More Awesome Than You!

Go to <Drive>:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Locale\Japanese\Bins and you will find this package. What actually does it do?

There are similar ones in the Korean and Chineses directories.
Facial structures by the looks of things.
So they don't have to play with fugly wide-eyed westernised sims?

Really?  You mean if you choose a different language you also get different face templates?  How unexpectedly cool.
Is it possible to extract the faces, and if so, could you give me some pointers as to where to begin tackling this?

What I know about how the sims facial structure files work could be written on a postage stamp.
I just tried copying the chinese file to downloads to see if there was any difference in CAS.  If there was it was too subtle for me to notice.
The people in the MTS2 Bodyshop forums would probably have better advice on what these files do.

Yes, you use those templates by copying and pasting them to your language's locale folder.
Here is how,:

For instance, I am playing with the UK English version of the game but want to use the Tradition Chinese face templates instead.
Go to D:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Locale\Traditional Chinese\Bins and copy and paste the Traditional Chinese Bin.bundle.package to D:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Locale\UK English\Bins. Since the "Bins" folder is not there in the first place, I will have to create it myself.
Then, next time you run the game, it will use the Chinese face template instead.

*If you are using US English, "English" under "Locale" is your folder. For the rest, it is obvious which is your langauge.

BTW, I am still wondering if the face templates of the Japanese, Korean and Chinese are all the same :P

SiuPang will you be testing this? Is this a safe procedure? I am curious but not that curious to break my whole game for some small face change

Yes, I can guarantee you it will not *bork* your game... I have been using this method to import in-game pop and housemix musics from other language version of the game too. :P

But as mentioned earlier, I cannot spot any difference with the "new' face templates... Am I too dumb to observe it?

Just curious, did you only look in CAS! or did you also try generating an npc or townie on a lot?

I guess it has generated new npc too. Y'know, when Sims brings home a new friend from work, that new friend may be either a new generated NPC or an already exisiting NPC or a playable character. When it takes a long time to load this brought-home friend, it means it is a newly generated one, or at lease I believe o.

From what I see, the new templates are not very different from the previous ones. Duno why Maxis created different templates for different countries in Asia.

FYI, the face templates for Japanese, Korean and Chinese are all different.

What I was wondering was if Asia-localized games might change which facial templates the randomly generated sims use, but not affect CAS. The advantage would be that the townies and NPCs would look localized, but it would still be easy for the player to create international celebrities. It would be interesting if they did that.

I expected they would all be different, because while people in the U.S. often cannot tell if someone is Chinese or Japanese or Korean, that is much less likely within those cultures.There was a quiz online that asked the user to guess what nationality different Asian faces are. Westerners taking this quiz did not score very high. Japanese people who took the quiz could almost always identify other Japanese correctly, and the same was true of the others. That probably makes it worthwhile to localize them. It does not really surprise me if they didn't do a very good job. Default sims faces are pretty strange looking anyway. Do Maxis playable sims look any different?

I agree with you. Actually I am from Hong Kong and I can tell who is Japanese, who is Korean, who is mainland Chinese, who is Hong Konger and who is Taiwanese correctly by just a glance most of the time.

And those playable sims, such as the Goth family? They are the same... I just added those Chinese face templates after I have installed and been running my UK English version of the game for years.
But I guess even the newly-installed Traditional Chinese version of the game will have the same Maxis playable sims as those bundles only alter face templates but nothing else.

I want to take this quiz. During the Olympics this year, Mr. Vulture and I had discussions about the facial characteristics between the different asian teams. I think I'd do... better than most westerners.

It's a shame that this doesn't affect CAS. It would be cool to be able to create Takimizu village locals this way.
I only have two asian template replacements to work from. =(

In principle, you could do it by spawning normal townies with the gun and then touching them up with plastic surgery.  You can always re-assign the townies to their vacation destinations any number of ways.

I'm less convinced that the localised templates contain anything meaningful.  I think Siupang would have noticed a difference in newly spawned sims if the templates were actually good.  Also, the randomise button in CAS pulls all the same genetic content that townies would have available.  Anyway, I have a 'hood that's only half built, so I'll have a look for myself.