Hi MTS! I've been a lurker for probably 6 years, just made this new account as I forgot the login details on my old one-
I've played Sims 2 on my desktop since probably 2006, but recently upon the release of Sims 2 Super Collection, I've been able to play on my laptop also (a Mac). Wow - it's faster, brilliant, and though I do miss having Apartment Life/Freetime, it's still pretty awesome (and QUICK!).

I have a neighborhood I've been playing, using the default Strangetown SC4 terrain. Have a couple families, particularly a 6th gen. Legacy family and a few random others I quite like. I play with no custom clothes/hair/anything except mods. I rushed in my excitement to create this neighborhood and picked the Strangetown terrain cause, well, it was the first one I glanced at.

I've now gotten in too deep to just put all the lots with my families into the lots+houses bin, and don't really want to lose all of their relationships. So I realized that I'd never questioned whether you could pack up all your sims into the Families bin, delete all the lots, and change the terrain of the neighborhood, put the empty houses back in, and move the families back into the neighborhood. This may be a silly question, but I did some looking around and couldn't find a conclusive answer. I know you can use SimPE (and I have before) to preserve some things when moving a family through the lots+houses bin to another neighborhood, but never knew if swapping the neighborhood map would work.

This is PURELY because I don't like the Strangetown terrain, and now have made some nicer, flatter, better organized SC4 terrains of my own I'd rather use.

If the answer is "no, that won't work" that's totally fine. I'll just have to move the families in the lots and houses bin and lose friendships etc. I may move most of the sims into one lot and move them all together so only townie friendships are lost (psh, they can befriend Jan Tellerman and Goopy again in the new neighborhood). Just wondering if it was possible to change the terrain without creating a new neighborhood.

Do you know about Mootilda's HoodReplacer? All you need to do is make a "dummy" hood with the terrain you want, exit the game, and copy that terrain to your Strangetown. You'll have to rearrange the lots to your liking, of course, but it's safe to do so while occupied as long as you don't put them in the lot bin (just use the hand tool to rearrange them).

Hope that helps!

I'm guessing it won't work on Mac, :/

Edit: currently, the neighborhood is N004, if I create a new neighborhood with the terrain I want, change the .package neighborhood file name to N004_Neighborhood.package and replace the file in the N004 file, that wouldn't work right? It can't be that simple and I feel like problems would arise. Note that I don't care about any of the lots/decorations/roads, just the families.

That wouldn't work because the N004_Neighbourhood.package is not just the terrain.

You can do it with SimPE but that doesn't work on Macs either. How about adding a sub-hood and moving them all there instead? (Don't move lived-in lots).

Do we know Moo's utility programmes don't work for Mac?

SimPE doesn't have a Mac version?
& I'm guessing her programs won't work for Macs because they are .exe files, which can't open without the use of running a program like Parallells or similar that run the windows operating system internally on a Mac (seems like a lot of effort for just a sims neighborhood ).

Ask a friend with Windows if you could do it on their computer? I don't think they'd need the game installed, just hoodreplace and the two neighborhoods.

Please do not move occupied lots into the housing bin. That causes all sorts of damage to the sims files and can render your neighborhood unplayable.

@ervrobins
I can do it for you but you will need to upload both the hood and the hood you want the org. one to be change to or the SC4 you want to use just PM me when you get them uploaded.

Yeah, that was going to be my "last ditch" effort - I don't think I'll be doing it that way.



Would you? That'd be so, so awesome. I'll do that now, dropbox it or something. The files aren't very big so should be no problem. Let me clean up the hood and I'll have them to you right away.

Good suggestion.

To answer other questions, no, I don't think there is a Mac version of SimPE.

Hey @marka93, I've sent you a PM

There is definitely no Mac version of SimPE, HoodReplacer, or CleanInstaller. You can make the Hood Checker and the Lot Adjuster work on a Mac -- IF you know your way around Terminal, which is a program where you talk to the computer by typing in computer code, not the usual way.

ervrobins has their problem solved, but I thought I'd clear up that point.

@ervrobins
Its done and PM sent with the changes.
I hope you enjoy your hood again.