After successfully creating a fully custom hobby hood from scratch, I've been trying with a magic one. I want completely different magic lots, in a different terrain with a few more community lots. I'll also be including custom premade social group Sims.

It seems I can't use hood replace to change the terrain of the magic hood when I copy a clean/empty E002 into the neighborhood folder (and convert to downtown to make visible), although this does work for hobbies. How can I make this work or get around it?
As for the secret witch lots, I've pretty much accepted I'll have to bulldoze the pre-mades from the inside and rebuild, unless anyone has managed to make it work from scratch? I managed the hobby lots from scratch by changing the u0 and u4 numbers; although the secret witch lots have unique u0 numbers, changing them isn't enough.
I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing for making social groups and the high witches themselves.

Any advice and pointers massively appreciated, I have been very perplexed and frustrated this weekend!

Do all other aspects of the AL EP work okay?

So I've actually made alot of progress on this, after realising my pc Was making an annoying virtual store... i'm now just one step away from a custom magic hood from scratch!

I've successfully created an evil witch lot that spawns the evil witch who functions as expected. However, this witch also spawns on the good witch lot I made.
I made the cauldrons, spellbooks, thrones, all lights, as well as invisible ambience boxes and the witch controller buyable, and placed in each lot according to alignment.

I changed the u0 for each lot to correspond to the maxis ones, as well as renaming the #STR to 'Evil Witch Lot' and 'Good Witch Lot's as per the maxis template, although this wasn't necessary to generate a successful evil lot...

I've also used lot cleaner, as I remember that was the missing step to make custom hobby lots functional.

I'm going to try merging the controller and ambience boxes into 2 packages, a controller with good ambience, one with evil.
I can also try combinations of cauldrons. The cauldron group in objects.package contains 5 OBJT files (a base, 0.0, 0.1 LEAD, 1.0, 1.1). The only version that shows up in the premade lots is the LEAD, although this probably represents an unclaimed cauldron. I'm using a package containing all 5, but a buyable cauldron can be made containing just the base and the 0.1 LEAD for example...

If these tweaks fail, I'm out of ideas. Does anyone have any ideas, or would like me to send what I've done so far?

I'm not really THIS good at editing lots, but what you sad made me have a question: do you think it could be possible to have a neutral witch lot too?

You could have a standard community lot separate to the good and bad witch lots in the magic hood and use it as a 'neutral witch' lot, but there's no coding for a neutral high witch to appear to buy reagents from and 'get advice' etc. I'm not sure if cauldrons function on standard community lots even in a magic hood, you could test it out. I should upload the buyable witch items I made, so you can have a go...

I'm a little unsure what to do about to cauldron as there are 5 separate OBJT files within the cauldron group in objects.package: 'Witch cauldron', 'witch cauldron 0.0', 'witch cauldron 0.1 LEAD', 'witch cauldron 1.0', and witch cauldron 1.1. I tried just including the LEAD one but it didn't work; it needed the file without any numbers too to show up.
The good secret witch lot I made up spawned an evil witch with a cauldron package containing all 5 as well as just the functional LEAD (which is the only one that shows up in the OBJT files in the maxis lot.package for both secret witch lots).

The cauldron deffo has something to do with the spawning as the NPC spawns near it, and the colour changes to the witches alignment before they spawn.
The BHAVs in the controller group that I've looked at which I thought might be relevant also refer to setting up the ambience box, and checking neighborid (unsure if that's of the NPC or the lot...)


It's so frustrating being so close to nailing it, but so far!
If this has piqued the curiosity of anyone who is confident using SimPE, please get in touch, and I can send you the template and the objects for your downloads folder

So I just tried another template, including an intended good secretwitchlot which contained the good ambience box with an unedited catalogue description (both good and evil are listed as mystic dust, so I needed to differentiate). Seeing as I can spawn an evil witch in lots with or without the edited ambience boxes, I thought this might work. I've double checked the lot is secretwitch, but it doesn't spawn either NPC witch. This implies the ambience box has a part to play.
However, when I install the maxis made lots I packaged up, Clean Installer flags all the witchy items I made buyable in my downloads (cauldron, spellboox, lights and thrones), but NOT the ambience boxes, which implies that they don't exist on these lots.
Feeling a litter closer, yet even further...

I've cracked it. It is possible to make a custom good witch lot from scratch, as long as you name the lot 'Palace of Neverending Light'. You can call an evil lot whatever you like, the evil witch is a default spawn for any secret witch lot...

I'm at peace with using the name, however, if anyone has any ideas how to change the lot name that links to the good witch spawning, I'd be very grateful. I'm making a Greek mythology hood, so I'll be wanting to call the good lot a temple instead of a palace...