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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 5th Aug 2022 at 2:13 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Need help for custom hood creation
As the title says, I'm planning to upload a custom hood to modthesims and want to make sure I do everything correctly so that it doesn't end up corrupted.

I'm planning to set up ancestors and dead relatives for sims. The way I was going to do it was to put the members of a family in one household, put them in a lot, then use the tombstone of life and death to kill the sims that I want, then use the other sims to bring them to the neighbourhood cemetery. Would this be the best way of doing it, or would I be able to do this from SimPE?

Also how would I go about setting household funds for sims? I was just going to use the motherlode and kaching cheats when in live mode for rich sims but would it be possible to set this in SimPE, just so I don'thave those pesky "I earned____ simoleans" memories?

I also have a few sims that will have businesses. Are there cheats I can use to get them to 5 stars with loyal customers or would I have to play the business for a bit?

And finally, before starting the hood I had a multi pollination technician mod in my downloads folder and only rembered it was there halfway through building the hood where I promptly took it out. Would the pollination technician for the hood be screwed now meaning I have to start over or would it be okay?

If there's a wiki or guide that would help I'd appreciate it if anyone could link it. I really appreciate the help
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Lab Assistant
#2 Old 5th Aug 2022 at 3:52 PM Last edited by ed95 : 5th Aug 2022 at 4:11 PM.
Hi, Misteriechick!
First, let me tell you you've been pretty brave (doing your own custom hood is quite a task), and I really hope you do something you end up really proud with!

Fortunately, I'm also building a cust hood, so you can evade all the errors I did. On your last question, yes, there are several guides for custom hood building; my favourite, and best ones in my opinion, are on MATY and Sims Wiki, which I have followed and have this links:
https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_g...an_neighborhood
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...ic,10798.0.html

I strongly recommend downloading HoodChecker here on MTS and use it profusely for... checking, during the creation of your hood:
https://modthesims.info/d/456523/ho...ry-11-2013.html

It's a good idea to use AnyGameStarter in order to make a clean, completely new savegame. It's a little complicated to use, but is pretty user-friendly too:
https://modthesims.info/d/250555/an...9-dec-2017.html

For a more refined and safe custom hood, be sure you've used cleaned templates that don't have the stealth families. A guide on how-to do that is included in the guides I provided above.

Now, on your questions:
I have used exactly the same methode for making ancestors for my hood; the only difference is that I first moved and killed the ancestors, and then moved the actual families I wanted to be playable. I used SimPE in order to set family relations; there are tutorials I could find for you in order to do that. This could make the process quicker and would prevent excessive memories on the sims. I'm not sure you can move graves or kill sims with SimPe, though.

For me, the quicker way to set household funds is either the "FamilyFunds" cheat or editing the quantity on SimPe. I believe there are several money mods that could do the same effect.

I don't know any cheat to set a business level, sorry. But I think that could be doable with SimPe.

The Muti-Pollination Technicians may be a problem, though. Those are universal NPCs mods, and though it won't cause corruption, someone who downloads your neighbourhood needa to download that same mod, since it would create problems otherwise. I recommed you check the original download, find out if the PTs are universal NPCs, and act accordingly: if you don't mind having to have that download as a requisite for your hood, just indicate it in your download. If you do mind, you'll have to uninstall the mod and, unfortunately, start over your hood. This is pretty confusing (and was one of the errors I commited on my hood); I can tell you what to do if you want.

If you want to assign memories and relationships to your sims, that can be easily done in SimPe; I can link some tutorials on how to do so. In any case, I strongly advise erasing the memories of the sims you don't care for, or all of the memories, so your 'hood doesn't have buttloads of information. Using the Batbox mod for erasing gossip is also a good idea.

Finally, it is always recommended you save everything before you start building your hood: put every lot on the lot bin (and clean them), and every sim on the CAS sim bin (and, again, clean such sims). I made a couple of "testing" hoods and then moved decorations or anything I wanted with HoodReplacer; that's a good idea to in order to edit quickly and safely your custom hood. And, finally, save very often your custom hood folder! You don't really know when or if you'll have an error, and having backups will save you lots of headaches.

It can be pretty overwhelming, specially with how much information we have these days, but custom hoods are perfectly doable. Keep on the job and don't hesitate to ask any question!
Mad Poster
#3 Old 5th Aug 2022 at 4:53 PM
The original guide for building a custom hood is Mootilda's, here: https://modthesims.info/t/420196
The title is "custom subhood" but it's all the same thing; just omit the step where you change the hood to a subhood.
We have more tools for this now, and the tutorial was written prior to EAxis releasing the UC, so katatty provided a multi-part tumblr handbook, which also discusses artistic considerations, beginning here: https://katatty.tumblr.com/post/173...hbourhood-guide
Many people on MTS have now created them and for specific difficulties it would be a good idea to post in Creator Feedback, possibly with an @ to anybody you think might be particularly knowledgeable in the area but don't want to PM, and hope to get advice that way. Sims 2 hood builders are generally very supportive and knowledgeable, but everybody's got Life happening to us so we monitor Creator Feedback less often sometimes than others. You might also want to look through the existing threads on custom neighborhoods, in case somebody else has had a similar problem before, and also you may get a head's up on common errors or alternate ways of doing things. What's intuitive to one person is intimidating to someone else and there's often other ways to do things you may not have considered. For instance, instead of building the neighborhood in your usual setup, I suggest making a new The Sims 2 folder or an AGS with only the downloads needed for development (anti-corruption mods, any sliders you want to use, objects like the batbox). This will save you from further accidents like the multi-PT mod going forward.

Rule #1: Thou Shalt Back Up After Every Session. You will make errors and have accidents and have to scrap the current version, and you want to limit the amount of stuff you have to do over.

If you want to do this, you are in for the long haul. Make no mistake about it, this is work. It's creative work, which means setbacks are a chance to implement a Better Idea. You need to adopt a mindset that is both goal-directed and freewheeling and not quite like any other work you've done unless you've done creative work before. I found the mental processes a lot like writing a book, except that the technical requirements of the process were different. You will learn a lot about the game and about yourself and the rewards are great, but don't kid yourself. This is not something you can knock off in a week. Pace yourself and practice patience.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
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