More Awesome Than You!

So, as part of my ongoing dumpster dive, a fix for something that had bugged me for awhile, that may or may not have bugged you: Sims that hike from all the way over from another subhood to be walkbys, a nuisance when you intended to keep them seperated!

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/terror/blue.gif)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) localwalkby.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/ffs/nl/hacks/localwalkby.zip)

Local Walkbys for TS2NLp1 - TS2OFBp2
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado)

Special Thanks To:
Hobbsee the Scrawny Pencil Neck
Fat, Hairy-Bellied Ness

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

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

FEATURES:
Sim residential walkbys now will only be people who actually live in your
subneighborhood, so it will greatly prefer actual neighbors, not "guy who
walked all the way here from Pleasantview".

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS hacks. Tested for TS2NLp1 - TS2OFBp2.

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

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

Yay! Thanks for this!  ;D Does this also change the welcome wagon, so sims are actually from your neighborhood?

Ste

I believe so. I made it awhile ago, and I think that was what was bugging me, when I first added Bluewater.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Yes, I needed this! My newest sub-hood is supposed to be a whole new planet, and I was wondering how I was going to deal with those walkbys...

Just a little notice.
If you, like me, are playing into a custom hood and have previously DELETED the default hoods, you don't need this mod.
This way I never saw walkbys except my ownies.

Does this restrict the walk-bys to playables only, or have a preference for them?  After I put this in and played 3 different lots, the only walk-bys were other playable sims -- not a townie in sight.

It shouldn't have completely eliminated townies, but jogging the list may have increased the favorability of playables. I'll give it another look.

I probably wouldn't have noticed it in my Pleasantview, but I usually test 'big' hacks like this out in Strangeville first, and there's not a whole lot of playables there (no CAS sims, just the Maxis mades -- I use it as my sort-of test neighborhood).  So it was real obvioius when the only walk-bys were Poll-Tech #9, Jenny Smith, one of the Curious brothers, or Loki Beaker on all the lots I played. :)

Thanks for checking into it...

Ok, I have an update on the mainly-playable issue.  I have La Fiesta Tech attached to my Strangeville, and it currently has 4 playable sims (Johnny Smith, Tank Grunt, Ophelia Specter and Stella Terrano). Ophelia and Stella are in the same dorm, and I played them through two semesters. At least 80% of the time, the only walk- bys were the annoying professor and Johnny Smith -- I can only remember a non-playable walking by once, and Tank maybe once or twice. So it looked like Johnny was circling the block, which isn't entirely bad because he's Ophelia's boy friend, but still -- he was almost doing the sim version of 'stalking'.

In any case, I'm going to disable this hack for now, since (at least in my game) it makes it difficult for sims to meet new folks.

I love the idea of this Hack, JMP. Thanks for writing it.

For a LONG time I've wondered if something like this might be possible - back in my PRE-OfB days I had two universities attached to my 'Hood, which I wanted kept as "no go" areas for outsiders, whilst at the same time keeping their occupants from wandering far afield without invitation to other sub 'hoods. A Hack like this is just the thing.

Sadly that ol' 'Hood o' mine is gone, erradicated, destroyed due to a bad install of OfB :( but I'm slowly rebuilding, bigger and better than before... and this Hack may well enable me to do this time what I'd been unable to do before. :)

So you have my sincere thanks for that, JMP. :)

Just one question - am I right in concluding that this does not affect Community Lots? I'd LOVE a way of restricting access on Comm Lots to "locals only"... especially since we can't save the "Visitor Adjustment" settings(Twojeffs' excellent hack) on Comm Lots. 

Edit: Hmmm... alas, JMP, this Hack doesn't seem to be doing anything in my game at least. Townies show up as notmal, unlike on jsalemi's PC, and I've had uninvited visitors arrive on the Lot, who live far away in other Downtowns, Universities and Business Districts. And all of that lot happened within about two or three sim hours of loading up the game with this Hack installed for the first time.

This wasn't on a Community Lot either, but a Residential one... so I don't know why that should have happened.  ???  :-\

In my experience, no, this does not restrict comm lots to locals only, which I kind of like. I do like that local walkbys in hoods should be... well... local. But on comm lots, it sort of makes sense to me that sims from all hoods can show up because they're supposed to be lots that sims take taxis to or what not. So if your sim can get there, why shouldn't any other sim be able to get there. Besides, I don't want it to be too hard for my sims to meet other sims from other 'hoods.

On the flip side... I have to wonder if this totally works. I've been playing some in my Pleasantview... and I think I saw a tinker or two walk by. Aren't the tinkers supposed to be from Bluewater Village, which is a separate 'hood right? I'll have to pay a bit more attention to this next time. It's hard to tell. I've also seen a sim called Aaron Collier (sp? - something like that) he is a darked skinned teen, and I have never seen him before. Is he a downtownie teen? My sims keep trying to bring him home, but thankfully with twojeffs' school bus dialog, I've been keepin that fugly sim at bay. :P However, I'm pretty sure I've seen him walk by at least twice. The freakin fugly stalker! He could very well be a generic new townie... but I have never noticed this sim before OFB, and I don't remember him before NL either...

Ste

If you want to restrict community lots, you could have someone buy those community lots, and then use the Customer Selector to reject "Nonlocal".

Ah, that sounds pretty groovy, JMP.

I'll have to look into the Customer Selector. :)

As it happens, I do tend to purchase all Comm Lots with my sims - even those I intend to turn back over to the Community - so that I can set up certain factors, spawn various Adjusters and InSIM sectionals, set the game's speed with Merola's Time Control Clock etc.

So yeah, that's gotta be worth a look.

Thanks for that.

But one thing though... seems the hack(this hack) isn't doing anything for me OR syperspunk.

Now, I don't know IF this is relevant, but further up the page it was mentioned that "If you, like me, are playing into a custom hood and have previously DELETED the default hoods, you don't need this mod."... well, I'm playing Pleasantview because my custom 'hood got messed up when I installed OfB. Might this be in some way related?

Also, I noticed that at least SOME of my unwanted visitors showed up AFTER I'd opened a Business on the Lot in question. Does THIS Hack(not the Selector, but this one) only work on Residential Lots with no Businesses?

Just wondering. Maybe they weren't Walkbys at all, rather Customers....

...HOWEVER, the Business was Closed at the time they showed up, and, when I checked the Customer Loyalty thingy, it said I'd had no customers. ??? So, I'm not sure if these three visitors were walkbys or customers(maybe they were customers, but I'd asked them to leave before serving any of them).

Hmmm... a few issues to sort.

Would you recomend that I put the Customer Selector on all HOME Businesses(Residential) as well as Community Lots, just to be sure?

Customers arrive by a different vector with different rules than the normal walkbys. You will need a Customer Selector (and preferrably the "no playable shoppers" hack to minimize duelling), if you want control over who appears at businesses, both home and community.

Ah, grand. So this Selector-thingy applies to Home Businesses too.

Good stuff. :)

If I may ask just a few more questions though... Sorry, hope you don't mind.  :-\

Um...

With the Selector... I can take sims that I'm currently playing to Community Businesses that would otherwise ban them, yes? No restrictions there, I take it? And presumably any companions travelling with them, either as Dates, Casual Group or from the same Family, would be ok too, even if banned, yes?

Also, if on A Community Lot I use a cell phone to Invite a Sim who'd otherwise be banned, that would over-ride too? 'Cos it would use Visitor, rather than Customer parameters, right?

Finally, if I were to sell a Business Lot back to the Community, and there was a Selector on it, would its configuration settings be preserved? Like with the Time control Clock and the Visitor Adjuster etc.?

Sorry for all the questions, JMP. Hope you don't mind.

Selectable sims and sims in groups of any kind should be ignored. You can do whatecer you want if you're a selectable.

Invited sims should PROBABLY be OK, but it gets iffy on lots with a Bandatron.

The settings would be preserved, but the items would be inoperative until someone owned the lot again, since normal community lots populate differently.

Here is an error log I got on a residential lot. The only pattern I noticed was it was around the top of the hour most of the time. Other than that, it was pretty erratic.

Error does not correspond to current version of code. I have added another possible corner-case fix, but your problem is unrelated. See that you have not pulled a Ness.

Thanks for the answers, JMP. :)

So the object will only work its mojo on OWNED Lots, eh? Well, that's handy to know. :)

I wonder... if maybe Twojeffs(if I ask him very nicely) might consider coding another Visitor-banning painting that could work on unowned Lots, which could be added to the set? Perhaps called the "Lady Who Hates Travellers" or "Tourists"? I figure it would be quite useful, since it would mean that you could designate individual lots as purely LOCAL shops - like grocery stores or tobacconists(convenience stores I suppose) which probably wouldn't get patrons who've come from afar just to buy a melon and a pack of cigs.... yet, a Lot such as that probably wouldn't be quite so much fun to run as an owned business, so a "Localiser Painting" or similar might be of use.

I guess I could ask at least?  :)

Because I had a thought you see, about the issue of enabling sims to meet and expand their social circle. Now it's true that if "out-of-towners" CAN'T visit Lots(including Community ones) in your own neck o' the woods, then it does indeed prevent you meeting them if you visit only the local haunts within your own district...

...BUT, IF you want to meet specific sims from a particular area(ie. not your own area), then an object that makes a select few individual Lots purely local would actually narrow the search... provided the playable sim makes the journey.

For instance, if I want to arrange for Don Lothario to meet and establish first contact with Lisa Ramirez, then logically the chances of finding her should be higher if I send Don out of the Pleasantview Core 'Hood, and have him visit Lots in Bluewater Village, local to her home. At present, the visitor pool from which the game draws takes in sims from all other districts as well, and - though I don't know this for certain - I'm unaware of any bias towards local sims; so in very populous 'Hood, with four or five SUB-districts, his chances of meeting her would be slim, even though he's shopping on her very street...

...but a painting that forbade non-locals would narrow the field, thus increasing his chance of finding Lisa, since the probability of the game spawning her as a visitor would be one-in-the-population-of-Bluewater and not one-in-the-population-of-the-entire-Neighborhood.

I guess it would also mean that it was applicable in games without EP3, because Uni and NL don't allow us to purchase Community Lots. But Twojeffs paintings work on unowned Lots regardless. And while I think of it now, even with EP3 you can never purchase University Comm Lots... yet it seems plausable to me that a Library on a Campus probably would not get visited by students from other colleges(depending on the rules of the faculty, they might not even be permitted admission).

Hmmm. Well, sorry to ramble, JMP... just thought I'd express my thoughts whilst I have them, since I wouldn't want everyone thinking, "Tsk! Once again Adam's wanting a Hack that's surely of no use to man or beast, and for what for what reasons could anyone require it?" Lol.

Er, anyway, having ellaborated upon a few reasons for why such a painting would be requested... is it ok to ask Twojeffs about it? That's within site rules, isn't it, JMP? I figure it's a courtesy to ask first.

Hope that's ok.  :-\

And sorry for the long post.  :-[

Thanks for your time as always. :)

Adam.

Anyone need a translation? My brain is tired just reading that!

Basically, it seems he was requesting another add-on to TwoJeffs' Visitor Controller that would help restrict visiting sims on community lots to 'locals' only i.e. when you visited the comm lots in Bluewater Village, you only see (or mostly see) Bluewater Village residents, when you visit Pleasantview comm lots, you only see Pleasantview residents, etc.

I asked TwoJeffs about this, and although you can restrict sims based on being a townie (I assume that means sims from the base 'hood) and downtownie (I assume that means sims who originate from Downtown), at that time, he (twojeffs) said he didn't know how to isolate playable sims that live in a particular 'hood. I'm not sure how to do this myself, and I haven't looked at the code for this because I'm lazy. :P

I also kind of agree, that it would be kind of nice to restrict things on comm lots. You can easily meet sims from across 'hoods via chatting... wait, I should re-word that, you can easily meet sims from across 'hoods via computer chat, but not as easy as it used to be. :P In some cases, you have to queue up multiple chat sessions with one sim before your sim 'meets' them. But it is somewhat more realistic.

On the other hand... if my playable sims can manage to take a taxi or drive to a comm lot, it stands to reason that townies and downtownies can too, even though we don't see the traffic anymore. It would be kind of neat to have flowing downtown traffic like in the original Sims. However... it'd be super annoying to get the same problems, with sims or PEtZ blocking the road, and getting all that honking and stalling and I'm sure it would be hell on a lot of people's machines and graphics cards. :P

And it never hurts to ask a question. I don't think you need permission. It only hurts when they point and laugh at you, but that's usually the worst you get. ;)

Ste

  Yes, Necromancy is bad, M'Kay?  But, as i just recently added Seasons i needed this hack for my 'adjusted' Pleasantview neighborhood.  It's my Royal Kingdom Neighborhood with most of the families banished to a sub-hood so i can do a Genetic experiment on the remaining select few.
   To set up the situation, i have 16 households in my Neighborhood, 6 grouped together in one corner, the other 10 grouped in another corner.  I also installed TwoJeff's Visitor controller to stop most Townies from walking by (have to put up with the Gardening Club i guess).  After playing all 16 houses for 8 days in rotation i've come to notice that the only playable walkbys for each house, are those playables living in their own little grouping (kids thru Elder).  Thankfully, the Kids bringing home friends from school hasn't suffered the same problem. 
   This makes it harder for my 'Farmers' to gift food to my 'city dwellers' when they randomly walk by, and for my 'city dwellers' to gift compost and payments as my Farmers walk by.  With this starting generation most of them do know each other from Pre-Seasons/Pre-LocalWalkbys hack days, but the next generation will never meet each other at this rate.
   If this is an intentional byproduct of this hack, then i can deal with it (as i only want my playables to meet only playables).  I can always move a few farmers closer to my 'city' area.

This seems entirely normal. After all, why would someone who lives on the other side of town be strolling by your house? Community lots are a helpful place for people to gather. Why not create some manner of farmer's market?

Better yet, have one of your sims buy a community lot and use JMP's customer selector to disallow all unplayables and allow playables.  Or if you don't want a business, you can use the "invite household" function to ensure that your sims all get to know one another.

I have just recently added this mod to my game since installing Seasons.  I have a neighborhood that has two custom 'shopping districts' to represent areas that younger members of the main hood have moved away to.  Like different states.  Older members of all three communities know each other but younger ones don't. 

What I have observed:  When  a family moves into a new home the welcoming committee is only sims living within that subhood.   Usually only children but sometimes a teen, since most older family members already know each other. 

When kids want to bring a friend home from school it is almost always other kids from that subhood. 

Coworkers coming for a visit are more often from out of the subhood. 

Random walkbys are not all local.  I can't say what the percentage is and whether it is different from before but there have definitely been children from the main hood walking by houses in the subhoods.  I have noticed one boy several different times. 

Walkbys are always playable sims since I have no townies in the neighborhood at all.