Is it safe to rename your neighbourhoods?

[Rose Outlaw]

Say if you got a copy of the entire N001 folder and you would like to rename it to N111, is it ok to just rename the main folder, then go to the subfolders and the main neighbourhood files and batch rename/replace each file to N111...whateverandso.on instead of N001?

Somewhere else, I came across a help seeking thread where someone renamed a neighbourhood and it wouldn't show up anymore. People advised to restore the original name and not to try again, because it would mess up the NeighbourhoodManager file - which was safe to delete to be automatically recreated, I always thought. Now I don't know if that person just wrote Pleasantview instead of N001 or whatever or if he or she even bothered to deal with the content in the folders ... it just made me wonder why my very own copy of Riverblossom Hills does work.

[pbox]

Totally safe in my experience, as long as you stick to the N### syntax and remember to renumber the stuff in the subfolders. I renumber my hoods a lot, and never had any issues.

(I have also seen it mentioned one or two times that something inside the NeighbourhoodManager might get confused by that, but those were only theoretical concerns .. I've yet to see anyone report actual problems)

[J. M. Pescado]

The ID of the neighborhood is encoded internally and cannot be altered simply by renaming files, but I believe SimPE is able to handle this process for you. I have never actually tried to do this, however.

[Aggie]

Interesting; would you be able to point one in the right direction as to how to go about doing that? Since you haven't actually done it, I'm not expecting a thorough walkthrough, but perhaps a nudge (or shove) in the right direction?

[Madame Mim]

A purely physical renaming will work most of the time. Especially in your own computer because it's using unique numbers now and when you spawn new Neighbourhoods they will be assigned their own unique numbers. Sharing the Neighbourhood can be problematic (whether you have changed the numbers or not) because of these internal numbers needing to be unique - and it gets even more so when you're talking about Neighbourhoods with subhoods (which probably includes the Pets and Seasons sub-hoods.)

The SimPE function for making the ID unique is IIRC under the Neighbourhood ID. The last tab of the options has a 'make unique' button - sorry this is a little vague it's been a while since I did this and I don't like to open SimPE when my game is running (which it is ATM). The problem is that even if you make the internal number unique (or get the person you're sharing the hood with to 'make unique' it doesn't always work, and I don't know why.

The good news is that even if you end up with hoods not showing up the problem is simply that one hood is conflicting with another and you can still play the hoods, just not when the conflicting ones are in the Neighbourhoods folder with it.

[Rose Outlaw]

Alright, all I share is photos, so Riverblossom Hills is safe. Well, as safe as a neighbourhood can be.

[Zeljka]

Probably redundant after Madame Mim's post, but I've renamed several of them and have never had a problem.

I have about 16 different neighbourhoods and tend to only play with 2 or 3 loaded at any given time. Creating new test hoods that eventually turn into something I want to keep, or restoring backups to see what's changed has given me plenty of opportunity to test it.
While I've never gone over 020, I use a file renamer (aptly called File Renamer) to rename everything in the hood and it's all good.

[MattyDienhoff]

I use a file renamer (aptly called File Renamer) to rename everything in the hood and it's all good.

Do you happen to know where I could find it? Renaming 200 files, one-by-one, gets old quickly. 

[Aggie]

Could it be the program at File Renamer?

[cwykes]

Somewhere else, I came across a help seeking thread where someone renamed a neighbourhood and it wouldn't show up anymore.

The standard answer to that in the early days was:  make a dummy in game with the number you want, so 'hoodmanager  expects a hood with that number.  Then quit and replace the dummy you just created with your re-numbered hood.  It'll be fine."  Of course we didn't know about the unique number issue.

I have some questions though:
- What kind of problem would a non-unique number cause?
- Is it safe to delete the 'hood manager file?  I used the trick with a re-install to fix flashing hoods in Seasons!
- when you add a sub-hood like Bluewater or Sedona, does the game allocate a unique number to that sub-hood properly?

I just re-name in a DOS window.  It's quick - apart from typing in the long file path.

[Lana B]

I have had multiple copies of the same hood in my game without problems. Is that not supposed to work?

[jrd]

As long as the instances are unique, it doesn't matter.

[Zeljka]

Could it be the program at File Renamer?

heh heh, yeah, that's the one...it's been extraordinarily helpful in my sims org/re-org...
my favourite feature is - delete 9 stupid pointless leading characters from 100 files at once, (13 if they're from MTS)

I've used it to rename backup copies (ie.. backed up N005 before renaming it to N009, loaded game with both versions while testing...)