Occupied Neighborhood Downloads (base game to Nightlife)
Date Posted: 13th Jan 2011 at 5:07 PM Views: 971
Updated: 15 Sep 2011 - Added Scotia.

I've been investigating various neighborhood downloads and realized that I particularly like populated neighborhoods: hoods with playable characters with interesting story lines.

If you know of any neighborhood downloads with playable sims that I've missed, please let me know.
Comments about any of these neighborhoods also welcome.

It can be hard to find occupied neighborhoods which can be downloaded. There are very few available; most "neighborhoods" which you can download are either neighborhood terrains or decorated neighborhood terrains; some of the neighborhoods here at MTS have lots, but no sims. It's also become apparent that creating an occupied neighborhood is really difficult, because some of the occupied neighborhoods that I've seen have problems.

I just wanted to make some notes about some of the neighborhood downloads that I've been looking at. Be sure to read the download threads, since I'm not going to repeat information that you can find there, including known problems. I'm going to organize these by latest EP required, since that is the thing which most affects whether someone can play them.

Important: Even when I mention problems with a neighborhood, that doesn't mean that the neighborhood is unplayable. You may be able to get years of enjoyment out of these neighborhoods without experiencing any problems at all. However, if you begin to experience random odd problems, you should be aware that there may be no way to fix the underlying corruption and you may lose the neighborhood. I always recommend that people keep backups of neighborhoods that they can't bear to lose; if the neighborhood becomes corrupted, you will still be able to salvage the hood terrain, sims' appearances, and lots from your backup.


Base Game:
Morewood
Custom Content: Included. Just a couple of pieces. Optional.

Haven't played a lot, but it seems fairly nice. No problems found yet.

Seagull Island
Haven't played a lot; seems a bit sparse somehow, perhaps because it's a large neighborhood terrain with minimal neighborhood decorations.
Notes:
There no longer seems to be documentation on this neighborhood, but the download itself is still available.

Problems:
Many of the Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville sims (both playable and townie) are in the neighborhood, unlinked and without character data, so it looks like the neighborhood may not have been well-cleaned. As well, there are a number of duplicate sims: for example: Alexander Goth, Darren Dreamer, and Dina Caliente.
Scotia
Custom Content: Not included. Shopping list available on website.

Not technically a playable neighborhood. Instead, this is meant to be a replacement for the Pleasantview template. It will add a completely different set of townies with a medieval theme to a newly created neighborhood. However, it can also be played as a standalone neighborhood, by just adding it to your Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods folder. Note that this neighborhood will conflict with Pleasantview.

Weivtnasaelp
This isn't really a new neighborhood; it's Pleasantview with all of the sexes reversed. A bit of fun.


University:
Maple Valley
Brand new fixed version with documentation. I'm looking forward to having some time to explore.


Nightlife:
The Past Of Pleasantview
Another version of Pleasantview. In this one, everyone is younger and some of the (previously deceased) ancestors are alive and well. Most of the homes are the original homes from Pleasantview and Downtown, although Pleasantview has been reorganized.
Problems:
Rather than aging down the playable sims, new versions were created. The original versions of the playable sims are still in the neighborhood; all now have a first name of "Unknown". It's not clear that this will cause any problems, but it's still a bit odd.

Continued in next journal entry:
http://www.modthesims.info/journal....howentry&e=5299

Recent Comments for: Occupied Neighborhood Downloads (base game to Nightlife)
Occupied Neighborhood Downloads (base game to Nightlife)
By lechapeau (24th Jan 2011 at 1:04 PM)
Thank you very much for the compliment on Beacon Falls Mootilda!
Maple Valley has quite a few problems, when people ask me for it I tell them the main troubles in there and then it's up to them to decide whether they really want it. I would usually include an information sheet along with the download but I see the file linked to here doesn't have that. I will upload it later today and PM you with a different link, though it's entirely up to you whether you want to change it here!
The people starting Maple Valley off were uninformed about keeping characters as clean as could be when first putting it together, this lead (as well as those you've mentioned) to problems specifically with the Tieliners, Ivan Fabulous and the Hudsons. I think the Applebaums too, maybe also Sylvia Tangia. I'm not sure about the Chuangs, I think Zythe thought he'd fixed them but they stick out in my memory for some reason, so there may be something with them as well.
It's a neighbourhood breaking rather than a game breaking thing, and my version of the 'hood took a year of constant play to go down. When I looked and saw the troubles in there for myself, people who were still playing it at the time told me that they'd seen no issues yet.
A lot of the affected Sims have '$' subject memories, any dead characters that featured in their storylines left broken data. Tera Tieliner & Ivan Fabulous had duplicate characters, where Zythe introduced a 'fixed' one after he'd found one to be broken. It would take an mount of dedicated fixing time to sort it out: at the time I wasn't familiar with SimPE at all, later on when I might have been able to attempt it, I was involved in my other projects.
I won't commit to anying, but *I am* sitting here thinking I could probably try soon and I will let you know if I actually get anywhere with that!
Another neighbourhood I know of is 'The Geoff Military Estate' by pm3cripp and can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/geoffmestate/
Occupied Neighborhood Downloads
By Mootilda (17th Jan 2011 at 6:13 AM)
Actually, I've only been listing the last EP used to create the neighborhoods. I suppose that I should add information about the other required EPs. Thanks for the comment.
Occupied Neighborhood Downloads
By maybesomethingdunno (17th Jan 2011 at 5:28 AM)
Thank you for this list. It's good to know what EPs are needed and what possible problems there may be (both of which isn't always apparent).

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