Clean and fixed Uber-Megahood! OUTDATED!

[Mixreality]

(VERY LATE) MAJOR UPDATE!

In case someone follows a link to this thread and haven't seen Tarlia's Uberhood, I strongly suggest you go get hers! Mine has issues and is unsupported. Carry on reading this only if you want the megahood without townies (but trust me - you'll want townies...). I will personally use hers over mine.

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X-posted to my Livejournal

UPDATE 03/21 - Updated Installation Instructions and Known Issues sections.
UPDATE 04/07 - Updated Known Issues section.
UPDATE 04/14 - Updated Known Issues section.
UPDATE 10/16 - Updated Known Issues section.

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One last time, this is a clean and fixed HystericalParoxysm's Uber-Megahood. I'm not going to keep updating it, I promise, even if there's something horribly wrong with it. As far as I'm concerned, it's as perfect as it gets. Above all, this is the only Megahood without corrupt memories (except the ones corrupted "by default").

Unfortunately, M&G STUFF PACK IS REQUIRED! If you don't have it, the hood just won't show up. I'm very sorry about that, but I haven't thought about sharing when I first started cleaning it.
Also, REQUIRES ALL EPS EXCEPT UNI AND NL! That means Pets and BV are required, as the bin families from those packs are included too* (Kat and Kim families from Occupied Lot Bin are NOT included, so you can add them yourself where you want them).  There's a possibility you could safely play this hood without those two EPs, I'm still in the process of testing it.
*You won't get any duplicate bin families no matter what templates you have installed.

No fiddling with SimPE this time, just extract the file to Neighborhoods folder and start playing!

Download:

Cleanerhood.part1.rar

Cleanerhood.part2.rar

Cleanerhood.part3.rar

Installation instructions:

If you already have a N001 folder in C:\Documents and Settings\<your name here>\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods, move it somewhere safe, if you need it. If you don't, delete it.

Once you got all 3 parts downloaded, open Cleanerhood.part1.rar and extract it to C:\Documents and Settings\<your name here>\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods. (All 3 parts will automatically extract there).

If you have trouble extracting the files, it's probably because you were using an extracting utility other than WinRar or 7-Zip. Get WinRAR or Get 7-Zip, they're both free.

Changes made to HP's original hood:

While your files download, you can take the time to read what you're getting.

- Neighborhood is renamed back to N001, because Pescado says that cloning a neighborhood is a VBT. If you wish to play original Pleasantview and this hood at the same time, you can rename it to whatever you want (using a batch-rename utility). See Tips at the end of post.

- Around 360 random townies and NPCs are Deleted 2, along with their orphaned family instances and clothing collections! I also deleted broken duplicates of Skip Broke, Darleen Dreamer, Michael Bachelor and Nervous Subject. The only trace of unplayables left are townies/NPCs known by playable sims (Crystal Vu, Abhijeet Cho, Kaylynn Langerak, Gordon King, Meredith Lillard, Phoebe Adams and Frances McCullough). Strangetown Bella "The Clone" Goth and 5 Bluewater employees are NOT included, but I have them all extracted if anyone wants to add them. The real Bella Goth is in the sim bin, see below. All the ancestors are untouched (except above mentioned duplicates).

- All memories fixed! If you ever attempted to wipe corrupt memories with Lot Debugger in ANY Megahood, you certainly noticed that almost all of sims' memories get wiped. This is the consequence of merging process itself - somehow, characters' GUIDs change which results in wrong Memory $Subjects. In other words, the memory looks just fine (it points to right name) but in fact it isn't (it points to wrong number). In this hood, "default" corrupted memories are still present in 3 base hoods - usually 5 per adult sim (pointing to dead broken relatives - 3 toddler skills, 2 deaths). You can easily wipe them with Lot Debugger if you wish. In short, in this hood, you can wipe corrupt memories without fear that entire sim lives will get erased.
While doing all this, I figured I might as well fix the maxian stupid along the way. The examples are too numerous to list. Some well known examples would be the Broke family remembering Skip died before Beau was born, yet Skip's the father of Brandi's unborn child. Or all death memories in Riverblossom Hills are green. Or all Desideratians have one memory too much - a memory of growing up to toddler. All these are fixed, and much much more! My personal favorite are the new job memories in Desiderata Valley and Belladonna - they now correctly show career icon (instead of memory owner's picture), just like in all other hoods.

- All existing pregnancies "refreshed", because Pescado says that mega-merging hoods results in invalid pregnancy tokens (I suspect, for the same reason memories get corrupt). You won't even notice that the pregnancies has been fiddled with (unlike the previous version, preggos now have correct job levels). Additionally, you won't get the Brandi clone, cause she's really pregnant with Skip now!

- Broken Family Ties in Desiderata Valley and Belladonna Cove have been reattached! (I haven't noticed anything else wrong with Family Ties, but if you do, let me know. It can be easily fixed without me uploading the whole hood again.)

- Bella Goth is in the sim bin now, 35000$ and an extra cheesy description included. As a townie she suffers from a rather nasty memory loss (she doesn't loose all of her memories like a normal townie). I made her not remember anything after the abduction. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. The "real" Pleasantview Bella doesn't even have memories, and I believe Megahood Bella's memories are the work of SaraMK.

- All the neighborhood and family albums fixed. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they will work for you, so far it seems random. At the very least, you should get working individual family albums in 3 base hoods, which were not present in HP's hood.

- Various other small changes, not particularly important. I will make a full list of it eventually and attach it to this post...

Known Issues:
(possibly critical ones in cursive)

- If you have original Belladonna in your game, you must remove it prior to installing this hood. Otherwise you might encounter missing/misplaced lots problem, such as this one. I have no idea why this happens.

- Multiple PT Hacks with custom skintones DO NOT WORK in this hood. They DO work in HP's original hood. I have absolutely no clue what happened here. So, if you can't part with your colorful aliens, this hood may not be for you. Regular Multiple PT hacks do work though. If anyone has any idea what could be the problem here, please let me know. Tarlia has found the solution, which might theoretically work for this hood too.  See the solution!

- Tessa Ramirez and Oberon Gossamer have blank wants and fears. Also, Tessa has no DNA to start with. I tested extensivelly and lurked around MATY and it doesn't seem critical. Correct DNA generated for Tessa and she spawned normally. Wants and fears appear over time, as those two sims start doing things. You can accelerate this process by using Lot Debugger's "Wants > Reroll". Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.

- Sarah Crittur (the dog) delivers immediately when you move her in somewhere. This is due to the way pregnancy tokens are set up (or my inability to understand how pregnancy tokens are set up ) - when I changed the token's raw data numbers to match the original, the pregnancy token turned into a gossip about a dead Veronavillian. So I figured it's best to leave it as is. She'll still have 3 puppies with Danny as the father as expected.

- Denise Jacquet doesn't know her husband died. Teleport Xavier Jacquet to her home (you'll get "Xavier died on another lot" message, and he'll dissapear, problem solved) and/or use Lot Debugger's 'Fix > Dead romances'. If you don't do that she might throw errors at you under certain circumstances.

- Jill Smith and Bianca Monty (maybe more?) don't know that they're in their everyday wear. When you first load their lots, change them to Everyday (even though they already are in everyday, you'll have the option), or they might throw errors at you under certain circumstances.

(Other issues from previous versions have been fixed. Please report any weirdness you might encounter. As I said, I'm NOT going to deal with this hood any more but I do mean to play it eventually and I'd like to hear your experiences, for my own sake, and for the sake of downloaders).

Some tips:

- Do not attempt to add another shopping district to this hood, EVER! You may however delete shopping districts if you want - sims living in them will appear in the bin. The lots are what actually makes this hood so big, so it might be a good idea to do this if you're on a low-end machine or you lack disk space. From what I gathered it's still best to leave at least one shopping district. Besides, where else would you move all those families. Again, you cannot add a shopping district even if you delete some. You can safely add downtowns, universities and vacation destinations, but do use empty/clean templates, 'cause hood is already huge as it is.

- I named the hood N001 on purpose. You shouldn't have cloned hoods in your Neighborhoods folder at the same time. That means, having Pleasantview and HP's Megahoods in your Neighborhoods folder simultaneously is a potential VBT. If you play original Pleasantview, or any clone of Pleasantview, (or any other hood named N001 perhaps?), but you still want this hood, I suggest getting AnyGameStarter, or playing on a different Windows account, or simply switching the folders in and out of your documents/EA Games/Neighborhoods. But it's your game and all, and if you think this is just paranoid, use a batch-renaming utility to rename N001 to a higher number (for batch-renaming I simply use Windows Commander's "File > Multi-Rename Tool"). Remember, you don't rename just the folder, but also everything in it.

- You don't really need many townies with this much playables, but some will simply have to generate. Use norespawn hacks to control the population.

Thank yous (in chronological order, I guess):

- SaraMK, who wrote the hood-merging tutorial and started the whole trend.

- HystericalParoxysm, whose hood I shamelessly stole and edited.

- My LJ friends for checking things out for me, letting me know about things I didn't know, asking me to upload this and overall being awesome. Special thanks to phoenix-daisy/Tamha and engram_au. Thank you both for providing tons of feedback and information. Bit of Tamha's work is actually included in this hood, 'cause I was unable to do it myself.

- Lots of baaas to MATYians who know all the answers and did not poke me with pointy sticks! Special thanks (and apologies) to Mootilda who I bugged for nothing, and Kalina who saved the day by discovering and resolving yet another Bella problem. The first thing I'll do when I start playing is killing the bitch. [/oscar mode]

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The original first post is removed, as leaving it in would make the post too long. Messages following this post refer to the outdated version of this neighborhood. The actual feedback on the finished hood starts from this post.

[CatOfEvilGenius]

- I did all my dirty work from Don Lothario's house, and I saved his lot with Free Will Off

Couldn't the lot have been saved with free will on before upload?  I would have preferred that.

I think this is a worthwhile project.  Unfortunately, I'm not knowledgeable enough to help.

[Mixreality]

Of course it could, but I have forgotten about that. It's easy to set it back on in Game Options panel, so I don't see it as a really big problem, but I'll definitely set it to 'On' if I upload the complete fixed hood. I find this fixes system easy for in-between versions but I'll certainly fix the small stupidies (Don's free will and Head "Warlocks") in final version.

[Tamha]

(LJ user Phoenixdaisy, had the dumb Caliente problem that ended up being tight pants.)

Good to see you're still working on this project. If I have some time later I may see about installing this updated version and playing with it a bit to see how things work. (Last time I started having problems related to my vid drivers, then I was on to a different project, and totally forgot to play CU-MH more.)

Also, more than willing to muck in the SimPE if you want me to have a look at Tessa, though I've never tried to fix these before apart from deleting dangling SWAF's. I had this happen to Lucy Burb in Pleasantview once, I think it fixed itself finally , but I don't remember if it was after a few restarts and batbox resets or just when she turned teen, as this was like 2 years ago, lol. Also, curious about the extra LTA tokens, so if I do mess with those I'll post back.

Have you looked inside Bennie Monty's character file to see if there is anything weird looking in it, or is it just inexplicably massive? Might be a good opportunity to test how Compressorized character files function in game, hmmm....

[Mixreality]

Oh hai I appreciate it. What I'm most interested in is this:

(Here's how you can make sure it works. Install HP's Uber-Megahood or my cleaned version, doesn't matter. Load several lots and use Lot Debugger's function "Memory > Wipe Corrupted". Note the number of corrupted memories. Now delete hood. Install my hood again and apply the memory fix. Load same lots and wipe corrupted memories. There should be significantly less. 3 base hoods will still have some corrupted memories, mostly 5 per adult sim (3 toddler skills, 2 deaths, referring to dead unlinked relatives), sims who know lots of dead sims will quite expectedly have more than 5 (Olive comes to mind) and there'll be hardly any such memories in newer hoods, 'cause EA apparently got a clue.)

That would seal the deal whether the GUID numbers are unique for me and other people, and whether the entire memory fix works as intended (I know for certain that it fixes my own personal mess).

I haven't look at Tessa or Benedick problem at all, 'cause I'm still waiting for some directions. I only played with Tessa for like 2 days. Rerolling wants with bat box doesn't give her all wants and fears. She had them all only when I force-aged her to teen. I gathered from here that this thing is possibly not dangerous at all, so for now I'll just wait... If you do some experimenting please post back! Thank you!

[Tamha]

Heh, I got so into playing the Brokes today I didn't even get around to Tessa.   Much less SimPE poking past the initial fixes. Nice change for me actually, been a long time since I've just sat down and played one family for a whole night. 


ETA: Ok, so my Tessa was also still without wants or fears. I figured that Lucy Burb is a fine example of the average female 6 (they even wear the same dress in different colors). So, I extracted Lucy's SWAF to my desktop, and replaced Tessa's with it, ensuring that the instance was the same  and it still was linked to Tessa before saving and quitting SimPE. No idea how dangerous this is, but so far Tessa has wants of her own, and Lucy still has her wants, and after loading both households I ensured at least that the wants are not clones and neither house is crashing. Before doing all this I noticed that Checo threw an error the very first time I loaded the Ramierez, but he seems fine. Can't really be sure though, I've never played the Bluewater families before.

[Mixreality]

Crap crap crap crap crap!

It never occured to me to replace her SWAF with a healthy one, so I extracted Tessa's SWAF from original B001 that came with the game with an intention of replacing Megahood Tessa SWAF (just to see what would happen). And guess what - there isn't any SWAF of Tessa's in a Megahood! I could swear that I did look in her SWAF but apparently it was after loading Ramirez lot (during some previous poking couple of weeks ago). So (I think) the good news is that SWAF does generate and it behaves pretty nicely - there was a blank fear slot after like 2 days of playing, but the type of wants and fears was normal for a kid and there were no errors. I'll finish the original Tessa SWAF test tomorrow.

Now the REALLY bad news is that she doesn't have a DNA!  I don't think that DNA generates. Just checked in HP's original uber-megahood and she doesn't have SWAF or SDNA there either. While it's a bit comforting to know I didn't mess it up myself, I feel bad for not noticing it before and scared that there might be more sims with missing DNA. I'm not talking DNA lines, but entire DNA resources. Total number of SDSC compared to total number of SDNA (630 vs. 613) does NOT sound good at all!

I guess that Tessa could be fixed by cloning someone else's DNA (like her mom's), correcting it if needed and setting Tessa's instance number, then growing her up, knocking her up and seeing what happens. Or - adding her own healthy DNA from B001. Will try both.

Thank you for your help! I really need it, this whole thing is a mess.

[Tamha]

Ugh, what a mess. You know, if you do find more like this (and I'm going to look to) I may just make a brand new Clean Uber-Megahood and have you help me test it, instead!  Before I found your version I had already done a lot of the prep work, I just would have to go back and re-fix my PV and ST as I still have the dupes in my version. And I may have dumped Abjeet and the Meredith, as for some reason they knew her but she wasn't showing any relation to them anyway from SimPE, so I may need to just redo ST anyway.....

ETA: She has her DNA in my game, so it must have generated. Here it is so you can compare it to her original DNA.

ETA2: I'm showing 641 SDSC to 987 SDNA, so they must regenerate somehow, but that means that less than a half of the Sims have DNA to start with (641-630=11, 987-11=976, 976-613=363, 630-363=267)

ETA3: Since I was in SimPE anyway, I had a look at Phoebe the Witch, and she wasn't showing Samantha in Relations/[All Households]. So I opened Samantha and removed then added the relation from her end, and now she is showing in Phoebe's relations. Heading into game now to see if I can make a witch.

ETA4: That seemed to work, I called up Phoebe and then asked to be a witch. And she made Sam into a witch, no hesitation or anything. So a similar approach would probably work for Meredith and Circe.

[Mixreality]

ETA2: I'm showing 641 SDSC to 987 SDNA, so they must regenerate somehow, but that means that less than a half of the Sims have DNA to start with (641-630=11, 987-11=976, 976-613=363, 630-363=267)

Well, shit, of course! All the DNAs of the 360 something deleted townies are in those 613 too. I just opened HP's hood and it has 970 DNAs prior to loading the hood (and 997 SDSC). WTF?!  I haven't touched DNAs while deleting.

Oh dear, I was actually looking at SWAFs yestersday; there are no 613 DNAs but 613 SWAFs, and 983 DNAs. Silly me. All is good in the world. And Tessa's DNA generated, good, wonderfull. I'm dealing with a toothache from hell and can't think straight right now, so I'll compare it later.

Ugh, what a mess. You know, if you do find more like this (and I'm going to look to) I may just make a brand new Clean Uber-Megahood and have you help me test it, instead!  Before I found your version I had already done a lot of the prep work, I just would have to go back and re-fix my PV and ST as I still have the dupes in my version. And I may have dumped Abjeet and the Meredith, as for some reason they knew her but she wasn't showing any relation to them anyway from SimPE, so I may need to just redo ST anyway.....

Then you'll end up with wrong memory $Subject GUIDs again, and that memory fix took me weeks to finish it. But it was kind of fun, so if you have time, then by all means make a fresh one, and I'll help you test it and stuff. I also accidentaly deleted Abhi..., Meredith and the witches, but instead of starting all over I cloned them and made them townies/head witches (and some of the relationship settings just wouldn't stick, hence the current problems with them). Anyway, you don't have to redo ST, just dump those two in and make them townies.

[Tamha]

Yeah, the memories and pregnancies would be the biggest complications to fix, but if the regenerated SDNA is the same as the original that's good enough for me, especially with the adjustment I just tried for Phoebe working out.

[Mixreality]

I compared it and the newly generated DNA is the same as the original. Double checked. Wonderful. I love when stuff fix themselves It could be because both of Tessa's parents have same genes as her, though. Newly generated DNA, or more specificaly, recessive genes might not be correct for sims whose parents have different traits, but that's ok with me. Checking 600+ sims for missing DNA, just in order not to get homozygous sims, is not on my to-do list.

Ok, one more thing left to do with Tessa is growing her up and breeding her. If all goes well, I'll leave her as is, 'cause that would definitely mean SWAF and SDNA generate as needed.

Now, dangling family instances and orphaned clothing collections... I'll add links later to some scattered posts about that, but I'm definitely gonna need some help with it. I'm lost at step 1, and if I skip it, I'm lost at step 2... And Benedick Monty's file - well, I opened it but it's all giberish to me, I'll have to lurk moar.

[Tamha]

I really should take the time to have a look at him at least once I shut my game down. While it's mostly imposing gibberish to me as well, I'm hoping that I've looked at enough character files to be able to spot glaring irregularities. 

[Mixreality]

Ok, I managed to clear the extra family informations, orphaned clothing collections and stuff. Here's what I did (if I did something horribly wrong, please, anyone, let me know before I upload the new version):

- Used Theo's Wardrobe Cleaner on all non-playable families that no longer exist and on townie and npc families that once had crapload of members but now only have several. Number of BINX and 3IDR resources went down by about a 1000.
- Deleted empty families.
- Deleted text lists, collections, BINX and 3IDR resources with same instance numbers as deleted empty families.
- Renamed townie and npc families to "Townies" and "NPC" instead of some random generated names.
- Tested briefly. Nobody showed up nekkid or dressed weird. New apartment residents generated in correct clothing (I moved Bella in that crappy apartment building near the trailer park, and bohos generated as expected). Bella (who was still in the townie family during cleaning) had her gray PJs like she's supposed to (I think).

* * *

Tested breeding DNA-less Tessa. Everything was fine. So I'll leave her as is and wont look for other sims with no DNA.

* * *

Fixed my previous stupidies (Don's Free Will,  preggos' jobs, witches' titles, Phoebe and Meredith missing from Samantha Cordial's and Circe's relationship panel).

* * *

Stuff yet to be looked into:

- Benedick Monty (huge character file, around 1200 kb). I've opened his character file and it has 32 geometric data containers (GMDC). Opened Buck Grunt and Alexander Goth and they have 8 and 10 GMDC respectively. So the number varies. Still must lurk around to find out more about this. Done! Thank you Tamha!

- Oberon Gossamer (Summerdream) also has blank wants but not all of them  He's unable to propose marriage to Tit but she's able to propose to him. What does all this mean? I've read somewhere around here that bunch of Capps are unable to propose to Montys and vice versa, and that EA says it's by design. Anyway, I'm contemplating deleting Oberon's SWAF 'cause I somehow think that SWAF-less Tessa behaves better (can't really put my finger on why I think so). Must test. ETA - He doesn't have SWAF either.

- Fix job-related memories in Desiderata and Belladonna (currently show memory owner's picture instead of career icon, for most sims in these 2 hoods). This is merely cosmetic.

- I've messed with Sarah Crittur's pregnancy token to "refresh" it, like all other existing pregnancies. She gives birth to three puppies (as expected) and Danny is the father (as expected) but as soon as you move her in somewhere, she delivers (not as expected, some time should pass). When I attempt to set raw data in her token to completely match the original, her token turns into a gossip about a dead Veronavillian guy, so I left it as is (she delivers immediately). Is this ok?

- Check how hood behaves in non-Pets, non-BV game ('cause user reported that it behaves pretty nicely. Game informs that those two EPs are "uninstalled" and that all sims who were on vacation are brought back etc. Cyd Roseland's in the bin but without the dog).

- Can someone who played HP's Uber-Megahood before inform me of problems they encountered, please? I've only played briefly. Uber-Megahood only (one with Belladonna Cove).
ETA - After some lurking around, here's what needs to be checked:
-Behaviour of hood with entire awesomeware installed, specifically Jill Smith, Bianca Monthy, warmthfixes, macro launcher...
-Send Cass and Don on honeymoon in Takemizu.

[Tamha]

I was just looking at Benedick, he should have 8 GMDC, same as the number of GMND he has. I removed the ones that were alone (not connected to any GMND's, CRES's or Shapes) and did a quick and dirty aging test with the Blender, and he seemed fine. Need to make sure he doesn't crash at a mirror, changing or breeding still, but attaching cleaner version so you can test it as well.

(I messed with these in a non-game sim once trying to fix a broken BS sim I had on my machine, also these are the resources that are attached to meshes.)

ETA: If you go into the Sim Descriptions and then the Relations panel and have it show all households, pretty much everyone is marked as being related to everyone else in the neighborhood they are from. This is most prevalent in Veronaville, Riverblossom and Desiderata, though there are instances in all the neighborhoods. This is why the Capp's and Monty's can't get married to each other and Oberon can't propose to Titania.

ETA2: If you have trouble fixing it yourself, I can do it later. I have done this a few times, though it's easier with the individual hoods than this one. Be best to do with your most updated Neighborhood package, since almost all Sim descriptions and relations have to be altered.

[Mixreality]

ETA: If you go into the Sim Descriptions and then the Relations panel and have it show all households, pretty much everyone is marked as being related to everyone else in the neighborhood they are from. This is most prevalent in Veronaville, Riverblossom and Desiderata, though there are instances in all the neighborhoods. This is why the Capp's and Monty's can't get married to each other and Oberon can't propose to Titania.

Do you mean related/unrelated tick boxes on the upper-left of the plugin window where you get to filter relationships? I think it's supposed to do that, as "related" basically come down to "known sims". Or do you mean that the "Family" check-box is ticked for non-relatives? Now, about that, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that it's actually alright. Game doesn't really consider such sims as relatives if you don't set the "Type of family relationship" from the drop-down menu. On top of that, family box actually *needs* to be ticked or relationship setting doesn't stick. Of course, that's just me thinking out loud, I have yet to actually look into it.

ETA - Ah, I just noticed that you already did it before, so it actually is needed. Crap...

ETA 2 - Just checked Oberon and Titania. Their relationship settings are identical. They're both set as Known, Friends, Buddies, Love, Family (undefined relation type), with over 80 points in daily and lifetime relationships. Yet she's able to propose and he's not. Btw, I haven't mentioned that Oberon could propose engagement, just not marriage. Also, I opened up couple of random sims from other hoods and they're all set as Family too. Like, Ophelia and Johnny Smith of which I'm sure many people married without a hitch. So something tells me that this particular mess-up is somewhere other than relationship settings.

I was just looking at Benedick, he should have 8 GMDC, same as the number of GMND he has. I removed the ones that were alone (not connected to any GMND's, CRES's or Shapes) and did a quick and dirty aging test with the Blender, and he seemed fine. Need to make sure he doesn't crash at a mirror, changing or breeding still, but attaching cleaner version so you can test it as well.

Ah, so that's it. Groovy, thank you! Off to test.

[Tamha]

I played with Benedick a bit more, that does seem to help.

As for the family settings, I don't have any idea why it messes up some sims and not others, but whenever I do make those changes I stop having those particular problems. *shrug* But, as Vv is the worst (as I mentioned before) and I actually almost never play it, I can only vouch for it definitely fixing Oberon and Titania for me for some strange reason. Already made the alterations in my playtesting CUMH so I'll pop it open and check how they are working for me really quick.

My Oberon had no problems starting the marriage vows to Titania. However, I transported in Antonio Monty and Miranda Capp, made her an adult, set their relationships to max and love, and they could get engaged but neither could propose marriage. So while that that fixed the Summerdream issue, it doesn't fix the Capps and Montys, I guess. Which means that the problems must not be related, my "fix" works for the Summerdreams, but not for allowing Capps and Montys to intermix.

ETA: I am guessing that the Summerdreams are an actual bug while the Monty/Capp thing is a "feature", so if a particular EAxis couple has problems getting married, removing the family tie in their sim description in SimPE will probably fix it, but not if they're Capps or Montys?

Since not all couples have the problem it's hard to be sure. In the case of a couple like Johnny Smith and Ophelia Nigmos, them aging to adults may prevent the invisible tie to be a problem. Or Oberon and Titania are an exception because they already have children (though adopted) together and are therefore already linked in the actual family tree as well. The dual tie in the tree and the relation resource combining to prevent the union, somehow.

Ugh, seems to me to be flaky like in-laws, step-family and distant cousins. Sometimes they can engage in love and marriage and sometimes they can't.

[Mixreality]

Current progress time:

- Deleted excess LTA - Inited tokens of Pauline Aspir, Etsu Cho and Marcus Baldwin. Tested Pauline only (extensively). Nothing blew up.

- Fixed Benedick. Ok, I lied. Didn't quite know what I was doing so I plopped Tamha's file in. Tested extensively. Works like a charm.

- Set Oberon and Tit as non-family. Both are able to propose, but the Summerdream kids will get some memories that "Titania joined the family". I'm not quite sure I like it. Because Tamha says that unticking family boxes did NOT fix random Monty/Capp couple, I'm leaving everyone else as they were, 'cause the numbers of potential couples to check (even in Veronaville only) is absolutely insane.

- While Meredith the bartender now IS on Circe's relationship panel, she's not listed in Circe's phonebook. Silly workaround is calling Service > Bartender. Meredith will arrive, nag that the Beakers don't even have a bar, than ask Circe would she like to hang out now that her "work" is done. She'll also take 10$ for arriving Now, after they spend some time together and Meredith leaves, Circe is STILL not able to call her. WTF? Tamha, is your Circe able to call Meredith? Other NPCs are fine (I tested Kaylin and both witches, Phoebe is definitely fixed).

- Now, those goddamn job memories. In two latest hoods (Desiderata and Belladonna), EAxis messed something up. Memory owner shows up as memory subject too (and in previous hoods there is no memory subject at all). This results in memory owner's picture showing in job-related memory (instead of career icon) in those two hoods. I still can't for the life of me figure out how to remove memory subject in SimPE. So I resorted to messing with raw data, but again, all giberish to me. I did a little test in game - got Victor Aspir promoted and compared the new, normal memory to one of the old, non-normal ones. Still giberish, so... here:



This is the old memory, showing Victor's picture.




This is the new memory showing (medical) career icon.

They're more different than I thought. I only managed to identify line 04 (0x035a) and that's Victor's instance number. Removing that line will remove him as memory owner (VBT), and NOT as memory subject.
Hm, just checked Circe Beaker who's also in medical and she has lines 05 and 06 same as Victor. So that makes 61fd0c77 the instance number for medical. (Or is it 0c7761fd?) Anyway, I'll check whether fixing just those two lines does something or not. ETA - It does, so I'll start the fixing, unless someone tells me not to.
I suppose that removing memory subject, if possible, wouldn't really do any good, 'cause lines 05&06 are incorrect. But the big question is - is this only a cosmetic fix? I fear that it actually isn't 'cause raw data of the right and wrong memory differ so much. But then again, I have no idea what I'm talking about. If it really is cosmetic only, I'm leaving it as is. It's too much of a hassle for something that people don't even look at anyway.

- And after that, testing and uploading. I'll try compressorizing the files, but before I do that, I'd appreciate if someone tells me that it's a VBT to do.
ETA - Compresorrized hood works just fine, but the difference is so minimal that it's not worth imposing unknown risk to downloaders. So, no compressorizing.
Again, stuff I particularly need to test are:
-How hood behaves with entire awesomeware installed and controllers present on lot. Specifficaly Jill Smith and Bianca Monty.
-Cass and Don, honeymoon in Takemizu, with and without norespawn hacks.

[phyllis_p]

- While Meredith the bartender now IS on Circe's relationship panel, she's not listed in Circe's phonebook. Silly workaround is calling Service > Bartender. Meredith will arrive, nag that the Beakers don't even have a bar, than ask Circe would she like to hang out now that her "work" is done. She'll also take 10$ for arriving Now, after they spend some time together and Meredith leaves, Circe is STILL not able to call her. WTF? Tamha, is your Circe able to call Meredith? Other NPCs are fine (I tested Kaylin and both witches, Phoebe is definitely fixed).

I've been following your thread because uberhoods interest me.  Anyway, wanted to comment on Meredith Lillard, the bartender.  In my last incarnation of Strangetown, someone set Nervous Subject up with Meredith Lillard as a blind date (networking interaction).  They totally fell for each other.  However, when Nervous tried to call her to ask her out, she was not in his phonebook.  I've played Strangetown many times and know that, at least before Freetime and Apartment Life, Meredith did used to be in Circe's phone book, so I went over there to look; nope, she wasn't in Circe's book, either.  Anyway, since I was not playing an uber-hood, I wanted to let you know that this seems to be either Freetime or AL borkage and nothing that you've done. (I was late getting both expansions, got them at the same time a few months ago).

[gynarchy]

Anyway, since I was not playing an uber-hood, I wanted to let you know that this seems to be either Freetime or AL borkage and nothing that you've done. (I was late getting both expansions, got them at the same time a few months ago).

Yeah it was Free Time that stupidly removed NPCs from the phone book. Paladin has a fix for it over at Sim Wardrobe.

[Mixreality]

Ah, thank you both, that's good to know. I'll test the Beakers with that Paladin's hack installed. ETA - Well, of course it works!

Now about that job memories - I finally figured it out and it's really easy  It's all about entering career GUID in lines 05 and 06, and career GUIDs are right there in SDSC. The only thing is, some sims are unemployed so I don't know which career they were in. I'm hoping I can find out in game, but I'll do all already-employed sims first. I realize it's a crazy thing to do, but I guess I need distractions.

[Tamha]

Ack, didn't even think to check everyone's memories when I was testing before. May also help to check Tit and Oberon without the relations removed (so she must be the proposer) and see if the kids still get the memories for Oberon joining the family that way.

I'll unzip my backup of the neighborhood from before I started messing with it and see what happens there, too.

Ok, weird, my Oberon still had no problem starting the marriage vows without removing the family ties (although I know I did have that not work in the past in Vv). What happened is whoever started the vows didn't get extra memories, but the other person "joined the family". So if Oberon starts the marriage, Titania "joins", but if Tit starts then Oberon "joins".

I don't know, weirdness again.

[Mixreality]

Now when I actually thought of it, it was supposed to be like it was in the first place - if Oberon could propose marriage, then they would be Gossamers and the kids would still be Summerdreams. Although, Oberon's last name is Summerdream too in the original Veronaville out of the box, but eh, who would ever understand maxoids. My heads gonna explode... Anyway, I set them back to family, but both are able to propose again. And then there all those 'joined family' memories (proposed sim, say Oberon, will get "Tit...", "Puck..." and "Bottom joined family" memories). Crap. If I go back to particular backup where Summerdreams were untouched, I'll have to redo some changes I rather wouldn't. And I'm not even sure which backup contains which particular changes, I lack labelling skills. Double crap. So that particular mess of mine will remain present. Well, nobody even looks at memories, right? Right. Besides, if I understood it correctly, you used a backup without family box unticked and it behaved just the same as if they were unticked??? WTH? It's getting curiouser and curioser! Head goes boom. Let's just pretend nothing ever happened, heh?
I don't even know how to describe this in the "Known issues" section of the final version, without making it too long and confusing. Perhaps I'll just keep my mouth shut and see if anyone will notice and report

Job memories - it was much, much easier and quicker to do than I thought. So yay, it's fixed! Except Isabel Baldwin and Timoty Rilley - they have job memories, but are unemployed and I have no idea what career they were supposedly in, so I left them as they were. Also Sophia Jocque had a job prior to her current one and I don't know which. Most likely it's a maxoid mistake (another 'got a job' instead of another 'got promoted' memory), but again, as it was. I changed one thing not related to Desiderata/Belladonna though - Trent Traveller bio says he was in Law career then decided to quit it and travel the world with his family. His memories point to Law Enforcement (naturally, so the Traveller family is only TS2/BV compatible). Well, because Megahood requires Free Time anyway, I changed it to Law. You don't get bored and travel-crazy from being a cop, but you do from being a lawyer, right? Right, again.

Aaand, just when I thought this whole thing is complete, I had to discover yet another quirk Patels (politician and his pregnant wife in Belladonna) have punks as neighbors! Their apartment lot value is set to 'Low' and I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be that way. I played them once before in original Belladonna and they had sporty people as neighbors. Baldwins' lot is 'Middle' (I think it's supposed to be 'High'). One of the really nice looking apartment building near the beach is set as 'Low'. Btw, I checked the newly generated social groups and they're dressed correctly, as much as I can see with all the missing thumbnails in SimPe. So, my guess is that groups go where they're supposed to, but the lot values are not set correctly. I never really played much with social groups and apartments, so... back to lurking. But I'll ask some quick questions anyway, just in case someone reads this and is in a good mood. What determines lot value? Which social groups inhabit which areas (exactly)? Do Jocks normaly generate in that stupid painted torso 'outfit'? I moved a sim in middle value lot, he had 3 neighbors from 3 different groups - jock, bohemian, techie. Is this normal?

[Mootilda]

I believe that the lot class value is determined by:

1) an override value which exists in the lot package (EA sets these override values before shipping the neighborhood, but the game doesn't allow us to set them ourselves)
2) OR the actual price of the lot modified by:
- the type of lot (it's easier to get a high-class residential lot than a high-class apartment building)
- the surrounding lot class values (for about 6 tiles in each direction)

In spite of any rumors you may have heard, the lot class value is not affected by any neighborhood decorations.

EA provides 3 cheats related to the lot class values:  one to display the current value, one to clear the override flag (option 1) which forces the value to be recalculated (option 2), and one to set the value temporarily (since we can't set the override flag, the value is lost as soon as you exit the lot).

[Mixreality]

Many thanks!

I'll try that recalculating thing and see what happens, but I'm not very optimistic. If that fails, looks like the only thing I can do is yet another 'Known Issues' item in the hood's description. Sigh. And I'll include the instructions on how to temporary set the lot value. I suppose temporarily setting, for example, the Patels' lot value to 'Middle' for the first time someone loads their lot will get middle class neighbors to generate. Of course, I'm only thinking out loud here, I have to actually test if it works that way and find those cheats... I've been slackin'.

ETA - Reread. Looks like the lot values had already been recalculated, huh? I might try replacing megahood lot packages with original ones...

[Mootilda]

I should have mentioned that I've added code to the LotAdjuster to allow you to set the lot class value and corresponding override flag.  So, you should be able to set the values yourself.  As well, you should be able to change them using SimPE, although maybe not using the lot description plugin (ie, hex-edit only).  I could look into this if you don't want to install the LA.

The hard part is determining what the values should be.  Every kind of lot seems to require a different value range for High, Middle, and Low.  I have a few notes from my testing, but they are incomplete.  If you're interested, I could try to find them.  Alternatively, I have a program which will print out the lot class values, so I could get you a list of the original values, if you like.