More Awesome Than You!

I am wondering just exactly what are the differences between a downtown area and the regular hood?
Vampires and gypsys do not visit a hood, but is that the only difference?

Vampires and gypsies will visit base neighbourhood lots.
You'll only find Vampires on community lots and the Gypsy will show up on all lots.

The only difference is that Downtown lots are, well, downtown.

Downtownies will walk by your house if you live downtown as well.  But you'll never see them if you stay cooped up in the base neighborhood.

Of course, you can always visit downtown community lots and meet them...

Hmm, I'm curious now, as I've never had a downtown home...

Do the 'normal' walkbys come walking past home lots in downtown as well?

And is there any perceptible difference in load times or game speed between the downtown homes and the neighbourhood homes?

As far as load times, several of the lots are 2x2, so since they are smaller, they do tend to load faster than larger lots.

The sims from your base hood will walk by downtown lots but downtownies will not walk by your base hood lots. I'm also fairly certain that the Grand Vampires do not visit base neighbourhood homes. Those are the only differences I can think of.

Hm. I don't recall many walk by visitors on my DT sim lots--some tho--I remeber one of my hood sims coming to visit on a DT sim lot. But the Hood sims always have lots of walkbys....

I always thought it was stupid for the hood to be the center with satellite dts and unis--it's the other way around in RL: a City is the center and it has satellite hoods and unis. I am thinking about dumping my DT and just moving everything to my main hood. Then I will 're-do' the hood into a main DT. :) Unless of course, there are significant differences that show up listed in this thread...

Well, the random calls you get for outings and the like always want you to go downtown, but I suppose you can also pick regular community lots when you choose where to go (I never do because mine are the boring comm. lots stolen from Pleasantview - I hate making comm. lots) so it probably doesn't matter there.

Yeah, my downtown areas have kind of a country feel to them anyway because I can't be bothered to fill them up- I don't like placing empty houses with no sims in them. The regular sims from the base neighborhood will be walkbys downtown, but there is the added benefit of the hot downtownies walking by as well- I like them, anyway. You also have a lesser frequency of hood walkbys because they are living further away compared with downtown neighbors.

Well, I've had walk-bys from downtownies in the main hood, but only after they've been moved into a house.  However, they all have several best friends amongst the dormies, haven't a clue how, but there it is!  I have, however, had dormies walk by in the main hood - not often, but it's happened.  (And they've kicked over trashcans!)

They're no longer downtownies after they've moved into a house, are they? ;) That all sounds normal.

I don't know of any real difference, but I like living downtown as if I visit community lots downtown, it eliminates a loading screen and I hate waiting for them (it loads "downtown" and then the place you're going, even if it's all done in one swell foop so it's less obvious than it used to be). Making good community lots in the main neighborhood would work just as well, but I do use the Maxis community lots and all the good ones are downtown. People that live in houses in the main hood will walkby the downtown houses.

I hate the loading screen as well. I don't even bother with adding a downtown. If you have pleasure sims, the "Go Downtown" want changes to "Go To Community Lot" if you don't have a downtown and that's fine with me.

So no difference other than the name? Why bother with a DT at all?

If one creates a DT off their Hood, that creates the NPCs (the vampires and the gypsy) for the DT. Then if one wants the maxis DT lots, which I used them for 'templates', bin them- they stay binned, move them into a hood--delete the DT. We have everything that NL has to offer right in our Hood.

Ok--why bother with a satellite Dt then? Why did maxis do that??

Because it makes people feel like they're getting something, and people like having "new locations." Or something.

Also, I think there might be more people in the DT lots, especially after hours. But that could be a figment of my memory.

How would they place the new lots in people's existing neighborhoods? I suppose they could have just left all the lots in the lot bin and let people place them in their own hoods.

It is also a way to expand real estate once your hood gets full. You can add several downotwns to each hood. One hood I was playing, I made one "downtown" the farming community.

Well, yes--but that goes right back to with the hood as the center and DTs are satellites, the whole thing seems backwards.

Oddysey, that thing about more visitors DT--that's a good point. I wonder if it's true. What would 'govern' max number of allowed sims for a DT as opposed to max number of allowed sims for the hood? How can that be different?

Not to mention that downtonies are like a million times better looking than most of the regular townies and dormies.  That's extremely nice for those seeking a Legacy Challenge.

You don't need a downtown to get the gypsy!  She appears as soon as you move sims to a new lot, or within a day of loading an old one, unless you have TJ's fix!

The only thing really that you gain from downtown is the new community lots and houses, and the nicer looking Downtownies, + the Tricous, and it gives you more space for more houses, when you already (except in Strangetown) have room for so many houses that if you  filled up every blank space your neighbourhood would almost certainly become a BFBVFS!

I started filling in my 'hood with empty houses.  Now that we can see further than our backward, it's worth it.  I'm no where near satisfied with the look of my 'hood yet, but it will come.

I was wondering.  If downtownies do not walk around your 'hood, will your townies walk around downtown?    I created around 32 townies when I started my game.  Which makes me wonder if a hack exist yet to create downtownies.  If not, might there be a way to do it with SimPE.

I suppose what I meant was, not so much the number of houses, but the temptation to fill them all up! 

If you don't have the notownierespawn, then every time you move a downtownie into a house, they will be replaced, but you will, of course, have to put up with the main hood townies!

I wouldn't know about townies walking around downtown, as I usually delete them, or in a custom hood I create the hood and the uni, then deleteallcharacters.  But since dormies can appear in the main hood, I don't see why they wouldn't!

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but my Sims energy seems to last longer in Downtown Community lots as opposed to the Comm. lots in the 'hoods.

I think that's true of the parks, which the splurge says are revivifying!  So maybe they made them that way?

If the DT parks are 'revivifying' that must be a setting in the lot data, eh? So if the park is moved to a hood, then that effect would move too. ?

The downtownies are not going to 'go away' if the DT is deleted. They'd show up in the Hood, right?

A DT doesn't really give you 'more space to build' because all character files are held within the same folder as the hood's--your PC reaches it's max number it can deal with and your game will ba a BFBVFS regardless. right?

Well, yes, you don't get a separate number of character limits for each bit, they're all jumbled up together in your characters folder.  But if you delete your downtown, I think that most of your Downtownies will be deleted too - but once you've played it and your sims have been there, then it's NOT A GOOD IDEA!!!!  I tried this kind of thing once with a second campus attached to the same Pleasantview.  Only two of my sims had been there, and were back in the bin  awaiting transferral to the original campus, deleted campus no.2 and lo and behold, loads of unlinked sims (not just the dormies, but the maxis playables and some NPCs) wandering around the original campus!  Took quite a while to clean everything up!  So I should think you'd get similar problems with Downtown.  Plus, you'd get an additional problem with all your dormies, who have relationships with most of the Downtownies!

hm.

I had two unis once and deleted the one--but I didn't have any problems.

One thing I've noticed with SimPE, which Ii couldn't play the game without, is it sometimes says a character is unlinked when, in fact, it isn't. I don't know why it does this--but I've learned to just leave those alone. ?

Well, if it says the character is unlinked, check to see whether the unlinked box has a number ending in 000 or 001 (if it's 001, then it's definitely unlinked!)  Trying to load a lot where one of your sims has become unlinked will cause your lot to crash - I know, I've had it happen! 

You only get the problems with the second uni if you play it, then play the first one again - in which case, a lot of those characters will go walkabout in it, and if your sims meet them then you get unlinked character files if you delete their hood.  It's made worse if you use the interactwogreet mod as you have less control over who your sims get to know!

hm. I'll have to watch for that 000 v 001 thing.

I'm not sure I followed what you said about the play the first uni then the sencond etc. but I do know: I played the one I deleted, but I didn't play it much. I took the lots out of it I liked and got rid of it, placed the lots in the other uni. No problems.

I have hardly played at all since NL because the patch screwed up my game and I had to reinstall, get backups etc etc. So I have an unpatched game which I'm leery of. Maybe OFB will fix that. Of course--then we'll have the OFB problems.....

What I meant was, if you played the first uni, then played the second and then returned and played the first one again, then some of the characters from the second will start to walkby your lots and dorms in the first, plus could appear at any community lots.  Once they've done that, your sims may interact with them and thus acquire the memory of that sim.  Delete the second campus, and those sims will still be in the first one, walking about, but since their "home" has gone, they will be unlinked.  But they may well have brought with them even more "baggage" in the form of sims from their campus that they knew.

Oh. Isee now: I did that, but I didn't do it much, a few times back and forth comparing.

Do you have any opinion about the max number of visiting sims DT v. Hood?

Where's Pescado, he'll know....

Are you going on dates? A successful date (not sure about timed outings) boosts all your stats, especially energy. You get a boost even if you don't reach dream date, but that one is worth the most. It's even worth ending a date once it hits dream status (even if you have 5 min. left on the clock) and just asking them out again or asking someone else (or using the time to look around) if you want to stay on a community lot longer.

I've done that for a Romance Sim before, I sent her out on something like 4 dates in a row to help her reach her LTW, and I never once had to refresh her energy to do it.  As soon as she reached dream date, I'd end it and then either send her out again with the same Sim or with a new one.

I really want to try to have a Sim bottom out and die from a horrible date though, so as soon as I get around to making some custom townies, I'm going to work on that next.  ;D

You can die from a bad date? <rofl> that sounds like a great story - post pics, please?  ;D

Apparently, their motives take quite a hit on a horrible date, so if they're quite low on hunger, they can actually starve to death.

If I do this, I'll make sure to take and post some pics.  ;D

Wow. I've heard of sims actually dying on dates, and the surviving partner still getting a 'dream date' rating, but never sims dying from bad dates. I have to try that now. (now = one of these days, not today, but later)

I have so many things listed as 'Have to try on unsuspecting Romance sims' ... One of these days, I'll get around to them all. Those poor romance sims, they'll never know what hit them. ;) (an 'evil grin' smilie would be perfect here)

Dormies and downtownies are not, strictly speaking, associated with a specific downtown or university. However, spawning downtowns does not appear to spawn more downtownies or downtown NPCs, whereas creating a new Uni DEFINITELY spawns more dormies and Uni NPCs. These new dormies and NPCs, however, are not differentiated or associated with the new Uni and shortly begin appearing everywhere else.

Hi,
I'm just a passing lurker, but I thought I'd throw this in, if it helps and someone can verify--it seems to me that when I send a sim to a community lot in downtown, there are more townies and downtownies milling about, maybe around 12 on a smaller lot (including npcs--servers, hostess, etc.).  On regular neighborhood community lots, I'll only get about a half as many sims.  I noticed this by accident--I made a small diner on a 2x2 lot that I like, so I put the same diner in both downtown and the neighborhood (I don't know about in a uni hood).  Now, I didn't do any extensive research or count or anything, but there were more sims showing up to hang around the downtown diner than in the main hood.  
I'm a bit limited on how many sims I can have on a lot at a time cause my computer is a p.o.s., so maybe someone can verify this, if anyone's interested.  

***retreating back to lurkerdom

p.s. thanks for the hacks, Pescado

Welcome out of lurkdom.

I haven't done any "testing" but I have observed the same things as well.

I think maybe you're right. But I don't understand WHY it would be different since the num of visiting sims is determined by your PC, why would the DT be governed by a separate config setting? But if this is so: what entry IS governing it... how and why? If the text that is controling this can be identified then it can be modified....?

The question is, what to do with all of those unlinked characters once we have already fubared the neighborhood? Can they be deleted somehow with SimPE? I have a bunch of them in my strangeville neighborhood (long story, very boring) and I tried deleting them with SimPE, but I don't think I was successful.

Well, if they're members of your families, why not just relink them?  Simply change the number back to 0X000.  You may have to replace lost memories or relationships within the family, and make a note of the sim's GUID so when you check other sims' memories and find Met Unknown and that GUID, you can either replace that with the sim you are relinking, or if it's Goopy, you can just delete the memory altogether.  Then you need to go back to that sim's relationships panel and either delete the relationship altogether, or again replace it with the correct one - that should then appear in your previously unlinked sim's relationships too.  You would then need to check the memories for that sim to see if that relationship is there or not - if not, simply add met John Doe, Made Best Friends with John doe, whatever is necessary.  It takes time, but if the sim is important to your hood, it's worth doing.

On the other hand, unlinked extra copies of your sims are bad news and need to be deleted, after you have made absolutely certain that no memories of them remain.