Humor me

[Cons]

I know somewhere there is probably a post covering this, but I' old and getting to be brain dead at times.

If this game keeps playing without the CC, can I just manually delete N001 and N003 before I load the game and the game will regenerate those two hoods? Nice fresh copies? Or am I really brain dead and this causes instant death of the game and a complete reinstall? Thought I read somewhere this could be done but just wanted to double check.

Same for deleting custom houses out of the house and lots bin, they're only in Veronaville (My testing ground) so if I delete them and then reinstall them whaty kind of problems will that cause? Some of them came with custom furniture and if this idiot game is balking at loading the CC file...I can't use them anyway w/o a reinstall of those lots. I have several that are unfurnished so they could be put back in.

I mean I used to just trash the houses if I didn't like them out of that bin and never seemed to have any goofies. But I just though I'd ask before I clicked on the little trash can.

Thanks

[syberspunk]

Dunno bout the other stuff, but...

If this game keeps playing without the CC, can I just manually delete N001 and N003 before I load the game and the game will regenerate those two hoods? Nice fresh copies? Or am I really brain dead and this causes instant death of the game and a complete reinstall? Thought I read somewhere this could be done but just wanted to double check.

I'm pretty sure the answer is no.  I tried this, and the game doesn't quite detect what Neighborhoods are "missing" from youre Neighborhoods folder.  If you want the game to regenerate specific Maxis EA default hoods, you should do the following:

1) Delete whatever hoods you want to be regenerated from your current Neighborhoods folder (in your example, N001 and N003).
2) Move your current Neighborhoods folder out of the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 directory tree i.e. move it to your Desktop or somewhere else that is "safe"
3) Launch your game.  It should now regenerate all 3 (or 4, if you have Seasons) default Maxis EA hoods.
4) Move your Neighborhoods folder back into the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 directory tree.  Let it overwrite anything.

In this way, you can keep any Custom hoods you created, And any default hoods that you played and wanted to keep.  In other words, if you played N002 and you wanted to keep it, just let it overwrite when you move it back.

I hope that all makes sense.  You might have to delete the Neighborhoods.package or whatever that file is called in the root of the Neighborhoods folder, and allow the game to regenerate.  But you might experience strangeness when it comes to the Story/photo album stuff.  I'm not sure how I fux0r3d mine up... but in one of my past attempts to regenerate hoods, something got screwed up numbering wise, and all of a sudden, albums weren't showing up properly.  I had to go into SimPE and fix it, so things pointed to the proper numbers, but it's been so long, I don't remember exactly how I fixed it.

Ste

[angelyne]

It's actually more simple than that. 

Indeed, the game will not recreate neighbourdhoods you delete.  How annoying would that be??

First delete the neighbourdhood you want to refresh.  Close the game.

Rename your \documents and folders\name\the Sims 2 folder to something like the sims 2.old and launch TS2.  It will recreate a spanking new set of default neighbourdhoods.  I've done this a million times.  I have something like 10 sets of folders for various tests I made.

Then copy whatever neighbourdhood you want refreshed N001, N002... or N003 back to your original folder (The Sims 2.old).  Obviously making sure you are not overwriting the neighbourdhoods you are keeping!!.  Delete or rename the new set of folders and rename your original back to The Sims 2.

that's it.

PS.  Oh and as always make a backup first.  It can't hurt and you might be mighty glad one day that you did.

[travellersside]

Let's do it simpler still...

In-game or out, delete the Maxis neighbourhood that you want to reset.
Find the folder that you originally installed the game into and hunt down the relevant N00x folder:
  default is (C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods) But everything before TSData depends on where you put it.
Copy the relevant N00x folder to the neighbourhood directory. The one that's next to the directory that your downloads go in.
Run game.

N001: Pleasantview
N002: Strangetown
N003: Veronaville

Not that you need these neighbourhoods in the slightest. Your question was ambiguous, so I'm not sure if you want to play in those neighbourhoods, or if you just expect them to return and that you can't do anything about it. If you don't want them, they won't regenerate unless you force the issue.

[angelyne]

...waits for someone to come up with an even simpler solution.  Stamping your foot and waving at the computer would be good 

[numaari]

...waits for someone to come up with an even simpler solution.  Stamping your foot and waving at the computer would be good 

Hmmm... If that would solve all my sims-related problems I would be all set.  Stomping my foot and shaking my fist at the 'puter is my default setting, so I would have discovered this loooong ago. *heh*

[jsalemi]

...waits for someone to come up with an even simpler solution.  Stamping your foot and waving at the computer would be good 

Put you hands on the monitor, brothers and sisters!  Now, all together shout, 'HEAL!  HEAL!  HEAL!' 

[ElfPuddle]

(I would, but my students would laugh.....I'll wait until I'm home, but then I will!)

[Marhis]

A former coworker used to dismount and then remount his PC once a week, on a regular basis, just to "show him WHO is the master here". It seemed to work, too.

[Cons]

Now when I stop laughing....I'll try and clarify my goal. In Sim1 when I had game glitches, I used to copy my neighborhood folders to a safe place, do a clean reinstall, and then slap the NH back in there from my backup and just overwirte the NH I wanted to bring back.Worked everytime. No problem.

Sim2 seems to be a shade different. My only goal is to kill off the current N001 and N003, which when I think about, they really aren't necessary are they? And just put the game default N001 and N003 in there.
Why, because those are laoded with custom content and houses and right now the stupid game is not a happy camper about running with those in there.I also thought I would go print out the handy how to merge neighborhoods, because I thought it would be cool to have tham all connected together...my thought about this game is you should be able to chat with friends in other "hoods"...but the way Maxis has it unless they are made sub hoods, it's a no go. Like the other hoods are on Mars or something.

Now if I thought the old method would work, I'd just nab Roseblossom Hills and do a complete reinstall
and slap it back in there. Why do a complete reinstall? Well I have an odd glitch with this game since I did the reinstall back in August after I upgraded and put in a new HDD.Uh I have no Body Shop. I didn't notice it until I had everything in through NL and I just said the Hell with it I never use it anyway.....
I toyed with the idea of slapping Body SHop in by locating it on the S2 DVDV...but then I remembered
it is updated with each new expansion and you might as well just reinstall the game than seach for all those files on each and every CD.

So give me a few to copy and paste your how 2's and mull them over, take a couple of Tylenol (I have a headache today) and come back with any new fun questions later on today.

Thanks so much for the help.

[amjoie]

A few things to note when making new default hoods:

When saving old hoods for backups, it is best to save the entire Neighborhood folder. Your bins are saved in the Lot Catalog folder. So if you don't delete the Lot Catalog folder, your bins will be the same as they were before you forced the creation of new neighborhoods. But because of this, if you are saving old neighborhoods as backups, be sure to also save a copy of the Lot Catalog along with the hoods. That will give you a complete backup.

When creating all new neighborhoods by moving your old neighborhoods out of the game folder and forcing the game to make new ones, don't forget to redo all your game settings. They will have returned to default settings.

If you want the default hood, but with no sims, get empty default templates for each expansion. For the first three, templates also exist  that will give you the default families for each hood, but no additional townies. You can also have the pets expansion, but no pets spawned until they are needed in the game. If you use the norespawn mods, you can keep numbers of townies, downtownies, and pets to a bare minimum. If you have Seasons, it is imperative to use an empty Seasons template, or the game will put the same families and ugly pets into every single custom hood you start up. Find more info here:  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html?PHPSESSID=a05fd685a759d582f96f5798598b3467

If you want no default hood, just delete one or more. It is gone, and will never bother you again. Default hoods are completely unnecessary. I play them only to test a new expansion, and then delete. All my regular playable hoods are custiom.

You cannot "save" one family out of an established hood and move it to a new custom hood. Don't even try. But you can remake a particular family of sims, age toddler and up, by making templates of them in SimPE using Sim Surgery and putting them back into your game. Babies cannot be templated, so age them before you do anything else. Pregnant Sims will no longer be pregnant, so birth the baby and age it to toddler with cheats before you do anything else. Once the new Sims from the templates are in the game, use cheats to put relationships back the way they were.

Existing pet breeds are already templates. So if your pet is a particular breed, there is no need to use Sim Surgery on it. But if your pet is unique, then use Sim Surgery on it so you can bring it back into the game as a template, and recreate your pet. Alternately, before you exit the established game, use the phone to make your unique pet a new breed. Then the template will be waiting for you when you start up CAS.

Empty houses can be moved from an established hood to the new hood, with sheer abandon. If you put an empty house in the bin, and then choose to not use it after all, feel perfectly free to delete it. Nothing bad will come from deleting every house in the bin. I routinely remove all MaxisEA houses from the bin, as part of setting up a new game. Then I reinstall my packaged furnished homes with Clean Installer (making sure no sims or mods tag along), and those empty but furnished homes are the only homes available in the bin.

If you want particular empty houses in the bin, but you also want to play them in the hood, just put them in the bin, first. Then put them back into the hood. If you have the expansion that allows empty houses to stay in the bin until deleted, you will now have the house template in the bin, and also the same house back iin your game.

It is wise to package any home you enjoy playing, even while it is occupied. You can package the same house multiple times, like after any major changes. They will be saved with numbers appended after the name. The largest number is the latest house rendition saved. When you wish to put the home back into the game, use Clean Installer to choose the "lot only" option in the upper right corner. If you still have the same downloads folder, that will put a fully furnished, but sim free, home into your bin. Use this method to always have backup homes, in case of a bad fire, corrupted lot, etc. [If you need to have the objects installed back into the game, be sure to uncheck all sim or family files in Clean Installer, before you reinstall the home. They are usually found at the bottom of the list, so start there and work your way up. Please remember that you only want to reinstall the lot and it's objects/recolors/walls/floors/groundcovers. Do not reinstall mods, clothes, makeup, sim files, family files, etc. Those should all be unchecked.]

If you have the expansion that allows empty homes in the bin to be used repeatedly, it is always a good idea to sparsely furnish a tiny home, making sure to stay just under 20,000 simoleans, so you have an ideal starter home. Move it to the bin. Now you can use that one ideal starter home over and over, to move any new family in, save up their simoleans, and move them up to a bigger and better home quickly. I have gone one step further, and made multiple starter homes in different styles (so I don't get bored with them), but they are immediately ready in the bin for a new college student, new married couple, or a spouse forced to move out after a disagreement.

[angelyne]

Couple of notes here.  Eliminating your neighbourdhoods will do nothing to get you rid of extra houses or custom content.  Houses and cc are shared between neighbourdhoods.  The only way (or should I say the safest way) to remove houses is delete them from within the Sims.  This will NOT however remove the custom content that came along with it. 

For that you have several options.  Remove it from within the game (that won't remove custom meshes however), remove it using Clean installer.  Or the more radical approach, move the download folders elsewhere and start over.  JM would add use del *.*.  But I won't go there.

Neighbourhoods you don't play, or even ones that you play but no longer want, can be safely eliminated, again from within the neighbourhood selection screen.  No worries about damaging your game.  The neighbourhoods, although they share houses,  settings, cc, (and a few other things) are independant from other 'hoods.  There is no need for you to put any of the default hoods back in.  The game will tick along happily with just one hood.

So your strategy for fixing your body shop problem is good.  After purging the stuff you don't want, houses, cc, hoods, move your ENTIRE The Sims 2 folder that resides in My Documents to your desktop.  Reinstall the game.  Delete the new The Sims 2 it has created (in My Documents).  Copy yours back (keep a copy, just in case).  And launch the game.  Everything will be as you left it, with body shop back, hopefully.

[amjoie]

It may not be merely the custom content or even how many houses were in your hood that caused the game to hiccup. It may be that your actual neighborhood was broken beyond repair. This is common, and has been discussed on this forum time and time again. All kinds of innocent things can break a hood until it is unplayable.

Try educating yourself on what does cause a hood to explode, by reading archives on this forum. Then you may be able to stop it from happening, next time.

But I think reinstalling is a very good idea. I reinstall, from scratch, with every new expansion.

One way to cut back on custom content, but keep what you really use, is to fully furnish several empty houses with your favorite custom content and package them. Then reinstall all those houses with Clean Installer (being careful no mods tagged along) into a brand new downloads folder. Now you will have all your favorite custom content as a good base, for starting over. If you don't want the actual houses, delete them from the bin, but the custom content will still be in the downloads folder.

After that, try adding the rest of your custom content a little bit at a time, like you were downloading some things each day. Keep what you need, and toss the rest. You can probably cut back by half, and hardly notice. It is rather painless.

[Cons]

angelyne,

I just need to kill off the houses in the house bin. CC folder/Downloads is completely out of the game.
I have a new improved folder in there with just hacks and Hacked objects, nothing else. Works fine with those so far.Known as how to clean out your DL folder in one complete sweep. Which is a good thing. Less mind boggling overall. LOL Since I keep all the original zips and rar files for DL's on my F drive, not a problem putting back those I really like, slowly to see if the game will run with them.

I think I like travellersside's method. At least it's close to what I used to do in Sims 1. I just need to delete N001 and N003 up in My Documents (Where the DL folder also resides) go to C:|Program files and suck the N001 and N003 out of Sims2/TS2Datea?REs/UserData/Neighborhoods and paste those back in the Neighborhood folder up in My Documents and it should be good to go.Yes??? Tell me yes, because that's way simple.

Well actually my plan for Body shop was to zap the file off the S2 DVD that has the Bodyshop install on it.
(Fun to find but it's there, under compressed file, CS Bin) and click on the installer and let it rip.....which may or may not be my best idea.Still mulling that over. Have no clue why it didn't install at the original install. Had no problem getting it in when I had put the game in on my old HDD.

amjoie

I've copied your post and am reading it, thoroughly. Because that may be what I really want to do. I had seen the thread with all that on it and was toying with that idea.Just using clean templates.

Yeah the Lots Catalog that's where I though the bins were. Shouldn't it delete them from that folder if I delete the lots in game in the House and Lots bin?

"Empty houses can be moved from an established hood to the new hood, with sheer abandon. If you put an empty house in the bin, and then choose to not use it after all, feel perfectly free to delete it. Nothing bad will come from deleting every house in the bin. I routinely remove all MaxisEA houses from the bin, as part of setting up a new game. Then I reinstall my packaged furnished homes with Clean Installer (making sure no sims or mods tag along), and those empty but furnished homes are the only homes available in the bin."

I remove Maxis houses that suck and never had a problem so I couldn't see any reason why I couldn't just
kill off those houses out the bin and then reinstall the ones I like with Clean Installer (Yes I use it)

I don't care about saving any of the families in those two hoods. Just thought I might put them back in there vanilla in case I wanted to try and merge them to Roseblossomhills. Or maybe just create my own hoods and go on from there.Out of Veronaville, even though they are weird looking I liked the Summerdreams....but the Capps and the Monty's are the most homely people I ever saw. They got 10 points for ugly. Summerdreams are ok after you clean them up with the exception of the pointy ears. I like regular average looking sims..not into aliens, vampires, werewolves, etc.

I would have gone with the broken neighborhood idea, but it happens in  Veronaville, Pleasantview and Roseblossomhills if I add back CC. So Roseblossom is new and it shouldn't affect it. No custom content there.


Really appreciate everyone's replies and suggestions and information.

[amjoie]

HEADS UP:

In the "Selling House and Leaving Furnishings" thread, Pescado just said packaging houses is "not a good thing."

I have asked numerous questions as to why, and am awaiting answers. But you may want to read that thread before starting your new hood ....

[angelyne]

What thread is this Amjoie.  I've never heard of this problem.  I know that packaging houses with sims in them is a big no no, but simply packaging houses?  ??

Yes Cons, just delete any house in your house bin.  Perfectly safe.   Hopefully you don't have houses in the occupied house bin, that needs to be avoided.

Yes Travellerside's method should work.  I don't see why not.  But that's only because we were assuming you wanted to restart some of your 'hoods. If that's the goal then yes.

If the goal is to reinstall, then at the very least, i'd make a copy of my entire the sims 2 folder (in My Document) just to be safe. 

Your game data might be borked period.  This happens with saddening frequency.  In which case you have a whole menu of starting over options and tutorials in peasantly.  Have fun.

[amjoie]

This thread:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7579.0.html

It just got posted. I frankly don't understand what he is talking about (of course, I have no claims to being awesome), hence the gazillion questions, which I hope he answers. I would like to understand this.

[Cons]

Well after mulling it over, I said crud, just reinstall it and see what gives. So I wiped out all these damn expansions, GL &FFS and reinstalled them. I loaded it up without anything in there and went to Roseblossomhills, which seems to be loading ok. Checked the memory usage at the McGregor house and noticed that it had 342,360 megs free. After closing it had 869,088 open. That's the most it's had free since I installed Seasons. So now I'm wondering if amjoie and angelyne might have been right and something was borked way back there and kept carrying forward. If it was it was in OFB when it developed a crashing frenzy, but seemed to be fixed when I deleted the groups.cache. This was before I installed GL,FFS and Pets. Played fine in Pets but then with Seasons it was just a mess.

Anywho, I have lots of nice info to read and think about. You don't ask you don't learn with this game.
Still want to see if I can add Pleasantville and Veronaville as a subhood of Roseblossomhills. That would perk up this game.

I do have Body shop now. Cool! Not that I find it something I need, but who knows maybe I'll use it once in awhile.

Maybe I'll just create my own hood at some point. I never did before because I loved torturing the Pleasantville natives.

We'll see how long it plays and if it starts crashing again at some point in time. I don't need the custom content for awhile. Once I decide the game is stable without it, then I'll add back some stuff I really like.
I'll miss the clothes most of all. Maxis has dorky outfits. Especially for Elders.

I'm adding back my Download folder of "Hacks and hacked objects(Clean and shinny for Seasons), the censor and those bonus objects that never showed up anywhere in the game before. Maybe after this reinstall they'll magically appear?

I never package occupied houses, seemed like that wouldn't work out too well.

Thanks again and I will read everything in Peasantry. Good stuff there.You'all do good work.I'm much better with hardware issues than in game programming glitches. Just dumb as a rock there. I'm still running with my old Nvidia drivers because they work and I don't have graphics goofyness with them...yet. But you never know. Surely to god Nvidia will get off their ass and put out some drivers that are compatible with S2 +5. ATI used to have the worst drivers in the world and Nvidia the best, now the worm has turned.

[amjoie]

You did the right thing.

By all means, really consider starting up your own new hood. Most of the problems in the game stem from the fact that MaxisEA took shortcuts setting up scenarios in their default hoods. Those are not hoods they started playing and then saved for us. They are artificially set up, and full of many blunders that should have been caught, but were not. So you will always be better off with your own fresh started hood. Always.