Killed Custom Neighborhood

[Haley]

I have been playing FreeTime since it came out just fine. No issues whatsoever. No new installs of anything. I had a custom neighborhood that had custom names/terrain/lots/face replacements/the whole nine yards. Everything has been 100% fine. Now? My custom neighborhood is not loading in the Choose a Neighborhood screen, even though it's still in the My Docs/EA Games/Sims2/Neighborhoods/N004 folder.

For starters, I checked out this thread here at MATY. I am fairly pessimistic and feel that the suggested methods will not work. This is because I have no "working backup", if you will, of my neighborhood saved somewhere else. I haven't installed any new games/programs recently, so I didn't think I needed to (stupid, I know). So I am kind of at a loss.

This may mean nothing, but as I am looking in the N004 neighborhood files in the My Docs Neighborhood folder, there are a bunch of "Suburb" files. Ie: N004_Suburb001.package and so on up to Suburb005.package. I've never noticed them before, but it says they were created back in May and edited this morning.

Also, when I load SimPE and load my custom neighborhood, it says everything is "UNKNOWN". Bad sign?

Any help is appreciated.

(PS...how can I prevent this from happening in the future, if I DO need to do a fresh install?)

[jolrei]

You don't need a backup to try those steps.  Just make sure you don't delete your current custom 'hood.

First step - delete "groups.cache" in your main Sims2 folder.  It will regenerate when you restart the game.  If this does not solve your problem try following Jsalemi's advice as quoted below:

I had something similar happen (can't remember why now), and I recovered by renaming my 'The Sims 2' folder in My Docs, and loading the game and letting it rebuild the default neighborhoods.  Then I copied everything back to the new directories except for the 'neighborhoodmanager.package' file (or some similar name) found directly under the Neighborhoods folder.  That seemed to to the trick, and my neighborhoods were all fine after that.

What this means is that your game will recreate all your default neighbourhoods when you restart.  Then you add your Downloads and other saved files (including your custom neighbourhood) back in.

[Kazzandra]

I just had this randomly happen to me. My problem was that the neighbourhood was labeled as something like N015 and for some reason, all of the files inside (the pngs, etc.) had reverted to N001. I changed the name of the folder to match the name of the files inside and everything was fine. I'm glad it was something so simple, but I felt like an idiot starting up the game so many times doing all sorts of things that people had suggested. See if that's not your problem.

[Haley]

@jolrei: I deleted Groups.cache, didn't work. So, I renamed The Sims 2 folder in My Docs, and it rebuilt the hoods. I copied back in my Downloads folder and my N004 folder, and it's still not recognizing it. The game generated a new neighborhoodmanager.package file, and now a new neighborhood appeared called "Hobbies" that seems to be replacing Desiderata Valley.

@Kazzandra: Unfortunately, that was not my problem. Everything in the N004 neighborhood folder is labeled N004. If only it had been that easy!

[Solowren]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "Hobbies" the neighborhood with all the secret hobby lots in it? o.O

[Cappuccino]

^ Yeah, you're right, nothing to correct there!

[Haley]

@Solowren: That is...very odd. I have no idea where the Hobbies neighborhood came from and why it's replacing things. :/

I attempted to load the newly generated The Sims 2 folder (from the rename of the folder) with my downloads in it and that was fine. All the default neighborhoods loaded correctly. However, when I attempted to add my custom neighborhood (N004), it wouldn't recognize and THAT'S when the Hobbies neighborhood appeared.

[jolrei]

Does your game allow you to create a new custom neighbourhood at the moment?

[Haley]

@jolrei: I did create a custom hood, and even attempted to put at least my character files back in it, and it still wouldn't show. :/ I think I am just going to start over. I regenerated a new The Sims 2 folder in My Docs, and am going from there.

Thanks everyone for your help. I just wish I knew what caused this bizarreness.