Neighborhood without Subhoods

[numaari]

I am restarting a Pleasantview, and would like to have all the residences and select businesses in the main 'hood.  I want all of the premade families, too.  Which would be the proper way to do this?

I currently have an unplayed Pleasantview with all the subhoods added.  Do I:

* Package up all the businesses and occupied houses in Bluewater Village, kill the whole neighborhood, and install the packages in a fresh Pleasantview without a shopping district added?

* Add a Bluewater to my newly installed Pleasantview, shove everything in the shopping district into the houses and lots bin and move them over to the main 'hood?

If I generate a downtown and a shopping district, move what I want over to the main 'hood, can I then delete the two subhoods without losing sims?  Do downtownies (like the Master Vampire) have to live downtown, or are they in the game once they are created, even if you delete the downtown?

Can you even delete a subhood once it is created?  My brain hurts.

[Ness]

The only way you can delete a sub hood after it has been added is by making sure there's another there to take its place.

For example, if you had added Sim State Uni, but decided you really wanted La Fiesta Tech, you could only remove SSU if you first added LFT.

[SaraMK]

* Package up all the businesses and occupied houses in Bluewater Village, kill the whole neighborhood, and install the packages in a fresh Pleasantview without a shopping district added?

You should never do this. You will destroy your new neighborhood by dragging dozens, if not hundreds, of "junk" files along with those occupied houses.

* Add a Bluewater to my newly installed Pleasantview, shove everything in the shopping district into the houses and lots bin and move them over to the main 'hood?

Again, you should never pull occupied houses into the bin or install occupied lots. So, this idea is a very bad one. A safe way to do it would be to move all the sims out of the occupied houses, move the empty houses into the bin, put the houses down in another location (like your main neighborhood) and move the sims back in.

Can you even delete a subhood once it is created?

Nope. At least, the game won't let you delete them directly. You could try deleting the files manually, and hope that your game won't blow up as a result. I explained it in this thread, though I really do not recommend anyone do it. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=6724.msg189432

[Ness]

Wouldn't it be safe to lot bin the occupied houses just so long as they have never been played and the sims in them have never met anyone not on that lot?

[J. M. Pescado]

Maxis preplaced sims cannot be treated this way because they already know each other.

[witch]

I'm just in the process of getting all the lots I want out of all the sub-hoods, I'm using a test hood so it doesn't matter, I can go into the lot, get the residents to sell their businesses and give them death by flies. The I get the lot furnished after I've deleted the ash and the tombstone. I'm hoping this won't fubar the lot. I can then package it and put it in my own custom hood.

I want all the shops, nightclubs etc etc in one base hood, I don't play Uni so it should work. Mind you I'm starting a fresh hood wih 3 families.

I really don't know how you could safely move sims over, their memories and relationships create problems in the new hood, I've done it early on before I found MATY - where people told me how bad it was - and I had heaps of problems, had to junk the hood in the end - BFBVFS.

Another thing I tried was using SimEnhancer cloning lab to make clones of sims I really liked, personalities, looks, skills, genetics. I made CAS sims in the same family relationships then put the clones over the top. No memories though. If you've done a DeleteAllCharacters first, then SimEnhancer corrupts your hood irretrievably, Sims 2 won't even see it. (Simmiecal and I did that to her big hood a couple of times till we worked out what was happening).

SimPE also has a form of cloning I believe, though as of a couple of releases ago, I couldn't get it working.

[Sleepycat]

to get empty Lots - Make a temp hood, attach downtown, enter it and move every Lot you want to the Bin.

Do the same for bluewaters empty Lots.

leave the temp hood and enter another hood, from there you can now delete the temp hood if you have all the Lots you want (or you can delete it the next time you load the game)


I suggest you package each Lot to a file once it is in your hood, that way if you want to restart again you will already have the Lots.

[J. M. Pescado]

Note that the Downtown subhood actually has special properties that distinguish it from other neighborhoods: Downtown lots are visitable by downtownies, can have grand vampires, and have larger visitor maxes.

[numaari]

See, I knew that moving sims from main 'hood to main 'hood (like Pleasantview to Veronaville) was bad, but I didn't know that the effect was the same moving them from a subhood to the main one (like Pleasantview's Bluewater to the main Pleasantview).

Crap.  Good thing I asked.

[kutto]

You mean by means of the Lot Bin, right? I move sims between sub-hoods all the time, but by means of the sim bin. That's not a VBT is it?

[Sleepycat]

Sim Bin is ok, Lot Bin is very very bad


edit - I had moved a bunch of Downtown Lots to my main hood, then customized them (and packaged them)

I also made all my downtownies into regular townies (with InSIM) including the grand vampires (left Crumplebutt alone).  It was working out great, didn't need to go Downtown for anything.

Of course after I was reminded that Downtown community lots get more visitors, I shifted my customized Lots back Downtown *laughs*  since it was already attached I might as well use it and enjoy having more visitors on those lots 

[witch]

Note that the Downtown subhood actually has special properties that distinguish it from other neighborhoods: Downtown lots are visitable by downtownies, can have grand vampires, and have larger visitor maxes.

Yes I did create a downtown to make the downtownies, I didn't know you actually got more visitors downtown, I'll have to shift some businesses myself.

Sleepycat I've done the same, customised the downtown lots I want with TwoJeffs visitor controller pictures, static energy statue and all, so I've got my clubs all set up. Plus of course a photo booth and hot tub - I hate trawling round lot after lot on a date looking for a bloody photo booth just because some random date has a random desire and it's the only date related desire left.

[Orikes]

Just out of curiosity, why is the moving by the lot bin bad?

I understand it's a VBT that will cause a FBVFS (or whatever that acronym is), but not exactly why.

[J. M. Pescado]

Just out of curiosity, why is the moving by the lot bin bad?

When a sim's home lot is moved to the lot bin, the sim is ripped out of your neighborhood, leaving dead files of that sim dangling as garbage.

When you then put that lot BACK in the neighborhood, files of every single sim in that sim's family tree and every sim he knows will then be dropped into your target neighborhood as dead files. Basically, everytime you do this, you essentially double the number of files in your neighborhood, clogging it with garbage. Don't move occupied lots to the lot bin.

Evicting a sim to the sim bin is a perfectly normal and safe thing to do, if you wish to move him between subhoods of the same neighborhood. Moving empty lots via the lot bin will inflict lot instance "holes" but is believed mostly harmless given that there are 32767 potential instances (and probably a creation index I'll find somewhere).

[jrd]

I know I replied to this with about the same content. Another lost post :/

[V]

Okay, does the Bluewater neighborhood have any special properties like the Downtown or Uni hoods? I want some of the businesses in Bluewater, but I do NOT want the plethora of sims (playable or not) to come with them.

Would it be okay to package the business lots in Bluewater, install them, and then move them into the main hood from the Lot Bin? Is there a disaster waiting if I were to package up some of the "owned" lots in Bluewater?

[witch]

I went in and killed off the sims in the owned lots in a test hood. Then packaged the empty furnished lots for use in my real game.

[Ness]

V, that should be ok to do.

The other thing I did was delete all the character files from the program files template for BWV, so I could add the hood as a whole with no extra characters at all.

[blubug]

Again, at the risk of sounding like I'm pimping Simwardrobe, there's an object there that lets you easily control number of max visitors on a lot. I use it for businesses a lot to bring in customers for lots of cash. If you're just creating downtown subhoods for more visitors, this object does it, you can change the max. number even if you're just visiting the lot and the sims appear quite quickly. It's under business facilitators.

[witch]

Okay, does the Bluewater neighborhood have any special properties like the Downtown or Uni hoods? I want some of the businesses in Bluewater, but I do NOT want the plethora of sims (playable or not) to come with them.

Would it be okay to package the business lots in Bluewater, install them, and then move them into the main hood from the Lot Bin? Is there a disaster waiting if I were to package up some of the "owned" lots in Bluewater?

I've uploaded the residential Bluewater lots, without sims or pets but with furnishings.
http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php?topic=605.0

I have all the business lots too, if you like I could upload those to Laverwinkle. I made all the sims sell the businesses before they were packaged, so if there are any issues, they'd probably be Maxis ones.

ETA: Have posted community lots to laverwinkle - http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php?board=54.0