More Awesome Than You!

Okay, not sure if this should go into Oops or not, as I'm not sure just how badly I've borked things.

A long while back I had six neighborhoods on the hood chooser list. 1-3 were the three Maxis hoods (Veronaville, Pleasantview, Strangehood), N004 & N005 were my created hoods and N006 was wife's, as we were and are sharing the computer that's capable of running Sims. Since I rarely/never played in the Maxis hoods, I deleted them via hood chooser. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have of course checked here FIRST before doing any such thing.
When I finished (grew tired of) N's 004, 005, and short-lived "Created For Visitors to Use" hoods 001 and 002, I set about making a completely new neighborhood following carefully the instructions for doing a proper clean-out here. This hood.. is N003. Currently, the only neighborhood folders in my game are Tutorial, N003 (properly cleaned legacy hood) and N006 (wife's hood).
Both hoods have been played in for a while now and neither is showing any errors or tendency to go splodey. I figured I was fine. Then today I realized if I'm going to be doing a complete reinstall (something I'd been considering) and saved backups of N003 and N006, I'd have two folders labeled N003. I'd like to bring back the Maxis Three and I know Seasons comes with a whole new neighborhood (oh, joy..) but I'm at a loss as to how to repair this numbering system.
Do I do my best to clone N003 to a new Neighborhood slot? Where would I go about finding the work I'd need to do for that (many sims, many custom houses, relationships & Know Sim __'s, etc)
Do I go through and rename everything in the N003 folder with a different N00#? (Could have sworn I saw somewhere that's a VBT)

Any idea would be a great help. Meanwhile, I'm refusing to reinstall or add Seasons when it's out.

SimPE allegedly can fix this, although I have not attempted it.

Hmm.. wonder how. I had no idea it was even possible for it to do such a thing.

Basically, that's your answer there.  I've known several people do it (though not myself) and AFAIK, it's not a VBT and can't see why it would be.  Though I'd stand to be corrected on that as I haven't direct experience of it.  Madame Mim, who posts here on and off, has done it several times to my knowledge.  The problem is getting EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of the N003 changed to N*** - otherwise it won't work.  I also know people who've used a file-renamer programme for this (sorry can't think of the name) - a freebie off the web anyway that allows you to rename all files in a folder to what you want, including renaming part of a name. 

I was wondering what number MaxisEA were going to allocate to the new Seasons hood.  Although I feel fairly capable of renaming my files using the file renamer that is linked to somewhere here on MATY, I'm sure it will throw up no end of problems for the BBS-ers.  That made me think they may make it N050 or some other pretty high number to ensure most people have no problems on installing the EP.  Either that or maybe the game will be able to automatically alllocate the new neighbourhood to the lowest available number.

Well, from the screen shots I've seen it seems to turn up before Pleasantview - maybe N000?

When you open up a 'hood in SimPE, there's a resource "IDNO" that seems to contain the neighborhood number. I can't tell if you need to change that number or not, and neither can anyone I've talked to.

Well, you know the saying. If at first, you don't succeed, destroy all evidence you tried.

I use Ant Renamer (http://www.antp.be/software/renamer). The "string replacement" function is the one you want, just make sure you rename the folder before starting. I have done this several times and not ever had any issues. I have never involved SimPE in the process and never needed to create a placeholder 'hood.
I know that others also use it to rename screenshots so they show up for the right lot but have not done this myself as I don't take enough pictures for this to be needed.

Ant Renamer is wonderfully easy to use. I've been using it to rename snapshots and thumbnails so they all appear in a specific household's album and are easier to load up for stories. It's super easy.

I used a very simple DOS command from the command prompt. I found the instructions around here somewhere, I think, some months ago when I was reorganizing my Neighborhood folders from all over my computer. You could probably do a search for it both here and on Google. It is just the name change command. I don't remember exactly how it goes just now, but if I find the thread that walked me through the process, I'll post it here for you.

ren N001*.* N002*.* ?
That's what I use mostly. As long as you remember to do it for the main folder and all subfolders (cmd.exe's ren does not take the /s switch) it will work fine.

I did this just tonight - I renumbered my N004 hood to N003 (I deleted the Maxis hoods a gazillion years ago) because ... oh well, never mind why.  Anyway, it works - all you have to do is renumber.  No fiddling with SimPE and I used a renamer programme I Googled for.  it took me all of 3 minutes including the time to download and install the renamer programme.  In fact, it took me longer to load up the blasted game and get into the neighbourhood.

That's it! Thanks, Jordi. You saved me from having to dig for it.

This was posted by Zythe on TSR a long time ago. There was a post with a pic of the process but the link goes nowhere now. :-(

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

or use

http://www.123renamer.com/download.htm

Oscar's Renamer is another programme you can use for batch renamings. It can be found here:

http://www.mediachance.com/free/renamer.htm (http://www.mediachance.com/free/renamer.htm)

I've done it plenty of times - no problems at all - though if I'm adding a new higher numbered hood, I have to create a place holder first for that.  No need for downloading though - these are the instructions I follow. Looks like I got them from Zythe on TSR -

" 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
"

I mess about with photo numbers and rearrange my albums all the time with sims2blog and/or wordpad.  I'm going to start messing with album numbers in SimPE sometime as well.  I see no reason why the brown's album name should not be brown000 rather than some collection of random junk.  I learned a lot from this thread and have got better ar it all - ask if you've got questions http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2104.0