Empty and Cleaned-up Templates. [UPDATED]

[duderocks]

Hi!

There seems to be a problem with the Bluewater cleaned-up template.

Issues:

Tessa Ramirez had no wants and fears upon entering the household (adding want/fear slots using inSim will lead to the slots going black with locks).
When I grow her up to a teen, she doesn't roll a LTW.

I restored the original Bluewater and she went fine

This was tested in 3 hoods.

I have Uni, NL, OFB and Seasons, no SPs

Can you update the Bluewater template, or is there a workaround for this? I want to use this to merge my Riverblossom again (I had to delete it because of this)

[SaraMK]

Tessa Ramirez had no wants and fears upon entering the household (adding want/fear slots using inSim will lead to the slots going black with locks).
When I grow her up to a teen, she doesn't roll a LTW.

Hmm. I've never had that problem, but I'll look at it.

I've never seen black wants and fears. Did you mean blank? There are several causes of blank wants and fears.

Anyway, I'll take a look at it. It hasn't been updated since OFB came out, so it is possible something was changed in Pets or Seasons that could be screwing things up.

[duderocks]

The wants and fears are indeed blank when I enter the game (they go black when I attempt to add an extra want slot). It's something like a dangling SWAF (I'm an idiot and I'm scared of fixing it with SimPe without some instruction)

BTW, It's from a freshly downloaded copy of the file, and the problem only persisted on Tessa and not on the other Bluewater people.

[vcline]

I'm installing Seasons this weekend (already have all the other EPs), and want to play Riverblossom Hills with all the Maxis-made sims, then attach your cleaned-up La Fiesta Tech and an empty downtown.  Is there any reason I should also attach a shopping district?  I think I can own and visit businesses in the main neighborhood and in downtown.  What would I be missing if I left out a shopping district?

And thanks so much for these templates.   

[Simsane]

I am sure someone with a lot more knowledge will answer you, but in my game, I always attach Bluewater Village then I never end up going.  I send sim teens to various Uni's and I have my sims go downtown, but the one time I did go to Bluewater Village (thinking I would have my sim parents buy their sim kids some toys) most of the stores were empty due to the fact that I never play the families in Bluewater.  So I have never bothered to go back.  lol

Anyway, my question (not related to the above) is that I thought I was going to end up with Pleasantville, Veronaville, Strangetown and Riverblossom Hills being empty of sims but just having all the houses and buildings when I downloaded the files that were listed under the empty part.  Not the files further down that said they only had the Maxis playable families/sims, but the one above that.  I have tried three times and I do get the files and I followed step-by-step (no, I did not replace under My Documents, but C:/ProgramFiles/EAGames/etc.) and when I go into the game, I still have families in every neighborhood.  Oh, and I first tried your N001.  When I still had families, I did like Jordi suggested and changed it to N001-bak.  Still families.  Was I misinterpreting something?

I do appreciate all the hard work everyone else has done and I'm not saying anyone here has done anything wrong, but does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? 

[SaraMK]

Still families.  Was I misinterpreting something?

I do appreciate all the hard work everyone else has done and I'm not saying anyone here has done anything wrong, but does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? 

If you tell me which families you are still getting, I could tell you where they're coming from. Without that it's pretty much impossible to know.

Most likely you missed the note that said that some of the templates (Pets and Seasons) ALSO dump some families into the families bin, and you have to delete those yourself (my files won't help). That's the thing a lot of people seem to miss.

I think I'll go and clean up the first post so it's more clear.

Is there any reason I should also attach a shopping district?  I think I can own and visit businesses in the main neighborhood and in downtown.  What would I be missing if I left out a shopping district?

Sub-neighborhoods do have special coding. The Uni coding is obvious -- mascots and the coach barge in, you can have dorms... etc. The NL sub-hood is the place to find grand vampires, and sims will come to community lots at night. I don't know if the shopping district has anything really special about it. I haven't seen any evidence that it does, but it's possible.

There's no reason to attach sub-hoods that you aren't interested in. I rarely attach a shopping district, and sometimes don't bother with the Downtown either. It's up to you.

[Simsane]

First of all, I do have my own neighborhood and when I go into SimPE, it lists the townies I have created so far (I'm not done, there are only about 15 or 16 so far), and some NPC characters such as the psychiatrist, social bunny, a stinky skunk (! - I don't have Pets) and a few others.  So I seem to have done something right so far, I could continue to just simply play my neighborhood, it's just that I wanted to be able to have to option of playing in the other neighborhoods as well.

I'm sure you are probably getting frustrated trying to help people, but I swear I read every post here and on Jordi's thread before I bothered you.  But if you don't want (or just simply cannot) help, I'll understand, afterall, you have a life beyond the sims too and it's not like it's life threatening or anything.  So, please don't help unless it doesn't put you out.  I'll just play my own blank neighborhood and keep trying to figure out what I did wrong.

But in case you or someone else does have time:

Riverblossom Hills:
  Roth - 4 members
  Wan - 2 members
  McGreggor - 1 sim
  O'Mackey - 2 members
  Greenman - 3 members
  Viego - 4 members

In sim bin:  O'Mackey - 1 sim

Pleasantview:
  Goth - 3 members
  Pleasant - 4 members
  Dreamer - 2 members
  Caliente - 2 members
  Lothario - 1 sim
  Broke - 3 members

In sim bin:  Burb - 3 members; Oldie - 2 members

Strangetown:
  Curious - 3 members
  Grunt - 4 members
  Smith - 4 members
  Beaker - 3 members
  Specter - 2 members

In sim bin:  Loner - 1 sim; Singles - 4 members

I have not gone into SimPE and checked out how many sims are listed for any neighborhood except the one blank one.  I checked it at the point in Jordi's thread where he said that there should be 0 or else you did something wrong.  There were 0 at the time I checked.  I didn't think to look at the other ones at that time.  It wasn't until I had made the 32 sims in bodyshop that Jordi suggested and then I thought I would like to put them into Pleasantview.  That's when I discovered the houses were still occupied so I have been putting them in a blank neighborhood.

Before I did this, I completely uninstalled all the games and reinstalled, then downloaded most of JM's directors' cut for Seasons.

If you need more information, let me know.  And please, don't feel pressured, as I said I can live without it and I do really appreciate the time and effort you have spent to help.

[SaraMK]

Okay, you haven't done anything wrong, you just misunderstood what the empty templates would do, and then I misunderstood your problem.

The empty templates don't do anything to Strangetown, Veronaville, or the main Riverblossom (the one you can select from the neighborhood screen). So, the fact that you have all the sims there is the way it should be.

Pleasantview should be completely empty if you downloaded and installed the Empty Pleasantview template. However, it will not be empty unless the game regenerated Pleasantview after  you installed the Empty Pleasantview template. If you already had Pleasantview, it won't be affected at all. The purpose of the Empty Pleasantview template is so that Pleasantview's townies and NPC's won't get dumped into newly created custom neighborhoods. The fact that the empty template makes Pleasantview empty is basically just a side-effect, not the main feature.

If you want empty Veronaville and Strangetown, there is a link on page 2 of this thread. Someone else asked about this and I uploaded the empty templates for her or him. Again, existing Veronaville and Strangetown won't be affected. They will only be empty if the game regenerates them after you install the empty templates. There currently isn't an empty Riverblossom available, but you can use the DAC code and then clean things up in SimPE to make it yourself.

[Simsane]

Oh, thank you for explaining this.   If I want a completely emply Pleasantview to play, then I need to uninstall again, reinstall but before I even open the game, put the empty template files in place, then open the game?  That's how I get the towns with all the buildings intact, but no playable sims, right?

Thank you again for responding so quickly and I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear to begin with.

Edited to ask:

If I put Argon's empty Pleasantview in place (instead of the other empty template) will I still have the houses?  I only ask because when I downloaded his to try, I noticed he had a folder called Lots but there was nothing in it.  If I save the original lots folder, can I put Argon's N001 in then just replace his Lots folder with the original one or will that undo all the work you and Argon did to clean it up?

[SaraMK]

You don't need to reinstall the game.

Install the empty template(s) first. Then choose one of the options below:

If you don't have any neighborhoods that you want to keep:

Then go to C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

Delete the Neighborhoods folder.

The game will regenerate the Maxis neighborhoods the next time you run the game.

If you want to keep your custom neighborhoods:

Open C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\

N001 = Pleasantview
N002 = Strangetown
N003 = Veronaville

Delete the ones that you want to replace with empty versions.

Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

Copy the appropriate folders (N001, N002, etc) and paste them into C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

Riverblossom will have to be emptied manually, since there is no empty template for it. You will need to know how to clean up the neighborhood file  (SWAFs and so on) after using DeleteAllCharacters.

Download the empty Riverblossom here: http://www.box.net/shared/pj0l8rspi6

• Open C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\
• Make a backup of the G001 folder
• Open the G001 folder. Delete everything inside the Characters folder and delete the file G001_Neighborhood.package
• Unzip the downloaded file, which is G001_Neighborhood.package. Place this into the G001 folder
• Copy and paste the G001 folder into C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\ like you did for Pleasantview, etc.

As far as Argon's template, I'm actually not sure.

If you want to keep the houses, I would use MY template, not his, since he may have deleted the code for the houses from inside his template.

[jrd]

I wouldn't use DAC to empty G001. DAC seems to mess up subsequent townie/NPC spawning since it leaves a lot of crap behind. Sure you *can* fix it, but why not do it right from the start?

To make your own empty template from scratch:
-Backup G001 (in Seasons\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods) or make sure you have the Seasons disk to restore from for future patches
-Delete the /Characters and /Thumbnails subfolders from G001
-Open G001_Neighborhood.package.package in SimPe and delete ALL Sims. Most should now be "unknown". Save and close the file (not SimPE, unless you like waiting).
-Reopen the file, and remove all Sim relationships if any are left. Ditto for all SDNA.
-Save the file.

These instructions should also work for any other 'hood, including the unis, downtown, and bluewater. It also works for the P001 and G002 cloaked 'hoods.

[SaraMK]

-Reopen the file, and remove all Sim relationships if any are left. Ditto for all SDNA.

And SWAFs, don't forget SWAFs.   

[Simsane]

SaraMK and Jordi,

Thanks to both of you, it's a relief I don't need to uninstall and reinstall (all that work I put into creating the townies in Bodyshop for my blank neighborhood (only to read on another thread that if I had put them into a blank Pleasantview instead...).  SimPE is so complicated to me that I think I'll just leave Riverblossom alone for now and play Pleasantview instead.

Hopefully I won't have to pester you guys again (at least not for awhile, anyway  )

[jrd]

SWAFs actually seem to be deleted if you first remove all characters. That's why I recommend saving after deleting all Sims, closing the file, and reopening.
Same for memories, if you save after deleting all Sims they're wiped without the need to delete them manually (which is extremely painful in the horrible SimPE memory editor we have since OFB).

[SaraMK]

Memories and family info are also deleted if you delete sims using SimPE and then reload the file, but SWAFs are not.

[jrd]

Good to know.

One thing I'm not sure about is the Sim Creation Index: in one of Pescado's threads he recommended resetting it, but I've not had any problems with leaving it at its default value.

[SaraMK]

I was afraid to touch it since I couldn't find enough info about it.

[Emma]

Oops! Sorry! Posted in wrong thread!

* Emma grabs message and runs

[Simsane]

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know that I now have all my houses/lots with no sims!  Thank you 

p.s.   I did try using Argon's but just adding the lots folder that wasn't empty.  Didn't work, still no houses.  So I have yours in now.

[Zazazu]

Is there any reason I should also attach a shopping district?  I think I can own and visit businesses in the main neighborhood and in downtown.  What would I be missing if I left out a shopping district?

A few Maxis sims and a bunch of badly designed Maxis lots. Any suburbs past one university and one downtown are superflous. If you need more game-generated townies for a challenge, adding a Uni works. Other than that, the only purpose for an additional Uni or downtown or any shopping district is to have extra room for more lots. Home businesses and playable-owned community lots can be present in both the main neighborhood and downtown.

[SimFeliz]

I have been slowly creating my custom hood over the last month. I have been using some great tutorials on how to create your own NPC's , Townies etc... I have also used these clean templates.

I decided last night to finally add a downtown, shopping district and a uni. I added a custom downtown since I wanted to make one from scratch, I added the cleaned up bluewater village without any characters they both seemed to be ok. I hit a snag when adding a uni. I've used the cleaned up templates without any charters and followed the instructions on adding.

When I try to add Sims State uni or the posh one (can't remember its name). On the creating screen it loads with the squares being lit up then when that finishes it pauses for a while. Then the top browser appears, the one to select what hood you want to go to, and the bottom browser too with the save, load etc... But it stays on the loading screen but flashes between that and a black screen. Sometimes it will even show the uni campus for a bit and reverts back to the loading screen. With the posh uni I was able to get into it but it runs extremely slow and choppy and also has the issue of the screen going black now and then. I didn't seem to have this issue with the desert uni or a custom uni.

If it comes down to it I will just stick with a custom uni but I would really like to use the posh uni template.  Well I hope this makes sense it is a bit hard to explain what is happening. Has anyone had this issue or have any suggestions.

[stormygsa]

I think you'll need to use the cleaned up templates for Uni rather than the empty ones.  But Sarah should probably confirm that.

[SimFeliz]

I gave that a try. Still running into the same issue. Can any one tell me what should be in the uni folders? Maybe I deleted something i shouldn't have. i doubt it though since i followed the instructions to the letter.

[Aggie]

Silly question: after using these blank templates in the Uni hoods, will they still generate Secret Society Sims like they do with cheerleaders/mascots/professors, etc.? If not, do you happen to know of any way I could manually create a Secret Society again? I looked in the lot bin, but I didn't see any SS lots.

[SaraMK]

I gave that a try. Still running into the same issue. Can any one tell me what should be in the uni folders? Maybe I deleted something i shouldn't have. i doubt it though since i followed the instructions to the letter.

In the U00# folders you should have the following items:

Characters folder (empty if using empty templates, or with fewer than 20 sims if using cleaned up ones)
Lots folder (full of files -- do not touch this)
Storytelling folder (harmless to mess with, but no reason to touch)
Thumbnails folder (good idea to delete everything inside, but not necessary)
U00#_Neighborhood.package file (downloaded from this thread)
U00#_Neighborhood.png picture file

The U00# folders can be found at C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\

I have never experienced the problem (extended loading / not loading) that you're describing. Does it also happen with empty templates, or just the cleaned up ones? It is possible, I guess, that an EP edited something and now the template need to be updated, but I haven't seen any evidence of this.

Part of your loading problem could be due to professors being generated. The game will generate 24 professsors when a Uni is created. You can't stop this. However, while this can cause a long pause when a Uni is first attached, it should not cause problems when loading an existing Uni, and should not result in graphical glitches.

The first thing you should try is to put boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true into your startup file, or enter it as soon as you are in your main neighborhood. Then either attach a Uni or enter an existing Uni that has the loading problem. If something weird is going on, an error might be generated.

Silly question: after using these blank templates in the Uni hoods, will they still generate Secret Society Sims like they do with cheerleaders/mascots/professors, etc.? If not, do you happen to know of any way I could manually create a Secret Society again? I looked in the lot bin, but I didn't see any SS lots.

All the Uni neighborhoods have a secret society lot already, except one. It's the Academie one. Try entering Academie and seeing if the SS lots show up in the bin. They won't show up in any of the other Unis because you can only have one SS lot and they already have them.

All NPCs, including secret society members, are generated on demand (when the game decides it "needs" them... whether you agree or not). The empty / clean templates do not stop NPCs from being generated. However, some hacks may prevent NPCs from being generated. For example, nossregen may prevent you from getting any SS NPCs.