More Awesome Than You!

I was playing with a Bon Voyage QA-release of SimPE today, checking out the tourist families. I thought it would be nice if they were actual families and did not only share a name. I found that these families do not know anyone else in the group with the same name, but have random relationships with all the special NPC's, i.e. the grim reaper, Crumplebottom, Pollination Tech, the ideal plantsim etc. I find that quite surprising and unnecessary. What a bloat! Is this normal? Is it bad? Can these relationships safeley be deleted? And does anyone know of any reasons why tourists should not be proper families with all the proper relationships?

   

They might not have proper family relationships, but set their gender preferences and let ACR do the rest, they seem to find out who they belong to very soon(unless they do not appear together on the lots for any length of time). I changed the personality/aspiration for some but most of them I kept the way they were and now they are flirting, kissing and woohooing all over the place. I use Insimenator to set the teenagers as children of them (so that they don't woohoo what I consider their offspring).
It's the same with the locals, there are certain "preset" potential couples too. 

My tourist families (game generated) don't even have the same last name.

yeah, you can use insim to fix that stuff pretty safely as far as I know.

Interesting.  I'll have to check SimPE on this.  I did not have ACR loaded when my last couple went on honeymoon to Tikamizu.  On the other hand, the maxoid tourist couple that was already there did a bit of tai chi and then spent the rest of the holiday fighting in the lobby, poolside, and on any other flat surface.  Rather realistic, actually.

I've been setting all my townies across the game as related for a while now, starting with the ones who Maxis "randomized" with the same last name and eventually changing some to match, and the game doesn't seem to have a problem with this. So now my downtownie kids have parents. I also married a couple of the island locals and set them as the parents of another who was marrying a playable, for instant inlaws. It just seems to make it a tad more real, heh.

Are you sure these are genuine relationships, and not an artifact of SimPE? I have SimPE version, er, 0.60 I think (the Pets release), and it lists things such as a sim's relationship with themselves, as well as odd relationships like the ones you describe that are not visible on the sims' relationship panels in the game.

Not to say that the game isn't buggy or that it's strange that "families" aren't real families - but these odd relationships may not really exist :D.

Well, I'm completely unsure what these weird relationships are. But I think them not showing up in the relationship panes in game does not necessarily mean they are not there... And I know that these tourist families and some of the Bon Voyage NPCs were the only sims with these relationships (or at least the large number of them, i.e. a relationship with every one of the special NPCs).

But yeah, it could be SimPE weirdness. I don't really know enough about these things to tell.  :-\

I was pretty ticked off when I found out how bland and random the families were.  I had my doubts that bon voyage would measure up to the sims 2 level of improvements, but actual families was something I counted on.  Maxis, the Sims 2 gives you the ability to create REAL families, why spawn a bunch of random sims with similar last names and expect that to be good enough??  Is it that hard to program a method of generating random famlies?  Create two random sims, mix their DNA for a child and connect it to them for the relationship, it's not that friggen' hard.  Laziness is all it is ::)  What type of idiots are you hiring these days?  I could design a better ep than their entire team can. *sighs*

I hate them, the stupid vacation families.  I've had enough of fat bloated faces with asian eyes and fish lips, brown skin and red mohawks.  I've been meaning to create a set of replacement families for some time.   :-\

I believe notownieregen stomps their formation, so you can make your own.

Would it be possible to split notownieregen into several hacks?  I mean dormies and even SS members have separate hacks, but townies, downtownies, locals and tourists are all bundled into one.

Don't believe this is possible, as they share the same core generator routines, whereas Dormies and SS generate from a different core generator. I was actually contemplating the exact opposite, rolling them all into an anti-regen singular hack, as I would figure either you do, or you do not, want Maxis-generated random characters rampaging around your neighborhood.

I like having some townies rampaging around.  The main reason I ask is because my trouble with downownies: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10094.msg276293.htm

I prefer them as two separate hacks.  I usually have notownieregen installed, but with the rate my dormies die off, I like having the game generate the occasional new one.

True enough.  I want notownieregen in place, but I like the option of removing nodormieregen if I need replacement students and don't want to CAS create them - sometimes random replacements are fine and much more "expedient" (expendable?).

Yea, and occasionally the game does generate a decent dormie, who then becomes marriage fodder (at least in my long-established hood, which can use an occasional influx of new genes :) ).

...especially if you use decent default face replacements to minimise EAxis fugly townies (TM).