More Awesome Than You!

I've decided that I want more interesting Townies. Mine are boring. :(

So I'm going to download some new face Templates. What I want to do is find a way to wipe all of the Townies that are in my neighborhood already and then make new ones. I know how I would go about making the new ones, but it's the nuking of the current ones that gets me.

Would it be safe/possible for me to move all of my playable Sims to my desktop or something, load the game, DeleteAllCharacters, spawn new Townies/NPCs, quit game, move playables back in? Or would this create a BFBVFS?

I've read quite a few of the tuts out there for creating complete custom neighborhoods, but I haven't seen any that involve already existing neighborhoods. Can anyone more awesome than me give me some input?

EDIT: Just learned that all Sims are kept in the same file, correct? So I guess I can't just move my playable Sims out. Does anyone know how I could just get rid of my Townies then? Well, I could just kill them all....

ack.  No.  Put that mouse down and step away from the computer s-l-o-w-l-y.


For one, deleteallcharacter has officially been stamped as a very-bad-thing TM.  For two there is no way to prevent your characters from getting nuked.  You cannot put them on your desktop and put them back.  Well you could, but that would be even worse than a deleteallcharacter.  I won't even mention it, in case you get ideas.

You have two options here.

one)  Kill all the towniesk individually.  There are about a million and a half ways of doing that. Might be slow. But then again you might enjoy it, who knows.  Let the inner psycho come out.  ALthough that is not going to improve neighbourdhood bloat

two) A better, sneakier, solution would be this.  Keep your townies, but spruce them up.  Use  Inge's teleport bush to drop them into your secret laboratory and use DMA's "thingie" to perform surgery on them.  You can also use it to change their appearance, buy and change their clothing.  Voila.  New and improved townies, without increasing the bloat in your neighbourdhood. 

If you're a perfectionist, you might also fix up their genetics in SimsPE to be sure that they pass off their good looks to their kids.  Or not.  that might make for interesting stories lol.

I knew it was a good idea to ask here first. D:

I'm actually thinking of just getting rid of the Townies for good. I don't really use them ever. I have JM's No Townie Respawn hack, so I think I'll just kill them all. :D

Deleted 2: Electric Boogaloo (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6205.0.html) or Sim Deleter Tool (http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/sim-deleter-tool.html).

Grab new face templates, generate townies, tweak and enjoy. This (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html) can help with townie re-population phase.

Yay!

I shall enjoy this. :D

Not OR. If the TheoTool does the steps performed in SimPE as recommended by Deleted 2, then you can use that instead. However, it is unknown how good a job that does. You cannot, however, just go about deleting sims without performing the in-game steps of Deleted 2 first.

Hey!!! I want to do this!! 

What is the " Inge's teleport bush " and where can I find it?  And what is DMA's "thingie" and where do I find that?  What ever the "thingie" is,  I hope it is clean. 

I have been wanting to do this for a while now.   This is a good topic!


 :-*

Well the "thingie" in question perfectly clean.   However the set it comes is could be considered questionable, by some.  Anyway, its called the Appearance and Outfit Changer or COA object and is part of the woohoo set made by DMA sims.  It works a treat though.  Allows you to change the appearance of any NPC on the lot, change their face (same as the surgery machine), and change their clothing. 

The teleport bush is made by Inge at simlogical.   However there is an updated version in peasantry which I can't seem to find and I'm getting a headache trying to.

bah.  Here's the darn COA thingie.  If anyone freaks I'll just remove it.  It looks like a red security alarm, found under miscellaneous

PS this is the pets version.  Also works in Seasons

...Oops.  :D

.....SHIT.

Um. Well my game crashed during the neighborhood load. And. Well.

This kind of sucks.

I had gotten about 1/5th of the way through deleting the Townies with Theo's tool when I saw JM's post, so I closed SimPE and tried to load the game. Uh.

...Dammit.

Four year old neighborhood up in flames!! D':

dumb question, but did you make a backup before butchering your neighbourhood with a large knife?

You didn't backup?!?

The one time I decide not to backup.

I'M SO STUPIDDDDD

I tried a System Restore. Didn't work of course, because Windows is a bitch.
.....

....Well, I have been wanting to start a new neighborhood.....

EDIT:

I'm going to try and see if I can create a new neighborhood and just copy the files from my old hood into the clean one.

Long shot. But it's all I've got left.  >:(

So restore one of your older backups.

/me points and laughs.

This thread is such a good illustration of how in spite of our best intentions and best efforts, it is often best not to attempt to educate some people....

And I'm not saying this to be mean. I'm just saying this thread is perfect proof that it's not always a good idea to tell people how to do stuff that shouldn't really be attempted by anyone who hasn't received at least an "acceptable" on a test of common sense. "Common sense" being the little voice inside your head that should have told you that backing up your neighborhood before ripping it to shreds with 3rd party tools is a good idea.

Oh, wait... that did kind of sound mean.

People on this forum do tend to assume that others have already mastered the basic concepts, so things like "make a backup" are often omitted from tutorials and other bits of advice. And they will  point and laugh if their advice causes a catastrophe.



I do hope you have a backup, Solowren, even if it's an older one.




Now let us all sit back and wait for STLBailey, with her bright red font, to come crying about her neighborhood exploding. If she doesn't, we can assume she gets a "passing" on the common sense test. However, the fact that she neither knows who Inge is or what a "teleporter bush" is  (perhaps one of the most commonly and widely used hacks), does not bode well as far as her ability to successfully use a complicated tool that shreds critical neighborhood files....

If one is unhappy with the townies he has, take the ugly ones and start a community cemetary.  The cute ones can be made over.  You can also go into SimPE and change their names.  It may not be a total fix of getting rid of townies, but it's better than making the neighborhood go explodey.  Sorry you lost your neighborhood but it's a risk to go into the game and fiddle with integral files like that.   :(

Good point Sara. 

However my advice was pretty safe.  I told him to simply kill off his townies.  Not delete them.  All in game stuff.  You can't really go massively wrong from within the game, so long as you don't start using the more powerful cheats. ( Or use some of Maxis completely fubared options, like family binning, which I didn't even mention).  And my advice to makeover the townies was safe too.  Can't really go wrong with Inge's teleport bush.  And the DMA is even safer.

Being in tech support, I'm used to dealing with all sort of levels of competency. Rule one.  Don't treat your customer like idiots, but never assume they are computer savy, unless they show you they are.  And it was clear from Solowren  questions that he fell in the category of "knows just enough to be dangerous".

BTW Solowren, system restore only restores changes made to system files, such as the operating system or program files. It's best used when a newly installed program, or driver, or malware/virus borked your system.  It does not affect data.  Neither should it, or it would wipe all recent changes made to your data. 

I know.  ;)

Actually, this thread greatly amused me for no less than 5 reasons:

1. It had a newbie who at first glance appeared to be of above-average intelligence (note the lack of horrific mangling of the English language in the first post), and yet turned out to be a BBS escapee after all.

2. It had another newbie, who definitely had a BBS aura around her, and who was apparently suicidal... that's really the only reason someone who doesn't seem to have ever downloaded a hack for the game before would want to go poking into the game files with one of Pescado's advanced tools.

3. At least one of the newbies was twirled around and given a shove in the general direction of a cliff.

4. It had high drama, punctuated by frequent use of multiple exclamation and question marks ("You didn't backup?!?") and CAPS LOCK freaking out.

5. It was the middle of the night, and I was hopped up on coffee and feeling very mean for some reason.


And of course Pescado pointing and laughing is always funny.




All that said, I do feel sorry for anyone who loses a neighborhood, because that truly sucks to have happen.

The tool deletes the sim character files immediately, but doesn't commit the neighborhood package unless you do it explicitly (clicking on the 'Save' button in T.A.T).
Since you didn't do the last step, the game still tries to load the SDSC resources but is unable to load the sim packages, which is an exception it can't cope with.
It may be a bit belated, but I will add this warning to the tool's description ;)

You may have a chance of getting the neighborhood to load, if you open the neighborhood again, and delete the SDSC resources of the sims you had deleted. Look for sim descriptions with 'Unknown', and delete them before committing your changes.


I must say the deletion of a sim from the database is so quirky and troublesome, that I only do it when I want to shrink the neighborhood 'weight'. On other cases, simple facial surgery is enough to give a new look to the townies.

I admit not backing up was a bad idea. It was an extremely bad idea. And I probably deserve every bit of assholery you guys can throw at me.

I also admit that I am new to SimPE. I'm trying to learn how to use it properly so I don't always have to request things of other people. Trial and error is how I learn best, which is slightly unfortunate. D:

And Theo, thank you for adding your advice. When I get home I'll be sure to try that.

Doing stupid shit, or at least watching other people do stupid shit, is how people learn "common" sense in the first place.

I really wish someone would create a tool that would allow old townies to use new face templates genetically. I don't know if this would even be possible, though.

You can use SimPE to do that.  It's not push-a-button easy, but it's not difficult either.  All you do is perform a sim surgery on a townie.  From within the surgery, you should have access to whatever templates you have installed ( I think, I'm not 100% sure).  Then once you have closed the game, you can go to SimPE and fix the genetics so that the new face will be passed to the kids.  It's just a 2 step operation.   If you also want to change the skin color or eye color that's more steps.  So to keep it simple it's best to just stick to the face.

Hmmm maybe I should write a tutorial.  I wonder if anyone would be interested.

i would!

Step 1: Make a backup.

 :D


Actually, it probably would help people to have a tutorial. Maybe they'd quit trying to delete sims just because they don't like how they look.

Yes, but going through all the townies and doing that is a severe pain and takes a ton of time.

What I used to do in my old game, was simply nab customers.  They got a little more they bargained for when they dropped by my shop!

Adds a little interest to running a business.  Although the DMA doesn't seem to work to change clothing on community lots.

Eventually you'll go through all  your sims.

You can keep a list of names and fix their genetics in SimPE once you finished playing.  Although fixing genetics is not all that necessary, unless you intend to breed them

And yes Sara. Step one, make a backup should be our sig line.  JM should put it on the front page.  Something like...Warning ...Failure to make a backup will automatically result in you getting pointed and laughed at.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=56241


Probably would be better for you to write one up for here on MATY, since this one is old and only really findable if you do a specific search at MTS2.



Er... I thought it wasn't exactly safe to go around deleting all the unknowns as some of them are things like.. Oh the wormrat and the bird. eh?

Ok... first off let me start by saying, i feel the pain for Solowren, I didnt crash my hood... but i had the HDD die on me, and I had to start again. (Which now i have done again, after fresh install)

Secondly, angelyne, yes a tutorial would be awesome for us n00bs that are not quite sure what the heck they are doing.

After reading the topic from top to bottom im still a little lost.
I too want to "make-over" my townies etc, (as this seems to be the best way).

Starting a stop and having them come in to buy things and get that face reco they always wanted is an awesome idea, then i could set a goal of 10 townies a night to change, until they are all done.

Ok, now for my question(s)
 - If I use either the "Shop Idea" or the "Shrub Idea" and DMA's Tool, to make the townies better looking with the new tempates.
what do i then have to change in SimPE so that if i was to multiply with them, their babies will look pretty as well?
(I'll have to wait till SimPE for Seasons comes out before I can do this)

 - If I'm using the new Face Templates, and CAS Templates, any new townies that are made will both have better faces, and this will be copied to SimPE, hence thier faces will carry onto new borns? (Also any new townies that are made from this moment on, will be good looking too? No over sized noses or chins?)

 - Is their anything else that I will need to make my townies good looking, and stay that way?

 - And just another question I thought of after previewing this... NPC's... is their away I can make them look better? (Using the same way as above?)

Sorry for all the question, but I'm just trying to understand the best way of doing this, before I do it.
Any help would be awesome, not more awesome than you though.

This is what angelyne was talking about writing the tut on and what is explained in the link I posted above but since MTS2 is apparently down for maintenance, here's the short version:
Open up the hood in SimPE, locate the sim's description, open the character file, select Facial Structure from the resource tree, highlight and extract the 2nd instance, then highlight and replace the 1st instance with the .simpe file you just extracted. Save and you're done.


Yes.


Nope. Of course your best guarantee for good looking townies is to make them yourself in CAS and turn them into townies afterwards. Using templates, unless every template is completely unuglified, may still get you a few here and there that don't meet your personal ideal.


I believe so.
I've never tried facial reconstruction on NPC's myself so can not say absolutely yes without a doubt. I have noticed that, many times, trying to simply change hair style doesn't actually work on some NPCs (i.e. the female maid) so there may be some sort of weirdness that prevents their genetics from being altered but that's about all I can say for that.

Thanks heaps for your quick reply.
Do you think that SimPE Pets ed. would work for this if I have seasons... or should I wait for Seasons ed. to come out?

Again another question I thought of... NPC's is their away I can kill them off... so that they generate with the new faces?
Or is that a whole you basket of cucumbers?

I did realize it would be silly to delete them just because I wanted new ones, so I had decided I just wanted to get rid of them. The bloat sucked, and I never used Townies anyway.  :)

Right now I'm following some completely custom neighborhood tutorials, so if what Theo suggested doesn't work I will just start anew.

That last line sounds like an insult for some reason.

Dunno if pets SimPE would work or not. Me personally myself I'd wait but I'm ultraparanoid, too.
You could always make a backup and try it with the pets version.

Yes, you can kill off NPCs but how you do so, how often, and where (in-game or out) matters to the size of the cucumbers. Do some research on neighborhood bloat, BFBVFS, and VBTs.

Ment in that way that... whould that be in another post or topic?
No insult intended apon anyone.

And for myskaal thankyou for your help... ill look into that.

Regards.

default face replacements + SaraMKs "empty templates" + new custom hood = a empty hood that will end up with better looking NPCs/townies/dormies

I've been using SimPe and it seems to be working fine, for what I am doing, which is just changing small things like character attributes and name. 

Starting a brand new neighbourhood is always an option. That's what I am doing now.  But some people are attached to their old neigbourhood.  I can understand wanting to keep it.

Deleting townies is always an option.  Except that the game will regenerate more, unless you have the notownieregen mod.  And even with new templates, you still might not be happy with the results.  But the reason I think it's a bad idea, is that it adds to the file bloat of your neighbourhood.  All your dead characters are taking a file "slot".  The new ones will use more slots.  There is a finite (albeit large) number that can be used.  At least that's my understanding.  That's the reason for the character deletion tool. But as you have seen from this thread, it's not to be used carelessly.

So apart from the fluglyness, your townies are perfectly acceptable characters.  They have a range of personalities, attributes, skills, badges, ect.  Some of them have relationships with your characters. Some of them are your customers. So instead of bumping the whole lot off, it seems more efficient to simply make them over.

That's my take on things anyway.

And alot of Family's in the Bin and Houses in the Bin, Community Lots in the bin, Dorms in the Bin... and 5hrs of setting up... and bam!
no more premade n/hood!

If i was to create a new hood with the empty templates...
when creating Downtown and Uni hoods... if i choose one of the pre made ones, eg Blue Water...
will that create new townies and NPC with new genetics...
or will it use the already existing ones from the Pleasantview Blue Water Towines?

from what I have read it isn't worth it to use the empty template for Downtown (you'll just get the same downtownies apparently)

if you use the empty dorm template then any new dormies that spawn will use whatever default face replacements you have in, assuming you have them (made dormies so much better in my game that I allow my sims to marry them)

I believe there is a empty template for bluewater village also but I never attach that sub-hood to any of my hoods, so I don't know anything about it...


use the N001 empty template and you won't get the default townies, after making my last new hood I spawned a batch of new townies using testingcheats enabled & shift-clicking on the mailbox etc... got some really nice looking new townies that way (they also use the default face replacements)


if you have Pets, I suggest using the empty template for that also.


the empty templates (incase you didn't find them)  -
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html


she has instructions to get rid of the binned Pets maxis premades (and maybe the Seasons ones also)

Just to ask another question to add to my long list in this Thread already... but is there doco on how to do this correctly?
So I dont end up screwing all my townies up.
Thanks

Yes Myskaal posted the link.  Here it is again : http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=56241

This is something you do after performing surgery on a sim in order to insure that his new face will be passed on to his simkids, instead of his old face.

I use the empty template for Downtown so that I don't get the graves.  I don't see the point in adding character files that I won't be using again.

I like the graves, because my knowledge sims are constantly rolling wants to see ghosts. That doesn't stop them, of course, from immediately running off to play poker or watch television as soon as they get to the cemetery. ::)

As so beautifully put by SaraMK:

With all of your infinite knowledge of the Sims and all of its hack, it seems to me that you would use it for the good of mankind (or simkind) and not sit and tear down newbies at all hours of the night.  Being "hopped up on coffee and feeling very mean for some reason" is no excuse.  All that energy you put in being mean could have went to helped us learn how to delete our townies correctly instead of losing neighborhoods.  What a waste of good knowledge.

Thank you very much, Angelyne, for your help.  I will try the program that you attached.  I have been playing around with SimPE, but I still haven't gotten the hang of it.  There needs to be a better tutorial or manual for it.  Maybe you should write one.   ;)  (hint, hint)

I understand that you have to have a thick skin in this place, however, I just wish that after all the harsh words have been said,...answer the persons question. Don't just talk shit just because you know more.  At one point and time, you were a newbie too.

Yup, and we all went through the same initiation here -- some survive, many don't.  Deal with it....

Don't be hard on Sara.   She's done a lot for "simkind", including providing us with empty and cleaned up templates for starting with a clean neighbourdhood, and giving us endless advice.

What she said wasn't directed at you, rather at us to be cautious about what advice we provide to people whose level of competency is unknown.  As Alexander Pope said "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

SimPE is a complex, very powerful program that manipulates your game data.  It can trash your game in the blink of an eye, with practically no warning, as it's meant for the advanced users.  I've only used a tiny fraction of it to manipulate my character files.  It does so much more.  There are lots of tutorials on how to use it.  The trick is to focus on what you want to do, and search for tutorials on that.

You might want to use Sim Enhancer http://www.sims2programs.com/ (http://www.sims2programs.com/).  It's a program to manipulate your character data, but with a more user friendly interface.  Some people swear by it. It's like Mac vs Microsoft.  The only problem is that it's not free and some people have complained that the guy who wrote it provides you with piss-poor service.  But anyway.

I am considering writing a tutorial on how to "beautify" an existing neighbourhood, by making over your townies and NPC's.  Starting over is a good option, but not everyone is ready to do that.

Hey...I can deal with it....put up with it....and maybe even dish it sometimes.  But when it is all said and done, answer the question and not just be mean.

I have TS2Enhancer.  Heck I even have the current upgrade!  LOL  But it won't let me change the clothes or faces of the townies.  Will SimPE let me do all that?

Clothes:  Make the Townie controllable using various hacks and change their clothes with the DMA gadget.

Faces:  Make the Townie controllable and use the plastic surgery station or the DMA gadget.

If you don't know what you're doing, don't monkey with SimPE.

Being mean is part of what we do.

Besides, the only comment I made that was in any way directed at you was about that huge red font of yours, and you were asking for it. As far as the original poster, by the time I came to the thread the last thing needed was more information... pointing and laughing was the only thing left to do.

Angelyne posted the DMA file for download.  (thanx)  

Now where can i go to read up about it.  Is there a website or a forum post?  Is this a SimPE Plugin or a file on its on to be put in the game like the Teleporter bush?

DMA is from an evil paysite. Have you destroyed a paysite today?

... oh, wait, angelyne is helping you with that.  :P



http://valdea.com/board/

Thank you, Sara.  ;)

See, I knew you were sweet after all!  LOL  (oops...can I say LOL)

After all, the description of The Podium says right up front, "Ask Me Your Questions, And I Will Make Fun Of You!" :)

 I guess no one believes it jsalemi ;)

Bailey, just put the DMA file in your download folder.  It will appear in your catalog under miscellaneous as a red burglar alarm.  Click on it, the options are pretty self-explanatory.  The nice thing about that hack, is you don't need to actually use other hacks to take control of NPC's.  You just click on the DMA hack, click on change appearance (for example) and click on the NPC that you want to change.  The NPC must be on the lot, to appear on the list.

A good place to use this is in one of your home business.  You makeover all your customers.

One trick you can do to potentially wire your neighborhood back together in such a case is to restore the missing files from backup. The actual sim character packages do not change much at all, so restoring them from backup tends to mostly repair them. Of course, this procedure is experimental and you could just fuck it up more, but I guess that's not really possible at this point. Naturally, it's probably too late. It's best to seek advice for this sort of thing in a more real-time response environment unless you want to wait a few days for all the verdicts to be rendered.

That's why I ask questions several days before I intend to perform any such procedures.

Christianlov at MTS2 has a hacked clothing rack that allows you to teleport any townie or NPC to the lot, give it a makeover, change its clothes, and give it plastic surgery. The only problem is that the clothing rack already costs something like §500, and your playable sims *still* have to pay for the townies' new outfits. Certain NPCs, like the mail-carrier, paper-deliverer, and restaurant staff are not worth reclothing, because they revert to their default uniforms as soon as they go to work, but you can still give them new faces and hair. I don't normally use money cheats, but it was worth a few kachings to make over the townies in one of my custom hoods.

I saw that hack.  Its called Sims Boutique Clothing Rack.  I tried to download it, but the file was bad.  Winzip would not install the file. 

I just downloaded the file then. and opend it with WinRar 3.62, and it extracted to a dir fine.
if need be... i can put the package file here. im not sure if thats allowed though.

Oh for...
http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?p=1531631

You'd better read the whole thing from the beginning, actually.

I need to remember this.  :P

Pescado: Thanks for the tip- As of this moment I have created a new, cleaned neighborhood and rar'd my old one, so it's no longer even in the game at this point. I'm sure I'll want to make another attempt to revive my poor 'hood eventually, so I'll keep this in mind.

I've just been reading through this thread and I'm considering deleting some of my townies because my neighbourhood is getting a little bloated. I did think about just killing them all off because it was quicker, however I've heard that because this doesn't fully remove them from the game it doesn't really reduce the neighbourhood's size. Is this true?

Yes, this is true. Simply killing off a sim just removes them from your sightline. They are still in your game files, and your neighbourhood files will still be as big as they were before.

Great, I've just checked my neighbourhood character file and there are 357 files in there :-[ No idea how that many have managed to spawn since I have barely played the neighbourhood yet. I really wish I'd followed one of those tutorials to make a clean neighbourhood now, but it's too late for that so I shall just have to spend ages deleting them all. I think I will try Theo's Sim Deleter tool, after carrying out Pescado's in game steps just to try and make things quicker.

With 357 sims, I would leave it alone. That is not considered a huge number, especially with NL and above, which fixed some of the bugs related to having too many sims. Simply having 357 sims will not make your neighborhood combust, so you can stop worrying about that. If this was your only  reason for wanting to delete them, reconsider it. Give them makeovers instead.

And install all the NORESPAWN hacks that Pescado has, to prevent any more spawnage. Here's a list: notownieregen, nossrespawn, nostrayrespawn, nodormierespawn, and antiredundancy. Check for EP compatibility, of course.

Hm, the most recent place I'm seeing nodormierespawn is the OFB folder. Am I just blind? <probably> or does it need updating of some sort?

It's not in the Seasons folder, but it is in the Director's Cut for Seasons, which must mean it is Seasons compatible.

ETA: Heh, with this post I got my third pair of lips ripped off. :P

My main reason for deleting them is that I hate having townies hanging around the place stopping my sims from meeting sims I have made. Then there's all the townies that trail home with my sims from work/school etc. They just really bug me and I want them gone!
Thanks for that list of hacks, I have notownieregen but I'll go install those others as well to keep my sims numbers down.

Killing them would very effectively prevent them from nagging your sims.  Making them over would maybe make you more keen on having your sims interact with them.  Different approaches.

Here is an idea. Maybe you could make them all dowtownies.  The downtownies don't come to the 'hoods.  Maybe that would get them out of your hair?

Also there is a hack to prompt you with a question when one of your simkid wants to bring someone from school. That could be another approach.

Hmmm I was considering killing them but the thing is this is a brand new neighbourhood at the moment so there aren't many characters in it. I do tend to play my neighbourhoods a lot (in other words I don't start over in a fresh one very often) and I've had problems before where the number of characters got too high and things started exploding. All in all I think the best thing would be to delete them.
At this point I feel quite bad because you're all giving me all this great advice and waving a big flag saying "don't delete them" and I'm still saying I'm going to delete them. I know that my random questions do make me seem like I don't know what I'm doing and like I'm going to cause a BFBVFS but all will be well :)