I just recently got Apartment Life and started playing Belladonna Cove. As I switched computers before adding Apartment Life, I started with a new install. I did add empty templates before adding subhoods, but only after I had already loaded Belladonna Cove. So all the sims that came with the stealth subhoods are there. I then added an empty university and an empty downtown after I had put the empty templates back in.

I wanted to check how many sims there are already before deciding if I would add any more subhoods and was surprised that there were already so many character files. Pescado´s census tool counted a hundred dead sims and I wondered if all those dead relatives showing up in the premade sims family trees have full character files? I couldn´t find any big graveyard in the neighborhood. Does anyone know, if all those dead sims have tombstones? And are they bad for the neighborhood or can I safely keep playing with it?

EA mucked up Belladonna Cove in a major way. It shares the neighborhood ID with Pleasantview. When you install Apartment Life and BC is added, the game recognizes the conflict and gives BC a new neighborhood ID. Unfortunately, the placement of the tombstones is dependent upon the neighborhood ID, so all of your dead sims are sent to never-never land.

It's possible to get those sims back using the HoodChecker Remove option. You'll be asked for a graveyard lot and the tombstones will be directed there.

You could probably also spawn each tombstone using some of Pescado's mods from moreawesomethanyou.com. I don't have the time right now to look that up, but any mod which allows a tombstone to be spawned for an existing sim should work.

There may be other ways to retrieve those tombstones, but those are the two that I know of.

As to the character files, I'm afraid that I don't know the answer. I always use clean and fixed neighborhood templates, since EA is known for pre-corrupting their shipped neighborhoods. With proper fixed hoods, the character files are complete.

Does that mean without doing the above that neighborhood is even more corrupted than typical EAxis made ones?

As far as I know, it's not corrupted unless you destroy the tombstones that are in limbo, and shred the character data in the process.

I believe that the Lot Debugger (batbox) has the option to respawn the tombstones:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...topic,72.0.html

I got this neighbourhood Its a clean template of the hood, and plus, you can just put it in. And not having the tombstones will not corrupt the game. I have EVERY single clean neighbourhood Its pretty awesome.

If it is what you are looking for at least:

Clean Template Neighbourhoods

I'm currently playing a cleaned-up B.C. neighborhood from "meetme2theriver' (thanks to the creator/cleaner); and before playing B.C., there are 61 character files. This is after I'd replaced the stealth hoods and downtown (D001) with empty .package files from other creators of empty stealth hoods.
Also have the 'notownieregen' and other files that only let the game spawn one npc when needed.
Not sure why 61 char. files when there's only a few sims living in B.C. upon start up...
Maybe it's the service npcs ?

If you look at the cleaned BC template, you'll see that there are no townies and no NPCs except the two witches. Most of the extra sims are the dead ancestors.

Thanks Mootilda. I´ll try the HoodChecker.

I know about the clean version of the hoods and I would have probably used one, but I had originally intended to only use Belladonna Cove for testing before going back to my costum hood. But now I have gotten quite attached to the hood and I don´t really want to restart it, if it´s not absolutely necessary.

I think I didn´t even have Pleasentview in my neighborhoods folder, when I installed Apartment Life, because I had already put in the neigborhood folder, that only contained my costum hood, which is labeled N003. This one and Belladonna Cove are the only neighborhoods, I currently have in the game. Maybe BC still got a new neighborhood identity, though, because I couldn´t find any gravestones. Gamesend grounds seems to be an intended graveyard going by the describtion, but it didn´t have any graves.

I'd have to look it up, but it seems to me that some of the tombstones had the wrong Hood ID and some had the wrong Lot ID. The HoodChecker can fix both of those problems. I always use Gamesend Grounds as the graveyard.

Seems to me there was a trick to it when using the clean template of Belladonna where before you did anything else if you went to Gamesend Grounds from the neighborhood (as if you were going to edit the lot) the tombstones would be there, the same for the lone one at the museum. If you played anyone before doing that they wouldn't appear. Also I don't know if it has to do with having the templates permanently installed in the C folders as I always use them as standalone and just drop them into the documents and play them from there.


ETA: I knew i was forgetting something. You have to load the clean Belladonna alone as the only neighborhood in the neighborhood file and then when you enter Gamesend they load.

That's definitely not right. I just restarted Belladonna Cove to test the Angel and Nurses pseudo-EP and I visited several lots before I went to Gamesend Grounds. The tombstones were there when I finally got around to visiting the lot.

I believe that the trick is to visit Gamesend Grounds in edit mode first, so that you can rearrange the tombstones on the lot, then save the lot with the tombstones on it. After that, you can have your sims visit the lot and the tombstones will be there and they won't be blocking access to the phone.

If for any reason your neighborhood ID changes from the one assigned by Tarlia, then you'll have to reset the graveyard lot again.

Now you've got me curious. I'm going to install the uncleaned template as the only hood (so that there can't be an ID conflict) and see whether any tombstones show up.

[Update:] My memory was wrong. It isn't the Hood ID which is invalid, but the Lot ID. EA obviously deleted their cemetery lot(s) before shipping. That just compounds any issues caused by a change of neighborhood ID.

These are Tarlia's instructions for keeping the gravestones: "If you want to keep all the gravestones for the dead sims, please make sure Belladonna Cove is the ONLY neighbourhood in your Documents\...\Neighborhoods folder when you first start the game. Go into the 'hood, and load Gamesend Grounds. Save the lot. Now you can exit the game and add your other neighbourhoods back in. (from here: http://meetme2theriver.livejournal....030.html#cutid1)

That makes sense. If you have no other neighborhoods, then the Hood ID will not be changed. When you add in new neighborhoods, the game will see the conflict and change the new hoods, not the existing ones.

Tarlia used the HoodChecker to set the graveyard, so the invalid Lot IDs have already been fixed in the clean version.

The HoodChecker worked beautifully. I now have a very full graveyard with all the ancestors grouped in families. Already send the first sims to mourn them.

Pescado´s census tool counted 100 dead sims and only 97 tombstones were at Gamesend Grounds when I first loaded it. If I counted right the text under the spoiler button also lists 100 tombstones, but three sims don´t exist. Maybe the census tool still counts these non-existent sims?

The HoodChecker also found quite a few invalid relationships, mostly consisting of invalid relationships with self, and some problematic memories. I think I am still going to keep playing the neighborhood and hope it isn´t already too badly corrupted. I feel at least a little better about the chances of it lasting for a awhile after running the remove option.

my Gamesend Grounds...

I know this is a very old discussion, but in all my games I've always been able to send graves here that I've created, but the lot is always empty of graves when I load it. I do swear that ghosts could glitch on this lot, such as appearing only for a few seconds, but I recall in another game that my Sim got spooked by a ghost on this lot. Perhaps the issue affects some games and not others.