More Awesome Than You!

Severely cuts down secret society townie respawn: The game will prefer to induct existing townies until no choices are available before finally creating one (and only one!). No longer will it insist on generating them up to your max visitor count, either: If it cannot find any after already having created one, it will simply run undermanned.

01/03/06:
Should no longer puke if you deplete the entire townie pool.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/yellow.gif)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) nossrespawn.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/uni/hacks/nossrespawn.zip)

RTFM:
Anti-Secret Society Respawn (v1b) for TS2U v1.0 - TS2NL v1.0p1
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado)

Special Thanks To:
Quaxi, for writing SimPE
Fairlight the Bitch

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.

FEATURES:
Eliminates respawning of Secret Society members. Secret Society members should
not be spawned to replace ones you happen to kill for whatever reason, except
as a very last resort of total desperation (which should be near-impossible, but
is there just in case), in which it will create one member. If there are not
enough SS members, when the game attempts to generate one, it will, instead of
generating a new NPC, induct a YA townie instead, and use him. The game will
also not insist on generating more to fill max visitor count when you are
abducted(IF you still are abducted: should theoretically work with no-abduct).
Therefore, if there is no SS townie, the game will first attempt to create one
by promoting an existing YA townie. If it cannot, it will only create one if
there is not even a single available member to perform the initiation ceremony.
If for some reason your university has a dormie population of zero, don't kill
this last guy.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS Hacks. Tested for TS2U v1.0 & TS2NL v1.0p1.

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

WARNING:
Do not open, crush, dispose of in fire, put in backwards, short-circuit, or mix
with non-awesome hacks - may explode, leak, or catch fire, resulting in injury
and/or death.

There's somethng not right about the whole process of creating SS members.  My Strangetown just created one new one the other day for no reason whatsoever, because there were plenty already.  I also made a big mistake in Pleasantview - having upped the minimum visitors to 12 for a grad party, I carried on playing the dorm and someone was abducted that night.  As I recall, the game created at least 8 new SS members to make-up the 12, even though there were more than enough in the first place.  If it is indeed true that the game can only cope with a limited number of character files, why on earth does it keep creating all these extra characters?  And why do we need all these superfluous NCP's anyway?  Only one can visit a lot at any one time in the case of maids and so on, so why are we forced to have all the extra ones?

Actually, it's possible for multiples to be visiting. If you invite one over before the maid arrives, they'll have to send a replacement. So that's why NPCs are sometimes spawned. Which doesn't excuse why they insist on making more even when this is not the case, especially for entirely *USELESS* NPCs...like the "Call In Sick" guy. Who can actually be safely deleted since he never appears in the game for anything, and his sole reason for existence is apparently to have a face in the phone dialog. Real necessary there. Look for him to receive the axe soon.

Call in Sick guy?  Now that's interesting, because I've never noticed one of these.  Mine rarely call in sick because even when they are sick, they're told they're not.  The only time I noticed anyone's face was when one of my Sims in the Science career called in sick and the person who answered his call (telling him he didn't sound sick when he had just been coughing his guts out) was in fact Cassandra Goth.  As I recall, at the time she was in a lower position in that career than he was, but I can't remember for sure.

And why do I have a pair of lips with a cross through them next to my name?  Does this mean they've been ripped, or are about to be ripped?  Do I need to worry about this?

Hi Ancient, welcome to the rank of the lipless :D

I thought the 'sick guy' was just a jpeg or something like that, but he/she is a whole character? I could do without the majority of the NPC's anyways. I never use a maid anymore since the macrotastic mod was introduced, I use Inge's non-maintenance bushes and no flower-beds so I don't need a gardner. Macrotastics and the lot debugger take care of the bills in case I forget/stuckiness, so the repo-man has not been around. Since a near disaster, any Nanny that dares to show up will be immediately disposed of; I use Inge's teleporter shrub to move in someone (a hapless townie who just meanders by in all innocence for example) for child-care purposes. I don't need a headmaster. Private school, ha, public is just fine, what was good enough for me is good enough for my pixel-people. I've only seen a social worker once (because that was in my plans) and never seen a social bunny (although I'd rather like to) I don't mind the fun NPC's like the psychologist, the grim reaper, and the alien person etc., but the others I can do without.

I used to hate the coach and the professors that were hell-bent on bothering my YA's, but recently I learned about new and fun ways to use the SimVac :D

G.

The Psychlerjist, the Grim Reaper, the Hulas, and the Alien Tech are not "real" NPCs. There's only one of them, and they're unique. You cannot kill them (without buggering your game), and they're not "characters". The "Call In Sick" guy *IS* a real NPC, however, even though he's entirely useless as you never even *SEE* him in person, and could easily just be an abstract icon. In fact, that's what I'm doing with him.

The "Call In Sick" guy is probably a holdover from when there was supposed to be a Boss Scenario.  I've noticed the game will pause to generate this Sim when my Sim calls in sick.

I wonder what would happen if you used a teleporter device to get this Sim on your lot, met them, then later invited them to visit.  Would it initiate the broken/unfinished Boss Scenario?  Hm. :)

Hook

I suspect this is why your sims are not believed: angry, rancorous subordinates get the call and avenge themselves...

I don't really think that's even possible, according to the code: It must find an NPC. So the fact that you managed to get a Cassandra Goth lookalike is coincidence.

Probably, yes. Even if the Boss Scenario actually FUNCTIONED, though, there's no reason to need to generate one merely for "Call in Sick", as the Boss NPC is not actually used as anything but a face, and this doesn't actually make any sense when applied to some jobs: The Criminal Mastermind has a boss?

Very doubtful. There isn't even a functioning scenario controller.

Hmm. I never noticed the 'CISG' wasn't just an NPC.
What about the carpool and bus drivers, are those from a special pool as well?

Carpool and bus drivers are one and the same, from the same special pool, yes. They're not ordinarily sociable either, although they do make physical appearances and therefore are "necessary" in that sense. As a result of making actual physical appearances, they tend to have memories of anyone they noticed peeing themselves or passing out immediately upon disembarking.

The cisg was rotated between serving npcs when I used to play Veronaville - back before my game exploded into a fiery ball. I recall npcs fulfilling the role, because one of the barmaids who took a call went on to become Romeo's wife - I recognised her because he was dating her.  Also, I've seen other people with the same occupation take the call - eg Mrs Jennifer Burb's icon (who was in the army) took a sick call from another army sim who was calling in sick.

But I could be making it up - I might be confusing it with sims that take calls for townies who are at work.  It was a long time ago!  Oops - there go my.... ;)

This is a most excellent hack, as I can now create a SS without fearing the spawnage of way too many sims. One thing that annoys me is that you never see playable sims on the SS lot. Why is this? Because the SS townies have no skills, it makes it kind of useless to have all those career objects. Or is that the point? Hmm. It would be nice to occasionally see a playable sim as an uncontrollable at the SS lot, though. Don't know if it's possible, but it would be cool. Especially since it would mean that townies would not be required for the Secret Society. Death to all townies! They clog up the neighborhood and are generally pointless. If I want a random sim, I can generate it myself.

May I admit ignorance (instead of just, you know, implying it right and left) and say that I don't understand the point of the no-respawn hacks?  Do I need them if I never kill, marry or even really look sideways at a town/dorm/ss-ie unless they get randomly brought home?

I gather the point is to reduce unneccessary character files, which can cause neighborhoods to self destruct and also contribute to system slowness.  How prevalent is this (considering that I don't think I engage in many respawn-necessitating activities)?

My layperson's understanding of too many character files is that when you have reached a certain (don't ask me how many) number, you simply cannot create any more sims; this means that any CAS or newborn sims simply disappear after you've saved your lot/game.  It happened in my game and in the end I had to start from scratch again. 

Back then, I played every neighbourhood for several months, expanded each to a population of atleast 40+ lots in Pleasantview, approximately 20+ lots in Strangetown and 50+ lots in Veronaville. In total there were about 450 playable sims - if you average each household to 4+ sims. Also I had a legacy neighbourhood (10 households) and one other neighbourhood with 5 approx households.    My downfall was that each household in each neighbourhood was regularly reproducing, also I'd done the unforgiveable and moved several lots between neighbourhoods. I had also downloaded and used peopled lots. Most of my sims had married or moved in townies, so they were respawning rapidly.  When Uni came out I moved most of my townie teens in one neighbourhood to Uni. 

Subsequent implosion of the game was just a matter of time! :-\

That's interesting.  I've never had any of my sims be turned down for calling in sick, even when they weren't.  Perhaps your sim's job performance wasn't high enough.

I have alot of nice community lots for my college and I haven't had my sims visit much because of the bar spam and the SS spam.  The game produced 2 SS members on one community lot.  I have no use for the SS at all so this will be great.

It seems to me the millitary career won't allow sick days in most cases.
But maybe that's because only my antisocial underachier Sims become soldiers.

If they have any vacation days, then they are usually ok, they just lose one of them.  But they get paid.

I guess that would be like real life. The military is not allowed to "call in sick"

I sent my sims in the main town and college town to a few community lots today and no new SS members spawned.  thanks.

I'm not sure this is working properly. I turned Jimmy Phoenix into a townie awhile ago to make up the numbers in an dorm, since this hack became available I killed all the other townies (something I've been wanting to do for a long time), after I added my test sim to the society using the cheats and visited the lot Jimmy was there, but so were a whole lot of newly generated townies as well.

Am I right that this shouldn't happen, or did I miss the point somehow?

Fixed now. Should no longer generate any as long as one could be found.

It's working now. Thanks Pescado, that's decidedly awesome.

I guess NL modified some stuff related to SS so this was listed as noe-NL compatible?  Has anyone tried it with NL regardless and see if fireballs spit up?

On a slight tangent:
I've been playing with only officially NL approved hacks, didn't notice this wasn't in there because I haven't been playing university lots.  Last night on one neighborhood I created 4 YA sims, cheated to induct 3 into SS, and let the 4th be friends with them.  They were all in the same household.  Then at 23:00, the limo came to abduct my 4th sim, but once the limo drove away, the game didn't load to the SS lot.  The 4th sim was simply removed from the selectable list while the residential lot continued to play with the 3 other sims.  I didn't wait around to see if the sim would come back later cuz I had to sleep, but did NL change the abduction behavior?  Or did I run into a bug?

Just as an aside, J.M., the zip file link isn't working. I'm getting file not found.

That's mainly because J.M. forgot to update the old threads when the hacks directory was re-arranged for NL. The new link is here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/uni/hacks/nossrespawn.zip).

EDIT: How ironic. I messed up the link correction.

EDIT II; Electric Boogaloo: Not again.

Is this hack NL compatible?

I don't  have it in my game, and so far I can't find that I'm getting more SS personnel!  But until I've moved out all the other dormies etc., thre are just too many files to check individually, so let's just say I haven't noticed any new ones walking by.

Usually the same set of existing SS personnel will function until they start being depleted. Then, depending on your visitor count level, tons more will be unnecessarily spawned. This changes it so that instead of spawning MORE sims, it will draft dormies into the SS instead, and will be satistified with finding just one, rather than trying to always max out the visitor count.

I just hadn't put it back in since installing NL - I don't think it was in the original list of compatible hacks, so basically I hadn't got around to trying it out myself.  (Or maybe it was in the list and I missed it!)

I started playing Uni again and I definately did not have this and need it now.

Well, I'm going to try it, nodormieregeneration works fine, so I can't see why nossrespawn wouldn't.

January 3rd, the update I've been waiting for.  Thanks!!! (-:

When I reinstalled Pleasantview I deleted all the dormies and created my own, plus let the game add a few.  It didn't create any extra ones, so the only walkbys were dormies who had left to make room for new students.  Not one single SS member was created.  As I needed a few new dormies and wanted them to be SS members, I sent Alexander Goth to a community lot and at first the only visitors were dormies from his own dorm.  Eventually the game produced 5 new SS members, all of them female (4 with dark skin, 2 with the same surname, 3 with a surname beginning with B and 2 with the initials RB).  As I only needed three females, I changed the other two to males in SimPE.  The rest of the SS members can be created from current dormies with this mod.

Quite why the game made them all female I have no idea, does it do only one sex per session or what?  I've noticed this similarity with names and initials before as well, as if the game gets stuck in some sort of endless loop.

Annoys me even more when it pinches names from MY sims!

It does that in my game all the time, too.  I have the package that gets rid of all the crappy names, but it still tends to go with the ones at the top all the time (the non-random random effect again).  It created a teen called Anna who became romantically attached to Dustin Broke, so they went to Uni together.  Next thing I know, it's created two cow mascots called Anna.  I changed their names and then it goes and creates a maid called Anna when I played today.  I also had 3 or 4 Cynthias and I think I had a Susan in every age-group, plus a Contessa Susan and a Professor Susan.

It seems to do slightly better with the male names ... I'd love to say I'd had a lot of Dicks, but I just can't bring myself to lie so blatantly.

But a good alias for Goopy!

Is there any way that the visiting SS members who drop by when our Sims are on the SS lot (or even members of the welcome party) can be our own playable Sims who are in the SS?  I get a bit fed-up when they're always dormie-types, instead of familiar Sims.  If our Sims can be visitors on community lots, presumably they could be the same on SS lots?  My game always throws-up at least a dozen SS members as visitors (no idea why, it's only set for 8) and none of them are ever my Sims, which means I'm forced to have a dozen new characters/dormie SS members in the SS all the time, which I can't see any need for, especially when I already have half-a-dozen of my own Sims in the stupid thing.  At least once the game gets to the magic 12, it stops creating new ones.

I quite honestly can't understand why there were ever so many in the first place!  I mean, when half the non-playables in Uni are SS members, how SECRET is it?  If every other person in you home town belonged to the Masons, it wouldn't stay secret for long!

I started to install this when I noticed in the manual that it will create just one when down to the last of the SS members.

I am trying to eliminate almost all non-player sims from my game except Grand Vampires and NPCs.

Then it dawned on me...if I eliminate too many and this hack just creates one, no one will ever be able to join the secret society anymore because they must have 3 SS friends just to join. Since playable SS members who have graduated do not count toward the 3 friend count, we really need 3 SS members available to us.

Am I misreading this hack? Or must I be sure that the last 3 SS members don't get eaten by the cow plant? And how do I know when I am down to this number aside from leaving the game and looking into Simpe?

What I meant by "will create one" means "When this function is called": So you will retain a minimum number of members needed to allow people to join the SS, should you start a massacre, generally around 3-5 members. I recommend you stop the massacre around then.

That, or start resurrecting dormies as zombies and turn your University into Night Of The Living Dead.

I gotta question. I recently deleted all my characters and started with a clean Pleasantview. I have the No Secret Societ Respawning hack and the no Townie Regeneration hack. Since I have no townies the game attepts to spawn SS members when I enter community lots but the the no townie regen hack doesnt allow it making it impossible to create SS members. I would remove my no townie regen hack but I dont want my game going into a frenzy of creating townies as soon as I remove it. Any suggestions?

I'd suggest remove nodormieregeration and let the game generated a few, then put it back.  Then the Secret Society members can be recruited from the dormie pool.

Darn, I wish there was some other way.

Have you installed OFB yet?  If not, you could use simPE to get rid of all but three or four of the new dormies before they start metting your sims.

Yep, its too late. I installed OFB.

you can use testingcheats or InSim to add the Secret Society token to select sims.  If you want to make uncontrollable sims members of the SS, make them selectable first.

You can use TwoJeffs' College Adjuster also to make sims members of the SS.

This probably has nothing to do with this hack but I thought I would mention it here cause this is the only hack that I believe would have anything to do with the Secret Society.  OK, every time one of my sims get abducted to the SS lot they receive millions of Simoleons.  After 6 students, they had over 900 million Simpleons in their family funds.  I even think that it might have gone into the billions cause one time they went with 551 million and came back with 251 million.  Not a biggy especially when SimPE gets updated.  I would be much worse if it was the other away around.  I'll live with it for now cause I have way too many hacks to weed through for just an annoyance.  Thought I would mention it in case someone else has this prob.

SimPE has been updated for OFB, theres a new CEP also

Can you use the Familyfunds cheat?

Cool!!!  I don't seem to have any luck with that cheat??  It really doesn't matter anymore cause the SS lot broke.  I just use the InSIMinator to induct them cause the SS  lot hangs and I have to do the three finger salute.  Thanx!! for the info--going to the InSim site!!

Have you used TwoJeff's hack where they don't get abducted for the SS anymore, they just get a message saying they've been inducted and they can visit?  I haven't been to the SS lot in ages.  Haven't needed to. 

I hadn't looked into that hack before.  I kinda liked having them aducted.  I had an issue with a sim strangely disappearing and he was inducted into the SS.  I fixed all the memories,so I think I want to try it one more time to see if that is what caused the SS to corrupt.  I wonder where the code is kept for those that were abducted.  Because it keeps a list of the SS members, then if one is deleted,  logically it would leave an error when it is trying to access that info.  So ,if he isn't removed from that list then the SS probably will stay corrupted,so I probably should get the hack??

Sims have a SS token that you can see in SimPE in their memories, but sims never get any kind of memory for being inducted into the SS that I have ever seen.  Which is strange because you'd think they would definitely remember getting kidnapped, handcuffed, and carried off to some strange place by limo.   ???

They don't get a memory of it because if they had a memory of it, either good or bad, they would then *TALK* about it....and that wouldn't be very secret, now would it?!?

It makes about as much sense as anything else Maxis does.  Like sims gossiping about their spouses getting caught cheating  by their lovers and giggling about it.

Hey Pescado, the version of this hack in the moreawesomethanyou-uni.zip file doesn't work properly if you're just using the base game and the university pack. Do you still have the old version of it somewhere by any chance?

I think anything older was lost in action in Hurricane Josh. Can you describe the nature of the not-working-ness?

That's unfortunate, hurricane Josh? :D

I had set up a college neighborhood by deleting every resident sim as well as all the dormies, and added one dormie who was a regular sim that I moved to the townie family for the purpose of being the guy to keep the secret society working (added the secret society membership with the cheats, though the description of this hack would indicate it would do that itself if I didn't). This worked alright in the past.

This is the error on loading the secret society lot...

Object Error
An error occurred in object "Controller - Secret Society" #396,
Error: Illegal owner field in data reference.

The only way to dismiss this error is to select "delete" but the loading screen never goes away, the sound eventually starts though so something must be happening.

I also tried loading a couple of community lots to see if it made any more sims or anything, it didn't, but the one sim I put in the townie family was instanced twice on the lot, once in his regular clothes and once in the secret society getup. I have verified that he is not in two families at the same time or anything like that.

Can I see more of the log?

Sure, sorry.

http://rapidshare.de/files/23083033/ObjectError_N001_t26.txt.html

That site is stupid and disagrees with me. Just attach it here.

Very sorry again.

Look like a newformat 8009 got in and gummed up the works. Should be fixed now, give it a try.

Looks like everything's working fine now. Many thanks! :)

Sorry to be farming the dead, but I just had an SS abduction in forever.  No new townies were generated, but almost the entire college population was brought to the lot to fill up the max number of visitors.  I exited without saving, verified that the majority of these were not SS members and reloaded with only nossrespawn in Downloads and non-member townies were inducted to max out the number of visitors.

I do have the number of visitors upped in userstartup but I don't think that should be overriding.  I am using the Freetime version and have everything up to and including Freetime.

Again, sorry for farming the dead. :-[

This is correct behavior. In the event that insufficient members exist to fill basic duties, this hack makes it so the game will prefer to induct existing dormies rather than create more. Creating additional sims is viewed as a move of last resort.