Dangling SWAF deletion tutorial?

[buddha pest]

This makes me ask.  Is it then possible to create a new neighborhood, with an attached Downtown, without having any Vampires?  'Cause for me that would be a good thing.

I think it's possible if they don't regenerate. But I have no idea if they do.

This morning I added a downtown to Strangetown finally. I immediately quit the game and went into SimPe and deleted all the downtownies and thier SWAFs.

I saw that 4 Grand Vamps, Mr. Big, The Diva, The Slobs, and some restaurant personnel had all already been generated. I just left them there, but it'd be interesting to know for future reference if they regenerate or not.

[J. M. Pescado]

Vampirism never spreads if you never let your simmies become friends with the Grand Vamp (or boolprop them).

Untrue. Vampires can and will potentially bite anyone, although their target selection is restricted a bit with vampirefixes. They probably shouldn't respawn if you purge them and have antiredundancy in place, though. Let me know how that goes.

[jsalemi]

I thought the antiredunancy just keep the game from respawing multiples of a particular class of NPC, not completely prevent any of the class from being spawned.

[JadeEliott]

Also, anti-redundancy is still in testing, at last look. Is it going to be moved from there any time soon? I have it in my game, and about to try it out when making a new hood.

[J. M. Pescado]

I thought the antiredunancy just keep the game from respawing multiples of a particular class of NPC, not completely prevent any of the class from being spawned.

It prevents the spawning of all but necessary NPCs. However, I don't think the Grand Vampires qualify as "necessary" NPCs, meaning if you remove them for whatever reason, either because you're on a vampire-slaying campaign, or because you've taken control of vampire society yourself, they will not respawn in an endless train.

[jrd]

I saw that 4 Grand Vamps, Mr. Big, The Diva, The Slobs, and some restaurant personnel had all already been generated. I just left them there, but it'd be interesting to know for future reference if they regenerate or not.

Those aren't generated per sé, they come from the D001 template, just like the dead Tricous and a full assortment of downtownies.
Some of the DT lots actually have a cook standing in them if you edit them.

[J. M. Pescado]

I recall they happen even if you generate the neighborhood without using the D001, though.

[jsalemi]

Yes, they do -- I built a custom hood with a custom downtown (no maxis templates used at all), and the downtown NPCs all generated themselves just fine.  The vamps are stalking, Crumplebottom is whacking, and the rich folks are preening.

[jrd]

Hmm. Maybe I should stop DACcing, or start doing a DAC before adding the subhoods.

[Jelenedra]

Aren't you supposed to DAC each time you load up a subhood? I know you're supposed to do the main hood THEN the college subhood....

[jrd]

I usually create the main 'hood, add all subhoods, and then DAC.
Then I clean in SimPE, and start playing. I have some CAS templates I now use for townies, and I let the game generate NPCs on demand. I do create the special townies manually (1 of each gender).

[Jelenedra]

Hmm, see this is why we need a new tutorial. Because the one here in the site says to make the neighborhood, DAC then add one subhood at a time and delete the character files.

Which reminds me, no one answered my question earlier. Do you HAVE to use SimPe to clean up character files if you cleaned out the character files via the EA Games Folder like the tutorial tells you to?

[jrd]

As long as they're all gone anyway? Nope. But since you're going to remove all SDNA anyway, might as well delete the default NPCs' SDSCs to be sure no problems can arise.

[Jelenedra]

Is there a fast way in SimPe to nuke everything? Or do you have to go sim by sim?

[jrd]

You /don't/ go Sim by Sim.

You do the DAC in the hood, save and quit TS2, and then in SimPE you select and delete ALL the SWAFs, the remaining SDCSs, SDNA, and relationships.
Save and quit SimPE, and you're done with cleaning.

[Jelenedra]

*obviously hasn't done it before*

Do you go through the neighborhood browser and pull up the neighborhood and is it all... just there to delete?

[jrd]

OK...

Open the 'hood file in SimPE. Do not select anything on the left (keep it on All Resources).
In the right pane, sort by type (click on the type header), it should look like this:



Select all the Sim DNA, Sim description, sim relationships. Delete them.

[Jelenedra]

Ah. Easy Peasy then.

[JadeEliott]

Jordi, I have the very latest version of SimPe. Why don't you select anything in the left pane?

[jrd]

Because a bug in SimPE prevents you from deleting all items of a kind. If you pick 'Sims DNA' in the left, you can't select and delete all SDNA entries. (It may look like you can, but in fact you'll delete nothing).

Plus it's faster to work from the top level, since you can delete all unwanted entries in one go instead of one type at a time (if the bug wasn't there).

[gypsylady]

Thank you Jordi this is what a ding bat like me needed to understand how to do this properly. Hits the thanks button many times in your honor Also hits it many times for Jelenedra for asking the right questions to get the right answers

[Jelenedra]

Hah, thanks. Whoo for being a SimPe idiot!

[JadeEliott]

Jordi, thanks for that answer. Another one:

Until you enlightened me, I was deleting SWAFs etc the wrong way. But I never noticed they were not gone. I would open the hood file again to make sure everything took and nothing. They were gone. I am using the latest simpe.

So perhaps this bug was fixed? How do I know they are NOT really gone if they look deleted?

[jrd]

It may be a bug in the development release (0.59), I don't use 0.58 myself.
In .59 at least they will re-appear on opening the file again after closing, proving they were not actually deleted.

[Soylent Sim]

I'm using .58, and while simply trying to delete all the entries post-DAC alone doesn't properly remove them, I find that if I delete and then save before closing, the files are gone.