Empty dorms in custom hood

[Clashfan]

It seems to me that dormies are assigned to a specific dorm and they always remain there. Meaning if I move a Sim into a 6 room dorm the game assigns the other rooms from the dormie pool. Those 5 dormies will forever be attached to that dorm for subsequent generations.

This is how it seems to work to me in game anyway.

I built a custom hood and have the nodormieregen mod from MATY, along with all the other non Sim spawning mods.

I built and played a few dorms then later bulldozed them and built new ones and so forth.
I'm in the 4th generation to be sent to this Uni and in the completely new dorm no dormies show up to take the open rooms.

I experimented and aged up a townie teen and then converted them to a dormie went back into the lot and the new Sim showed up as the sole dormie, there were still 5 empty rooms.

So it seems I've depleted my dormie pool.

How do I get the dormie's that were previously assigned to a dorm that now no longer exists to be put back in that pool?

Would it work to summon them to a lot make them part of the family and then convert them back to a dormie?

I really don't want to increase my population just to be able to have full dorms. I also don't want to majorly bork up my game either.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.

[Mootilda]

Interesting question. Did a small bit of research and here's my initial observations: In the memories of a Young Adult Townie, you will find a hidden memory named "[invisible]Token - Door Key", with a value which is the (decimal) Instance number of a dormitory Lot Description. Here's my suggestion:

First, backup now, just in case this doesn't work.

1) Open the university package in SimPE. Determine the (decimal) Instance numbers of the Lot Descriptions for all valid dormitories. Anything not on this list has probably been deleted and the dormies should be available to be reassigned.

2) Open the neighborhood package in SimPE. For each Young Adult Townie, look for the Door Key memory and check whether the value is one of the valid dorms. If not, remove the Dorm Key memory. Commit, save and exit.

3) Run the game and see whether these dormies are now available for your new dorm.

[Clashfan]

Thanks for the help. I think your method would probably work however I'm on a Mac so SimPe is not an option. Makes it frustrating to try and fix stuff like this let me tell you. I do know that the method I was suggesting does not work. I've already tried it out and restored to a back up.

Seems I'm just going to have to do without that new dorm or give in and create some more dormies. This is what I get for being a bad builder and having to demolish a couple of first attempts.

[Mootilda]

I knew that you were on a MAC, but assumed that you could run SimPE. Do the techniques in this article not work for SimPE?
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=366580

How many universities are attached to your neighborhood? How many dorms did you remove? Any idea of the number of dormies that would need to be fixed? Also, do you know approximately how many young adult townies you have in your neighborhood? If the numbers aren't too bad, I might be willing to make the changes for you. However, I'll have to do further research to determine whether I'd need your entire neighborhood folder (including the Characters folder) or just the two neighborhood and university packages. [Update: only the neighborhood package is changed; the character files do not change. However, it may be impossible to find all young adult townies without the character files.]

In fact, if you have access to a Windows machine, you might be able to do this yourself, even if the Windows machine doesn't have the Sims 2 installed on it. I'm not sure whether SimPE requires the game to function, but many of my programs can be run on a machine which doesn't have the game installed. You just (backup, then) copy over the files that you need to change, make the changes, then copy the files back to your MAC.

[Clashfan]

Thanks so much Mootilda! That link was very informative, I actually have an old PC laptop with Windows that I don't use for anything. Was thinking of getting rid of it but it's more than 5 years old so by today's standards I can't imagine anyone would want to buy it.

Seems I just need to get a network cable to hook it to my MAC and I would be able to run SimPe on it. Which would be really amazing since it gives you so many more options for tweaks and fixes for Sims.

I only have one University attached to this hood, I removed 3 dorms. The first was one I downloaded that while cool looking just didn't function properly, the next 2 were ones I built that ended up being too large to be practical. The total number of dormies that were assigned is around 12 more or less.

For the current dorm in question I only needed about 5 more dormies so I just bit the bullet and added them. For the future though I will explore the Windows option in order to use SimPe . Being an avid player it really is a tool that one needs for the game. Heck I'm just excited I might be able to go in an properly bin some of the CC I have that the original creator didn't bin.

It's amazing how many computer skills I've had to acquire since I started playing Sims. Building the custom hood from clean and empty templates was just the first challenge.

Thanks so much for help it was really well...helpful. :D