The Wooden Simolean

Do you think Maxis made butt-ugly Townies on purpose? Or are there just too many for your taste? This is your fix!

I used to nuke my new hoods with deleteallcharacters. However, I started a new 'hood for experiments in growing up Dormies, and discovered it is actually kind of nice to have a good supply of preexisting Townies and Dormies to interact with, instead of waiting for them to slowly generate (reference Greg's Legacy hood where the poor guy almost died of aspiration failure before anything female showed up). I also found out the neutron bomb tends to leave crap behind which causes problems down the line, especially if you reset the "first Sim" index to 1...

Note: The sections marked "scorched earth approach" will remove (at least temporarily) all Maxis created neighborhoods, lots, and Sims. Examples:

1. If you should delete your entire My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 folder, the base 3 neighborhoods and Riverblossom Hills will not regenerate.
2. Downtown, Bluewater Village, and the 3 college campuses will not be available when adding subhoods.

You might want to package all the lots from all neighborhoods and subhoods before performing the "scorched earth" steps. Do use CleanInstaller to remove the original inhabitants from populated lots and save them with new names, like "Tinker house - unpopulated." You shouldn't need anything except "lotsegmentforupload" or the file named with the "name" of the lot.

Recommended downloads:

1. Replacement face templates -- There are quite a few available on Mod The Sims 2.  Although you can only have one set installed at a time, there's no law that says you can't have several sets and switch them from time to time or even create your own set by using single templates from each set. Switching your templates or sets will have no effect on previously generated Sims. All needed information is copied into the Sim at creation. By their nature, all face templates are "genetic," if you mean the children will inherit a blend of their parent's faces.
2. Boiling Oil's names hack. Boiling Oil has merged and cleaned up several "better names" hacks.  Thousands of names -- much less chance for duplications!
3. Various hacks to prevent excessive generation and repeated regeneration of non playable Sims, NPCs and strays.  I use those from More Awesome Than You, but there are others available.  Warning:  the regulars at MATY tend to be very unforgiving of beginners' questions.  Constant spawning of Tour Guides and Charlatans is a known BV bug, requiring a hack or a Maxis patch to fix this.
4. "Hiders," or hacks to prevent any undesirable clothing or hair styles, such as wedding veils or Santa outfits, from appearing on your new Sims.  Zirconia Wolf even hides all the Maxis elder clothing and "elderizes" all the Maxis adult clothing so her elders will wear adult clothing
5. If you have Apartment Life, you need Cyjon's Townie Apartment Residents hack to avoid the use of Social Group members.

Instructions:

1. No Ugly Townies:
   • Just prevent the Townies: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods/N001. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders (just in case you ever need them), then delete them.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods. Zip and delete the N001, N002, and N003 folders.
2. No Moronic Dormies:
   • Just prevent the stupid college students: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 University/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/U001. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them. Repeat for U002 and U003.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 University/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate. Zip and delete the U001, U002, and U003 folders.
   • Note: Secret Society members are either drafted from available Dormies or created as new Dormies who are immediately flagged as Secret Society members.
3. No Annoying Downtownies:
   • Warning! Sleepycat sez that the Downtownies are generated from hard coded templates cleverly hidden in some inaccessible place in the game. You might want to keep the Downtownies, who are not nearly as ugly as most Maxis Sims, since you will probably get duplicates when new Downtownies are generated from these templates. However, you can get rid of the service NPCs without ill effects.
   • Prevent all the Downtownies: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Nightlife/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/D001. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them.
   • Just skip the Downtown NPCs: Do not delete Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Nightlife/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/D001/Characters. Instead, you will keep the following files: (TBD)
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Nightlife/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate. Zip and delete the D001 folder.
4. No Weird Bluewater Village Inhabitants:
   • Just prevent the inhabitants: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Open for Business/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/B001. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Open for Business/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/. Zip up the B001 folder, then delete it.
5. No Stupid Pets Families and Strays:
   • Just prevent the families and strays: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Pets/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/P001. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them. Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Pets/TSData/Res/UserData/LotCatalog. Zip together all files starting with cx_Character_, then delete them.
   • Prevent the families and strays, but leave the pet adoption pool: Perform the steps above, except for deleting the Characters folder. Open the Characters folder, and delete everything except P001_User00069.package, P001_User00070.package, P001_User00072.package, P001_User00073.package, P001_User00074.package, and P001_User00075.package.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Pets/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate. Zip and delete the P001 folder. Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Pets/TSData/Res/UserData. Zip the LotCatalog folder, open it, and delete the contents.
   • Scorched earth, retaining pet adoption pool: Perform steps above, except for deleting the P001 folder. Open the P001 folder, and delete everything except P001_Neighborhood.png, P001_Neighborhood.package, and the Characters folder. Open the Characters folder, and delete everything except P001_User00069.package, P001_User00070.package, P001_User00072.package, P001_User00073.package, P001_User00074.package, and P001_User00075.package.
   • Note: Even if you prevent the poorly trained Maxis animals, by default, your game will create 15 strays in your new hoods. There are hacks to prevent this, such as "nostrayregen."
6. Prevent the Plant people families:
   • Just prevent the Seasons families: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Seasons/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods/G001. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them. Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Seasons/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/G002. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Seasons/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods. Zip and delete the G001 folder. Open up Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Seasons/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate. Zip and delete the G002 folder.
7. No Annoying Tourists:
   • Just prevent the tourists: Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Bon Voyage/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/. Zip up the V001 folder, then delete it. Zip up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Bon Voyage/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/A001, then delete the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders. Zip up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Bon Voyage/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/M001, then delete the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders. Zip up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Bon Voyage/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/T001, then delete the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Bon Voyage/TSData/Res. Zip and delete the NeighborhoodTemplate folder.
   • Note: Apparently, there is no way to add the special BV lot to a custom vacation 'hood, so you might not want to use the Scorched Earth approach with this EP.
   • Note: The game will spawn replacement families, so there will be a lot of lag the first time your Sim(s) go on vacation. 
8. No Free Time residents:
   • Just prevent the new stupid ugly people: Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Free Time/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/F002. Zip up the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders, then delete them. Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 FreeTime/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods/F001. Zip up and delete the Characters, Storytelling and Thumbnails folders.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up /Program Files/The Sims 2 Free Time/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate. Zip the F002 folder and delete it. Open up /Program Files/The Sims 2 Free Time/TSData/Res/User Data/Neighborhoods/. Zip and delete the F001 folder.
   • Note: One of the rewards for each hobby is a pass to use a secret lot to practice that hobby. Apparently, you need the lots in the F002 folder, so don't "scorch earth" on that folder.
9. No Apartment Life Social Group Members:
   • Just prevent the new stupid ugly prospective tenants: Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Apartment Life/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods/E001 and zip up and delete the Thumbnails, Characters, and Storytelling folders. Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Apartment Life/TSData/Res/UserData/NeighborhoodTemplate/E002 and zip up the Characters folder.
   • Scorched earth approach: Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Apartment Life/TSData/Res/UserData/Neighborhoods and zip up and delete the E001 folder. Open up /Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Apartment Life/TSData/Res/UserData/NeighborhoodTemplate and zip up and delete the E002 folder.
   • Note: Apparently, witches go to a "secret lot" just for them, so you might not want to delete the E002 folder.
   • Note: Scuttlebutt says prospective tenants are generated from hidden templates in a manner similar to Downtownies. However, you can use Cyjon's Townie Apartment Residents hack to avoid the existence of social group members completely once you've done the zip-and-delete procedure.

Run the game and create a new neighborhood.

Without no-regen hacks, the game will create:

• one Townie for every non-Downtown community lot visit,
• one Downtownie for every Downtown community lot visit,
• enough Dormies to fill your first Dorm,
• two professors for each Maxis and CC major, plus one advisor for the Secret Society lot, when your first campus is added,
• 15 strays,
• a Hobby Leader for each hobby,
• a Social Group member for each apartment in your first apartment house appropriate for each group, and
• all the necessary NPCs, such as paper carriers, mail carriers, maids, nannies, butlers, vampires, headmasters, repair people, coaches, mascots, cheerleaders, charlatains, tour guides, animal control officers, garden club ladies, etc. as they are needed.

If you want more Sims at the beginning, especially Townies or Downtownies, refer to the creation portion of my Custom Default Sims tutorial.

Note: Vista users: Vista won't let you create the zip files inside Program Files. Just save the zip file to My Documents and drag the zip file back by hand.