When you load a hood for the first time, it goes through the whole process of making weather, pets hoods etc. How do I play the hood to set things up while preventing that from happening? I was thinking that the answer was empty stealth hoods, but won't that prevent the game from adding stealth hoods to the neighborhood if other people load it?

I don't know if you can prevent other people's games from loading in the stealth hoods, other than pre-loading it in with empty stealth hoods. Pre-loading with empty stealth hoods should prevent the stealth hoods, even if someone don't have those installed, since this only happens during first load OR if the player installs a new pack with a stealth hood.

This would only work if it's a regular hood in the Documents folder, and not a new template hood of some sort. Template hoods will run through the stealth hoods every time you set up a new hood with them, unless the player has empty stealth hoods installed.

Just to clear things up, I'm not trying to prevent other people's games from making stealth hoods. I'm trying to have it happen in their game (if they want it to), without it happening on my computer when I pre-play the hood to get things set up.

I'm not sure you can? If you're uploading a premade hood, it's already gone through the process, so the stealth hoods have already been made (or not) depending on whether you use empty stealth hoods.

Only possible solution might be to make it a template of some sort (kinda like the original hoods are, in the install files).

I'm not sure if it really is that big of an issue. You could make optional families as "stealth hood replacements", for instance. I don't think people would mind some other sims to play with than the usual stealth families.

Just use empty stealth hoods on your end. Or in some way disable them so your game isn't reading them. What happens in other peoples games depends on their setup.

Okay, thanks. I just needed to make sure my disabling stealth hoods wouldn't prevent other people from having them if they choose.

I appreciate the advice, I will keep it in my mind.