AnyGameStarter as an alternative to clean templates?

[bowrain]

As you may have noticed, Numenor added a shiny new feature in AGS

New Feature:

<snip>

Empty Game - This will create a perfectly empty game, without neighborhoods, sub-nh, sims, lots: nothing at all. Choose this option if you want to create an entirely new neighborhood to share with other players.
The neighborhoods created in this empty game will require the newest EP, among the ones you selected (if you deselect all the EP, the resulting NH will be base-game compatible). The size of the created empty NH can vary, but it's extremely small (a base-game simple NH: 190 Kb; an all-EP NH with college, downtown, shop district and 3 vacation dest.: 16 Mb)

My question is, can it be considered as an alternative to the clean templates? Can you create an empty neighborhood using it, and then copy the whole nhood folder to the normal game and retain the 'emptiness'?

[pbox]

Numenor says yes -- this has come up in the AGS thread already, not sure if you've seen it:

TREEAG & PLASTICBOX - A new tool specifically focused on creating empty neighborhood would be basically a reduced version of the AGS; as for the BGS, if I remember well, it already contain the "No Maxis content" since last update, but I have to better check it.
As for the "MoreEmptyThanYou" templates, and all the other existing templates, they all are bound by the same philosophy: take a normal neighborhood and strip away as much as you can without breaking it. But a played neighborhood, even if cleaned at best, can't possibly be "cleaner" than a neighborhood created clean and never used. So, now that you pointed out this feature of the AGS, if I ever need to create an empty neighborhood you can easily guess whichwill be my choice

[Emma]

You can, but if you have already placed the empty templates in your program files then it is job done-for any 'Sims 2' folder you may have (I currently have 3). I am running the AnyGameStarter and have no characters whatsoever in any of my unplayed neighbourhoods. Plus, if you are copying clean neighbourhoods to use in other 'Sims 2' folders then you'd have to change all the filenames for everything in that folder to correspond with your existing neighbourhoods. IMO, much easier and much less work to just leave the clean templates installed and generate neighbourhoods as needed if they just for your own personal use. However, if you are creating a neighbourhood to share with others, then I would use the AGS, purely because everything would be contained in the AGS folder and would be much easier to find/rename etc.

[bowrain]

The thing is that I haven't put in any empty template. I did have them a couple of months back but I've since reinstalled the game and forgot to back them up. Now I'm too lazy to set them back. So I can just take the empty neighborhood AGS generated and put it in my normal games folder?

[Emma]

Yep.