More Awesome Than You!

http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/Scotia.htm

Is a Neighbourhood I have been working on. It is designed to do away with Goopy (and all the rest) and give you default townies and basegame NPC's of a medieval flavour.

The method for doing this is to replace the original (or blank template if you're using one) C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001 with another N001. I call it Scotia.

Scotia isn't a fully defigned Neighbourhood (like Pleasant View, etc are) although you can play it as such. Mostly it exists so that any new Neighbourhood you spawn will use my default NPC's and townies rather than the EA/Pleasant View ones.

Theory testing has been completed and the process definately works. What I need now is people willing to test that (with the full shopping list downloaded) all NPC's (bar the Headmasters which I cannot do very much with) and townies are properly theme garbed - ie I haven't missed anything out of my shopping list (which I am 99.9% sure is complete).

Please test it and let me know what you think.

edit: Can I please have some feedback - even if it's "I'm not touching that with a ten foot barge pole because . . . . "

Actually, I love this concept because I can't stand to make my own townies.  It's the main reason why I don't use the clean templates.  Heresy, I know.  :D

But the reason I haven't dl'd to test this is the theme.  I just started toying with Seasons and I'm trying to keep the CC down while I'm exploring the vanilla game.  :-[  I can completely understand that the tedium of making your own townies and NPCs is orders of magnitude greater when you also have to dress them right, so I do think there's a greater need for this in themed 'hoods, though.

Oh, good. Then you can vote on which theme next. Medieval was just first firing in my brain. I want to do a series of swapable N001's for different themes. Just pop one in and you'll get different townies every time.

Of course if you don't download any of the shopping list you'll still get new townies and NPC's - they'll just be wearing some wierd ass clothes.

Silly question: I'm playing a N001 'hood right now that is not Pleasantview (it's my own custom 'hood). Were I to replace the requisite file, would I see any negative effects on my custom 'hood and current townies?

Also:

No. The template only comes into play at creation. Your current townies, etc, would all stay as they are. Unless you remove the Neighbourhoods folder and force the game to spawn new 'original' Neighbourhoods you'll never even see my N001, just the associated townies when you spawn new Neighbourhoods.

If I could see the size of all the files that I'd need to download, I could give this a shot for you. I don't mind spawning a new 'hood to test this out. This sounds rather interesting. :)

ETA: Okay, I got in this time. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes. :)

ETA2: It may take me a while to download all the clothing listed. Trust me when I say that I will, in fact, update you as soon as I know anything.

I've taken a look, and I think I'll try it out. I have most things on the list.

I downloaded all seven parts of Scotia, but they're all the exact same size. Why do I need all seven parts?

Because it's a split rar (and the last file is a little different in size) to make downloading easier. When you unzip part one it unzips the rest of them too to make one Neighbourhood folder and one set of instructions for installation.

Hmmm, when I unzipped the first one, it didn't unzip the others. Perhaps that's why none of the townies I've spawned have had medieval wear.

Just to ensure that this works, can I manually unzip the 7 files and install them somewhere? Also, I'm only installing the clothing to test that this actually works. Does it matter what folder the custom clothes are placed in within the Downloads folder? Can I put all of the clothing into a separate folder of its own (which is what I've done) and still have the game generate medieval townies/NPCs?

ETA: Urk. I was spawning them in an existing 'hood. Whoops. Let me go correct this.

I just noticed that the inteenimator is part of the shopping list. I've never used it, never really wanted to. Is it essential?

Denimjo - it should not matter where you put them. I keep all of mine in the same folder so that I can remove them when I'm not playing a medieval Neighbourhood.

Are you sure it didn't unzip the others? It should do it quietly in the background (ie it'll just look like it's unzipping the first one, but really it's doing them all). You should end up with 139 character files in the N001. In fact if it doesn't unzip the others you should get an error message. Try deleting the existing N001 and then putting the new one in. If you just paste over the top it doesn't work right. I'm uploading an unpartitioned rar as we speak - but it'll take some time.

jmtmom - inteen is only needed if you plan on playing the N001 rather than using it to spawn townies. All you need if you want to use it to spawn townies are the clothes.

I figured out why it hadn't unzipped the others: I'm pretty sure it's because I changed the default unzip location. I did it again and I'm pretty sure it was fine. I'm going to try it again here in a second.

Ok followed all the links, found a few things I needed to add. When I clicked on the " a bunch of stuff I don't know where I got..." I got an error page: "Not Found
The requested URL /guest/MadameMim/thatWhichIsUnfound.rar was not found on this server"

I grabbed everything else except the inteeninator and the default preg clothes replacement.

Finally MATY has returned. :)

Nope, no luck. I got all the clothes except for the ones from Fashion 2 Sims and put them into a separate folder in Downloads. Created a new 'hood, but the townies are all being created with regular clothes. What could I be doing wrong?

thatWhichIsUnfound.rar was poor pathing on my part and should be fixed now.

As for the townies that are being created with normal clothes - are they normal townies? Do you recognise any names? Are the NPC's the normal ages that you would expect? Basically I'm trying to find out if this is a clothing or entire Neighbourhood problem you are experiencing. Please tell me some more about these townies and tell me the installation steps you took so that I might better understand. Thankyou.

Okay, for the installation:

1). I've only downloaded the recommended clothing files. I've gotten those files placed in a separate folder in Downloads (a folder named Scotia).
2). When I first began this process, my C:Program Files etc. area had a folder named N001-bak. I rared this folder and then deleted it (keeping the .rar file in the same location).
3). I then extracted the first part of the 'hood files. I cut/pasted the N001 folder into the C:Program Files etc. area.
4). I opened up the game and created a brand new hood.
5). I went into CAS to create a Sim to start the 'hood off with. I then moved her into a lot.
6). Since I have debugging mode on in the usercheatstartup file, I then shift-clicked on her and spawned the Spawn NPC and Townie tree.
7). I generated several townies that way as well as a maid and a gardener. They all had regular clothing, but their names were drawn from a Live.package file from my Downloads folder.
8). I then quit the game.

I later managed to get all seven of the .rar files to extract at once and then copy/pasted over the N001 folder I had gotten from just the first part earlier. Rebooted game; same thing. Then I manually deleted the N001 folder from the C:Program Files etc. area and re-extracted the seven .rar files into the location I had saved them (a folder on the Desktop). I then cut the provided N001 folder and placed it back into the appropriate area. Rebooted game; same result.

I'm wondering if this has anything to do with a Download conflict.

And there's your problem right there (at least I hope it's that easy). My NPC's and townies are already there. If you spawn them you are making new ones to EA design (and the only way to over-ride their clothing is through Paladin's NPC clothing changer). My NPC's and townies are carefully created by hand (god, that sounds so pretentious) with changed ages so that they don't get forced into EA-wear. If you have a teleporter bush try checking the families available for summoning and who is in them.

AHA! I shall check that out right now and let you know how it turns out.

ETA: Yup, that did it. Everything seems to be working peachy keen right now. The only issue I have is with some elders clothing (and that is doubtless due to the fact that I failed to get some clothing from one of the sites listed) and one Service Sim, Ernest Gast, seems to be sporting mime costume makeup and I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.

Am going to download the 'missing' clothing soon and will even get the rest of the medieval set (objects, building items, etc.) very soon. I love this idea! There even is a Goopy lookalike in there somewhere.  :P

The only thing that I'd suggest is that since it would doubtless attract many other users, perhaps just adding a footnote to mention that one doesn't need to spawn new townies or NPCs would be helpful. I know most people here at MATY wouldn't need to know that, but people who tend to do stupid things (i.e. myself) would probably benefit from a 'stating the obvious' instruction like that.

Nicely done, Madame Mim! And I love your username, by the way. :)

Thankyou. I'm rather fond of your avatar. I wish I could remember the joke about Allah comes round to borrow a cup of sugar and God asks him how to pause Civilization - turns out that all our problems are because God is trying to run a PC universe on a Mac.

I'm glad it worked out for you in the end.

Sounds rather likely to have happened.  ;D

Do you happen to have any recommendations for some nice medieval hairstyles? I think that might be the only thing that my new 'hood is lacking at the moment. For some reason I thought that I had seen Peggy have some quite some time ago, but the prospect of having to go through hundreds of pages of downloads is a little daunting.

Sorry, no. I just threw out all my hairs because I could not track down something that was causing skull colouring so I've only got MTS2, Parsimonious and Rose Sims hair in at the moment. I don't think PeggySims has much medieval in anycase. I suppose you could try Neptune Suzy http://www.ts2creations.com/ I've liked her clothing and downloaded (but not yet installed) her medieval hairs for women.

Oh, Ernest Gast is probably sporting a scar by simgirl24 http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?f=378&showType=1&u=674926&threadcategory=Special%20Effects If you make him selectable you'll be able to wipe the makeup off his face.

In theory could i place this hood long enough to create a mideval style hood and then remove it? Would that leave the new hood with the new townies provided none ofthem get killed forcing the game to generate an ea townie?

I would love a mideval hood but don't want ren-fair townies being spawned in my non themed neighborhoods.
So could I put the neighborhood in the folder to create the hood and take it out to play the other hoods, killing townies with no problem then put it back in when I wished to play this one?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, Madame Mim, but I'm pretty sure that you can do that, Morriganrane. After all, the character files for the townies for a 'hood are kept in the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods/N00x/Characters folder. I'm not sure if you'd have to summon all the pre-made townies and NPCs first or not (I suspect you would, though).

The only thing that I would also change would be to make sure that you remove the default Medieval Pregnancy Wear hack when you weren't playing that 'hood, since it's a default maternity wear replacement.

I can't correct you Denimjo because you're right. In fact it is my ultimate purpose to make a series of swappable N001's for themes, or just so that we get different townies occasionally.

Now that this one is working fine (barring shopping list error reports) all I need is to decide what themes to do. Probably the next one will be to fix Planet of The Cats so that the NPC's stay in character and just convert it to a template.

The only thing I'm not sure about morriganrane is your statement "killing townies with no problem then put it back in when I wished to play this one?" because I'm not sure I understood. So I will just make two statements.

1. My NPC's townies will only generate on the creation of a new Neighbourhood (like the Pleasant View townies do ATM) and if you remove them from the pool any new ones spawned by the game will not be in theme.

2. Once a Neighbourhood has been created you do not need to put my N001 back in for it to work. Created Neighbourhoods stand alone (as Denimjo said).

You asked for suggestions for future NPC sets.  How about Western/frontier/pioneer?  All About Style has some very nice pioneer and Victorian clothes. Also a sci-fi one would be good, and a Regency/Victorian.

Oooh, I'd love to see a Western one as well.

I was assuming that if a townie died with this in they would be generated using the theme of this template. So if any townies of this new themed hood die then the game will generate an ea townie that i then have to redress?
Any townies in my own custom will still be re-generated with normal clothes even with this hood in?

In a completely unmodified game, when you create a brand new neighborhood, the game looks at Pleasantview as the source for a set of PRE-GENERATED townies and certain NPCs (for example, the maids -- you've probably seen Kaylynn Langerak in your custom 'hoods before, right?). All downtownies, dormies, non-basegame NPCs, and replacements for whatever gets killed off are generated randomly.

With this template, there are no Pleasantview townies and NPCs -- no Benjamin Long, no Goopy Gilscarbo, no Meadow Thayer, no Kaylynn, and so on. Instead, you get MM's custom medieval ones, who are ALSO (like the Maxis Pleasantview ones) precreated. Any later generation of new townies/NPCs is still random, however, and this download doesn't modify the random generation. That would be a totally separate and more involved mod.

The best way to avoid generation of random out-of-theme townies would most likely be to use notownieregen, and if you later need more townies, you can create them by hand and townify them with Inge's shrub.

(This sounds awesome, btw, MM, and I'm salivating over the idea of a sci-fi themed one, though I admit that I am allergic to shopping lists and thus would probably want to make my own instead.)

akatonbo: Thanks. I have a list of suggestions that so far contains Army Base, Victorian, Flapper, Colonial America (which is also the cowboy one I assume), Planet of the Cats (which is just one of my old hoods upgraded), Alien Planet (which is the Sci Fi one I think) and all Service Sims are 'bots (but that one isn't base game compatible and I'm not sure if it'd work).

As for new NPC's and townies. There are four of all NPC's (barring the checkout chicks of which there are six) in an effort to stave off an EA Sim influx, but you really do need antiredundancy and notownieregen. And Inge's shrub is a must if you wish to top up the townie pool.

I think I like the cowboy one the most for the moment. So I'd better start researching where I can get all the bits I need from.

Nope, colonial and cowboy are about 50 - 100 years apart.  The Colonial era generally refers to the 100 years or so up to and including the Revolutionary War, from the late 1600s to the late 1700s.  The Cowboy era started with the western expansion, and really took off in the mid 1800s.  Its generally considered to have ended in the early 1900s, though some states are still in their own 'cowboy era' today. :)

I'd really love these (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=224753) clothes if they weren't wearing freaking high heels! Do you know of any cow wrangler that would wear such footwear?  :-X

It's silly to ask me - I'm an Australian. So you'd better hope I remember my old movies correctly.  ;D

edit: I see what you mean about those, but they're also a little more modern than I'm aiming for in any case. Unless you were hoping for modern cowboy - in which case you may be completely out of luck as I don't even have old movies to go on to do modern western America.

question: politically incorrect one at that: am I making the maids, etc black?

No.  They are hired, not purchased.

Plus in those days, slavery hadn't taken on racial overtones and was an equal-opportunity institution. If you wound up on the losing side of a battle, you could be sold into slavery.

Indeed, people tend to forget that part. Not only were there white slaves but there were black slave owners. If you managed to fall into financial ruin with debt it was very likely that you would either become a slave or an indentured servant.

IIRC, for example England used to enslave even its own subjects well into recorded history. It's a good way to end a rebellion: remove citizinship from the rebellious population!  Also helps demotivate those who fight on, if they know their mothers, wives, sisters etc. are being sold on the market. Wasn't this one of the atrocities under the Cromwell regime?
Not to mention the treatment of the  Irish and Scottish by the English.

And most black slaves were caught, transported to the coast, and sold to muslims and later Europeans, by other blacks.

OK, so multi-coloured people of all social levels.

So far I've been through MTS2 and All About Style in search for period clothing - and some of the stuff I've picked up is stretching it a bit. Can anybody else think of places for appropriate clothing - especially male elders and children. Appropriate excercise wear would be a help too. At the moment I've got them all jogging in their bathers (which is marginly preferable to jogging in your undies, but only just).

I don't think that people of that period typically engaged in what we would term "exercise". Their daily lives WERE a form of exercise.

None of which helps when the game starts jogging Sims past doorways in their underthings. Makes me look to see where the screaming mob with pitchforks and tar is - and then I'm disapointed when I don't see them.  :'(

Elder male formal wear is a bit thin on the ground too. At the moment I have EA standard and a tuxedo with tails. Not appropriate for the garder to switch into if he's at a wedding. Ah well. I suppose I could do what I did to get bathers as exercise wear and resort to tagging other peoples work for multiple purposes. It looks damned silly that the gardener has anything to change into for the wedding anyway, let alone that it's a long tailed tuxedo.

Awww, pity I couldn't use it for my actual hood, that would be ubershiny. But I'm quite sure I will make another one, and your hood is definitely perfect. Thank you very much for that.

Perhaps it may be of interest that for my hood (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8877.0.html) I've made a lot of template replacements for NPCs uniforms, so they always have the correct clothes, even the newly spawned ones (some NPCs tend to revert to original template clothes). I don't know if it uses the same system of Paladin's tool, as I made them by hand, but it works. I don't use texture/mesh replacement, only the linking of resources (I hope my words make sense).

At the present time it's still a work in progress, but could it be useful somehow?

Actually your words don't as I am very point and click at anything to do with clothing. It probably does use the same method as Paladins tool (you must be changing the same things after all). He's just made it point and click so that everybody can use it.

I basically ram them into different clothing by changing their ages. For most Sims this works fine, but I have found that it does not matter whether you make a headmaster adult or elder (male or female) you cannot change what they will turn up at your house in, and maids cannot be teenagers or they will not be able to get out of the car when they get to your house.

I like your hood I've put it in my game to try. But I haven't done much with it yet. I thought about making themed addons (like Cwykes's Sedona) for all the 'additional' Neighbourhoods but have put it into the later pile while I'm fiddling with this.

Thanks for the link to your Neighbourhood. I always like to find new ones to read or try.

Finally got around to trying it. The NPC's & Townies look great. Just a few observations:

Pets and Seasons NPC's appear to be the same as the EA defaults. I wasn't sure if they were included or not, or perhaps I missed something on the download list.

I'm not awesome enough to know if changing the vehicles that drop off the NPC's and the sims in their new homes is possible. That would be wonderful.

Not that I would make such a dumb mistake  ::) but if anyone thinks it's not working, make sure you changed the N001 in the Program files folder, not the Documents folder.  ;D

I really like the idea of having separate theme based NPC's and townies in different neighborhoods. This process is much easier to me than swapping out different NPC packages.

I'm glad to hear it's working now.

The Pets & Seasons NPC's and, in fact, the Uni, OFB and Nightlife NPC's come in different places. To change them I'd have to get into and alter their templates as well. I plan to do it at some stage but it seemed more logical to get people interested in the purely basegame concept first.

I think some other people have done vehicle replacements. The two ways I can think of (and have never tried so I don't even know if I have the skill or not) are by job replacements (which wouldn't fix the bus or nanny, etc) or by overrides. It's not something I'm really interested in.

cute toddler boys cowboy and indian outfit
http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=29015 (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=29015)

SIMplyLisa - thanks for those clothes links. There's very few native american clothes out there so those will definately help.

WildWildWest is almost finished - I just have to generate and clothe some repo men and then I can make the townies, but I need to ask. Are you all alright with standard Headmasters or do you want me to make them as teenagers? The problem is that my method of changing their clothing (and making it stick) is to change their ages. If the age group of the NPC has no work clothing then they do not change out of their everyday wear and you get themed NPC's. The headmasters (and also Uni professors - although that has no bearing here) have work clothes available in both adult and elder (indeed the game can make them as either) so the only way to theme them is to make them teens. So, I ask again - teenager headmasters or just deal with the out of theme headmasters?

Of course I don't know how themed WildWildWest will be anyway. A combination of a lack of clothing and my unfamiliarity with early America means that there's probably several ages mixed together. It is themed, I'm just not quite sure what that theme is  ;D

Let me know about the headmasters.

This is awesome, just tested Scotia and it look real good, I have most of the items required but not all, one lady showed up with no body just head and a ring :) Many other had standard clothing.
So I have to download everything except a few things I know I have, I didn't download everything from dark project or midsummer night only a selection and now is MTS2 very slow.
I had a problem with installing and I wonder if I did it right, I replaced the
The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001 folder and removed the
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 folder but then the neighborhood didn't came up so I copied the Scotia N001 folder into
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 and it came up, is this correct or have I done something wrong?

Also like the Wild West project but has not tested it yet. Might be easier to install because it look like most of the cloting is from all about style. She has an amazing collection, I say that anything in the Victorian category can be used, and it should be more than enough variation, true lots of the clothes are a little to fancy for the frontier but you see the townies mostly then the have traveled to the town center. Also the wild west period was from the 1860 to 1890 and you can probably stretch it a little in both directions.

Thanks for your appreciation of Scotia. The way to install it differs depending on what you want it to do. If you want to play Scotia itself then you need to either
a. delete My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 and put in Scotia, or
b renumber Scotia (and all it's files) to the next available N00# number.

If you want default Medieval townies and NPC's the next time you create a Neighbourhood then you delete/backup the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001 folder and put Scotia there.

These instructions are in the zip. I don't believe in including readme's that are simply self-advertisements and copyrights. My readme's are there to help you. Please let me know if the instructions were unclear and how you think they could be improved.

As for WildWildWest it's mostly the skirts that have me worried. I'll just have to see what people say when they see it. That shopping list of mine is only a preliminary one. There's a couple of alterations I had to make to clothing to fill in some gaps. The Neighbourhood should require a lot less downloads than that to start because I'm not using everything I downloaded.

You might want to talk to the creator of all about style, it looks like she know much about historical fashion and should know that what absolutely don't fit in, also a good possibility that she let you include her items in the download.

I just wanted to mention that the hack 'jaxad0127_NoNPCRevert' (found at MTS2) may fix the problem with the headmaster and others reverting to their normal clothes. I had problems with the NPCs in my cyberhood reverting to their normal uniforms, but this hack has stopped all such annoyances.

Thanks for the reference - I shall go and check it out.

edit: I don't know if it'll be any good because the reference to the problem it is designed to fix is useless and links to a whole thread and not to a specific post/problem. *argh* every time I go to MTS2 I hate it more >:(. I shall have to put the mod in the game and test it - then I will know whether or not to recommend it to others.

I have tested this now after downloading from shopping list and removing duplicated content, it looks wonderful.
One question, did you use the dragon end table a lot or are I'm missing some content? Thinking about the witch house and the merchant close to the thief, I did not see the royal castle before yesterday because it was so far out on the side of the map.

Do you have a neighbourhood file for your Wild West neighbourhood? It would be fun to test out.

I also have a zip file with all the required content from Scotia. I downloaded on work so I have the file. Don't think I can put it up public because it's from multiple creators but if somebody wants it I can make a link.

What's the dragon table - the chinese topped one? Yes I used it - but if it's turned up in the castle then I've probably not listed a hogwarts table I got from MTS2 - I'll have a look into it.

As for WWW I'm up to testing my shorter shopping list. The Neighbourhood will be ready for primary testing once I get that list organinsed. If you're interested in being a primary tester PM me on mad dot mim at bigpond dot net dot au and I'll give you a link to the Neighbourhood the minute it is up - probably about 12 hours from now as I am about to turn off the PC and get some sleep before work tomorrow.

Hi, the table is named exploding dragon dinner table, it's a one tile table and is much used in the castle. Can you check that its name is in your game?
Else everything looks nice except that the house to the merchant next to the thief family didn't   have any roof :)

One more question, is the ottoman family safe to use? I assume this family don't have any memories or connections to Pleasantville. They would make good serfs after my opinion :)

I have little time to play now so I don't know much I could test the Wild West neighborhood, I have just started populating Scotia.
Will contact you then I got a little more time.

The table should be this one - http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=159466 - of course installing now that it has reverted won't fix it and you'll need to delete the dragon table (where appropriate) and replace it with this one.

As for testing I've been held back - silly mistake on my part. The great thing with Neighbourhoods made this way is that the only thing that really needs testing is the shopping list - which is what I've futzed. Should be ready soon - even sooner if I pull my finger out and do some work - but I'm off to the shops and the movies, so don't hold your breath  ;D

I also have a question, Madame Mim. I have the Medieval stuff separated from the regular downloads and all, but I find that I have several of the custom townies from Scotia showing up in BodyShop. Can I delete them without having them disappear from the Medieval neighborhood I have set up?

I have no idea why townies are showing up in bodyshop. I'd make a backup of the game and try deleting them yourself, but it shouldn't hurt. I can think of no reason why it would damage the hood at all.

As for adding townies to your existing hood - no. It's not a case of just finding the character files and plunking them in there. If you like the look of them you could use SimPE to extract them and then use their templates to make new ones, but that's about all - sorry.

I'd very much like to get this medieval set,  but the file is no longer on the file site.

Which site and file?

Sorry I wasn't very clear.   Tried to edit that post and apparently it didn't take. 

I checked  everything on your page at Genensims but couldn't find the split file for the medieval neighborhood.   I saw the whole file but 32 mb is way too big for my dialup connection to handle.  (Took me over an hour today to get a 10 Mb file downloaded.)   I was really thrilled when I saw the earliest posts in this thread about the file being split into 7 parts and was really hoping to get it. 


Looking forward to your wild west neighborhood also.  If at any time you need any more clothing for that theme I have quite a few things I have made for all ages except toddler when I was doing a Little House on the Prairie theme.  The kind of clothing farmers and their families wore in that time period.  I haven't ever uploaded them anywhere but would be happy to share them if anyone wanted them. 

I took off the seven part file because people were getting confused. Try back here tomorrow and I'll have the links here (I think I'll need to reupload the parts, hence the wait). I think I'd better check the wording of the page while I'm at it.

WWW is actually finished. I just keep getting lazy about paring down that shopping list. I really should do it, but I'm having too much fun playing with my main hood ATM to bother. ;)


http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part01.rar
http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part02.rar
http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part03.rar
http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part04.rar
http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part05.rar
http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part06.rar
http://www.genensims.com/guest/MadameMim/downloads/Scotia/Scotia&Instructions.part07.rar

Remember these links may not be valid yet as you read them (they definately aren't as I type them). Download all seven and put them in the same folder. Unzipping the first one (you will need winrar or some such) will unzip the rest as well. If you have any problems downloading them let me know.

No. My townies will only generate on the creation of a new hood, and they'll only use the clothes that they were designed to use. They are all pre-made (just like the Pleasant View ones).

If you want to make townies that wear medieval clothing you can simply make them like ordinairy Sims and add them to the townie pool with a SimLogical teleporter.

If you want to convert your existing townies and NPC's to your theme check out Dizzy's remix ver 2 thread in Peasantry. She has mods that will allow you to change their clothing and to force the NPC's to stay in that changed clothing.

Thank you so much for putting those split files back up.  It will take me a few days to get them all since my download time is limited but I am really looking forward to having this neighborhood. 

Is there anywhere else I can get these files please? The links are down and I'd really like to get hold of this :)

Future? Deliciously tacky neon and chrome clothing would be awesome.

The files being down is my fault I've been distracted by the shiney that is BV. Today I will fix the Neighbourhoods folders so try later, or maybe tomorrow - sorry.

The files should all be back online again now - only don't take the links from this thread go to the webpage and follow it through for working links. Let me know if there are still any problems.

Thanks, page is up now :) And thanks for that long shopping list! I'd found it so hard digging out the medieval/fantasy outfits, now there's other places I can check out that I'd never even heard of before :D

Just wanted to add my thanks.  I've been playing Scotia for about a week now.  Since I did the complete reinstall, and discovered the joy of Numenor's Any Game Starter, I figured I'd try out your custom hood.  Wanted to before, but I already had a Medieval hood then.  Anyway, it's going great.  The Goldenbough family booted out the resident Royal family, and renamed the kingdom Golden Valley.  Put me down as another who is looking forward to the Wild West neighborhood.

This is exactly what I have been wanting to do but with an Egyptian themed neighborhood.  At Sapphire Sims they have all the Egyptian clothes and some ready built sims.  They also have all the furniture and housing and even a bazzar.

This is really great.

Thanks.

I threw WWW away because I could not resolve the shopping list - my problem is that I download everything on a theme and then get carried away rather than merely using what is necessary and referencing the rest. I got all confused and couldn't refign the list properly. Plus I suck at buildings.

But I promised so I'm going to try this another way. I'm going to ask for help.

Does anyone have a building (preferably base game but I can make my own translations if it isn't) that they think belongs in this Neighbourhood - credit given to any I use.

Does anyone have any Sims they would like me to use the statistics and visuals of in creating townies or NPC's? I get so bored making them over and over and they all look the same, again credit will be given.

Oh, and try to remember to include your own shopping lists with submissions.

Post said Sims and buildings (either residential or commercial) with an explaining letter (and the title Wild Wild West) to mad dot mim at bigpond dot net dot au - but please remember that I am working in the basegame and might have to make changes to get your contribution to fit.

Something that may be helpful with designing a WWW neighborhood is to remember that the Victorian Era, the Wild West and the Civil War era all kinda overlap in places.  So if you're not too much of a stickler for dates then elements of any could fit into one nieghborhood.  The difference in a cowboy's residence and a governor's manor would be vast, with the cowboy's easily using some medieval themed furnishings and the governor's manor using high victorian stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_west

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era

If and when you release the WWW neighborhood, I may use Numenor's Any Game Starter to use it twice.  Once for my Firefly/Serenity neighborhood, and once for a Weird West Neighborhood.  Maybe some of these articles can be inspiring. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_west

For the record though, if one of two of the townies or service sims has a broken outfit, I have no problems with fixing it manually.  I think it's a pretty cool idea to make these theme nieghborhoods though.  I've been doing it myself for years, just not nearly as well.

Why are you using the any game starter? Is it to keep later NPC's and townies from ruining your theme?

No, actually, my neighborhood ended up with the Ottamas, the Ramaswamis, and that Roseland guy with his dog.  I decided to make them extras as I decided to keep your custom families as extras while I have my own Royal Kingdom challenge families that I created.  Yeah, I play everyone, and no doubt my gene pool will thank me for it later. 
But, back to the question, I decided to use the Any Game Starter so I could have an independent game from my usual game, but also so I could drop Bon Voyage, as well as nearly all the Stuff packs that I didn't have any use for in my medieval game.  I also ended up with some of the Seasons NPCs like the garden club people, but whenever I see them I simply use dizzy's change any outfit (or whatever it's called) to fix them.  Really, with only the one neighborhood and only the medieval CC, it loads ridiculously fast.  Well, longer than my husband would put up, but much faster than my previous 24 minute load time.  That was when I had about 6 custom neighborhoods of various types, all expansions, and about 19 gigs of CC on my game.  Now that I use the A.G.S. to have my independent theme game it's about 2- 3 minutes, tops.

Hi there, I would really like to download this - but the files are down again.  can you help me?
thanks

Which files? WWW isn't done yet, but Scotia should be fine. Sidney's changed her domain name a little http://www.genensims2.com/guest/MadameMim/index.htm if you're having trouble getting into the site. Other than that I don't understand.

I guess the link i tried was on an older post....  the one you just supplied works! yay!!  thanks

Well, I always appreciate worship.

 ;)

I think I saw some neat western wear at All about Style http://www.all-about-style.com/themes_prairie.html Give it a shot!

I'm getting a real kick out of the idea of medieval sims dressed in wild west wear.

"Dayum, Marshall.  Thet thar knight varmint done stole mah, cows!"
"Well, ol' timer, ah guess we'll have to give 'im a fair trial, followed by a first class hangin'.  Ain't bin nothin' like that in merrie old England since the prince killed Dangerous Dalton."

All about Style does have medieval wear as well.

Hi Mim,   I too have been struggling with a Victorian neighborhood, a Medieval neighborhood and a Wild Western one.   So many anachronisms!    I found the Hexameter wagons,   a carriage,  and a really well done horse as well as a bicycle over at MTS,    but I have a real heartache with the NPCs from BonVoyage.    First of all,  I have the hack done by someone that just makes all lMaxis cruddy clothing dissapear....except BonVoyage stuff.   Guess we are all awaiting SimPE.    The RPC not revert thingy by jaxnad just doesn't function.    I can change the NPC clothing with the rack,    but there you are with the bellcaptain in his modern dress.   And the generated people show up in resort wear.   I like BonVoyage for my other games...I have external drives set up for multiple MyComputer setups....so just uninstalling does not appeal.   
Its a shame that Paladin hasn't continued with his NPC changer.   I sent off a message in the forum,  but I guess it is a dead issue or no longer supported.  It worked quite well for the NPC's in the early EPs.   
Also there are tons of western, victorian, and medieval outfits to use,  as well as hairstyles galore. My next effort is to convert the taxi and maid and repair cars in SimPE when we see it again, to substitute them with wagons.   
I find your postings here interesting.    And I can't wait to see what you do with the victorian theme.   How are you handling the anachronisms?   Any advice?   
I found the latest version of jfades Wranger helpful.  It makes the custom clothing townified.  Really cuts down on the number of wandering townies in wrong garb.    Hopefully, when jordie gets around to updating the get rid of Maxis clothing and hair thingy, that will stop happening.  Thanks and good luck with your project. N

I used to change the ages of Sims to bypass NPC clothing reversion but now I use mods by Dizzy -
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9535.0.html - from this thread you need to download Dizzy's latest brain dump and find casual-npc.package. change-appearance-anyone.package is quite useful too. As are a whole slew of the mods in there. Just read the text file to discover their nefarious purposes.

I've completely bypassed the need to even think about vehicles by designing in basegame. I'm not even going to mention later version adaptions in this Neighbourhood because there is invariably the nimwad who downloads the Neighbourhood and then blindly collects all my links without bothering to read - then complains that they don't get horses, ect like I promised they would. *feh*

And as for the carpool and NPC vehicles they are simply beyond my skill. I am a collater and coallesor (?) of the ideas of others. So if you get them done I will just jump on the bandwagon and point everyone towards you.

I meant for the western theme... ;)

I think I missed some part of the conversation.  Anyhow, I followed your link and got western-wear for my own game.  I don't actually play themes but take an eclectic view of clothing.  Now I can have a knight in armour, a glamour playboy, and a tombstone marshall all sharing living quarters.  Naturally, they all will have cell phones.  ;D

I also like the idea of female romance sims who wear full body Victorian swimwear while dating outgoing sims who wear nothing when they swim.  The stupidity of the situation amuses me.

*unlurks*

Just wanted to say a great big thank you for this! This might be a dumb question, but is there some way of getting your townies to work with Pleasantview? I'm quite taken by the idea of Don Lothario as an errant knight who spends rather more time romancing every skirt in the nieghbourhood:p

Sorry, not sure I quite understand this.  If you want Don Lothario to be an errant knight, simply download whatever clothing you want from the medieval section of "All about Style" - there is a range of robes, armour, etc.  Have him buy the outfit at the store or however you normally get your sims to add to their wardrobes.  Select that outfit as the normal "casual" outfit, and off you go.  The outfits are not specific to a particlular 'hood.

If you want to make a townie that wears this stuff, follow instructions about making custom townies - this is covered in a number of threads - a search on "create custom townies" should get you there.

Mmm, I suppose I wasn't clear about that:) What I really wanted to know was whether there's any way to use Madam Mim's NPCs in Pleasantview. Is it possible?

No (well, not unless you wish to create great flamming bags of poo raining down apon your Neighbourhood by packaging Sims from one Neighbourhood to another).

This is a default Neighbourhood. To make it work you put it in your core game folders instead of the EA template N001. ie. When you have this template installed you don't have Pleasant View and visa versa.

Although I suppose you could get really fiddly and have this installed as a template and then create my Pleasant Village. Then you'd only have three generations to play before you could (technically) get to Don.

I'd just like to second, third, fourth, whatever, the suggestion for a science fiction/futuristic themed 'hood. The idea of one where all Service Sims are bots is MADE OF AWESOME! You'd better consult Pescado about whether you could use actual Servos, or if they'd need to be "human" sims with robot genetics... I suspect game b0rkage would occur if you used Servos where it was expecting to find humans :(.

I know TSR did a Sci Fi/Futuristc theme a while back. While it's an Evil Paysite, some of the files will now be free, while others may be obtained via ARRRnet.

I'm also going to check out your Shopping Lists to see how they work, for a project I've just started...

Thanks for the quick reply:) Oh well, I suppose I'll just have to adjust the clothes of every sim in Pleasantview:p Oh btw, I found your shopping list really comprehensive and helpful:) If not for it, I wouldn't have bothered with medieval sims, however great the temptation was. Thanks again!

Just wanted to say I've been playing a lot with your neighborhood and spawned townies, and I really appreciate all the work you put into this. Lots of little touches keep surprising me. The townie kid named 'Beastiality' was good; I can only assume this was a Discworld reference (which was awesome because the reason I got your neighborhood (and the attendant shopping list) in the first place was to start up a Discworld 'hood.)

I haven't had any glitches so far.

I'm glad you're enjoying it. Yes, Beastiality was a Discworld reference. I'd love to hear more about your Discworld Neighbourhood.

Let me say so far that, despite careful planning, Angua has an immense and unexplained crush on.......Nobby Nobbs. It makes my head hurt to think about.

(I'm going to try, for the first time, to actually accumulate enough screenshots to do a real story mode; if I get it done and upload it somewhere, I'll post again here or PM/email you.)

(Just out of curiousity--I wasn't sure if you were still here in the thread and whatnot--if I spawn any subhoods, I will be subjecting myself to bad NPCs being spawned? You don't have any medieval templates for any of them, correct? Not to sound ungrateful--I'd always planned for the Discworld hood to function without subhoods for that reason, and you've already done an immense amount of work.)

That's right. You will get EAxis generated townies and NPC's for the new hoods. I considered making sub-hood templates but then somebody (Cwykes?) said that they had such hoods under construction and I took that excuse to not have to do it myself.

ROTFLMAO - Nobby Nobbs? Oh, dear. . . I put some MATY self Sims into the neighbourhood I am playing currently (as teens and young adults because that was the age group I needed) and I made Invisi Goth the sister of Victor Goth (Mortimer's grandfather). She promptly fell madly in lust with Pescado and kept making booty calls to him until she got herself pregnant, so she's now Invisi Pescado. Sometimes the Sims just have minds of their own.

If ever you wish to package your whole hood up for sharing I'd love to see that personally - do you have an early copy?

I was wondering if there was any way that would be remotely feasible without it being immense. I did make somewhere in the realm of 30+ Discworld characters (some of which I turned into NPCs), and I've slowly been converting some lots into Discworld sites (although architecture and decor is really not my forte, and I've had a problem with many of the medieval lots being really pretty but totally unplayable from a flow standpoint...I've got to figure out what to do with my Unseen University because if I actually try to play the lot I get motion sick, heh).

I probably do have an early copy (I've only had the neighborhood up and running for a few days in any case), I think I made a backup with TS2 Enhancer pretty early on. Would it just be a matter of zipping up the N00# folder and sticking it somewhere? Hrm, almost all the characters have custom hair of one kind or another, though, and I have a lot of clothing/outerwear from AAS (and probably other stuff) that wasn't on your shopping list. So it wouldn't be perfect (and I don't think I have the wherewithal to catalog and list all the CC they have).

From what I gather, packaging sims themselves is evil?

Er: short version...I'm totally willing to give it a shot, don't mind sharing, upload/hosting not a problem for me, but it would probably not be as neat or... done correctly? ... as your stuff or the typical shared neighborhood. :)

True, packaging individual Sims or families who know other Sims is not a good idea, and yes, to package a whole hood you just get hold of the N### folder. It's the shopping lists that are a bitch, but I can do without. I like seeing other peoples characters.

As for the medieval/discworld lots I have a sugestion. I found that most people make the lots too big but with patience and the lot expander you can break them into smaller lots. A number of the lots in my WWW neighbourhood are actually the creations of others which I have built pieces of on other lots and then used the lot expander to shrink down. Like the row houses mentioned in another thread here. I do not know why people build enormous community lots. Even if the PC can handle them you're forever chasing things all over the place.

I have been enjoying the townies from your template in my medieval challenge. I did get a lot of characters not in medieval clothing but that might have been my fault...not sure what I did wrong. One thing..I put in always wear casual wear thinking that I could change the clothing of the NPCs...but then I realized too late that you probably changed their clothing. There are a few others that don't appear to be townies..I actually think they are Bon Voyage tourist but why they are showing up in the neighborhood..who knows.

The medieval shopping list was fairly comprehensive - but you have to remember that the Sims covered in Scotia were only basegame. Any further expansion packs added their own Sims and I didn't include a template for that.

I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying them though, and you're right, Dizzy's NPC_wearCasual (or whatever it is callled) plus his mirror add-on mean that you can make-over anyone who turns up in inappropriate clothing.

All (both) my Neighbourhood templates replace the Pleasant View template so yes. If you want to get standard EAxis/Pleasant View Sims on creation of a new Neighbourhood you must replace my template with the original (the one the installation instructions told you to back up?)

But if you just put Scotia or WWW in your Downloads/Sims 2/Neighborhoods folder then you don't have to do anything because the templates weren't touched.

^^  Lovely work!

Would it be possible to get a version with only the NPCs?  I love making my own townies, and I don't like having any other ones running about.  I'm simply incapable of creating my own NPCs, as it seems, however.  ::)

No. Which is to say that it would be possible, but that I'm not going to do it  ;D . You could take one of my Neighbourhoods and use Deleted 2 to get the unwanted Sims back out of there if you wanted though.

OK, thanks anyways.  I might do that if I get annoyed enough at the NPCs (and if your site is back up again when I do.) xD

I didn't even know it was down. The link in my sig is good for me.

I'm wondering if I can change the filename of a neighborhood to have it become a zone atached to another hood. I like to play in one hood only and then have the sims travel to the medieval or western zone of their hood.

Yes. It is remarkably easy (if you aren't that fussed about ending up with some themed NPC in your general NPC pool).

1. Get Marvin Kosh's no BlueWater & no Downtown button (or, if you only have one of those expansions the one that is appropriate to your game config).

2. Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\D001 and use SimPE to open D001_Neighborhood.package
(or C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\B001 and use it to open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\B001)

3. Extract the ID Number from the template Neighbourhood into a safe folder on your desktop and close that Neighbourhood.

4. Open the Neighbourhood that you wish to turn into a template and replace it's ID Number with the one you saved.

5. Save and close.

6. Rename every folder and file of your new template to D002 (if it's an Nightlife Neighbourhood) or B002 (if it's an OFB Neighbourhood).

7. Put it in the same folder as the Neigbourhood you copied the ID Number from.

8 Play and attach.


If you want to have a 'cleaner' hood you need to check out posts by SaraMK, Jordi & Marvin Kosh, and remember to only use Pescado's method (deleted II( for deleting Sims.

Hexameter over at MTS2 has been making NPC replacement vehicles: http://hideki.modthesims2.com/member.php?u=75890

Are these compatible with your replacement NPC's? If I could combine your Scotia NPC's with this, it would be perfect.

Oh, yes. Completely seperate actions/creations and completely able to be used together.