Hello, please direct me to the answer, if these questions have been answered already.

Question 1. In one of my custom neighborhoods, all Victorian, I just spent a lot of painstaking time making over ALL my townies and social groups with ChristianLov's wonderful clothing rack. I have played the neighborhood and interacted with these townies. Now I wish that I could start a new neighborhood and transfer all these wonderful new townies over... their appearance, I mean.

Question 2. Is it safe to transfer custom community lots (that have been visited by sims) from neighborhood to neighborhood by placing them in the houses bin? (Not talking about OFB business lots) --I don't want game corruption

Thanks

P.S., I already tried creating neighborhoods that do not spawn social groups by installing Cyjon's SMARTER EP CHECK and TOWNIE APARTMENT RESIDENTS http://cyjon.net/node/220 but my new neighborhoods still spawn social group sims. I think it may be because my games were purchased in combo packs, i.e. BEST OF BUSINESS, DOUBLE DELUXE, FUN WITH PETS COLLECTION... which Cyjon warns about on his site. Any known way to make this mod work in this situation? ALL THOSE SOCIAL GROUP SIMS... sure could do without them.

You can clone appearance of sims in SimPE using the SimSurgery tool. I have to go out just now but I'll come back and either link you to a tutorial or post the instructions (it's not hard to do). Chances are though, someone will come along in the meantime and tell you how to do it.

I think you can also pack up a lot and clean it (if necessary) with SimPE and the Clean Installer but people like Jawusa have this information more to hand than I do so hopefully she'll or someone else will see your question and give you the relevant information.

YEa, thanks Maxon, learned to do both of these today... Transfered over some cleaned houses and put the sims likenesses into the sims bin with SIMsurgery in sim PE. guess I should have made sure the community lots also were "clean" of sims references, BUT I DIDN"T... whee! but I never have come across anything that says not to transfer comm. lots nbhd to nbhd.

ANyone have any ideas how I could do manually what I cannot get TOWNIEAPARTMENTRESIDENTS mod to do: start a new neighborhood without my character file immediately sprouting about 140 "social groups" members? I can't get the cyjon modhack to work

Well, I'm glad you learned to do that - saves me some work. Regarding the social groups, you need the empty template for that group (or use the other method people here use which is to move or rename the relevant folders - I don't do that myself because I use AGS (which does more or less the same thing but automatically)). Either that or you could try creating a neighbourhood with Any Game Starter which allows you to build a neighbourhood without any of the regular NPCs and townies. However, unless you have empty templates in your main game, once you transfer over the neighbourhood folder (cut and paste but don't overwrite), you will find the game will make the NPCs/townies on first loading the neighbourhood. So to recap, what you probably need is empty templates. These can be in the form of using existing EAxis templates or completely empty templates without the EAxis neighbourhoods in your game.

Regarding Cyjon's mod - try getting it to load last. That sometimes helps if the mod addresses the same BHavs as another mod. The one the game loads last is the one it uses.

Community lots I think don't have to be cleaned because they're never saved with sims on them. Not entirely sure about this though because I've never looked at the files for that.

Wow OK --I'll put a "z" in front of the name and see if anything happens

you are getting me intrigued with these templates ideas. I'm sure this has been covered many times so I will Google. And AGS, I want to do this little operation in the safest way I can.

INTERESTING STUFF --I have only been playing the sims 2 again for about a week, after 3 years hiatus, but with new mods it's turning in to a new game for me this time around --BUT my new 19th century neighborhoods gasp a little bit when Kaylyn what's-her-name invades, sporting black lipstick and motorcycle clothes; I must find a more expedient way to banish her and her ilk.

Well Any Game is here:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=250555
A godsend for neighbourhood builders.

I once asked Jawusa about cleaning sim references from lots.

Weird, I sim PE peeked into some Maxis-made community lots that I plopped in to my nbhd from the houses bin, like H&M Simcity, that had never been played --and these lots all had sim files... for example the Swifty Quick or whatever mini-mart from Belladonna Cove had: Sim Information file(1), Sim Relations (7), Sim Scores (80). But these lots have never been visited by sims... MY sims anyways! This is the mini market from a NEW BElladonna COve I created 2 days ago and played for about 3 minutes. I don't get it

yes that page looks like the one I have been working from --very helpful

Hmmm - sounds like you might see that if the lots have been played. Worth cleaning then. I don't touch EAxis myself - far too bugtastic as a general rule.

It's an interesting issue since community lots don't get saved in live mode (with sims in them). I don't know why there would be sim information in the lot file though I think it's known that NPCs called to the lots to operate machinery or play roles (e.g. baristas, bar people, cashiers) can leave traces in a lot that's been played.

The townie apartment resident mod doesn't stop the social group sims from being generated, it simply stops the game from filling up all your apartments with them. As has been mentioned, you need an empty template to stop the game from making them. Specifically, it seems you need an empty E002 template, which is the Magic stealth hood from Apartment Life. Here's another thread about a similar issue: http://modthesims.info/t/537582

Thanks. YES I finally started to suspect that this afternoon , and went back to Cyjon's to read more carefully... he never claimed it stopped them from being generated. I picked that mis-information up somewhere else, I guess. So now I can quit wondering why it did not work

Wow I already put them in my nbhd but I hope that is not too big of a deal. I will clean them, as long as I know now that it will not screw them up to delete every SIM file I see. Can get a little obsessive trying to be clean but after reading the wiki and other things the last couple of days I fear corruption at every turn, and my old neighborhoods were REALLY BLOATED. I made every mistake possible in the beginning --I can't belive my game kept working. so it is hard not (now) falling in to obsessive cleaning perfectionism on this new, fresh start with new neighborhoods.

I think I will just learn to live with the social group sims. The more I read about templates today, the more radically game-invasive it sounds, and because I have been fortunate to not have the really awful sounding problems that many other gamers seem to be having w/ this game imploding, I feel like I don't want to fix something too much that aint really broke.

BUT I might change my mind... I guess back-ups is the key... If I could just remember where everything goes and what I have tinkered around with. If something horrible happened TODAY I could fix it because all this info is in the forefront of my thinking... but 6 months from now?

Yeah, that's the problem with the Wiki, it's a bit OTT. Your game kept working because that's actually the reality for many people. Corruption can cause problems but most of the time it doesn't and being clean is better but people tend to get a little hysterical about it. I've said it before but the only thing that is known to cause problems are dangling SWAFs which come from deleting sims (and tombstones) or moving lived-in lots into the lot bin and transferring between neighbourhoods (which are all varieties of the same thing - effectively deleting sims). Everything else is deletable or fixable though in some cases it's a bit of a fiddle.

Templates are easy really - you fiddle around with the files once and that's it (unless you reinstall).

Well, it is a moot point now; I stayed up late last night re-creating my historical townies in the NEW pastoral historical community I created on a "clean" lot I downloaded here: THE BEGINNING OF RIVERBLOSSOM. The social townies came, and I made over each and every one of them, the same way I did in my other lovely --but fatally flawed-- historical neighborhood (the one I did the dirty deed in: transporting families nbhd to nbhd via the family bin). ChristianLove's clothes rack is getting a real workout.

I figured if I could do the (socials) makeover "one better" I would not feel so annoyed at the repeat drudgery, and thanks to the really nice historical costumes and hats I obtained from ALL ABOUT STYLE I feel I succeeded. My new social townies are... is "breathtaking" too much to say? Albeit the neighborhood makes little sense historically; I have Medieval nobles and knights, Victorian characters from Henry James, and 18th Century powdered wigs --all at the same party, so to speak, but it sure is fun to sit back and watch.

Thanks for the help

Guess I will have to endure "RIVERBLOSSOM" as the name of my town --a little bit insipid and way too cute. I had hoped to christen it "Waddington"

You can change the neighbourhood name in the neighbourhood chooser screen. Sounds lovely btw.

wonderful wonderful wonderful