Default Medieval Townies & Base Game NPC's for all.

[vcline]

You asked for suggestions for future NPC sets.  How about Western/frontier/pioneer?  All About Style has some very nice pioneer and Victorian clothes. Also a sci-fi one would be good, and a Regency/Victorian.

[Aggie]

Oooh, I'd love to see a Western one as well.

[morriganrant]

1. My NPC's townies will only generate on the creation of a new Neighbourhood (like the Pleasant View townies do ATM) and if you remove them from the pool any new ones spawned by the game will not be in theme.
2. Once a Neighbourhood has been created you do not need to put my N001 back in for it to work. Created Neighbourhoods stand alone (as Denimjo said).

I was assuming that if a townie died with this in they would be generated using the theme of this template. So if any townies of this new themed hood die then the game will generate an ea townie that i then have to redress?
Any townies in my own custom will still be re-generated with normal clothes even with this hood in?

[akatonbo]

In a completely unmodified game, when you create a brand new neighborhood, the game looks at Pleasantview as the source for a set of PRE-GENERATED townies and certain NPCs (for example, the maids -- you've probably seen Kaylynn Langerak in your custom 'hoods before, right?). All downtownies, dormies, non-basegame NPCs, and replacements for whatever gets killed off are generated randomly.

With this template, there are no Pleasantview townies and NPCs -- no Benjamin Long, no Goopy Gilscarbo, no Meadow Thayer, no Kaylynn, and so on. Instead, you get MM's custom medieval ones, who are ALSO (like the Maxis Pleasantview ones) precreated. Any later generation of new townies/NPCs is still random, however, and this download doesn't modify the random generation. That would be a totally separate and more involved mod.

The best way to avoid generation of random out-of-theme townies would most likely be to use notownieregen, and if you later need more townies, you can create them by hand and townify them with Inge's shrub.

(This sounds awesome, btw, MM, and I'm salivating over the idea of a sci-fi themed one, though I admit that I am allergic to shopping lists and thus would probably want to make my own instead.)

[Madame Mim]

akatonbo: Thanks. I have a list of suggestions that so far contains Army Base, Victorian, Flapper, Colonial America (which is also the cowboy one I assume), Planet of the Cats (which is just one of my old hoods upgraded), Alien Planet (which is the Sci Fi one I think) and all Service Sims are 'bots (but that one isn't base game compatible and I'm not sure if it'd work).

As for new NPC's and townies. There are four of all NPC's (barring the checkout chicks of which there are six) in an effort to stave off an EA Sim influx, but you really do need antiredundancy and notownieregen. And Inge's shrub is a must if you wish to top up the townie pool.

I think I like the cowboy one the most for the moment. So I'd better start researching where I can get all the bits I need from.

[jsalemi]

Colonial America (which is also the cowboy one I assume), ....

 I think I like the cowboy one the most for the moment. So I'd better start researching where I can get all the bits I need from.

Nope, colonial and cowboy are about 50 - 100 years apart.  The Colonial era generally refers to the 100 years or so up to and including the Revolutionary War, from the late 1600s to the late 1700s.  The Cowboy era started with the western expansion, and really took off in the mid 1800s.  Its generally considered to have ended in the early 1900s, though some states are still in their own 'cowboy era' today.

[Aggie]

I think I like the cowboy one the most for the moment. So I'd better start researching where I can get all the bits I need from.

I'd really love these clothes if they weren't wearing freaking high heels! Do you know of any cow wrangler that would wear such footwear? 

[Madame Mim]

It's silly to ask me - I'm an Australian. So you'd better hope I remember my old movies correctly. 

edit: I see what you mean about those, but they're also a little more modern than I'm aiming for in any case. Unless you were hoping for modern cowboy - in which case you may be completely out of luck as I don't even have old movies to go on to do modern western America.

question: politically incorrect one at that: am I making the maids, etc black?

[BastDawn]

question: politically incorrect one at that: am I making the maids, etc black?

No.  They are hired, not purchased.

[J. M. Pescado]

Plus in those days, slavery hadn't taken on racial overtones and was an equal-opportunity institution. If you wound up on the losing side of a battle, you could be sold into slavery.

[morriganrant]

Plus in those days, slavery hadn't taken on racial overtones and was an equal-opportunity institution. If you wound up on the losing side of a battle, you could be sold into slavery.

Indeed, people tend to forget that part. Not only were there white slaves but there were black slave owners. If you managed to fall into financial ruin with debt it was very likely that you would either become a slave or an indentured servant.

[jrd]

IIRC, for example England used to enslave even its own subjects well into recorded history. It's a good way to end a rebellion: remove citizinship from the rebellious population!  Also helps demotivate those who fight on, if they know their mothers, wives, sisters etc. are being sold on the market. Wasn't this one of the atrocities under the Cromwell regime?
Not to mention the treatment of the  Irish and Scottish by the English.

And most black slaves were caught, transported to the coast, and sold to muslims and later Europeans, by other blacks.

[Madame Mim]

OK, so multi-coloured people of all social levels.

So far I've been through MTS2 and All About Style in search for period clothing - and some of the stuff I've picked up is stretching it a bit. Can anybody else think of places for appropriate clothing - especially male elders and children. Appropriate excercise wear would be a help too. At the moment I've got them all jogging in their bathers (which is marginly preferable to jogging in your undies, but only just).

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't think that people of that period typically engaged in what we would term "exercise". Their daily lives WERE a form of exercise.

[Madame Mim]

None of which helps when the game starts jogging Sims past doorways in their underthings. Makes me look to see where the screaming mob with pitchforks and tar is - and then I'm disapointed when I don't see them. 

Elder male formal wear is a bit thin on the ground too. At the moment I have EA standard and a tuxedo with tails. Not appropriate for the garder to switch into if he's at a wedding. Ah well. I suppose I could do what I did to get bathers as exercise wear and resort to tagging other peoples work for multiple purposes. It looks damned silly that the gardener has anything to change into for the wedding anyway, let alone that it's a long tailed tuxedo.

[Marhis]

Awww, pity I couldn't use it for my actual hood, that would be ubershiny. But I'm quite sure I will make another one, and your hood is definitely perfect. Thank you very much for that.

Perhaps it may be of interest that for my hood (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8877.0.html) I've made a lot of template replacements for NPCs uniforms, so they always have the correct clothes, even the newly spawned ones (some NPCs tend to revert to original template clothes). I don't know if it uses the same system of Paladin's tool, as I made them by hand, but it works. I don't use texture/mesh replacement, only the linking of resources (I hope my words make sense).

At the present time it's still a work in progress, but could it be useful somehow?

[Madame Mim]

Actually your words don't as I am very point and click at anything to do with clothing. It probably does use the same method as Paladins tool (you must be changing the same things after all). He's just made it point and click so that everybody can use it.

I basically ram them into different clothing by changing their ages. For most Sims this works fine, but I have found that it does not matter whether you make a headmaster adult or elder (male or female) you cannot change what they will turn up at your house in, and maids cannot be teenagers or they will not be able to get out of the car when they get to your house.

I like your hood I've put it in my game to try. But I haven't done much with it yet. I thought about making themed addons (like Cwykes's Sedona) for all the 'additional' Neighbourhoods but have put it into the later pile while I'm fiddling with this.

Thanks for the link to your Neighbourhood. I always like to find new ones to read or try.

[jmtmom]

Finally got around to trying it. The NPC's & Townies look great. Just a few observations:

Pets and Seasons NPC's appear to be the same as the EA defaults. I wasn't sure if they were included or not, or perhaps I missed something on the download list.

I'm not awesome enough to know if changing the vehicles that drop off the NPC's and the sims in their new homes is possible. That would be wonderful.

Not that I would make such a dumb mistake  but if anyone thinks it's not working, make sure you changed the N001 in the Program files folder, not the Documents folder. 

I really like the idea of having separate theme based NPC's and townies in different neighborhoods. This process is much easier to me than swapping out different NPC packages.

[Madame Mim]

I'm glad to hear it's working now.

The Pets & Seasons NPC's and, in fact, the Uni, OFB and Nightlife NPC's come in different places. To change them I'd have to get into and alter their templates as well. I plan to do it at some stage but it seemed more logical to get people interested in the purely basegame concept first.

I think some other people have done vehicle replacements. The two ways I can think of (and have never tried so I don't even know if I have the skill or not) are by job replacements (which wouldn't fix the bus or nanny, etc) or by overrides. It's not something I'm really interested in.

[SIMplyLisa]

cute toddler boys cowboy and indian outfit
http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=29015

[Madame Mim]

SIMplyLisa - thanks for those clothes links. There's very few native american clothes out there so those will definately help.

WildWildWest is almost finished - I just have to generate and clothe some repo men and then I can make the townies, but I need to ask. Are you all alright with standard Headmasters or do you want me to make them as teenagers? The problem is that my method of changing their clothing (and making it stick) is to change their ages. If the age group of the NPC has no work clothing then they do not change out of their everyday wear and you get themed NPC's. The headmasters (and also Uni professors - although that has no bearing here) have work clothes available in both adult and elder (indeed the game can make them as either) so the only way to theme them is to make them teens. So, I ask again - teenager headmasters or just deal with the out of theme headmasters?

Of course I don't know how themed WildWildWest will be anyway. A combination of a lack of clothing and my unfamiliarity with early America means that there's probably several ages mixed together. It is themed, I'm just not quite sure what that theme is 

Let me know about the headmasters.

[olsen]

This is awesome, just tested Scotia and it look real good, I have most of the items required but not all, one lady showed up with no body just head and a ring Many other had standard clothing.
So I have to download everything except a few things I know I have, I didn't download everything from dark project or midsummer night only a selection and now is MTS2 very slow.
I had a problem with installing and I wonder if I did it right, I replaced the
The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001 folder and removed the
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 folder but then the neighborhood didn't came up so I copied the Scotia N001 folder into
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 and it came up, is this correct or have I done something wrong?

Also like the Wild West project but has not tested it yet. Might be easier to install because it look like most of the cloting is from all about style. She has an amazing collection, I say that anything in the Victorian category can be used, and it should be more than enough variation, true lots of the clothes are a little to fancy for the frontier but you see the townies mostly then the have traveled to the town center. Also the wild west period was from the 1860 to 1890 and you can probably stretch it a little in both directions.

[Madame Mim]

Thanks for your appreciation of Scotia. The way to install it differs depending on what you want it to do. If you want to play Scotia itself then you need to either
a. delete My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N001 and put in Scotia, or
b renumber Scotia (and all it's files) to the next available N00# number.

If you want default Medieval townies and NPC's the next time you create a Neighbourhood then you delete/backup the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001 folder and put Scotia there.

These instructions are in the zip. I don't believe in including readme's that are simply self-advertisements and copyrights. My readme's are there to help you. Please let me know if the instructions were unclear and how you think they could be improved.

As for WildWildWest it's mostly the skirts that have me worried. I'll just have to see what people say when they see it. That shopping list of mine is only a preliminary one. There's a couple of alterations I had to make to clothing to fill in some gaps. The Neighbourhood should require a lot less downloads than that to start because I'm not using everything I downloaded.

[olsen]

You might want to talk to the creator of all about style, it looks like she know much about historical fashion and should know that what absolutely don't fit in, also a good possibility that she let you include her items in the download.

[notveryawesome]

I just wanted to mention that the hack 'jaxad0127_NoNPCRevert' (found at MTS2) may fix the problem with the headmaster and others reverting to their normal clothes. I had problems with the NPCs in my cyberhood reverting to their normal uniforms, but this hack has stopped all such annoyances.