I think I've already messed this up sadly But anyway, hopefully I can stop it from getting worse.

I have a neighbourhood which I have carefully ported from one computer to another over about 7 years. At first when I was porting it I always had empty templates installed, so I had no new townies spawn or anything like that. The hood started off with only custom townies who I made myself.

I just loaded up a copy into my new computer, and although I had renamed all of my G001 etc folders with the -bak suffix, it started "creating" all of the stealth hoods. Suddenly I have 400 NPCs in my tiny hood Opened it up in SimPE to compare with the older copy, and yep, the older copy has 450 character files, the newer one has 660.

So firstly - how the heck do I do empty templates? It was so much easier 7 years ago, now there are so many options and different ways to do it, I'm afraid to try in case I mess it up again. Also with the old method, I ended up deleting pleasantview etc completely, because I couldn't envisage ever needing them, which was a pain when I wanted to start a megahood as I didn't have the original townies etc.

Secondly - I think I may have screwed up by loading this template on my older computer without realising, because I'm sure there weren't 450 sims in it originally, but I can't be sure. My old-old backup taken directly from that computer, though, also has 450 sims. So if that's the smallest one I have, I'll work with it.

I'm so confused and annoyed, because I thought it was only the first time you loaded a n'hood with new EPs that it would create the stealth hoods, I thought that if the n'hood had already been played in that EP, no new subhoods would be added.

The way you do stealth templates has not changed (much anyway) - sounds like you made a mistake somewhere. Did you remember to delete the character files from the game files? BTW, I didn't rename any folders with bak or anything, I just took them out altogether and left empty copies (I have them stored though you can also get them off the game disks if necessary).

I followed this to disable the templates, but it doesn't work:
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...an_neighborhood

I realise now that I was supposed to replace the template hoods with empty copies, but I didn't do that. There was a nice shiny award thing at the bottom of that article so I thought it was true

All the info needed to use empty templates are here http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751

Yes, that's it. Well, try again and better luck this time.

Cool, thanks. I saw those but wasn't sure if they were the best ones since there are about 5 different versions now.

That's to indicate that the game guide had reached "Featured game guide status" before, because it was either well-written or well-designed. Kinda like the Featured Article system on Wikipedia. It does not necessarily mean "Free of errors".

I did that the other day too, and not only did it not work, it added a bunch of sims to my existing Veronaville when I loaded it (the Pleasantview townies and who knows what other additional sims). When creating a new hood, the Characters folder started to fill up instead of remaining empty.
I assumed I had done something wrong, but maybe not if you had the same problem.

I restored Veronaville from a back up, and removed all those suffixes. I then reinstalled empty templates the MATY way , which has always worked for me, and still does. My existing neighborhoods are spared, and the empty hood I needed for some genetic manipulating is created with no character files at all like it should.

@Lili975 the ones at MATY were done before all the knowledge was found out and they still have small amount of sim info in them, most probably will not cause corruption but the new ones done by Jawusa with Mootilda's help are by far the cleanest ones out there now. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751

Mark: I haven't seen any detailed informations, or just informations really, about that, just "those were not so good and these are better", basically. A link to that kind of informations would be helpful.

It was in the "Creator Feedback Forum" but has been deleted, both Jawusa and Mootilda were talking about it.

Here is just 1 of the threads that is still around http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...5#startcomments

Thank you, Mark, I have read that one already and it is about clean templates unless I'm mistaken, and one reason why I stuck with the MATY ones.
Too bad that info has been deleted, then.

I am now ready to jump on the "empty" bandwagon after years of lazily killing all the bin families with Rodney's death creator on a lot on the edge of town. I've just got two questions. My first question is, what about the premade hoods? I have been wanting to restart Pleasantview. Will everyone be there if I use all these empty hoods? Second, what if I use the mega hood, which I also am finally thinking of doing, will everyone be there? Thanks.
Btw, messing with my games the way these installations require always freaked me out. Since I am visual, the text-only instructions leave me bewildered. I've been reading over the instructions trying to let it sink it and visualize it in my head. I think I understand it all now.... at least for the empty hoods. Mega hoods I'm still lost! LOL