Empty and Cleaned-up Templates. [UPDATED]

[ladyl]

Thanks for all the help SaraMK, I did all that you asked me to do and now when I enter my new custom neighbourhood, Guess Who Pops In To Visit...?! Bella Goth! I was totally stunned! But enjoyed it of course!! 

[Wkdude]

If I have the base neighborhood cleared using the Pleasantview template in a new 'hood, and then I add a custom uni or downtown, could I delete the character files for both of those sub-neighborhoods? Or would I need to download the uni, nl, and ofb templates before creating the uni and downtown for a completely empty new sub-neighborhood?

[SaraMK]

You would need to install the templates. You can uninstall them again after adding those sub-hoods to your neighborhood.

Once a sub-hood is added, and the characters that come with it are dumped into your neighborhood, there is no way to get rid of it. Or at least not without going through the tedious Deleted 2 process with a lot of SimPE work. Custom sub-hoods dump sims into your neighborhood the same as the Maxis pre-made sub-hoods do, so unfortunately the only way to not have a lot of sims added is to use the templates. The only way to get a completely empty neighborhood is to have all the empty templates installed.

Don't forget to have antiredundancy, notownieregen, and nodormieregen installed while adding the sub-hoods. Otherwise the game will immediately begin to create sims.

[Wkdude]

Okay, I get it now. So I would need antiredundancy, notownieregen, and nodormieregen, plus the empty Pleasantview template and the one for the sub neighborhoods. I would install the templates following the directions, make the new neighborhood and subneighborhoods, and then create townies, downtownies, NPCs, dormies, etc following Jordi's tutorial.

Ha, thanks. Another person and I've been trying to figure this out. 

[ladyl]

It's me again...  I have all the cleaned-up templates up to pets and am playing a custom neighbourhood. I recently added Bluewater Village to my neighbourhood therefore the playable sims from Bluewater Village started showing up in my custom neighbourhood as expected. I now own a business in my community lot... The question is:

I tried to hire employees but not only was the list limited, they were all either playable sims from my neighbourhood or from Bluewater V... How do I hire a non playable sim or townie safely? Do I just spawn them with the Townie Maker and hire them as per normal?

Thanks! And Sorry if my question sounds really stupid cos I'm really terrible with computers and technical stuff so I jus want to be extra careful...

[notveryawesome]

I've been playing the cleaned-up combined neighbourhood for several days now, and it has made my gameplay thoroughly enjoyable; HOWEVER, I noticed while mucking about in SimPE that the relationships for some of the Pleasantview sims are seriously messed up (no doubt due to shoddy EAxian programming and nothing to do with SaraMK's efforts at cleaning up and combining the 'hoods). For instance, Lucy Burb was listed as being the sibling of some of the Goth ghosts, and was thus listed as being Alexander Goth's grandparent. Kaylynn Langorak (sp?) is related as Family (unspecified or unknown) to everybody she knows, including Daniel Pleasant, whom she's been boffing on a regular basis (ewwww). These things are easily fixed, and I've already fixed them, but the thing I'm not so sure how to fix is that there are two each of Darleen Dreamer and Michael Bachelor (both dead sims). I've removed all relationships and family ties from the duplicate sims (leaving one of Darleen and one of Michael intact), but I need to know how to go about safely deleting the now-unlinked duplicates and cleaning up general garbage files (I've noticed a few Unknown toward Unknown relationships, etc). I'm still not very clear on how to clean up dangling SWAFs and whatnot. Can somebody either provide clear instructions on exactly how to do this in SimPE, or point me toward a good tutorial (the ones I've found are about as clear as mud)? Many thanks to anybody who can help!

[jsalemi]

I tried to hire employees but not only was the list limited, they were all either playable sims from my neighbourhood or from Bluewater V... How do I hire a non playable sim or townie safely? Do I just spawn them with the Townie Maker and hire them as per normal?

Well, the whole idea behind using the empty templates is to not get the default townies.  If you have notownieregen in your game, you won't get any at all unless you specifically generate them with the Townie Maker or turn CAS sims into townies with the teleporter bush or testing cheats.  If you don't have notownieregen in your game, the game will only generate townies as needed, one at a time,  so it could take a while to get a big enough population to hire.

Either way, if you want more townies you have to make them yourself one way or the other.  Note that the mass townie generator is broken in OFB (and all EPs since), so you'll have to make them one at a time.  The best way, though, is to create a bunch of sims in CAS and then turn them into townies. Many of us do that with the self-sims of other MATY members found here.

[Sleepycat]

I use the empty templates and when I start a new hood, when I have a family moved in, I enable testing cheats and shift click on the mailbox and tell the game to mass create townies (forget what it's under in the menu) and the game then creates around 30 (I think thats how many) different townies (I've even run it twice to have more townies) but I do this before adding any sub-hoods, I sort of remember someone saying that a sub-hood could break it, Uni I think.


I got sick of having to make my own townies a long time ago 

[ladyl]

Thanks jsalemi and sleepycat! This whole thing about what exactly townies, downtownies and NPCs are is jus confusing me to the max! Thanks for all your help! I'll go create my townies now! 

[Wkdude]

Alright, another dumb question...with the subneighborhood templates, there's one for U001, U002, and U003. I know that when you make a custom Uni without the templates, it gives you the sims from Sim State. Would you need to put all three of the clean templates in for this to stop?

[SaraMK]

Alright, another dumb question...with the subneighborhood templates, there's one for U001, U002, and U003. I know that when you make a custom Uni without the templates, it gives you the sims from Sim State. Would you need to put all three of the clean templates in for this to stop?

No, you just need to install the one that they're usually being copied from, which (I'll take your word for it since I can't remember off the top of my head) is Sim State.

[Wkdude]

Okay, thanks! And yes, I'm almost positive the default characters are from Sim State.

[shokoladka]

Ok, so I already have some families I don't want to lose in Pleasantview, and am too lazy to mess extract them and then mess with them in SimPE. Is there anyway I could get your empty templates and somehow tweak it into N004?

[SaraMK]

The empty templates don't affect existing neighborhoods. If you install the empty Pleasantview, the only thing that will happen is that NEW custom neighborhoods won't have Pleasantview's sims. Your current Pleasantview isn't going to change.

[shokoladka]

I get that, but what I want to do is copy the Pleasantview into my neighborhoods folder (as in the one in My Documents) as N004, so that I could start playing in that neighborhood without all the Maxis sims and Townies, and keep playing my old neighborhood as N001, so I'd have Pleasantview 1 (mine) and Pleasantview 2 (empty). Or is the only way to do that to pull mine out and then put in a copy of yours... and then when I want to play my old one to put mine back in and pull the new one started with your base out.

[SaraMK]

Can't be done (safely) without using SimPE to extract and replace Number ID.

You could, however, start a new game set for the empty Pleasantview. Simply install the empty template, then go to My Documents\EA Games\ and rename the folder The Sims 2 to The Sims 2 - Original (or some other descriptive name), and then run the game. A new game set will be created, and it will include an empty Pleasantview. When you want to play your old neighborhoods, rename the new folder to something else and rename the old folder back to The Sims 2.

Here's how to do it if you want to try doing it using SimPE:

Make a complete backup of your Neighborhoods folder in case you screw up. Put in a safe place.
Add a new neighborhood. Exit the game as soon as the neighborhood is created. Let's say this neighborhood is N004.
Open the N004 folder and open the N004_Neighborhood.package file in SimPE.
On the left side find Number ID, click on it, select it on the right side, right-click on it, and choose Extract.
Save the file on the Desktop or inside a folder so you can find it quickly later.
Open the N004 folder again and delete everything.
Take the empty Pleasantview you downloaded from me, which is a file called N001_Neighborhood.package.
Put the file inside the now-empty N004 folder, and rename it to N004_Neighborhood.package.
Open the file in SimPE.
On the left side find Number ID, click on it, select it on the right side, right-click on it, and choose Replace.
Find the file you extracted earlier and choose it. Save the changes and exit SimPE.
Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001
COPY everything in that folder except the N001_Neighborhood.package file and the Characters and Thumbnails folders.
PASTE the files into the N004 folder.
Rename everything that's named N001 to N004. Including the files in the Lots folder.

[Jenchipper]

Make a complete backup of your Neighborhoods folder in case you screw up. Put in a safe place.
Add a new neighborhood. Exit the game as soon as the neighborhood is created. Let's say this neighborhood is N004.
Open the N004 folder and open the N004_Neighborhood.package file in SimPE.
On the left side find Number ID, click on it, select it on the right side, right-click on it, and choose Extract.
Save the file on the Desktop or inside a folder so you can find it quickly later.
Open the N004 folder again and delete everything.
Take the empty Pleasantview you downloaded from me, which is a file called N001_Neighborhood.package.
Put the file inside the now-empty N004 folder, and rename it to N004_Neighborhood.package.
Open the file in SimPE.
On the left side find Number ID, click on it, select it on the right side, right-click on it, and choose Replace.
Find the file you extracted earlier and choose it. Save the changes and exit SimPE.
Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001
COPY everything in that folder except the N001_Neighborhood.package file and the Characters and Thumbnails folders.
PASTE the files into the N004 folder.
Rename everything that's named N001 to N004. Including the files in the Lots folder.

This works fabulous!  I made myself a 2nd Pleasantview nieghborhood following these directions and using your empty templates.  I am so loving not having all the idiots wandering around, getting in the way and just making a general nuisance of themselves.

You are my new hero, Thanks!!

[Dark Trepie]

I've got a question that may or may not have been answered here.  If it has I've missed it.

Is it possible with the empty Uni templates to add all three Unis to a neighborhood and not have an overflow of professors and NPCs with the anti-redundancy hack?

Not that anyone would have any real reason to do so unless they were running out of Uni real estate.  Which is a problem I may be running into later since I just downloaded that big joined hood of yours.

[SaraMK]

You can add all the Unis. You will still get at least 24 professors. I'm not sure if it will attempt to create more professors... but it shouldn't. With anti-redundancy I think you will be safe from an overflow of other Uni NPCs as well. Or at least I've never had more than one cow/llama/coach... and I've had multiple Unis before. I just don't recall about the professors.

[syberspunk]

I can confirm that in my game, which has been reasonably well played game since NL (I rebooted at that time with a fresh clean 'hood, without all the VBTs I had done to make it a potential BFBVFS way back when we didn't know about those things), that after adding two additional Unis (La Fiesta State and Academie Le Tour - I already had Sims State U), using SaraMK's clean templates and Pescado's antiredundancy and noregen hacks, I only had/have 24 professors.

I was very meticulous in noting the number of sims I had in the Characters folder, and then counting the additional number of sims created after adding each new Uni.  The number of new sims matched the number of Maxis EA playables that came with each clean template, no more, no less.  I only have one set (of 24 total) professors.  I have yet to play any households in the new Unis, but so far so good.

Oh yeah, and I had 3 of each Uni NPC (mascots, cheerleaders, coaches, etc.) and no new ones were created.  So definitely use antiredundancy and the noregen hacks.


Ste

[SaraMK]

I'm going to have to re-upload everything to 4shared.... I forgot to access my account last month and I guess they deleted everything from it. I'll do that today, so check back later.

[Charlotte]

Thanks for reuploading Sara

I have the three maxi's hoods attached to Riverblossom Hills, there was something like 700 sims in my characters folder and I was already experiencing some bugs

[Argon]

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?

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.

It's not Pleasantview, and it was never made from Pleasantview, it was generated from scratch (with corrections by me) by the game when it didn't have access to Pleasantview files. It's purpose is to prevent any of the left over unreferenced junk from being copied to new neighborhoods which SaraMK's templates do because it kept the houses. With the empty templates it also prevents the non-service NPCs from getting borked in that new neighborhood. It's been a while since I've seen this thread, so I thought I'd clear that up finally.

[Jenchipper]

I have all expansions except Seasons and I have the empty templates installed. 

I tried to adopt a kitten but the only pets available were a small adult dog and an adult cat. 

I tried boolprop testingcheatsenabled true/shift + click on the mailbox and got an option to create pets but it didn't change.  Is there a way to make puppies and kittens availiable to adopt?

[SaraMK]

Using the empty templates will limit the number of strays that are in your neighborhood initially, but eventually more strays will be generated, unless you have installed Pescado's hack that prevents this (nostrayrespawn). If you did install it, you will only ever see a few pets up for adoption.

You can spawn the NPC & Townie Creator (a dead tree) using Debug Mode. Activate debug mode, shift-click on a sim, and you'll find it under the Spawn option. This will let you create some strays, although I'm not sure you can make baby  animals with it.

Another way would be to make a pet shop, have a sim buy a bunch of animals, and then put them up for adoption.