How to prevent ugly townies in new hoods!

[mikedelaney16]

Originally Posted by Miros1

Now to visit a Uni community lot. Then to add more stores to each subhood. Then to add extra subhoods... dang, this is complicated!

Visiting a secret society seems to add a few dormies too.

[Miros1]

Even with nossregen, the minimum to perform the initiation is much higher than the one that JMP thinks it is! That's my goal for next semester... suck up to the Dormies in Ellen's dorm and get into the Secret Society!

Most recent experiment: I added more community lots to all 4 parts of the hood and sent my co-ed to 5 lots scattered across the main 'hood and the shopping district. This resulted in the creation of a mascot, a cheerleader, and 5 Townies. All 5 Townies are teens, so methinks I need to add the Lot Debugger to my carefully selected set of downloads...

[Miros1]

Poor Ellen worked so hard at sucking up to the 4 Dormies living in her dorm she got a D and spent the next semester on Probation! Only two more Sims generated: cow mascot and coach. Everyone hates the cow and has gotten into multiple fights with her.

[Greg]

Do the dormies whom you are befriending have to be members of the SS?

[Miros1]

Yes, but I read somewhere that the first group of Dormies generated without templates are automatically members of the Secret Society, so I'm assuming that her dorm mates are the designated initiators.

Silly woman got romantically involved with 2 of them, now she's down to 2 dormie/potential SS friends!

(If your Sims don't sleep in their undies, they don't get left standing in the middle of the road almost naked...)

[mikedelaney16]

In my experiments, if you don't have enough townies, the game has your regular sims visit the community lots over and over and over, all that lobster and drinking (possibly several times for every time your current playable is at the lot) makes your regular sims fat, very quickly.

Before I added new downtownies last night, some of my regular sims would be seen to arrive, eat food, have a drink, leave, exiting stage left and return entering stage right within 30 seconds and do it all over again.

When I checked them this morning, some of them were seriously obese, which they weren't when I added them to the game. Mind you, I suppose it doesn't help that they live on extremely minimal lots, in fact 3 of them have absolutely nothing on their lot.

MikeD

[Miros1]

Well, I've only got 2 Sims, one adult and one college student. But yes, when the college student visits the non-Uni community lots, there's Jocasta...

The townies recycle quickly too -- Jocasta's boyfriend, Caleb, ran off and came back about 4 different times in one visit!

[mikedelaney16]

Make them selectable and check their fitness levels. You could be in for a shock.

MikeD

[Miros1]

Lol, so if Caleb marries Jocasta, his belly will bulge over the top of his pants immediately after the ceremony?

I'm still testing, so I really don't care what happens to most of the townies.

[mikedelaney16]

Bulge?

Lol, mine went way beyond a mere bulge. The bar graph had no blue in it at all anymore and the fat icon was lit up. Nope, they weren't just a bit overweight.

[Miros1]

I've updated the first post with (hopefully) coherent consistent instructions.

To continue from MikeD's last post:

There's a hack called fitnessforall that will cause your non-controlled Sims to appear fat or fit as they eat or use the exercise equipment. I wasn't using it in my experiments because I wanted to keep the number of hacks down.

[Miros1]

Could someone tell me where the default vacationers are stored so I can add them to the instructions in the first post?

[Greg]

That's the first time that I have heard of something about any sim, other than relationships, being changed by autonomously visiting outside the home.

[Miros1]

I think communitylotskilling also lets them learn logic from playing chess and whatnot on community lots. Might be just controllables tho.

I think bad makeovers "stick" to the uncontrollable victims too. Not completely sure, since none of my Sims actually owns a salon!

[Zirconia Wolf]

I have no idea where the vacation peeps are hiding (don't have BV installed yet) but I have to belive it would be in somekinda of character file in the newly created BV folder, as vacation people are so "tied in" to the various locations (as far as local customs/actions, etc)

Hmmm, does this mean that BV will or will not use the default replacement templets in a players Downloads folder to draw vacationers from??

The only file I have (currently) cleared out of my game is the UserData\Neighborhoods\N001\Characters one. Does this explain the fact that in my 3 all-me-created hoods, whenever I take a Sim to a "Dowtown" type hood I see lots of "other" Sims, but in a "Shopping" type hood I only see the other "playable" Sims and no computer generated ones???? In short, I seem to have only Downtownies & no Townies in those hoods. I also noticed a college proffesser wandering the streets of my "Downtown" lots & the friggen Gypsy showed up & even rang the doorbell at the dance club!

I haven't played at all with the Uni hoods in those me-created base hoods, but if I have college proffessors I figure I might have Dormies??

In short; whatintheheckhaveIdonetomypoorgame & is there anyway to fix it?

(Would it be maybe be possible to use the Simlogical Bush to make some of those Downtowines into Townies?? )

**EDITED TO ADD**

I popped into Canyon City (one of my all-me-created base hoods) that currently contains only the following 4 playable Sims:

Cyd C. Roseland
Nina Nelson (a former NPC garden club lady who is now living with Cyd)
Sandee Yuppie (a CAS "test" Sim living across the street from Cyd & Nina)
&
Thomas Lycos (offical EA download, complete with his own house)

"Playable" pets (which aren't counted by any in-game counter of mine) are:

Porthos C. Roseland (lives with Cyd & Nina)
Daquari, Sasparila (Danny & Sarah) with pups Margarita, Tequilla & Merlot (all living with Sandee)
&
Lycos, who- of course- came with Thomas & the Lycos Hub house

While there (at the Lycos Hub, actually) I used the Cenus Tool to checkout the ages of all the NPC's in the hood & found that Young Adults were present & accounted for, so at least I know that my hoods are drawing Downtownies & Dormies just fine. Did another test visit to a communtiy lot in my "Shopping" district & still only had my playables (and the cashiers) present.

Hmmmm...

[Miros1]

Yes, since you left the Downtownie generator files in, you've got a ton of the original ugly stupid Maxis Downtownies.

I'd just let the townies slowly regenerate. According to my tests (which I conducted before I started recommending this process):

You get one new townie for each visit to a community lot unless you use notownieregen.
You get one new downtownie for each visit to a downtown community lot unless you use the appropriate noregen hack.
You get enough dormies to fill the dorm that your playable has moved into. I assume there's a few extra.

As a rough estimate, without nostrayregen, you get a new stray every couple Sim days. This is rough because I've played exactly once without nostrayregen. I didn't get the whole horde of Maxis strays, because I had the P001 folder zipped up...

BTW, I seriously recommend zipping up the P001 folder (and removing the nostrayregen for a session or two if you really want a few strays)... fewer strays means each one shows up more often and actually gives your Sim the chance to befriend and adopt a particular stray.

My reason for asking where the files are hiding: I need an exact answer so I can add it to my first post. I'm growing increasingly disillusioned by BV, so I might not buy it ever.

[Miros1]

Hm, I know I usually went to community lots in the main hood, but I thought I went to some in the shopping districts too. I'll have to check my notes.

The best way would be to remake the hoods, but that's a pain... If you decide to do this, jam all your playables onto one lot and pack them up. Then delete the whole hood, zip up the Downtownie and Dormie generators, make a new hood and move your playables back in.

In regards to why I'm disillusioned with BV: I'm refering to Jase's 2 comments on the InTeen boards... 81K lines of new code, and it's full of bugs of the type you'd expect from a newbie modder, but unlike a newbie modder's products, you can't just remove them and ask for an update!

I suspect if you zip up the relevant directory full of BV NPCs and vacationers, that would much improve the initial set up of the vacation subhoods... of course, I'm the only maniac who would do such a thing!

[Zirconia Wolf]

Actually, since my Townie troubles seem to only be a problem in my 3 "all custom" hoods, and since none of them have more than 4 playable Sims (not including playable pets) I'm tempted to give the "pack 'em up" idea a try. I'll take slow generation over quick defaults anytime! Plus, I've encountered an unexpected problem with 2 lots I packed up from the default Downtown (Cold Issue Clothing & Lucky Shack Cards) causing crashouts when I tried to enter them in other hoods. I've since pulled them out of my Lots bin.

Is there a reason my playables need to be on one lot for packaging, aside from just being quicker?

Will this be a problem when it comes to moving them back in, as far as keeping their "correct" last names?

Since Thomas & Lycos came with their own lot (which I kind of want to keep) can I just let them be deleted with the hood & then re-installing the relevant Sims2Pack file? (Yes, it's been checkout with the clean installer! )

Do I need to be concerned about the few NPC's that my playables do know & have memories/relations with? (One of my playables has the hots of the local Gypsy, for example. )

[Miros1]

Putting them on one lot is just to maintain relationships between Sims that live on different lots. If your Sims just have good relationships within the family, don't worry about moving them, just pack 'em up!

When you unpack them, make sure you uncheck all Sims not resident on the lot, like the gypsy, the maid, Thomas and Lycos, etc.

Don't forget to zip up all the Character folders (or all the Letter00Digit folders)!

[Zirconia Wolf]

Just curious: does the Bluewater Village folder effect all "shopping" suburbs (like the N001 folder is the "templet" for Townies no matter the hood), or is it just specific to Bluewater Village itself?


(I don't think you're a maniac at all for the zipping-BV-folder idea! When I am finally able to install it, I'm thinking I'll give it a try! Hey; that's why we all have backups, right?? )