Now in my case, this was a university, so as far as I know, I could have simply deleted it without a problem. But it's always good to back up your game before adding any new subhoods just in case you get a strange Maxis glitch, or you decide you don't like the terrain. And boy, did I get a bizarre glitch!

After finally building a Uni in a throwaway hood and arranging the buildings just how I wanted them, I backed up the game first, loaded up my main hood, and put in my custom Uni subhood so I could replicate the layout of the test hood. The game opened the Uni hood only to reveal ... ponds.

In place of any trees, I got the neighborhood deco ponds. Ponds as far as the eye could see. Ponds on ponds on ponds.

I do have a picture, but after having my pulse rate rocketing up after seeing dozens of ponds, I deleted the hood, and it's in my Recycle bin right now. I really don't want to restore it, thanks. Luckily, I had the backup I made before adding the new Uni. I first tested on a test hood when re-loading the game, and the new Uni hood looked fine. It looks fine in my main hood as well now.

So the moral of the story is to back up before adding any new subhoods. It's good to do regular backups anyway. (And no, I didn't do VBTs or anything weird to the game! I just seem to be one of those here who sometimes gets really strange stuff when I play TS2.)

EDIT:

If this happens to someone else and they encounter a pond invasion even after trying again, here's a tip. I found this just now. I THINK I'm OK because my Uni hood now looks normal. Still back up, though.

http://www.digitalperversion.net/ga...php?topic=12361

Is it bad that ive been playing the game since 2004 and ive never made a backup?

I dont really do anything crazy though. Im glad yours worked out!

No one's here to judge you. But if something goes wrong with your neighborhood and you want to keep it, the backup means you can.

I can't even count the number of times going to a backup has saved my butt. Sometimes, I have messed up; for instance, while doing a 50/50. Sometimes, Maxis messes up, as in this instance. (I think my blood pressure is back to normal now.) I'm not as careful as many here, but I do make complete backups once a month, and will back up before trying something that has a chance of screwing up, such as this Uni hood. I had to do quite a lot of terrain editing and other finagling to get the look I wanted.

And I am definitely ultra-careful. I think I'm TOO careful.

In fact, I just backed up the hood (not the game ... not needed) after doing a couple of hours of work on the layout. If I mess up the terrain editing or anything else when I start up again. I at least have a backup.

Hah, i remember copying neighborhood terrains with HoodReplace and getting endless ponds as well too. I simply HoodReplaced it again and told it not to copy any of the deco. Had to do the same thing when, in Springwater, I put down enough trees to cause the game to insta-crash (!!!).

Restoring from backup is easier though.

Well that's up to you, if your game decides to suddenly make half your sims vanish or your hood explodes and you can laugh about it than no it doesn't matter. If you would be upset over such a thing then a backup is a good idea. No need to have done anything crazy for things to happen either, sometimes they just do. All it takes is a computer hiccup and a crash.

I think it's a valuable topic.
I already do back-ups, but before I became a member here, I didn't even think about such a thing.
Learned the worth of having back-ups here and it paid of.
A couple of times I depended on one of those back-ups.
Weird glitches I couldnt get rid of.
But I had a back-up from just before that inconvenience happened. (obviously I back-up a lot.) That's then your ultimate way out if nothing else works to resolve an issue.

It's hardly the effort as well. Copy and paste to an extern memory device or a different place (partition) on your pc.
It will transfer itself while you download some more cc for your game. :P

For a bit more effort, you can have automatic, scheduled backups:
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=582506

I didn't get to see the picture, but I imagine that was terrifying. I tend to get really into games when I play them, so seeing glitches always startles me. I start thinking the entire game is going to break. Knowing TS2, that wouldn't be too far-fetched.

I rarely do backups simply because I'm lazy, and boy, have I regretted it- I made drastic changes to my favorite neighborhood and now I can't reverse them or it'll cause corruption.

I only needed a backup once, but when I did, I was glad that I had it.

I also only needed a backup of my computer once, but I didn't have one at the time, so that shock is still present for me, as is the huge relief when they were able to save the partition that had the really irreplacable stuff on it.

Wow, that's the longest surviving hood I've personally heard about.

Ah, but they never said they've been playing the same hood since 2004.

I installed Double Deluxe after having started with just the base game. I made a backup of Strangetown and made sure I copied the file across, rather than just moving it, before trying to open it. Just as well -- in my game, Jill Smith had already died of extreme old age, but when I opened up the copied file, she showed up in a private university residence, looking like an elder but walking with bent legs and unable to get anything but snacks from the fridge. Then a social worker turned up to take the "child" off to an orphanage - eh? Got my game back eventually, but these days I'm afraid I just let it go and start over if I lose everything to a computer crash.