Is there a standard procedure among TS2 players on how to safely delete the neighbourhoods that shipped with TS2 and its expansions? And if, let's say, I wanted to play with Strangetown later on and wanted to get it back, would I have to completely reinstall the game?

Thank you.

(I'm not sure if this the right place to post this, so please tell me if it isn't.)

Go to your save folder, then to the neighbourhoods folder. There's a number of folders there, N001 up. Figure out which one is your neighbourhood, zip it up, move it to another folder, burn it to a CD, whatever. Delete it and NeighborhoodManager.package (you don't really have to, but it's good practice). If you want to put it back later just paste it back in.

If you want to play the premade hoods, look into Tarlia's versions. The premade hoods are borked and tend to explode into fiery balls of corruption pretty quickly.
https://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html

It is always safe to delete neighborhoods, either from the files or from the screen. Each neighborhood is a separate little entity, with all its subhoods and sims, and they don't leak data into any other neighborhoods. Deleting individual sims from a neighborhood will corrupt the neighborhood; deleting a neighborhood wholesale does not affect any other neighborhood or any game files.

To restore them, go into your data files and rename your TheSims2 folder (where ever it may be in your particular system) to something else; TheSims2-1 or whatever. Load the game. A new TheSims2 folder will generate, with all the shipped neighborhoods that have been safe all this time in your game's program files. You can now play this new set (with a different Downloads folder; good for playing historical hoods and modern hoods at the same time without getting an overwhelmingly large Downloads folder) ; or you can transfer the neighborhoods you want to the old one, delete the new one, and rename the old one to its original name.

One thing to be aware of: If you wish to replace one neighborhood file with a different file with the same name - as, for instance, if you realize you accidentally bulldozed the Goth mansion without moving the graves out and corrupted your Pleasantview. Whether restoring from a backup made before the corruption occurred, or resetting and starting all over, it is imperative that you first delete the neighborhood file and then replace it with the file for the backup or unplayed copy. If you overwrite N001 with another N001, the program will replace some of the code but not all of it, resulting in rampant corruption and weirdness.

Once you understand what's going on, this will all seem much simpler. For now, you may want to go to the Game FAQs and cruise a couple of sticky threads about preventing corruption and managing your game for maximum enjoyment and minimum hassle. Stop and ask questions when you need to. There's even a Stupid/Random Questions thread just for people who have a question that they're afraid everyone else knows the answer to, or which doesn't seem worth starting a whole thread for. I promise, no one will mock you for posting there. Everyone has done it. Nobody knows everything about this game. The only person who ever came close, alas, is dead.

This place is overwhelming at first, but you'll soon get the hang of it.

Welcome aboard and have fun.

Only delete NeighbourhoodManager.package if you're on Windows, Macs tend to freak out if you do that.

NeighbourhoodManager.package is a game wide inventory, it mostly contains the tokens of Game Tips that have run. No point deleting it in Windows either, that just causes those Game Tips to reset/rerun if Game Tips are enabled.

Occasionally people who've deleted 'hoods experience odd issues that are solved by deleting NeighborhoodManager, so while it's usually not necessary to delete I do understand why some people do so as a precaution.

When resetting hoods it is a good idea to also delete the "NeighbourhoodManager.package" it holds a lot of info from the old hood and will add it to the new reset hood.
(Remember I said "Reset" hoods.)

I might be oblivious here and need a whole lot more caffeine before posting, but if you delete a hood, it could be a pain if you started an custom hood and decided you wanted Strangetown back. Unfortunately, I have to leave soon, so my caffeine fix will be delayed. I will edit this post if I'm entirely clueless.

If you delete N002 (Strangetown), for instance, then start a custom hood, that custom hood will be N002. I believe I read of a way to rename everything in N002 using Sim PE, but it's a pain in the neck.

I would do one of two things:

1. If the custom hood takes over the N002 spot, make that a junky/crappy/who cares hood for testing stuff. If you change your mind about Strangetown, you will have to get rid of the junk hood first. Let the next hood be the custom hood (that would be N004). Or, what I did with Strangetown, since I wasn't sure myself, but wanted custom hoods:

2. Let everything load, including Strangetown. Start your custom hood then. Delete Strangetown, remembering ... again ... that if you decide you want another custom hood, you might want to be sure that a hood you don't care about will load as N002.

I would also use Tarlia's hoods if you might want to play Strangetown in the future, but haven't yet: https://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/. These versions correct a whole lot of glitches in game's hoods.


I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing, but I replace the Neighborhood Manager if I need to replace a hood with a backup. I guess that would be a kind of reset. I just think of it more as a, "Oh, crap, something got really messed up in this hood! Time to go to the backup." The last time I did that, it was some sort of mod conflict that screwed up my characters for some reason. Like others here, I read about character data from old versions of a hood causing problems. I might be over-cautious, but with my history, it might be understandable.

gazania, to reserve a hood number you can create an empty dummy folder (named N002, for instance) inside the Neighborhoods folder. I tried that and when I created new hood in game, new folder got created with a new number. Dummy folder stayed empty.

Ooh ... better yet!

The idea is to have some sort of placeholder. I know back in my sillier days with the game, I had no idea about doing that.

Thank you all for your tips and ideas!

I wouldn't bother with all that gazania - I'd just get a file renamer programme and renumber either Strangetown or the custom hood.