "occupied lots" in the housing bin.  I would also guess that if I created a Stangetown or Veronaville that those occupied lots would still be available (?) since I didn't delete those hoods  (or for that matter even open them yet).  I really have no idea though since the info is apparently not in the hood file that I copied back from program files.

It bugs me a bit since I guess I will just lose those sims everytime I start a premade hood over which is fairly frequently.  I just thought that there may be some easy way to copy those 2 occupied houses back into my hood housing bin without causing problems since they will have never been placed before and so have no memories.  Maybe it is just as simple as packaging their lots immediately after I place them in a hood but that worries me because I have never messed with packaging occupied lots - particularly when they will be used in multiple pre-made hoods.

The immediate fix was to just uninstall/reinstall Pets and they were back but I don't want to do that everytime I start one hood over again.

They arent in houses, at least they werent in my game, they are in the family bin. So I have no clue what you are talking about now...

Well, there are those occupied lots in the Lots Bin for Pets. The crazy cat lady house and the other one with the space theme family.

there are families in the bin (2 : one of 2 dogs and one of a sim and a dog) AND families in houses (in the houses bin) (2 I think: the cat lady (a sim, 2 cats and a kitten) and a family (mom, dad and kid with a cat and a dog)).
The familes in the houses don't have memories outside the house.
Pioupiou

Yep, I don't have any problems with the sims in the bin (the 2 dogs and the guy with the dog) - they came back when I copied over N001.  The occupied houses did not.

I also just checked Strangetown and those houses weren't available anymore either.  I guess after I placed them in PV they are gone and if I delete and restart the hood I place them in they don't come back just by copying the N001 file back.

Trying copying the teleport files, aren't those the ones that contain the houses?

I'll try that, thanks :)  I have no idea where anything is except downloads and the N00# files.  They are the only ones I have had the courage to mess with  :P

It just depends on how EA decided to package those occupied houses. Your teleport file from a vanilla install should be empty, it where all those downloaded houses go. *frowns* But I don't. I'm not awesome. =p

found : to have the game regenerated the premade familes in house bin : delete or remove the lot catalog folder from your my documents/ea games/the sims2 and load the game. The folder will regenerate with the inoccupied houses and the occupied ones complete with their familes.
Pioupiou

Whoo! Hurray for Pioupiou!  :D

can you then set those to read only so they will always be there? Like we used to do before with unoccupied houses? I dont know why you would want to...but I am just asking.

That is weird I didnt notice any occupied houses and I did check all the houses out, either that or it was late and I was tired - more likely the case is mini-me was ragging for me to get to CAS already so I wasnt paying close attention and missed that detail.

Ok, I left my custom hoods in while I installed (3 of them) and they all had the premade families in the bins. They're also in the default hoods to.   :)

You are my hero Pioupiou!!  Thanks :)

The premade 2-dog and sim-dog families that come in the sim bin are now always installed into ANY hoods by default whether you had the neighborhoods before you install the pets or you make a new custom hood / regenerate the old hoods after installing. That kinda sucks. :P

Happy to be the one to help, for once... It doesn't happen to me often !
Pioupiou

Good work - it's a very useful thing to know, and I can see it applying to other things too.

Hmmm. I need to investigate further.

I did the same thing.  Regular unoccupied houses will remain in the bin even when you place them in a hood, like they've done since NL.  But it seems occupied one will disappear from the bin when placed.  I placed those two in a test hood after I insatalled pets and didn't realize what had happened untill I went to another hood and couldn't find them.

Notovny was nice enough to package them up and upload them to the Exchange when I whined about it in #grah.

Family #1:  Mom, Dad, kid, dog, cat. (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=442511)

Family #2:  Lady and three cats. (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=442508)

Backtrack...

Maxis has placed two occupied lots in the lotcatalog?

Does this mean that these families will be added to all neighbourhoods? Or do I need to place the lots first before this happens?

Oh and if you mark the files in the lot catalog folder read-only, the occupied house will stay in the bin after you place it.
Pioupiou

I suppose you can always move the files out of "...TSData\Res\UserData\LotCatalog" if you don't want them.