I remember that this project had already been underway when I first started playing the sims 2 back in 9th grade. I'm really glad that it was finally made a reality! Congratulations!

Wow! That's an enormous amount of work; thank you so much for doing all of that!

I've actually never played Strangetown, because I'd heard it was broken. So after a zillion years, I can finally play it for the first time -- how cool!

I'm sorry to be stupid, but I'm having trouble figuring out where to put this. I tried going to the place where the game is installed (which is the F drive on my particular computer), so I went here:
F:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate
That folder contained only a .png file, no neighborhood files.



There are neighborhood folders in my C:\Users\MyName\Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods folder, but I thought those were the saved games. So where are my neighborhood templates?

Thanks!

Wow, this must have taken you ages, great job.

@Corylea The templates are in \TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods.

This is huge! Thank you all!

I didn't even know the Singles were supposed to have different surnames. I thought it was part of the limitation of the game only allowing same-surname people in a household in CAS.

Finally! An official version! This is so awesome! I've been recommending your "tester" version as my favorite for ages! Great work. Thank you!

@Nopke Oh, thank you!

After all, why would EA put them in a folder explicitly labelled "Neighborhood Template" when they could bury them under "UserData." *head desk* :-)

Thank you so much! I've been looking for so long for a Strangetown that was not only clean, but also came with townies and ancestors and such. Thank you for undertaking what I presume was a difficult project.

Thank you, Dorsal Axe. I always assumed meetmetotheriver's releases were free of all these issues. It's also great to have the original townies back.

I do have a question, however. You said we should "allow the game to generate a new save game folder. From there you can move it to your existing save game folder," and that "copying the new N002 folder directly to your existing save game folder can result in losing neighborhood stories for all of your neighborhoods, as well as some other weirdness".

I'm guessing this is a newbie question, but the only instructions I found on a google search for resetting premade neighborhoods was to simply copy and paste the template files, which is exactly what you instructed us not to do. By "new save game folder" did you perhaps meant we should delete the entire TS2 folder found on My Documents and not only the saved neighborhoods folder?
---//---
And hopefully this isn't off topic and someone can tell me:
I'm about to start a Pleasantview save, and after seeing this post I decided to run the Hood Checker on river's templates. The analysis found "incorrect subject" for Dina's memories of Michael Bachelor and Darren Dreamer's memories of Darleen. (fixable with the "fix corrupt memories" function of Pescado's FFS Lot Debugger/BatBox)

As for the subhoods (Bluewater Village, Downtown and SSU), seems like all playable families' memories, including those of the dead Tricous, were marked as "incorrect subject". Besides adding the subhoods, I haven't even played with this save file yet.
EDIT: This is not an issue with MeetMeToTheRiver's templates, but with the game itself. As it's mentioned in her clean template releases, "adding any and all subhoods ingame partially corrupts the memories of added sims. Always run the Hood Checker on a neighbourhood after adding any subhoods to fix this." I just made this edit in case someone comes across my comment and thinks her subhood templates are somehow not safe, which is not the case.

Does anyone know is this could be a sign of serious corruption, or is it something easily solvable (hopefully with Pescado's BatBox)?

Ah, I haven't explained it very well. I'll rewrite the instructions to make them clearer. Basically you should temporarily move or rename your saved game folder (usually under \Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2), this will cause the game to generate a new folder and copy over the template neighborhoods from the installation directory (usually under \Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2). Then you can move the new Strangetown to your old save folder, swapping it over with the old Strangetown, then delete the new save folder and restore your old one.

In my testing I found that directly swapping the old N002 out for the new one would wipe my stories in all hoods, but following this more cumbersome process didn't for some reason. I couldn't tell you why

Regarding the other thing, my guess is that it's because those memories are pointing to invalid targets. There is a duplicate of Michael Bachelor and one of Darleen Dreamer, who are not properly linked, so that's possibly why that error is being thrown. I haven't really looked at Pleasantview much yet, so I can't say for certain. I'm also not sure about the Tricous. Issues with memory subjects can easily be fixed in SimPE though.

Thank you, Dorsal Axe! It's great to have a chance to try playing Strangetown more or less safely.

There's an issue that pops up though. When I play the Curiouses and after Vidcund gets abducted and then returns, the want controller is throwing an error (testingcheatsenabled is on). If I reset it then Vidcund has 3 out of his 6 wants blank (I got him a university diploma), and if I delete it then everyone's wants are messed up. Does anyone know a way of fixing this issue? When Pascal delivers a baby, he loses all of the wants and fears, so does Lazlo

I know that there's a "recommended" order in which to play the Pleasantview families if one wants to see all of the Maxis scripted events. Is there such an order for the Strangetown families?

The Prima Guide recommends the following order:

1. Curious
2. Specter
3. Beaker
4. Smith
5. Grunt

I recommend you play the Beaker family before the Curious family. If you play the Curious lot first, you may end up satisfying some of Nervous Subject's wants (make friends with Pascal, etc.) before you even have a chance to play the Beaker lot.

@RoxEllen1965, thank you very much!

I converted this to a subhood. Seems ok to me, but would anyone like to test it?

This is very nice but I'm very curious, what makes this different from Tarlia's clean templates? Not discrediting your hard work, I'm just genuinely curious. And will this make resurrecting Olive's "victims" be safe and not corrupt the neighbourhood?

I've been playing StrangeTown for quite a while actually and i didn't know it was so buggy until now. Luckily I never resurrect dead sims.

Awesome! i love this town and im glad you made a fix. Im curious however, do you plan on making a shopping district version of this so we can use it as a subhood?

I wondered if the expanded want slots were conflicting with the scripted scenario (since that forces certain wants on Sims IIRC), but I'm afraid I haven't been able to replicate this at all that on a clean game. Therefore, I can only assume it's due to a mod conflict.


Pretty much what's in the description and changelog.

[EDIT: Removed some comments as I was basing my info on a now very outdated version of her project]


I'm afraid I won't be making any variations of this hood, this was all a lot of work as it is. It looks like Sunrader up above has converted it to a subhood, so your best bet is to contact them about that or wait for them to release that version

As DA said, I converted it. I've tested it myself and it seems fine, but if you'd like to test it on a hood you aren't invested in, that'd be great. PM me for a link.



If you mean the new one released last year, MeetMetotheRiver does great work, but she doesn't list very many changes in Strangetown and she deleted all the townies, so if you want the hood close to the original, this is my fav.

Awesome! Thank you so much! :up:
That's a fantastic job done here. Much appreciated. :gjob:
We can finally enjoy a proper Strangetown! :D

Wow very useful. I'll try that.

Thanks for doing this... I am one of those few people that actually like the townies!