More Awesome Than You!

I'm thinking of starting a new neighbourhood completely from scratch with no EAxis fuglies and no strays and I was wondering if anyone wanted to share their methods for making unique sims, because mine always end up all the same and I invariably get bored - and I have read on here and other places that after the first couple of generations, a hood gets interesting, so I really want to make myself stay in that long.

I'm thinking what I will probably do is track down a few sets of default replacement faces to keep swapping in and out during sim creation and gameplay - any suggestions for good ones which have a good variety in would be great - and for most of my CAS sims and CAS townies, make them look like real people by modelling them off photographs and possibly downloading a few well made selfsims. However I've found you have to be careful with selfsims and photo modelled sims because if the features aren't positioned close enough to the original templates you get weird looking sims with mouths almost in their noses etc.

I've also downloaded pretty much every one of Enayla's skins and narrowed them down until I have only the ones I like, and plan to make them genetic. There are 15 in all so that should provide some variety. I wish we could make a new hair bin, as I'm not really a fan of putting light brown in brown and hoping it goes through to the brown/blonde sims. However that's another thing I'd be interested in - your favourite hair creators/sites. There are so many to sift through on MTS2 etc I don't know where to start.

Lastly, I'm being ridiculously organised and/or OCD with this hood and have set up a wiki to detail all the starter families, who is in them, what age they should be on Day 0 - and giving them personalities and backstories or ideas for storylines before I start. Hopefully this way I shouldn't just get bored of playing, or forget which sister is supposed to be slutty and which one is supposed to be studious, etc. I have just randomised the families, how many people in each, what ages they are, etc. So I get some strange combinations like one elder, 2 teens, 2 kids, and a toddler, which makes for an interesting backstory. I can also link up the families before I start which should help matters.

Oh and I have a couple of families made up of real people, mainly my own extended family which is always interesting. In the sims my little brother *always* grows up to be gay, through ACR's choosing...

I adore Zazazu's face replacements (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8378.0.html). I use her replacements exclusively in my game and CAS almost always generates a pretty sim with them.

Ooh, those are really nice, and I hadn't seen them before. Thanks.

I think I might try to be disciplined and only let the actual face templates be used to generate NPCs though. I can just about be bothered to make my own townies, but NPCs, not so much.

I like selzi's new defaults.  Although, I would mix them up a bit.  They look great, but I don't think that they offer a lot of variety.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=250376

She has an older set of defaults as well.  I believe that they are linked in Zazazu's thread that was provided by jesslla.

To make completely unique CAS sims, just move the sliders up and down on the face creation bit. You can get some really interesting looking sims that way. I personally use AmberDiceless' face templates as they are the closest I've seen to actual EAxis default faces without the fugly.

I tried a wide variety of face templates about a year ago and really liked the ones made by terramoskos.  They have been modified to look somewhat more realistic. 

You can get it here http://hideki.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=135121

Well, I too use CAS replacement faces and cleaned hoods (specifically these http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=106077 (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=106077) faces which are basically the Maxis ones with minute changes to the templates so they look more realistic) but I don't breed for pretty sims nor do I control their every movement (Well, it helps that I have Pescado's hacks like that baby controller and bathroom controller).

I find that the Sims can get really boring if all of your sims are beautiful and if you insist on controlling every little movement they make. I tend to marry my sims off to other sims that they have a minimum of two bolts for. I avoid cheating extensively (although with AL the needs degeneration is ridiculous so I've relaxed those rules a bit) and enjoy letting the pixels destroy themselves without any intervention from me. I roll a die (similar to the Legacy rules) for aspiration and keep the turn on's and turn off's the game chooses. Or I use these: http://sumomo.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=293685 (http://sumomo.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=293685).  When a sims becomes an elder (or the couple both become elders) I save and exit than never play them again. This results in a huge family and they're always coming and going, fighting and hugging, etcetera.

I find the way I play to generate very interesting looking sims and sometimes result in fighting or premature death. It's fun :) and I recommend it to everyone.

I use mine, Selzi's 2nd set (the 1st set has a bit too small of eyes for me), Katuchan's, Terrakosmos's, and someone else's. Can't recall. Bruno?...one of the faces has a bad elder conversion. I'll check when I'm home. Then I have one mixed set that is Katuchan/Terrakosmos's, and one that is a mix of all the sets. I also have two Live.packages for generated sims names. One by Jordi from MTS2. The other one by Ellatrue here.

There's a set of Enayla's skins set as defaults with extra genetics that are linked through Peasantry. I also have her eyes as geneticized defaults with a bunch of other ones that have been geneticized and made townie-ready.

For hair, I have a lot of Peggy* stuff (you have to sift through it, the girl is oblivious to her gaps), a lot of Rose* and Raon*, Helgasims, XMSims, Sims2ArtistUnion...etc, etc. You want to check out this page. (http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Hair_Gallery) Trust me.


*Pay. See booty. Booty is love. Also, many are high-polygon.

I love Nailati's face replacements: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3804.0.html

The best way I keep all my Sims from looking alike is to use other people's self-sims. Do them up to fit your hood's aesthetic/time period, towniefy the ones you don't want to play, and go forth and breed.

Maybe I'm tootin' my own horn, but I think my CAS replacement set is still the best.  You can get it at MTS2 here:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=130190

Sadly, there are no pics anymore (I uploaded that years ago, and the pics have gone to Internet pic heaven) so you have to try it and take my word for it.

I've tried most of the other replacement sets.  It doesn't hurt anything to swap them in and out and try different ones.  The only one by somebody not me that I actually liked was (I think) the one by Kaituchan.)

If Sims 2 weren't in its last days, I would make a new replacement set, but...

yeah I love that set from selzi, they're the ones I use - they still leave the general gist of the maxis face, but just clean it up a bit...so you do have prettiness in even the "fugly" maxis faces with that set, but not everyone is a cookie cutter.

I like most of Spookymuffin's defaults. They are the most unique that I've seen. There are a few that I replace from other sets, but I can't remember which ones. I'm sure there will be a few unique faces for you in the set.

http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=75472

I use Natali's default replacements. She hasn't made a replacement for every face, so I use AmberDiceless' replacements for the rest.


That's a great idea. I'm so glad I thought of it.

For non-playables (townies, students etc.) what I do is build 'types' - it's surprising what a difference hair and clothing can make.  I made a set of students recently.  I'm currently attending a university in RL which is very large and also has a hugely varied population.  So I based my students on the people I see around me every day.  I do exaggerate characteristic features.  I made my goth sims as gothy as possible, while the hippy sim looks like a throwback to 1970.  As my university has a lot of international students, I also made sims based on nationalities: for instance, I made a sim based on a Fulbrite scholar I know over here doing her PhD.  I think you'd call it preppy over there - is that right?  It can make building sims in Bodyshop or CAS more interesting: how do I make this sim look as though he is unrealistically idealistic and obsessed by student politics or environmentalism?  (Grungy, yay!)  All social groupings tend to develop a look or uniform that they use to identify one another and you can use that.  I'll download CC specifically to get the look I want.

For playables, I have a different approach but as I usually have some clear role or idea in mind for them, I also have a corresponding sense of their appearance.  So, the sim is built around that.  Is the sim middle class or ambitious or intellectual or greedy?  I'm such an obsessive story-teller.

I use various face templates but modify them considerably anyway.  I've not found a complete set I like so I pick and choose.  Also, some of the sets you see are facially virtually identical over the whole set.  Who wants that?

I used to use yours but I ended up with very weird chins and/or cheekbones on most of my sims once I was a few generations in :D

I've used Amber's for ages, and I like them very much.  You can find them here (http://ambular.djssims.com/index.php?category=2&subcat=21). 

(And I just noticed she's updated them, so I'll have to grab the new ones when I get home later.)

I use the face replacements by selzi now.



If you want some different sims for townies I have a ton of them already packaged in houses. Most were born in-game in one of my old hoods.

The ones in this thread are base-game compatible and are cc/hack clean.
http://www.the-isz.com/theisz/index.php?showtopic=833

So you've cleaned up all their memories etc? 'Cos you know importing sims from another's game is a VBT don't you?

ya, I've known that for a very long time now.  ;)   I used "extracted in SimPE & then cloned in Bodyshop" clean files.  edit - and I packaged them as soon as I moved them onto a lot.

I think it's yours I've got, and I reckon they're pretty damn good.

Why do people keep imagining things like this? There is NO change to motive decay in AL. People have been saying this about EVERY expansion pack, and it's NEVER TRUE.

Wut? Ya mean it ain't mah game 'tis mah 'magination?
I thought it was kind of funny that five minutes RT after eating they would be yellow.... perhaps Maxmotives is teh fail and I've been playin' wit it fer too long...

Well 5 minutes Real Time (I assume that's what you mean?) is about 5 HOURS Sim Time.  I get pretty hungry 5 hours after lunch too.

 :D Yes, I meant Real Time but not in the literal '5 minutes' but more of an approximation. Usually I have Sim1 serve dinner and then, afterwards, go off to talk with SimSpawn1. After around... two minutes of real time play they are yellow hunger, yellow comfort, and yellow fun....

Cooking skill points or "higher quality" food and better counters may make the difference.  Just because they ate doesn't mean they necessarily got FULL. 

I didn't think counters had anything to do with it :-\.  Fridges, cookers, food processors are what I concentrate on.  Oh, and freshly grown food from orchards or veggie patches are good at filling your sims up too.

Food processors are actually less effective than counters that cost more than $500.  The Old Fart recommends expensive counters and no processor.

*looks askance*

Basic sim motive management is basic. Perhaps you need to use those cheaty aspiration objects. Or are you incapable of keeping your sims in gold, too? Here's a hint...look at the bars. Full green is full, barely green is almost yellow.

Don't worry about the fridge cost. All more expensive fridges do is hold more food, not better food (exception= unmodded mini-fridge).  So you have to trek to the grocery store more often...that's how the spawn meet mates. Fresh food storage is boundless for your farmers. My sims always get the Hunger=10 oven and the best counters I can afford for them without them not matching the house. Food processors are rare. I don't really do small appliances at all, and my kitchens are small. My everything is small.

It sounds like your skill at this game is epically fail! Get Macrotastics. Install it and its accessories. Then slap on "Power Idle" and watch and learn. That is how a PROFESSIONAL EXPERT handles motives.

I have not recommended any such thing, if you meant me. Yes, food processors are less effective than high-class counters, BUT food processors are much FASTER. Points to consider:
1. Only lower-class foods even offer the option to use a food processor.
2. Lower class foods are not generally that filling anyway, so you typically do not use them.
3. Time is more important than the few points of FPV you may gain, and it is possible to have TOO MUCH FPV. If you have fresh food bonus on top of that, many foods can become simply inedible because a single plate is more foodpoints than a sim can actually eat.

 ::) Yeeeah.. I do have it installed but didn't know what Power Idle was for. Now that I've learned my lesson I shall go use and perhaps I'll become a little more awesome at playing Sims2...

Sorry, Pes.  I got that information from Awesomespec, not from you.  My error.