Saturday 20 October 2012

Clean templates in...the rebuild begins!

Because I can be a bit of a moron, it took me a few days to get my clean templates installed properly. Pro tip: it really helps if you follow all the instructions!

I really didn't discover anything especially exciting during this process but just in the interest of keeping you all up to date, I'll share what I did find out along the way, through my own fiddling around and with the help of some of the people at N99 and on Twitter. I'm not going to go through the instructions here as they're quite simple. Any advice I give below assumes you've already read the instructions and have at least a vague idea of what you're doing.



First of all, I'm using these clean templates. If you want a custom neighbourhood completely free of sims when you start it, you'll need to install the templates for each expansion you have. All the links you need are right there in that thread.

Tips:

  • This is already stated in the thread I linked to but I'm going to repeat it here. Out of everything, this will save you the most heartache! Make sure you back up each original hood template in a safe place. That way, you won't have to worry about deleting the wrong thing or anything like that, because you can just go back to your backups.
  • If you're making a custom hood, you can safely ignore the Strangetown and Veronaville templates. For the base game, you only need the Pleasantview templates. 
  • I am pretty sure that it's the same deal for the Uni templates. Custom unis always use Sim State townies and NPCs. I wasn't 100% positive though, so I used all of them. My test hood did not add any townies or NPCs when I added the uni and the first professor generated was not a default one. So if you're also not positive, you can't go wrong doing the templates for all three. 
  • The instructions for the BV template V001 state it is a complete replacement of the folder and that you don't need to delete the character files. It's not and you do. In the rar, you'll find the V001 neighborhood template, which you can copy over the one already in the folder but you'll need to delete the character files manually. So you do this one exactly like you do all the other hood templates. If you don't delete the character files, you'll get the Traveller family in your bin.
  • Also, double check your steps along the way, just to make sure you've done everything correctly. I forgot to delete the characters from V001 and P001 (the Pets hood) and ended up with 134 characters in my Characters folder before I'd even created a sim or placed down a lot. 
Once I did all that, I created a test hood and I had absolutely no characters in the Characters folder! Everything seems to be spawning as it should so far. I've seen the paper girl go by, I've generated the professors (as I mentioned) and I even tested out the NPCs like the Therapist and the Social Bunny.

I'm doing a few things differently this time around. I'm not going to have a downtown. I'll still think of Exeter as a downtown area but technically, it will be a shopping district. This prevents the Grand Vampires from being generated. I already had hacks to stop them autonomously biting my sims but I'd rather not have them at all.
So far in this test hood, I don't have any Master Wolves or Grand High Witches. I didn't do anything special to ensure that, so that's interesting. I have been plagued by witches since I installed AL - none of the hacks I've tried work for me - so it'll be awesome if I don't have to worry about them in Sullivan 2.0.

Because of the clean templates, I'm going be cutting back on the amount of townies I have. I got lazy with Sullivan and ended up taking out the vacation templates and letting all those sims generate. Due to the same laziness about making dormies, I ended up with two universities full of dormies, way more than I needed for my purposes. No more. For one thing, Kendal, Lake and Gordon (and possibly others) are all former vacation townies, so I don't really want to see their clones walking around the hood. But also, I just want to keep the character files down a bit better than I managed with Sullivan.

One nice thing that I've discovered with this test hood - I can adopt pets again! I've always been able to buy pets from pet stores and using Monique's computer but I haven't been able to use the adoption service since before Sullivan. My game would crash every time I tried. So I'm looking forward to having another option available to me now.

Anyway, I think I'm now finished the preparation stage and am ready to start the actual rebuilding of Sullivan! When I get started, I'll put up at least one more post with some (hopefully) helpful tips about how I'm going about it all, as well as some links to hacks that I'm using to help me. 

Eeek! I'm actually a little nervous about beginning this rebuild finally, so wish me luck!

22 comments:

  1. Good luck, Carla! I hope the rebuild goes as smoothly as possible.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! The game loaded just this second, so I'm about to start Sullivan right now. :D

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Thanks! From my experiences yesterday (my first crash since I last opened the old Sullivan), I'm going to need it!

      Delete
  3. Gosh! That was a lot of work - but I am certain it'll be worth it in the end, once you'll have your wonderful, clean, Vampire-free (etc.) Sullivan 2.0 up and ready!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's not really a lot of work, actually. It sounds more complicated than it actually is! Really, the process of installing clean templates can be boiled down to "download templates, back up old templates, delete characters and neighbourhood package file and replace with package file from the zip". You just have to make sure you're putting everything in the right place but if you're paying attention, it's not so bad. :)

      I'm hoping it will all be worth it in the end!

      Delete
  4. Wow, you've done some great progress! Good luck with the rebuild :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm onto the hard part now - figuring out how to move my lots over. That's already proving that it will give me a ton more trouble than anything else but I'm hoping some of the other options I have available will work better than the method I tried yesterday!

      Delete
  5. I wanted to try a clean template before I rebuilt the last time, but the whole process scared me to death. As a result I have townies I don't want. I didn't load a downtown, and it's interesting to see that you decided not to do that either. I don't see a lot of pluses for using one unless you want vampires. I haven't done anything with universities yet either. I did find a hack that got rid of all the witches. This is wonderful information! Thank you for doing it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Like I was saying to Librarian, it really is much simpler than it looks! And if you back up, there's no reason to worry at all. I find pushing past that natural hesitance we all have about messing around in the game files is really worth it in this case. I hope you don't have to rebuild again but if you do, I hope this helps you. :)

      And yeah, there are pretty much no advantages of a downtown over a shopping district. Except for vampires, which I personally see as a disadvantage. :)

      Delete
  6. Good luck! I downloaded a different set of clean templates (http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html); they're not empty, but that's because I'm building my own Megahood. I am curious though as to how you delete the character files.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'd forgotten all about those templates until someone mentioned them at N99. Her uberhood is the one I'm using at the moment though. I follow her blog and knew how hard she worked to get everything nice and clean.

      Deleting the character files is a cinch - you just delete them from the folder. That's explained in the instructions, which is why I didn't go through it here. :)

      Delete
  7. Heya, Asha from SB here =)

    Looking forward to seeing your rebuild! =D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Asha! I'm looking forward to actually getting on with this rebuild. I'm investigating the possibility of multiple crash causes at the moment. I do think I need a rebuild but seeing one of the houses I tried to move over crashed in a clean hood but not on someone else's game, I need to check out the CC thing too. Argh! Hope it doesn't take too long to track down but I have a feeling it will.

      Delete
    2. I know the feeling. I had crashing problems a couple of years ago and I ended up clearing out all of the cc and then reintroducing it bit by bit - and, of course, I had to start over with new sims and houses. Bit of a nightmare really. Hopefully you don't have to go that far!!

      Delete
    3. Well, whatever happens, I have the sims themselves in CAS, so I won't be starting over with them. Even if I clear out the CC, I'd add back the stuff I need for the actual sims first. Lots are another story! I'm having a hell of a time trying to port them over at the moment.

      Delete
  8. Sorry I haven't commented in a while but I just wanted to say good luck with the rebuild and I hope it all goes well! Can't wait to see more from Sullivan once its up and running again!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Hannah! It's not going too well at the moment. I feel like I'm not much further ahead with it than I was when I wrote this post. :(

      Delete
  9. Hi Carla,

    I think I'm blind, but I can't see where you've done pictures of your hood? I'm on an architecture, town-planning spree and thinking that I'd like to be inspired by yours! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Heh, no, you're not blind! I've never done a post specifically for hood pictures. They're sort of just sprinkled around the blog in fairly random places, unfortunately!

      But I'll track them down and start a thread at N99 (or if you get there before I do, feel free to start it yourself). That way others can add to it as well and you can get even more inspiration. :)

      Delete
    2. That's a great idea Carla! If I haven't spotted your thread I'll start one.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, I tried to start it yesterday afternoon. Put all the pics and text in, click "post" or "submit" or whatever it is and everything disappeared, at which point Yuku told me I had to add something to the main body. I had a main body, until you got rid of it, Yuku!

      LOL, I haven't had any Yuku issues in a long, long time, so I guess I was due!

      Delete