How long does a neighborhood survive?

How long does a neighborhood survive?

I just started a new neighborhood. This is the 2nd time I've had to do that. The experts around the Sims Community say that after about 800 sims have come and gone through your neighborhood it's about worthless. Well, the game puts about 200 of those files on itself with NPCs, Townies, and Dormies. I'm sure there will be another explosion of NPC's and Townies with Nightlife in a couple of weeks. I think I am going about this business the wrong way. I have 1 neighborhod, put all my Sims there, and when I screw it up, all their generations are gone. And I invest so much in them emotionally because I feel like I "raised" them, like pets!

So, it got me to wondering: What is the average life-span of a neighborhood? How long has your neighborhoods lasted you? About how many families? How often do you play your favorite neighborhoods?

This isn't a technical or "How Do I" kind of question. What I'm looking for here is just the experiences of other Sims players.

 

Wow, that's really...different that how I play. I've only made 2 neighborhoods so far (one called Ivorystone doesn't count, because I don't have any sims in it) and I spread all of my families throughout--I also put some in the Maxis ones, because it's just fun to mess around with Mortimer, the Curious brothers, and Titania and Oberon. I only started making my own neighborhoods a few months ago. Before that, I was just satisfied with the Maxis-made ones.

 

My neighborhood has lasted since October 2004, which was when I bought Sims 2. It has survived Uni with its share of problems. I'm on my third generation...which is sorta co-mingling with the 2nd...Would a 2nd gen+3rd gen=2.5 gen or something, or 4th gen?

 

Other than the Maxis provided neighborhoods I have six neighborhoods. Two of them have almost no one living there--I set them up for some specific test or pursuit. Baltimore is one I've been in the most, both for my movies and for the Sparrow family that I've spent the most time with. I started Baltimore in December and have played with it heavily since then. It has only one University associated with it (Le Tour). The properties function tells me there are 73 lots (I'm sure that includes Le Tour) and 289 character files, which doesn't seem like that much. A visual count (visiting each household) came up with 78 people in 15 families that I have control over. The neighborhood looks crowded to me. My Sparrow family is working through its 4th generation. A couple of bugs seemed to have arisen (the game gave me a lot of grief with the birth of Sybil's 3rd and 4th children. JMPs lot debugger appears to have salvaged 90% of the situation.)

Anyway, that's 8 months of play with 78 sims under my control and more than 200 (I assume) NPCs and townies wandering around my main neighborhood.

I am a very conservative player, however. I don't experiment much at all with the cheats. I have downloaded a grand total of 3 things--two JMP fixes and Merola's painting. No clothes, skins, houses, or anything else.

When I happen to take a look at the cheat window (to moveObjects) I find that the game displays a long list of errors and other conflicts. I avoid looking at the cheat window because it just upsets me. I expect a crash of the neighborhood at any moment.

By the way, I've seen mention of JMP's "critical fix" but can't find it anywhere. Has it moved? Where do I look? Thanks to anyone who points the way.

 

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?
PHPSESSID=2452b1232ff8eb41a42543602ff29de4&topic=10.0

 

I have 58 controllable Sims in my neighborhood...4 are sort of NPC-ish in that I don't play them, 1 that has died. However, when I look at the properties of my Characters folder, I have 583 files. Um...is there a way to reduce the number?

 

:shocked: 583 !!! :shocked: Am I looking in the wrong place? I look under properties in the Characters folder for my Neighborhood 007. Is yours a neighborhood you started from scratch?--I mean, not Pleasantview, Veronaville or that other one with the Curious brothers.

I can't believe you and Kristalrose have accumulated so many and I have only 289 unless I'm not reading the file right. This is very worrisome. I could be on the brink of disaster and not even know it.

Zydeco--mucho thanks.

 

Won't you (hundreds of people) be my neighbor?

I have a neighborhood I am starting right now with over 35 families, and I still have 2 pages of people to add (2 pages from my notebook where I keep all my creation notes). End total, 50+ famailies. Each family has 1-6 people, so room to expand. There will be 150-200 new people, and as I don't delete townies or Uni staff, well, do the math. It's a lot of people.

And I have yet to have a neighborhood "die", they evolve. Like organisms. Crazy, zany organisms with giant bunnies and stuff that catches fire. Choke of that, Darwin!!

 

Good topic. Kristal, I suspect that you may be going a bit overboard with CAS. I noticed that you said in earlier posts that your last hood had quite a large number (can't remember offhand the number but I remember thinking it seemed a lot!)

When I started my new hood to replace the one I lost in my post Uni meltdown I deliberately chose to stop using CAS ... mostly because it is completely pants cut-down version of Body Shop. I installed all of Pescado's indispensibles, but did not delete any townies ... though I did murder Meadow Thayer and Goopy Wotsisname and Benjamin Long I don't have that PC unpacked yet so I don't have acces to exact number but the neighborhood character count is under 300.

I made 6 adults in Body Shop to create 3 main families, and am currently raising the third generation. Some have intermarried, others have married NPCs, several marriages were 'made' at university with dormies. To widen the gene pool I have 3 more families that were made from Body Shop sims and when I add NL and 3rd generation reaches maturity I'll consider adding up to 6 more families to keep up the diversity.

I mostly avoid having children unless I intend to grow them up and breed from them. Sim kids don't need friends (especially if the friends don't grow up with them!) My preferred way of building a playable sims friendships is when they're at the toddler phase have them playing with the rabbit when Mom and Pops come home from work and then get any workmates coming home with them to "play with" the toddler. Even if friendship doesn't reach 50 the kid will still know a new sim to hassle on the phone when he's old enough and can build the relationship. I always get my kids immediately to say goodbye to any NPC kids who come home with them from school ... mostly because they only head straight for the teleprompter or pool table and clog the toilets and break the TV ... or dive in the pool and then hang around the ladder stopping anyone else getting out

 

I have one neighbourhood other than the Maxis created ones. Its called Mountain View (Its got a mountain, its got a view!). I hardly ever play the Maxi's neighbourhoods. When I do its just to test something out.

In my neighbourhood I have 4 "legacy" families, and 1 email challenge family, which I play randomly, but try to keep the generations the same. I mentioned in another post that I deleted all townies and create my own now. I think I've come to the limit on creating them now as I now have a large base of townies (maybe 50) to use to marry with my families.

My main fascination is to see the genetics of game born sims, and also to see how houses develop over time. I have some very weird looking houses, which have been built for functionality and not style ... quite interesting.

 

You looked in the right place, and yes, I did start my neighborhood from scratch (I didn't start playing the game with those premade neighborhoods, I started my own right from the start lol). I'm not sure why my file says that I have so many, I don't see that many Sims running around past my house...unless it's counting the Sims at Uni or something. I also was a late starter using the notownieregen mod...so...

 

I don't know. Someone mentioned using SimsPE to delete all the character files that I wasn't using, and said that I would have to go through every Sim's memory and wipe out those "met so-and-so" or "so-and-so did something" memories, or it wouldn't work. And by the time you have 800+ so-and-so's, it's a little much. I don't know which ones are the regular Townies and NPCs, and which ones are the ones generated when I packaged and moved those lots and deleted my binned sims. I just do not have the technical knowledge to do that, and I'm afraid to try. I have this history of screwing it up, you see. . .

 

My brain is still locked on that 583 number. I've been thinking that maybe I don't have so many files in one neighborhood because I set up 6 new neighborhoods altogether since I got the game last fall. Although I've played the game for hours and hours, no particular neighborhood got 100% of those hours, not even Baltimore, my favorite. I'm wondering if we were to punch a clock every time we go into and out of a neighborhood we'd find a correlation between the number of character files and the number of hours we spend there. Just a thought. Anyway, since I got the university and moved so many teens there, I've got a quite few more strangers roaming the sidewalks of Baltimore. I've haven't bothered to meet any of them--my families get too many phone calls as it is.