Clean and Fixed Uber-Megahood - FINAL(ly)
X-posted to MATY
UPDATE 03/21 - Updated Installation Instructions and Known Issues sections.
UPDATE 04/07 - Updated Known Issues section.
UPDATE 04/14 - Updated Known Issues section.
UPDATE 10/16 - Updated Known Issues section.
One last time, this is a clean and fixed HystericalParoxysm's Uber-Megahood. I'm not going to keep updating it, I promise, even if there's something horribly wrong with it. As far as I'm concerned, it's as perfect as it gets. Above all, this is the only Megahood without corrupt memories (except the ones corrupted "by default").
Unfortunately, M&G STUFF PACK IS REQUIRED! If you don't have it, the hood just won't show up. I'm very sorry about that, but I haven't thought about sharing when I first started cleaning it.
Also, REQUIRES ALL EPS EXCEPT UNI AND NL! That means Pets and BV are required, as the bin families from those packs are included too* (Kat and Kim families from Occupied Lot Bin are NOT included, so you can add them yourself where you want them). There's a possibility you could safely play this hood without those two EPs, I'm still in the process of testing it.
*You won't get any duplicate bin families no matter what templates you have installed.
No fiddling with SimPE this time, just extract the file to Neighborhoods folder and start playing!
Download:
Cleanerhood.part1.rar
Cleanerhood.part2.rar
Cleanerhood.part3.rar
Installation instructions:
If you already have a N001 folder in C:\Documents and Settings\*your name here*\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods, move it somewhere safe, if you need it. If you don't, delete it.
Once you got all 3 parts downloaded, open Cleanerhood.part1.rar and extract it to C:\Documents and Settings\*your name here*\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods. (All 3 parts will automatically extract there).
If you have trouble extracting the files, it's probably because you were using an extracting utility other than WinRar or 7-Zip. Get WinRAR or Get 7-Zip, they're both free.
Changes made to HP's original hood:
While your files download, you can take the time to read what you're getting.
- Neighborhood is renamed back to N001, because Pescado says that cloning a neighborhood is a VBT. If you wish to play original Pleasantview and this hood at the same time, you can rename it to whatever you want (using a batch-rename utility). See Tips at the end of post.
- Around 360 random townies and NPCs are Deleted 2, along with their orphaned family instances and clothing collections! I also deleted broken duplicates of Skip Broke, Darleen Dreamer, Michael Bachelor and Nervous Subject. The only trace of unplayables left are townies/NPCs known by playable sims (Crystal Vu, Abhijeet Cho, Kaylynn Langerak, Gordon King, Meredith Lillard, Phoebe Adams and Frances McCullough). Strangetown Bella "The Clone" Goth and 5 Bluewater employees are NOT included, but I have them all extracted if anyone wants to add them. The real Bella Goth is in the sim bin, see below. All the ancestors are untouched (except above mentioned duplicates).
- All memories fixed! If you ever attempted to wipe corrupt memories with Lot Debugger in ANY Megahood, you certainly noticed that almost all of sims' memories get wiped. This is the consequence of merging process itself - somehow, characters' GUIDs change which results in wrong Memory $Subjects. In other words, the memory looks just fine (it points to right name) but in fact it isn't (it points to wrong number). In this hood, "default" corrupted memories are still present in 3 base hoods - usually 5 per adult sim (pointing to dead broken relatives - 3 toddler skills, 2 deaths). You can easily wipe them with Lot Debugger if you wish. In short, in this hood, you can wipe corrupt memories without fear that entire sim lives will get erased.
While doing all this, I figured I might as well fix the maxian stupid along the way. The examples are too numerous to list. Some well known examples would be the Broke family remembering Skip died before Beau was born, yet Skip's the father of Brandi's unborn child. Or all death memories in Riverblossom Hills are green. Or all Desideratians have one memory too much - a memory of growing up to toddler. All these are fixed, and much much more! My personal favorite are the new job memories in Desiderata Valley and Belladonna - they now correctly show career icon (instead of memory owner's picture), just like in all other hoods.
- All existing pregnancies "refreshed", because Pescado says that mega-merging hoods results in invalid pregnancy tokens (I suspect, for the same reason memories get corrupt). You won't even notice that the pregnancies has been fiddled with (unlike the previous version, preggos now have correct job levels). Additionally, you won't get the Brandi clone, cause she's really pregnant with Skip now!
- Broken Family Ties in Desiderata Valley and Belladonna Cove have been reattached! (I haven't noticed anything else wrong with Family Ties, but if you do, let me know. It can be easily fixed without me uploading the whole hood again.)
- Bella Goth is in the sim bin now, 35000$ and an extra cheesy description included. As a townie she suffers from a rather nasty memory loss (she doesn't loose all of her memories like a normal townie). I made her not remember anything after the abduction. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. The "real" Pleasantview Bella doesn't even have memories, and I believe Megahood Bella's memories are the work of SaraMK.
- All the neighborhood and family albums fixed. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they will work for you, so far it seems random. At the very least, you should get working individual family albums in 3 base hoods, which were not present in HP's hood.
- Various other small changes, not particularly important. I will make a full list of it eventually and attach it to this post...
Known Issues:
(critical ones in cursive)
- If you have original Belladonna in your game, you must remove it prior to installing this hood. Otherwise you might encounter missing/misplaced lots problem, such as this one. I have no idea why this happens. :(
- Multiple PT Hacks with custom skintones DO NOT WORK in this hood. They DO work in HP's original hood. I have absolutely no clue what happened here. So, if you can't part with your colorful aliens, this hood may not be for you. Regular Multiple PT hacks do work though. If anyone has any idea what could be the problem here, please let me know.
- Tessa Ramirez and Oberon Gossamer have blank wants and fears. Also, Tessa has no DNA to start with. I tested extensivelly and lurked around MATY and it doesn't seem critical. Correct DNA generated for Tessa and she spawned normally. Wants and fears appear over time, as those two sims start doing things. You can accelerate this process by using Lot Debugger's "Wants > Reroll". Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.
- Sarah Crittur (the dog) delivers immediately when you move her in somewhere. This is due to the way pregnancy tokens are set up (or my inability to understand how pregnancy tokens are set up :) ) - when I changed the token's raw data numbers to match the original, the pregnancy token turned into a gossip about a dead Veronavillian. So I figured it's best to leave it as is. She'll still have 3 puppies with Danny as the father as expected.
- Denise Jacquet doesn't know her husband died. Teleport Xavier Jacquet to her home (you'll get "Xavier died on another lot" message, and he'll dissapear, problem solved) and/or use Lot Debugger's 'Fix > Dead romances'. If you don't do that she might throw errors at you under certain circumstances.
- Jill Smith and Bianca Monty (maybe more?) don't know that they're in their everyday wear. When you first load their lots, change them to Everyday (even though they already are in everyday, you'll have the option), or they might throw errors at you under certain circumstances.
(Other issues from previous versions have been fixed. Please report any weirdness you might encounter. As I said, I'm NOT going to deal with this hood any more but I do mean to play it eventually and I'd like to hear your experiences, for my own sake, and for the sake of downloaders).
Some tips:
- Do not attempt to add another shopping district to this hood, EVER! You may however delete shopping districts if you want - sims living in them will appear in the bin. The lots are what actually makes this hood so big, so it might be a good idea to do this if you're on a low-end machine or you lack disk space. From what I gathered it's still best to leave at least one shopping district. Besides, where else would you move all those families. Again, you cannot add a shopping district even if you delete some. You can safely add downtowns, universities and vacation destinations, but do use empty/clean templates, 'cause hood is already huge as it is.
- I named the hood N001 on purpose. You shouldn't have cloned hoods in your Neighborhoods folder at the same time. That means, having Pleasantview and HP's Megahoods in your Neighborhoods folder simultaneously is a potential VBT. If you play original Pleasantview, or any clone of Pleasantview, (or any other hood named N001 perhaps?), but you still want this hood, I suggest getting AnyGameStarter, or playing on a different Windows account, or simply switching the folders in and out of your documents/EA Games/Neighborhoods. But it's your game and all, and if you think this is just paranoid, use a batch-renaming utility to rename N001 to a higher number (for batch-renaming I simply use Windows Commander's "File > Multi-Rename Tool"). Remember, you don't rename just the folder, but also everything in it.
- You don't really need many townies with this much playables, but some will simply have to generate. Use norespawn hacks to control the population.
Thank yous (in chronological order, I guess):
- SaraMK, who wrote the hood-merging tutorial and started the whole trend.
- HystericalParoxysm, whose hood I shamelessly stole and edited.
- My LJ friends for checking things out for me, letting me know about things I didn't know, asking me to upload this and overall being awesome. Special thanks to phoenixdaisy/Tamha and engram_au. Thank you both for providing tons of feedback and information. Bit of Tamha's work is actually included in this hood, 'cause I was unable to do it myself.
- Lots of baaas to MATYians who know all the answers and did not poke me with pointy sticks! :D Special thanks (and apologies) to Mootilda who I bugged for nothing, and Kalina who saved the day by discovering and resolving yet another Bella problem. The first thing I'll do when I start playing is killing the bitch. [/oscar mode]
UPDATE 03/21 - Updated Installation Instructions and Known Issues sections.
UPDATE 04/07 - Updated Known Issues section.
UPDATE 04/14 - Updated Known Issues section.
UPDATE 10/16 - Updated Known Issues section.
One last time, this is a clean and fixed HystericalParoxysm's Uber-Megahood. I'm not going to keep updating it, I promise, even if there's something horribly wrong with it. As far as I'm concerned, it's as perfect as it gets. Above all, this is the only Megahood without corrupt memories (except the ones corrupted "by default").
Unfortunately, M&G STUFF PACK IS REQUIRED! If you don't have it, the hood just won't show up. I'm very sorry about that, but I haven't thought about sharing when I first started cleaning it.
Also, REQUIRES ALL EPS EXCEPT UNI AND NL! That means Pets and BV are required, as the bin families from those packs are included too* (Kat and Kim families from Occupied Lot Bin are NOT included, so you can add them yourself where you want them). There's a possibility you could safely play this hood without those two EPs, I'm still in the process of testing it.
*You won't get any duplicate bin families no matter what templates you have installed.
No fiddling with SimPE this time, just extract the file to Neighborhoods folder and start playing!
Download:
Cleanerhood.part1.rar
Cleanerhood.part2.rar
Cleanerhood.part3.rar
Installation instructions:
If you already have a N001 folder in C:\Documents and Settings\*your name here*\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods, move it somewhere safe, if you need it. If you don't, delete it.
Once you got all 3 parts downloaded, open Cleanerhood.part1.rar and extract it to C:\Documents and Settings\*your name here*\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods. (All 3 parts will automatically extract there).
If you have trouble extracting the files, it's probably because you were using an extracting utility other than WinRar or 7-Zip. Get WinRAR or Get 7-Zip, they're both free.
Changes made to HP's original hood:
While your files download, you can take the time to read what you're getting.
- Neighborhood is renamed back to N001, because Pescado says that cloning a neighborhood is a VBT. If you wish to play original Pleasantview and this hood at the same time, you can rename it to whatever you want (using a batch-rename utility). See Tips at the end of post.
- Around 360 random townies and NPCs are Deleted 2, along with their orphaned family instances and clothing collections! I also deleted broken duplicates of Skip Broke, Darleen Dreamer, Michael Bachelor and Nervous Subject. The only trace of unplayables left are townies/NPCs known by playable sims (Crystal Vu, Abhijeet Cho, Kaylynn Langerak, Gordon King, Meredith Lillard, Phoebe Adams and Frances McCullough). Strangetown Bella "The Clone" Goth and 5 Bluewater employees are NOT included, but I have them all extracted if anyone wants to add them. The real Bella Goth is in the sim bin, see below. All the ancestors are untouched (except above mentioned duplicates).
- All memories fixed! If you ever attempted to wipe corrupt memories with Lot Debugger in ANY Megahood, you certainly noticed that almost all of sims' memories get wiped. This is the consequence of merging process itself - somehow, characters' GUIDs change which results in wrong Memory $Subjects. In other words, the memory looks just fine (it points to right name) but in fact it isn't (it points to wrong number). In this hood, "default" corrupted memories are still present in 3 base hoods - usually 5 per adult sim (pointing to dead broken relatives - 3 toddler skills, 2 deaths). You can easily wipe them with Lot Debugger if you wish. In short, in this hood, you can wipe corrupt memories without fear that entire sim lives will get erased.
While doing all this, I figured I might as well fix the maxian stupid along the way. The examples are too numerous to list. Some well known examples would be the Broke family remembering Skip died before Beau was born, yet Skip's the father of Brandi's unborn child. Or all death memories in Riverblossom Hills are green. Or all Desideratians have one memory too much - a memory of growing up to toddler. All these are fixed, and much much more! My personal favorite are the new job memories in Desiderata Valley and Belladonna - they now correctly show career icon (instead of memory owner's picture), just like in all other hoods.
- All existing pregnancies "refreshed", because Pescado says that mega-merging hoods results in invalid pregnancy tokens (I suspect, for the same reason memories get corrupt). You won't even notice that the pregnancies has been fiddled with (unlike the previous version, preggos now have correct job levels). Additionally, you won't get the Brandi clone, cause she's really pregnant with Skip now!
- Broken Family Ties in Desiderata Valley and Belladonna Cove have been reattached! (I haven't noticed anything else wrong with Family Ties, but if you do, let me know. It can be easily fixed without me uploading the whole hood again.)
- Bella Goth is in the sim bin now, 35000$ and an extra cheesy description included. As a townie she suffers from a rather nasty memory loss (she doesn't loose all of her memories like a normal townie). I made her not remember anything after the abduction. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. The "real" Pleasantview Bella doesn't even have memories, and I believe Megahood Bella's memories are the work of SaraMK.
- All the neighborhood and family albums fixed. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they will work for you, so far it seems random. At the very least, you should get working individual family albums in 3 base hoods, which were not present in HP's hood.
- Various other small changes, not particularly important. I will make a full list of it eventually and attach it to this post...
Known Issues:
(critical ones in cursive)
- If you have original Belladonna in your game, you must remove it prior to installing this hood. Otherwise you might encounter missing/misplaced lots problem, such as this one. I have no idea why this happens. :(
- Multiple PT Hacks with custom skintones DO NOT WORK in this hood. They DO work in HP's original hood. I have absolutely no clue what happened here. So, if you can't part with your colorful aliens, this hood may not be for you. Regular Multiple PT hacks do work though. If anyone has any idea what could be the problem here, please let me know.
- Tessa Ramirez and Oberon Gossamer have blank wants and fears. Also, Tessa has no DNA to start with. I tested extensivelly and lurked around MATY and it doesn't seem critical. Correct DNA generated for Tessa and she spawned normally. Wants and fears appear over time, as those two sims start doing things. You can accelerate this process by using Lot Debugger's "Wants > Reroll". Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.
- Sarah Crittur (the dog) delivers immediately when you move her in somewhere. This is due to the way pregnancy tokens are set up (or my inability to understand how pregnancy tokens are set up :) ) - when I changed the token's raw data numbers to match the original, the pregnancy token turned into a gossip about a dead Veronavillian. So I figured it's best to leave it as is. She'll still have 3 puppies with Danny as the father as expected.
- Denise Jacquet doesn't know her husband died. Teleport Xavier Jacquet to her home (you'll get "Xavier died on another lot" message, and he'll dissapear, problem solved) and/or use Lot Debugger's 'Fix > Dead romances'. If you don't do that she might throw errors at you under certain circumstances.
- Jill Smith and Bianca Monty (maybe more?) don't know that they're in their everyday wear. When you first load their lots, change them to Everyday (even though they already are in everyday, you'll have the option), or they might throw errors at you under certain circumstances.
(Other issues from previous versions have been fixed. Please report any weirdness you might encounter. As I said, I'm NOT going to deal with this hood any more but I do mean to play it eventually and I'd like to hear your experiences, for my own sake, and for the sake of downloaders).
Some tips:
- Do not attempt to add another shopping district to this hood, EVER! You may however delete shopping districts if you want - sims living in them will appear in the bin. The lots are what actually makes this hood so big, so it might be a good idea to do this if you're on a low-end machine or you lack disk space. From what I gathered it's still best to leave at least one shopping district. Besides, where else would you move all those families. Again, you cannot add a shopping district even if you delete some. You can safely add downtowns, universities and vacation destinations, but do use empty/clean templates, 'cause hood is already huge as it is.
- I named the hood N001 on purpose. You shouldn't have cloned hoods in your Neighborhoods folder at the same time. That means, having Pleasantview and HP's Megahoods in your Neighborhoods folder simultaneously is a potential VBT. If you play original Pleasantview, or any clone of Pleasantview, (or any other hood named N001 perhaps?), but you still want this hood, I suggest getting AnyGameStarter, or playing on a different Windows account, or simply switching the folders in and out of your documents/EA Games/Neighborhoods. But it's your game and all, and if you think this is just paranoid, use a batch-renaming utility to rename N001 to a higher number (for batch-renaming I simply use Windows Commander's "File > Multi-Rename Tool"). Remember, you don't rename just the folder, but also everything in it.
- You don't really need many townies with this much playables, but some will simply have to generate. Use norespawn hacks to control the population.
Thank yous (in chronological order, I guess):
- SaraMK, who wrote the hood-merging tutorial and started the whole trend.
- HystericalParoxysm, whose hood I shamelessly stole and edited.
- My LJ friends for checking things out for me, letting me know about things I didn't know, asking me to upload this and overall being awesome. Special thanks to phoenixdaisy/Tamha and engram_au. Thank you both for providing tons of feedback and information. Bit of Tamha's work is actually included in this hood, 'cause I was unable to do it myself.
- Lots of baaas to MATYians who know all the answers and did not poke me with pointy sticks! :D Special thanks (and apologies) to Mootilda who I bugged for nothing, and Kalina who saved the day by discovering and resolving yet another Bella problem. The first thing I'll do when I start playing is killing the bitch. [/oscar mode]