More Awesome Than You!

Since NL is about to come out, and like a true BBS idiot I will rush and purchase it the moment I see it in store, I've been pondering restarting the Maxis-made neighbourhoods.  Especially Pleasantview, I've tinkered a fair bit with it, and I've got far too many Brokes and Goths roaming around - too much liberal use of twojeff's twins/triplets/quads hack, that is definitely going to go!

In addition I've started many families with the little girl next door (she loves making and dressing new sims - usually in families of about 7 or 8, not playing them so much though) for Pleasantview and ended up deleting them ingame - which I now learn does not actually remove the files from the neighbourhood.  Gah.

What's the process for regenerating a neighbourhood without reinstalling?  I tried once by just deleting the neighbourhood folder and restarting the game, but that didn't work.  I remember reading somewhere it involved changing registry values but I can't remember the method.

Or would it just be a better idea to reinstall when NL comes out?

Enter your Programs, EA Games, The Sims 2, TSData, Res, Neighborhood Template. You should see three folders: N001, N002, N003. Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville, respectively. Copy them over your corresponding ones in your Documents.

I've been toying with this thought for quite a while, too.  In fact, I did re-start Pleasantview and altered a few things, but it just isn't the same.  It was boring playing the same characters all over again from the start, not to mention the fact that I really missed my other Sims!  I'm onto third generation with the pre-made families now and at last the offspring are starting to look different; I don't want to lose all that.  I just wish I could reduce the number of characters safely and easily - even if I only got rid of the ones that have never married into the original families, I could get rid of quite a few.  I just don't want all the hassle of removing memories and relationships, it would take forever. 

Yeah, this is why I've been considering NOT restarting the neighbourhood, some of my best CAS families are in there!

This could get my lips ripped off and I'm prepared to be told if this was stupid, but I deleted 150 Sims from a neighbourhood and at least a couple months later have only noticed one minor problem.

Obviously having too much time on my hands, I arrowed down through the SimDescriptions in PE and renamed everyone I wanted gone with an underscore. ie _Anna Buckingham. I did this with 'Relationship' open to limit the damage, theoretically purging only unused Sims. Due to that NPC generation bug, I had nearly 100 Repairmen and Nannies alone.

I ran CleanInstaller (PE opened), sorted by name, (closed PE)  and removed all the underscored Sims to a backup folder. Closed CI.

Re-opened PE, again scrolling through SimDescriptions, this time deleting the Unknowns.
I didn't want to delete those Intentional Unknowns (Grim, Hula etc.) but deleting character files from the folder does not remove Age or Aspiration from the Neighbourhood File (at least until you load the Neighbourhood) so I only deleted Unknowns that had both. Saved, closed.

The only glitch I've noticed to date is that new Sims sometimes confuse their Aspiration with that of character they replaced.

ie. Original/deleted character 0017 was a Family Sim, newly created 0017 is a Knowledge Sim with 'Family wants' lightly sprinkled in. He may start with a 'Want Baby' though skilling and other Knowledge Wants will still spin more often. I personally enjoy this as I find the one-track mindedness of Aspirations  to be getting a little old.

Again, ready for someone to point out flaws in this as I would hate to suggest something that could wreck someone's game. I backed up the neighbourhood, but haven't needed to restore.

This is bad, and cross-talk like this will surely produce unexplainable artifacts in the future. Your game appears to function now, BUT YOU NEVER KNOW.

And what if you don't have a TSData file in Progams/EA Games/The Sims 2 ???

I admit, I am a technical moron, and I deleted my neighbourhoods from inside the game.  Now, I want them all back, and I tried to delete the Sims 2 folder so they would regenerate when I started the game again, but it won't let me delete it. It says the Storytelling folder is being used by another program (it's not) and instructs me to close that first.

Blue, the Neighbourhood folders can be found in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods however you can also copy the default folders from the original cd/dvd without having to reinstall.

The thing of it is, I want to reinstall the game.

But, I shall admit something right now - I removed the disk, and then it worked fine to delete the folder.  :P :-[

(Told ya I was a technical idiot)

True, and I was expecting my game to explode into a fiery ball when I did it, but the neighbourhood was so buggered anyway that it seemed worth the risk at the time. I knew I would possibly regret it later.
With all the screwups in the other neighbourhoods, it seems it would probably be wisest for me to write off any already existing in my game when I install the EPs anyway..