Here is the safest and easiest way to delete all characters from a neighborhood:

1) Create a new empty neighborhood with the terrain type that you want to use. This is the safest way to create an empty neighborhood:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost...223&postcount=2

2) Use HoodReplace to copy the neighborhood terrain, roads, trees, deco, etc. from your old neighborhood to your new neighborhood:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=279992

3) In your old neighborhood, make sure that all of your lots are unowned and unoccupied. Otherwise, your Lot Descriptions will reference families which are not available. It is probably safest to allow the game to delete all objects from your occupied lots when your sims move out. Use of the Stay-Things Shrub or similar mods may leave references to sims on your lots.

4) Download and install the latest version of SimPE:
http://sims.ambertation.de/

5) In SimPE, extract all Text List (STR#) with instance numbers of 0x8000 or larger from your old neighborhood.

6) Extract all Lot Descriptions (LTXT) from your old neighborhood.

7) Add the extracted Text List (STR#) to your new neighborhood. Save your neighborhood, so that the Text Lists are available for the next step.

8) Add the extracted Lot Descriptions to your new neighborhood.

9) Copy all lot packages from the Lots subfolder of your old neighborhood to the Lots subfolder of your new neighborhood.

10) Rename all of those lot packages from <old>_Lot#.package to <new>_Lot#.package (i.e. change the neighborhood prefix, but nothing else).

11) (optional) Copy the png from your old neighborhood to your new neighborhood and rename it to have the new neighborhood prefix. This is the preview picture for the neighborhoods menu.

Thank you so much, Mootilda- I tried this and it worked perfectly!

I had one or two lots that didn't copy over for some reason, but apart from that no glitches. I managed to clone a neighbourhood and its downtown and Uni, so this tutorial was very useful! I had over 300 characters so it would have taken a while to delete them manually.

HugeLunatic is having a problem with Black Mesa (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=478837) which may be related. It looks like lots may disappear if the Test List (STR#) associated with the lot doesn't match the information in the Lot Description (LTXT) record.

Therefore, I'm going to recommend that people also copy all Text List (STR#) records for their lots. I've updated the original tutorial.

The instance of the Text List is 0x8000 + the instance of the Lot Description. For example, if the instance number for a Lot Description is 0x00000001, then the Text List instance for that lot is 0x00008001.

I do remember reading, I don't know where that it IS okay to delete the character files in the characters folder of a neighborhood, if, and only if the hood has never been played. I have an empty custom neighborhood I am using just for building. I thought I had used an empty template - it isn't a pre-made hood. Since no sims have ever been made in the hood, I would think the characters in the Characters folder wouldn't have any relationships that can corrupt a hood if all the character files are removed. The relationships might exist between each other, but does the game keep those relationships attached to the hood, or with the sims? The game generated 81 characters in these supposedly empty hoods. I don't them and can make my own characters without all the extras.

However, as I am ONLY building in the hood, I can place all the lots into the lots and housing bin and place them in another empty 'hood. Actually, I think I'll just keep the hoods for practice (with a backup) and testing some lots. I can easily use the same empty ,sc4 terrain and place the same lots on it, since I know I don't want any game-generated characters, except in the one RiverBlossom Hills pre-made I am also using for testing. I test cc objects there. But I want a completely empty hood to test copies of lots.

Guess I'll have to go back to find out what I need to install that I missed doing to get an empty hood with no characters. I think this happened to me once before, so I'm sure I copied the instructions into my computer somewhere. At least I didn't notice all those character files after making a bunch of sims and playing them. So no loss in creating a new hood, and doing it right this time.

I'm on a Mac, so I don't know any way to fix stuff with these hoods, as I have no access to simpe.

This is completely and totally wrong. If you delete the character files in the Character folder of a neighborhood, you instantly corrupt the neighborhood.
Corruption occurs because internal references do not point to valid data. When you delete the user files, you ensure that all of the references to sims point to invalid data. This invalid data may not be visible to you, but it is visible to the game and the game will eventually have problems because of this invalid data. Some of the records in the neighborhood package which contain references to these non-existent characters are: SDSC^wiki, SWAF^wiki, SREL^wiki, SCOR^wiki, NGBH^wiki, FAMI^wiki, FAMt^wiki, STR#^wiki, 3IDR^wiki, BINX^wiki; I'm sure that there are others. At the very least, you must delete each and every reference to the user files that you deleted.

Originally, people tried to empty out the shipped neighborhoods by deleting all of these records from the neighborhood package. You would then replace the original neighborhood package with an empty version and delete all of the user files in the Characters subfolder of your neighborhood. Unfortunately, removing all references to sims is difficult and the people who created these empty templates missed some records which can cause problems.

This tutorial works by creating a completely empty neighborhood with no invalid references, then copying (from your original neighborhood) only those things which have no references to sims. In this way, we can be sure that no invalid references to sims are copied.
Packaging the unoccupied lots and moving those lots to your new neighborhood should be relatively safe, and doesn't require access to SimPE.

However, you'll still need to create an empty environment to create an empty neighborhood. The best way to create an empty neighborhood is described here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost...223&postcount=2

Since you are on a MAC, you will probably need to use the manual method, rather than AGS:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost...97&postcount=11

An alternative is to install empty templates. If you are not sharing your neighborhood with anyone else, empty templates should be relatively safe.

Hi,

I imported a neighborhood from Sims Pet Stories (Garden Heights) to Sims 2 and I'd like to change it to a suburb template (like Bluewater Village)
Alright, there's no elder state in Pet Stories so that's why all of the maxis premade sims are corrupted (they don't have an elder face - they don't get a face when they're old)

So I followed this tutorial here, it worked as excepted but when I enter a house, it always create some charcters (15 I think) but it's an empty 'hood...
When I leave without save - they won't be saved in the 'hood (as usual) so I made a backup of the 'hood and entered a random house and saved it.

In SimPe, I opened one of them (charcter files) and there was nothing... it's just a empty blank package... can I delete it?
And is it safe to delete it? Or does it respawn again?

It's difficult to speculate about sims that are generated in your game after you complete this tutorial. Note that this question has nothing to do with the tutorial itself.

My suggestion is that you search for the SimID to see whether you can identify the sim, either in The Sims 2 or in Pet Stories. That might give you some additional information.

Sounds like those houses may have been corrupted when they were converted from Pet Stories to The Sims 2. It may not be possible to convert them safely. You might want to consider rebuilding them from scratch, if unknown sims are generated whenever you enter a lot.

Again, I cannot support transferring things from Pet Stories to the Sims 2. You should really start one thread and keep all of the issues that you're having in one place, rather than spreading them out among a bunch of different tutorials, none of which are meant to work with Pet Stories.

Replying to this thread so I can save it for later, but also as a placeholder for testing these methods to make sure they still work with Legacy Edition. will update once completed!