@Daleylife - these are the stealth hoods and will only effect new hoods. I am not sure what you mean by saved sims via the move house to lot method?

@Jawusa - tested all three the Uni hoods now - all seem fine and without problems (although I find them almost too empty )

I think Daleylife means she moved the house to the lot with sims in it, which means she corrupted the hood she took the lot out of, and then moved it into the empty Pleasantview, thus corrupting it.

It seems likely that you don't understand what the mod does well enough to playtest it. If you are trying to use a hood designed to be a Stealth Hood as a main hood, then you can't expect it to work properly. And if you are still moving occupied lots to the lot bin, you need to research how neighborhood corruption happens.

That is what I was afraid of, Peni - I think Daleylife is a new player, and we all made mistakes in the beginning (and sometimes still do )

@Daleylife - please read the article here : http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?tit...Hood_Corruption.

@Peni Griffin and @Justpetro these are not the stealth hoods but are the main hoods that shipped with the game and have been clean of all sims references so they can be used as players sees fit to use them.

The cleaned and empty Stealth Hoods are here http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751

Ah, good thing I'm not playtesting them as I clearly don't understand what's going on well enough to do so!

Another attack of severe stupidity after having tested them for quite some time

There are also the subhoods (the universities, Downtown, Bluewater Village) but without sims. Not just the main hoods.

Basically all of EA's playable neighborhoods but without any sims.

Ya i should have been more clear, even though some or them are subhoods I still considered them to be main hoods that ship with the game with all the sims removed because they can be played in where stealth hoods can not be played in for the most part other than a lot or two.

Main hoods to me anyway are the ones you can go to from the hood selector screen.

Sorry for this taking so long! I know there're only a few neighborhoods left.
I'll give my best to finish them all as soon as possible.

I'm installing on a new computer. Are there compatible G001, E001, and F001 neighbourhoods available anywhere? Those are the only ones missing, aren't they?

I'm getting all you have, to re-re-make Maxis houses for a thread on a social group. I've remade certain houses SOO many times, but never took pics. So thanks!

Yes, and I'll upload them once they're ready. Unfortunately, I can't tell when exactly I'll be able to. Sorry!

I'm sorry! I didn't mean to sound pushy; I really appreciate all the hard and time-consuming work you've done on this project. Also, I guess I wasn't clear. Are there some clean 'hoods (just blanks/bare terrains are fine) that I can use as a stop-gap until yours are ready? I'm looking for something that won't bork my game when I swap in yours. Should I just leave the premade hoods in there until yours are ready (and not play those neighbourhoods)?

@croiduire
I think some time back there were also empty templates on MATY.http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=4306.0
The links aren't working anymore but someone re-uploaded somewhere else.

But I can't seem to find them anymore.

However, I'll give my best to finish these templates soon! It's been years since I started this and I still haven't finished it. I really want to finish this, like now!

Oh, I hear that! Always, always, so many projects, so little time!! I'm looking forward to them whenever you get them done! I really appreciate how meticulous you are in your workmanship.

I just wanted to drop a note to say how much I enjoy having empty templates. I love the idea of building everything -- Sims, houses, businesses -- from scratch. Without these empty templates, my game play would be so much different!

Okay!
Here are the clean and empty neighborhood templates for The Sims Castaway Stories.

Note: You need to replace your current NeighborhoodManager.package file in order to bypass the story and unlock all story rewards.
If you don't bypass the story, the game might crash then, because it would search for sims who don't exist in the neighborhood... so you'd get nothing but errors if you didn't bypass the story.

Known Issues:
No issues for Wanmami island but Felicity Island...

It was really hard to remove the hard-coded story from Felicity Island. Simple re-numbering and changing the neighborhood ID didn't work...
Well, the story's gone now - so it's a free neighborhood like Wanmami Island...

But it's not perfect yet. The story rewards are all there in my game, however, the travel button is grayed out. Fortunately, you CAN travel but you have to click on the portrals if you want to travel. I'll update Felicity Island if I found out a way of re-enabling the travel button without enabling the story again.

Resurrecting a dead (hopefully not) thread here!

Years ago I had installed the templates from MATY and after my computer crashed (for reasons unrelated to these templates) and much grumbling and complaining because I lost all my sims and 'hoods, I quit playing.

Last week (!) I decided to reinstall Sims 2 but was unable to d/l the original templates from MATY, and stumbled on yours instead, which sound way better! I'm excited to try them, but as I've been away from the game for so long, I want to make sure I have all the instructions right so I don't crash it. I only have two original sim families on the go, so if they end up getting deleted through this it's not the end of the world. I've read through the entire thread so I'll try not to re-ask questions that have already been clarified.

Here we go. *clears throat*

1) You stated that the Exotic Destinations can be downloaded from your original post. (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751) Is there a difference between downloading that file opposed to the individual destinations you have listed in this thread?

2) All five files from your original post can be used in the game as none has had updates since then, correct?

3) My favourite buildings for my sims to live in are apartments as I *gasp* hate building houses. Weird, I know. Is it safe to continue doing this while waiting for your AL template, or will that completely bork everything once your new one is installed? Not trying to rush you, just trying to be prepared on my end.

4) Once I replace the 'hood that my sims are living in, they will be deleted as well unless I package them, right? Or is it okay to just move them to the sim bin and they'll stay there until I find them a new home?

Man, reading these over again I sound like a total n00b. Sorry about that. Like I said, I just want to make sure I don't screw my game over completely and have to reinstall everything. TIA!

First of all, welcome back.

Second of all, Do not move anybody to the lot bin! This will break your neighborhood! If you move them to the Family bin they will remain in the neighborhood. If you want to move them to a new neighborhood, you'll need to clone them with SimPE, run them through bodyshop, and recreate them in CAS in the new neighborhood.

What you need to do depends a lot on the results you want. There is no point in adding empty templates to an existing hood, as they don't remove anything. If you add them before generating or loading a hood, they'll prevent the game from adding to the hood those premade sims normally held in that template, but will not stop new sims from generating under certain conditions; for that, you'd need respawn suppressing mods.

If you explain to us what result you want to achieve, we can explain your options for getting there. One of the great things about this game and the mods for it is, that there's almost always more than one way to accomplish a goal, and you can use the one that suits your purposes and playstyle best.

And yes, Jawusa's new templates are much better than the old MATY ones, because we know more about the causes of corruption than we did when those were made.

That is a very good question. I actually had to think really hard about it. I can't remember how I used to play as it was literally 5 years ago but this is my plan so far.

I like playing in the existing neighbourhoods because they're already decorated and full of houses. I never use the pre-made families or the families in the bin, so I'm totally fine with getting rid of them. I also hate the pre-made townies and their terrible names. I'm interested in doing a legacy challenge and marrying some townies in, so I like the idea of batch creating a few right off the start.

What I think I'll need, and do correct me if I'm wrong, is the blank 'hood templates. The suppressing hacks I have so far are antiredundancy and notownieregen. I don't mind the stray pets, so I didn't get the mod to stop them. My understanding is that a smaller number of sims will be force-created when mine go to uni or downtown, which is fine as long as I don't have dozens running all over the place and between 'hoods. I also have Nysha's townie body diversity mod as well as a name replacement mod, although I'm not 100% sure how this would work if I'm batch creating townies to start with.

Any advice on how I can improve on this is more than welcome and feel free to let me know if this is a completely terrible plan. As I'm essentially "starting over" and re-learning to play, I am totally open for suggestions!

If you have the townie and antiredundancy hacks, you will get no townies at all if you start with an empty hood. Antiredundancy affects NPCs and what happens with that is the game will create one - and ONE only - when it needs one (unless you have something like two tills on a community lot in which case it will make two shop workers). The game will then re-use that only ONE when it next needs that type of NPC. Normally, for most NPCs, the game will make three of them.

I, too, have been away too long and can't quite parse anymore how this works exactly. I would really appreciate if someone could clarify, because I tried what I thought should work, but the bin sims are still there in the "empty" hood.

I want to leave my existing neighborhoods as they are and still play them, but I want to create a new neighborhood that will only have my created (cloned) sims in it or new NPCs to be generated only as needed. As I understand it, after a lot of scrolling and cross-checking, I have to rename the neighborhood folder where Pleasantville resides in the game folders, and please clarify, this won't cause any problem with my current Pleasantville, right?? And, also, if that's right, what's the path exactly for what I need to rename, if I'm using UC? [I thought I understood that just renaming this would get rid of the bin families, but I expected to still see sims from Pets, Magic, etc, if I started playing. Instead, I still see the bin families, so I don't have it figured out yet.]

Next, I think, and please correct me if it's wrong, I have to download these stealth neighborhoods (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751) and put them in all their respective folders so that when the new neighborhood is created, those will not produce any sims. And, again, this is not going to affect anything that's already in the game and I can replace those again with the originals if I want to go back to creating a normal Maxis style neighborhood later, right?

I'm very confused what these templates are here in this thread with Pleasantville and Strangetown, etc. I think I don't need those unless I want the same Maxis neighborhoods I have now, except without Sims, right? As far as I can tell, you would do that to preserve the lots in them? I'm not sure about that part.

Last, suppose I want to use SimPE to clone a number of my current Pleasantville Sims that I know and love and I want to put them all in my new clean neighborhood, assuming I figure this out. I can't remember how to get them in there. Do I have to go through creating them all in CAS? Or is there a way to move them en masse with SimPE or copied files or something?

What do I have horribly, dangerously wrong here?

Yes, that folder will prevent the game from adding the default townies/NPCs to be added to your newly created game neighborhood.
In UC it's Program Files/Origin Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/Double Deluxe/Base Game/TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

But it sounds like that you didn't download the second set yet, which is supposed to disable those sims from Pets, Magic, etc.
You need that one as well.



You can always restore to the original templates and no, it won't affect anything that's already in the game. So you can keep your neighborhoods and have a completely empty one as well.



Yes, these templates are just in case you want to re-create Pleasantview, Veronaville, etc. to your own liking and imagination. Many people use it together with the Beginning Hood series where there are the ancestors of the sims and you have to bring them to the current generation. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=523417



Yes, there's no other way than extracting them in SimPE and cloning them in BodyShop. There's a step-by-step tutorial for that.
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...of_in-game_Sims



Nothing?
You just forgot to install the second set of the empty templates... but that's all! You didn't corrupt your game or anything... just download the second set and create a new neighborhood and you'll see the magic!

Thank you! I didn't forget, I just somehow thought that just renaming should have a partial effect. I guess not. And thanks for the mention of the Beginning Hood, that's new to me and sounds very interesting.

Alright!
The new versions of the Life Stories neighborhoods are done and can be downloaded here!

I don't think these neighborhoods can be moved into a regular TS2 game... but some how succeeded in doing so.. Some say that they work if you load them in a Uni-NL-OFB game only, go into each lot and make one structural change and then, it can be moved into an all EPs game.

But this is still a experimental approach. So DON'T put these into a regular TS2 game.
Instead, download the recreated versions if you intend to play the LS neighborhoods in TS2.
http://modthesims.info/d/557801
http://modthesims.info/d/564424

You can put these ones alongside the original ones, they won't conflict.
Just like the Free Play neighborhood, you don't have to go through the story in order to play these neighborhoods, but you need to play the story in order to unlock the story rewards.