Transferring Neighborhood = Renamed Townies?

[Aimlak]

I have a neighborhood from quite a while ago that I started a legacy on, and since getting a better computer, trying out The Horror and quickly getting bored of it, I decided to install Sims 2 on the new computer and transfer over the old 'hood and continue playing it. It's not the first time I transferred a 'hood between computers (or loaded backups) so I thought I had done it same as normal, but when I went in to play, all of the townies who I had married into my family have been renamed (My poor sim's husband has been renamed to Allison). And it's not only the townies, but also my family's servo. I never noticed this happen before, but to be honest I never payed much attention, so I could very well just be doin' it rong.

Anyone know what the heck I did to cause this?

[kazebird]

Could you have overwrote the neighborhood's folder in the game, instead of deleting, and then replacing the folder?

If you did, this is VBT.

[Aimlak]

I don't think it would have been possible to have done that. It was a fresh install on a newly formatted computer that had never had Sims 2 on it before, and the first thing I did was to get rid of the Maxis neighborhoods before anything else. There shouldn't have been anything to be overwritten.

[rufio]

What did you do, exactly?

[Aimlak]

I just copied the entire N004 folder from the neighborhoods folder over into the new neighborhoods folder.

Edit: So I spent a bit of time looking at exactly which sims had their names changed, and so far I've found that sims in the main 'hood created in CAS or born during gameplay kept their names. Townies/dormies that married into the family got renamed, as did any sims who had been adopted into the family, a CAS dog, and a servo, however a Takemizu Village vacation local who married into the family kept her name. In one Uni 'hood (Sim State University) all of the playable's names are intact. In another Uni 'hood (a completely custom one) all of the playables (all created in Create-a-Student) got name changes. Many name changes are repeats of each other, and a large percent are wrong gender names. Haven't got a clue how it decided which sims it felt like renaming.

[Tarlia]

Actually, I remember this happening to me long ago when I installed Pets (I only had the base game at the time). Several of my sims in my Pleasantview got renamed, random townie names which didn't always fit the gender. I don't think it was just former townies that were affected, though, but I don't think any of the original PV sims were. I don't think it's anything dangerous, just some sort of glitch, possibly related to EP changes. You could rename them in SimPE. Which EPs do you have installed?

[Aimlak]

I think the old neighborhood was on a game with everything up to FT, and this new computer now has all EPs and SPs. I don't really even care about the names so much, since its been so long since I played that I can barely remember what they were in the first place, I just want to make sure I didn't do something stupid that's going to lead my 'hood to a BFBVFS.

[haifen]

I remember my sims names all got changed when I switched from English to French. Perhaps you at some point changed from idk US English to UK English or vice versa?

* haifen shrugs

[Aimlak]

Hah, you know that might actually be it. I'm not sure but I think my old installation was US English, and this new one is UK English. Of course my first question would have to turn out to be something dumb like that.

[soozelwoozel]

I remember my sims names all got changed when I switched from English to French. Perhaps you at some point changed from idk US English to UK English or vice versa?

* haifen shrugs

I doubt that's the problem. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between UK English and UK English names in TS2. Why on earth would they bother changing the names? SILLY HAIFENS.

[Tarlia]

I doubt that's the problem. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between UK English and UK English names in TS2. Why on earth would they bother changing the names? SILLY HAIFENS.

I don't think it's a case of EAxis "bothering" to change the names, but more likely some sort of unintended side effect. I had a quick look at my randomly generated townies in SimPE, and the names are mostly the same in all languages. This could mean that they don't really have names in all the other languages, so perhaps the game rerandomizes them when an EP is installed in a different language, no matter what that language is?

With EAxis, anything is possible.

Either way, this is their doing and not the OP's.

[Aimlak]

With EAxis, anything is possible.

Either way, this is their doing and not the OP's.

Well, as long as it's EAxis' fail and not mine. I'm pretty used to them doing dumb things. Time for me to go rename a bunch of sims then play it out to see when something goes boom.

[haifen]

If someone would bother to recreate this issue we can haz a better understanding maybe [/Zoidberg] Not me though, I don't feel like doing the dance of the disks tonight

Oh and:

As far as I can tell, there is no difference between UK English and UK English names in TS2.

wat

[J. M. Pescado]

This is precisely what happens if you end up switching from EN_UK to EN_US or vice versa: The game will find null strings or garbage in all the names and generate random replacement names or spit back garbage.