Wow! This is amazing! Thank you (and Mootilda) and all of the people involved in testing! Can't wait to try it out!

does happy dance It is so great to see these here, ready for download! I know how incredibly hard you worked on these, and I hope you are enjoying a well-earned moment of triumph and accomplishment.

Thank you also for your tribute to Mootilda. She is still sorely missed and deeply appreciated by many. (Me, for one, every time I use hood checker!)

Now, I have two questions. First, I installed all the clean templates from the Creator Forum just two weeks ago. Have they changed substantially since then? (If yes, if you did some final tweaking, then I will download and reinstall, but I'd rather not if I don't have to.)
Second, I'd been playing Strangetown before I had to reinstall, and I'd like to continue with my heavily tweaked and customised playables. Can I just plop my backup in my documents folder as I would any custom neighbourhood, or does it need special handling?

This must be the best download ever!!! a huge thank you for all the time and hard work you have done to complete these, also my heartfelt thanks to Mootilda, I do hope you don't mind though that I have a few questions? I have only ever played with the maxis neighbourhoods, the ones in the game that you select to make your own neighbourhood, they are empty! so my first question is are these corrupted in some way too!

My second question is if I am using your default or non-default NE01 or NE03 neighbourhoods , would it be alright to change your 'Lots' folder to an empty 'Lots' folder as I would rather have no premade houses in my neighbourhood, or would it better to leave all the 'lots' in your 'Lots' folder and then once in the game delete all the houses etc ?

I would really appreciate your advice!

I am incredibly thankful for this much needed modification. I appreciate Mootilda (may she rest in peace) and everyone else who also helped you to accomplish this incredible task. Also, I would like to thank you for sharing it with the Sims community.

I tried putting the Desiderata subhood in my OFB folder, as advised, but I keep getting the message "cannot find the paths specified" using 7-Zip. If I recall, though, in a case like that, you put the file on your desktop, then cut and paste it in, which would better correspond to your directions ... I think. Is that correct? Sorry ... never put in a hood this way, so I want to make sure I'm doing this right

@croiduire


1. No, you don't have to. They're all the same templates. The only thing that is new are the non-default versions and the subhood versions. Otherwise, everything's the same as before.
2. Well, you can just keep your Strangetown then. If you want to have an empty Strangetown, but don't want to lose your current Strangetown, then download a non-default version. That's why I made them.

@Summer25


1. Well, yes, the originals are corrupted, but meetmetotheteriver has fixed those already those here. These are EA's neighborhood templates WITH SIMS.
However, my templates are the same thing... but WITHOUT SIMS. So, her neighborhood templates, as well as mine, are NOT corrupted. The corruption has been fixed. It's the original EA neighborhood templates that are corrupted.

2. No, that would make the space where the lots are unplayable. Meaning, you wouldn't be able to place any lots in those areas. Instead, download the non-default neighborhood, and remove all lots from hand. I'm sorry but there's no other way round this.

@gazania


Oh, that doesn't work because of admin rights or something... I never managed to extract something into Program Files... I usually place the zip file onto desktop, extract it there and move in into Program Files.

Hey, Jawusa. Congratulations on uploading these! I've been using the empty versions of the BG hoods and universities, but I'll be replacing them with these versions as per your instructions. Words can't express how grateful I am for being able to renovate the premade lots and safely re-use them everytime I start an edited premade hood.

I have a question though - I read somewhere that plopping down university lots in the main hood or converting university hoods into main hoods screws up the aging process in the main hoods. I'm interested in using the empty main hood SSU template and I'm sorry if I missed the information somewhere, but I'd like to ask if your university templates bypass the aging problem.

@Sketching

That's only true if there are students on those lots... but in my case, there aren't any sims at all.

Thank you so much Jawusa, I really appreciate your advice, and will use the non-default version and remove all the lots by hand, also I would just like to say that I prefer your cleaned up templates as they contain no sims, I have done the 'No More Ugly Townies' -"Scorched Earth" by miros, to obtain having no maxis sims, but now I can simply place your non-default templates in my 'Documents' EA Games, Neighbourhood folders, this is something I have always wanted, so a huge thank you for this

Just for clarification, does that mean that we can convert empty university subhood lots into main hood lots as long as they're free of students? Can we do the same with an entire empty university subhood? Sorry if I'm a little off-base there - there are some university subhoods that I like but don't actually want to use as a university, so if this method works this could mean that I'd be able to convert them.

@Sketching

Yes, that should be doable. However, I'm not positive the dorms will properly work in a mainhood... these lots might have to be changed into residential/apartment lots.
Unless you have a mod that enables YA to be in a mainhood and dorms to work in a mainhood.

Thanks, Jawusa! I tested it out with Lion's Gold Record and it seems to work all right as a dorm in the main hood. I'll be keeping an eye out for any aging issues on the test hood, but thanks again for all of the empty templates!

Hi Jawusa!
First off, thank you so much for making all these empty neighborhoods! I've been snatching up every new clean template you've made for the past couple years

Also, I remember awhile back (in some post) that you mentioned you may "rebuild" the neighborhoods using the ancestor sims from marka93's beginning hoods. I was just wondering if you're still planning something like that in the future. Just asking out of curiosity because recently I've been messing around with the ancestor sims and trying to make their descendants.

Thank you again for all your hard work!

@Eleos2095

Yes, but I don't know when these neighborhoods will be available. But I already mixed up their genetics.
Sometimes, they turned out pretty accurate...

I've finally had time to start using these, and they're so awesome. I've made my own medieval-style town in the Veronaville houses. But I'm also working on a couple of projects of my own. However for these I want completely clean, empty, Sims2-friendly versions of all the lots on the Stories hoods (or the recreations of them).
You and marka93 helped me out loads by sending me empty versions of most of them from during the recreation process a while ago, but I'm having to do Four Corners myself. I was wondering what the process for emptying and cleaning it would be? Presumably you move the sims out, somehow ensuring that the house stays furnished, then use some kind of tool like ChrisHatch's to clean the lot?

@GneissGuy

Just follow this tutorial.
http://modthesims.info/t/468987

Between Step 3 and Step 4, use ChrisHatch's tool to clean all lots of the neighborhood. Then, you can follow the rest of the tutorial as ususal.

I've been working through Belladonna Cove and most of them do look really similar to the originals. I did find that Jason Cleveland looks VERY different

Would it be possible for you to post the descendants that you've created? I'm mainly just interested in their appearances. I was thinking maybe I'd use Theo's Alt Sim Surgery and meetme2theriver's neighborhoods to change the playable sims' appearances so that they look like their ancestors.

I've started to become weary from recreating the descendants and I've only finished Belladonna Cove

Yay, my empty hood collection is now complete! I'm so happy for these, thank you so much for sharing, Jawusa!

Thanks Jawusa for your hard work! You've put a lot effort to complete this. Now I'm working on re-creating Downtown for my neighborhoods. By the way, should I remove the Sim Information from every lot in this template?

Great idea, but will the Sims, Townies and all the NPC's disappear once the particular folders are placed in the suggested Neighborhood folder? If they do, then it depends on which file I download for each game and/or expansion and it's respective neighborhoods, right?!
In any case, if that's true, then I'll still have Vampires and all the specific Townies, NPC's and Sims that will be spared from being wiped clean!

@bulbash
You don't have to as I already did... the game generates a new Sim Information file then but it's empty inside... so don't worry about that!

@Cloud_Strife
Yes, that's why I made the non-default ones! For those who want to keep the townies/NPCs but want to have a empty copy of the neighborhood, so they can make-over it.

I'm making arrangements in my Sims 2 Apartment Life game so that my custom Sims will be backed up, as well as deleted the local Sim families that belong to the second and third base game neighborhood, as well as the expansion neighborhoods except Takemizu Village in Bon Voyage, because I need the Ninja, but here's a list of all the downloads I have from you:

Strangetown default, Veronaville default, Sim State University default(because that's the only one I play), Bluewater Village default, Riverblossom Hills default, Three Lakes default, Twikki Island default, and Belladonna Cove default!

So I should have NO Sims, Townies or NPC's with these specific downloads, right?
And I should still retain the Sims, custom Sims, Townies and NPC's from the downloads I chose to leave out, right?
If this is all correct then I'm good to go!


Sincerely Anxiously Excited,
Michael Simkins/ Cloud_Strife

@Cloud_Strife

Yes, that's true! However, don't worry about the Ninja.
The game generates a new one if you travel to a empty Takemizu Village subhood.

So even with the Takemizu Village default download installed as per your instruction, the game still generates each NPC for the Base Game, and each NPC from it's respective expansion pack right!? :lovestruc

@Cloud_Strife

Yes, using that, you can have neighborhoods with fully unique NPCs you have never seen before.
Did you know that Tour Guides can indeed be female? Or headmaster witches being males?