This is off-topic for this thread. You probably want the "Disappearing Neighborhoods" thread:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=180053

Thought it was associated with the subhood itself

This tutorial doesn't cause your subhoods to disappear overnight. You have some other problem which is unrelated to this tutorial.

Since the thread is already fairly long, I'd prefer not to confuse the question of subhood template creation with your own personal problems with a disappearing neighborhood. I'm just thinking about the other people who have to read through this entire thread to understand how to create a subhood template.

Hopefully, this won't be considered necromancy... I'm trying to create a vacation subhood template using this tutorial, and so far everything seems to work fine, except that I've noticed that, despite the fact that I followed all the steps to have a clean hood (I can't use AGS, unfortunately, so I had to use the steps in post #11), the game has generated 15 stray pets in my neighbourhood (when I was building the lots).

Can I share the neighbourhood as a vacation spot with the 15 stray pets? Should I just delete them? Should I scrap the 'hood and start again? I'm totally unsure how to proceed at this point. I have a bit of a time constraint on this, so I really hope it's an easy fix or not a problem at all....

It would be better to fix the problem, which means that you'll need to determine where the stray pets are coming from. There are two likely options:
- The Pets stealth neighborhood, usually found under C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate
- You are missing the no-regen mod for strays, available here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,6027.0.html

Once you are able to create the empty environment, you can use this tutorial to clean your neighborhood:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=468987

Do not attempt to delete the strays in-game. That will corrupt your neighborhood.

Ah! It's the no-regen for strays that I didn't have. I'll install the mod and clean up the strays using the tutorial. Thank you so much for the quick response!

I completed the tutorial using the non-AnyGameStarter method for my existing neighborhoods. Then I renamed all the folders back to their original names before loading. Yet the game seems to be stuck on step 1E. Clearly I missed a step. I am new to this but I did make a backup if it comes to that.

The neighborhood templates must be unavailable while the game is generating the initial save game. After the initial save game has been generated with no neighborhoods at all, then you can rename the primary neighborhood templates back if you wish. However, the stealth neighborhoods should remain unavailable until you've completed your neighborhood and moved it to Program Files.

If this doesn't answer your question, then you'll need to give me more information about your problem. Step 1E is generating the initial save game. Exactly what problem are you having with step 1E?

The folders weren't renamed until I exited the game because I thought it was a wrap. I only generated a custom hood for the IDNO for my base hoods. I did however move the neighborhood to Program Files. This is very new to me so sorry if I'm not wording things right.



My problem is essentially that I can't seem to move past Step 1E. I did the other steps in the tutorial, thought I completed it, but my screen is identical to the screenshot in 1E. The only options the game is giving me is to create a custom hood. I've already done that so why won't my original screen come back?

Also, my expansions for Open For Business and University are missing. The game keeps on asking for my Apartment Life CD.

I'm sorry, but I'm still having problems understanding your problem.

As I understand it, you create a custom neighborhood. Then it just disappears? You say that you've completed the tutorial. At which step does the custom neighborhood disappear? Does everything work well until that point?

[Update:] I just thought of something. Are you saying that the neighborhood is no longer available for editing, once you've moved it to a NeighborhoodTemplate folder under Program Files? That's to be expected. At that point, you want to test your new subhood template by trying to attach it to another neighborhood.

My goal was to make my pre-played neighborhoods into subhoods. I didn't want a new custom neighborhood. I only created one because the base games don't have the proper IDNO to change it from 1 to 4. After completing the tutorial and loading the game only the custom neighborhood appears. I wish the custom neighborhood would disappear. I only needed it for extraction in SimPE. I think the issue is my game not recognizing Open For Business and University anymore. But I have no idea how to rectify this.

I'm sorry that I'm being so dense. It helps to know that you are trying to convert an existing base-game custom neighborhood into a subhood template.

So, you have a base-game custom neighborhood that you want to convert into a subhood template, and you have a machine which has (at least) University, Open for Business, and Apartment Life. You generated an empty neighborhood just to get an IDNO record with the correct format. You then replaced the base-game custom neighborhood IDNO record with the newly generated IDNO record. This will automatically make your custom neighborhood require (at least) Apartment Life.

Did you modify the IDNO record for the custom neighborhood in any way? Specifically, did you modify either the UID or (parent) Name? Is this the point at which your custom neighborhood disappears? That may be because of a conflict between the IDNO records for the custom neighborhood and the empty neighborhood, especially if you did not modify both the UID and (parent) Name fields. Try deleting the now-unnecessary empty neighborhood and see whether your custom neighborhood shows up again. I'd like to suggest that you delete the neighborhood by deleting the appropriate neighborhood folder, rather than deleting it in-game. That's because we already believe that the game is confused about having two neighborhoods with the same IDNO record; we don't want to confuse it further.

Can you tell me whether the custom neighborhood folder is still in your save game Neighborhoods folder?

I agree that it's important to get your University and Open for Business to be recognized again, since OFB subhoods will not work without Open for Business.

I know of one main reason why EPs can automatically uninstall on a computer: if you are using the Launcher. For some reason, the Launcher likes to uninstall EPs. If this is the case, then you should do the following:
1) backup your save game, just in case.
2) Bypass the launcher: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...assing_Launcher
3) Reinstall any missing EPs.

The only other time that I've seen EPs automatically uninstall is when someone tried to use the AnyGameStarter with unsupported collection packs or downloaded games. If that is your problem, you'll probably have to reinstall the missing EPs and avoid using the AnyGames, at least until you get them fixed.

Just to be clear, the more that you can tell me about what you've done and when problems started to appear, the easier it will be to help you. At this point, I'm really still guessing about your problem.

You are so not being dense. I wasn't sure the proper terminologies for the things so I'm sure I was vague. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. I looked into it and unfortunately AnyGameStarter was used at some point. And--oh boy--I use the launcher all the time. Well that explains everything now. Thankfully I did backup my game. Now I have to see if I still have my old disks.

The AnyGameStarter is great, as long as you only have supported packs. Numenor left the community after Mansion and Gardens was released, so the latest packs aren't supported. Do you have any of the later collection packs, or did you download any of your games (rather than having them on DVD)?

I downloaded Freetime. The rest were on disc. Based on what I read I'm guessing some of the horsemen of my Sim apocalypse were Double Deluxe, Best of Business and University Life. I don't know if I still have all of these discs. Is there a way to copy the install files to another location and reinstall using these files?

The AnyGameStarter doesn't work with Best of Business or University Life and I believe that it doesn't work with any downloaded games. If you pirated these collection packs, you'll need to buy them to reinstall.

I downloaded Freetime from Amazon or something like it. I didn't download any of these illegally. (Edit:Don't want to advocate anything against site policy.) I guess I could try to get their game on my USB port. I'm also trying to do a system restore. I'm sure not going to buy three games again.

A system restore from before you installed the AnyGameStarter should fix the problem.

Sharing games with friends is still piracy (to say nothing of risky - when they lose your disks). You can't install a game by just copying the game folder from Program Files; you need the installation disk.

Honestly I remember now flat out giving the game to my friend's granddaughters. Some things were loaned like DVDs but I actually got those back. At the time I had no interest in playing. I also gave them some books. You're not going to call Harper Collins on me, are you?

System Restore is not working for me. I had a tech friend look into it and my computer's corrupted. So either I break into the granddaughters' house and steal their game or go shopping. There are some expansions I don't have so maybe there's a package deal somewhere out there.

Of course not. I'm just trying to point out that you need the installation disks; copying the files from the hard drive isn't enough. If grabbing the disk from your friend's granddaughter is the solution, then I say "go for it!".

Sorry that the system restore didn't solve your problem.

Can you think of a better way to word the warning on the AnyGameStarter? I know that one of the moderators tried to make the warning more forceful, but it's obvious that it's still not clear enough.

I think the warning with Any Game Starter was clear. It's just my eyes aren't as young as they used to be and I hadn't played in while. I have been able to play by manually uninstalling and reinstalling Best of Business. Once I load the lots playing the characters is fine but the towns take forever to load. I know having Double Deluxe means everything is supposed to be uninstalled. This is just temporary because we're supposed to be transitioning away from Windows XP. I do like your tutorial and would like to play it once my computer is less wonky.

Good news! Changing the subhood type just got a lot easier. Steps 3A - 3H have been replaced with one step. No more need to deal with that pesky SimPE bug.

All right, I'm trying to make a subhood version of Widespot, to be called Widespot RFD. I have not so far been able to make the changeLotZoning cheat to work. When I attempt I get the following error:
ERROR TSCheatSystem: ERROR IN CHEAT: Unknown command
in command 'changeNeighborhoodType suburb'
with command changeNeighborhoodType suburb
.\source\TSCheatSystem.cpp(68)

Which means squat to me. It's possible that it just won't work with an inhabited neighborhood.

Yesterday I tried changing it with SimPE, and realized after I'd attached it to a disposable Belladonna Cove and playtested for awhile that I had done it wrong, so I started fresh today and the cheat still doesn't work. However, when out of curiosity I looked in that Belladonna Cove with SimPE and checked to make sure I knew how to read the pregnancy controller, I found that all the pregnancies had the correct father NID. So this is encouraging as far as it goes.

So far all the file names have been changed from PGWS to BGWS and the name of the hood has been changed to Widespot RFD, and that's all I've got. If anyone can suggest a way to make the cheat work I'll try it again; otherwise, I get to do it the Long Way and have my first excursion into Hex Code.

Looks like you need to be in debug mode. Try creating a text file named userStartup.cheat in your Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config folder and adding the line:
boolprop testingCheatsEnabled true

I've updated the post about using the changeNeighborhoodType cheat. You can download a copy of my userStartup.cheat file from that post.

Yes, hooray, it is a suburb!

I tried just typing in the testingcheats, and it didn't fly. I don't know what was different about having it in the UserStartup file, but once I did that, it worked, and since it's better to have the testingcheats enabled for testing anyway I need to copy that file into all my AnyGames made for this project. Of which there will be many by the time I'm done testing this. Let the tedious testing begin!