More Awesome Than You!

This is specifically for OFB, but it can be used for non OFB users as well.

This is PRE OFB PATCH ONLY until further notice.

Deleting, Creating, and Generating Townies


INDEX:

1.) Getting rid of all characters
2.)Making new townies
   a.)To Make Maxis townies
   b.)To Make Custom Townies
3.)Adding a Downtown
4.)Adding A University
5.)NPCs

The BIG no no: DO NOT do this in a Maxis made neighborhood! Meaning

Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville. Doing so may blow your game

up beyond repair. I cannot stress this enough.If you really want to get

rid of the sims in these neighborhoods, kill them off individually in

game. If it is simply the houses you want, Package each one you want to

a file and install them after you have completed your new neighborhood.

If you are using clean installer (I hope you are) select LOT FILE ONLY.

This is important. Failing to do this will potentially blow your game

up.

Or you can be really patient and wait until I finish the empty, bug-free version of some neighborhoods, as well as custom townies with no custom content. This will be a while, so don't hold your breath - you will probably turn blue and die if you do.

DO NOT use the deleteallcharacters cheat more than once per

neighborhood. You will get an error during townie creation. If you

screw up the first time, start over. If you accidentally forgot to

delete all the characters before generating townies (meaning you have

two full sets of townies in your neighborhood), deleteallcharacters

will give you an error when you try to generate them again. Add all

your lots and houses AFTER making your townies/downtownies.

NOTE: If you have tried this in a clean neighborhood and you are still getting errors: First, exit and delete the NeighborhoodManager.package from your Neighborhoods folder. If that doesn't work, make sure you have no hacks that prevent townie/dormie regeneration, etc. If that doesn't work, then remove your hacks and try again. If that doesn't work, then I'd say you are SOL. Sorry!

-------------------------

1.) Getting rid of all characters:

Start in a brand new neighborhood, do not make any sims. Do NOT make a

downtown or University. You may make a new Shopping District, but an empty one - NOT Bluewater Village.

 Besides that one exception, NO SUBHOODS ALLOWED! The reason for this exception is that an empty

 Shopping District does not create any new characters.

Adding any others before you delete the characters will make your game blow

up. I will explain how to add Subhoods later in this tutorial, so be

patient!

There are two ways to go about this.

One is while in neighborhood view, hit Ctrl+Shift+c to open the cheat

console. Type in deleteallcharacters, at which point you will be

prompted as to whether or not you really want to do this. Of course you

do, so select yes. At this point the neighborhood will reload and there

will be no one there.

The second one, is to exit the game and delete all the files in the

character folder. (C:\My Documents\EA Games|The Sims

2\Neighborhoods\<insert your neighborhood folder here>\Character Files)

There should be 87 files there. Make sure you pick the correct

neighborhood folder. Once you have navigated to this folder it is wise

to leave it open and Alt+Tab to access it in-game and keep track of

things as you are going through this process.

--------------------------

2.)Making new townies:

First, get either Inge's Teleporter Plus shrub found  HERE : http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/smf/index.php?topic=2757.0 , or get the proper version of the

InSIMenator (the Sim Edition) for your game version found HERE: http://www.insimenator.net/forumdisplay.php?f=38

or you can use both. This is simply a matter of preference. Read up

(thoroughly!) on both to find out what they do and choose which method

you prefer, and please note that if you choose to use just the

InSIMenator you will have to have a sim ask the townies you exported to leave

the lot. Also, you can adjust their gender preference before

exportation with the Personality Adjustor. With the shrub, you can

remove all non-residents and they will vanish off the lot. Both have

advantages the other doesn't.

This will be split into two sections. Making Maxis townies, and making

custom townies.

  a.)To Make Maxis townies:

Make a sim in CAS aka Create A Family. Move them into a house or empty

lot - it is up to you. As soon as the lot loads for the first time, one

townie, the Grim Reaper, Mrs. Crumplebottom (If you have Nightlife),

the Shrink, and the NPC-Remote Control Car will be generated. Now, open

the cheat console again, and type in boolprop testingcheatsenabled

true. Then you can either Shift+click on your sim and select

spawn...NPC and Townie Maker. It looks like the dead willow tree. Or,

you can Shift+click on the mailbox, and on the second set of menus you

should see *DBG - FORCE Create Townies. It will ask you if you want to

create them now, select yes. SOmetimes you will get a random skintone

option as well. If you have Nightlife, you will have the option to

create Downtownies. Do not pick this one, you will simply get an error.

Now your townies will be generated without a hitch if you have followed

the directions thusfar. More often than not during the creation of said

townies, you will see the icons of the one townie, the 4 NPCs, and the

sim you made where the game is showing you it is creating townies. Do

not be alarmed - this is normal. About halfway through, you will begin

to see other faces as well as blank ones. By the time you are done

generating townies, the paper will likely have been delivered and your

NPC paper delivery teen will have been generated. Save your game. You

should now have 32 files in your Characters folder. 1 is your sim, one

is the paper delivery sim, and the other 30 are townies.

  b.)To Make Custom Townies:

In CAS create 24-30 sims of your liking (preferably in groups of 6-8),

using whatever custom content you want, and leaving them in the Sim Bin

until you are done (it seems to be easier that way). After you have

created your townie sims, move one group into a lot at a time,

preferably an empty one. I prefer to use the same lot for townie

exportation, leaving one sim behind so I can just combine households

(you must have University for this option) with the remaining sims in

the Sim Bin. No waiting for the lot to move them in that way. Do not

give them a phone. Do not greet any visitors that may come to welcome

your sims. This makes the process easier.


Shrub instructions: With each sim, click on the shrub and choose Make

Me A Townie. As you do this, the selected sim will automatically

change. When you have exported all on the lot, you will no longer have

the "make me a" option. Sims will remain on the lot and wander around

doing sim stuff after exportation if you do not pause the game, which

is recommended. After you are done exporting every sim on the lot,

click on the shrub again and select Remove All Non Residents. This will

cause all of them to vanish. Exit the lot, and repeat with the

remaining sims you made that are still in the Sim Bin.


InSIMenator Instructions: click on the ground and select Spawn...Family

Tree. Click on the Family Tree and select Remove From Household...As

Townie...<insert sim name here> -  Leave Downtownie alone for now, and

I highly recommend not touching the NPC option. Continue until you have

one sim left. Have this sim tell everyone to leave. If you do not do

this, they will remain on the lot, even after exiting the lot. If you

have University, you can now take another group from the Sim Bin and

combine households. If you do not have University, export this sim and

then exit back into the neighborhood and move your next group in.

Continue this process until you have sucessfully exported all, and

there will be one exported sim on the lot left. If you wait until it is

really late, they will leave on their own - or if their motives get too

low they will leave before that. If you have a refrigerator and a bed

they will stay, so leave these items off the lot, as they will use them and stay indefinitely. Otherwise,

you can tell them to leave when a new family moves in, but I do not

recommend that.


---------------------

3.)Adding a Downtown:

Before you add a downtown, go to your character files folder and look

at the highest file number (example:N001_User0x00032) and remember it,

write it down, whatever. Now it is safe to make a downtown. Make ONE

and ONLY ONE! DO NOT use the Maxis made Downtown!

Immediately after making your subhood, exit the game. Go to the

Character Files folder and select all the new character files, then

Shift+delete. (This will bypass the Recycle Bin and delete them from

your hard drive). This will normally create 78 new character files.

Start the game, and follow the instructions above for making townies.

It is exactly the same, simply select Downtownie instead of Townie in

each case.

---------------------

4.)Adding A University:

Follow the same instructions for making a downtown, making a note of

the highest character file number, and deleting all new files. There

should be 98 of them. What happens next depends on what you want to do.

Maxis Young Adults: Can be generated by selecting "Create Townies" on a residential lot in a University hood, but be warned: This makes 49 YA, unlike every other neighborhood, which makes 30.

If you make a YA sim and move them into a dorm it will automatically

generate one cafeteria worker, Professors, the Gypsy (if you have

nightlife), a cow mascot, and enough dormies to fill up your dorm. Then over time it will produce a llama

 mascot, a cheerleader, and a streaker. If you put another student or students in another dorm, it will

generate enough dormies for that dorm, as well as a new cow, llama, cheerleader, dorm cook, and streaker.

If you put your sim in a house,  about 30 sim minutes or so after lot load,

the game will produce the required Professors (29), but no dormies or other

YA. On first visit to a community lot ON campus, the game will generate

the necessary NPCs and a Secret Society member - but that is it. If you

want more YA then put a sim in a dorm or make your own.



Custom Young Adults: To make your own YA, follow the same instructions

for making custom townies, only do so in the University CAS. You MUST

do this on a regular lot - not in a dorm. Young Adults are considered

Townies in most (if not all) cases. So export them as Townies, unless

you really want a few as Downtownies for some strange reason.
---------------------

5.)NPCs

NPCs will be automatically created by the game as needed, so it really

isn't necessary to generate them all. If there are NPC's that you never

use or see, there is no point in making them anyway. You can choose to

generate all NPCs with the mailbox (DBG-FORCE Create NPCs) or the tree

(Make All...Base Game NPCs or EP2 NPCs) for the base game or Nightlife.

You can generate special NPCs for each expansion, except Open For

Business, individually with the tree, as well as EP/non-EP specific

NPCs (maid, burglar, repoman, barista, streaker, mascot, Grand Vampire,

Dateable Slob, Mr.Big, Chef, DJ, etc.) If you find you want specific NPCs

and do not want to wait for them to generate on their own, then this is

a good option.


Edit May 17:

If you wish to let them generate on their own, they will. When you create a sim and move them into a downtown lot, it will make a downtownie, if you move a sim into the main hood, it will make a townie. This will happen every time you add a new sim to your neighborhoods. When you first visit a community lot, it will create a new sim plus NPCs every time you go. The first 10 or so seem to be teens, and then it begins to make adults. This is still experimental as far as the numbers are concerned, but so far my new hood has made 26 character files.

Thanks to Jordi for the inspiration!

That's it! Hope this helps :)

Thank you so much! This is incredibly helpful, I've been going through a similar process creating new hoods because I'm so sick of the same Marissa and Ben and Brandi. And I'm very glad to see that getting odd character thumbnails is normal...I've been seeing the NPCs you mentioned (though I haven't seen the RC car), often more than once, plus Santa, Father Time, and a toddler or two.

Couple questions, though. Why do you recommend not using the Maxis downtown? Also, why should you not place lots until after using deleteallcharacters?

Thanks again for writing this up :)

The remot control car is what Nec believes causes the blank thumbnail that shows up. 

Nec is the expert on this, all I know is that as soon as a sub-hood was added the whole thing broke even more than it was before with just OFB.

Ahh, gotcha. I haven't noticed any problems with my Maxis downtowns, but I haven't played any for a great deal of time so they have probably just not become obvious yet.

That makes me think of another question. Can you create NL NPCs (the Diva, Mr. Big, vampires, etc) without a downtown and have them live in the base hood? Lately I have been deciding not to make a downtown subhood and and instead building my own downtown area in the main hood itself, but I'd still like to be able to have those NPCs around.

That I have not tried. The option is there to create them as long as you have the EP, though. That I can test out, I am quite curious to know now. As far as the lot thing, I meant that specifically for packaged Maxis lots from Maxis hoods (since they have so much info attached to them that is not really lot-related) - in case that is what people wanted. Which brings me to another test I am going to try. I am going to make an empty Pleasentview terrain, DAC and then cgo into the normal one, delete the occupied houses and then exit and copy the files in the lot catalogue and see what happens. Will post results as soon as I have them!

And you're welcome! Glad I could finally offer something of use rather than just random and excessive babbling  ::)

Ah okay, that makes sense. That didn't occur to me, I guess because JMP has scared the daylights out of me about of about moving occupied lots ;D

I'm quite interested to hear what other results you find :)

OK, lots copied from any custom neighborhood show up (which I am used to), lots from Pleasantview will not. Just shows how tweaked Maxis hoods are. You can create Mr.Big and the Grand Vampire without a downtown - the Gypsy spawns on her own. So far, I have not seen any but the gypsy. I think it is probably because their coding requires they show up in downtown lots. I Imagine this will be true with all neighborhood specific NPCs, with the exception of the gypsy because if you have NL the option to call her as a service is automatically there.

Crap :( I was afraid that might be the case.

Thanks so much for checking that out Nec, good to know!

Thanks Nec.  I have been wanting something like this since TS2 first came out.

Why do you not add the sub-neighborhoods before running the deleteallcharacters command?

Thank you.

Because it's really FUBAR in OFB if you do that.  As other discussions here in The Podium have said, doing it before adding the sub-neighborhoods is the only way to get it to work right.

Eh no problem :) The other thing I remembered about placing lots after making all your townies is because if you screw up the townie making process, you won't have worked hard to make the hood nice for nothing.


jsalemi is quite correct. I have suspicions, but I am not positive of what, exactly, the problem is. I suspect it has something to do with the quantity of character files. I also suspect that since downtown and university have specific functions for each neighborhood not available in the base hood, that might cause something weird, as well.

This really made me want to go back home and start a fresh town!  :-\

I'm half way across the world, and the only thing that makes me home sick is the sims.

Next question.  Why do you say not to use the Maxis downtown?  Is it because of the Tricour ghosts?  Their character files are created even if you create a custom Downtown for your neighborhood, and they are still created as ghosts. 

Awesome info, Nec!  Thanks so much.  I'm also curious about your advice not to use a Maxis Downtown after a new base hood w/custom townies etc has been created. 
Thanks again!

If you plan on deleting all the downtown characters, a Maxis subhood doesn't work because of all of the extra information attached to them. You can attach any Maxis neighborhood if you plan on keeping all the characters intact. If it is the buildings you want, move them to the lots and houses bin, or better yet, package them and then install them as the "lot file only" to get rid of all the person and other erroneous data that may be attached to it.

Nec Thanks a million for this tutorial.  Now I know what I did wrong the last time and it explains why I ended up with errors when creating townies.

I can now safely create a custom neighborhood without worrying. 

I will delete my other custom hood I created, eventhough it does not seem to be FUBAR, I won't take any chance.  Anyway I am not attached to it.

One little note though, I was always able to generate the YA'S by placing a YA I created in CAS in a private house (I use the familyfunds cheat so it have enough money).  Once the YA was in that house, I choose the create townie option like usual either on the mailbox or the deadtree, it creates 50 YA along with the NPC's you mention in your tutorial.  Is it wrong doing this? Can it cause problems?

If it is working, that is great. I didn't even try it :P I will make sure it works in my game before I change the post - thanks for the info!

Edit: It did work, thanks! It makes too many new sims for my taste, but it is good to know the option is there.

I am happy I helped you and grateful you tried it out to make sure it was ok to do this.

Since I always place not more that 2 controllable Sims in the same dorm, it is more convenient for me to create those 50 YA townies right away so the game won't generate them 1 by 1 when needed.  I normally don't have many generations so those extra character files do not bother me that much.  I have the tendency to reset the game often too!  :P

Next time I will create a cc hood, I will follow your tutorial to avoid BFBVFS.

Thank you :)

I use the YA's as a townie-marriage pool.  There are a few plate eaters in the mix, but that's why we have Sim Surgery.

I think the only two lots in Downtown that should have issues are Gothier Green Lawns and The House of Fallen Leaves, since those are the two lots with tombstones on them.  I'm gonna do some experimenting and see.

Can you just create a new neighborhood and add all of the sub 'hoods and then exit the game and delete the characters from the characters folder?  Or will that cause problems like using deleteallcharacters?  It seems to me that would save a lot of steps and if you are manualy deleting the townie files from the characters folder anyway, why can't you do it in just one go?  I'm probably missing something, but just thought I'd ask. 

No, that will cause the same problem, which leads me to beleive that the problem is the number or character files deleted at once when it comes to custom hoods, and possibly with the Maxis pre-mades as well, since they have more character files than a new hood, though I am convinced that a lot of that has to do with the pre-arranged scenarios in various families (they are much different and cause errors with the same hacks that don't cause errors with the exact same setup, minus the pre-existing storyline). This is speculation, but it is the only thing that has made sense to me so far. One at a time seems to be the only way at this time. I am slowly working on creating a bunch of custom cc-free townies, as well as bug-free Maxis neighborhoods that are empty. This is taking a long time, however, as I am doing many other things at the same time :P

Thank you so much, Nec, for your response.  I figured that I just didn't understand something, but I am a curious cat and always want to know why something doesn't work.    Maxis should have given players the option to choose whether or not they wanted townies, and how many.  Especially since they are not actually required for anything, as far as I know. 

When I create a custom 'hood this way, do I have to create all of the townies?  I usually don't like to have any townies in the base 'hood, and only about 10 to 15 each in UNI and Downtown, for shoppers and dormmates.  I don't figure it matters how many I create, but I just thought I'd ask.  If the problem stems soley from deleting characters, not how many you create then it shouldn't make a difference, right? 

You don't have to create all the townies, you can just create one at a time with the tree. I am not clear yet as to how many will generate on their own, or how many you have to have before they will stop regenerating. I have not tested this. Uni hoods are much different, and will generate new dormies for each dorm, though if you move a student out of a dorm and move another one in to any dorm, it will make use of the existing dormies as well as generate more if needed to fill up a dorm with more rooms than the previous. You can use noregen hacks to prevent this. I have never used them, so I can't tell you specifically which ones to use or how they work.

I think it works like this: on every load of a lot (residential or community) a townie is created, up to the apparently built-in limit of ca. 40 (4 teens, 4 kids, 2 elders, 30 adults). Downtownies are never spawned, but special townies (vampires, slobs, divas) are.

Ok, I did notice the one on the lot load, but I never made more than one lot for when I was figuring this out so I didn't know that it was one per lot. I wonder if it will create a downtownie for every downtown residential lot load? I make a lot of sims live downtown. Have you checked that? I will pay attention when I make my next custom hood.

I don't play downtown much… but looks like it does generate downtownies for SP2 lots. My count is off by 10 by the way, it's actually 20 adults so 30 in total.

I am not sure how many downtownies will be generated in total, I am guessing 30 as well with the same setup.

Add to that of course 1-3 NPCs per type, and the two slobs, two divas, four vampires, and the special NPCs… and for OFB the reporter(s)?

OFB lots seem to use normal townies.

Downtownies are all taken from the Maxis downtownie templates by the way, so there are usually exact duplicates.

So far I have been getting a new downtownie for every sim I add to downtown, and a new one whenever a new downtown lot is visited for the first time. I also have 2 paper delivery teens in the base hood, and a new one in downtown. So far the only adult townie made is the bartender. The rest are teens. This will be interesting to see what happens once there are 10 non-npc teens in each hood. I am at 7 total right now.

I did the counting in NL by the way… it is quite possible OFB broke it. They destroyed the generator afterall.

nope it didnt. it shows random pics but nothing else.

Actually, it did break - which is why you get error logs stating that the error is the communitly lot populator (ie the townie generator v2.0). This is why this tutorial was put here in the first place. The 'random' pics are explained in the first post of this thread.

Nec, I actually sat down and tried this out a few days ago and it worked beautifully!  Thank goodness you worked it all out for the dullards like myself.  I would kiss your feet, but I don't know where they've been, so I won't  :D

Just wanted to say that it worked for me as well.  Thanks for your efforts to help others in this matter.

Thank you so much for writing this tutorial.  ;D
I have been building a new hood and this is working like a dream

I have two question thoug. You mentioned  the noregn hack ... I can´t find it  ::) , do anyone have a link and can I use it while generating my own Townies/Downtownies or should I only add it when I´m finished creating the townies ?

Thanks once again

Rose

Assuming you have OFB. Hack is here http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/ffs/ofb/hacks/
they are alphabetical. I have not used notownieregen, so I cannot say anything except wait until you are done. If someone else knows the answer to this, please speak up. :)

Thanks and I won´t use it while I´m generating my own townies ... unless someone have positive experiemces with it :)

Rose

The whole point of notownieregen (and nodormieregen) is to keep the game from creating its own townies and dormies while you create your own.  So if you don't want the Maxis townies running around and just your own, then you should definitely put both in your game.

I have finally finished creating all my townies in CAS ... and am now ready to convert them to real Townies *G*
I have added the notownieregen and ofcourse I have a back-up ... I´m slow, not stupid *LOL*

I guess that if you don´t hear from me the next couple of days, it means that it works like a charm, otherwise I´ll surly be back with 25.000 questions ... expecting that you have an answer to them all *LOL*

Thanks once again again

Rose

Thanks Nec. I'lll give this tut a try.

I've been messing with deleting townies out of my version of Strangetown. I keep this town around as a testing ground. I have one main hood, a custom, that I play and I noticed the number of character files is getting way high. I want to clean it up.

So far, the noregen seems to not work in my test hood--but there are a variety of things that might be making it 'appear' to not work altho it does, so I test on...Some of the problems I have encountered maybe that it IS a maxis hood--so thank you so much for pointing out the follies of Maxis hoods!

I have my main hood populated with my own sims and it seems to 'push out' the townies (ie my sims appear in place of the townies--like the welcome wagon, the shoppers, however sometimes a townie still sneaks in.)

I want to play without ANY tonwies. Period. None of the little buggers. Think it can be done?

Yes, I think it can be using the notownieregen mentioned, and then you just have to delete the first one made when you load your first lot.

I have my hood up and running. Have moved in 2 playable sims. Had them visit Community lots and Downtown (not Maxis) and everything works GREAT!!!
I have not spotted one single Maxis sim, except the nessary NPC´s, like repairman and waiters at restaurants. This is the best thing that have happened to my game ... you guys are great

Rose

I tried following this tutorial in a fresh hood to try out some default facial template replacements I downloaded, and I had problems with toddlers getting strange wants, like want to buy a car.  I opened SimPE and found that I had way more SWAFs than I did Sim Descriptions.  Same thing with DNA.  I deleted all the extra SWAFs and DNA entries by noting the gaps in the instance numbers that did not have Sim Descriptions.  This solved the problem.  I have seen this mentioned elsewhere on this site, but not in this thread, so I thought I'd mention so people are aware of it.

hmmm ... what is SWAF´s  ???

One of my toddlers also had the Want To Buy A Car-want ... but I´ve ignored it, will it make my game explode in the furture or is it only an annoyance  ???

I would prefer not messing to much around with my game, I love it as it is now ...  ;D

Rose

Sims Wants And Fears

Toddler wants has been discussed lately.  I'll use the search  ;) facility and edit in the link.

Edit:  Here's a few discussions about weird wants -
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4753.0
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4428.0
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4676.0

older threads:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3637.0
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3052.0

There's a lot more but I didn't re-read the entire threads to see if it matched your issue.  Use search and put in 'toddler wants' if you want to peruse.  :)

Oh Doh  ::) Thanks  :D

Rose

Does deleteallchars actually get rid of the SWAF, genetics files, memories and relationships?  I didn't think it did everything it needs to.   I'd be happy to be wrong on this one, but I think you need to look at all of these in SimPE and clean up leftovers after you do the deleteallchars plus delete the files in the hood characters folder.  Then you can start making clean ones.  I used deleteallchars on one hood a while back and it still had loads of extra SWAF and DNA files etc when I went through on my big clean up last week.  Maybe I did some other stupid thing in the hood...   

Maybe somebody moreawesome than me could do the equivalent of Theo's memory editor for the SWAF, genetics and relationships bits... pretty please..


thanks for the bit on NPCs - I'm desperate for a reporter to show up in a business in Strangetown - I didn't attach a shopping subhood and no reporter so far.  2 of Ajay Loners wants are "get a good review" and get a "best of the best"  I've locked "marry a rich sim", leaving me 1 slot to keep him happy and it's getting harder..  I tried the badge juicer - the action just seemed to drop out of the queue and still no reporter.

deleteallchars only deletes the Sim files and relationships, it leaves the SWAFs, DNA, and in some cases memories behind. Best bet is to do a deleteallchars, save and exit, clear all SWAFs and sDNA in SimPE, and then return to the clean 'hood and start playing.

So with these dangling SWAF's...plus the way this tutorial works, is it best to make the hood, DAC then go into SimPE and follow Jordi's advice of clearing SWAF's and sDNA, then do the same with the Downtown then also the same again with the Uni?
And then add townies...

As in it says at the start not to add the hoods all at once.
So once the first hood is set and cleared with no extra's, won't you in adding another sub hood mess it all up again?

Sorry if it's a stupid question...I'm trying to get it right as far as I can!

I advise to use the empty templates found in peasantry if you want to add unis, downtowns, or shopping districts. Then there's no need for further d-a-c-ing and cleanup.

If you plan to use the spawn object to mass-generate townies, you must do it before adding a subhood to the neighbourhood, or the generator will throw up errors. If you are content to let the game generate townies by itself, or plan to create your own in CAS, there's no need to wait with adding subhoods.

I have my own townies already, so I'm OK making sure it's clean then adding the sub hoods and the townies at that time...and that's alright to do.
That's brilliant, Thank you very much!

Thanks, Jordi :)

I was wondering ... would it be possible to costumize Townies 100%  ???

What I mean is, some of the Townies I made for my hood was created as siblings and they have the family icon in the thumbnail (one of them have moved in with a playable sim).

Could I have created a whole family with grandparents, siblings and kids ??? And have the grandparents working as nannies, gartners, repairmen and so on ... it could be really funny if we could make familybonds (sp?) between the Townies and NPC´s

Hope this make sence

Rose

You can't create Service NPCs yourself, as their character data is different from that of normal Sims. This can't be easily fixed with SimPE either.

But you can certainly give townies family relationships with other townies or Service NPCs, or even with playables.

For the most part, but sims like the gardener, repairman, etc., I have not messed with. I change their physical looks with Insim and SimPE, though. Someone else here should know about it.


Thanks again, Jordi :)

But, but, but ... when my sims marry the maid ... she becomes playable and act like a playable ... it should be possible to do the same the other way around ... though I don´t know how ......... typical me  ::)

*LOL*

Rose

Most service NPCs can be converted to playables without much problems, but there are exceptions. Examples are the mascots and cheerleaders from uni: they will not age, and keep wearing their uniforms on community lots. Likewise the streakers will show up naked all the time.

I had a hack (from MTS2 I think) that let you create service NPCs with your choice of age and sex.  It wasn't a totally free choice because of the game imposed rules, but it was better than nothing.  It probably doesn't work since OFB and I don't have it in my game now.   I'd quite like a version that generates NPCs with your choice of skin colour as well including alien and custom skin..  Standard skin colours are annoying if you have a hood that isn't like that.

There are ways of fixing their appearance and personality once they are created of course.  Editing in SimPE or makeovers..

Wow.  What a great tutorial!  Thanks so much.

Hey!

This tutorial saved my life.  I am super OCD about my townies!!!


There is only one thing I noticed - when you export personalized, customs students in the university CAS and then remove them from the family as townies, thus creating YA students, for some reason, when these students move into a dorm, - EVEN after they have autonomously claimed a Myne door, they will leave at night and say "oh look at the time, i must be going" even though the LIVE there....I am guessing because at some level they are townies.  Now, because they have the MYNE door, they keep coming back, and if you select them and 'take over them' you can see how the game is still making them go to class and disappearing in their room and sleeping.  However, thy leave the dorm all night long - letting me know over and over that they are leaving and then returning just a minute later.  Am i doing something wrong?

How are you turning them into townies/dormies?  I've done this with Inge's Teleporter Plus bush (actually, the updated versions found here) and never had this problem -- the CAS-dormies act just like normal dormies.

WOW!

Thanks for such a quick reply!

Well, I followed the instructions for Uni that referenced instructions for Townie.  I was using Insimenator, creating the YA's in the Uni CAS screen, then removing them from the family using the Insimenator....I guess I should use Inge's bush instead?

thanks again for your help & talent!

Well, the Insiminator should work the same way as the teleporter bush, but it may be worth a try using the bush and seeing if that makes a difference.  If not, then something else is hosed in your game.

As for the custom dormies problem, if you turn a YA into a townie (make sure you use the TOWNIE family by the way and NOT the DOWNTOWNIE family), they must not have already claimed a Myne door. Get them to unclaim their doors and remove them from the lot. The rooms will be reassigned to dormies according to the normal rules and if you have no other dormies your custom ones will come to claim their doors.

i'm to build all zones on the same land, so if i chose University, Downtown, or the commercial center...
at the first impatc nothing should change...

that mean that i've to copy every building and place it on the right place on all zones.. isn't simple but at the end should looks great  ;D

ElfPuddle?

hem.... any chanse to copy the Downtown to University ?
i mean the disposition of the house, and the rest of the stuff.. tree, radio's antenna, and all the rest..

'cause it looks realy hard to have the same Neighborhoods ... the game randomize also the tree..
i've imported an SC4 terrain with some tree.. in downtown they are Pines.. at Uni... are Palms  :o

**edit

i'm testing now :P
will copy  N002_Downtown001.package and i will rename it in N002_Suburb001.package
maybe it will works  ::)

obviously it didn't work..
but i think it's doinable via SimPe..

if you open the file N00x_WhatUwant.package (WhatUwant = University /Suburbs / Downtown)
you can change the nHood type.. so i will try to copy my Downtown to Suburbs and University so to have the same place for every
nhood :)

** Last infos:
 i've succesly cloned Downtown to University  ... (but it always night on the nhood view lol)

Heya!

Thanks for looking into this....

I am going to try the bush and come back and let you know what i find out. Just in terms of this post, the order went like this -

before i created a single university dorm, I created allllll the YA's and exported them.  So I promis that they never touched a myne door before they were exported as townies. 

You can toggle day/night with an icon from the nhood screen.

I've made a set of 30 custom Townies, and thanks to your tutorial, they seem to work beautifully.

So now I have a question:  Is there a way for me to use this set of Townies in another new neighborhood?  Can I just copy a set of files after I've deleted all the sims in the new neighborhood, or is there something in the file itself that sets the neighborhood?

Thanks.

Character files are neighborhood specific, so you can't just copy/paste them. The best way to go about that would be to package the lot with the family the first time you load the lot, and before exporting. Then you can install them and place them in another neighborhood as well. I suppose it is a bit late for that at this point, though.

I was afraid that might be the case.  Thanks for confirming it.


It's a good suggestion for the next time I make a complete set of custom Townies, though.  Thanks for the suggestion, and for the speedy response.

Jordi comments got me all worried.  I don't use SimPe and have no idea how to remove the extra SWAF or whatever files I need to.

Can I still create a custom hood without worrying or am I stuck with Maxis townie forever? I will only create my townies but will use Maxis University and downtown section as it is.

Is my only hope to learn how SimPe works?

Safest bet is doing exactly the following:

1) create a new 'hood
2) do the delete all characters cheat
3) save and exit.
4) Open the neighbourhood in SimPE and remove ALL SWAFs. Also remove the following if they exist: memories, relationships, sim descriptions other than the default NPCs
5) save and reload your new empty 'hood.

From then on follow the tutorial given above and you should be fine.


It is never a huge problem if you forget a step (it won't destroy your 'hood) but you may end up with incorrect wants unless you clean SWAFs first.

And I highly recommend using the empty templates for universities, downtown, and bluewater.

Did what Jordi suggested

I have only 3 SWAF, belonging to Father Time, Toddler New Year and Santa Klaus ... shouldn´t there be more  ???

and is it : Also remove the following if they exist: memories other than the default NPCs, relationships other than the default NPCs or is it ALL memories and ALL relationships ???

When deleting memories, I assume that I should activate the Neighborhood/Memory (NGBH) (1), right click the picture and choose Nuke Memory ... or am I at the wrong place ???


I´m really confused right now :lol

Rose

There shouldn't be any more SWAFs until you next load the 'hood. Default NPCs are always regenerated.

For the same reason I would recommend removing all memories and relationships including the default NPCs': anything needed will be added back anyway.

And Nuke memory is indeed the spot. There should be no memories at all after cleaning.

This is what I was told to do (thanks Ozzucay), can you confirm that these steps are ok:

1) Create new empty neighborhood
2) Delete all characters using the cheat
3) Exit the game
4) Open SimPE and open the neighborhood from the neighborhood browser
5) In the Resource tree on the left I looked for the Sims Wants and Fears
(SWAFs). There weren't any. I suppose if there were any at this stage you would
then select them in the right hand window and press shift-delete. The same thing
goes for memories. The neighborhood memory that showed up seemed to have nothing
in it so I left it alone.  There was only NPC memory so I did not delete them.
6) Select Sim Relations in the Resource Tree. Select all the entries in the
right hand window (shift-click), then shift-delete.
7) Select Sim Description in resource tree. Select anything in the right hand
window that does not say NPC and shift-delete. There should be 5 remaining.
8- Select Sim DNA in resource tree. Delete all entries here, too.
9) Save and exit SimPE.
10) Open the game again and start working on filling up your empty neighborhood
with Nec's tutorial!

Are these step ok?  Is my custom hood safe to play with?  Can the fact I did not delete the memories cause problems later?

Also, I am planning in create another hood in which I will add all the sections so I can package the Maxis community lots I like and can then use them in a cc hood, is this a bad thing to do?  I will then delete that hood when I am done packaging.

I already started to add townie in it so I hope everything is ok.

Should all be safe that way.

I had a born-in-game sim marry the cow mascot and although he occasionally reverted to wearing the cow uniform (most memorably at their daughter's wedding lol) he aged through adult to elder without any BFBVFS.  Is it a VBT because one of my CAS sims has a thing for the repairman?

Different effects in different games I guess…

Repairmen are safe afaik.

I've got a question I hope you can answer.
When I first made my custom neighbourhood a few months back, I made a bunch of custom YA townies at my university (I can't remember how many, but around 25-30), then created a custom Secret Society lot and made another 8 sims who I added to the SS using the college adjuster before I moved them into the townie pool.
I'm using OFB directors cut, which contains notownieregen.package and nossrespawn.package, so the townies I have made are the only ones in the 'hood.

Anyway, here's the problem:  I have played this university for 7 generations or so now, in a dorm with 16 rooms.  I do what I can to get my sims into the secret society, so when I see a face I recognize I hunt him down and befriend him.  Trouble is, my college townies are befriending each other too much, so when I eventually get my sim to the SS lot, there are more than 20 people there.
I assume this is because I had too many SS members to start with, and it's spread like the plague.

So, do you know what the ratio of dormies/SS members in the game by default?

Default number of SS members = maxnumofvisitors+1. There is no direct relation to the number of dormies.

Pescado's nossrespawn will make sure that any SS member is made from existing dormies, the game will still try to fill the SS up to the maxnumofvisitors. The "+1" is the SS abductor, who is not a normal dormie.

So, the problem is probably my userStartup.cheat, not dormie fratinization.

I don't think that regular dormies can be made members of the SS by making friends with three SS members like playable sims can.  Playable sims aren't members of the SS until they have gone through the "kidnapping" (unless you have TJ's no abductions hack, of course, then they aren't a member until they get the message).

From the rftm for nossrespawn:
With the hack in place, it will turn dormies into ss members until the max visitor count is met — if you have that many dormies. If your max visitor count is 25 and you have just 10 dormies, you will get just 10 SS members. But typically you have more dormies so the max visitor count can be met.
I have 34 dormies in my current game, and about 20 of those are SS members.

I changed my userconfig file.  At least that will make initiation cermonies less absurd.
I had 25 members greet me, then one of them stole the garden gnome and the remaining 24 all stood there yelling in near perfect synch.

i've made 30 sims..
i've erased all towies and npc..
i've extracted about 10 townies form hood "bellavista" (n001)
now.. i've started a new one, my target is to have no townies but only the one controlled by me..

the second target will be the NPC, i with that the game will use this one 30 (great if the game will keep it in radom)
any suggestion ?


did the game will create new townies by itself ?

ty :)

What about the text lists?  I have 55 of them in simpe, and many of them just say default, I have one that is talking about Pleasantview (not the current neighborhood) and a few of them that seem to reference houses that are not in the 'hood.  Should I delete them?

Well, I followed this tutorial despite my game being post-OFB-patched (what can I say, I'm a risk taker, heh). And everything worked smoothly except for one thing... none of the townies have Interests. I checked them out and all of them are at 0! I married a townie to a sim I made in CAS and she "magically" gained interests.

So, my question is: is this the reason this tutorial is pre-OFB patch only? Or is what happened to me some unrelated, insane and random glitch?  ???

Max: I have not had the game generate any townies randomly as long as I have exported 30 townies, but it will generate new bartenders and the like if you add another community lot, and the others are being used already.

I do not do anything with NPCs, so I can't tell you about them.

Shanpooter: That may happen if you moved a family from Pleasantview to your new hood. Otherwise, I don't mess with text lists (other than reading them from time to time) though Jordi may know something about this.

Firestorm: I have only tested this without an OFB patch, so I have no idea what it does with a patch. I haven't reinstalled OFB yet (I will eventually), but I will check it out when I do. That is really weird :-\

I don't believe townies are given interests until they are first 'initialized' on a lot and given the initialized token. This should happen the first time they appear on a lot as a visitor or walkby.

Thank you for your reply.  This is a brand new 'hood, just created and no sims have ever lived there or moved to there, so I'm not quite sure what is going on.  There are no files in the characters folder, I'm getting ready to make my own towines using the ingelogical shrub thing.  I'm just gonna leave them (the text lists) alone for now, unless someone tells me differently.

I think you will be fine, probably. I never thought to check the text lists before addin new townies. At any rate, my hood is pretty old now and not buggy, so I imagine you will be fine.

I have been getting crashes in two hoods recently...one is brand new and one I have been playing for a while. And in both I had done a DAC and regenerated new townies using the in-game townie creator (the dead tree thing). I have OFB and both patches. Did one or both of the patches break the DAC and/or townie creator? Is there something I can do to fix these hoods or are they fubared and I'm stuck with Brandi LeTourneau and Ben Long for the rest of my life?

For what it's worth, I did my DAC post OFB patch 2, and I haven't had any problems other than the SWAFs that needed to be cleaned out as I described earlier in this thread.

So far my hood runs fine, but something mysterious have happend. I have the notownieregen hack installed in my Downloads folder, but the game have started to generate it´s own townies. So far there is 2 lurking around in my hood.

Is it caursed by using the Matchmaker woman or do the game ignore the hack  ???

One of them (Lee) have made relationships with my own sims, guess that he´ll meet Mr. G. Reaper soon, but the other one (Christopher) have no relationships with anyone or any memories other that the usual ...went to college,  meet mystery sim etc. ..... can he be deleted or should he populate my community graveyard along with Lee.

I sure hope that it´s caursed by the Matchmaker ... otherwise I´ll have to build several graveyards  ::)

oooh ... it would be so cool if we could create our own NPC´s  *drool*

Rose

Are you sure the new ones are actual  townies, and not new service NPCs (i.e., cashiers, bartenders, baristas, etc)?  The game will generate those as needed (usually when you visit a community lot for the first time), and they can appear anyplace where townies normally appear once they're created. Killing them off does no real good, since the game will just generate someone to replace them next time you go to their 'original' community lot.

well ... I doublechecked with SimEnhancer ... all the other Maxis sims have a NPC-job, like maid, nanny etc except those 2 ... no NPC-job at all,they are just useless sims like any other Maxis townie ;)

btw, I only have a cc-downtown and a cc-university, no business district.

Rose

Doesn't matter if you have a business district or not -- any community lot that's not owned that has cash registers, coffee or drink bars needs someone to run them. I don't recall if the NPC cashiers show up as having jobs in SimPe or not (I've never used SimEnhancer), but for whatever reason the game doesn't pull from the existing townie pool to fill those jobs.

Easiest way to tell for sure is to send one of your sims to your non-owned community lots and make note of the names of the sims working there. That'll tell you if the new 'townies' are actually more service NPCs.

okay ... I look out for them tonight when I fire up my game ...

Thanks :)

Rose

I can´t find them in action. The only times I see the to "townies" is when they just walk by ... I´m almost convinced that they aren´t related to any community lot ... darn you Maxis  >:(

Rose

OK, this may be a dumb question, but I have recently created a new 'hood, cleaned out all the characters, deleted all of the SWAF, relations, memories, and sim descriptions.  This was awhile ago.  I finally got around to creating new townies for the 'hood, and using inge's shrub to make them downtownies.  I just decided to open up SimPE and have a look at them, and in the sim description window I have two unkonwns.  I am positive that they were not there before.  Is it safe to delete these?  Where did they come from?  I do not want to start over, but I am determined to do what it takes to have a "clean" neighborhood before I start playing.  (Once I accomplish this, I will make a backup to a disk to use as a template, so I do not have to do this again!

One of the unknowns has been there since the base game, I believe it's the Mystery Sim they all had relations with (although I could be wrong). 

The second unknown was added by OFB.  I notice that it seems to collect memories in my houses with cleanbots and sentrybots in the frontyard.  As in memories of events that happen in the front yard (eg promotions, and gossip from conversations & phonecalls that take place there).  So I think it's holding the memories of the sentrybots and/or cleanbots.

These unknowns are required by the game.  Don't delete them.

You're probably right about the bots, Kyna.  I haven't looked in SimPE, but I know the game treats them as a Sim.  I have Merola's mirror, and I made the clean bot selectable.  It has a blank thumbnail.  It had a Family aspiration and was in complete aspiration failure with the meter full red.  It had two blank wants with one want to get married and the other to have a baby.  But I don't see anything in the Memories section.  It did have two icons in its action queue.  I had a teen get abducted before going to college, and Witness abduction was in  queue along with Welcome Home.  :P  The teen had long since gone to college.  Strange.

OK, thanks guys.  I thought I might have messed up somewhere.  I'm relieved that I don't have to start again.  It is nice to know whats going on in my game.  Kinda strange about the robots.  I wonder why they need to be treated as a sim.

I think it's actually the remote control car, which the game has always treated like an NPC.  All the autonomous bots get lumped under the second unknown since OFB.  That's why outgoing sims actually great the robots when they walk by, which I always thought was kinda silly.

That would be why I've never seen the first unknown have any memories when I looked in SimPE.  I never use the remote control car.  I understand it's supposed to be safe now (especially as I've write-protected the objects file) but I'm just not in the habit of using it.

Yeah, I used it a few times a long time ago, but the sims became obsessed with it, as they are wont to do, so I sold it.  :P

My custom hood is on Day 40 now and I know I should abandon it.  I did what you say not to do - created the main neighbourhood and the subhoods (all custom, no Maxis ones), then simply went out and deleted all the character files (without bothering with deleteallcharacters).  I forgot all about SWAFS and DNA and it wasn't long before the problems started.  ALL my toddlers had strange wants (if they had any at all) and I had to spend ages deleting SWAFS and stuff.

What is weirdest though is that certain Sims keep getting strange relationships with people they don't even know.  It seems to be certain Sims in particular, although there is no pattern to them.  One is a CAS made adult male, another is my first CAS made YA, one is the second child born in the game, and several are townies/dormies.  The first two, for instance, apparently knew every single Professor in the game and had various relationships with them (the toddler, for instance, was married to one of them).  The in-born girl has gone one step further insofar as she apparently has a relationship with more or less every single Sim in the neighbourhood. The first YA created has basically the same problem.

I also had NPC's who were married to each other, parents of each other, etc.  There was no notice taken of gender or age - for instance, the papergirl was apparently the mother of one of the elder male cooks, who in turn was the father of a male elder Professor (making the papergirl the Professor's grandmother!).   Three of the NPC's also appeared to know more or less everyone in the neighbourhood, namely a gardener, mail delivery person and a fireman. No matter how many times I delete these relationships, they just keep coming back.  The 'known' box is never ticked, incidentally, but the relationship bars always show varying numbers.  It doesn't help that whenever a Sim is merely in the presence of another Sim, it produces a relationship between them in SimPE.  I would much rather that only happened when they actually met the Sim and the 'known' box was ticked, but that's another issue.

I didn't have a Diva, Mr Big, or Slobs until about Day 30, when it finally dawned on me that the game had never spawned any, so I had to create those myself with the tree.  Instantly, several of my Sims appeared to know them, even though they'd only just been created and not appeared anywhere (I left the game as soon as they'd been created to check).  None of these Sims were on the lot they were spawned on and several weren't even in the main neighbourhood, they were YA's. 

Anyway, I don't know if the way I created the neighbourhood caused all this to happen, but it's downright weird and I have no idea why it is continuing to happen.  The neighbourhood plays normally and obviously these relationships don't show-up in the game, nor do they show in Family Relations, but they're in the relationship sections.  The most puzzling thing is why the ticks keep coming back in "Married" and so on when I keep deleting them and why it keeps respawning the relationships.  The only way to get rid of them for good is to go through the character files and remove them, which is an absolute pain in the butt because SimPE forces you off the Relations list into the SimPool each time you delete one and you have to keep going back to find your place again to delete the next (that will only make sense to anyone who's done it!).  Deleting the relationships in Sim Relationships doesn't work, even if you delete both, they just come back.

BTW, what are all these Family Unknowns, are they something that's leftover from the beginning?  I haven't got rid of any families and I have about 11 or 12 of them.  One new one appeared only yesterday and I didn't delete any families or change any, although I did create two new ones.  I am wary of deleting them because I don't know what they are - does anyone know if it's safe to do so?

I may start a new neighbourhood when the forthcoming furry expansion that doesn't actually exist comes out, but that would be a problem insofar as I wouldn't want the usual crappy P'view townies, but I might want the new furry families and obviously this method wouldn't work then, so is there another way around that?

I wrote :

Mystery solved ... the 2 sims are the ones who answers the phone, when sims call their work ...  ::) DOH !

I created my CC hood like it is described, and it is way over 40 days and running fine ... I have 9 families and 11 teens now ... no problems other the one above, that now is "solved".
I woyld start over if I was you ... it sounds very annoying ... except for this :
that was hilarious LOL

Rose

You have not deleted the leftover Simrelations the got assigned to other Sims now.
 Every Townie created  by making a new Neigbourhood gets some relations at the beginning. If you delete those Sims delete also there relations.
 Or get them in a weird way assigned to other Sims. I dont know what generates unknown families.
 But i had them in my old Neighbourhood where i putted in Sims created in different Neigbouhoods. I think they are unlinked Sims.

I noticed those relationships in SimPE last time I tried this.

I put in the base hood + the stripped Bluewater that's in another topic here (stripped of character files).  I deleted all characters.  I had a look in SimPE, and there were relationships there.  Glancing through the relationships I saw that some were marked as family.  I deleted those relationships in SimPE before I went any further.

I wasn't sure if the problem was with DAC or with the stripped Bluewater, so I didn't post at the time.

As far as I know, all premade Maxis hoods are not DAC capable without problems. Unfortunately I can't help with the rest of the questions at the moment. I haven't played in a couple of months and haven't played with OFB in about 4 months.

Maybe the unknown families are the ones the deleted townies used to belong to?  I'd say delete them - could be they are part of the problem.  As long as the families of your sims are OK, what have you got to lose?

I know what you mean about cleaning up relationships in SimPE.  It's painful.  So is hitting that commit button all the time to make sure the changes all get saved before you move into another bit of SimPE.

If you delete the married marker on both sims and the relationship, I can't see why it keeps coming back unless SimPE isn't saving the changes.  How about the editing the family relationship tree?  Hitting the commit button harder? Is there a cache somewhere that's not getting cleared when you update... ?

I guess you already deleted the actual character files of deleted sims from the 'hood folder, not just in SimPE.  I know you're supposed to do it, but I've never been sure why.  Do they appear again and mess things up?

I'm getting the feeling that once the 'hood file is messed up, you don't really ever succeed in cleaning it up. Even if you do everything on our checklist.  I've cleaned up a couple of 'hoods and I'm still getting missing wants for a couple of sims.  I don't have Uni or NL with all the extra characters, so I think I have a lower potential for mess... and it still isn't right.

I have deletet the unknown family files in my cleaned neighbourhood but keep in mind one unknown family must stay its the first one. Dont delete or your neighbourhood wouldnt load next time.

 Its really a pain to get a clean neigbourhood now so many files to delete and dont delete the wrong ones.  :-\

Just a note, ever since GLS according to SimPE (test version) I have six ‘unknown’ Sims in my 'hoods, including new 'hoods.
However I am missing some of the default NPCs such as the shrink, Mrs CB, and the polli tech. so it may be a bug in SimPE itself (none of the Unknowns have character files).
The new SimPE is screwed up anyway, you can't delete SWAFs, SNDAs or relationships unless you go to the top level.

As for ‘family unknowns’, you should have just one of these. Delete them all, and let the game regenerate one.


And just FYI this is the "proper" cleaning process as far as I know now:
1) Create a new hood (base 'hood only)
2) Do a deleteallcharacters. Quit and save.
3) Open the 'hood in SimPE and delete all of the following:
-All Sim Wants and Fears (SWAF)
-All Sim DNA (SDNA)
-All Sim Relationships
4) Save the 'hood, close the package, and reopen. Delete any SWAF/SDNA/Rel that mysteriously reappeared.
5) Start TS2 and load your 'hood. Now create townies by your method of choice (CAS + Teleporter Shrub or Insimenator, Spawn...Family Tree, or the mailbox). If you plan on adding a Downtown later, now also create downtownies (again, either CAS+My shrub/Insimenator or the Family Tree -- remember to switch the FT to downtownie mode).
6) Optionally, create some of the special NPCs now as they may not spawn correctly. Set the FT to downtownie mode, and create the ‘special townies’ (grand vampyre, slob, diva). Remember to set skintone and gender options first.
7) Exit to the 'hood and save and quit. Make a backup of the 'hood file in Win Explorer so you have a "clean copy", saving you time if you ever decide to start from scratch.
8) If you created custom townies/downtownies in CAS, now is the time to edit their names in SimPE.

Is it absolutely necessary to have SimPE and create custom townies, and if so, where can I get it?   ???

this is the home of SimPE http://sims.ambertation.de/
It's your game and your hood.  If you want to leave all the maxis generated sims in your game, feel free.  If you want to get rid of them and make your own, you don't have to clean up the files.  If you don't clean them up, the sims you create will have messed up wants and assorted other bugs that will shorten the bugfree life of the 'hood.  If you just want to build it without playing much, that might be fine for you.  Buggy behaviour irritates the heck out of most of us.  The new options on Pescado's lot debugger make it a lot less painful thank goodness and we know now you shouldn't delete any DNA files.

Just out of curiosity how many townies/downtownies do you guys make for your new hoods?

Also, do you make custom dormies or do you leave those alone?

Also, Jordi, shouldn't you add all your subhoods and follow steps 2-4 each time before you start messing with creating new townies?

I've not got much experience.  I've only done it once and I only have base game and OFB.  I made 3 housefulls of townie shoppers because that's felt about right and anyway it was getting late, I'd run out of ideas and I wanted to see if it would work.  I wanted enough shoppers that it wasn't always exactly the same 3 sims who came shopping - running a business in a small hood gets almost incestuous.  So I guess how many you create depends on how many you need for your game. Err on the low side I guess.  You can always add more, but taking them out is tedious.

Thank you for your reply.  So deleting DNA is unnecessary?  I want to create my own townies, but am seriously considering letting Uni and Downtown make theirs automatically.  This is possible, right?

Jelenedra: the reason I recommend leaving out subhoods until later is that you may not always want to add the same subhoods, and doing it this way leaves a clean copy.
But you could add subhoods in step 1.

I make the following townies:
8 adult male
8 adult female
2 teen male
2 teen female
1 elder male
1 elder female
1 child male
1 child female
-----------------+
24 townies

Added to this:

6 adult male
6 adult female
2 teen male
2 teen female
----------------+
16 downtownies

24 townies
-----------------+
40 nonplayables in total.

Added to this are:
1 slob male
1 slob female
1 diva male
1 diva female
1 vampire count
1 vampire countess
------------------------+
6 special townies

I let the game generate the rest. (NPCs, dormies, SS members, etc.)


LadyCrimsonSkye:  leaving SDNA intact after a DAC may or may not lead to problems. To be safe, delete all SDNA.

Jordi:  Thank you VERY much!  This was very helpful.

I'm going to see what I can manage this afternoon and evening, as far as creating townies, downtownies, and such.  I have followed the instructions carefully, so hopefully it will work out for me. :)  I'm keeping my fingers crossed! :)

Pescado is saying delete all the DNA if you have done a deleteallchars.  You only get problems if you've done a partial deletion - you  mess up the DNA of all the sims remaining.  Bizarre!  Pescado told me this on the lot debugger thread just the other day.  I was working to Quaxi's old list, which said do it - I missed the update  :'(

I really need to thank you for your help, and the excellent resources you have provided here!

My Townies have all been created, and moved into town, now I need to make my downtownies.  I'm a little burnt out on the making part now, I'm ready for a break... maybe some dinner.

Is it possible to just use Maxis generated townies for University, Downtown, and OFB once the base neighborhood and townies have been created?  I think I can live with a few big mouths, squished noses, and squinty eyes... if nothing else, I can cow plant the ugly ones, and replace them later with custom sims, correct?

Really, thanks a lot for all the information provided here... there is a LOT to read, but it's SO nice to have a reliable source, finally!

Best I know, the game will create them when it needs them unless you have Pescado's no-regen hack in which prevents routine bloating. I think you get extras added every time you play up to set limits.  There's a post somewhere here about it.  So no, you don't have to do it. 

Downtownies are said to be better looking - DK if that's just the maxis created ones though.   At least they will be new rather than excatly the same guys as in Pleasantview.  I read somewhere here that the game uses the Pleasantview ones if you have no sims in your hood.  (hope that's not back to front!)   If you want a better choice of names Jordi has one based on the most common names  from the US census.  You need live.package and I think it's still on variousimmers.

It's also on MTS2 now again, since VS is moribund.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=110889

The game should generate a townie per lot load until the limit is reached, but there seems to be a sadorandom bug in the default townie generation.
Last time I let the game do its stuff, I ended up with far more teen males than any other age group.

A helpful hint: if you want some more variety, edit your genetic skintones and eye colours according to theo's method (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5681.msg163660.html#msg163660), and new townies will have all skintones and eye colours.
Clothing won't work that way alas.


And downtownies are better looking because they come from preset templates including makeup etc.. This also means that if the sadorandom generator resets, you end up with near-twins (same hair, same clothes, possibly only a different face template).

if you use face replacements then I suggest using SaraMKs empty templates

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html


I use her empty Uni template and all my new dormies(and professers+) were spawned using the better looking face templates rather then getting the same old fugly maxis dormies. Now most of them are atleast decent looking and my sims get to marry them  :D

Oh, and FYI:

If you delete or rename the N001\Characters folder in the template user data (C:\Games\TheSims2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001\Characters or whereever) the game won't import the Pleasantville posse on creating a new 'hood.

Combined with the empty templates found here this means you could very well do without Delete-All-Characters.
You still need to clean out the SimDNA and relationships though.

New info!

Before creating a new 'hood, I had completely renamed the C:\Games\TheSims2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001\ folder. My new 'hood was created CLEAN, without ANY characters, SDNA, or other garbage.

I did not do a delete-all-characters.

Batch-creating townies and downtownies with the tree worked without errors!

I still got errors on creating individual NPCs, but I don't care since those get spawned anyway :)

With the busted OFB generator?

If so, this is fantastical. I renamed the templates folder last night but hadn't gotten around to creating a new 'hood. Should I rename the entire N001 folder, or will disguising the template folder suffice?

Yup, with the built-in NPC/townie generator. Apparently deleteallcharacters is what breaks it…

I have renamed my entire N001 folder. Just renaming the /character subfolder will still leave the SDNA and relationships.

No nasty sideeffects seen yet from renaming.

Wait, what?

If you rename the N001 folder, you can make a new neighborhood without having to clean it up? It'll just spawn empty? No SDNA or such and such to delete?

I just want to make sure I understood that right.

Yes, that's it. You get a completely clean neighbourhood without /any/ garbage at all.

At least so in my game (all expansion and shopping packs). Furthermore, the NPC/Townie generator does not throw errors on batch creating of townies of downtownies.

Jordi,  was it a custom hood you made or a fresh copy of Pleasantview?

*wants to make sure she understands correctly*

I did this with a custom neighborhood.It has only a uni attatched. Everything showed up in the Uni hood,Lots , Hood deco and such ,but in the main hood the only problem I am haveing is that only 14 of my lots are showing I have checked to make sure the lots are named correctly. My opion is it should be all or nothing. Can't figure out what I am doing wrong.

Let me be more clear…

*I renamed my entire N001 folder in the install folder (C:\Games\TheSims2\ in my case: full path C:\Games\TheSims2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods\N001\).
*I then created a new custom neighbourhood.
*On inspecting this new 'hood file in SimPE I found it to be clean: no townies, no SDNA, no relationships: no Sims or Sim-related items at all except for the default NPCs (such as the Grim Reaper).
*I created a single Sim and moved him in a new lot. I spawned the NPC/Townie generator tree, and batch-created townies. No errors. I set the tree to downtownies and spawned those, again no errors.
I have not  tested the mailbox townie generator but since it runs on the same code it should also work.

I also added a uni, downtown, and shopping district (using the empty templates), and the tree still works on batch runs.

Conclusions: #1: the default townies are always pulled from N001 in the install folder.
#2: the deleteallcharacters is the cause of the errors in the batch creation of townies
#3: Deleting or renaming N001 in the install folder forces the game to start with a clean new custom neighbourhood.


Note: generation of NPCs using the tree remains broken.

This sounds great!  Thanks Jordi for sharing this.  I have a question though.  If I rename the D001 template in the Nightlife install folder woul it enable me to create a custom downtown that was clean?  Or do the downtownies get created from something else?  I like to have all custom hoods and sub-hoods with no townies, downtownies or dormies.  If this method works for all of those as well, it would save me a ton of hassle.  I could use the empty templates, but then I am stuck with the default terrains.

Subhoods don't work as main 'hoods: their Sims are not pulled from D001 (or U001 or B001), but the default collection of townies/downtownies comes from the template userdata folders (can't check the path right now). That's why they always got unique names.
I have not tested if renaming the template folders will lead to a clean subhood, but it should work.

I used the empty templates for my uni and downtown, and while I did add a custom shopping district I did not get any extra townies from it (then again, B00x does not have any NPCs or townies, right? Just a reporter who is spawned in-game).

Okay, here's my experience:

- Renamed "N001" in the "...The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods" path to "lame-N001"
- Created a new neighborhood with one empty lot
- Alt-tabbed and noticed that in the "My Documents\...\N004" folder there were no characters
- Created one sim (Katy Kunoichi) in CAS
- Moved Katy to the empty lot and used the batch NPC from the mailbox
- Noted that the NPCs were all perfectly normal
- Noted that in the "My Documents\...\N004" there were the proper number of character files
- Tried to batch create townies using the NPC and Townie Tree, but the townies were being generated as repeats of Santa, Katy, and Toddler New Year, etc. so I quit to hood without saving
- Created the townies one at a time as normal, and that worked fine

dizzy: the thumbnail problem is harmless. The game does not actually create multiple santas ;)
If you had let it run its course you would have found ~30 townies.

Batch NPC from the mailbox works then? Interesting :)
I only tried individual NPC creation on the tree.

I've rewritten this tutorial with latest findings. See here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=5861.0).

If you wanted the maid to just have a different uniform, use the NPC Changer from SimWardrobe http://www.simwardrobe.com

If you want the maid to have a different face, I'd use the SimSurgery part of SimPE on her.

I haven't been to SimWardrobe in ages, but there used to be a forum.  A woman moderator named Kiki would answer what questions she could, since Paladin was still somewhat under the weather.

You should be able to get in contact with James at N99 http://p218.ezboard.com/bstarlightsims (http://p218.ezboard.com/bstarlightsims) and also Kiri hangs out there.

Rose