Make Your Own Default Townies, Downtownies, Dormies, and Adoptable Pets!

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After tidying your game so you don't get the ugly Maxis Townies anymore, wouldn't it be nice to have a pool of attractive premade Townies and Dormies which automatically appears in each new hood?  Wouldn't you like a puppy or kitten for each Sim that really wants one?  Yes, you can have this!

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...

Needed resources:

• Argon's Townie Brick -- Only essential for making Vacation locals.  Other types of Sims can be made with:
• One of Inge Jones' Teleporters -- Choose the appropriate one for your game.  Other creators have made similar items; just make sure they can convert playable Sims to Townies and Downtownies.  Warning: Does not correctly associate Vacation locals with their neighborhoods.
• Christianlov's Baby Pet Creator -- Christianlov has a new site!  The Baby Pet Creator is on page 5 of Pets.

Recommended Resources:

• 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.  Argon has also figured out how to create additional face templates and several creators have made templates that don't replace the Maxis ones.
• Boiling Oil's names hack. Boiling Oil has merged and cleaned up several "better names" hacks.  Thousands of names -- much less chance for duplications!
• 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.
• "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.
• Townies and NPCs can generate with Glasses/Facial Hair
• If you have Apartment Life, you need Cyjon's Townie Apartment Residents hack to avoid the use of Social Group members.

Definitions: "Drag" means place the mouse cursor over an icon, hold down the left mouse button, move the mouse to the new location of the file, such as a different folder window, and release the mouse button.  Personally, I prefer to "right drag" using the right mouse button, so I can choose "Move" or "Copy" from the context menu, but that's my preference.  A "context menu" is the menu that appears when you right click on icons or links.

Instructions:

1. Open up My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods and drag your N001 folder to a safe place, like your Desktop or the top of your My Documents folder. Leave the Neighborhoods folder open.
2. Start the game and create a new neighborhood.
3. Alt-Tab to the Neighborhoods folder to make sure the new 'hood is N001. Leave the Neighborhoods folder open and switch back to the game.
4. Make at least one Sim and move them onto a lot which contains the Teleporter and the Baby Pet Creator.   You can also spawn random Sims this way:
   1. Use boolprop testingcheatsenabled true.
   2. Shift-click the mailbox to mass produce random Sims. 
   3. Save after each good batch; leave the lot without saving to discard the ugly ones.
5. Make some adoptable pets: (with help from Zirconia Wolf)
   1. If necessary, make a couple adult dogs and cats in CAS or shift-click the mailbox to make your first batch of puppies or kittens. 
   2. Use the Baby Pet Creator to make some  puppies and kittens.  I prefer the the Baby Pet Creator, because it lets you choose "parents" for your new adoptables.  Personally, I like recessives and family ties.
   3. Use the teleporter to put them all in the adoption pool or give the Sim a phone or cell phone to call the Pet Adoption Service.  If you use the Pet Adoption Service, that exact animal control officer will appear in all your 'hoods. 
6. Use the teleporter to make the Sims either Townies or Downtownies.
7. Add a campus. Make some YA Sims and move them onto a rental lot containing a teleporter. Use the teleporter to make them Townies.  Remember, a Dormie is a YA Townie. 
8. You may repeat steps 4 through 7, but be sure there are no Sims living on the lots when you are finished.
9. Quit the game.
10. Open up Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods.  Yes, that's Program Files, not My Documents.  If you have not yet zipped up the N001 folder, do it now. You should also have the Neighborhoods folder from step 1 still open.
11. Delete the Storytelling and Thumbnails folders from the new N001 folder.
12. Drag the new N001 folder from My Documents/.../Neighborhoods to Program Files/.../Neighborhoods.
13. Drag your original N001 folder back to My Documents/.../Neighborhoods.
14. If you preserved the puppy and kitten portion of the Maxis adoption pool, you probably want to delete them from the Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Pets/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/P001/Characters folder to prevent duplicates in future neighborhoods.  I assume they're already zipped up against future needs.

This will not affect your current neighborhoods, as long as steps 1 and 13 are performed.

Note: You may use steps 4 through 7 individually to add Townies, Downtownies, Dormies, or Adoptable Pets to an existing neighborhood.

Note: You may also use SimSurgery to copy some of your favorite Sims onto the randomly generated Sims.

Note: Since I've adopted Cyjon's Townie Apartment Residents hack, I won't be exploring hand creation of Social Group members.

Note: If you'd like some of your Townies to be related to some of your Dormies, create the family including the prospective Dormies as teens in the main neighborhood.  Move them onto the lot, send the teens to college using the phone or the button on the Neighborhood screen, then make the rest of the family into Townies.  Dont forget to make the YAs created this way into Dormies in step 7!