More Awesome Than You!

I got the new QA version of Simpe Today and looked into my Hood. It was a Shock.
I have 40 Tour Guide and 9 Unsavory Charlatan. Every Time my Sim walks to another Lot a new Tour Guide is spawned.
Same when a Charlatan visits the Lot its a new one every time.
I am not sure about Ninjas but its possible for them also. Had it in a new created Hood with no hack also.

Have you got noredundancy in your hacks?  Or has it not been updated yet - if not, I think I'll postpone installing BV until it has!

I have only BV compatible awesomehacks, antiredundancy isnt updated yet.

Then I'll definitely wait.....I spend enough time in SimPE as it is!

Antiredundancy is in the BV directory, so it's compatible.  May not have been updated to cover the new NPCs, but it's compatible at least..

The antiredundancy hack from the BV directory was in game used and i got the 40 Tour Guides. As i sayd its not updated for now. I posted it as a warning only.

when you open a neighborhood for the first time, after installing Bon Voyage, you get a shitload of fucking sims dumped into your hoods before you even attach any of the 3 vacation subhoods.

let me re-phrase that, before you officially attach those 3 subhoods because from looking in the folder of a brand new (empty) neighborhood theres N007_Suburb001.package
N007_Suburb002.package
N007_Suburb003.package

and this hood has NO Subhoods attached yet! none, not even a Downtown...  but it now has 81 maxis/ea fucking sims in it...

in 1 other hood I loaded, the same new Suburb001-3 files show up, characters folder has the same shitload of sims added and that hood hasn't had the vacation subhoods attached yet either...


now, in the maxis/ea G001 folder (not sure if I loaded that one) it shows the Suburb001 & 2 files (so I must have loaded it) but it dosen't have the Suburb003 file and it hasn't had sims dumped into the characters folder yet. I must not have stayed in that hood long enough for it to start dumping those sims in. It has no attached subhoods at all.

the new family is typical of maxis/ea but the others shouldn't get spawned if you don't have any vacation subhoods attached, atleast they shouldn't IMO but no... maxis/ea just has to dump them on us right away.

what if someone has no intention of attaching any vacation subhoods...stupid maxis/ea  >:( 

I rarely get pissed off at maxis/ea when it comes to how they do stuff in TS2 but them shoving 74plus sims into all my hoods for no reason has me pissed off. 

Sorry deleted the reply because i was wrong. You get 13 characters in a total empty hood made from argons empty template. They are  3 Bell Hops and some Vacation Travellers plus the new Family. Plus the NPCs like Ideal Plantsim, Hula Zombie etc. makes a total of 66 Characters with all EPs and Stuffpacks installed.

Edit: forgot to count N00X_User00000

It's terribly odd.  I have base, uni, and BV loaded.  Don't know what happened before I attached the vacation hoods, but I definitely have a suburb001.package attached (not an 002 or 003 incidentally).  I'm not sure what this is, since the only sub-hoods for my game should be universities and vacation spots, which seem to have their own files.  Someone was mentioning a new sub-hood that EA was attaching, but I'm not sure if I remember that issue correctly.  Love to know what this is.

Anyhow, I reloaded the main hood and uni hood empty templates immediately after loading BV, which may have avoided the creation of some default maxoid townies in my hoods.  I also have the no regen hacks in so no more will spawn, I hope.  There are still, of course, EAxis townies generated in the vacation hoods.

I noticed the same thing too with the Tour Guide, I had way too many of these characters in my files... argh they are spawining everywhere.  LOL

We have the Pets the Weather and now Vacation as third Suburb.
So without Pets and Seasons you have only one Suburb.

I think my copy is staying in the drawer!  No way am I going to b***** -up all my hard work getting my present game how I want it!

ahhh...thank you, that explains those Suburb files *totally forgot about pets and weather adding them*


I'm still annoyed at maxis/ea for dumping all those sims in my hood before I even attach any of the vacation subhoods though. 

I've never liked the way EAxis codes for townies - I much preferred how in Sims 1 you met townies Downtown, you met vacationers on vacation, etc., they didn't spill over into the residential zone unless invited, and they didn't follow your sims home from school, work etc., or pester them on the phone.  They added interest to the downtown lots and didn't try to take over!  Sims 2 and its programmers suffer from townie diarrhoea, and they just want to pass it on to everyone who plays the game!

Personally, I think they should have built certain options into how you play your game, so you could choose which of the unnecessary NPCs you have (cheerleaders, mascots, vampires etc.) and you could also select the number of townies/dormies etc. you want the game to generate (starting at zero).  But I suppose that would be too much to ask, so we have to rely on people like JM to give us some choice as to how we play our game.

Vacation townies already ARE confined to their starting hoods as normal encounters, IIRC. However, there seems to be some crap embedded in the "vacation" core template before any destinations are added. To avoid this, restore your neighborhood from backup and install only the newly added suburb.package after the game creates it.

After seeing this thread i checked and as it turns out i got like 20 or 30 tour guides too so it obviously spawns them everytime instead of using an existing one.  By the way would my game explode if i moved some of these tour guides in?  Believe it or not some don't look like they got run over by a car.

You won't be allowed to.  He's an NPC whose sole purpose is to be a tour guide.  Has but two interactions: to sell tours or tell you about "cool" things to do.

I realize that but there are hacks to move npcs in by force.  Although now that i think about it he'd probably be stuck with only those 2 interactions wouldn't he?

Yeah, that would definitely mess up your game. There are some sims that are unsafe to move in under any circumstance. They include Santa, Mrs. Crumplebottom, carpool/bus/taxi/etc drivers, Grimmy, the psychiatrist, ideal plantsim, Pollination Technician, repo man, hula zombies, social workers, social bunnies, father time, or any sim from the default family (if you use insim or another hack with a teleport function they will be listed under "default".) A good rule of thumb would be to never move in a sim that your sim cannot normally interact with romantically. So for BV, I wouldn't try to move in the wise old man, the witch doctor, ninjas, tour guides, bellhops, local chefs, unsavory charlatans, and any other non-romantic character I forgot to mention. Obviously bigfoot is an exception because he is meant to be moved in.

Okay to move in (although with some you may get strange behaviors, like the mascots might show up on community lots wearing their mascot outfit instead of their everyday outfit): Maids, gardener, mail delivery person, pizza/chinese food delivery person, mascots, professors, nanny (but god, why?), cashiers, waitstaff, hosts, and probably some that I forgot to mention.

MATYites, please add to this list if you notice that I forgot something.

Thanks Invisigoth i'll have to remember that about the default bin.  I figured it probably wouldn't work or be a sane idea but i just had to know for sure.  Thought it might be an exception since the game obviously spawns new ones if their needed (which their not).

Hooray, the old Uni barista spam problem is back with a new twist!  ::)

I notice everytime I went to a new community lot at some point my game lag and I was not sure which sims were created again and again.  A quick check in my character folder did confirm the game created a new sim and another and another, I do not have the working version of Sim-Pe so I could not check which type.

I will avoid the vacation lot until something is posted to fix this.  

Same here, i'm sure an emergency fix will be posted soon enough.  I plan to take a sim couple on a honeymoon as soon as i got a fix, should be fun and interesting especially since i'm restarting the surrounded by idiots challenge.

Tour guides are spawning endlessly even AFTER the neighborhood templates are added? The game will normally introduce 3 of every sim as part of the templates for each of the 3 vacation spots. Are you STILL getting MORE tour guides, like the Endless Barista Bug?

Yes exactly like that i have about 20 or so of them.  I'm not sure if any of the other npcs do it.  I've got 3 ninjas and i'm sure i've found the ninja 3 times that's probably a coincidence though.  The only other with alot was the picketpocket guy which i've never seen at all despite there being 5 or 6 of them in my hood.  Oh yeah and if it matters i got 1 of each location, Island, Mountain and Asian.

Tour Guides and Unsavory Charlatan spawn like the Baristas every time you enter a Vacation Lot.
Tour Guide every time, Unsavory Charlatan when the game decides to send one to this lot.
Not sure for Ninjas had only 3.

Edit: Tour Guides and Unsavory Charlatan are not pre spawned with the template Hoods.
I know this for sure because the dont use Maxis fugly Faces. They appeare with Nailati Template Faces what only fresh created Sims use.

I just had a look in my character file. Vanilla game, two families in hood, no sub-hoods except all three vacation ones - 417 characters. I've probably been to 30+ lots in the vacation scenarios, many repeatedly of course.

Issue confirmed: Yes, Tour Guides *DO* spawn endlessly, everytime you see one, it will be new and never, ever, reused. A hack for fixing this is in the works and will be out later today, sooner if someone actually shows up to help test it. In the meantime, refrain from going on vacations! The pickpocket, however, should not have repeated instances. Confirm that your pickpockets are not preexisting? A report of 9 pickpockets is consistent with the expected number caused by 3-per-subhood-added. This is too many, but is not a sign of endless spawning: Just Deleted 2 them.

Deleted 2 is the recommended option for these Tour Guides/ Charlatans, yes? I've only seen two charlatans, but I've been on two vacations in my new 'hood and have been on every lot...so that's a fair few tour guides. If they were marriable I wouldn't mind the extra characters.

You know, considering this is a Critical-Orange fix, there are a distinct LACK OF VOLUNTEERS to test this.

I pm'd you Pes.

I'm at work, so I can't test it until I get home (about six and a half hours from now) but if you give it to me I'll do it then. I have a 'hood I don't mind bombing in case it blows up.

I prefer not to try to walk people through this process over crappy PMs, so chatgoers only. You'd just end up asking me moronic questions anyway.

If you still need help by the time I get home, I am willing to help.

Will check in chat when I am ready, I am at work right now.

Do we grab the anitredundancy file that is in the BV\test directory?  Or is there a special file you have to fix this?

Pescado wants more people to abuse in chat, and as such the only way to test this is to go to #grah (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9191.0.html).  Be careful, it's easy to get consumed by the craziness.   

I'm not too sure if this is happening to my game - when I put the new hood in there was 140 characters, I've got 272 now after adding the sub hoods and I have one sim who's been jumping between community lots looking for the ninja.  My simpe isn't updated to really have a look...

But anyhow, I'll be willing to test it as well...

ETA - Just checked, my hood has 18 tour guides ???

I cannot chat with non-work people at work, and I don't want that on my home computer. As I have no nose-thumbing pics ready, you'll have to settle for this. You'll like it better anyways.
(http://lolcat.com/pics/sleepingkitty.jpg) (http://"http://lolcat.com")

I presume that kitten is terminally ill due to Inteenimator abuse?

Zazazu never mentioned the kitten-killer!  It looks healthy enough to me, and very comfy in its bed!

Neh, just cute. I wish I had some cute ones of my two...the cutest pic I took is burned to some CD that I can't locate...it was Soren laying in bed on his back, holding Mikko like a teddy bear (Mikko was maybe two months old at the time).

Zazazu, you're obviously a kitten-lover!  I thought so....

Animal-lover. I have two cats, but grew up with dogs. I'm actually slightly more of a dog person...but I think the longer I've had cats the smaller that margin of preference has gotten. I love all animals, barring snakes (the slithering creeps me out), and some bugs (all spiders must die, anything that wants my blood must die). I have a shakey truce with Canadian geese. They're so beautiful, but have the worst attitude problems. When I used to live in an apartment back in Indiana, we had a flock or three that took over the complex. One chased Soren when I was walking him, and I had a stand-off with another who decided I wasn't allowed to enter my building.

I was pecked on the bum once by a goose, I was trying to have a pee in the shrubbery at a party. Gave me a hell of a shock.  :D

When I was growing up in London, there was a factory at the end of our road that used a flock of geese as watch-geese.

Oh yeah? Me, too. No peeing in shrubberies, I actually was minding my own damn business.

(http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/4475/millagoosedpo9.jpg)

It hurt like a mofo. That's flesh you see being bitten, there. (Not even my dad's sweater was big enough to protect me, though it pretty much could have fit three of me in there at the time.)

I have a little more meat on my birdy little bones now than I did then, so I'm sure s/he would be able to get an even bigger nip these days. I can't imagine it would hurt less.

Also, if my friend wasn't busy being stereotypically Japanese and taking pictures of everything that moved, she'd never have gotten this shot. Hoorah for Atsuko. LOL She was pretty awesome.

I wonder, can goose-owners be sued?

Heh, I got bit on the bum by a goose once, too. Perhaps they have a taste for INTJs. ;)

These were free-range geese. When you live in a town surrounded on three sides by water, and with lots of ponds and wildlife preserves, you get geese.

In fact, they are fond of office parks in Atlanta.

If you know the name of God's lawyer, let me know, because he's the one who owned that particular goose. :)

That's kind of what happened with my old place. The complex had two large man-made lakes, which the Canadian geese promptly overpopulated and turned into two huge piles of excrement. Literally. Nothing small (dogs, cats, kids) was safe from them, because those suckers are tough and quite imposing when they stick out their chest and start beating their wings and hissing. Soren was a good ten feet away from them and minding his own business when one decided he must die. Fourteen-pound cats are quite strong when running for their lives...he dragged me by his leash. The one that blocked me from my building was in full aggressive pose (the beating and hissing). Standing with my arms akimbo (slightly wing-like, I suppose) and hissing back made him back down, but I wouldn't recommend trying it for laughs.

The only animal (non-bug) that has ever bitten me out of aggression was a small terrier dog. It was later put down because it attacked everyone...mail carriers, neighbors, family members alike, and it ate one of my neighbor's pet ducklings.

Luckily, the most aggressive animals I run into anymore are people's dogs (and all of them on my block seem to be really nice) one of my neighbor's cats that he lets run around, a boatload of squirrels, and occasionally a raccoon. Big whoop.

I think a lot of it must be because it's the mating season!  We get Canada Geese here, but during the winter, mostly, I think, and they don't cause much of a problem, except the excrement one!

As for terrier dogs - what can you expect, when most of them were bred to be killers!  However, bite their ears the first time they nip you as a puppy, and they'll never bite you again - that's not to say they won't bite someone else, though.....

That is all very interesting, really. Kittens, geese & puppies... really, amazingly interesting stuff. :P

But what about the redundancy problem? Has it been fixed yet? Have there been any volunteers to test the fix yet? I was not planning to install the EP right away, but I will if there still aren't any (or enough) volunteers for a critical fix.

What I am understanding from this thread is that in order to avoid the worst of the redundancy problem, we will need to move our neighborhoods out of the way when we install this game, then take the default hoods out and put our old ones back in after installation is complete. Will that help at all? or are we still looking at having endless new characters whether we want them or not?

Pes posted the fix here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9607.0.html). It seems to be working for me...no character file explosions last time I took someone on vacation. No errors are being thrown, either.

It will help if you don't want the total Maxis-townie spam. The game will spawn new vacation townies on its own though. In my game I got 9 or 10 new local townies per vacation hood, and 48 tourist townies additionally. Once notownieregen is updated to work on those new types of townies that shouldn't be the case anymore, though. ;)

I have seen no tourist townies, just the vacation locals that are added with the individual vacation hoods. Not sure if they actually RESPAWN, but they're sort of necessary for your vacation to fully function, or no one will teach you the vacation crap!

At first, my game spawned the 48 new tourist townies when I was entering a community vacation lot for the first time. When I played another empty vacation hood later they were spawned when the hotel was loaded for the first time. It probably differs WHEN those tourists are spawned, but the game will do so eventually.

Sure, they're necessary, but 9 or 10 of them? In my opinion 3 or 5 should have been enough ... ;D

But did no one tell you - the EAxoids all suffer from NPC/Townie diarrhoea!

Did this happen with no-townie-respawn installed? I haven't spotted any new tourist townies, and this is after a complete Vtardrancher and Stupidlilley's Excellent Adventure.

As soon as you move your playable sims into a hotel the game should spawn new tourist townies who will fill the other empty rooms, just like dormies are generated to fill the vacant dorm rooms.

Yes, I have all anti-redundancy-hacks like notownieregen, nostrayrespawn and antiredundancy. I look for updates every day, so I'm sure I was using the newest versions. The same thing happened to IAmTheRad here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg263650.html#msg263650

I agree with him, I think tourist townies are coded differently than normal townies, that's why notownieregen doesn't affect them.

By the way - when I use christianlov's clothing rack to change the appearance of my neighbors vacation locals and tourists appear under "Sims" where playable sims are usually found. The clothing rack has other options like "NPCs", "downtownies" and "townies", but they don't appear there - this is why I think that vacation sims belong to an entirely new "species"! :D

EDIT: I just noticed that I'm not using "nodormieregen" because I never play in university. So I'm not using ALL of the anti-redundancy hacks, but most of them.  ;)

The first time I played BV in a vanilla test scenario (Pleasantview base with Traveller family) the game spawned all sorts of BV tourist townies to fill the hotel.  Now I'm back playing from my main hood with the hacks installed (I have both nodormiespawn and notownieregen installed with antiredundancy) and the game only spawns what it needs, it would appear.  My sim family is staying at the Twikkii Beach Hotel and some rooms are not filled (don't care really), so the hacks seem to be working to limit fugly tourists in my game.

I noticed that -- I sent a family to the mountains after re-activating notownieregen and adding in the new antiredundancy, and only a couple of tourists showed up.  And none of them ever claimed another room in the hotel.  My family (mother and 2 teens) were the only ones with claimed rooms.

When I was Deleted 2'ing my tour guides and charlatans, I noticed that they and a bunch of names I remembered as vacation families were all under the "..." category. No one else was under it.

Its because the Game removes the Townie and Work NPC Pool Family Names  when it creates the "Exotic Destinations" (or something similar). Every Townie,Tourist Townie,Bellhop, Cook, Barista.....etc has no longer the overall Familyname in SIMPE.

I am declaring this issue satisfactorily resolved now and closing this ticket.