Sims 2 Custom Neighborhood Tutorial (Part 2

In the first part of this series we covered planning our Sims 2 custom neighborhood – the map, districts, buildings, and residents. In this part, we’re covering how to create a completely empty neighborhood free of Maxis Sims that we can populate with our own creations.

To do this, we’ll disable the Maxis townies and NPCs that dump into every single newly created neighborhood. This is optional, but recommended if you don’t want the same old Maxis townies (Sandy Bruty, Benjamin Long, etc.) in your custom ‘hoods.

Contents hide

3.2 Pets Stealth ‘Hood

3.3 Seasons Stealth ‘Hood

3.4 Bon Voyage Stealth ‘Hood

3.5 Free Time Stealth ‘Hood

3.6 Apartment Life Stealth ‘Hood

4 How to Install Templates

5 Necessary Mods

6 Create a New ‘Hood

7 Test Your Neighborhood

8 Conclusion

If you prefer, I made a video tutorial showing you how to backup your files and install the empty templates (see below). But I will also outline the steps here in this post.

Empty Templates

To stop the Maxis Sims from populating in your newly created custom ‘hood, you need to download and install an empty neighborhood template for Pleasantview and empty stealth ‘hoods for several others. These templates erase the Maxis Sims.

Pleasantview is the only ‘hood that requires an empty template because the game always uses its townies for new ‘hoods. Every new neighborhood created in the game gets the same set of Pleasantview townies.

The empty template stops this from happening by erasing these Sims from the game files. (This does not impact your current neighborhoods, – only the ones you create after installing the empty template.)

Stealth ‘Hoods

Stealth ‘hoods are the neighborhoods in The Sims 2 that you can’t select at the neighborhood selection screen, but they attach to every newly created ‘hood and dump universal Sims and NPCs into them.

For your reference, here is a list of the stealth ‘hoods and what they add to each neighborhood:

PETS – Adds the same set of stray pets to the neighborhood, PLUS the Roseland and Crittur families to your family bin.
WEATHER – (Seasons) Adds the garden club Sims, PLUS the Ramaswami and Ottomas families to your family bin.
EXOTIC DESTINATIONS – (Bon Voyage) Adds the tourist townies, PLUS the Traveler family to your family bin.
HOBBIES – (Freetime) Adds the hobby lots and hobby instructors, PLUS the Picaso and Cooke families to your family bin.
MAGIC – (Apartment Life) Adds magic lots, good and evil witch NPCs, social group townies, PLUS the Gavigan, Goodie, and Newsom families to your family bin.

As you can see, that’s a lot of unnecessary Sims that you probably don’t want in your custom neighborhoods. But, if you DO decide you want them later for some reason, meetme2theriver created stealth ‘hoods as subhoods.

Backup Game Files

Before you start this process, BACK UP YOUR GAME FILES. This is not negotiable. If you ever decide you want to play with the Maxis Sims again in the future, you can easily add them back in as long as you back up the original files.

NOTE: Installing empty templates WILL NOT erase the Sims you already have in your game. If you are currently playing Pleasantview, it will not be affected. All your Sims will remain there. The empty templates only stop the Sims from being dumped into NEW neighborhoods you create AFTER installing them.

Here are instructions for how to backup all the files you’ll be replacing with empty templates. If you ever want to go back to the originals, just place the backed-up file into its original location.