More Awesome Than You!

My style of playing The Sims is to create a neighborhood, use deleteallcharacters to wipe it clean, and play with as few NPCs as the game will let me get away with.  Yesterday I finally sent some sims to the university for the first time, understanding that the game would probably generate some NPC to bother me.  Along with creating a cheerleader, a cow mascot, and a streaker (one of each... bothersome, but understandable), it also created about twenty professors who now keep showing up all over my community lots.  I don't mind having 2-4 professors, but I don't know the best way to get rid of the rest of them without causing a lot of problems.  I could just wipe them out by deleting their character files using Sims2Pack Clean Installer (which i've tried in the past with other unwanted npc's), but my sneaking suspicion is that simply deleting them that way will cause genetic problems in future characters, and will eventually lead to my neighborhood blowing up.  I'm also about to start a fresh new neighborhood, and am interested in preventing the same thing from happening in this one.  I already tried to generate a professor or two so the game wouldn't bother making any more when I sent someone to college, but couldn't find the option on anything I tried.  So I have two questions:

1) How do I get rid of all of the unwanted professors in my old neighborhood?
2) How do I control how many professors are created in my new neighborhood?

24 professors is the standard number (I think it's 24) - it's two professors for every major at every level - something like that.  Anyway 24 it is.  I have just made a new neighbourhood the Jordi way (I hope you're pleased Jordi) with no NPCs at all and have yet to send anyone to Uni.  I'll see if that generates the full set when I do I suppose.  Do you have the antiredundancy hack in?

Oh yeah!  The antiredundancy hack is what brought me to this site in the first place.

Well, I'd guess then that the game needs all 24 professors to run University properly.

If that's true, then is there a way to keep them confined to the university, or to keep them from showing up anywhere else in the game?

Pescado has a hack for that, I believe. It's called localwalkbys, though I don't know if that's technically what you're talking about.

Yep, that's pretty much the it of it.  I don't think there is a way to avoid this.  Unless you could conceivably link only two professors to serve all the majors?  But it just sounds messy.


You could use twojeffs visitor controller thingamabob and just ban them like from everywhere.  If it doesn't already exist, maybe you could request a ban uni prof specific painting/object.



I have that. Does localwalkbys restrict Uni profs to the Uni subhood? I don't remember. If it does, then that would probably be the simpler answer, since I assume it does so by default.  With twojeffs controller, you probably have to ban the profs individually?

Ste

Well, yes, that's what it should do. It should restrict YAs to the University subhood, Downtownies and anyone that lives downtown in the NL subhood, and does the same for Bluewater.

I haven't been able to find any way to get less profs or do anything with them at all :( Totally clean neighborhood, all of JMs 'don't give me extra' hacks etc. and I'm still stuck with the EA profs (I almost wish they'd just redo the Uni EP, it's so bad. I'd like to have a good one.) The problem with local walkbys is that it'll do all the Uni folk, not just the profs - including your young adults and your created dormies (if you make your own). There might be an option for not allowing Uni NPCs on Two Jeffs visitor controller?

I used the tutorial here to do the clean neighborhood the right way with the empty templates. When I put a student into a dorm I got a lag while all those profs were created, and I do use no redundancy.

To keep the professors off the property, I use TwoJeffs controller. Just click the active Sim and choose ban professors, as well as mascots, cheerleaders, and streakers. I didn't see any of his paintings to control these characters, so you have to set the ban on each Uni lot that you play. Using a no townie painting has kept the profs off of the Uni comm lots for me.

I am currently playing Uni and no one other than my playables ever walk onto my lots.

What I want to know is, what is the source of this anti-professor prejudice?

/me shrugs.

Perhaps it may be considered "a waste" to interact with these sims? Since you're not supposed to move them in or marry them?  I dunno.  I don't mind them, because socializing with them boosts grades.

Maybe people hate teh "lecher" prof i.e. that Drama prof who stalks your sims all the time, even if you haven't met him yet.  It seems that he will walk by and ring your dorm doorbell, even if you haven't met him or any other professors yet.  He (or she, depending on your game) is a creepy lecherous sim (yes, even the code has a check for Sim - Is Lecherous? BHAV or something like that), and apparently they are meant to stalk you, where ever you go.

I believe they are the profs that Pescado mentioned before, who like immediately get a crush or fall in love with you as soon as you meet them.  I do my best to avoid those at all costs.  If I see a walk by Prof ringin my doorbell, I just totally ignore him/her.  Creepy!  Those Maxians have an odd sense of humour. :P


Ste

Bad grades? ;)

For those of us who are Americans, it's in our genes. Anti-intellectualism has been bred into us for generations (how many generations is 200 years??)—it's one of the fundamental elements of our national character.   :(

I wonder if you could give them a prisoner token to stop them from showing up on community lots. It works for the aliens I keep on The Mothership lot in my neighborhoods, but they aren't NPCs.

You could get it from simlogical.com and see if it works on professors. You need to have the inventory feature... whichever EP that came with.

Oh, my prejudice isn't restricted to just the professors... it's for all game-produced characters.  I've hated all game produced and default characters since I started playing the original Sims five years ago, and Sims 2 just made them that much more obnoxious and hard to get away from.  They do nothing but get in the way and complicate the game for me.  Since I know that the game requires a certain number of NPCs to run properly, I use antiredundancy to keep their numbers down to a bare minimum and simply ignore them as much as possible.  The problem I have here is that I don't know why the game has to produce a full two dozen of them.  I'd prefer just one, and I'm even willing to go along with up to four, but twenty-four of them means that my game will have more professors than all other townies, downtownies, NPCs, and strays combined.  Obnoxious.

Me too, exactly that, ditto.

My prejudice is for all EA/Maxian created characters and I've worked hard at having very limited numbers of them (to the point of never calling a taxi in some hoods so I don't end up with a driver NPC). It's annoying that it works pretty well for everything but Uni. What I really want is to make my own professors. And I don't feel a need for that many. I've only got 6 kids at uni - 3 playables, 3 (my own) dormies... the profs waaayyy outnumber the student body. There's gonna be a revolution soon.

Ooo!  Mothership lot!  Where do you get this?  I love alien stuff.

It's just a lot with a buyable alien ship on it. :)

It houses twelve aliens that I use to pollinate anyone who gets abducted, so that they're not all related to one alien.

If you are willing to experiment, try this.

Change all the professors to infants with SimPe.  Disclaimer:  I've never done this, I've only read about it.

It seems that changing an NPC to an infant prevents them from visiting other lots.  If you try this, I would suggest trying to call them on the phone, to see if it can be done.  After all, phone calls to professors can help grades.

You also may be able to chat with them online.

Of course, I understand if you don't want to experiment with this.  Just thought I'd pass the idea along.

If that works it would solve-ish my problem.  I'm mostly interested in the game not having to load a bunch of useless character files in the first place, and all the great not-having-to-deal-with-them which would come with that.

Since you brought this up, I have Dramafix in my game to stop this strange character. When I started my Uni lot I forgot to set TJ's visitor controls to disallow profs, but I hadn't met any yet since I use Squinge's "No meet profs". Then somewhere around 3am this prof shows up and rings the doorbell. I quickly set the visitor controller and he disappeared. But the next night he shows up in the middle of the night again.

How do I know that this was the Drama prof or not? If it was the Drama Prof, I want to report it in the right thread.

I don't think Pescado's dramafix stops those profs, because I have it (it's marked critical) but it doesn't change their behaviour in any way.  Lemme check...

Yup.  Dramafix fixes "lost best friend" memories and "met self" memories.  No claims to fix their stalking behaviour.

Could you possibly have a different drama prof hack?

As seelindarun says, I don't think the dramafix alters the drama prof behaviour. It fixes buggy things about them, but doesn't stop them from stalking you.


If you have InSim, or any of the other hacks (Merola's mind controller or Dolphins thingamajig), you could make the prof selectable.  Couldn't you check to see that way?  I sort of just assumed that the stalker prof was the drama prof.  I vaguely recall looking at the code once, and seeing what it was that identified a sim as "Lecherous" and I think I eventually traced it back to being a drama prof.  I forget tho, the details, of how one is classified as a drama prof. :-\

If I find time, I could probably figure it out by looking at the code.  But wouldn't you also be able to check by enrolling a YA in that major, sending them to class, and seeing what prof's s/he meets?

Ste

What would happen if you just deleted them? Then like with other NPCs, the game would only make one when it was needed...like when you delete all maids in making a new hood, the game only makes a maid when you need one. So unless you try to call a professor in your major, it would not make one, right? *wonders*

I guess I just misunderstood what the dramafix did. I thought it fixed the met self memories AND stopped the weirdo.

Jade, for some reason the game feels a need to make all the profs the minute you start playing Uni - even if you start with the empty subhood templates (no characters at all), delete all characters or whatever. It doesn't create them just when you need them and it won't do just one - well for some dumb reason you hafta "meet" two the first day of class anyways. So my 3 playables met 6 profs, all different ones, even tho they were all (at that point) undecided majors and then 2 more each when they declared majors :p. Only one of about a billion 'why in the world did they set it up like that' things about Uni.

Thanks, Sagana. That is exactly why I plan to create my own uni within the hood, rather than using a Uni hood.

I have Merola's mirror and IIRC, making the profs selectable will only show you they are 'Unemployed' but not which majors they are assigned to.

I used SimPE (the University tab will display a major for the profs) to check and rename the profs so that their names include which majors they are supposedly assigned to for easy identification, but I'm not entirely sure if SimPE displayed the correct information though since I also use TJ's No Meeting Professors hack. If SimPE is correct, then the only stalker-ish profs aren't just the drama ones.

Quote ::
* syberspunk shrugs.

Perhaps it may be considered "a waste" to interact with these sims? Since you're not supposed to move them in or marry them?
EndQuote::

   Mmnn,  first i've heard about the Profs.  :(    <adds Profs to list of 'Do Not Move In/Marry'.
Forgive me, but it's almost getting to the point where it's not recommended to move in/Marry ANY of the NPC's that are generated.
(Forgive me for not Quoting the proper way, this comment by syberspunk was too far back to show up to Insert from.)    :(

That's a pretty good rule, yes.

How in the world could you do that? There wouldn't be any classes or homework, or term papers or anything. Does just putting a dorm into a regular hood make it work?

You'd need a ton of hacks, which will probably all be broken when the next edition of Lies and Propaganda comes out.

BTW, your Sims get credit toward their semester grade by interacting socially with a professor.  Even College->Rampage uses this on occasion!

I make use of this quite a bit for my popularity and romance sims.  An outing with 2 profs at around 30/10 and autosoc often boosts the grade meter enough to finish the semester without doing the term paper or assignments at all.  Add to that the boost in motives and asp meter, and it's hard to resist. 

I'm not sure if I would claim that it's literally faster than College Rampage, but I like to play Uni a little looser.  Most of my sims have a very abbreviated adolescence, so college is a time for them to make friends, find a mate, shag, etc.  If they roll up the want to make friends with their prof., I let them. 

Before I came to MATY, one of my sims rolled the want to make friends and flirt with her sorority sister's prof., which I indulged. She had 3 bolts for him and he wasn't heinous to look at, so I let them marry.  He was abducted by aliens the night after their wedding, and produced the first alien I ever had.  She was even cute!  That prof. later threw two really cute twins, too.

Anyway, for nostalgic reasons I'm a little more sympathetic to all the profs now.  He was a literature prof. though and apart from always showing up in his prof. uniform, there wasn't anything strange about him.  Being a knowledge sim, the funny bow tie suited him anyway.

Literature profs are the best kind. I got quite fond of a lot of the profs when Elaine from my legacy dated a whole lot of them, and Prof Spencer, whom she eventually married, was a great dad until he got hit by that satellite.

I thought marrying profs or any Uni NPCs was a VBT, no?

Anyhew... I've been thinking about merging my maxian hoods, thanks to Dea and SaraMK for their hardwork creating bug free DNA fixed hoods an awesome, easy to follow tutorial. Yay! :D

I'm just curious tho... since I've been thinkin about merging 'hoods and what not, is it possible, with antiredundancy in place, to add a 2nd (and 3rd) University without having all those other NPCs generated?

Can antiredundancy stop those extra NPCs from being generated?  Will the game "know" that there are already 24 Profs, 3 Cheerleaders, 3 Llamas, 3 Cows, 3 Cooks, 3 Coaches, etc.?  And are these NPCs shared across Uni hoods?

OR... does the game have to generate separate profs, cheerleaders, coaches, etc. per Uni sub hood?

And if so... can I just use SaraMK's clean/empty templates/instructions?

Ste

Uni-NPCs retain their special codes and behaviors upon moving. For things like Cheerleaders and Mascots, this means they continue to behave in their psychotic way after marriage and post-Uni life. Drama professors continue to behave in their obnoxious ways after marriage also. Normal professors lack special behaviors and are relatively safe, but all professors will respawn themselves if you deplete the pool. And respawning is generally a bad thing.

I dunno about any of the other stuff, but the empty templates won't help. NPCs spawn when needed, and Uni appears to believe it needs 24 profs when the first playable student enters the hood.

If it's possible to share them across sub-hoods, then that'd be good, but otherwise they'll generate even if you start with an empty hood (I started with that - no dormies which is very nice :)

In my numbers experiments, the game will only add another batch of students (50 in total per university) when you add a new university.  Apparently, the universities share staff.  With the clean templates, you don't get anyone though the profs will generate the first time you send a student to college (as they go into the dorm). 

Ha this explains why the stupid professor I allowed to marry my legacy heir kept falling in love with everyone he met. I thought this was some sort of bug in my game, but I didn't worry too much because I just killed him off and counted it towards one of my types of ghost for the challenge. Now I know never to marry them again!

I have never seen the magical student addition happen in my game (with empty U001-3 templates in place).
Dormies are only generated to populate dorms, and SS lots.

Professors always spawn, although I do not always end up with 2 professors per major.

I'm confused, has it ever happened where you did not end up with 24 profs total?

And... have you ever tried to add more than one Uni with empty plates?  And if so, do you ever end up with more than 24 profs?


Ste

Yes, I have and nothing is added until you play the university for the first time.  I'll check and see if I got 24 professors if you like.  I added two universities to Little Carping when I made it fresh with Seasons.  I have no townie/dormie/anything even remotely Maxian not even sodding pets - regen in.

To be clear Jordi, the game adds 50 new students with every extra University without the empty templates.  But Syberspunk, the second university DOES NOT add another set of professors.

That is awesome.  That is exactly what I wanted to hear.  So, by using the empty templates, I can theoretically add 3 universities and only have one set 24 professors.

Ste

Little Carping has 2 universities, no students and one set of 24 professors.