More Awesome Than You!

Experimental, untested fix for "mile wide mass of Zergs" barista spam.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/orange.gif)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) nonpcspam.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/uni/alpha/nonpcspam.zip)

RTFM:
No NPC Spam (v1b) for TS2U v1.0
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado)

Special Thanks To:
Quaxi, for writing SimPE
Fairlight the Bitch

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

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

FEATURES:
This should cut down the "mile wide mass of Zergs" effect for Barista-spawning
in Uni. It also eliminates a lot of the "safety" checking for NPC-typing, so if
you try to create an NPC by simply setting his NPC type and dumping him into
the NPC pool, this hack will disable that check and you'll get your new,
non-functional NPC showing up to not work. Fortunately, this should never
actually happen unless you are actively trying to do something stupid and not
recommended. So don't.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS Hacks. Untested alpha for TS2U v1.0.

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

Thanks !! I run to see if it works !! This bug annoyed me to no end.
pioupiou

Don't know if it'll solve my problem, but I'll try it and let you know if I actually get a barista to work at my empty espresso bars! Thanks for getting back to me so quickly about my problem!8)

Is this going to be extended to other NPC's?  I had a llama mascot die in a dorm recently and the game immediately spawned another one, even though there were still 2 left in play.  I think I read somewhere that mascots are allocated to certain areas, which would explain it.  Is this actually the case?  Seems stupid to create extra characters when I am trying to reduce the number of character files.

That's unrelated to this: The game naturally attempts to maintain a pool of 3 NPCs of any given type. Baristas were an exception, as the game would never previously attempt to reuse a Barista, instead always generating more and more and more Baristas.

I removed all Way Cooler bars because of that spam crap.  I would like to have a couple on certan lots, will download.  Hope someone can report quickly if this works or not.

Well, it worked!  I finally have baristas turning up for work.  My problem must have been the opposite, in that my game just wasn't creating any of them at all, except in Pleasantview!  Thanks, Pescadp, this is a really useful hack!

It works !
After 5 trips to the expresso bar, I have only two barista NPC and I have seen them twice !!
Thank you so much !!!
pioupiou

Awesome......

Ahh the sensation of releif. I hated having to replace all my coffee bars with juice bars. How the hell can you have a bohemian art major sim go for a group study session on a community lot WITOUT COFFEE!! It's insane, I tell you!!!

So, unrelated problem, then.

I must bow down to JM for being more awesome than me. I've been searching for a solution to my missing baristas and useless espresso bars for days now. I haven't installed this just yet (I JUST downloaded it), but seeing ZephyrZodiac's posts stating that this fixed the problem with the missing baristas as well as the endless spawning of baristas, I wanted to post my thanks before I install it and reboot my computer. So thanks.  :D

I think this explains the fact that I"ve got about 200 baristas in my characters folder!

Thank you! It works! :)

After some hours of gameplay and a lot of trip to the coffee, it really works well, three baristas, no more !!
Thank you so much for this one !!!
Pioupiou

My game made two, though I only saw one on a comm lot.  I saw the other one in SimPE.  The first lot in regular hood no bartender showed up, but I was using a custom bar, which I ditched.  In college town, they showed up at regular way cooler bar.  Will experiment more later.

Game made 3 and I went from lot to lot and no more seem to have been made.

I could have sworn I wrote this already, but maybe it was just prescient deja vu...

The hack worked. Those coffee bars that were missing baristas (some neighborhoods had them, some didn't) now have them back. And the same baristas are there when I return to a lot.

My lips are yours.

I've played with this only in the normal neighborhood yet, but there it doesn't work for me. Still new baristas generated.

The game always insists on a total of 3 NPCs of each type, meaning you'll get 3 baristas, 3 bartenders, and ones will be spawned until this quota is met. If more continued to be spawned, something is wrong.

I don't have this fix, but I don't have baristas missing in the community lots. All my sims order coffee, and even befriend the baristas workers.

But, I have downloaded Danny's bordello from DMA, in which I have baristas for the visitors. Is it the reason I don't miss baristas?

Sorry, DMA stuff is considered evil and I don't touch it.

Lol, well, I needed it, because I built a "Romance Neighbourhood", with 4 generations of romance sims...:).

My females couldn't fulfill  all the woohoo wishes of their spouses, especially the Public Woohoo - and Danny's bordello solved this problem quite good...:).

Now all my sims have  Knowledge aspiration (I change all aspirations to knowledge with the SimPe), so I don't use it anymore, but it's still in my inventory.

The baristas for Danny's DMA have to be called with the booth each time you visit community lot.  The only bartender/baristas should should have with that pack are Randy and Oliva.  Randy has a white suit and Oliva has a Hula dress.  Your game may or may not be making more and more different NPC's.  If they have green or black apron outfit they are Maxis, not Danny's.  Also you need special bar from DMA for them to work.  They are a good alternative to the Maxis NPC if you have room on lot for booth controller.

No, I put the original baristas in the community lot (usually I have only one, sort of all-purpose community + hotel with beds and showers, remodelled from "King's Landing Tavern", downloaded from the exchange, made by wintermuteai1,  before TSU was issued - it's still there, search for "king", oldest lots, community), and the workers come there autonomously - I don't call anyone of the Danny's workers. I just don't have the barista bug - strange.

I have the bug only in my testing neighborhood, where Sims have visited a downtown lot with coffee bar many, many times. In other neighborhoods, where they spend more time at home, the bug never appeared.

So, whether you have the bug or not seems related to the number of times you've asked the game to generate baristas by visiting a lot with a coffee bar.

Note that my problem was missing baristas, not too many baristas. The same fix seems to alleviate both problems, though. Barista Fiber!  ;D

This bug seems to be fixed in NL, as far as I can tell after one afternoon of playing NL. My sim went to the coffee shop and each time it was the same barista. I will play again later today and keep you informed.
Pioupiou.

After some days of playing nightlife without hacks (except crammyboy's no censor blur) I am positive that the barista bug has been fixed. After a lot of visits downtown or in campus I only have 3 baristas.
Pioupiou

I on the other hand played with a hack free game in Nightlife, wrote down the files I had in my char folder, went to a coffee bar a couple of times, and did indeed find that more baristas had spawned. I even checked the new files in SimPE, several baristas and a ton of gardeners (from another bug).

Mutiple Baristas are generating again with Nightlife.  :-\ Not only that, but if I have my Sims chat with them, they become useless statues that stand there doing nothing. They won't even serve coffee to "Townie" Sims who try to order it ~ those Sims get "stuck" in the action for a while, but it eventually times out and they go do something else. If it's my Sim, I can cancel the action from the queue.

It's only a matter of time before Baristas disappear again altogether, I guess.

You make me reluctant to install NL when it arrives!  Can Maxis never get anything right?  Surely that was a known bug that they ought to have fixed in this EP.

I would have thought they'd fix it, too, especially since it has the potential to make one's game totally un-playable! But then, I still have Sims rolling up empty Wants, so they didn't fix that, either.

In your shoes, I'd still install NL. JMP will have it soon, and make it all sparkly for us.  ;)

Well, I ordered it on sunday from amazon, and I think it should arrive any time now - depending on the GPO.

Seems to me, though, that the people at Maxis are being pushed so hard to develop the next EP or whatever that they never have time to research and make patches - they just leave it all to JM!

I couldn't remember, and I did a quick search and did not find a definitive response, but is this still required for NL?  ???

Or has this been "fixed" by the patch? Can anyone confirm whether npcspamming occurs in NL if you don't have this hack?

Thanks,  :)

Ste

Without this hack in place, I still don't get too many NPCs. So it appears fixed in a patched NL.

I'd go along with that, I don't have it in either.

It seems to have been fixed with the patch.

Yes, it was evidently a fault and not a "feature"! ;D

So you've verified that no extra baristas spawn even without this hack, and you're seeing the same baristas consistently, instead of random baristas every time?

Yup. After extensive playing I still have just three baristas in my main 'hood. Same for other types of NPCs.

I can confirm this. I reported the endless spawn in the old times at varioussimmers, but I play now without this bugfix for awhile, and no new baristas.