My custom lots are not showing up in the neighborhood

[stormgirl_lp]

I can't see my custom lots in Pleasantville. I see them in the folder N001, but they are not showing up in the neighborhood during game play. The neighborhood looks like the it does after a fresh install with no CC or lots. Any ideas?

[stormgirl_lp]

Is there no reply because this is a common problem or because no one has an answer? If its a common problem, could someone post a link to a solution? I've searched several help sites and came up empty. Would love to get these lots back again.

[ellacharmed]

By Custom Lots, do you mean self-built or downloaded? These missing lots have been placed in the N'hood and then disappeared?
You've combed through the FAQs in the Help menu above, and still found nothing that helped? Then you've exhausted all our knowledge on the issue and found a new one!

Some of the FAQs that might help (if you hadn't read any of the FAQs):
Game_Help:Bad_Lot
Game_Help:Downloading_for_Fracking_Idiots_10#Where_are_Lots.3F
Game_Help:GCCTSU

[stormgirl_lp]

Hello and thanks. These were my own lots that I built in Pleasantview (sorry, keep calling it pleasantville, as most of my neighborhoods are named somethingville...) I built most of them with just the Sims2 & Pets EP. I've intalled other EP's later and I wonder if I didn't screw something up during the last install.

Anywho, they just don't show up when I load the neighborhood, but I do still see the files in the (N001) folder.

edit:
Is there a wiki that talks about how custom built lots (not downloads) are saved and stored. That would be so handy. Most of these lots were built before I knew that I could package them right from the game.

[Mootilda]

Information about lots in a neighborhood are stored in two places: the lot package, which contains almost all information about the lot, and the neighborhood package, which contains mostly information about how the lot interacts with the neighborhood: placement, size, rotation, type of lot, family, ... For an unoccupied lot, the Lot Description is the primary record in the neighborhood package:
http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=DESC

It sounds like your neighborhood doesn't actually know about the lots, but the lot files were not correctly cleaned up in the directory. These questions might help us to determine what you should try next:

1) What did you do which made the lots disappear from the neighborhood? Installing a new EP should not destroy existing lots. It really sounds to me like a clean neighborhood was copied over your existing neighborhood; is it possible that this happened? If so, the required Lot Descriptions will be missing.

2) Did you make a backup of your My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 directory before installing the new EPs? If not, do you have any backups of your game which have the working lots?

3) How do you know that the files which you are seeing under N001 are actually the lots that you think that they are? The lot number is not a clear indication of what's in the lot package.

If you know how to use SimPE, then you can open the neighborhood package and see whether there are Lot Descriptions for these lots. You can also open the individual lot packages and ensure that they are actually the lots that you expect; I find that the easiest way to check is to look at the pictures of the lot inside of the lot package.

I have several ideas about how to get back these lots:

A) The obvious solution is to restore from a backup which has the working lots.

B) If you can't do that, then you may be able to get unoccupied lots back by placing a copy of the lot package into the Lot Catalog and renaming it to match the lot catalog naming scheme. Here's a tutorial which does something similar; you'll have to modify it a bit for your situation:
http://community.livejournal.com/thesims2/6049797.html

[...]
8.) Go back to the lots folder you have open from your neighborhood and find the file name
9.) Copy the file
10.) Go to C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR NAME\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\LotCatalog
11.) Paste the file
12.) Rename the file cx_00000001.package and if that name is taken, rename it whatever the next number is available. So, if you have files in there named cx_00000001.package all the way up to, say, cx_00000021.package then you need to name it cx_00000022.package.

[ellacharmed]

@stormgirl_lp, in addition to the above info - there's a sticky on Disappearing Neighbourhoods on the main Sims2 Help forum page. I haven't read all 16 pages of it to determine if your issue is addressed there, though. If you haven't read it, it could provide some pointers (that hasn't been transferred to any Wiki pages), that you hadn't tried?

[stormgirl_lp]

1) What did you do which made the lots disappear from the neighborhood?

I think you are spot on that the neighborhood was probably over-written.

In Nov, I bought a copy of Glamour Life--which I already owned--without thinking and came home to install it. I kept getting the "Uninstall" prompt, and then cancelled the install. I eventually had my "Doh!" moment and realized I already owned it.

Its always possible that a bug in the uninstall code whacked a couple of files before the confirmation prompt, and the next time I launched it created new default neighborhoods. Since I hadn't been in Pleasantview for quite some time, I'm speculating.


2) Did you make a backup of your My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 directory before installing the new EPs? If not, do you have any backups of your game which have the working lots?

Yes, but apparently something went wrong, its not there. :(

3) How do you know that the files which you are seeing under N001 are actually the lots that you think that they are?

I am looking at the modified dates on the lot packages, and the lot numbers. I remember some of them from when I created them.


If you know how to use SimPE, then you can open the neighborhood package...

I opened the packages, but I couldn't figure out how to view the images. I have the newer version of SIMPE now, but I can't see the option to reset the views for some reason.

I think I am going to go with option B and see if I can just put them in the lots bin and then place them back in the neighborhood. not sure what that will do to my sims families...but life is an adventure!

I mostly build homes, so I'm not too freaked if my families get whacked. They are for testing purposes mostly.

[stormgirl_lp]

Oh Halleluja! I found an old backup copy of the neighborhood and put it back. I got 90% of my houses back, which is good enough for me.

I mostly wanted these 2 guys!

[Mootilda]

Great. I'm glad that you managed to save them.