TUTORIAL: Merging the Maxis neighborhoods.

[Kyna]

Edit:  Ugh, well, it does work attaching things to Belladonna, but for some reason now some pretty important characters (like Bella Goth) have the wrong names.  She's called Allyn Kim for some incredibly strange reason.  I'll start over...  yet again, tomorrow.  Ugh.

I can understand the townie Bella Goth from ST being renamed (as she's in the townie family and sub-hood townies get renamed in a merged hood), but why would the real Bella Goth from PV be renamed?  She's in the default family, like all the dead sims.  Are the dead sims being renamed too?

You may have to consider reviving PV Bella and adding her to the Goth household to prevent her being renamed.  Then it won't matter if ST townie Bella gets renamed.

[HystericalParoxysm]

ST Bella didn't get renamed the first time I did this so I'm thinking I must be using a different template than I did with the first Megahood (I'd switched after the first stupid try thinking I was using the old one but apparently not).  And I'm -not- willing to go through and note down everyone's names from all of the attached 'hoods and verify that everyone is correct and fix them if they're not.  It'll take ages and drive me absolutely bonkers.  So I'm gonna see if I can switch templates to what I must've been using originally and see if that helps since ST Bella was fine the first time.  Ugh, what a giant pain Apartment Life is turning out to be.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Yes, I am having that same problem as well, obviously.  Everything looks fine as you say until you go into the hood and look and see no one in the apartments. This makes me so sad.  I've never had a problem before attaching the new Maxis hood as a downtown/suburb.  I will admit I am not that savvy at this, just following instructions, so I have no idea what is going wrong. 

When and if you figure this out, could you post instructions here or point me (and anyone else who comes to check this thread) to the place where I can get some help to hopefully to do this with my 'hood in the future.

Funny that you post that now, because I JUST got the Uber-Megahood working with proper apartments.  It's a -stupid- workaround but it does work and it's pretty easy.

- Let the game generate a fresh Belladonna Cove (BDC) like you do the rest of the neighborhoods.
- Before removing Belladonna Cove from the Neighborhood folder to attach it as a downtown/shopping district template, go into BDC and move everyone who is currently living in an apartment into the sim bin.
- Attach BDC to your neighborhood as normal.
- Reassemble everything - BDC and whatever other 'hoods you've added with the proper ID numbers and whatnot.
- Go into the freshly-attached BDC and move everyone back into their apartments (see notes below) - make sure to use boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true... walk an adult to the apartment door you want to rent, shift-click the door and choose "Rent Furnished" - all of the furnishings they had before will be there.
- Once everyone's moved in, go back to the neighborhood and use familyFunds (familyname) (amount) to fix everyone's monies (see notes below).

My notes - I made notes on where everyone lives, and which apartments, and how much money:

Cho - 16,221 - Sentinel Apartments, lowest floor
Riley - 32,785 - Sentinel Apartments, apartment above Cho on 1st floor (2nd if you're American)
Patel - 25,976 - Ocean View Apartments, front right apartment on lowest floor (I think there's only one floor anyway)
Peterson - 14,325 - Main Street Mobile Homes, mobile home in the middle with pink walls
Cleveland - 42,768 - Bella Park Condominiums, 1st floor (2nd if you're American), on the right.
DeBateau - 227,933 - Cornerstone Condominiums, top floor
Baldwin - 58,297 - Tech Terrace - 1st floor (2nd if you're American) with balcony out front.


Also, a big note when adding stuff with stealth neighborhoods that is not specific to Apartment Life but all EPs - to prevent duplicate NPCs you need to do a little fancy footwork with empty templates:

- Create a fresh copy of your base neighborhood.  Enter it to let it create the stealth hoods as normal.
- Rename Pleasantview's template in Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData from N001 to N001-bak to prevent it from generating new Pleasantview-template sims.
- Put in empty templates for ALL stealth 'hoods that your game may create (Pets, Weather, Exotic Destinations, Hobbies, and Magic)
- Generate fresh copies of your neighborhoods to attach*
- Attach these fresh copies to your base hood the same way you normally would - they'll just be cleaner and more compact than they would have been otherwise, and you won't end up with duplicate sims you don't want.

* Pretty sure that if you don't need to enter the neighborhood before attaching it (like you do above for BDC to fix the apartment-dwellers) you only need to do N001 - not the stealth hood templates as they won't be generated till you enter the neighborhood.

Edit: New Uber-Megahood, with working apartment-dwellers, is here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=301194  ... I will cry and have a hissy fit if it's somehow otherwise broken but it seems to be fine.

[Hellyes]

The reason you gals and guys are having problems with AL is because SimPE does not recognize sims living in Apartment buildings yet.  IAmTheRed mentioned this in an earlier post.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4480.msg368010.html#msg368010


That's too much trouble for me moving them out and in, and people who download your merged neighborhoods usually want the lots untouched and exactly as Maxis made them.  I think I will wait for SimPE to recognize sims that are living in apartment buildings before I undertake this.  I've been checking the SimPE QA forum every day.  They seem to be down for maintenance this morning.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Hellyes - The only real difference between the original BDC apartment-dwellers and the moved-out-and-back-in versions is that they won't be standing exactly where they were originally when you first load the lot.  If you rent furnished and fix their family funds as advised, it works just fine.  They're still the same sims with the same memories, relationships, etc..  I'd call the difference between a sim standing in one place and standing in another pretty minimal.  It's not like anyone was doing anything too amazing that it's a big loss to have them in a different spot the first time you load the lot.

[Hellyes]

Where am I going wrong? I don't get this.  I don't understand why we can't merge Belladonna Cove like we do all the other Maxis neighborhoods now that we have SimPE version 72?  How is AL different than the other hoods, or is there still something wrong with the latest version of SimPE?  Why is SimPE still not able to keep the sims in their original apartment slots?

When I go to attach Belladonna Cove the apartments are still empty.



Okay, I may be forced to move them out and in, but I would rather figure out why merging Belldonna Cove isn't working as it always has before with the other hoods.  There has got to be a solution.

[ElfPuddle]

The reason you gals and guys are having problems with AL is because SimPE does not recognize sims living in Apartment buildings yet.  IAmTheRed mentioned this in an earlier post.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4480.msg368010.html#msg368010

That's too much trouble for me moving them out and in, and people who download your merged neighborhoods usually want the lots untouched and exactly as Maxis made them.  I think I will wait for SimPE to recognize sims that are living in apartment buildings before I undertake this.  I've been checking the SimPE QA forum every day.  They seem to be down for maintenance this morning.

Where am I going wrong? I don't get this.  I don't understand why we can't merge Belladonna Cove like we do all the other Maxis neighborhoods now that we have SimPE version 72?  How is AL different than the other hoods, or is there still something wrong with the latest version of SimPE?  Why is SimPE still not able to keep the sims in their original apartment slots?

When I go to attach Belladonna Cove the apartments are still empty.
Okay, I may be forced to move them out and in, but I would rather figure out why merging Belldonna Cove isn't working as it always has before with the other hoods.  There has got to be a solution.

So maybe that wasn't why the "gals and guys" were having problems? Intriguing. If you find a cure, do let us know.

[Hellyes]

So maybe that wasn't why the "gals and guys" were having problems? Intriguing. If you find a cure, do let us know.

I felt surely when SimPE was fully updated that it would correct this problem. That's why I waited.  I think it has something to do with that fact that in the AL folder the hidden Magic neighborhood E002 is in the Neighborhood template folder instead of the main BDC hood, and the main BDC hood is in the Userdata Neighborhoods folder. OFB doesn't have a Userdata Neighborhoods folder.   Some how when we put the BDC files in the OFB neighborhood template folder the apartment dwelling sims get cut off from where they live.  I have some ideas up my sleeve that I am going to try.  I still would like to figure this out.

For today, I did I put it together the way everyone else is.  Although it was a little more time consuming, that worked fine, except I found that the baby furniture was not included in the furnishings in the Cho apartment.  What did everyone else do about that? 

[FourCats]

I merged them as well.  When I load houses from  Belladonna Cove or Sea Gull Island the game freezes or all the houses are under a hillside.  When I try to move a family or bulldoze a house from either of those subhoods the game freezes. 

Also with Beacon Falls I can't move any sims.  It says "You must enter the lot and play the family before you move them."  Even after I've played and saved them.  I haven't tried this with other sub-hoods at this time.

So far all my other downtowns are working fine.

[sigi]

Hi together,

it is definitely no SimPE issue with the missing Apartment Sims. With SimPE you fix only the IDs, but the Rebuilding is done by the Sims Game itself, using so called templates...
If you spent some thoughts on the concept, you will realize some facts:

1.) Suburbs (exclude Holiday & University) are supported only by OFB & Downtown. downtowns & business districts are the only type of suburbs you can use.
2.) When the game uses the new added neighbourhoods, the numbers of the Sims & the buildings are rebuild in ascending order - the templates are used as base, but nevertheless the rebuilding process of the game changes a lot of values when you add them as new suburb. And this process is done by The game, NOT by SimPE.

Sims living in Apartments are a complete new concept -  you can take an apartment as a kind of mini-lot. Why should EAxis have taken care on old suburb concepts for this with introducing Apartment life when they don't provide Apartments in suburbs themself ?  - Take all original games and you don't have any apartments in any original template. So this error is only a logical result of an in-game missing concept.....

The only way will be that one to move the Sims out of the Apartment before using BDC as template OR using BDC as Main neighbourhood as described above - with all consequences of possible renamed Sims.
 

[HystericalParoxysm]

So maybe that wasn't why the "gals and guys" were having problems? Intriguing. If you find a cure, do let us know.

I felt surely when SimPE was fully updated that it would correct this problem. That's why I waited.  I think it has something to do with that fact that in the AL folder the hidden Magic neighborhood E002 is in the Neighborhood template folder instead of the main BDC hood, and the main BDC hood is in the Userdata Neighborhoods folder. OFB doesn't have a Userdata Neighborhoods folder.   Some how when we put the BDC files in the OFB neighborhood template folder the apartment dwelling sims get cut off from where they live.  I have some ideas up my sleeve that I am going to try.  I still would like to figure this out.

For today, I did I put it together the way everyone else is.  Although it was a little more time consuming, that worked fine, except I found that the baby furniture was not included in the furnishings in the Cho apartment.  What did everyone else do about that? 

Maybe it has to do with the difference between apartment lots and normal lots.  Mootilda has done some great research on this and discovered that the game sort of "clones" an apartment lot.  Each apartment lot gets copied to make the separate sub-lots for each apartment so you can play them separately.  Because they're not handled as normal lots, the attachment process might just go weird with those lots, to use a very technical term...

Which, now that I read it, is basically what sigi said in different words.

The moving out and moving back in is relatively simple, if a bit of a hassle...  I didn't notice any difference between any of the lots before merging and after merging...  But the Cho and Riley lots are known to be kinda weird anyway so if it comes down to a couple missing pieces of furniture, I'd call that overall not a big deal at all to fix.

[Mootilda]

Maybe it has to do with the difference between apartment lots and normal lots.  Mootilda has done some great research on this and discovered that the game sort of "clones" an apartment lot.  Each apartment lot gets copied to make the separate sub-lots for each apartment so you can play them separately.  Because they're not handled as normal lots, the attachment process might just go weird with those lots, to use a very technical term...

I was thinking the same thing... let me try creating an apartment (base) in a subneighborhood and see what happens with the clones (sublots).

Unfortunately, my video card just died, so I need to get a new one before I can try this.

[Inge]

I felt surely when SimPE was fully updated that it would correct this problem. That's why I waited.

Please point me to your posts about this on the SimPE forum.

[Hellyes]

I was experimenting with this yesterday, and it is as sigi said.  The instance values for the sims and the lots do change and that is related to it, but that alone isn't the only reason why attaching BDC with apartment lots is a problem.  If it were only that the Instance values change then we would have the same problem loading any of the other neighborhoods via the OFB or Downtown templates as well because those Instance values also change.  Even when you go in and correct the Instance values for the apartment dwelling sims with SimPE, although it almost works, there is still problems and the lots become glitchy.  The problem is centered square on the apartment lot files themselves.  The baselot and sublot files are stagnant and the values do not change at all as long as there is sims living in the lots.  You've probably heard about people saying we also can not seem to move apartment lots around within the neighborhoods or into the lots bin with sims living in them in-game either.  I don't know whether this was intentional by design or a bug, it may be intentional.  There might be too much that goes wrong with these lots, so Maxis designed it this way.  I know that when I attempted to do it by correcting the values with SimPE it glitched up the lots and the graphics on these lots get all wonky.  If it's unintentional, there may be a possibility that this could be fixed when the patch for Apartment Life is released.  I will be looking in the patch notes for this.  But, this is definitely is a problem with the apartment base and sublots in particular and not anything to do with SimPE.  

[Inge]

The fact they could not do it by upgrading the dorm code to allow switching to a different playable sim from another family there bodes ill for Sims 3.   Lately I have been predicting that Sims3 will consist of a copy of the entire hood per playable family, each one with the Sims saved in the middle of completely different situations.

[kcervero]

hi everyone - i just started replaying the game - I have: Basic, Nightlife, University, OFB, Pets & Seasons.  Does anyone know where a combined/neighborhood template with the Maxis playables but without townies is located that I can download?  I want Pleasant View, Strangetown, Veronaville, Riverblossom Hills, Downtown, Bluewater Village, and the 3 stock universities all in one neighborhood so they can interact.  I did this once months ago and it took me 12 hours, my comp crashed and I don't have the template I built.  I will pay for a download of this type of combined neighborhood.  Any direction, links would be appreciated.  Thanks all!

[SaraMK]

Did you try MTS2? They have two flavors of merged neighborhoods.

[Nova]

Has anyone used HystericalParoxysm's Wiki tutuorial on merging hoods recently?  If so, can you tell me if we are still supposed to move out the apartment dwellers in Belladonna Cove before beginning the merge?  Her tutorial says nothing about this, but in this thread she states it needed to be done in order to make them show up properly in the merged hood.  I'm confused and don't really want to do it one way, only to find out I could have/should have done it differently.

[Tarlia]

Has anyone used HystericalParoxysm's Wiki tutuorial on merging hoods recently?  If so, can you tell me if we are still supposed to move out the apartment dwellers in Belladonna Cove before beginning the merge?  Her tutorial says nothing about this, but in this thread she states it needed to be done in order to make them show up properly in the merged hood.  I'm confused and don't really want to do it one way, only to find out I could have/should have done it differently.

You'll have to do it unless you're using Belladonna Cove as the basehood. Otherwise the residents in the apartments will be all messed up.

[Nova]

Oh yuck. I kind of figured as much but was hoping for the other answer.  I tried it awhile back and somehow managed to explode my completed hood.  I'm guessing it had to do with me loading BellaDonna without using empty templates.  The game created all the weather, pets, etc... I continued on, and everything was going perfectly.  I thought.  Added all my subhoods, loaded the finished project, then saw the complete mess I had made.  Anyhoo, is my assumption correct? If I attempt to move out the residents after installing the empty templates will I get the intended result?  Should I just stab myself in the head and be done with this madness? 

[Tarlia]

Oh yuck. I kind of figured as much but was hoping for the other answer.  I tried it awhile back and somehow managed to explode my completed hood.  I'm guessing it had to do with me loading BellaDonna without using empty templates.  The game created all the weather, pets, etc... I continued on, and everything was going perfectly.  I thought.  Added all my subhoods, loaded the finished project, then saw the complete mess I had made.  Anyhoo, is my assumption correct? If I attempt to move out the residents after installing the empty templates will I get the intended result?  Should I just stab myself in the head and be done with this madness? 

What I did was enter my own cleaned up version of Belladonna Cove with clean templates in place, move out all the sims living in apartments (taking note of how much money they had and where they lived), then shut down the game, delete all the subhood files from the stealth neighbourhoods in the 'hood folder, then proceed to merge it as normal. It worked fine. Once the neighbourhood was complete I moved the sims back into their apartments (shift-clicking the door in debug mode or having Pescado's apartment hack in lets you rent the apartment furnished) and gave them their correct amount of money.

[Nova]

Okie doke, that's what I thought.  If I remember correctly, I didn't remove those created subhoods and it was all downhill from there.  I am in the middle of trying this again but I somehow didn't replace the E002 file after using the cleaned up templates.  Now I can't restore my Apartment Life files to their original state.  All this hassle better be worth the pain.

[witch]

All the original hood template folders are here.

[Nova]

That list is great, however the file I'm missing is located here: Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Apartment LIfe\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\E002.  That stupid E002 is the one I'm missing. 

Okay, some beautiful soul uploaded the E002 file for me, but now for some reason the bin families for Belladonna aren't showing up when I make a new copy of the hood.  The Gavian, Goodie and Newson families have gone poof and my head is about to asplode.  Any guesses as to why and where they went?

[Tarlia]

That list is great, however the file I'm missing is located here: Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Apartment LIfe\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\E002.  That stupid E002 is the one I'm missing. 

Okay, some beautiful soul uploaded the E002 file for me, but now for some reason the bin families for Belladonna aren't showing up when I make a new copy of the hood.  The Gavian, Goodie and Newson families have gone poof and my head is about to asplode.  Any guesses as to why and where they went?

Those three families belong to the stealth hood (E002, in fact). If you're using a clean template for that (as you should) for Belladonna Cove, then they won't show up.

You should instead let the main base hood load E002 with these families in.