Starting "anew"

[Brynne]

Okay, I've decided to bite the bullet and start a new neighborhood. Since I played my current neighborhood for several months before the critical fixes existed, I'm afraid it's a ticking time-bomb. Here's the thing: I want to remake the old neighborhood. I am planning on cloning my characters and manually recreating family ties, memories, etc. I know this will be a big project, but I've got nothing but time on my hands (except for my son, my job, my husband, and my social life, of course).

My first question is this: Is there a way to copy all of the memories of a character in SimPe and pasted them into the new character's file, or do I have to redo each memory one at a time? Of course, these memories will have to be edited anyway, since I will be making some changes, but this is simply a copy-and-paste question. CTRL+C doesn't work for me in SimPe, but I am hoping maybe there might be another method for copying multiple files in the program.

My second question: When cloning a character, is the voice-type included in the clone? I am used to my characters having certain voices. If not, I know how to change the voice-type. I just wanted to know if this is something I should expect to do.

My third question: Can any of my houses be saved? If I empty them and put them into the lots and houses bin, is there any risk involved in putting them into the new neighborhood?

Are there any other things I should be aware of?

Thanks muchly.

Val

[J. M. Pescado]

My first question is this: Is there a way to copy all of the memories of a character in SimPe and pasted them into the new character's file, or do I have to redo each memory one at a time? Of course, these memories will have to be edited anyway, since I will be making some changes, but this is simply a copy-and-paste question. CTRL+C doesn't work for me in SimPe, but I am hoping maybe there might be another method for copying multiple files in the program.

Nein. Manual creation is the only way, and even then, manually creating memories does not correctly stamp all of the uninterpreted data. Consider these memories basically a scratch.

My second question: When cloning a character, is the voice-type included in the clone? I am used to my characters having certain voices. If not, I know how to change the voice-type. I just wanted to know if this is something I should expect to do.

Voices are apparently fixed by age and gender. There is no variety. All sims sound the same. Unless you've done something to change this, which I know nothing about.

My third question: Can any of my houses be saved? If I empty them and put them into the lots and houses bin, is there any risk involved in putting them into the new neighborhood?

All houses can be salvaged intact with no risk, provided you remove all sims (and possibly all tombstones). They can even be salvaged intact with all furnishings, if you kill all of the inhabitants or are especially adept at manipulating the lot file backups. As you plan on destroying the original neighborhood, the former method is considerably easier. Kill everyone, destroy all the tombstones, and you have a clean lot.

[Brynne]

My second question: When cloning a character, is the voice-type included in the clone? I am used to my characters having certain voices. If not, I know how to change the voice-type. I just wanted to know if this is something I should expect to do.

Voices are apparently fixed by age and gender. There is no variety. All sims sound the same. Unless you've done something to change this, which I know nothing about.

I've noticed two different YA male voices. Most of the YA males that I have sound alike, but I have two with a completely different voice. Ashton Pitts and Castor Nova from Sim State's Omega Clam Chowder fraternity (whatever the name is) have different voices, for example. Most of my YA males sound just like Castor, but I just got a new one that sounds like Ashley. I have also noticed two different female adult voices; one is huskier than the other. And with the adult males, one voice is much deeper than the other. They also use different sayings. I know this can't be my imagination. And I lied. I don't know how to change the type. I guess it was a fluke that I changed one female elder's screechy voice to a much less screechy one by copying the voice type of a female with the desired voice and pasting it into the the file of the screechy one. I checked in SimPe, and the voice-types listed for my sims are all different. I have no clue what "voice type" means, now. 

[Brynne]

Pardon my posting twice in a row, but I have another "shot in the dark" question. If, before I even play the game or add my own characters, I install a brand-spanking new Pleasantville, can I change the actual neighborhood but keep the characters? Say I move all families and houses to their respective bins. Can I then swap out the traditional Pleasantville neighborhood for a custom one and then put everything in place there?

[bluecatvon]

i think i've read somewhere that there are 2 or 3 different voices for both males and females...i forgot where. expect that from me very often haha! i have short-term memory loss...

[veilchen]

Pardon my posting twice in a row, but I have another "shot in the dark" question. If, before I even play the game or add my own characters, I install a brand-spanking new Pleasantville, can I change the actual neighborhood but keep the characters? Say I move all families and houses to their respective bins. Can I then swap out the traditional Pleasantville neighborhood for a custom one and then put everything in place there?

That sounds like a question that I had, I just never had the nerve to ask, because....well, just because. I have a neighborhood that has become too small (its the smallest one available from the template) and I would like to move everyone to a larger one. If I pack up every single house and every single sim and move them all into a larger neighborhood, am I dooming them? I was always leery of doing that because, naturally, I can't pack up the NPC's as well.

What if I delete the old neighborhood completely after I moved everybody out?

G.

[Brynne]

Pardon my posting twice in a row, but I have another "shot in the dark" question. If, before I even play the game or add my own characters, I install a brand-spanking new Pleasantville, can I change the actual neighborhood but keep the characters? Say I move all families and houses to their respective bins. Can I then swap out the traditional Pleasantville neighborhood for a custom one and then put everything in place there?

That sounds like a question that I had, I just never had the nerve to ask, because....well, just because.
G.

I know why you didn't have the nerve to ask. It's the same reason I haven't asked the question until now. It's a possible lip-ripper. Oh, well, lips to the wind!

[J. M. Pescado]

Pardon my posting twice in a row, but I have another "shot in the dark" question. If, before I even play the game or add my own characters, I install a brand-spanking new Pleasantville, can I change the actual neighborhood but keep the characters? Say I move all families and houses to their respective bins. Can I then swap out the traditional Pleasantville neighborhood for a custom one and then put everything in place there?

This is BAD. You once again are committing the cardinal sin of MOVING AN OCCUPIED FAMILY TO THE LOT BIN. Don't do this.

What exactly are you attempting to do with Pleasantview? If you merely want to replace the terrain, perhaps because the terrain is not to your satisfaction (Pleasantview may feel small, but it really isn't: I thought this at first, so I made my own custom neighborhood with lots of wide open space, and have since discovered there is absolutely no sane way I will ever use even half of that space!), there's a terrain surgery procedure that I can outline for you that will let you replace the terrain within an existing neighborhood while leaving all houses, relationships, families, and people intact.

[Brynne]

Yes! That would be great! That's what I was wanting to do.

[jrd]

There's a terrain surgery procedure that I can outline for you that will let you replace the terrain within an existing neighborhood while leaving all houses, relationships, families, and people intact.

Yes please! I haven't been able to get this to work at all.

[reggikko]

there's a terrain surgery procedure that I can outline for you that will let you replace the terrain within an existing neighborhood while leaving all houses, relationships, families, and people intact.

I'll jump on this bandwagon, too.

[veilchen]

Please do JM. I'm queing myself right behing Reg.

G.

[themaltesebippy]

My second question: When cloning a character, is the voice-type included in the clone? I am used to my characters having certain voices. If not, I know how to change the voice-type. I just wanted to know if this is something I should expect to do.

No voice is random and could be one or the other.  I thought I already answered this for you at VS but maybe it was deleted.  Just write down the voice type of the sim's voice you hate and switch it with another who's voice you hate.  Here, have a screenshot:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v99/themaltesebippy/?action=view&current=sim.jpg

How about doing a deleteAllCharacters in your hood along with the Simlogical stay things bush to prevent having to refurnish?  Then add fresh clean characters.

[Brynne]

Yes, you answered that question at vs when I was trying to change Screechy Old Lady's voice. Since I'm cloning a large amount of sims, I just wanted to know if I should expect to do this since I heard somebody say the voice does stay the same, most people say it doesn't, yadda yadda yadda.Then I looked in SimPe at the files and got even more confused. I tend to make simple things difficult. Thanks for the info. and the advice. I may try the delete all characters thing. I still want to change the terrain to a custom one, however.

[themaltesebippy]

There is a guy on MTS2 who makes beautiful custom terrians. I forgot his name, but you can easily find him there. Yes the voices thing is very annoying.  I only wind up doing maybe 6 out of 300 sims.  I know they don't always keep the voices because Juliet and Hermia had opposite voices and Romeo's voice was wrong too so I changed them.

Best thing to do is to pace yourself with all of this.  If you get too tired you will make mistakes that can probably be fixed later but still a pain.  Make a test hood first for some of the things you are not 100% sure of.  Yes it will make your task more delayed but it will be worth it in the long run.

[Ancient Sim]

Please do JM. I'm queing myself right behing Reg.G.

Add me to the list, please.

[Brynne]

I am waiting eagerly to find out how to do this. Right now I'm in the process of cloning characters and making the family trees for my new 'hood in preparation for Nightlife. Not fun. But I do want to change my current Pleasantville to a different terrain. I need a change.

[witch]

I'm just starting my third new n'hood in a month. I tried killing dormies with testing cheats, the game started behaving oddly. Then I tried burning townies en masse  - again the game didn't like it. So I'm about to start all over again - I've deleted all characters and am just keeping fingers crossed. Mind you I've written off the sims I had, better to start from scratch I think with the critical fixes firmly in place.

[veilchen]

It would also be nice to know exactly what items to stay away from. So far, the remote control car and the handheld games are the only ones I know about, other than the fact that you should under no circumstances download any automobile.

That is, until the nl ep comes out with who knows what other buggy issues that will then officially be fixed in the next extension.

Oh yeah, I forgot: don't ever save and exit if one of the pixel people is using the cell-phone.

G.

[Brynne]

I don't use the cell phones at all. I don't trust them, since most of my "too many iterations" errors had something to do with the cell phones.
Does anyone know of any place I can get the characters (clean, physical, bodyshop characters-no ties!) of the Pleasantville ancestors of the Broke family, Goth family, etc.? I'm trying to recreate all that history again and I'm not sure of the best way to do it. If not, I guess I'll have to use my own talents in Bodyshop, but I don't wanna.  So far I have all my characters cloned, and I cloned the living Pleasantville characters. I'm just getting into creating family ties and I haven't even touched the memories yet.

[veilchen]

Does resurrecting them and then exporting them from SimPe work for you? Unless I misunderstood your post, and by ancestors you don't mean the dearly departed. Then you can leave out the resurrecting part; however that's done. That would be worth a try. It doesn't work too well for me, body-shop and I are not on speaking terms at the moment

If you already tried that, I apologize for the redundancy

G.

[Brynne]

I could resurrect a couple of them; I think Skip Broke is resurrectable. But most of the older ancestors have no character data and can't, to my limited knowledge, be resurrected or exported from SimPe into bodyshop. Or maybe they can. After I typed that last sentence I looked in Sim Surgery and saw Agnes Crumplebottom. Gonna go check that out.
I guess I'll have to create the Goth ancestors and immediately kill them to have their ghosts at the Goth home. Sounds like fun. I had to do that in my new neighborhood with the supposed-to-be-deceased parents of one of my male characters. It was funny and sad at the same time. I used the tombstone of life and death. My female sim was having a pillow fight with her husband's mother, then a satellite dropped on the old lady. The husband and son of the dearly departed ran over sobbing. Then dad was electrocuted out of "nowhere" leaving his son and daughter-in-law traumatized for life.


edited to add:
Okay, I exported the Goths and Crumplebottoms, but I guess I'm on my own with the Newbies...

[J. M. Pescado]

Characters with "no character data" consist of only a portrait, that you can basically substitute in for any deceased "no character data" sim. Generate a townie, kill him, destroy his tombstone, and replace his portrait. Modify the appropriate fiddlybits in the neighborhood editor for proper personality, sex, etc., just in case, and you're all set. No genetic data to worry about here.

[veilchen]

Well hello there, fellow wuss. I have problems killing my sims too (I know they are only pixel people, but hey). Even the most obnoxious ones; I end up feeling sorry for them in the end.

SaraMK has a resurrection guide somewhere on VS, that could give you an idea on who can and who can't be recalled, other than that just follow JM's advice and modify the fiddlybits (I like that word. He's coming up with quite a few today, just as über-mod).

Oddysey seems to be pretty good at using pictures only for creating new sims, she even made a JM alien for use in game. At least, that's what I think she used.

G.

[J. M. Pescado]

I dunno, Oddysey entirely failed to capture my angry eyebrows that are such a prominent feature in both me and my sims. Fat, useless Oddysey.