I'd guess so. We wouldn't know for sure unless we knew how he made them though.

Did you try the method in post # 68? Did the mod add a new Unknown sim to your neighborhood? Is the user data for that sim in your Downloads folder? I tried to come up with a way to determine whether any particular mod falls into this category.

Another way is to ask the creator. The creator should know whether a new sim is created in your neighborhood.

The implications for user-added NPCs are amazing. I'm now looking at several of my downloads and thinking, "Wait .... that one could be based on the car. That one could be based on the penguin. That one ..."

Now if you really like the user-added item, that's no problem. I do have a few that I really like, such as the multi-PTs. But if you download it, add it to a neighborhood, and find out you really can't stand it, or it creates a nasty problem later, that could be difficult.

And no, unless you re-download the questionable item and add it to a (possibly soon-to-be-reset) neighborhood, it would be really hard to tell. Just looking at the possibilities is mere speculation.

MAYBE, if you add a fresh, never-played neighborhood, you might have a clue. I have a neighborhood with just a few Sims and NO possibly user-added items. I wonder if that would be that different from the more populated neighborhoods. or are user-added NPCs game-wide, even if you don't place them?

gazania I'm doing the same thing. I'm looking at the toy tricycle and a remote control bird and thinking remote control car! I thought they added the NPC's game wide? I think we need some clarification. If it only adds them to the hood that would be great for future reference, that way they can be looked at first and then deleted if it wasn't wanted.

Seems to me it should be easy to tell if there's a character file added by making an empty any game with AGS and anti-townie/npc mods, and then adding in the [potentially NPC creating hack to check it out. If it creates a character file, there you go. See if you like it enough to live with it. If it's in an Any Game file and your program files are read only, then there shouldn't be any risk at all to your main game.

It's a good idea to backup your save game before installing any CC, and it's especially important for this type of CC. That way, if you really don't like it you can just restore from your backup and you won't have to worry about the additional sims at all.

If you add one of these mods to your Downloads folder, the additional sims will be added the next time that you play each neighborhood, regardless of whether you use the CC. If you want a mod to only affect one neighborhood, the best way is to set up separate save games, each with their own Downloads folder. The AnyGameStarter is one way to setup these separate save games, creating separate user IDs is another. Even having several The Sims 2 folders which you swap in and out will work.

Just remember, the minute that you enter a neighborhood, the sims in your Downloads folder will be added to that neighborhood. If I remember correctly, you don't even need to enter and save a lot. Just enter the neighborhood and exit without playing and you've got the additional sims.

This isn't correct. These mods do not create character files, they are character files. When you have one of these mods, a new sim is added to each neighborhood that you play; all of these sims share the exact same character file in your Downloads folder, unless you specifically copy the character file into each neighborhood's Characters folder.

Sorry to drag this back up, but I'm curious about this situation:

what if you had a couple mods that added the character files (like the animated horses, and in one case, an item from simwardrboe) but you never actually placed them in your game (but were in your downloads and therefore, added npc files to the neighborhoods). Could you safely remove the horses, misc items without any effect or would you have to go about deleting them some other way?

These mods can be safely removed as long as the game hasn't created any additional references to the NPCs whose character data is stored in the mod itself. We know that references can occur in a number of different records, including: family ties, relationships, wants and fears, memories, scores, etc. and that the game can create these references even when one doesn't expect them.

You can use the batbox to prep these NPCs for deletion from a neighborhood, using the Deleted 2 method from MATY, but that will modify the mod itself. This is fine if you only need to clean one neighborhood, but won't work if you have multiple neighborhoods which need cleaning.

If you have multiple neighborhoods which need to be cleaned, you could use the Deleted 2 method to clean the first neighborhood, then reinstall the mod and use the Deleted 2 method to clean the second neighborhood (without accessing the first neighborhood, since that will add the NPCs again), then reinstall the mod and clean the third neighborhood (without accessing the first or second), and so on, until all neighborhoods are cleaned.

Please note that I can't guarantee that this will work. However, it seems like your best bet if you need to remove the mod.

I had a house panel open instead of family panel in the hood screen and without looking I clicked the picture that's supposed to remove a family from a house to the family bin. But since it was a wrong panel, the next thing that I saw on my screen was the house being packed into a house panel, WITH SIMS LIVING IN IT! Caps aren't stupid, they show the state of my mind back then! I didn't have a ready late back-up, you can imagine the horror. The house was still being packed, and the only half-sensible thing that came to my mind was to open up a task manager and forcibly finish the TS2 task.

As a result, in the game the house is still placed on the land and sims are still living in it. I can't see any weird signs about them, either, their relationships aren't removed. Hopefully this is ok.

Babahara: In spite of the thread title, I didn't think that this was a general thread about hood corruption, but instead a thread about hood corruption caused by removing mods which include character data for NPCs who are automatically added to your neighborhood.

I believe that there's a better thread for general hood corruption questions:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=394352

I know this is an old thread, but I just had some experience with this last night... SimWardrobe's SaniBot 5000 was trying to clean up a puddle, but couldn't reach it -- and it stopped and made the exact same noises as a Sim who can't reach something, the noises that are accompanied by a stompy-wave, using a human voice. I don't have SimPE, so I can't check for sure, but I consider this strong evidence of a character file.

(I had backed up right before installing the SaniBot, and I'd been playing for maybe five minutes, so I quite without saving, removed the bot from Downloads, and restored from backup.)

Maxis robots ( the task ones) do that too, but I didn't think they were NPC's. Maybe someone can confirm one way or the other?

I think they mean NPCs as 'using a sim file template' to make an object that can move around. What happens is that the object is attached to an invisible 'sim' (it's not a complete 'real' sim). A lot of CC and EAxis objects use this method to make an object mobile. This means the creation of a sim file in the neighbourhood Characters folder or in the Downloads folder. In this case, I think the posters here are using the term NPC in it's original literal sense (non-player character) rather than what we, in the sims community, usually mean by NPCs - service sims and townies.

I was referring to a non playable character NPC like the remote control car. I think any download that contains a moving object should not be causally tossed just in case they are like the farm animals. I know the farm pigs use a male npc as mine went weird when it snowed and he showed up, standing in the middle of a pig off an on. Was kind of creepy.

I had that problem aswell, the NPC in the middle of the animal, mine was the horses.

I asked Rebekah for advice on this. I ended up quitting the game, removing the files from Downloads and re-downloading them, putting them back in Downloads and then going back into the game. Would this cause damage?

Also I did find two solutions for the problem:
1. Sell the animal before you exit the lot (only now I'm wondering if this is dangerous aswell?), then re-buy the animal when you re-enter the lot.
2. Instead of exiting to the neighbourhood and saving when asked, save using the save button first, then exit to the neighbourhood. This seemed to work for me.

No, I don't believe that this will cause damage. Any potential damage would occur from running the game without the mod.

Thankyou Mootilda. You're very patient and so helpful to me and everyone else on here, you deserve a medal!

Sorry to be a pain, but do you know if selling the animal (using the option provided on the sign) would cause corruption? I was just wondering if it was like selling a gravestone?

She truly is. We should make her a medal!

That is exactly what I had with the pigs. At the time I deleted them from the catalog, but of course now know that is the worst thing I could have done.
Also on the same lot where I had the pigs, cows and chickens, I found the time running very slowly even on speed three over night. While the sims sleeping zzz's came out fast, the clock would move at only a little faster than speed 1, so night time took ages.

Can the radio controlled toy car cause any similar problems, since it evidently contains a hidden Sim? I gave one to a pleasure teen who wanted a toy, and I'm not even sure that the game counted as a toy for the purpose of aspiration points. Mind you, it was worth giving it to him, because he loves playing with it. In truth, I think he'd rather play with his little car than make out with other teens!

But is there anything I shouldn't do with it, like sell it? or put it in an inventory?

(I knew there was a radio-controlled car that contained an NPC, but somehow always thought it must be a full-sized car rather than a toy.)

You should not save and exit the game while the teen is playing with it, because that could break the objects.package and thus force you to reinstall the game. You can prevent this by making your installation files read only (technically only need to protect objects.package, but no reason not to do all). That's the one thing I'm aware of with the Maxis made controlled toy car. I'm sure it's perfectly fine to delete it, but no idea about inventory.

Aah that's really cute, he sounds adorable! (Which you can't say about most teens!)



I have made my objects package read-only, but just out of interest, why does saving and exiting while it's being played with break it?

I'm not entirely sure, but if my memory isn't 3-am-flawed, it's because there is a problem in the code for the car that EA never fixed and that could corrupt the objects.package file if you left a lot where someone was using it. That may or may not be the real reason, I'm not sure, but I do know one has to be careful about using the radio controlled car if installation files are not protected by read-only status. I'm sure someone else can confirm if I got it right, or if it's something else.

I have just made C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Double Deluxe and all the files and folders it contains read-only. As soon as I did it, I thought that that was maybe a little unwise, as it will surely cause me problems if I ever get another EP/SP. I see that it already contained some read-only files or folders (from the fact that the Read-Only check box was blue rather than checked or unchecked) but I've no idea which files/folders they were. I suppose I could restore them to their previous state by using the Previous Versions tab of the properties dialogue, but I'd have to do that fairly soon, because Windows doesn't keep restore points for ever. Is there any risk in the way I've done it?

If I do nothing now, and do want to add another EP/SP later, do I just make everything Read/Write before starting, and put it back to Read-Only after installation?

Will SecurROM (spelling?) be quite happy with everything Read-Only?

Does anyone know which files in the installation folder are always Read-Only? I feel I should have checked that before changing anything.

I'm usually very cautious about this sort of thing and now I'm getting cold feet! Sorry for all the questions - I should have looked before I leapt!

[EDIT] Sorry! Panic over. I realised I'd been using PC's for long enough I ought to be able to work that one out for myself! I made a copy of the previous day's version of the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Double Deluxe folder and checked with a Command Prompt that there really weren't any read-only files. After that I started my game and it's working perfectly. Thanks gummilutt, and sorry for being so silly!

I can't answer all of those questions by knowledge, but I can apply a bit of logic.

1. Will installing another EP cause problems with read only?
- I don't see why it should, but just to be safe you can just remove read-only status before installing a new EP and re-apply it to everything when you are done.

2. But some files were already read-only, what about those?
- If they were read-only, the game made it that way itself, so I would assume the installer knows not to mess with those files regardless. If a file that is usually read-only is messed with during an installation, that is intentional and they probably have a system to remove the read-only temporarily regardless. I don't see how what you do would affect that in any way.

3. Will SecuROM have a problem?
- I did the same way as you did, read-only to EA Games folder and make it apply to everything in it, and I never had any problems. That is no proof, but SecuROM is about avoiding piracy. I don't see why it would care about that.

Like I said, I can't say for sure because I've never tried, but it would surprise me greatly if it caused any problems. I got the advice to read-only everything from Mootilda back when I was reinstalling my game, and I trust that advice to be safe and sound.