I know it's recommended to use fixed hoods but what if you want to play a saved game that didn't use them? Is there a way to (safely) carry over your lots and Sims to the fixed version? If not, is there some way to manually fix the bigger issues with them?

One of them is a recent save, I reinstalled the game but completely forgot to change this. I only played Strangetown pre-fix and none of the pre-made families. My Sims met Bella Goth in passing but I don't think they've met Olive Specter (for example). Would it help to make Bella playable and then use a mod to delete her relationships with dangerous NPCs?

Thank you!

If you haven't made much progress yourself, you can port your custom Sims to the new (clean) Strangetown by extracting their appearances in SimPE and then remaking them in CAS in the new Strangetown. You can find the tutorial on how to extract the appearances by looking up how to move Sims between neighborhoods on SimsWiki.

Removing Bella's spicy relationships with the untouchables won't help much, since there's tons of other problematic stuff happening in stock Strangetown. If you were to fix them all yourself, you'd be doing work that's already been done by other creators.

Just make sure you have the essential mods from here and play on.
I don't believe you can change a hood that you have been playing to a fixed one in any way, the only way is to start over. It does not matter who has met whom, all of them will have memories already, whether you have played them or not.
You can also run the Hood checker to sort out some of the problems in the hood.

Extracting sims: https://pixel-trade.livejournal.com/16091.html

Extracting lots and cleaning them of sim references (if you've moved sims in) - https://thesims2.livejournal.com/6049797.html and https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=609188
(if there's never been any sims living in them, you can either package them up and install with the Clean Installer or use the method in the first link, but cleaning them like described in the second link could be a good idea anyway)

This is if you're starting over, although it can come in handy for backups and if you want copies of sims made/born ingame, or lots from after you moved sims in.

Thanks. That's a shame that the only way is for them to lose all their memories. I do have a bunch of the essential mods and have run the hood checker, so hopefully that'll keep the game stable enough. I'll probably still extract appearances and move them to a clean hood, maybe when the next generation are adults and losing their memories won't matter as much.

I honestly wouldn't mind the extra work of "fixing" things if it were possible.

Thanks for the feedback and help!

EDIT: I'm definitely going to do this for my very old saves when I find them again, I miss some of those Sims!

If you don't mind putting in the extra work, you can also recreate the memories with SimPE. Just write down what they had and add them to the fixed versions.

I agree with Justpetro. Neighbourhood corruption is a serious issue in The Sims 2, but I sometimes think its seriousness gets exaggerated. If you have a Maxis neighbourhood that you love, and have been playing it for a long time, I'd advise you to go on playing it, and as far as possible go on enjoying it. Be sensible: use Hoodchecker, and don't do known VBTs ("Very Bad Things!"). But don't let fear of corruption ruin your fun. Restarting an existing 'hood and trying to get it back to its current state is a very big undertaking. Your Sims don't only lose their memories: they lose their "training" too. A few years ago @gummilutt "rebuilt" a 'hood by trying to play everything exactly as it had happened the first time (with Free Will off). I think she largely succeeded, but it was a really vast undertaking, and it took her many months. I fear few of us would have the patience to do it.

Myself I've been playing Maxis Veronaville for over nine years now. I started playing it the first time I opened the game, and a few months later I added a Maxis Downtown. After that I learned about the "clean" hoods, and, when I added Bluewater to it, it was Tarlia's (AKA meetmetotheriver's) clean version of Bluewater. I also used Tarlia's versions for my standalone Pleasantview and Strangetown, and when I add a university to Veronaville, it will probably be Tarlia's version of Académie Le Tour. But the main 'hood and the Downtown are still original Maxis. And I really haven't noticed all that many problems. Over the years I've added many CAS Sims to Veronaville, and I really don't think I could rebuild it from scratch the way gummilutt did. I think I love all my Sims in Veronaville (and I believe I'm secretly in love with one or two them -- to the extent that I'd find it very hard to live without them.) I have other 'hoods that I play sometimes, but Veronaville remains my main game.

I am a little diffident about posting this just now, because I haven't actually been playing Veronaville since January, when I experienced two or three crashes. I am however fairly confident that I will be able to restore the 'hood from a recent backup, and resume playing. (I think Microsoft OneDrive may be causing my problems, rather than any in-built corruption by Maxis.) I have made and kept frequent backups from the beginning, but am trying to choose as recent a backup as possible so as to minimise the loss of gameplay.

P.S. Sorry if this doesn't make much sense. As usual I'm burning the midnight oil -- I should have been in bed hours ago. My Sims have much more sense than I do. When they're tired they just go to bed -- regardless of what I want.

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I suspect you're right about the risks being exaggerated sometimes. When I first started playing TS2 I had absolutely no idea about any of this and managed to play in the same premade hoods for years, while also often doing a bunch of things I probably shouldn't have (like deleting graves). I think it's important to try to be on the safe side, just in the case there's some bad luck with it, but otherwise it might not be a done deal that things will go wrong. I've done what I could using the batbox, etc. and hopefully that'll be enough for now.

Playing Veronaville (or any hood) for 9 years is very impressive! You must love it a lot. I hope you manage to get it up and running again



Is that how the modders who have made "clean" hoods have done it? If so, I'm amazed by their patience!

I hope you manage to get some rest

I just start with the terrain template for one of the towns shipped with the game if I want to play that town's map instead of using the already established version which is often corrupted even if it stays playable for a long time.I've got my BACC in the Strangetown map template and apocalypse challenge in the Riverblossom Hills terrain map while my Pleasantview Epic Challenge is taking place in the Pleasantview template.The only issue with using the blank templates is having to try to create your own renditions of the families or of the ancestors as is the case in the PEC game.

I'm impressed that you remember that, almost 7 years ago now that I posted the thread saying I had at least finished my rebuild. It took me almost 3 years, but that was partly because I had to start over from scratch more than once. On the plus we learned a few things about corruption from it, like that uninhabited lots carry sim references that can transfer corruption between hoods if not cleared Without the restarting due to corruption from original hood travelling with lots I'm guessing it would have been more like one year rather than three.

It was a big undertaking but worth it for me, it was either that or quit as I really don't enjoy the game with just some random family. If it's not my Sims I know and love, then what's the point

@ OP: If you do decide to start fresh, perhaps the memory manipulator would be of some use to you. Easier for re-creating memories than doing it in SimPE. Has all vanilla memories, just need the two Sims on the lot. You won't get the learned behaviors aspect of your Sims, but you could replicate memories if you wanted to You also have things like treeags' book of talent that you can use to re-learn things the Sim had learned and get the memory for it. I'd say extracting appearances (don't forget to clean in bodyshop!) and then using those two + simblender/sim manipulator for relationships, you'd get pretty far with re-creating the Sim

Thank you so much! I've extracted all their appearances for backup files. Next, I'll be backing up the lots. I hope I can keep this hood going for a time but it's good to know I can recreate my Sims pretty well if something goes wrong



Yeah, that's what I don't like about blank maps -- having to create people to live there even if I don't necessarily want to play them. I forgot to do it this time around, but I remember downloading "fixed" versions of Maxis hoods and premades and preferred to do that. Maybe one day I'll do a BACC challenge!

I used to just want everything already in place though that nearly always led to problems and those could just be even things like sims flirting outside of marriages while not under my control because I was adding way too many in before starting live play so I changed how I started towns up though that was full of isssues in a vanilla setting and not anymore with the Mods I loading up into my game.I've got one from here that fixes the lot pre-populating on loading which was one of the most annyoing bugs and not realistic at all.I've been wanting to play the Pleasantview families and will get to in my Pleasantview Epic Challenge from the start of the town as a colony in Early America started in the turn of the 17th century with the ancestors of the families who lived there back in the colonial era.