Is it safe to move the reporter into a household?

[nocomment]

Has anyone done this?  Are there any glitches or surprises?  I remember people having problems after moving in a headmaster.

[flowerchile]

Umm...dunno.. 
Why don't you bite the bullet, try it and let us know 

[Gwill]

I personally wouldn't risk it.

[travellersside]

I've heard - unsubstantiated rumour - that the reporter is okay to move in, but the person who posted it also said that in the home business, the ex-reporter would sometimes still take out a clipboard and study the business. I don't recall any mention that a real review came of this though.
Take this for what it is: A rumour that suggests that it may be a bad idea, but not necessarily disastrous.

[notveryawesome]

I never move in NPCs unless I plan to immediately kill them off, but that's just me.

[jsalemi]

I never move in NPCs unless I plan to immediately kill them off, but that's just me.

Only NPCs I ever moved in were maids, and haven't had any problems with them -- in fact, they make great spouses, since they come with maxed out cooking and cleaning skills.

[miros]

I haven't heard anything about drivers lately... Are they still missing most of their minds, so if you have them join the family, you can't interact with them?

[Jelenedra]

You mean they actually exist outside of their cars? I thought they were Johnny Cabs.


Five points to the one that gets the reference.

[idtaminger]

Johnny Cash?

[VacantBlue]

Was that in Total Recall?

[Jelenedra]

Yesh, that would be Total Recall.

*rewards VacantBlue with five points, but remember, the points don't matter.

[Marhis]

I have an evil mascot moved in a family; he acts normally (no more prank obsession and such), but every time I load that household, he is a cow and his personality is resetted to 0 nice/10 playful/etc..
I solved by editing in SimPE: Sim Description -> Other -> NPC type = 0x0000, then open character file and delete all the extra BHAV except init, main and load.

Another trick is age him back to child or toddler, then again re-age in adult. This usually resets the charachter to normal.

[rohina]

I had a guy get the reporter as a date from the fraudulent gypsy. He eventually married her and they had kids with no ill-effects. They never ran a business, though, so I can't comment on that part.

[miros]

I have an evil mascot moved in a family; he acts normally (no more prank obsession and such), but every time I load that household, he is a cow and his personality is resetted to 0 nice/10 playful/etc..
I solved by editing in SimPE: Sim Description -> Other -> NPC type = 0x0000, then open character file and delete all the extra BHAV except init, main and load.

Another trick is age him back to child or toddler, then again re-age in adult. This usually resets the charachter to normal.

Thank you!  I have a Sim married to a Llama Mascot, and the same thing happens!

[nocomment]

Thanks for all the input.  I guess I'll have to think about it.  rohina - I'm glad to hear you didn't have any problems.

[cwykes]

Pescado says never move in mascots, cheerleaders, headmasters and....  if there are others I forget them and couldn't find it on search. I did pick up a couple of quotes from Pescado on fixing them in SimPe in case there's anything you missed.

"Heh, if you want to hack things in SimPE, you can actually strip the mascot code from the character files. Replace all of the BHAVs, the OBJF, and the "Original GUID" from the OBJD with versions from a normal "non-mascot", and your sim should be back to normal."

"If you want to make a cheerleader or other NPC behave "Normal", what you need to do is to open up both a normal sim's character file and the affected NPC, and replace the "Fallback" and "Original" GUIDs from the NPC with the "normal" sim. That should cause the NPC to act normal."

I've avoided marrying all NPCs in case - no legacy challenge - The only one who married into a family still occasionally shows maid behaviour and puts that maid costume on.

[Marhis]

Good point! I've forgot the GUID thing. Oh, and I forgot BCONs too: normal sims doesn't have any.

I was curious and tried to look at these issues a little more, so I've noticed that Original GUID is always the GUID of corresponding NPC Template object in objects.package (rather obvious, so far), and the Fallback GUID is always the GUID itself (i.e. if your sim has GUID 0xACB500A5, his fallback guid is 0xACB500A5 as well).

Playable sims, townies and downtownies (non-npc) all have 0x7FD96B54 as Original GUID, which is actually the TemplatePerson GUID.

I've written down a complete list of NPC GUID (UNI & NL); not sure if it's useful some way, but since it's yet done, here it is:

Code:

EP      Template Name      GUID           Original GUID
-------------------------------------------------------
B       Bartender          0x0C8EE246     0xAC87048A
B       Boss               0xAC87048A     0xAC31502A
B       Burglar            0x4C0DE403     0x2C0D7EB9
B       Delivery Person    0x4CAD4A18     0x7FD96B54
B       Demo Dummy         0xACB58C44     0x7FD96B54
B       Exterminator       0x2C31398B     0xA82892C3
B       Firefighter        0xAC3ABE65     0x8C352DFD
B       Gardener           0xACAAB82A     0x7FD96B54
B       Handyman           0x4C6349E3     0x2C31398B
B       Headmaster         0x6CD7D0E3     0xAC87048A
B       Maid               0x4C5BA139     0xC61931DC
B       Nanny              0x4CB50CEB     0x4C5BA139
B       Paper Person       0xEC3EA3FF     0xCC3523CD
B       Person             0x7FD96B54     0x00000000
B       Pizza Dude         0x4CAD5157     0x7FD96B54
B       Police Officer     0xEC0DE507     0x4C0DE403
B       Register Clerk     0x4C4428BC     0x8C352E9B

EP1     Barista            0xCEAA3CA4     0x0E8507B8
EP1     Cheerleader        0x6EAF4A2A     0x8EA1056C
EP1     Chinese Deliv.     0xEE963CF9     0x4CAD5157
EP1     Coach              0x8E83C01F     0xCE83BFB3
EP1     EP1 Bartender      0x0E93A00E     0x4C5BA139
EP1     Evil Mascot        0xCEC0ADEE     0x0EAF64B9
EP1     Lunch Lady         0x0E8507B8     0x4C5BA139
EP1     Mascot             0x0EAF64B9     0x6EAF4A2A
EP1     Professor          0x8EA1056C     0x6E9D5360
EP1     Streaker           0x0E67FB80     0x4C5BA139

EP2     Chef               0x2F4C1856     0xEF2F2878
EP2     DJ                 0x4F583CAD     0x2F4C1856
EP2     Grand Vampyre      0xCF99CB2E     0xCF7A514E
EP2     Gypsy Matchmaker   0xEF594042     0xCEAA3CA4
EP2     Podium Guy         0xEF2F2878     0x0E93A00E
EP2     Server             0x6F4C183F     0xEF2F2878
EP2     EP2 Date - Diva    0xEF826029     0xCF7A514E
EP2     EP2 Date - Slob    0xCF7A514E     0x4F583CAD

I noticed also that according with original GUIDs, some NPC seems "derivative" (sort of) from other NPCs. At this point, it was funny enough to trace a "tree" of these pseudo-dependencies. I absolutely have no idea if all this stuff could have any purpouse, but just in case:

Code:

                     |Delivery Person
TemplatePerson ----> |Demo Dummy
                     |Gardener
                     |Pizza Dude


Boss --------------> |Bartender
                     |Headmaster


                     |Lunch Lady
                     |Nanny
Maid --------------> |Streaker
                     |EP1 Bartender ------> Podium Guy ------> |Chef ------> DJ -----> Dateable Slob -----> |Dateable Diva
                                                               |Server                                      |Grand Vampyre

[cwykes]

Interesting!  maybe I should try and fix my maid.  The trouble is with this stuff though, that there is always something you didn't find.  I posted two passing comments from Pescado.  When he really looks at something, he usually finds some other item that needs fixing else as well. The Electric Boogaloo thread about deleting sims has a new item and we've been talking about that on and off since the Sims came out.  Safer just not to move NPCs into your game in the first place.

[Gwill]

The original bug with the headmaster was fixed in one of the basegame patches I believe, and the phone hack double protects against it.
The problem there was that even though the neigbourhood did in fact have several headmasters, once one of them was living on the lot you could not invite any headmaster over to run the scenario and thus couldn't get your kids into private school.  It didn't crash the game or anything, but it was annoying. I had to kill off the poor guy to get my kids to school.

I imagine, if anything, that's the worst that could happen if you move in the reporter: No one will come to rate your business.

[Marhis]

I agree; I don't know anything about the code, but trying to figure out looking at the game during these months and years, it seems that Maxis/EA/whatever choose to manage playables/non playables at first through their selectability rather than their specific characteristics; this works, but it seems to me that is not very reliable.

Anyway, for sure, the best way is always backup your neighborhood often, and try to not crying too loud when you found that you scrambled everything and have to replan your stories, and re-play, and... oh, grrrr :/

[Ivy]

I imagine, if anything, that's the worst that could happen if you move in the reporter: No one will come to rate your business.

The game would be forced to create new reporters for you by default, since the reporters were taken out of the pool, same way the maids or any other NPC's do. 

I've had no ill effects from moving in reporters, and it actually fixed the buggy reporter scenario for me by forcing the game to use an alternate reporter.  My business owner was friends with the first two reporters actually from their persistant phone calls after they first met and they never came back to report again, after 40+ hours of real life game play.  I'd call that a bug, not just merely bad luck...lol.  After moving both reporters in, shortly thereafter the game spawned a 3rd one that no one had ever met before and the reporter scenario played out as it should have to begin with.  Neither of the former reporters have attempted to do any reporting-type activities now that they are no longer reporters.