More Awesome Than You!

Feel free to point and laugh.  Prodding with sticks may be required as well.

I decided to really get revenge on the townies and create a custom neightborhood of just townies.  I called it Town-E-Town (aka Killville).  My intention was to take the horrid townies and see how many ways I could mess with them.  I figured it would be a way to see how long it takes to kill a sim using various methods.  (I've only had a couple of sims die in any way but old age, but those were rescued from the Grim Reaper by loved ones.)  I can't kill my own!

I decided my starting point would be to send the townie teens to college.  But to my surprise, there weren't any of the usual suspects!  No Tosha Go, Orlando Centowski, or Ricky Cormier.  Some with the same faces, but different names.

Any other custom hood I've started has had the same old townies.  (I have all 3 EPs)  I started another custom hood not long after I got OFB and that one had the default townies, so why not this one? 

The one thing I didn't do with this one was make a CAS sim, since I don't want any in this hood.  Just townies, to mangle as I please. 

Is it possible that by not having any other sims present, the hood created truly random names with the same old faces?  I'm hoping that as these die off, the old culprits will return, but if not, does anyone have any suggestions as to what I might need to do to get them?  Like, would just creating a sim in CAS and leaving him in the sim bin be a way to generate the usual, horrid townie crew?

You may begin your laughter now.

Edited to fix name mangling.

I've had this happen before, and I didn't quite understand it either, but it didn't bother me.

No, these are your townies and you won't get the same ole Pleasantview townies in this neighbourhood.  I'f you've just made it, you may want to try and make another new one to see what you get there.

It didn't bother me, either, that they weren't the regular guys.  In fact, there are some in this hood who are better looking than the usual townies, and a couple of them I kind of like, so far.  So I'll probably get them in the Nat. Sci. career and get some nice, hungry cowplants going.

I may try making one by starting off with a CAS sim and putting him in the bin, just to see if that makes a difference. 

I've been playing these guys long enough for them to be juniors at Uni, so I guess I've been working on this one for about a month.  (That's about how long it takes to rotate through all my hoods for that many days!)

Thanks, BlueSoup.  I thought as much (about not getting the usual guys) but - hey, it was worth asking, anyway.

Elvira, I had the same experience, when OFB was installed in my game, and I openned a new hood. I couldn't meet any of the usual teens - no Randy London, who was regular visitor, and passed each day, no Meadow, no Ricki Cormier, and no many regular main characters - especially Komei!

When I uninstalled OFB, and openned a new hood only with NL installed - all of them appeared again.

But I have to say, that the OFB teen males were much prettier.

Mine happened before Nightlife was out.  Or maybe very shortly after, but probably before.

Gali, I know what you mean about the OFB teen males.  (oops! almost typo'd that as meals!)  I have one whose name is Ramin Barthelet and he's pretty cute!  He's one of the ones I will probably let grow old, as well as the girl he attached himself to.

But now I have another question:  I thought the cow mascots were girls and the llamas were guys.  They always have been in my other hoods.  I just had a cow mascot go into the girls' shower in the dorm, and when 'it' spun into nakedness, it was a guy! 

He/she must be confused.

Any picture of the "Ramin Barthelet?"
I reserve my skepticsm till a picture is shown  ::)

Llamas are always male, cheerleaders are always female. (Think of them as male/female versions of the same.)
Cows are both genders: there are no 'evil cheerleaders'.

As for the naming mystery, if for some reason there is any Sim present after generating a 'hood the game will not import the Pleasantview Posse. Any townies present will be generated, and thus have sadorandom names.

Sez you  :P

Best sadorandom townie name ever? Kacper London.

Seriously, Maxis, Kacper? I want to put him in a story just to make fun of it.

Actually, I do believe that is a German variation on the spelling of the name, so it's not -that- far out there. ;)

I have Kacper Bear in my game-he is a downtownie teen :D

German variation on what name? Shithouse?

I know Casper/Kasper/Kaspar is a name, but none of them are spelt with a c in the middle.

Kacper is Polish.

Okay. I take that as a challenge. Not every language handles pronunciations and spellings like English.

http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=kacper
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0467261/bio
http://my.opera.com/Kacper/about/

And I was wrong. It wasn't German. It was Polish.

(From http://www.polishroots.org/surnames/surnames_40.htm)

I just put him in my avatar.  This is how he looked when he spun up into a YA - I haven't changed anything about any of these townies' looks.  I thought he was a lot better looking than most of them!


Ok - but a male cow in the ladies' shower?  This dorm has men's and women's facilities.  That's why I thought s/he must be confused!

If there is a sim present the game won't import the usual townies?  I didn't make any sims.  Did you mean if a sim isn't present?  If I could get the usual gang to pick on just by creating a sim and putting them in the sim bin, I'd probably start another hood.  Otherwise, I'll probably just pick on the uglies and annoying ones of this bunch.  ;D

Some special NPCs are gender-inspecific ;)

No, I meant if any Sim (playable or not) is present, it won't try to import the Pleasantview Posse. This can happen if the townie generator kicks in a little too early (immediately after creating a 'hood): the game will check if it is an empty 'hood, if yes: it will copy the PP. If no, it will skip that step. You have encountered the relatively rare case where it encounters a townie already and therefore doesn't import, but runs the normal townie generating routine instead. Adding any of the sub'hoods adds townies with random names and this can further jumpstart their number.

A fully stocked 'hood has ~60 townies, ~30 downtownies, and (IIRC) ~40 dormies (YAs). NPCs not counted.

So if I just started another hood, chances are I'd get the normal crew of townies?  Just my luck, just when I decided to do this I got the "rare case"!

Oh well.  Next time I'm in my other account, maybe I'll start hood #8 and actually call it Killville!   :D

And I guess this cow doesn't have any specifications.  LOL!  I probably wouldn't have even noticed, but I don't play with that horrible blur, and the cow and only one of the playables were awake at the time.  The playable was a guy in the men's shower, and it kind of surprised me when the cow went in to take a shower, because that doesn't happen very often in my game.  Surprised me more when what I assumed was a girl - wasn't!

This looks like the start of a very interesting neghborhood.

*
I don't know if it is still true but all of the townies and downtownies were named after maxis employees (I think they now sadorandom the first and last names)  so some poor schmuck at maxis has the forename Kacper (and I always pronounced the c as soft like an *s)

So is a stupid townie question a stupid question about townies, or a question about stupid townies?

(Yes, I'm a pedant. As well as being a predictable puellile poser.)

...or a stupid question about stupid townies?

All of the above.

Ok, he does look decent but the nose is awful.
If you use face replacement templates or one of Enyala's oily skins, he might be better-looking  ;D

If Kacper is Polish, then it is a proabably bad transliteration since the c probably isn't a hard k sound. Also, kack in English is unfortunate.

while on the subject of hard and soft *C* my name is pronounced with a soft *C* ie: kassi-day-ma







just in case you were wondering lol

I'm not trying to argue with you... but a quick google search does prove the name isn't just a bad translation from Maxis. It's an actual spelling of a Polish name. Most of the NPC/Townie names are probably from Maxis employees or their relatives. I can see someone of Polish descent having a granpa Kacper.

Nope, not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent - at this juncture.  I'm leaving them all just the way they are.  Don't like the oily skins, anyway.  And I don't use any face replacement templates, either.  I don't think I've downloaded anything that would be considered custom content, actually.  Just mods/hacks!

I figure they're TOWNIES - they're stuck with what they have - no new clothes, no new hairstyles, nothing.  Makes it easier to find a way to take them out.

Like I said, all my sims die from old age.  I just did this to see what it would be like to have one die from the cowplant, or be hit by a satellite, or catch fire or something.  I don't want to get too attached to any of them!  I need the variety. 

The sims I create are all reasonably good-looking, anyway.  But I like having a variety of faces, like in real life.  Not all people are beautiful on the outside, but can be very much so on the inside.  So even my CAS sims may have a hook nose or a big chin.

And I have just enough frustration in my life right now, I figured it might be kind of therapeutic.  I've been playing Strangetown, too, and I couldn't wait for PT 9 to die - what a waste of pixels!

And just FYI - that nose is similar to many in my family.

Polaks use the Latin alphabet, there is no transliteration. A Polish C has a ʦ sound, so the name is pronounced similar to Katsper.

Ah, he's a good cook, so you can just have him crank out food for the rest of the family until he goes to the great bit bucket... :)

Well, there is a latinate alphabet for Polish, but there are a number of sounds represented by letters with accents. Your spelling of how you think the word should be pronounced indicates this. That was my point, essentially.

A language using an extended Latin alphabet is still using the Latin alphabet. Kacper does not contain diacritics even in the original form (Kaćper doesn't exist, would be pronounced Katschper I guess—English doesn't have the sound represented by ć (IPA ʨ) afaik.) And in fact the Polish c is closer to the 'zz' from 'pizza' (IPA ʦ, or more accurately t͡s ) so 'Katsper' is an approximation.

Still, it's not called transliteration since Polish doesn't use Cyrillic or similar.

According to the OED, transliterate (v): 

 trans. To replace (letters or characters of one language) by those of another used to represent the same sounds; to write (a word, etc.) in the characters of another alphabet. Hence trans{sm}literated ppl. a.

Nothing about specific languages or alphabets here. You keep making my point, and saying I am wrong. If the Polish c without any accents sounds more like z or s, then writing it as a c in English leads to a mispronunciation, and is a transliteration error.

I'm really dumbfounded that you're arguing this issue when the name is obviously one that is not uncommon in Poland. As I said before, a quick Google search turns up several sites with info about people named Kacper. How is that bad transliteration?

Exactly.

Names are written contrary to the way they are pronounced either because that's how it's written in the original language, or because they *WANT* to make it look foreign. Supposedly, having a foreign-looking name makes you look exotic and aids in the attraction of mates. Insert Polish joke here.

I have a Polish aunt. She went from being a Kataleski to a Baggesen (Norwegian) to a Mantegna (Italian). Her mother told her, "You should have found a Smith, honey."

Say- 'Polish it behind the kitchen door' - 10 times fast :P

Just back on-topic for a sec.

I started another townie-only town on my other account and got the usual group.  When I created it, I didn't add any NL or OFB subhoods, just UNI. 

(I had started a new PV and ST after I got OFB, and theirs are the usual, plus those that come from the subhoods.)

You may resume your name discussion.  Just wanted to update!

This may seem like an odd question, but why is it that a new neighborhood only gets either the Pleasantview townies or sort-of-randomly generated ones?  It might be interesting if we could somehow get the game to generate the Veronaville or Strangetown townies instead for a custom neighborhood.

Don't they get the same townies anyway? I remember seeing the standard crew show up in Strangetown for the meet and greet (Marisa Bendett, Benjamin Long, and ... one of the other standards whose name I'm forgetting).

A new 'hood gets the Pleasantview Posse because it is hardcoded to copy the N001 townies to new 'hoods. If you replace your copy of the 'hood in the game install folder with N002 or N003, the game will probably import those.
If you clean out the N001 folder it will presumably not copy any townies.

N002 has some same names but the townies are slightly different, same for N003.