Hello! I want to share here my neighborhood that was inspired by fascinating hoods, made by alext369 and Jawusa!

Here is the master post of it with main info and pictures. Hope you'll like it.


Description:
Trio Lake is named after the famous "Maria" trio, who founded this city by making a portal to enter from middle 19th century. Just imagine you enters now 1850s in England. Industrial revolution was made air here polluted, spoiled enviroment and turned grass to dirt. Town has two prevailing families. Goths are native right-wingers. They invest in family relics since far times of agriculture. Second are progressive neighbors Landgraabs, just came up from Shamps Les Sims. They are getting profit from sales, developing and land grabbing, that sets them opposite to conservative Goths.

Statistics:

• Number of community lots: 24
• Number of residential lots: 20
• SPs and EPs used: All
• Ground type: Dirt
• Seasons cycle: autumn-winter-autumn-winter

Features for unpopulated version:

• Unpopulated
• The whole Borough consists from nine districts related to this borough history. Each with its own features. The guide is here
• I followed the common pattern for all houses that I have the list of rules for this neighborhood. They are:

1. More fireplaces (they defintelly had no central heat)
2. Layered curtains. There is textile on door arches, on windows, on plain walls. I made a gaps between walls in salons to decorate it with curtains as well.
3. Public WC inside the houses
4. Cupdoards! (act like usual dressers, as bars combination with cabinets or other structures made to look alike)
5. Antique, gothic and cottagecore furniture.
6. Typewriters instead of PCs, Public Cinema instead of TVs, musical instruments instead of stereos, dogs instead of burglar alarms, horses instead of vechicles.
7. Luxury, overfurnished living and poor bedrooms with sparse decoration for poor houses
8. Drawing rooms (rooms with sofas and loveseats that were meant to be for communication)
9. Pot Belly Stoves at kitchens (warmth at winter plus... well... I think it looks like victorian stove where people could have cooked like in oven)
10. Fireplaces used to throw away rubbish (fireplace+trash schute combo)
11. No double beds for poor and middle class sims.
12. Sculleries with baths, horse troughs used as tubes too. Toilets and kitchens without sinks while every bedroom has basin (sink)

• All lots are visible without neighborhood camera mod, however Industrial Area factories will be seen in limited viewing angles.
• All food stalls from Bon Voyage and Apartment Life are available in Trio Lake City.
• In my gameplay there are some amenities banned by Trio Lake government. (That means next amenities will not appear in this neighborhood or may appear in leaving shops):
  
  - Night clubs in its modern meaning
  
  - Dancefloors
  
  - Public bowling areas (though I found bowling existed in royal family, so it is not-that-banned)
  
  - Trio Lake does not support any modern influences. There should be no TVs and no PCs.
  
  - Cellphones are banned here for open sale but they may appear at the leaving shops.
  
• In my gameplay there are some amenities supported by Trio Lake government. (That means next amenities will certainly appear in this neighborhood):
  
  - Landlords (owning apartment lots)
  
  - Brothels (as hotels with double beds)
  
  - All types of business (ownable and home).
  
  - Gambling and casinos are allowed.
  
• In my gameplay magic is neutral to Trio Lake government:
  
  - Magic (Trio Lake passed Gothic Era. Although there is no need in magic because most of goods can be producted in plants. Witches are not banished any more but not supported as well. They recognised by Trio Lake citizens as puritans).

Questions and answers from me to you:
Q - About NPCs here https://modthesims.info/showthread....1&cb=1610013548
A - Athough I had not direc answer to this question, I found one mod that works well to select NPC when their number breaks EA setted limit.
Q - Is that safe to delete files from character folder for wipe sims from neighborhood? Is thare any abetter way to have sims removed completely (with whole memories, relationships etc.)?
A - https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=650439
Q - I still don't know the exactly how to name it. The base name is Trio Lake but, but I want also one extra word that means its function of industrial cluster, but less short then "industrial town" or "industrial city" =\ (We have in russian short name for industrial clusters called literally "promzone", I wish to know is there any close in English?)
A - I decided to name it Borough. The name of City is the most close to British Borough I guess.
Q - can sims sit on low chairs when drinking at bar?
A - they sit on dinning chairs only when they are in the same room. With no chairs in room with bar stall they drink standing.

Regards. Vic ^_^

Very impressive neighborhood! It looks very unique! I love the polluted pond idea, it really makes the neighborhood look urban! :lovestruc
Also, I'm glad I could inspire you to create your neighborhood too! I can't wait to play in your neighborhood once you've uploaded it!

Though, please have a look here and here for tips to create a custom TS2 neighborhood for upload.
So, for your second question, no it's not safe to delete them from the Characters folder. Nor is it safe to delete any sims using the Delete button in-game, this can lead to game corruption.

If you want to create a version with townies/NPCs and one without townies/NPCs, you have to do so separately. Create the non-townie/NPC version first. Copy your neighborhood folder as it is. Store it somewhere safe. And then, you may proceed to create townies/NPCs for your neighborhood. Unfortunately, you cannot just remove swap the Characters folder, as they are also stored inside the neighborhood package. There IS a way of deleting sims (mostly safe), described here though it's not 100% safe.

If you want to remove all sims from the neighborhood, there is a tutorial here
On a second note, since your neighborhood type is a Downtown, hence a subhood. Unfortunately, you may not have inhabited apartment lots in subhoods. While they look pretty fine as a standalone neighborhood, but they get corrupted once the neighborhood is added as a subhood to a neighborhood.

When I made Emerald Heights (also a Downtown neighborhood), I had to move out all families living in an apartment lot, to make the lots work again. If you want to keep the inhabited apartments, you have to change the neighborhood type back to a primary neighborhood.

Oh, thank you. I noticed that I've missed few sims that were spawned. So I tested today those method but without Theo's tool since site is unavailable. Manually wipe was done a bit rough and I forgot the procedure. I hope this will be clean neighborhood with no errors and Moo's Nhood tool finally after few hours of tweaking had show me [img]this[/img].
Sad to see that Sims still can't be removed completely and DNA and Wants and Fears are stay even after tools used.
I made this hood for myself, and this is fine for me as base neighborhood, as well as subhood. But since I decided to share it, I feel my need to care of other's wants, and probably players wish to see it also like subhood. I'll find a way how to move all families from flats to residential lots. Thanks for warning
Sadly I was fast with developing and maybe was posted too late. This Hood is already populated and now to make it clean I should act rather eraser then creator with step-by-step moving.
I'll try to do my best. But since that's my first world, it expect to have some bunch of mistakes. Will keep fingers crossed that won't be fatal and burn anyone's PC.
Regards. Vic ^_^

Theo's tool is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012021...leter-tool.html

Yay! Just like first aid kit Thanks
I noticed the problem of sims names skip to EA generated after move neighborhood to another language settings. How can I make English language available for everyone?
Regards. Vic ^_^

@Jawusa typed this out for me not too long ago:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....317#post5699317

If you reset the Sim Creation Index, then the game may use the deleted sims' IDs for further purposes like generating babies according to the SimDNA code which the old sims had. So, don't worry about the extra simDNA in your neighborhood. I believe SimWants&Fears are safe to delete? And Mootilda's HoodChecker tool can get rid of invalid sim relations, etc, anyway, so. :P

Though, you may want to prepare these sims for delete using the batbox in-game first. Just to make sure that everything's clean and safe. Then proceed to use Theo's plugin.

I was made victorian downtownies. I did not found victorian dresses so sims would rather have custom content. If I wanna share hood like main hood, guess I need to switch them to townies. How can I make it and vice versa?

After my attempts today in Any game starter, my main game lost connection to "The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection" folder and spawned new one in Documents. Same as previous, but without Trade Mark in name LoL. I prefer with TM, but since this not affect any gameplay... let it be... Maybe that's dev's fun. I moved everything to new location, and all seems to be fine. Just remembered developers. Many thanks to them for make this work unstable.
Regards. Vic =\

Ok I tried today a scenario, when installed those neighborhood as downtown in Belladonna Cove. I was very upset about its function cause I did not see anyone from those army in my neighborhood. When I was moved new sims to apartment in town, game was started to spawn absolutely new sims even not from social classes list https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Social_class My sims were left untouched and still can be found in downtownies directory, when using Townie and NPC spawner, while new, spawned by game, are townies!! How come?
How can I switch all this army to townies now? Why are downtownies if they are not usable? Is that a fake class that's not used by game? Can't relate
Regards Vic

Unfortunately, the sims' types do not get changed when converting between primary and downtown subhoods.
All the townies, downtownies, garden club members, service NPCs, social class townies, hobby instructors, etc. are stored in SEPARATE families. And according to the family types, they appear in the corresponding neighborhoods or not.

Service NPCs are in 0x00007FFF
Regular Townies are in 0x00007FFE
Downtownies in 0x00007FFC, etc.
There are more family types but these ones are the most relevant for you.

If you want to convert your Downtownies to Townies, open SimPE, go to Family Information, select the Townies/Downtownies family and then remove/add the members using the tool in SimPE. If there is no Townies family type, you can convert the entire Downtownies family yourself in Resource tab. Go to Instance and change 0x00007FFC to 0x00007FFE to convert from Downtownies to Townies.

Finally, if you want Townies to appear as Apartment neighbors, you might want to use this mod instead.
Many people use this mod because it significantly drops the amount of sims in the neighborhood and opens new Storytelling possibilities (like Bella Goth moving in an apartment in Strangetown)

Oh. I already has it. Just searched through my Downloads folder, and that was there. Probably I download that before due someone's recommend. That's why I had no Dotownies probably.
I am almost sure there is a batch convertor of townies to downtownies. Your way looks a little bit torturous. But I can deal with that. Thanks XD

It's not that difficult, trust me! If you need help, feel free to ask.
Again, if your neighborhood does not have any townies at all, you could just select the Downtownies Family Information in Resource tab in SimPE. There you'd see box with this code 0x00007FFC... just change the C to a E and you're good to go!

The amount of errors makes me tense. Game was switched back to old location in my documents, and one family was lost during this movement. The last family I was moved to residential from flats was just... poof! disappeared. New residential lot was lost too as well as lot with flats that was their previous location. In SimPE it still shows that character is playable, and I can call him from other sims, Moo's hood checker shows everything is fine.
I was tried to move him to other family but he disappears from there after family reload.

After some hours in search of the answer guess I need to stop developing this project. I found that new families created won't appear in SimPE and that makes me worry about how I can control them. I don't know how that could happen. I did not found anything to solve this problem.
Regards Vic

Just as example: I made family with Dumb name 123 Test (screen 1) then inhabit tiny lot in my neighborhood (screen 2), save and exit. Then I open SimPE and.... where is it in Recourses? Do have a look at screen 3.

I recall having an issue like that once when I forgot to remove the neighborhood from the NeighborhoodTemplate folder.
Did you remember to take out your Downtown subhood template from the NeighborhoodTemplate folder before editing the neighborhood?

Please don't give up though. Neighborhood creation IS challenging, since you have to think about so many things and something can easily go wrong. But if you keep backing up your neighborhood versions and plan everything ahead, you can always go back and reverse any mistakes that you made throughout the process. I remember doing soooo many mistakes in my first neighborhood, too!

I was not delete template cause planned to develop both of them. They were in different Anygames and I can't relate how data files were bleed from one to other. I was backing up that many times, and restore that to previous state. But unfortuantely, that was not solve the problem and all new data is saved somewhere in Lots and Characters folder but don't show up in SimPE. New families still appear in game, but not in SimsPE. As well as lots. Other neighborhoods are fine and don't have such corruption.
I plan to restore neighborhood manually, without SimPE restore. The worst and time consuming method I see is to create a copy neighborhood with your method https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=650439 and recreation of all characters using sim surgery. But I don't know what to start from and that scares me. If I do something wrong in procedure, I can miss some parts forever. Nobody says I can do something wrong again and this will corrupt entire neighborhood.

UPD: Well, after manual replace of entire neighborhood by those from backup folder, new sims and lots were start to appear in SimPe. But I found also three wolves and bunch of potato heads in uneditable sims who live in default family. Those family I moved from flat to residential house was disappeared again with both previous and current livings. It's still in playable tho. And can be called by phone. But invisible from map view.

The NeighborhoodTemplate is in the Program Files and is therefore universal. Even if you edited the subhood in a different anygame, it's still in the game files. So, that's why you probably got this issue, ending up with a neighborhood folder where parts are missing because the game saved them somewhere else, hence disapparing families and sims. If you don't see all the sims/lots in SimPE, that means that the neighborhood got separated and the rest of the information is stored in the other neighborhood in your NeighborhoodTemplate folder.

I'd suggest you to go to a backup BEFORE putting the neighborhood into your NeighborhoodTemplate folder. That version is probably the most up-to-date version which is not corrupted. All the other versions seem to have been loaded while the subhood was still in the NeighborhoodTemplate.

The extra NPCs can be deleted using Theo's tool, don't worry about these. The only thing that matters now is that you should have a full neighborhood folder without any partitions, caused by the game.

I feel that should share this hood as fast as I can. I see many simmers share their neighborhoods here at MTS and that's perfect time now to blend in the crowd. I don't wanna others make a lot of attention to my neighborhood.
I found STR# files from N001 file. Cleared them all. I have few more questions how to clean up the hood.

• I ve learnd from this article to avoid of delete sims DNA. My bad, but I have already 2k+ sim DNA files and that makes me sure game won't use them all even being repositoried. Is that any way to clean them safe anyways?
• What about sims relationships that not needed (f.e. relationships between townies, relationships towards one person when backwards relationships stay) and gossip memories and mystery sim memories? Are they safe to remove? Is there any fast way to remove them if so?
• Would number of SREL and SWAF files match each other?

Regards Vic ^_^

2k+ Sim DNA files seem to be a lot, are you sure you used the most up-to-date empty templates when you first created your neighborhood?

- But to answer your question, no, unfortunately, it's not safe to delete simDNA in any circumstances. Doing so might lead to corrupt faces like the ghosts in Olive Specter's graveyard in Strangetown.
The only way to "clean" a neighborhood from excessive simDNA files would be to clear all characters using my method and then, recreate the families, I'm afraid.

- Sim Relationship files can be deleted if necessary. This can be useful when two sims have met in the game and you don't want them to know each other. Though, make sure that you delete the relationships for both sims. Not just one way. Otherwise, the relationships won't get deleted properly.

- Gossip/mystery sims memories are completely safe to remove and actually, quite recommended to do so if you are sharing a neighborhood. The batbox can clear all the gossip for you for all sims in the neighborhood at once.

- I'm not quite sure what you mean with "number of SREL and SWAF match each other"? I guess if they match, then they represent the relationships and wants&fears of one specific person.

Idk what was wrong with all files but I just renamed all subhoods to prevent them from work. And have all locks from this thread but some NPCs still spawn in hood with very little amount. I try to make all edits in pause mod using insimenator tools but I still have 2 NPCs to spawn each time I enter Sims 2.

After inspiredzone decided to take part in building, I need to take new pics of neighborhood cause those I had are not actual... I don't want to add here anything else. And now I have 213 MB neighborhood in total.
If I were in far 1900s, I would rather say this neighborhood is huge. But now in 2020s when all has 1 or 2TB HDs, it is teardrop in waterfall.

The -bak part in that tutorial is kinda misleading. I found that it still adds Character files when creating a new neighborhood.
Instead, try to completely take the N001 folder out, just like the stealth hoods and try once again.

I took that away but they are still spawning. I found where does they come from. Usually when I create NPCs with Townie and NPC maker. Each time I killed NPC that files were still saved. I was made it very often. I don't usually glad by result of NPC spawner. Even I click to make NPC with "lightest" skin, it still spawns NPC with 2 skintone. Due to this fact I was killed up to 20 of sims before reach the goal.

I don't know how much NPCs should be in neghborhood, so I was made 4 for each type: 2 male and 2 female. Those that just female or male are 2.

That option to kill sims is really bugged and actually corrupts the neighborhood, so you shouldn't do that. (It's literally the same as deleting sims using the delete button in neighborhood view). That's why you ended up with so many character files. IF you spawn NPCs using the Townie & NPC Maker, you ALWAYS have to accept. If you wish to customize your NPC further, you need Alt Sim Surgery to completely replace the sims' appearances.

Also, did you download the NPC Maker Fix before spawning the NPCs?
To be honest, I don't quite remember what the NPC Maker made in my game without that fix, but I remember a few issues that were fixed using that mod.

And yeah, this thing with "lighest skintone" and still spawning tan-skinned NPCs is due to the game actually creating the sims based on Downtown sim templates. So, no matter which skintone you choose, it will always disobey you, unless you have Downtownie Templates Be Gone mod installed.

Also, you don't need to create that many NPCs for each type. EA's neighborhoods have 3 of which. But people prefer to only have 1 NPC of one type though. That's literally what the antiredudancy mod does; forcing the game to use only 1 NPC of each type instead. For clean neighborhoods, it would only make sense to have multiple NPCs if you also have a Storytelling purpose behind that. (ie. twin maids that hate each other?)