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

[jrd]

Zerth: did you rename the P001 folder?

Jelenedra: I haven't tested that scenario. Bluewater should not spawn extras (except perhaps a reporter), but NL and Uni might. I really need to test if renaming the templates is enough to stop this.

[Zerthimon]

Should I have?  Because I renamed the N001 folder (double checked, tried it a couple times), and remain unawesome.

[jrd]

If you have Pets and don't want default Pet crap, apparently yes, you should.

[Zerthimon]

Well, the default strays don't bother me that much.  But trying again, renaming both folders...crashes.  Creates a new "N001" folder.  The invisible pets neighbourhood becomes visible. So, no dice, at least for me.

[jrd]

You must not be following the instructions correctly.

[Zerthimon]

Alright. I reset everything and tried it once more-and I know there's no point in arguing "I followed the instructions"-"Then why doens't it work".  But it crashed again. 

For the record, it always crashes when generating "Pets".  I'm going to give it a rest before I FUBAR something important. 

[jrd]

Pretty weird…

I'll have to do some more checking. You can do what Pescado recommends: leave P001 in place, and make a backup of your 'hood in SimPE (or just copy the package) before first loading the 'hood with Pets. Then replace the neighbourhood package file with the pre-Pets one.

[Zerthimon]

SimPE it is.  Thanks for the quick replies.

(EA did not have to make this so hard.  Townie creation should be a box on the create neighbourhood screen.  Though they probably would have messed that up, so eh.)

[jrd]

Agreed!

They should have given us the option to import defaults, or start with new custom townies.

[Zerthimon]

They could have had a collection of theme sets for the lazy people-retirement community, young community, "hip" district.  And new randomized townies.  Instead, we get weird noses, plaid shorts, and in the case of this moron, constant crashing

We're in an abusive relationship with EA!

[CrabOfDoom]

There must be something I'm not doing right, as well. I'm running Pets, for reference.

I have tried renaming the Program Files... Neighborhood N001 folder to "N001-bak" and "N001 -bak", and both times, the whole boatload of instant character files came with the custom hood. I put both the "no townie regen" and "no dormie spawn" mods in my downloads folder, but the files were always there. I tried using "deleteAllCharacters", but the pop-up said they'd be regenerated when I visited the first lot, and they must've been, because the tree generated the 30 townies it was supposed to, but there were 280+ character files when I saved and checked. The instructions say the mods will stop the spawning, so I added one each of the sub hoods (all blank terrains except Bluewater,) and don't advise against waiting, so I went ahead and added them.

Are the character files still being generated stray pets? I don't mind, if that's the case, but I'm not skilled/alert enough to tell the difference between types. But my favorite neighborhood is fast approaching its fiery ball of death threshold, and I'd prefer this new hood be as clean as possible for the clones. I've tried the directions three times, and it's getting really frustrating.

[Mizz Rose Bud]

Okay ... I have a CC hood, created from Nec´s tutorial, and it works fine, so I now want to add my own CC pets to the hood ( I have installed the EP, but haven´t loaded my hood yet, so I guess that it´s not harmed yet) .. so how do I prevent that the game fill my hood with a lot of unwanted dogs and cats ?

Do I do the Rename-N001-Folder thing
or
do I use Pescardo´s No Stray Respawns thing

 

And what is that with some invisible hood      ... I did a seach and couldn´t find anything that made sence ... or maybe it´s just that I´m danish ... or both 

Rose

[jrd]

Pets is not well tested and therefore unknown. The above is only valid for XP3 and the two SPs, XP4 is an unknown factor.

[Mizz Rose Bud]

Okay, thanks
I´ll just wait then, and keep playing my other hood

Rose

[jrd]

Zadan: saw it, and linked to it.
Nice collection of hints.

[jrd]

Zadan? Where is Zadan? I don't see anything... *whistles*

[shanpooter]

Whenever I attempt to create a new neighbourhood after renaming N001, the game quits and the invisible "Pets" neighbourhood becomes visible (I can't do anything with it though).  I get a whole new N001, defaut townies and all.

I have the same exact problem.  I'm pretty sure I am doing everything correctly.  This was working perfectly before I put pets in last night, now the game crashes upon creating "Pets."  What seems strange to me is that I haven't renamed anything related to pets.  I renamed the N001 folder, and have put in the empty templates.  This does not happen with previously created neighborhoods though.  The game is able to create "Pets" and with no problem.

[miros]

What about creating a new hood with the "New Hood" button?  Guess I need to do an experiment here...

BTW, I'm getting more and more corrupt Groups.cache and Accessory.cache files since installing Pets... so if your game suddenly quits loading past the first splash screen -- just delete those and all will be well!

[Eleonora]

Just thought I'd share my experience with Petz.
I renamed the Program Files\...~...\Neighbourhood Template folder, and installed 'no stray respawn', hoping that my game wouldn't spawn the usual bunch of strays. The results were somewhat interesting. The stray part seems to have worked, so far I have not seen any strays on any of my lots. No wolves were present either, my game generated one after about an hour of gameplay.
Some parts were less succesfull; the Crittur and Roseland family had been spawned, and the standard 3 animal cops and 2 obedience trainers too. Also, when phoning the pet adoption, I got the same list op pets as in my other hood, where I had not renamed the Neighbourhood Template folder.

EDIT: Sod it, karma is a bitch. Renaming that folder seems to have FUBAR'ed my hood. 3 sim minutes after loading my lot, lo and behold, little black doggie Grace walks by, the same friggin stray that all my other hoods have. Apparently all strays did spawn I was just lucky enough to not see them for a long time. But it gets worse. Pissed off, I load a different hood, one that had already spawned all petz stuff whilst the folder was NOT renamed. And my bloody game starts creating all that stuff all over again! Now I have two of everything, strays, Critturs, and those blasted pre-made families in their fugly houses  RAAH!

[JenW]

I have Pets and I tried to do this last night...I renamed the correct folder in step 1 but I still ended up with a whole slew of character files. Maybe Pets changed something?

[jsalemi]

I thought about this after you left the chat last night -- did you check the character files in SimPE?  I'm wondering if they're the default pets and strays the game creates....

[JenW]

No, I haven't checked them yet...I have the game open right now but I'll check later. There are a *LOT* though...IIRC around 165 

[jsalemi]

Hmm, that sounds like way too many -- if memory serves, there's only 80-something created when you load a new hood that pulls from the N001 template. So it may be them plus strays....

[JenW]

* JenW double-checks

k it's actually 157 files...still way too many.

[jrd]

Warning added to first post. Even if it does not always corrupt 'hoods, it is nonfunctional under Pets.