Tutorial: Clean custom neighbourhoods + townie creation (updated for Seasons)

[KevinTMC]

I believe the thing to do, then, would be to:

1) Follow Jordi's pre-creation instructions, installing SaraMK's empty templates also if desired.

2) Run OFB using Numenor's BaseGameStarter, and create the new neighborhood according to the rest of Jordi's instructions. Add subhoods based on the blank templates as desired. Save and quit.

3) Undo the file and folder changes from step 1.

4) Back up the new neighborhood.

5) Launch Pets, open the new neighborhood, wait for it to generate animal spam, then save and quit.

6) Per Pescado's instructions upthread, find the new NXXX_SuburbN file that was created in the new neighborhood in step 5. Pull that single file out of the neighborhood; replace the neighborhood folder with the backup from step 4; then add the NXXX_SuburbN file back in.

That ought to work, right? My custom neighborhood seems to be okay and this process was what I went through, with the exception of step 2 (instead of using Numenor's tool, I created the neighborhood under NL before ever installing OFB and Pets).

[jrd]

Using those steps, do you have any strays?

[KevinTMC]

I have no animals whatsoever, just yet.

[jrd]

Disturbing… as there is no spawner yet either. Thanks for testing in any case.

[KevinTMC]

"Disturbing"? Should I be worried about this neighborhood? Should I have followed some instructions other than Pescado's?

(It'd be easy enough for me to load my pre-Pets backup and just let Pets install the 50-odd characters it tried to add to my custom hood...and I presume one could thin some of those out later in SimPE...)

[JanaFantastic]

I've follow the step with the OF. While having pets. Everything seem to work well. All strays were created again.

[JenW]

Okay this is weird. As I said, I have Pets. I tried the renaming method the other night and still ended up with a folder full of character files, so I assumed it had not worked and later deleted the hood without playing it. I forgot about renaming the N001 folder under Program Files back. Yesterday I created another new hood, thinking I was going to end up with the usual Goopy and Ben. First odd thing I noticed was that I was getting different NPCs. No Dagmar or Pao delivering the mail, no Maura or Neil the fireman. Eventually I realized that it must be because of the folder being renamed. So, maybe this *does* work for Pets, but you still get loads of char files? Maybe all of those were just animals...I didn't think to look at them in SimPE before I deleted the hood.

I did get strays and wolves and skunks without having to spawn anything btw, and at least some of the strays are the default ones (Scout the little black dog and Allegra the grayhound or whatever she is).

[dizzy]

They obviously don't bother looking for "P001" like they do with previous EPs. They just dump whatever data is in the hood template folder to your documents hood folder?

[Morague]

I've just managed to get a clean neighborhood with Pets installed - no chanracter files whatsoever. It's a combination of doing what Jordi, Kevin & Pescado said.

1) Downoad the empty templates & follow the directions
2) Do Jordi's Planning stange & rename the N001 template files
3) Download Numenor's Base Game tool
4) Start the Base game tool & create a dummy neighborhood - this will be N001 under the "The Sims 2 - NL" or whatever name it comes up with when you picked your Base Game options
5) You need to know how what the correct next number a custom neighborhood will have in your Sims game, in mine it was N005, so I had to create another dummy neighborhood in the base game tool & then finally the Neighborhood I wanted - so three in all, 1 for Pleasantville, one for N004 which I already have & then finally N005 - my new neighborhood.
6) Ok then just exit from the Base game tool, and copy the N005 neighborhood from it's folder into your proper Sims2 folder under My documnets
7) Start TS2 & choose the new neighborhood. It will generate the pets.
Exit the game, go to your N005 folder & delete all of the folders & files except the N005_Suburb001.package
9) Copy the N005 subfolders & the N005_Neighborhood.package & N005_Neighborhood.png from the Base Game tool folder to your normal Sims2 folder.
10) Now start TS2 & add whatever districts you want. ** the empty templates do not work with the Base game tool, you have to add the districts to the actual game, but the empty templates work perfectly.

Then start creating sims per Jordi's instructions.

[Giggy]

well... you can try to delete the characters in
my computer/drive * (*= the drive your game is in)/programs/eagames/thesims2pets/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplates/P001/Characters
howeverthis may muck up the game unless someone edits the P001_Neighborhood file, !testing is needed for this theory!

[Mizz Rose Bud]

Now, let me see if I have got it right 
Right now I have Uni, NL, Gl, FF and OFB installed ... and my CC hood still runs fine.
If I, after creating a back-up of my hood, install Pets, load the game + hood, exit game, remove all in the hood folder except of the N005_Suburb001.package and add the nostrays hack, copy my back-up to the hood folder ... then I should be able to play with my CC hood, without any of EA´s strays showing up, right     

Rose

[Eleonora]

only if the suburb_001 is the only suburb you have. You need to copy the latest created, that's the one that's added with petz. If you already had a suburb you'd just be copying your old one.

[Mizz Rose Bud]

eeeeeh ... I don´t understand. Sorry!

I thought that the Suburb001.package was something that came with Pets ... is it not 

Rose

[Stitches]

Maybe I'm alone in this but...

When Pets came out, I created my neighborhood by renaming the character templates for Uni, NL, and OFB. I originally tried to rename the Pets templates, but it caused crashing when creating a hood. I restored the Pets templates and removed "nostrayrespawn" and tried again. This time, it created the neighborhood just fine. I then spawned my townies but never got around to playing.

After reading this, I checked my character files. All I have are the strays, the one sim I created, and the townies that were spawned. Nothing extra.

So as far as MY game is concerned, this method works abeit without being able to get rid of strays.

[Eleonora]

eeeeeh ... I don´t understand. Sorry!

I thought that the Suburb001.package was something that came with Pets ... is it not 

Rose

If you have OFB every new shopping district you create makes a new suburb_00X file. So if you had 2 OFB districts before you installed pets, pets will create a suburb_003 file. That's the one you need to copy. If you don't have any OFB districts than the suburb_001 file is the file created by pets.

[Mizz Rose Bud]

Okay ... I get it now ... and I do not have any Suburb00X yet ... Thanks

Rose

[KevinTMC]

Okay...I've got something worrisome in my neighborhood now, after following the steps outlined above.

The hood was animal- and additional-sim-free after following Pescado's instructions for upgrading to Pets. It is still additional-sim-free. But SimPE now shows a grand total of 57 Unknown sims.



All of them appear identical (all but one, which has a "Life Section" setting of "Unknown" rather than "Adult"), and none of them appear to contain any actual character data at all in any of the panels of the SimPE character view.

How did this happen? How bad is this? What should I do?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[Mizz Rose Bud]

I followed Kevin TMC´s advice and installed Pets, loaded my hood, exit game, removed the hood files ( - Suburb001) added my backup and have played all evening. There were some strays, even with the nostrayrespawn

Originally there were 156 character files

In the folder I removed after installing Pets, there were 223 character files.

In the folder that I added, there are now 172 character files

I don´t know if this is useful for some of you, but now you know ... I haven´t looked in to SimPE, I wouldn´t know what I should be looking for 

Rose

[Giggy]

well I got another idea.
you could
A: with the base game tool follow the instructions to make a neighborhood in page one plus subs, then make your NPCs and townies then check the amount of characters
then play with the normal game and let the game spam some pets in then delete the unwanted npcs and pets till you get to the previous number of character files eg. if you had 45 characters and the game gave you a mere 25 more then delete the 25 till you get 45  files left
Or
B: get rid of them damn files in the drive

[jrd]

I've done A. If I can find those instructions for cleaning up templates, I'm going to try to clean P001. I still need to find a way to generate strays on demand though.

[Giggy]

simple. just spawn it with the mail box or using the townie tree

[J. M. Pescado]

I've done A. If I can find those instructions for cleaning up templates, I'm going to try to clean P001. I still need to find a way to generate strays on demand though.

Animals are already generated on demand, if you don't have norespawn.

[jrd]

Including strays? Good news.

Giggy: maybe I'm blind, but I can't find PETS on there.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you actually want your neighborhood populated by dozens of random animals, you could just leave nostrayrespawn out. The randomly generated animals are actually quite acceptable compared to the horribleness of townies, but on the other hand, you may not necessarily want a bunch of critters wandering around all the time, causing spammed memories and relationship markers everywhere. Better to leave them in the adoption pool for you to pick.

[Giggy]

Including strays? Good news.

Giggy: maybe I'm blind, but I can't find PETS on there.

its under EP4