Widespot RFD: The Subhood

Intrigued by Widespot, but too fond of your custom hood to play anything else? Like Widespot, but concerned about genetic bottlenecks and longing to hook Mary and Penny up with Pascal and Lazlo? Don't care much about Widespot but sick to death of Bluewater Village? Love your megahood but think it's too small? Such a deal I have for you!

Welcome to Widespot RFD - the Subhood!

Widespot RFD is identical to the Widespot inhabited neighborhood found here at MTS : (which see for pictures of the inhabitants and glimpses of their complicated lives; I could copy/paste it all here but holey cheese, the bandwidth!) . Same five families - Land, Weiss, Beech, Hart, and Mann - in the same community full of the same soap opera, bad choices, cartoony sims, and tragic backstory. The only differences are that:

• The name of the neighborhood is Widespot RFD, to prevent confusion;
• The name of the folder is BGWS instead of PGWS, and all interior files referencing the folder name reflect this;
• I've fiddled with the storytelling folder;
• The folder should be installed in your game's program files rather than in your My Documents folder;
• Woody has a memory of pottytraining Skye! I fixed this in the main neighborhood, but you can't open subhoods in SimPE without attaching them to a main hood, so - if it bothers you, you're stuck fixing it yourself, sorry;
• OFB is required for use; and
• Instead of the highway improvements being theoretical, they connect Widespot and its desperate denizens to the neighborhood of your choice. Yes, now Widespot can be a bedroom suburb of Pleasantview, or Strangetown, or Belladonna Cove, or your own custom hood, and your favorite sims can experience The Drama for themselves!

Because the name, folder, and interior files have been changed, Widespot RFD should be safe to attach to any other Neighborhood, even if you are also running Widespot as a main hood. Attaching Widespot RFD to Widespot is not recommended. I don't know what would happen, but it doesn't strike me as wise.

Potential Concerns: Widespot, as you may know, is full of pregnant ladies, and the same is true of Widespot RFD. I have tested the subhood in each EP post-dating OFB, and found that in all cases the pregnancy controller correctly updated the NID of the father once the household containing the pregnant sim was opened. As far as I could tell, it happened at the same time as the assignment of Lifetime Wants, turn-ons, and so on, so opening the household and taking the game off pause, then saving, should be sufficient.

It is impossible to guarantee the safety of a pregnancy in a subhood, even in a patched game! In April 2015, Tarlia (of Tarlia's Cleaned Hoods) discovered that, while in an unpatched game a subhood pregnancy will almost certainly assign the wrong father on adding the subhood to a neighborhood, a small possibility exists in a patched game for the game to overcorrect and reassign a fixed pregnancy, thus breaking it again. This is most likely to happen in cases of alien pregnancy, as the circumstance is most likely to arise if the correct father has a very low NID. Therefore, it would be prudent to check the fathers' NIDs with your editing tool of choice, and correct them if necessary. Since the identities of the fathers are spoilers, instructions for checking the NIDs are included at the very end of the "Welcome to Widespot RFD" text file. As of April 2015, no one has reported any problems with any pregnancy in Widespot RFD, and the danger is a slight one, but forewarned is forearmed.

Installation Instructions:
In order to be available for use as a subhood, the BGWS folder must be placed in your game installation files rather than in your Neighborhoods folder. The usual filepath is C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate. When you find a folder named B001 (Bluewater Village) you're in the right place. Unzip or copy/paste the BGWS folder into the Res folder and you're good to go.

In order to make Widespot RFD accessible from your "select a shopping district" screen, it may be necessary either to temporarily remove Bluewater Village from this folder, or to install Mootilda's handy fix (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=420924) for the problem of the Big Blue Button that covers all but one choice. I recommend the latter as a simple, permanent fix for the problem.

Always remember to back up the neighborhood to which you intend to attach Widespot RFD, in case something goes wrong or you change your mind.

Thank you, and have fun pitting Rhett Hart against Don Lothario in the Life Complication Olympics!