More Awesome Than You!

Who'd like a whole new neighbourhood to play with?  Meadow Lawns took a long time to build, so I hope there's something in there for everyone.  There are over 20 businesses and a similar number of families each with a story album plus some small community lots.  I think it's going to be fun to add Seasons to this hood - especially for the elders.  Let me know how you get on :)

I set out to make another Bluewater alternative for OFB and kept adding to the story until it got far too big to be a an add-on.    Check out the neigbourhood story http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=170707  The old part of Meadow Lawns is a sleepy village with a lot of elders, but the advent of an army base fuelled a property boom and attracted some younger newcomers and a would-be entrepreneur and his family who have created a lot of local employment.

The hood can be downloaded here www.moreawesomethanyou.com/cwykes/  just follow the link to Meadow Lawns.
There are pics on the webpage and I'm planning on adding more.  Let me know what else you'd like to see. 
The download is 100MB in RAR, so it's too big if you're on dial up!  OFB is required and you also need either Nightlife or the mustang and driveway download.  I used Numenor's mustang and I also used a lot of the maxis downloads like football pennants, christmas decorations, race car stuff etc.  Not having those isn't a biggie - items will just disappear from lots.

Cwykes, this is awesome ;D I am going to d/l when I have more time and play! Yayness!

Cwykes, you are amazing!   :o  I had lots of fun with the aliens in Sedona, and with your Green, Foster and army families (all in my apocalypse neighborhood).  I'm in the middle of playing with the Riverblossom pre-mades, but it's awfully tempting to just add another neighborhood.  Especially with new businesses and houses, which I never make for myself.

I have to confess, you'll find the greens, the army and the foster home in Meadow Lawns as well vcline.  Those squaddies get all over the place in Meadow Lawns.
Thank you both for your kind comments  :-[

Love the pre made hoods are u doing any more I love them.

Glad you like it.  :D  This one took me so long, I'm going to think hard before I start another one.  I have a couple of ideas though.  I'd like to make another add-on as a Bluewater alternative - either on green or concrete terrain.  I'd also like to make some Belgian looking houses, but that's a lot of building!  For now I'm  playing the seasons which I've held off installing until I finished Meadow Lawns.

TSR has a whole thread about pre-made hoods.  You've probably seen Beacon Falls, but you might want to keep an eye on it.  Their site is down so I can't link, but it's a whole section of the forum called Neighbourhood Stories.

Oh cool!  I wanted to message you about this (I can't, since I'm banned from TSR >:( ) for the links that had been removed.  I helped out when they made Morewood over there but no longer play it.  I've been thinking of making my own alternative to Bluewater but just thinking about it drove me insane - it looks really awesome!!  Can't wait to try it out :)

Hi Charlotte - guess you found it then despite TSR not letting me link to it directly. ???  If you have a moment it would be nice if you dropped back here and let me know how you like it.  :)  Suggestions welcome on what to do differently next time.

About making another OFB sub-hood - we need to check the method still works now as we are several EPs and several versions of SimPE further on.  I'm planning on doing that sometime, but I just want to play seasons for a bit before I start creating again.

I installed Meadow Lawns last night and visited a couple of families.  I love it!  You really put a lot of work into this.  And I like the back stories on the families.  My only problem is that I can't find the army base.  I assume it's at the edge where it's hard to get at.  I used to have the mod that let you see the whole map at once, but I seem to have lost it.

Yes - that problem came up for someone at TSR.  I didn't mean to make the base that secret though it would have been sneaky.   ;D
I use Gunmods camera mod http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=97642&highlight=gunmod
The other simmer got into one of the camp houses and used the clickable neighbours option to get to the base.

Fantastic work cwykes :)

It is the perfect hood for seasons too, all those vacant community lots are great for fishing and gardening businesses.  Great back story too!

Yes, there's certainly a lot of opportunities for fishing in the families.  The Green boys are well on their way to gold.

I see, I was wondering why I couldn't find the old people - I had a feeling I might need a camera mod because I've hidden families in the same neighborhood before.  *goes back to game* :D

EDIT: Ok, sorry, I'm a complete doofus.  I thought Meadow Lawns was the business district - I was completely confused and NO WONDER why I couldn't find the "old people" in Sedona ::)  This works out better though :)

Meadow Lawns was going to be another sub-hood, but it got way to big, so I left it as a neighbourhood.  That's probably where the confustion came from.  Mind you Sedona does have a few elderly alien tourists as townies.  They have time to travel the universe after all and they are dressed in all sorts of holiday gear they picked up along the way.   :D

I was playing that Staines family (woman with 3 kids and her brothers) and she started autonomously flirting with one of her brothers (I can't remember which one out of the two dark haired guys) and that's when I realized that she doesn't recognize them as family yet they are shown as siblings in the family tree ???

And also, you did a great job with the 'hood!  Seriously!  Did you have any help?  It's so well done and really professional with the neighborhood story and personal info - I love reading those things!  I'm a little bit scared of going in and really playing; it's so well done I feel like I'm going to ruin all your hard work (even though I have a back up) ;D

I have to confess that I couldn't play some of the poorer families, like the Schmits (?), without Inge's $1000 mortgage bush.  When there are babies/toddlers that need a nanny and only one adult and maybe a teen with a job, there's just not enough money coming in early on for them to exist.  Plus I usually have them quit their minimum wage jobs at one of Jack's many businesses and get a better paying job.  Once the teens have progressed and acquired some skills, I'm going to add a university, probably using the Alpine dorms, e.g. http://www.pc-sims.com/smb/showthread.php?t=8508 (http://www.pc-sims.com/smb/showthread.php?t=8508), from PC-Sims.  This site also has lots of army stuff at http://www.pc-sims.com/smb/forumdisplay.php?f=97&page=2&order=desc (http://www.pc-sims.com/smb/forumdisplay.php?f=97&page=2&order=desc).

I had to use one of Inge's bushes for the Green family:

At first I started playing that old lady with the glasses that lives in the army base (she ended up marrying Elijah Caretaker so I could "knock two birds off with one stone" - he's dead now).  I thought it would be a good idea to move that pregnant lady (Green) in with her so she'd have a comfortable pregnancy, but I went to play her house for a bit, checked out the family tree and noticed that she had another 6 kids in another house.  I went to investigate, found her kids living by themselves with only $23 while she was somewhere else pregnant and her useless husband was still in the army.

That family really put the Broke family to shame: it was a waste of time trying to sell off furniture because the price had already depreciated.  The aging had been switched off on that lot as well, but things got easier when Cheryl became an adult.  Their grandmother moved in and moved the next two eldest children out with her while the youngest kids stayed with Cheryl - that toddler Jonny is a teen now, and Cheryl has been getting friendly with Cash, the guy from the army.  The kids who moved in with the grandmother are adults now and helping their grandmother pay off the mortgage (I have no20k handout and used Inge's 10k shrub to bring the price of the house down).

I still have to go back and get the mother to have the baby - that's one woman that's going to have it stitched up after the baby is born.

I was also playing the Schmidt family (is that the one with the single father and all those kids?) - I'm a bit burnt out from playing poor families with lots of kids ;D

Cwykes, just wanted to tell you that this is a gorgeous project you have here. Such a different idea, having the three islands and a strong elder contingent. I really shouldn't add another 'hood to my play schedule (my poor alphabet family's sitting in limbo) but I can't help it! Gimme!

Is that what was wrong with them? Thanks. I never use that cheat and so didn't even think of it.

I am loving having a new Neighbourhood to play - it's even side-tracked me from the development of my own next Neighbourhood - but there's something else about the Green family that I need help with. Belinda's face. How do I get that muck off of her? I've tried using a mirror, and I even took her out for a makeover (which she seemed to enjoy) but I can't get her face back to 'normal'. I'm assuming a failled make-over did that to her, but I've never bothered with makeovers before and don't know how to fix them.

You can get rid of the face crap with a mirror: pick anything in 'full-face makeup' and then remove it. Did that make sense? You can't remove it but you can replace it, then remove the replacement.

It's nice to have a new custom hood with a storyline so different from what I usually play. Thank you for putting so much effort into this!

Thankyou, yes, I understood and it worked.

Yeah, I pop over there every once in awhile. I've gotten so used to the 2-day rotation in Monopoly that playing one sim/family straight in Urban Paradise seems strange! I started with the Green gramma first. She sold all her furniture out on the lawn  and then I moved on. Checked on the Green kids and knew that there was no way they were surviving as it was. The house just isn't built for all those kids! So Gramma moved in straight away, and her money let me rebuild the house and put a little better furniture in it. Not that much, so they still aren't living in luxury. The three eldest kids share a bedroom, as do the three youngest, and Gramma has a tiny room off to the side. The living room is super small, but what can you do?

I really like that most every lot in the "poorer" section of the 'hood has a pond out back. The Green kids spend a lot of time fishing, and hopefully will start selling fish from the front yard since Cheryl doesn't pull in enough to cover the bills and Gramma's busy taking care of the littler ones. I'm quite upset with Belinda for prioritizing making more babies and abandoning the ones she has, so I suspect she'll be finding herself in a ladderless pool as soon as she pops out the one she has at the moment.

One question though: what's with the energizers? The Green kids had four on their lot.

Those ponds were a life saver!
When I went to play that Green family, Cheryl wanted to go steady or fall in love so I got her with that spiky haired rich guy to boost her aspiration so for the rest of the night it was cleaning up the house, teaching the toddler his skills - energizer - then fishing.  I only realized that aging had been switched after the third day because when I first sorted out the house I prepared myself for how hard the house was going to play when those babies became toddlers.  I had to move some of the kids out because there was just no more room for beds - pre seasons, I would've just let them sleep under the stars :D

Another hard house to play is the Liveseys (if you keep them all in the same house) - talk about fight for the toilet.  It got easier when the parents died - they became instantly rich!

I really shouldn't be taking on another 'hood as well - my custom hood, Riverblossom and Pleasantview are still there and I didn't really intend on liking this hood so much.  That baby that Belinda was pregnant with is now married to Zoe Chandler from the orphanage.  It's amusing because his siblings, which were babies in the other household are still kids :o  Their father can stay in the army forever - no more woohoo for him!  And Belinda is the manager at Eve Jackmans outdoor salon.  And Cheryl got married to the single father of those other kids - the Schmidt family???  His eldest daughter Helge(??) is in a unwed relationship and living with that Goosem guy and is pregnant.  One of those kids is butt ugly.  The toddlers from the Staines family got shipped to the Foster Household.  One interesting tidbit there - I put in an elevator because the stairs weren't working for them and they ended up breaking, I got Helen to fix it and she died from electrocution!!  I don't normally have accidental deaths!  Now that Monty granddaughter is in there looking after the toddlers (now kids).  I've got it set up so that any of the Richer family's in the hood, or the Army base can 'donate' money to the orphanage.

Sorry, I've babbled on too much :P

Oh Wow!  I love hearing what you guys are doing with Meadow Lawns. :)  Sorry about aging being turned off on the Green lot - I've no idea how that happened.  :-[  I can't see how to fix it in SimPE, but it's on my to do list.  I looked at the relationships in the Staines household - they are all family according to SimPe, but not siblings, so they shouldn't be getting flirt wants.  I'll have to check it out in game I think.

The Green's have a long sad history. It was too big to put in the neighbourhood, but it's on my simpage. Unless you've already dunked her in a ladderless pool, here's chapter 1 which might make you a bit more sympathetic to her  http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=63465&asset_type=story&user_id=1159607 
Alternatively, if you have the SShack in your game, you can send Cheryl to work and all the kids end up in the adoption pool.
Belinda loves her husband and kids - she just went to visit Phil for the weekend, got pregnant and couldn't get home again.  You could imagine she had health problems if you like.  Same with Phil, he's not at home because the army needed him to run the base.  He was a good dad when he was there and he left Belinda the energisers to help her cope with the kids while he was away.

So what's happening to the Jackman business empire if all their employees have got proper jobs?

I decided not to off her. She's had another set of twins, who I'll be moving in with the rest of the family as soon as the third youngest leaves the nursery. Then I'm planning on putting Belinda in with the army base, jealousy off and autonomy to five. Popping out random soldier's kids should be more punishment.

I had to start my Meadow Lawns again because I lost the Jackman family (Francois and Phillip) somewhere - they were on there way to one of the community lot businesses (I can't remember which one it was but I think it use to belong to George Jackman) and it kept crashing everytime I tried again.  I couldn't find them at there house and when I used any teleport method, they weren't available anywhere - the had just disappeared and even Susans memories of them were blank.

I'm also not going to kill of Belinda even though I think she's completely irresponsible.  I might just punish her a bit - Phil is pretty goodlooking and goodlooking genes shouldn't be restricted to one woman :P  Belinda is working at the hair salon again and this time I might get her to save enough money to buy it for the family - she's going to stay alone with the baby she's having just to make the game a bit harder for me.  Most of the elderly people are dead; all of them except for that Fuller lady, Mr Goosem and the romance brother from the Livesly's.  I made Adam an adult again and he has two top businesses and got married to one of my CAS sims - she's now pregnant.  Fred ended up starving to death. And the second youngest brother (the family sim) got married to Isabella Monty a day before he aged and that poor lady (the chubby Staines girl) is pregnant with his lovechild. 

The Jackmans:  Well the oldest Jackman's died after a few days of playing and George got what was left of the businesses (she had sold a few to Phillipe Dumont who is living in the apartments with his brother Gerard, the old place his parents and Elijah were living).  Over at Georges house, George got caught cheating with Ruby (totally missed that) and then he got caught cheating again by Ruby when he tried to hit on Emily.  Emily had affairs with Jackbot, Jan Goosem and that romance Livesly man.  Eve got her 20 woohoos but I had run out of men in the hood and the 20th woohoo she got was that lady with the glasses that lives in the army base.  And George got to woohoo that blonde lady he liked.

Oh I forgot to say that when Philip became an adult, I let him woohoo his grand aunty Eve :-\  And Susan is pregnant to one of my CAS sims :)

And curse you cwykes - I'm totally hooked on this 'hood :P

 ;D :D  you made my morning!  thanks for the update... 

did you let young Philip acquire any skills or is he still completely useless?

Oh Philip - he doesn't have any skills, but he does have most of his gold badges.  He owns all of the family businesses now because his father is getting old, but I think the family only have 5 businesses left - the rest got sold back to the community and then the Livesly's and Dumonts bought them.  I had to move them out of their house because during the autumn, all Jackbot was doing was raking up leaves and the large lot lagged my computer.

I was actually going to continue on your story about the Greens that you have on the exchange - Cheryl is pregnant to Philip at the moment just to frustrate her grandmother even more because they're still broke as anything.  I just have to figure out what's going to happen to their father :)

Thanks for the update - that lot was lagging even before leaves started falling off the trees.  I'm glad Philip moved out!  Selling off the businesses made a lot of sense as he really couldn't manage all of them - he must be mega-rich by now. 

If you put up Cheryl's story, do let me have a link and I'll pass it on to the people who keep asking me to write more about the Greens.

Cwykes, did you make the terrain that you're using? If so, are you willing to share it? If not, where did you get it? It looks like the perfect size and I like the different islands.

I didn't make the terrain.  It came from MTS2 so you can download it and use it with no problem.  Loverat's Dinkydowntown is here http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=118669  I'll update the credits now I've worked out where it came from and drop loverat a mail to say I used it.  Thanks for prompting me to do it.

Thanks! The 'hood looks awesome, too. I may download in the future when I don't have so many of my own projects going on. BTW, is there a tutorial explaining how to do this?

:) I've got the first part of the story up now - it's not as good as your story, lol, I'm a lame storyteller.  I just have to figure out how to link back to your stories - new to the BBS here :D  Cwykes, I also left a message in you GB :)  http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=175407

Reggiko - It's not an add-on suburb, but a normal 'hood, so I just made a neighourhood normally.  I did take great care not to mess it up by deleting sims or doing other stupid things and cleaned up carefully in SimPE.  I imported previously made lots like the Willow Walk houses, which reduced the amount of building, but the businesses are all new and took time.  I made my own townies - there's a tutorial on that, but basically you use Inge's shrub from Tasters' Choice.  I did some editing in SimPE as well.

Charlotte - I absolutely love your story  :D- thanks so much for writing it!  I'm glad you took the Greens in a different direction - that's what I was hoping people would do when I first put them up for download.  You managed to pile disaster on disaster wonderfully well!  I laughed when I read that the Staines kids ended up in care too! 

I thought your own sims were very pretty - I don't recognise the clothes and hair.  Is it CC or just from an EP I don't have?  Did the Greens get a bit of facial surgery or is it just that the hair is different?

I enjoyed that Charlotte - things just went from bad to worse  - just like a soap opera - yet the sims managed to carry on their loopy lives just like normal.  :D

Thanks, CW. That's how I understood it, but I wanted to make sure that if I ever took on a project of this magnitude that I wouldn't 'splode peoples games.

That's the advantage of a 'hood over an add-on subhood like Sedona.  A 'hood is stand alone, so any damage is restricted to that 'hood.  You can't wreck their Pleasantview!  An add-on sub=hood is another matter - badly done, that could cause trouble in any 'hood it's added to.  Jordi was kind enough to check that over for me and I crawled all over it mutliple times in SimPE.  Keeping the number of sims right down helped!

Is there a tutorial for add-on hood creation around anywhere? After I get a few of my replaceable N001's done I'd like to complete the theme through the expansion packs. It would, of course, be so much easier if I knew where other people had found problems before me.

edit: Oh, I should add that I am about to trawl my way through Marvin Kosh's thread on default Neighbourhood creation and also re-read SaraMK's merging the Neighbourhoods. I'm just hoping that you also have something concise on the process you used.

TIA

Marvin's thread is the only one about making sub-hoods.  It's basically easy to do.  The hard part is making the files really clean, so you don't export junk.  The sad part is that it doesn't work with Seasons.  We can talk about it on that thread if you have questions.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3996.0.html

Yes, some of it's cc and the default skintones make a huge difference to my sims appearance ;)

Thanks for reading the stories *redface* I have two more up now but I have to play some other household because they are being neglected :D
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=176249&asset_type=story&user_id=2513480
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=176257&asset_type=story&user_id=2513480

I love them both - I laughed out loud at several key points and in jokes - no spoilers though.  Please keep 'em coming!

This hood sounds like so much fun.   I would love to get it and Sedona too but they are just too big for my dialup.   I did download your Green family houses and also the Jubilee Gardens.  Any chance you will be making more of these available?

Hi Hedgekat, I'm sorry it's too big for you  :-[  Meadow Lawns certainly ended up far bigger than I planned! 

Base game versions of some of the lots are available on TSR and the exchange.  TSR has unoccupied houses and community lots here http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/cmid_427711/sims2/lots/  The exchange has two alien families who went into Sedona and 1 elderly sim who ended up in Meadow Lawns.
http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/uploads.php?user_id=1159607&nstart=1&asset_type=lot

If you haven't already seen them, I think you might like the TSR challenges.  Each one is a small download, but you have a back story and targets for each family.  I've stayed up into the small hours trying to meet that last target for several families.  You can download the TSR wizard that keeps track of where you are on the challenges, but you don't have to do that to have fun with the families.

I'm away from home a lot at the moment and trying to organise a concert, so the only project I'm working on is a new default downtown with Lechapeau.  I've been building on tiny lots for a city feel 1x1, 2x1, 1x2 and 1x3.   I keep meaning to put up businesses for download, but I've never got round to it and anyway, I'm never happy with them!

I know that I'm very late to the party.  I just installed this neighborhood and it's wonderful, but I've run into a couple of problems.

The main problem is that Philip's Dream House crashes whenever I try to enter the lot.  I'm running University, Nightlife, and Open for Business with no CC.

The other issue is the family tree for the Monty family at Monty Retreat.  The middle generation is missing and when I click on any of the pictures, it's replaced by one of the two existing family members.

Thank you for posting.  I'm glad you like Meadow Lawns.  It's really nice to find someone downloading it several years on.  I can't play it myself because it's sort of finished as it is and I can't decide how to move the characters on...

I'm sorry about the family tree.  I didn't notice it was broken.  It might be fixable with a few hours in SimPE, but I'd rather not tackle it to be honest.  Someone reported a similar problem on the army base.  my bad...

Philip's dream house is crashing because it has a driveway and OFB can't handle driveways.  They cause crashes rather than just disappearing like other NL buy/build items; it's one of the known issues.  You'll need to get the driveway pack and Ford Mustang from the exchange.  The mustang is on the first page and the driveway on the second.  There are actually more of the old freebie maxoid deco things in the 'hood like old Christmas decorations in the bar, but they'll just disappear if you don't have them in.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/search.php?asset_type=object&pid=Exchange_objects


............................buried in the masses of print on the website ..........................
Known issues
1 Aging was turned off on the lot where Cheryl Green lives. Fixed from v.5
2 The army base is right on the edge of the map. If you can't see it, adjust your neighbourhood camera settings or download Dewshine's replacement file (here). You can also get to the base using clickable neighbours. Visit one of the camp houses and you should be able to see it and click.
3 I've used the Maxis driveway and Ford Mustang downloads in a few houses. If you don't have Nightlife or the download, the cars and drives should disappear without causing a problem provided you have Pets or above. If OFB is your highest EP and you don't have Nightlife, I suggest you get the download to avoid potential crashes.
4 Flirt wants have been reported within the Staines family. I don't understand that because they are set as "family" though the relationship is "not defined". I intended them to be half-siblings at best from parents with a trail of broken marriages; they aren't genetically similar.

I saw that.  My impression was that I could use either NL and OFB, or OFB and the downloads.  The lot crashes with either option.  It also crashes if I use all EPs and SPs.  I'm re-downloading the driveway and cars now, just in case I have an old version.

Update: It wasn't the driveway or car, it was the Cat-A-Strophic Luminous Lawn Ornament by MaxoidMonkey.  Everything's fine now.  Thanks for your help.

Thanks for explaining - another thing to add to the "known errors".  Glad it's sorted & hope you think Philip's dream house is a suitable bachelor pad for a layabout romance/party sim.  It was very hard getting Philip to adulthood (more or less) with no skill points!

I've been doing a survey of neighborhoods which can be downloaded and this is definitely one of the nicest ones that I've seen.

Thanks  :-[

I've got Matyville, which I've never loaded with all the CC involved, plus these:

Seagull Island - http://www.sparkyssimsations.com/terrain_menu.html
Morewood - http://welcometomorewood.blogspot.com/
Beacon Falls - http://www.lustre-point.com/welcome.html
Maple Valley - ??

Seagull Island is just beautiful btw.
If you find more, I'd love to hear.  I put these links plus Sedona and Meadow lawns on the sims2wiki, feel free to update. 
http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Content_List_Talk:Main_Page

My list is in my latest journal entry at MTS (13th Jan 2011).  As you can see, I haven't even installed a lot of them yet.
http://www.modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showjournal&j=718

There's a download link for Maple Valley, but the website with the documentation seems to be gone now.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5LEC9Q8D

I still haven't decided which one to try to play next, but I'm having fun looking at them all while I try to decide.

I am unclear how you managed such a thing short of either cheating to skip your way through, or intentionally torturing him. That you have managed such a torture without leaving any scars, like when you lock a sim in a doorless room to pee on itself, is pretty disturbing. I didn't even manage to torture the Kewians that much.

I did play the household propertly and didn't cheat, as far as I remember anyway.  I just ignored all skilling opportunities.  Philip was perfectly happy with romance/popularity and pleasure sim kind of activities all through school.  He didn't need to work of course being a spoiled rich kid.  It was an amusing challenge.

Mootilda's blog has lots of things I've never seen, so I'm going back to read it more slowly.  The catastrophic lawn ornanment is a problem I didn't know about.  Several lots would crash without the driveway though and there is a used car lot, so the mustang is also needed.

Would you know which lots these are?  Even one lot name would help, since I haven't been able to get any other lot to crash, even when running just Open for Business.  I'm trying to make sure that I know the minimum EP and CC requirements for each neighborhood.


I suppose that's why they call it catastrophic; it will crash your game unless you have it installed.

I've been guilting over the problems you found and what I can do about them.

Re crashing lots -  I'm actually pretty pleased you can't get any of the lots to crash!  I was thinking them through in my head last night as I went to sleep and Philip's is the only house I remember with a driveway.  I'd have to do what you're doing and go back to every lot to be sure of my facts.  As to community lots, I can see from the pics on the website that there are ford mustangs on the car showroom and probably a driveway too.  I can also see a catastrophic cat on the flea market.   I'm now wondering if the crash problem with Philip's lot was always the cat and not the driveway.  hmmmm

Re the Monty's.  I think all the Monty ancestors are stubs, so they aren't going to be running around as ghosts spreading gossip if that helps.  I think also that they were the first, or among the first families I placed.  I tried very hard to keep the 'hood clean.  Isabella Monty is  one I remember doing a lot of work on and I did that in another 'hood before putting her in Meadow Lawns.  Most families were kept clean from the start.  I put for more effort into the backstory of the living sims than I did with ancestors.  For me, the albums are the back story, not the family tree.  Hope you like those.

Staines family - somebody reported that they were getting flirt wants in that family.  I couldn't see anything wrong with the family relationships, but it was a worry.  It was intended as a dysfunctional family anyway so a bit of incest would be in keeping.  Let me know if you see anything odd with them.  They were pretty much the first family I ever made (in CAS).

Camera hack required - it's noted on the website, but you can't get to the edges of the 'hood if you don't have a camera hack.  The secret army base becomes a lot more secret without one!  I give a link to Dewshine's update of Gunmod's hack, http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?p=1647071#post1647071but I had trouble with it in an all EP game and took it out.  Do you have an expert recommendation.  http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?p=1647071#post1647071 (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?p=1647071#post1647071)

Extras - I built seven cottages using Seasons which are much nicer than some of my base game efforts plus roller rink & skating rink lots.  If I were playing the hood myself, I'd replace some of the cottages with these and add the community lots.  All the Willow lots are free on TSR http://www.thesimsresource.com/members/cwykes/downloads/details/category/sims2-sets-lots/title/willow-lane/id/689231/ (http://www.thesimsresource.com/members/cwykes/downloads/details/category/sims2-sets-lots/title/willow-lane/id/689231/)   Yes, I know they come with added sypware... Putting them on my site is another job that's been on the to-do list forever.  I'll mail clean files to you if you like the pics.

Unless the Monty problem is fixable, I don't think it's worth doing a v7 of the 'hood.  I should update the website though to say the catastrophic cat is required and note the Monty problem.  Even updating the website is a pain because I haven't even got an ftp package installed on my new Win7 PC and there are probably passwords I've forgotten/lost; plus SimPE crashed on me both time I tried.  If I were to update, would it be worth going round the lots to use that lighting fix you mention?  I'm not clear if they'd stay fixed if downloaded by somebody without the fix.  

Well I have more things on my to-do list now...   Let me know if the list grows. :)

I got SimPE to show me the dead Monty character files; there are 5 stubs (Bianca, Kent, Patrizio, Antonio and Claudio).  I can't seem to get into the actual family tree.  Clicking on family ties doesn't do it.  I've either forgotten how or SIMPE has changed since the version I knew. 

From in game, these 5 names are the only dead sims in the Isabella's family tree.  I see their names but no pics.  While that's clearly messed up, I don't see how it could cause corruption.  The game isn't trying to do anything except show you a pic.  The names are right, so it's looking at the right characters, but not finding pics.

Meadow Lawns got looked at pretty hard when it was new.  I had a couple of people test drive it as well.  If you think it's potentially corrupt you should say so, but if it were true, I would have thought that MATYians would have gleefully and loudly pointed it out to me a long time ago.  Not sure what else I can do....

Thanks.  I'm going to check out those lots without Nightlife and without the downloadable driveway and cars, just to see whether I can make them crash; I'll let you know the results.  I suspect that the cat was causing the crashing all along.  If you do a V7, you might want to think about removing the cat, so that you can honestly say that the neighborhood doesn't require any CC (except the camera hack) or extra EPs.


I'm not really an expert on this sort of thing.  Most of what I know about these problems is from things that I've read here at MATY.  I can't figure out why the Monty family tree behaves so oddly, but I've been writing down anything that doesn't look right to me.  That way, people can make up their own minds.  My understanding is that this kind of thing can take a long time to show any outward signs of corruption.

Perhaps Pescado (or someone with more experience than I have) could take a look at the internal structure and see what's going on.

[Update:]

I hadn't looked at the car showroom before, or any owned community lot, because I didn't want to actually play the owner.  However, I just realized that you can edit the lot using the LoadLot cheat.  The car showroom doesn't crash without the cars.  However, the bargain bazaar crashes without the cat and at least a couple of the other maxis downloadable objects... I haven't narrowed down which objects are required.

[Another update:]

Looks like it's the three lawn ornaments: Cat-A-Strophic, Four Dead Guys, and Jack-O-Hattern.

Thanks for the update on the maxis objects.  Why on earth don't they just disappear like normal objects?   .....GRRR ..... 
So what else did I use and where...  I know I used things like the Christmas decorations; the bar certainly has them.  Other than that, I just don't remember. 

I'm glad the ford mustangs behave normally.  Any word on the driveway?

I've worked out how to get into the family tree in SimPE, but it doesn't help.  The dead sims have thumbnails in SimPE, so I don't know why the game is defaulting to the last pic it had in memory rather than showing the actual dead sim.  If all that's wrong with the 4 character files is that the thumbnails are messed up, then it's not a biggie because they won't be wandering around and can't be resurrected.  It's that word IF.....

btw I went and downloaded some of the other hoods.  I LOVE the N099 project with Jfade's controller.  Hours of fun to come.  Thank you.

It's probably not worth updating for other people, because the lighting for a lot will switch back the next time that the lot is saved.  So, the only lots which will retain their proper lighting are unowned community lots, which are never saved during normal game play.

So it would be worth changing the lighting on community lots in v7; the fix makes things look so much brighter.  

However, I'm pretty much decided against updating the 'hood for the moment.  There are too many practical problems.  Apart from the things already mentioned, I now find I can't get AnyGameStarter to run because my game is not on a standard path.  AG operates by moving the 'EA Games' folder around and I renamed mine during the install.  If/when I can do something about the Montys, I'll bite the bullet.

I thought about coming at the crash problem from the other direction, creating a new hood with 10 lots, placing Maxis downloadables and seeing which lots crash.  But it's not a quick and easy method as I have 138 package files in that folder: sims, their clothes and face paint as well objects.  I know Philip has the teen vamp outfit in his wardrobe and that lot loaded OK, so maybe the clothes aren't a problem.  However it then occurred to me that all the townies have been shopping and have a random collection of things in their inventories.  One of the townies might have bought a Cat-A-Strophic along the way and deleting items off the lots won't fix that.  

Is there anyone in the sims community who might already know or could find out easily which maxis objects are a problem?

UPDATE - I realised that the 3 problem objects you've found are also part of the Festive Holiday Stuff Pack and anyone who has that doesn't need to download duplicate items from the exchange.  The snowman construction set, the 'a touch of cornocupia' horn and two menorahs (Kwanzaa Kinara and Chanukah Kinara) are also in this category.  I'd have to uninstall the Festive Holiday Pack to test whether they cause crashes as well.  I haven't looked at the clothes etc, but have proved that most maxoid exchange items do behave nicely.  I'll update on this tomorrow.