I want to add a downtown to the Sedona neighborhood I am playing but I want it to look like a very different world, so I am planning some major alterations and I would be very appreciative if someone could tell me if I would be damaging my neighborhood with the following changes:

1. I want to pretty much bulldoze all the Downtown lots and put in my own buildings, parks etc. Why not just start with a second downtown map and build from there, would be the obvious question, and the answer is I want the Grand Vampires, Tricou teens etc. I think if I start with a second downtown, those characters will not be added , am I correct?

2. I also want to remove all the N'hood decor and re-place my own..with skyscrapers all clustered in the middle and clubs, residences and parks around the edges of the map. I want each lot sims will be visiting or living in to have those sky-domes and I know that the view will be cut off at a certain point. I am trying to plan things so that the lots I add are far from the densely packed center, such that when a lot view ends, it isn't so obvious that lots of distant objects are being cut from view by those sky-dome objects.

Not sure if I've done a good job explaining why I want to do these alterations but simply put, is there any reason I shouldn't bulldoze everything Downtown and start afresh if keeping the sims that come with Downtown is important to me?

I'm on a Mac btw, so use of modding programs is limited. No megahoods etc possible for me, is my understanding.

I don't know if that could bork your hood, but if you only want to keep the sims I think it would be easier and safer to start with a fresh map and just download the Triccous (or re-create them). I think the game spawns the same townies for custom downtowns, so you should still get the teens and the vampires and all that. But someone should confirm that because I'm not sure.

Bulldozing lots does not corrupt hoods unless there's graves on the lots. I suggest that instead of bulldozing the House of Fallen Trees and Gothier Green Lawns, you leave them in place and rebuild them, thus retaining the Tricou backstory as well as the Tricous.

If you add a custom downtown, you'll spawn master vampires, slobs, etc. and downtownie sims from the downtown templates. When I moved all the graves and deleted downtown, then added a custom one, I got a second set of dead Tricous and live Tricou teens, completely separate, and with family connections. But weird things happen in Drama Acres.

If you want to see if that works for you, back up your neighborhood, add a custom downtown, save the neighborhood, and look in SimPE (or any other means you may have of checking this) to see if you have character files for the Tricous, and whether they connect with each other. If the result is satisfactory, carry on. If not, restore the backup and proceed with the add-and-bulldoze plan.

Please report back, as the data on how downtowns work is confusing and we need more thorough testing.

Well, let's deal with this one first. The answer is No. The characters get added to custom downtowns too (as long as you don't have empty templates). Not sure if the relationship between the Tricou teens and Jon Tricou remain (never bothered myself since I don't find that interesting) but they get added because the downtown neighbourhood template used to generate the population is a separate thing from the downtown map.


No but watch out for deleting lots with residents (graves included, as I think some of the others have pointed out).

I don't think I can check character files, as SimPE is only for Windows and I'm not partitioning my hard drive.

So, it seems that there isn't any problem with my plan unless I delete lots with graves.

Thanks all, now to get back to rebuilding..

There must be a way for people who can't use SimPE to check character files! Though you don't actually need it here it'd be a good thing to find out how to do.

If you're checking for the existence or non-existence of character files, one could view the directory they're saved in (on Windows here, I don't know where it would be on Mac).
Backup the data, view the characters folder, note the number of files; start the game, add the downtown, then check the number of files in the character folder (if it's more than the previous number, then yes it added downtownies/etc).

To make sure you get the same amount of sims (i.e. all dead Tricous along with Tricou teens), you could do what jaytee suggested and try it with adding the regular downtown and adding a new one.

Which makes me wonder, what happens if you add a custom downtown and the dead Tricous get spawned? Do they have graves? And if not, could that cause problems?

I can tell you exactly what happens because I've done this test numerous times. Here from my last report:

Adding a Downtown
559 Sims +78
(452 SimDNA, 366 SWAFs, SCOR 168, SRels 3176)

Tricous (9) - adds these whether you use the standard downtown or not (Jonathon (or John Smith Tricou), Jennicor, Jennail, Nylissit, Kvornan, Kiernan, Fricorith, Gvaudin, Rainelle)
ME 1, FE 1, MA 2, FA 3, MTn 1, FTn 1

NPCs (15)
Gypsies (elder female 3)
Restaurant Hosts (elder 3)
Waiters (3)
Cooks (elder 3)
DJ (3)

Downtownies (54)
ME 3
FE 5
MA 10
FA 10
MTn 6
FTn 6
MC 3
FC 3
Vampires (count 2, countess 2)
Slobs (FA 1 MA 1)
Mr Big
Diva

This is, needless to say, without empty templates. The older Tricous have no graves but you can retrieve them with the batbox (which is what I did with the first Little Carping - the second Little Carping was made with empty templates and didn't have the Tricou's initially - I imported them along with all the other characters).