Using a Mac for the first time

[chknflvrdramen]

Hi all,
Long story short, my PC is in the process of dying a horrible drawn-out death and I am inheriting my husband's Mac. Now I've searched a bit and do not like some things I've read, so I'm just hoping that maybe, just MAYBE, there's a chance something new is going on... is there anything similar to Clean Installer available for Mac? Or SimPE? Here's the thing: I was able to do this with Nightlife installed on my PC, but only have Uni on the mac so as I understand it none of my game files will be readable, not because I'm on a Mac but because on the other machine I had Nightlife. I had used the Clean Installer to go through the character files of Pleasantview in the Program Files and delete all the ugliest of townies so that new neighborhoods would not spawn them. I want to do the same thing here, but don't know of a good way to do that without Clean Installer. Help please? Anyone? TIA!

[Marhis]

Uh... I'm not sure I have understood right; if you removed character's files with Clean Installer, you didn't delete those sims, but only part of their data - and this is not a healthy move for your hood, whatever your operating system is: in a nutshell you basically messed up those hood, better would be restore it from a backup before it's too late: Clean installer is not made for tinkering with hood files.

Anyway, you don't have simpe or clean installer versions for Mac OS X, and this may be a problem if you have to edit game files (with simpe) or install parts of sims2packages (clean installer). You may use them, however, just like on a non-mac pc, in a Windows virtual environment (VirtualPC, or GuestPC) if you have a PowerPC Mac (G4, G5), or natively if your machine is an Intel-based one (MacIntel), by meant of BootCamp.
Some further infos about your machine may improve our ability to help you.

I don't understand what you mean with

none of my game files will be readable, not because I'm on a Mac but because on the other machine I had Nightlife.

You mean your played saved hood (with Downtown subhood, addeed in NL), or custom files (e.g. clothing, objects, hacks, etc.)?

[SaraMK]

Ditto what Marhis said.

Get the Empty Templates instead, if you want to get rid of the Pleasantview townies being copied over to any new neighborhood. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html

Alternately, there are NPC/townie-free Maxis neighborhoods that can be downloaded here:  http://www.4shared.com/dir/2250323/a7d398b0/Temporary.html You will still have a full Pleasantview, with all the Maxis playable sims, but no NPC/townies will be dumped into any custom neighborhoods.

[miros]

Somewhere in SaraMK's tutorial she says which files to remove so the stupid standard ugly townies don't generate. Instead you get some stupid, random, not-quite-so-ugly townies.

[chknflvrdramen]

Thanks for the help everyone, I can't wait to get back home to my game to try out your suggestions!