I haven't really been bothered that much yet by my Sims getting to the top of their career.  I actually like fulfilling the career LTWs (no more worries about their aspiration meter), but I can see how I might want to limit things a bit.  I hate knowledge teens, always bloody skilling away and wasting time they could be snogging the paperboy or trying to go steady with the shop clerk, or sneaking out with someone they only met a few hours ago (all the things I never did when I was a teen because I was too busy "skilling").

I have taken to not letting the blighters study if they have more than 4 in any skill area or when they get to a career, they simply rocket through the promotions.  I do like the idea of stopping people at "Freelance Photographer" rather than advancing in the slacker stream.  I've never understood why a photographer would want to become a Professional Party Guest, especially with those dumb hours.

Or perhaps Peasantry.  No little description of what this is?

Very succinct and does not hide behind hyperbole.  Unfortunately also sounds potentially accurate.  I have only ever had houses stop "responding" to the Sims (as in, Sims not able to use household features like hot tubs, toilets, doors, etc.).  In these cases, I usually just bulldozed the lots after moving out the family, and let them start over in a new house.  Your houses seem to disappear altogether. 

Is there a "trace" left, like an empty lot marked in the neighbourhood, or just nothing at all?  Any sign of the lots/houses in SimPE that could be debugged?

Thing I though of immediately is what you already thought of - possible bad objects.package.  I have heard tell that they sometimes seem to go corrupt even if you (not you personally, of course) do set them as read only.

Only other thing I can think is to try to figure out what the last CC, hack, mod, etc. was just before you noticed the problem, and test-remove it, in spite of what S2HD says (no aspersions intended).  Worst case there is it doesn't help, but it sounds like it can't hurt either.

One can hope that syberspunk's response, while stylish, is not the final word (although "Doomed!" seems pretty final).  Ooooh.  Brain hurts!

Freeeow, sagana!  Clubs, groups, professors in offices.  Just thinking about the work involved in setting that up makes me tired.  No, wait...I'm tired because I never bother with sleep.  Seriously though, I have enough trouble finding time for Sims to skill, eat, socialize, woohoo three different other sims per day, etc. without making additional clubs for them to go to.  And I have yet to work up the energy required to build an entire custom uni.

A faculty lounge and offices for professors sound interesting.  Do the profs stay in their offices?  What do you use to set their schedule or is that part of the manage groups thing. (see, I show my complete ignorance).

I really like the idea of having to leave the dorm to study, skill, work out, etc.  I found it really annoying that you could pretty much go through an entire uni career and never leave the dorm (apart from the automatic-go-to-class-disappear-for-a-bit-and-return-a-better-person thing).

Good point.  Whenever they accessed cake easily, I used a small one square table (like the crazy eights table or other such thing).  I think the problems arose when the table was too close to a wall or tree in the yard, restricting access.  I usually have my parties outside, since I don't have Seasons, and the weather is thus consistently and ridiculously marvellous in my desert neighbourhood.  I'll have to watch table placement for future birthdays/weddings.

On the other hand, I'm still at a loss as to why visitors suddenly seem interested in raiding the fridge (only since adding Uni and creating a clean neighbourhood).  I'm still rather slow in acquiring EPs so only have Base and Uni loaded at present, but with just the base, I didn't notice this amount of fridge raiding (when there was a perfectly good buffet available).  My Sims and I seem to prefer the turkey or gelatine at the buffet, but visiting sims go for the refrigerated chips.  Hey ho, all part of the entertainment, I suppose.

I find it's a bit hit and miss - at some parties the guests eat from the buffet and eat cake quite nicely.  One wedding I had, there was a mad rush on the cake, with about 6 guests complaining that people were in the way when they wanted to get a piece.  Usually I find that nobody at a birthday party will go for the buffet at all until after the cake interaction is finished.  Then suddenly they all seem to feel hungry and I run out of places for them to sit and eat.  Just recently I noticed that, even with the Food already available hack installed, a number of guests seem prone to raid the refrigerator. (why are packets of chips/crisps in the fridge?)

I had roughly the same thing happen in one of my neighbourhoods.  If you can "see" the neighbourhood and the sims in it in SimPE, you can use SimPE's simsurgery tool to clone the two sims.  I think this is generally the same as the MTS2 method.

In Simsurgery, scroll to your Sim in the 'Sim Pool'and highlight her/him with a single click.  Then in the 'Patient Sim' window of the 'Sims Surgery Tool, click 'use'.  Your Sim's picture should appear in the 'Patient Sim' window.  Then click 'Export' at the top right in the 'Patient Sim' window.  When prompted, give the sim file a filename you will remember (you probably want to delete it soon).

Do this for all the Sims you want to clone.  When you're done, exit SimPE.

Open Sims2 Bodyshop (not the in-game CAS, but the separate Bodyshop program that comes with the game).  Select "build/clone a sim".  Read a book for a bit while bodyshop loads all the various sims templates.  when it's done this, find one of the sims you just exported from SimPE.  Clone this sim in bodyshop (yes, clone it again - the SimPE clones have all sorts of additional rubbish attached to them and they behave very strangely at times if you use them in the game, so it's safest to re-clone them in bodyshop.  I find that bodyshop doesn't let me do anything with the sims anyway until I re-clone them).

You can edit your sim a bit now, if you like, or leave them the way they are.  When you're done, "accept" or "save" your sim just like you would a newly created sim.  I would now delete the SimPE clone since you now have a nice new shiny bodyshop clone.

Do this for all the sims you exported from SimPE.

Now close bodyshop and open the game.  Go to whatever neighbourhood these sims are going to live in and open CAS.  start to create a sim in the normal manner, but when the random sim comes up, instead of editing it, use the "select a sim" option.  This opens up all the various sim templates available, including the ones you just cloned.  Select your sim from here and then edit them as you would any other CAS sim (i.e. give them a name, star sign, aspiration, clothes, wider eyebrows, etc.).  At this stage you can also choose any age for them (teen, adult, etc. if you don't want them to remain elders).  If you want the sim to be roughly the same as in the previous neighbourhood, give them the same star sign and aspiration as they had before.

Save your sim. 

If you want your sims to have the same personalities they had before, you will need to note their interests and personality traits (neatness, grouchiness, active/lazy, etc.).  You can open SimPE again and edit these aspects of the sim to your liking, and then hit "commit".  Make sure you save the neighbourhood package when you're done.  Back up your neighbourhood before you do this, just to be safe.

Your sims should now be more-or-less identical to the ones from the old neighbourhood.  The only thing missing from them will be their relationships and memories.  When you create your couple you can certainly make them married at the CAS stage, but other memories they will have to get from experience.

Hope this helps.

I use the Homework Sometimes hack, which reduces the amount of homework (more realistic, or at least it appeals to the part of me that feels that homework is bad for kids anyway).  They seem to drop the homework in the room with the desk in any case, either on the desk or on the floor beside.  I had one house where the teens would consistently get distracted when getting off the bus and drop their homework on the front walk.  This led to 9:00pm sessions of homework outside.  Eventually, I installed outdoor lighting for them so they could do it more conveniently.

I personally like to start on a large lot and lately have been building "impossible" houses.  I'm experimenting with floating houses that stand on one pillar, with a pool under the house.  Since I don't have Seasons installed, there's no problem with leaving exercise machines, hot tubs, etc. outside on a large deck (usually bridging a scenic gorge of some sort).

Houses themselves tend to be built around a central bathroom and kitchen structure with dining, living/entertainment, bedrooms etc. radiating out from there.  I try to make things so the Simmies can wander around the house easily without spending the entire time walking.

If I get seasons, I'll have to add exercise rooms and enclose the hot tub, I guess.

Ah, but who are the unique dozen (sounds like a failed movie title).  Do I look like someone else, or do a whack of people look like me?  If they look like me, do I get to take them to court for copyright violation?

I generally build all my own townies in bodyshop, takes time, but then I always have the basic sims if something goes wrong.  Tweak them in CAS (personality, astro sign, etc.) and export to the game as townies or dormies, or whatever.  They show up as playables, but you can export them off as townies using Insim's Family Tree.  That works reasonably well.  Caution with this: if you make any teens or kids, you have to edit relationships in SimPE, or they'll end up with family ties you may not want. 

OK, I know, it's a fair bit of work, but I get what I want in the game in the end and don't overload with useless townies that I wouldn't let my playable Sim teen girls date, let alone marry.  I think if you use the mailbox "generate townies" option, it gives you 32 straight off (if you're doing that, you probably do want to replace the default faces).

I'm using default skins from www.paradisesims.com.  I find they are not too shiny and they have a range of skintones and colours (blue, purple, pink, etc.) if you like that sort of thing.  Genitals are reasonably nicely rendered, but no "moving parts" so to speak.  Have not checked compatibility with Crammyboy's stuff.  For those that like it, they also have "nude clothing", which subs for undies, swimwear, or athletic, so sims can go nude without shocking other sims.

Edit:  they do have "normal" skintones that mirror the default maxis skintones, and a choice of defaults with pubic hair or without.

He's right, you know.  Make sure you replace, rename, or delete the N001 folder in your program files Sims\neighborhoods\ folder, not just the one in your "my documents" folder.  I failed on this step at one point and was justly chastised. 

When creating custom townies/dormies, will they only wear Maxiswear???

While I was too caffeinated to sleep and too tired to really play last night, I decided to add to the population of my university and bodyshopped a couple of new YAs to move in as dormies.  Got to the Uni hood, went in to CAS and got my newly created sims out of the bin, dressed them nicely, and moved them into the dorm.  Using Insim, I moved them right out as dormies.  As happens, they just wandered off the dorm site, which I felt was very normal and well adjusted of them.  The new YA woman came back onto the dorm lot a few seconds (real time) later and was wearing a different top.  I noted that she had "changed" out of a custom download beadwork blouse, into a Maxiswear white tanktop.

Is this normal?  I'm assuming that the change is as a direct result of making her a dormie, since she arrived on site wearing what I originally dressed her in.

No worries, floopyboo.  I shouldn't assume the whole thing is about me anyway.  Nose still in place.

Have looked at the error log myself now, and frankly can't make head or tail of it.  Not surprising really.  No experience with that sort of thing.  Don't have any of the hacks loaded that are known to conflict.  I may just follow your advice and try to load a new version, on the off chance that the one I got was actually the wrong one.  In any case, the only thing not working on it seems to be the "ask for help" function.  All other functions seem to be fine (or at least do not generate error log entries).

Answers to Q1-4:  Inteen not loaded at all. Jenflower's Woohoo Teens also not loaded.  I do have InSim (latest uni version).
Answer to Q5:  only base and uni - I downloaded hacks from the correct category (checked twice).  Version of "homework somtimes" is the one recommended for Uni.

I have downloaded all EA/Maxis patches for both Base and Uni and installed them, so if the game itself is not up to date, then I'm missing something.  There were no errors in loading either base or the Uni EP (none registered by the load process, anyway).

Certainly a point, showing my inherent non-awesomeness.  It may be that one just has to do the breakup and live through the bad memories temporarily, although I suppose one could use debug mode and adjust relationship bars to make it easier for the former couple to be friends again.

Just in Ask for Homework Help.  They seem to be able to do their own homework just fine.  As I mentioned in a previous post, if I remove the hack, everything works as normal, but with the hack in, they can only do homework (ask for help gives me the jump).

Power Idle is a new thing for me.  What is it, how do I tell if the sim is in that mode, and how do I switch it off?  If they are in "power idle" mode, I did not consciously do anything to get them in that mode. 

Update: I don't have macrotastics loaded, so I don't think power idle is the problem.

I've always used SimPE for that.  Open the Sim browser or Sim description for one of the sims in the relationship, click on the "relations" tab.  Scroll down the list of sims with which your sim has a relationship until you find their spouse/partner.  At the right hand side of the screen there will be two sets of bars:   x's relationship to y, and y's relationship to x.  Don't move the bars if you want to preserve the friendship, best friend, etc status.  Look at the check boxes under each set of bars and uncheck the  love, crush, steady, married, family, etc. buttons.

When you are done, only "friend", "buddy", and "known" should be checked.  Then click on the commit button and do a file+save.  When you go back into your game, your sims will still be living in the same house, but will no longer be married or in love.  They will just be best friends (I'm assuming if they are currently married, that they are best friends - any married sim I had was best friends with their spouse).

Care should be taken at this stage not to let them flirt with each other, hug, or gods forbid, kiss, or the whole crush/love thing will rear its ugly head again.

Yes, I think shift+click on your sim should give you the spawn option.  If that doesn't work for you, try using the mailbox (shift+click on the mailbox) and follow the instructions for that in Jordi's tutorial (also in step 4, I believe).  That should give you your full set of townies.

Alrighty then.  That explains that, and I learn something I didn't know about Windows as well.  Now, I just need to wait until either I get bored again, or my current neighborhood goes foom, and I can give it a try.

Cheers.

I renamed the entire folder in the "my documents\EA Games\Sims 2\Neighborhoods sub-folder as per instructions - rename N001 to N001-bak.  I also tried deleting the N001 folder altogether.  Nothing seemed to stop the Meadow Thayer, Tosha Go, Goopy etc. townies from generating. 

*sudden thought* Does it matter that my first custom (not cleaned) neighbourhood remained in the neighborhoods folder and had all those townies already in it?  I mean, the game must be getting the blighters from somewhere, and if not Pleasantview, then where?

Anyhow, in the end, I DACed the thing and deleted all relationships, memories, sim dna, and SWAFs with SimPE.  That cleaned it, and I populated the place with home-built Sims.  All seems to be good so far, with total playable/townie population at about 40 Sims (including dormies at the university).  I think more may be necessary if any romance types want the 20 loves at once LTW.  Very tough when everyone is on a lot at once (especially without a jealousy hack).

A bit of a late response here, I know.  I'm having the same jump/no action problem when using "homework sometimes", and I don't have inTeen or Woohoo Teens installed.  If I take the homework hack off, they can ask for help normally.  The homework hack seems to work for all its other functions (modified chance of getting homework etc.), so after they learn to study, I reload it (a bit of a tedious system, I grant).  Anyway, logically it would appear that it's not the teen woohoo hacks that are causing the problem.

As a test, I'm going to remove other kid interactions hacks (can't remember which ones I have loaded, but I probably have too many hacks in my game anyway) and see if that helps.

I'd just like to echo that I only have TS2 and Uni installed and just started seeing the "assignment jump" yesterday in my university sub-hood, newly built (clean/custom - no maxis dormies).  Only seems to happen with one CAS created dormie so far, but it's a brand new university (Academie Le Tour).  Currently I only have one playable YA in one dorm, and 16 custom made dormies running about the place (7 in the dorm).  I will have to test the chairs in the dining hall to see if they are borked, now that I see this post.

I have "noassignmentlitter" installed, but it seems that others who don't have it are also experiencing the same problem.

Logic would suggest however that it is not Seasons or OFB that is doing this - may be a residual bit of wayward Maxis code conflicting with something else.

Since there are only 40 Sims in my entire neighbourhood (including the uni), including townies/dormies, but not counting NPCs, I have a hard time thinking it has something to do with overpopulation.

I'm wondering if the best "band aid" solution for now is to replace chairs in build mode every so often until someone obviously more awesome figures out what is going on anyway.

I'm new to the thread (and the game), but have been following this for a month or so, and just created my first clean/custom neighbourhood this week.  Thanks Jordi for the excellent tutorial. 

Unfortunately, I have the same problem as a couple of others here, that when I rename N0001 to N0001-bak (and delete the characters in the Characters folder, etc.), the game still generates all the Pleasantview townies in my new neighbourhood.  I tried deleting the N0001 'hood altogether, but that seems to simply make my new custom neighbourhood N0001 and gives me the same townies again (I have only the base and uni installed).  This happened about 4 times consistently.  Finally I built my neighbourhood and used "deleteallcharacters" (only once).  I don't use the townie tree for townies anyway, so hopefully nothing bad will happen.  If it does, hey ho - my favourite sims are all cloned anyway.

I'm wondering if I missed a step, like using empty template N0001 (just picked that up now).  I'll try that if I decide to start a new hood again (or if I'm forced to). 

It's a fair bit of work, building every single townie by hand (only 14 townies in the neighbourhood so far, but they're all ones that I'm happy with).  The noregen mods are fantastic for keeping indigents out.  Thanks MATY for those as well.