More Awesome Than You!

Here is something odd.  I added a couple of university subhoods to Desierata Valley, the new hood that comes with Freetime.  I installed the blank University templates before adding them, and generated new townies and NPCs for the university using Boolprop and the NPC/Townie Maker.  All is fine and dandy.

But... Later on, I wanted to add a few more professors of certain types.  The NPC/Townie Maker allows you to "Generate professor..." and select the major of the new professor.  The new professors I generated are shown below.

But notice anything unusual about them?  They appear to be made from the Downtown template characters!  Certainly, a couple of them look familiar. They certainly were not made using my Default Faces Replacement package.  One of them really counfounds me, the one that has the sports-glare-blocker smudges under his eyes in the form of full face-makeup.  I can't recall ever seeing that one in a Downtown lot before.

For further baackground,  I have a downtown hood installed, standard templates (with all the usual default downtownies and NPCs), and I have OFB and the Asian vacation hood installed with blank templates.

Does anybody want to make any sense of this? 

I wonder now if installing some Downtown blank templates would let me generate professors that look like Kaylynn the maid, the Grim Reaper, the Hula Zombies, and the Alien Pollinator as professors.  Maybe the NPC Townie Maker can't resist using whatever NPC templates it can find, rather than using the default faces.

(http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2935/profpicsvy8.jpg)

I've had this happen in my game when using the townie gun.

If I switch to making downtownies (or the switch is forced by generating a diva/Mr Big or slob), then the NPCs I generate get "normal" faces using the default replacement templates in my game.  If I don't switch to making downtownies, then any NPCs I generate get downtownie faces.

I don't mind the glitch.  Since I let my sims date NPCs, I'm happy that some of my NPCs have make up, glasses or facial hair to match turn-ons and turn-offs.

I also find it amusing when I get a vampire wearing sunglasses.

Have you ever seen that one at the bottom, though, the one with the smudges under his eyes?  I can't remember seeing that even on a Downtownie.  That one is a mystery to me.

Yes, I have.  He's a mailman in one of my 'hoods.  Downtownie template.

Yeah, I always get him if I generate Downtownies. He always shows up wearing the vest and camoflage shorts with DMs in my game. I almost never force generate Downtownies now, too many clones!

This is what he looks like when he's a standard downtownie. 

(http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff46/Kyna62/downtownie-1.jpg)

Okay, I did some more dinkin' around.  I installed the Downtownie Blank Templates, clearing out the old D001 character template files. 

I restarted the game and generated some professors.  They were STILL DOWNTOWNIES!!  Amazing.  Where is it finding the template information?  Is it copying this stuff from the existing EA downtownies?  Are they stored elsewhere in the Nightlife folder?

Next I tried what Kyne suggested. I clicked the "Switch to Downtownies" button, then generated a new professor.  Voila!  It used my default face replacements and it did not include any downtownie makeup.  And the thumbnails had the professor clothing, rather than downtownie clothing.  (If you looked at the thumbnails in my pic at the top post, you could see that the professors were wearing downtownie clothes in their thumbnails but the correct professor suits on the lot.) 

Just to see what happens, I clicked "Switch back to making Townies" and generated a new professor.  The next professor had a downtownie face again.  So, yes, Kyne is right (thank you Kyne!), you have to put the NPC/Townie gun into downtownie mode before you generate new professors or else you'll get downtownie faces and makeup on your professors.  Which might be cool, depending on what you're trying to do, I guess. 

Where else in the world could I have found such an esoteric piece of desiderata?

I'm still baffled, however, by how the game can still put downtownie faces and makeup on new professors under any circumstances at all, considering I wiped out the D001 characters folder.  I double-checked it.  It's clean.  Is it getting the faces and makeup from one of the nightlife objects packages?

Oh yeah, that outfit. I could've sworn it was the other one :D I was close though.


Gwill was having the same problem ages ago with a downtownie teen that kept getting generated. I have always kept the clean templates installed for all EPs when setting up custom neighbourhoods and I still get these default downtownie face templates. I have no idea where they are coming from.

I think I remember that thread by Gwill.  He had the tan teenage townie girl with the blonde angela pleasant type hair in his game.  The one in the retro 50s dress.

Okay, I just went to my preexisting downtown neighborhood, went into family lot, and used the gun to make a new set of downtownies.  I was curious to see if it would make them using my replacement defaults, since I wiped out D001/characters.  No such luck.  They were all the same downtownies.  Same faces, makeup, clothing.  Thirty of them.  My best guess is they must be coming from somewhere in the objects folder.

Like Emma, I use empty templates when setting up new hoods.  There are no characters in my D001 folder, so it's clearly not drawing from those.

Yep, that's what we thought at the time too. Can they be default replaced if they are in the objects package? I might have a poke around in SimPe and see what I can find.