More Awesome Than You!

After installing I played a few sessions in Maxis neighborhoods with no downloads, then made sure all my hacks were updated before adding downloads back and installing my custom neighborhoods. 

Among the hacks I made sure I had antiredundency, no townie respawn and nostrayrespawn. 

First play session in custom neighborhood I created a four unit apartment builiding and immediately moved in four playable families. Only new person seen was the landlord.  However when checking character folder at end of session there were 22 new character files. Simpe revealed in addition to landlord there were five townies, one bartender (I have never hired a bartender in this neighborhood) and fifteen new strays.  Several play sessions and several playable sim births later I noted that two more strays and two more townies had been created. 

More game play passes and I take a sim to a community lot to film his death (faked, later died on home lot)   Later I noted an Unsavory Charlatan was spawned.  (Have no vacation subhood attached to this neighborhood.)

None of the no spawning hacks seem to be working the way they have in the past.  Yes, I am sure they are the latest ones. I have redownloaded them twice.

Another much BIGGER problem.   When attempting to scroll around the neighborhood or in any lot the cursor seems to have springs attached. I attempt to move forward, the cursor jerks back to where I started,  or springs further than I wanted it to, or jerks randomly to one side or another.  Has become very difficult to move around the lot for viewing. No problem with scroll wheel, only with right button scrolling. 

There have been other issues that I have been able to find answers to by searching.   

The good news is my wolves are back.  They stopped appearing on all lots in all neighborhoods after installing Freetime, whether with custom content enabled or totally removed from game.  My previous post asking if this was a bug of the unpatched Freetime never yielded an answer but whatever caused it has been fixed by installing AL.  Wonder if installing M&G would fix current problems.  Can't install patch as too big to download on dialup.

You're aware that attaching new sub-hoods (hidden in the case of AL) will flood your 'hood with new townies, aren't you?  The 3 hacks you name don't prevent townies which come with each sub-hood template.  Those hacks were meant to be used with clean templates, if you want the absolute minimum of townies/NPCs.

The service NPCs (bartender) can be spawned if you place a bar on a comm lot.  Even an OFB lot that you never visited but immediately purchased to be operated by a playable will spawn a bartender, if you saved it with a bar.  Similar rules apply to objects like the espresso bar, possibly cash registers.

I've had the Unsavory Charlatan visit downtown comm lots, and Witches on Uni comm lots.  I don't know if it's normal for them to spawn without the sub-hood attached, but empirical evidence suggests that as of AL, these NPCs are not properly sequestered to their respective locales.

I do have all the empty templates and they were installed before loading my custom neighborhood.  The particular hood that I am currently playing has no downtown and no community lots other than the cemetaries.  No bars at the cemetaries.  One other bartender was spawned

No witches have been spawned though I do find a witch cat and a spectral assistant in Simpe.  They apparently are not in the template neighborhood.  I do not have any of the Seasons npcs.  No garden club.  I do have the hobby people and in one of the apartments they were actually showing up and walking into the apartments instead of calling with their messages.

Why were 15 new strays spawned with AL?  The old ones were not all adopted though never see them anymore.

Well since you only have the 15 pets you can't account for, I'd try starting a new 'hood and checking to see if you get more pet spam.

I have nostrayrespawn and clean templates, and I don't get any pet spam.  I've converted dozens of 'hoods to AL and have not had any new pets.  To be honest, I don't get bartenders or social group townies either, until I build the relevant lots.
If you don't have the whole director's cut, I suppose you can try testing with that set of hacks to see if you get different results.  I looked over my own selection of MATY hacks and didn't see anything besides wolfwatchers and creaturefixes, that has anything remotely to do with pets.

Do you have anything special at the cemeteries?  The 'hood I'm currently developing has 4 small ones with nothing but headstones, landscaping, and public washrooms.  I have only 4 pets of my own creation in the adoption pool, 3 kittens and a puppy, so they aren't even eligible to wander around comm lots.  One wolf makes the rounds, but that's it.  I've played this 'hood for about 80 sim days, so I doubt very much there is anything inherent about AL that produces strays.  You should check conflicting hacks, your templates, and maybe the health of your installation at this point, I reckon.