If I sever the family ties for a sim with relationships (that is, unwanted babies who are related to their parents and siblings) using InSIM, can I then safely nuke the babies using this method?  Says not safe for sims related to others, but if I make 'em unrelated, would that work?

My search fu fails.  Thanks for the link, Emma.  Feel free to make fun of me mercilessly now, or somethin'.

So I was testing something that required multiple births, and instead of using a crap testing family, I used my family of three cute redheaded sisters... and like an idiot, when I quit, I saved instead of quitting without saving like I meant to...

So now my cute redheads have six squalling infants, all named Baby Boy and Baby Girl.  This simply will not do... I know I could get them taken by the social worker and then delete the memories but then I have six stupid babies floating around my neighborhood for no good reason besides my own stupidity.  I created a nice clean new 'hood with all my face templates and names and no unwanted NPCs only to end up with these damn useless crotchfruit hanging about in the family of cute redheads who are meant to be the town's bicycles.

So what would be the best way to basically make it as if these unwanted babies never happened so my redheads can get back to hoing it up?

nerd - Thanks much!  Not sure how I missed that as now that you say it, it makes perfect sense... Trying again for the third time, a little clearer on exactly what I'm doing... we'll see how this works. 

koshechka - Hrm, well, that didn't appear to be my problem, but thanks.

I'd started over from the beginning and when I got to that step I was able to add the Strangetown downtown successfully.  But that's when I got a little bit confused.  I tried to continue on but after doing what I thought were the right steps (which I'm pretty sure weren't), I got to the very end and had no Pleasantview anymore.

I may just be a bit dense here and it's possible it's been answered previously, I'm just blind, but... After you get Strangetown attached, I'm a little unclear on what exactly is being done there.  I guess I'm a little scatterbrained, but I find it a lot easier to do tutorial steps when it explains exactly why one does each step and exactly what you're doing, and I've tried to wrap my mind around it, but... I just don't get the purpose of certain things...

Part 4/Step 8:
"Open My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 and find the file called N001_Downtown001, and its picture. Rename both the file and the picture to N001_Downtown002. Put them in the same safe place as you put the first one, created in Part 1/Step 7."

For that step, I have Downtown001 (default Downtown) and Downtown002 (Strangetown) in N001, as I had created the default downtown as directed in Part 1/Step 6 and it doesn't say to do anything with it between those steps.  Am I copying the default downtown to my Finished Work folder and then renaming it?  If so, why am I doing this now as opposed to when I created it, before making the 002-Strangetown downtown?  Or does Downtown002 (Strangetown) need to be moved somewhere first, so that I can rename the default downtown from 001 to 002 where it is (since there's already a 002 in my N001 folder)?

I guess if I knew exactly why I'm doing Part 4/Step 8 I wouldn't be quite so confused. 

I'm having the same problem as koshechka - when I get to the step to attach the Strangetown-as-Downtown, I don't have the option to attach a downtown template at that point, just custom ones.  I have all EPs including Freetime and I was attempting to attach all the Maxis hoods as downtowns... haven't really done anything that deviates from the tutorial at that point besides adding two additional neighborhoods to begin with, and deleting Riverblossom Hills and Desiderata Valley too when you delete Veronaville and Strangetown (basically following the same steps for them).  I'm using the empty templates for those that they were available for...  I'm pretty darn sure I didn't do anything wrong as I read everything quite carefully and followed it as exactly as I possibly could... Any idea where I might have gone wrong, or shall I just start over?

Indeed, there are no standard values that will work for all skins.  Not all pale skintones are exactly the same shade, so you cannot apply the same filters/transformations to all pale skintones and expect the end results to match.  You generally have to do this by hand - putting your document-in-progress side by side with a document that looks like the shade you want to achieve can help.

You mentioned GIMP which I haven't used in a long time, but in Photoshop you have the option of using Actions.  I rather like using actions for recolouring skins as there's a pile of images to recolour, and it's generally easier to let it do it in batches... this is especially helpful if you have multiple filters/effects/etc. that you put each tone through before it's how you like it, i.e. from pale to tan you change the saturation, then the contrast, then the brightness in three different filters.  Just remember to deselect eyes and teeth on the faces before doing this or you'll end up with weirdness in those areas.  Perhaps GIMP has some sort of automated batch type function as well.

Also, something to bear in mind is that not all skintones -can- be recoloured well to other tones.  Pale skintones only have a limited range of colours included in the textures, so if you try to transform a pale skintone to dark, no matter what you do, you're probably going to end up with mud, not a dark skintone.  The information just isn't there to give you a sufficient range of highlights and shadows doing an extreme transformation like that - just as you can't go from a dark skintone to a light one with no problems either.  It can be done in certain circumstances, depending on your skill in your graphics program and what skin you're recolouring, but most of the time, if you want to take a skin and make a full range of it, you need to use a medium skintone, which will generally go dark and light a heck of a lot easier than starting at either end of the spectrum.

I -do- so love these threads... Not only can I laugh my ass off at all the hideous crap... but all the links to stuff on MTS2 are quite helpful in removing a bunch of old awful stuff that nobody in their right mind would download.  Blessedly, 99% of it is quite old, from 2005/2006 so I don't have to feel too bad, but still.  *goes on a happy tagging spree*