So which Maxis neighborhood has the prettiest Sims (besides Pleasantview and Riverblossom Hills)? I haven't played most of them, and I want to start a legacy challenge but don't feel like making it as a separate custom 'hood. I am totally not following the NPCs and townies move-in/marry only rule. :P

I happen to like how the Apartment Life / Belladona Cove sims look. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ;D

@Alpal425
Any one of my Beginning hoods for most if not all the Sims in each one look very good to me and I still dont know why EA deleted them. You also have Riverside.

See my sig or go here http://modthesims.info/member.php?u=7749491


ADD: And there all set up for a legacy challenge.

Well, I also need the most amount of handsome male, single Sims I can get... I prefer male Sims that aren't that buff and stuff, you know? Sweet, nerdy, etc.

Only you know what you like Alpal. Open up the wiki and look.

So, Lots will adopt their terrain to whatever neighborhood climate type they are placed? I just discovered this when I placed a Lot I had made in the desert into a lush neighborhood. It's supposed to work that way? It doesn't cause any problems down the road? The Lot actually changes its terrain type? I don't need to make separate versions of the same Lot for different climate types?
Was there a specific EP this was put into effect?

I appear to have lost/deleted a gravestone!

A while ago, when my megahood first began, I decided to move Michael Bachelor's grave from the Caliente sister's house - being that Dina had moved out already and Nina wasn't really cool with having her sister's late husband roaming around. So I moved him to Gothier Green lawns (I think!!), which I then later, when Darren was moving out of his house also transferred Darlene Dreamer there too. So when I was doing my rounds of Downtown, I checked in so I could move their graves to a more presentable patch rather than just on the pavement... Darlene was there, but Michael wasn't! So thinking that I must've put him elsewhere, I checked everywhere where I thought I'd put a grave. He doesn't appear to be anywhere!

But I continued playing regardless (trying to tell myself that I must've put his grave somewhere else, and that I'd find it), but a few rotations later the game would crash when I tried to enter the Caliente lot so I moved them out and asked on here for help - I don't think anyone replied, so I just took note of it and continued playing with the Calente's living in a new house now. Buuuut this rotation, for the past few houses I've been noticing thought bubbles of squiggly lines.

I've just downloaded and opened hood checker, and there is a LOT of "Invalid relationships with self" and "Sim does not exist". Where did all that come from? is it the result of Michael Bachelor borking my game or has something else gone on? I know I haven't done any hood-corrupting things, other than losing Michael.

Would you say as far as size of downloads folder it is better to have more recolors than adding new meshes and what have you ? Do recolors add much "size" or does it all just come down to each particular item and polys and what have you ??

Have you had the tool try to clean up the hood for you? I've also had experiences with the "Invalid relationships with self" and "Sim does not exist" even on hoods that I've barely touched. I thought it was just one of those "It'll happen because it just does" sort of things. 99% of the time Mootilda's Hoodchecker clears it up for me.

Where's Jo when you need her. D'8

Yeah, the Hoodchecker'll clear most of that right up. Try respawning Michael's tombstone - if you can, the character data are still intact and it shouldn't be a problem. (You're quite sure it's not in Dina's inventory?)

Rob, as far as I know, lots have always been transparent until you put down terrain paint; i.e., they take the terrain type of the neighborhood in which they're placed, and if you want something different you have to use paint, floor tiles, garden plots, etc.

Start-up Cheats!

I haven't done this yet, and I really need to, so.. Would this work for my start-up cheat file (especially the radio thing, I really have no clue how to write that one)?

boolProp allow45degreeAngleOfRotation true
setQuarterTilePlacement on
floatProp tvVolume 0.2
floatProp radioVolume 0.2

It's not that the lots are transparent: there is a lot texture in the neighborhood terrain files, and in the game it's made to match the neighborhood terrain (though the lighting is different, which is why it doesn't look quite the same). When I made my own neighborhood terrain, I thought it would be clever to make the lot texture different. Years on, it doesn't look so clever. I have it set up so the "lot canvas" (which is the neighborhood texture that you see from the lot) is dry yellow grass such as we have here in California eight or nine months of the year, while the lot texture is bare dirt (as you'd see in a construction site). I keep meaning to edit the "lot canvas" because my attempt to make it not so monochrome ends up looking like it has green and brown measles, and I'm kind of bored with the lot texture too.

Recolors do add much "size" because textures are by far the largest thing in the package. But much space can be saved with Age Conversion Repository Clothing. You just have mesh and recolors for one age group, other age groups meshes have textures liked to that one age group. Phaenoh had made tutorial how you can do this yourself here: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=300954. The tutorial is for maxis meshes, you can do the same with custom meshes.

Cocomama did serie of Texture Referencing files for her Ageconversion meshes here: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=316844.

Skellington7d started Maxis Match Repository Project (for Maxis meshes) here: http://skellington7d.livejournal.co...itory%20project.

I couldn't work out how to get it to clean up the hood, I just got a list of the errors and I read through it, and I think the only options were to "refresh" "close" and "ok". Then again I had to skim the download thread because I had other things I had to do today (I opened up my game hoping for a 'quick play' )


It shouldn't be in Dina's inventory because I heard that moving a sim out with a tombstone in their inventory is bad. I'm 100% sure I put it on a community lot, though I haven't checked every single one - just the ones that I figured I'd put a dead sim (e.g. Parks).

How do I respawn Michael's tombstone? I know there's a "assignable gravestone" on here but would that work? is there any other ways?

jimlisa912, there's a robust argument as to whether the volume of the downloads folder or the number of files in it is more important in lag and other such issues. But it's true that mesh packages are larger in general than recolor packages. There are people who bundle their downloads together to cut down on the number of packages, something I've been meaning to explore but have never gotten around to (and I don't know where the instructions are).

On the volume side, I've noticed that hairs are among the largest files, and Maxis object recolors the smallest. There are exceptions to these, of course.

The number of polygons in a mesh file contributes to lag separately from the size of the download folder, as the game has to render all those polygons. The usual understanding about this is that you don't want to have a slew of high-poly objects on one lot, and your definition of "a slew" will vary depending on how fancy your computer is. For that matter, just the number of things on the lot can have a similar effect, so if your computer tends to struggle, you might want to decorate more sparely.

Speaking of the hoodchecker, I just ran it on Pleasantview (been playing it a lot recently) and got a ton of "Incorrect subject instance" under Memories. Is it safe to fix those? My brain's telling me "Wiping memories usually isn't good".

@Bigsimsfan12 When you run hoodchecker, the first time is to Check. So you can see what's going on. Run it again, after you've selected the hood you want to clean, hit the Remove button. It says at the top something like "Select Remove to attempt to fix the hood's invalid references" or something of the sort. Then you run it a third time, again with Check so tsee what's been left over.

Can a family in the main hood invite a young adult who goes to university over for a visit? And the other way around, can a young adult invite over a friend (teenager or adult) to his dorm?

Sure, just have them pick up the phone and invite them over.

Probably asleep seeing I live on the other side of the world.
I'm not the one to ask things like hood checker read outs. I know how to run and remove and would certainly load up SimPE and remove anything strange, but that's about it.

Yep . Lilith Pleasant is a young adult in my game and she often gets invited to family gatherings, and invites her Grandparents to her sorority regularly.

Yes, that's not a problem at all. They can visit freely; but a YA invited to move in from the main hood will grow up to adult and be unable to return to school (without mods).

Siletka, wiping bad memories is much better than keeping them!

To spawn a tombstone, Bigsimsfan, you will need a teleporter cat and the testingcheats. Use the teleporter to summon the dead sim; make him selectable with the game paused (he'll fade away again almost instantly); and click (Shift click? I keep forgetting) him to get a pie menu. The one you want is Item/Spawn tombstone or something like that. Sometimes it takes two tries.

I never noticed that Lot terrain took on the climate color of the hood. I just never looked too closely and usually also paint the entirety of my Lot, which covers the default color.


I thought I did notice some unusual lighting effects when put a desert Lot into a temperate hood. Will have to look at this further.


That's a cool-looking town, Lucy, definitely Californa-ish. I like the way it looks in hood view and I don't see anything wrong with this Lot view either.

Thanks for the answers about young adults and visitations. Will be necessary for Widespot, since today I sent the very first two teens to college!

Whhheey! Michael now has a tombstone! Thank you very much :D

On the other hand (and what I'm looking for) the Blender has an option "get pregnant with" that includes anyone on the lot - including "yourself"! But even with controllable pets, there is no option (which would be nice even if they were NOT related).

Well, yeah, if you want to do pet breeding in a cheaty way instead of it happening "naturally" in the game. But no, the Blender doesn't work on pets. I'm not aware of any such object that does work on pets...but then I'm probably not aware of all such objects.