More Awesome Than You!

Includes fix for Endless Tour Guide Spam in BV.

BV: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/orange.gif) Seasons-: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/blue.gif)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) antiredundancy.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/bv/hacks/antiredundancy.zip)

Anti-Redundancy for TS2NL - TS2BV
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado & Doctor Boris)

Special Thanks To:
Hobbsee the Scrawny Pencil Neck
Fat, Hairy-Bellied Ness

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

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

FEATURES:
Eliminates spawning of unnecessary redundant NPCs. Should only spawn one per
type, more only if needed because the first is unavailable. All spawned NPCs
should be equally accessible instead of just the first 3.

BUGS FIXED:
Shady Charlatan and Tour Guides should no longer spawn apparently without end.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS hacks. Tested for TS2OFB - TS2BV.
Possibly working for all versions.

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

WARNING:
Do not open, crush, dispose of in fire, put in backwards, short-circuit, or mix
with non-awesome hacks - may explode, leak, or catch fire, resulting in injury
and/or death.

And there was much rejoicing.
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a321/cwieberdink/c19-rejoicing.jpg)

Yay.

Thanks will this remove the 40 tour guides i already have as well  or can i just delete them from my characters folder plz

It won't remove existing ones, but it will prevent the game from creating new ones.  As for 'just deleting them', I don't think that's safe -- follow the 'Deleted 2' instructions you'll find elsewhere on this lot.

(Unless, of course, it's a test hood and you don't care if it eventually goes up in a BFBVFS... :) )

Just a question because someone else mentioned it.

Seeing as you can't interact socially with the Tour guides, if you nuked all gossip memories using the debugger and deleted the character files of the unecessary tour guides, , would that be a safe option or not?

ETA: NM, testing results in BFBVFS apparently.

Follow the "Deleted 2" procedure. It is, in fact, pretty quick and easy to do, and you can mass-delete them by the dozens in a fairly short period of time: Because you probably haven't generated many sims, all the tour guides will be a single contiguous block or two of character files. You will know that they are the tour guides because they're the ones which are now suddenly < 30k in size. So nuke all their SDSCs, then mass-delete all their character files. Just look for the huge chunk of files which are suddenly gonna get small when you Prep For Delete on them. There may also be a Theoplugin which can complement Deleted 2 that will automatically remove the offending character file for you, without you having to manually identify it. Is Theo still alive?

First time poster but long time lurker.Thank the lord there is a god and it's name is J.M. I love your work and I have been waiting for this so I can reinstal BV.Will this take affect amedietly or will I have too do the Delete 2 thingy?I'm going too reinstall BV with a custom hood I don't care about EA townies I just don't want random Tourguides and Pickpockets.
Thanks again so much for this. :)

I took a look at Deleted 2.

A) I am severely simpe challenged, so it all looks like gobbledygook to me.

B) If I do decide to have a go at this, I presume I can use the seasons version of simpe, seeing as the BV version is as yet unreleased.

C) I may well be SOL in all instances. I can live with it, 'tis only a game after all.

I bow at your feet, oh mighty Pescado! I was ready to throw BV into the garbage bin but now I can actually play it. Thank you  :-*

The version linked to from here seems to be a year older than the one I downloaded from the test area last night.  I'm guessing this version isn't updated for the Bon Voyage issue yet?

I believe there is a QA version of SimPE available for BV.  

I know Pescado was asking for testers - I'm guessing it's been tested already and I'm late to the party again but I'll try this out tonight.  Miraculously, BV is working fine in my game.  Who'd a thunk?

Flush browser cache, or make sure you're not looking at the RTFM timestamp?

Is it safe to follow this method http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4306.200 posted by Invisigoth? I only do the first part, as I will just do a little surgery on the locals as there arn't many. It did work for me, but i don't know enough to know it it's really ok to do.

It was browser cache, thanks!

Yay!

Is that guy who blathers on about the weather a tour guide? I so wished I had the option to SMITE.

Added additional fix to kill the Charlatan spawning. Honestly, I have no idea why EAxis wrote the code in the utterly bugfuck baffling way they did, which was both unnecessarily bloated and convoluted, not to mention broken.

Thankyou Jm installed and tried this , lot hopping round the beach vacation lots and checked after

Still only the 40 tour guides i had before i installed so its stopped them spawning thank goodness

Not sure if its related got an error. Log attached.

Does this ban Uni profs as well? 'cause 'No meeting those buggers' hack doesn't prevent the game from generating another truckload of them whenever new add-on is installed or after deletion spree.

Fixed.

The game demands a minimum count of apparently 2 professors per major, so if you delete them, they regenerate up to this number, but no more.

@adammc: That error message has nothing to do with your tour guides - it is caused by the new expansion pack you installed. SimPE can't handle it, so it will throw some weird exceptions. Quaxi and his team are already working on the new version, so better don't touch your neighborhoods with the outdated SimPE until the new one is released! ;)

Thankyouthankyouthankyou!  I've put off playing BV after the first few days when I realized the tour guides were screwing up the entire game.  Doesn anyone know if this affects the ninjas, too?  I know I have at least 2 ninjas...

The fix is definetly working,but I have 7 charlatans and 3 tour guides and 3 ninjas.When i went too my Comm lots in the hood the game generated 4 charlatans there and 3 in Takemizu Village.So even visiting lots in th base hood seems too spawn those suckers.I have 309 character files so far and 1 familly in the hood and only visited Takemizu Village I haven't played the other 2 yet so I suppose the count will go up again,but atleast this fix is stopping the retarded spawning overload.

Did you just get back from a vacation and did you chose to be refreshed?  My sims had the same thing happen after they returned from their vacation.  It went away when the refreshed state faded.

I'm getting an error involving the pickpocket after installing this.  I played a couple vacations without this a few times and have no idea how many guides/pickpockets I have but I have seen them on lots before so I know I have at least one.  Now I get an error from the scheduler whenever I'm on a community or vacation lot.  I've attached the log file below.

You are oldversioned. Reupdate, and next time, don't bother posting until you've tried reupdating first.

Hah, delete me will you - well I probably deserved it, but I was only being annoying to try to help.

I'm still getting the creation error (at least on vacation community lots, not sure about 'normal' community lots) and I definately have the latest version available this time.

Your error is in a BHAV that is not part of the stack affected by this hack, nor does it even match the actual Maxis BHAV. It is therefore the Work of the Non-Awesome. As warned in the RTFM, do not mix with the work of the non-Awesome, or it may explode, leak, or catch fire.

hello;

I don'find the delete 2 instructions Can you please link me in the exact post ?

thanck you very much !

If you haven't gone on vacation EVER in the neighborhood, the first time you go on vacation, the game must generate the minimum required NPCs still. This will result in a brief lag while all the locals and NPCs you absolutely need are created, such as to staff your hotel. However, no more than absolutely necessary will be created and the lag will pass.

Delete the neighbourhood you've played deletes EVERYTHING that was in it. This game is smarter than TS2. The old files will be gone.

I recommend you get this. Seriously.

OK, slight problem. My Sim checked into the Twikki Island Beach Hotel and there was no tour guide on the lot. I exited the game and removed the antiredundency hack, and my tour guide was back. A different tour guide (the first was female this one was male).

This Sim was the second Sim to check into the hotel. Don't know if that has anything to do with it. Maybe the game demands a different tour guide each time? I checked for errors in the log that might help. There is nothing there. The Sim finished his vacation and checked out. Another Sim checked in and still no guide. The tour guide only showed up after I removed the fix.

Anyway, I love this fix. 4 vacations and no extra characters. Just thought I'd let you know about this. Meanwhile, the fix stays.

I had a problem with the tour guide not showing up, and I didn't have this hack installed.  I doubt the hack is the cause of the problem.

Hook

The Tour Guide is not guaranteed to show up all the time, every time. He will usually appear sooner or later, but is not guaranteed to always be there.

Thank you for clearing that up. One more question. Is it normal to have just one tour guide?

Here's hoping she shows up sooner or later.

The point of this is that the game was making a new tour guide every time it needed one, instead of reusing the existing one.  So yea, with this in there should only be a minimum number of tour guides around.

I've noticed that the tour guide has weird hours.  He (so far always male in my game) shows up about an hour after the sims check into the hotel, and then leaves anytime between 6 - 8pm.  On other days I've never quite caught when he arrives, but it does seem to be at different times. And I have been on community vacation lots where he didn't show up at all.

After the first visit to a hotel, all my hotel tour guides are AWOL. I haven't seen a tour guide at any hotel in any neighborhood (day or night) for over a week of game play. This was happening *before* I installed the new antiredundancy and is still continuing after reinstallation of the updated fix. I doubt it has anything to do with the hack.  I played PV before the hack and have the usual charector spam but have since played other neighborhoods and have had no additional spawning of tour guides and unsavory charectors. It's the only 'bug' I have in my game (well...other than I've never seen anyone doing Tai Chi..ever).

I have never seen anyone doing Tai Chi on a community lot either.  Both times I have vacationed to the Far East, I've had to enter debug mode to make one of the locals selectable, and direct them to do Tai Chi which my Sim could then join.

HIGHLY annoying.   :P

I have your hack also and it's keeping the Tour Guide down to 1 but the Unsavory Charlatans still keep spawning.  I have 3 with a thumbnail and 3 with  Mr. Potato Head in SimPE.  The Mr. Potato Heads all have the same SimID and Family Instance--the one with an image have different SimIDs.  I have 6 Unsavory Charlatans total now.  I started out with 3.

Make sure you have the latest version -- it's been updated in the last day or so because of just that problem.

Or as Pescado would say, "you're oldversioned" and then insult you. :)

I do, I have SimPe_063f, I grabbed it first thing this morning.   ;)  And if he puts another one up, I'll get that right away also.   ;D

Thanks so much for this :)

The only weirdness I've noticed is:
1) Had problems going on vacation because the nanny wouldn't show up - I'd get a pop-up that there was a technical problem with my tour and my air fare was being refunded..  I had her tracking the schedule of a sim - once I cancelled schedule tracking, she showed up and the shuttle arrived as it should.
2) I'm now in the far east - forget which hotel - and no maid service has spawned.

I don't know if either issue has to do with anti-redundancy, but since they're both NPC issues I figured I'd mention it.

Thanks again :-)

Hack is working wonderfully, I'm showing only one tour guide in my character section but 3 of the pickpockets and 3 ninjas. I'm assuming this is normal since I've been on two vacations with no problems or mass spawns clogging up my hood.

I wouldn't be surprised if the nanny thing is a BV bug. :)  The maids at hotels are wonky, though, and pretty useless.  If your sim is out and about for the day (which is kinda the point), the maid never actually does anything to their room.  I've seen the maids just hanging around the lobby of the hotel, and not much beyond that.  I guess the only saving grace is that the hotels reset when your sims leave, so they're clean for the next visitors.

I may need to pay more attention, but as far as I can tell the hotels do not regenerate in my game, and I find it really annoying. I seem to remember going back to the same hotel with a different family and finding the bed unmade and some disgusting plates on the patio. And it was on the first days, so without hacks. I will pay more attention and see if they regenrate or not...

Hmm, I may be wrong on that, but I thought they acted like all comm lots. Though they may act more like dorms, which as I recall don't completely reset when they're empty. If that's the case, then EAxis needs to fix that, or hotels will eventually become unusable.

Ok, I have a question. How do you get rid of all the extra Tour Guides and Charlatans without screwing up the game? Can I just delete their character files? And if I delete them all, will they respawn (not tons, like the 37 guides I have and the 11 charlatans) but like 1 per vacation area?

Follow the 'Deleted 2' directions you'll find in the War Room forum here.

Ayep.  I've got to do some character cleanup.  Gak.  As for the issue with housekeeping - yeah, they're worthless.  They seem to show up around 10ish and leave around dusk - prime vacationing hours.   I think somebody *cough* *EA* *cough* didn't think that through too well. 

USER, YOUR POST WAS MOVED (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9680.0.html), NOT DELETED. THE PUBLIC MUST BE INFORMED. END OF LINE.

I'm having a lot of trouble with nannies since BV. The old issue that occured with the schedule not updating after a promotion is back, and cancelling and rescheduling doesn't seem to work for me.

3 pickpockets and 3 ninjas are made when the stealth neighbourhood is added. It might be different if you got a replacement for it to make it clean, but the game WILL start with 3 of both normally. Like the other NPCs without clean templates.

Now there's a nice new hack waiting to happen. Make the maid work at any time, when there is something to be cleaned. 24/7

I make my sims macro-clean before I let them check out. But to my delighted surprise, I actually saw a hotel maid clean up a dirty plate yesterday.

I am hoping that hotels do not reset, as I added some bookshelves and other fun items for rainy days. Also, buffet tables! I use the Pet Stories one. It means that all passers-by can help themselves but once each sim has the "room service" memory it's the way to go.

The tour guide seems to arrive some time after the sims do, so if they check in at a hotel latish in the evening, they can go on a night tour.

I have been playing for a week and no charlatans have been seen thus far.

I'm with you there.  I have yet to see a hotel maid do anything useful.  One of my sims autonomously cleaned up dishes and then the bathtub before I figured out where he had disappeared to.  Still, since he never cleans anything at home, perhaps this is his idea of a holiday.

Thread temporarily locked while I fix an issue with new users avoiding the subscription fee.

EDIT: Nevermind, that didn't work.

Its because they are being linked either directly to this thread or the index. I don't suppose we could just keep people from joining for a little while?

Yeah, and we're getting a lot of the "I don't want to take out any of my pre-BV hacks cuz i lik th3m, like, soooo much, but BV isn't wrkng - plz help!1!1!1" messages with lots of horrid emoties (oh, the pain!).  Might be part of the same problem.

Did I mention the emoties?  Oh, right.

Guess I don't need to post another "Who the heck are you and why haven't you cleared yourself through me?" survey. I saw the two main (and four + idgit blathering freak-out) threads at the BBS. Stupid Eaxis of Evil.

Yes, I know this. I tried to split the entire thread except for my post into a new thread (which would give it a new thread id, and so "fix" the direct thread links), then keep this thread as a locked "here's a link to the download. Do not register. Do not post. Go away." post. Unfortunately, it failed, because you can't split the OP of a thread into a new thread.

Damn, I don't suppose that the addy could somehow be changed on this one, and a new one be made that they will have this addy. If thats impossible, just ignore that, I have no idea how websites work. Any way to make some kind or redirect for them? One that will send them to a post that has the file and no link to how to register, but a sign in for people who already have an account? Eh, just throwing out ideas, you can blame my pounding head and fever if they are too idiotic.

When SimEnhancer was updated and I had the chance to look at the new sims, I had about 40 (!!!) tour guides and unsavory charlatans. I thought this was a bit over the top.
Just looked at them again and noticed that there were about 8 new tour guides and one unsavory charlatan. It almost looks like every time a sim visits a hotel or community lot, a new tour guide is created. So how many tour guides would you get if you play for a year or so?

I risked my game exploding and deleted the new ones and a few others.

Anyway, it's time to install this hack, because it is in fact critical for the new expansion.

Depends on how quickly you get sick of sending Sims on vacation.  I've got less than 45 hours playing BV and I'm already tired of it.  Worse, I haven't even been on a mountain vacation yet! :D

I have 28 tour guides, 8 charlatans, 5 ninjas, lord knows how many other extra files.  But only around 900 character files total, and this is my most-played neighborhood, and includes moving a couple of occupied lots from other hoods so I have extra default townies.

Hook

Can you not just make an entirely new thread, move all these replies into that thread, and then edit the original post of this thread?

I have a question? In Takemizu Village, before the antireduncy hack, I would get a ninja and charlatan on every community lot, but after the hack, I haven't seen either of them.  I don't mind about the charlatan, but I wanted the ninja. Also, went to visit the wise old man in the hidden lot, and he didn't tell the sim about the dragon tale.  The family spent one whole day there and got nothing.  When I made the wise old man selectable, he didn't have the tale available in his queue.  Made me wonder if they are able to do these actions one time and another NPC has to be spawned to get the "gifts" again?

Post Fix, I am still getting the Ninja. Haven't seen the charlatan lately, but when I first played (pre-hack) I didn't see him for a long time. He seems to go AWOL once in a while and then shows up all the time. Make sure you know the proper way to greet and interact (serve tea, chat, make friends etc) with the old man. No greetie...no dragon tale. No problems getting the scroll post-fix here. But, I only have the awesome (and a few 'almost' awesome) things in my hacks folder.

Thanks for the reply.  The whole family bowwed to the old man and  stayed long enough to make friends with him, each one. The wise old man, drank tea, fished, tai chi, played kicky bag, but no dragon tale. A whole day of vacation was wasted there.  My other family that visited before I downloaded the hack, stayed for  a sim hour and entertained the old man, he gave up the tale in no time flat.  ;D

Mere coincidence - my sim went to the Wise Old Man(TM) without even knowing how to bow and a very basic understanding of tai chi. Also, the conversation after having tea didn't go too well. Still, after joining the WOM doing tai chi for a while and having learned to bow from him, she was told the legend, though they weren't even close to being friends. Post Fix, of course.

Using the bow appears to trigger something in the old man that makes it much easier to get the dragon legend.

After serving tea, I just used macro>socialise>friendly on the old git. Once daily reached 35 he told my sim the tale. Huzzah!

 :D  I know, the bow is how you greet him. The whole family did it, and talked, drank tea, fished, played kicky bag,  all 3 of the family members were friends with him by the end of the night. They spent a whole day with him, no dragon tale.???  Just about to test another family and see if this continues.

I sent a Sim to the Wise Old Man, knowing that I'd have to bow and serve tea.  He was just sitting there, and when I queued my Sim to bow, nothing happened and bowing eventually dropped out of the queue.  I had her serve tea, and the WOM joined.  Then she performed tai chi (I think I invited the WOM to join) and after a very short time the WOM said my Sim was gracious enough to learn and told the story.

My Sim had done tai chi enough to be fairly good at it, and I'm wondering if this made a difference.  I like sloppyhousewife's story about learning to bow from the WOM.

The only problem I've had, even without the hack, is that I only sent one Sim of the two on vacation at the time to see the WOM, and he was no longer there when I sent my other Sim.

Hook

I think you can only get the tale once per vacation? I sent a sim back twice during the same vacation and the WOM was not there. Maybe it's just normal game play?  It's funny he didn't react to the bow. You did use the Greet interaction, which is a bow?

Back on topic- I had a terrible problem with disappearing tour guides at the hotels (no guides on any hotel lots no matter how long the sims stayed). Since installing the mod they are starting to reappear. I also have been using the lot debugger to nuke>sim schedulers on hotel lots. I have no idea which mod/fix is correcting the problem. Mind you, this has been occurring in my new vacation hoods with downloaded hotels. I need to revisit PV and check the original hotels I played before installing the mod. Hopefully the problem is resolving itself.

Serving tea is how you greet the wise old man - you humble yourself to the role of his servant by serving him tea. I think the bow just gives a relationship boost. But I've never gotten the legend - I thought he was there to teach me tai chi, and havn't been back to the far east location since I found out there was more to it

Okay, I just got Nervous Subject back from Takemizu Village. While there, he greeted the WOM with a bow, at which point the old fart teleported away to some other point on the lot. Nervous served some tea but the WOM didn't join him; rather, he went over to the pond and started fishing. So after a couple drags of tea, Nervous joined the WOM fishing and they comingled their souls over the trout for a while, at which point the WOM told Nervous he was worthy or some crap and indicated he was going to tell him the Legend. But approaching Nervous, he started stamping his foot like there was something blocking him, then he went back to fishing. Nervous started to stink and I sent him back to his hotel for ablutions and a hot meal, then I had him return to the secret pagoda and the WOM was levitating by the tea set just like the first time Nervous visited the lot. In fairly short order, Nervous got the tale told. No tai chi involved and still no tea serving involving the old man. But he did bow.

Since we're so far off topic anyway, what the hell is the point of the stupid legend? I've had Nervous tell the damn story to five or six other Sims, and the only result I can see is that they got a few more points up the friendly scale. Whoop-dee-doo. Am I missing something?

P.S. The hack's working great for me, too. Just to steer it back to the topic at hand.  ;D

The legend is pretty, but it seems to me to be the most pointless thing in BV. My sims now keep rolling wants to tell it to other sims.

If the want is starting to become clog, take their scroll away and put it someplace in the house as decoration, and they will stop.

Actually, it was sim me's only chance to learn it - the locals just hated her ;D. Which I found hilarious, because the first thing she learned at Takamizu Village was to teleport and thus used this very convenient way of transportation all the time. It was like "Look at that stupid German bitch - thinks she's so cool using powers she doesn't even understand." :D

Back to topic: I haven't seen any locals at the hotel lots (both Takamizu and Twikki) since installing Anti-Redundancy. Not that I'm complaining, I'm just wondering if this is related?

I don't recall seeing locals at the hotels even before this was updated -- only other vacation/tourist families and the staff.  I always thought the locals only appeared on comm lots.

If by locals we are talking about blonde haired sims in grass skirts, etc, my sims have met those guys in hotels and my sims learned the "chill out" gesture from one of them in the hotel lobby.  I'm sure antiredundancy was loaded at the time.  Mind you, I didn't have it loaded until after a fair number of the blighters had been spawned already so that might be why they show up.  I haven't bothered to delete them.

Locals are not NPCs and don't have a known endless spawning bug. You get a passel just for adding the relevant vacation hoods, and they remain (and are occasionally seen at hotels) until you kill them, whereupon they respawn unless you have the latest no-townie-respawn to replace vacancies. No townie respawn will keep the count to a minimum of one, which you'd need to learn the gestures from.

Fair enough.  In that case, referring back to sloppyhousewife's post:
I'm not sure how antiredundancy would affect the appearance of locals.  I'm pretty sure it does not in my game.

Oh, I just wanted to know if it was related or not. But obviously, it differs from game to game, seeing that you do have locals on your hotel lots, whereas others (see jsalemi's post) don't. *shrugs*

The presence or lack of locals at a hotel is purely a random phenomenon, they appear at random, often with low probability, so you won't always see them.

I didn't think it was possible, but is seems that with BV EAxis made the sadorandom generator even MORE sado...

I got BV this week and installed this hack before playing it.  Now, it is entirely possible I'm an idiot, but I haven't seen a single tour guide.  Where are they supposed to be?  Is it possible that this hack prevented *any* from spawning?  Should I take it out, play the game, and then stick it back in? 

Flaming me is more than welcome.

The tour guide hangs around by the payphone of community lots and at the front of hotels (where the taxi stops).  He is not always there.  Generally if you wait around for a bit, one shows up.  The hack is designed to allow one to spawn, if one does not already exist, but not to spawn them incessantly.  If your sims leave their lodgings (hotel etc.) and go to a vacation comm lot, does one show up then?

Ideally you will have three tour guides (one for each vacation destination).  He/she will hang out in front of the phone on community lots. 

If you have the Clean Installer, use it to check your character files.  You can easily spot the guides, ninjas, and charlatan files.

Tour Guides and Charlatans are not vacation-destination-specific. All reside in the NPC pool and the only thing that distinguishes them is the uniform they wear on different destinations. If the code had originally been working correctly, one would be selected from the pool of availables and then dressed in the local uniform. There is no particular reason why there would need to be *3*, though, other than that 3 is the magic number Maxis likes for "variety", even though there is no point in having a "variety" of Social Workers or Tour Guides or other Sims-Without-Names.

Well weirdest thing in my game with this hack is that no charlatans come to any lots (They don't spawn ever!) which is a bliss but sometimes I want to see someones money get knicked.
I guess I'll have to do it manually

I have been playing BV for two weeks, with the hack of course, and no charlatan has ever showed up. I am quite happy about this, fears of having pockets picked show up very often.

Ditto -- no charlatan's here, either.  I may take this out for one play session just to spawn one so I can see what he/she looks like. ;)

The Charlatan works fine with this hack. See proof:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/bv/images/charlatan.jpg)

This is with a game with all of them initially purged and yet one (and only one) charlatan has generated and thus appeared in the game. It follows that therefore, the charlatan is working fine and his appearance odds are similarly unaffected, but you're just imagining that he is more frequent than he really is due to sampling error.

And no, DON'T take it out, or you'll be snowed in tour guides!

What I mean is that they never show up on lots even though I spawn them manually on the home lots

Sounds like the normal EAxis sadorandom phenomenon again to me.  I've only ever seen one in several vacation outings, so they don't seem to show up with any regularity.

I don't think so, I switched hacks and they show up on the lots but without the bloated spawning

Even before the hack, in four vacations I saw the charlatan once. Sadorandom. Oh, and now I have a female tour guide, which is nice.

Maxoidsam was gathering info about the lags but he also mentionned something that got me wonder in this post: http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=10a566e72566d1d0ab9c4bf935ad07c0&directoryID=189&startRow=1&openItemID=item.189,item.43,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

Quote of the interesting part:
"The "NPC Spawning bug" that creates an additional, unnecessary character file of a tour guide or charlatan or food booth chef IS happening in everyone's game"

Is anti-redudancy already taking care of that?  And is it really happening?  I do not remember reading any complaints about food chef being excessevily spawn but it does not mean it is not happening.

ETA:  I do not have a working with BV SimPe version or I would check the number of those character I have.  Though I must say I did not play the vacation part much lately so it would not necessarely be conclusive.

My shrub teleporter can tell you how many of each NPCs you have.

Thanks Dizzy it is good to know your shrub can do that. :)

The thing is, like I said already, that I did not play the vacation part much so the number of those specific type of character would not help me found out if it is true or not.  I think I went to like 2 or 3 vacation lots and not all had those food booth chef. 

Therefore the reason I asked the awesome Pescado to tell me if that is just lies and propaganda and if not, if the anti-redudancy was already taking care of that.

I have not seen any evidence of special Local Chef spawning, nor endless spam. No doubt MaxoidBullSam is confused. That, or it's a forecast of what they intend to break with the patch, by screwing with something that isn't broke.

Is this fix really safe to use?
I don't doubt your talents, it's just that BV belongs to my sister and I offered to fix it for her. I don't want to screw it up more than it already is.

Could it really cause computer damage?
*referring to side-effects part*

Hyper, the side effects are just humorous and ironic.

That fix is totally safe.  Actually you have more chance of the side effects happening without that fix in your game.  :P

Thank you for you answering my question Pescado, let's hope they will simply fix it not break it.

The mod itself will not fix any damage that has been done, but it will stop any more damage from occuring.

Well so far I haven't seen any spawned Tour Guides, but I'll use the hack anyway. Better to be safe then sorry!

You would not see any new tour guides--they do not pop up on screen.  It's all in the background.  The only way to know would be to count character files, or use the Cleanpack Installer.

Well I shouldn't have too many since we've only played on it 3 times XD

The first post says to store in the download folder in the Sims2 folder but I don't have that folder.

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m160/Ichigo1993/Download.png

*Sorry if I'm being a nuisance, I'm not very good with these kind of things*

That's because the Downloads folder isn't generated automatically. You have to create it yourself (File... New... Folder...) and name it "Downloads" (without quotes, of course, and mind the capital "D").

Thankyou so much for your help!
Plus do I leave it in the zip folder or should I unzip it?

You have to unzip it, and put only the .package file(s) into the Downloads folder (the hacks usually come with a readme file, mostly called "RTFM.txt", you don't need that in the game for the hack to work).

Okie Dokie ^^

Everything is ready now, so I'll test it tomorrow

Yes, we all saw that already, there's another thread where we are discussing it. If you'd read any thread on this forum about MaxoidSam you would realize that he is a big huge liar who knows nothing about the game. The bug IS harmful. He is stupid. EAxis doesn't fully test their products whereas MATY hacks are tested by hundreds of users and we are lucky enough to get nearly instant support. If someone posts an error log it is not unusual for JM to have a fix up in an hour or less. Many MATY users have taken their time and energy to independently test the NPC spawning bug (both in BV and with previous EPs, this isn't the first time that this bug has reared it's ugly head) and they discovered that it is in fact harmful. It is common knowledge at this point that having too many character files can bork your hood in a number of unpleasant ways and dramatically increase load times. Listen to us, not MaxoidLiarSam. We, both individually and as a community, actually hold ourselves accountable for the research/testing that we do on the game and with various hacks (with the exception of the color scheme "experiment") and for the fixes that we post.

You're not on the BBS anymore, honey. Here search is your BFF. Also, lurk MOAR and you won't get poked with sticks. Although your handle is pretty fucking awesome, so that may help sheild you from some of the wrath. I already like you better than all the other n00bs. Also, go find the FAQ in the podium. It will save you from a lot of pain and suffering. I'm not going to link you because I am sick of linking n00bs to the FAQ. I want to see n00bs take some initiative, dammit!

HyperNeko, you need to read the FAQ too. Seriously. Right now.

Problem for me while the hack is ingame
I created a new hood from scratch and found out that while the fix was in the hood would not create any townies except one

On home lots it did not create any and just one teen on downtown lots . Once that one teen was created he was the only one who appeared on ANY downtown community lot  , It created the NPC's as necessary

So my new sim never got any townies walking by his house and every community lot downtown just had that one teen

I tried playing the game for a sim week to see if it was just a mishap on the first day but no success

PS in reply to next poster NO i havent also got the no townie regen hack

Are you sure you didn't also download notownieregen?

No, they don't. Except for the halitosis.

http://dictionary.reference.com/ (http://dictionary.reference.com/)

Go back to the dictionary, and look up the word 'joke'.

Windows has a built-in zip extractor, so you don't need anything special.  The NPCs spawn every time you go to a vacation lot (other than one you own).

Nothing bad will happen if you download this and use it in your game. Everything on this site is specifically designed so that you can download everything and they all work well together. I can't say the same thing about every other site, though.

(i.e. working, as designed)

If you want a lot of townies in a new hood, you need to create them. Do a search on this site or look in Peasantry on the subject.

It could give you halitosis in the same way as it could make your head explode.

Go back to the dictionary after you're done with "joke" and look up "metaphor".

*weeps for the future*
Sorry, but I would have understood what was meant in the RTFM when I was five zero. Use those brain cells, kids!

Although I hate to encourage an utter moron and you could have searched!

Here:

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=15301&asset_type=story&user_id=1082952
 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=15301&asset_type=story&user_id=1082952)
AND

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=15306&asset_type=story&user_id=1573748 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=15306&asset_type=story&user_id=1573748)

Now Go Away!

I like to keep up to date on hacks I have in game and you are messing up my routine by posting like this is the BBS, it's not.

Is it just me or are all these new posters with n00b questions really just mean people trying to make fun and/or rile up old timers?

That's the sort of thing that gives my mom the giggles. She likes to call me up and fake like she's a really stupid student...it got ridiculous back when I worked in medical billing and she'd call me, doing a shakey old lady voice and saying that her bag broke...her colostomy bag...and she needed someone to come over to fix it.

But no, this is typical BBSesque posting style.

Ok thanks i though this just stopped unwanted tour guides and charlatan not everyone spawning , Guess i will have to take it out for a few days to generate townies then re add it

This doesn't stop townies. That's "notownierespawn". Antiredundancy is purely about NPCs, eliminating the desire to spawn redundant NPCs instead of using existing NPCs.

I do not think these are BBSers, they are too polite and they don't RITE LIEK DIS LOL. I think they are MAXOIDS, looking for awesomehacks to put in the next patch. They are just scared that the hacks will make 90000000 games explode at once if they do...

OK it must be just my game then IT totally stopped townies spawning in a NEW hood and after taking it out they spawned > Ive never downloaded or installed the notownierespawn hack

Celestra, re-read Dizzy reply.

He clearly mention YOU need to create townies in a clean hood.  The game will spawn a few when you visit new community lots or when you move new sims into new residential lots but will stop at one point.

The fact you removed anti-redudancy has nothing to do with the fact new townies were generated, you must have done one of the things mentionned above.

Oh for the love of Pete!  In the interest of your personal peace of mind, and so that you will stop wittering on about this, I will spell it out in ridiculously clear terms:

1) all third party software, hacks included, include a disclaimer that you use the hack at your own risk.  This means that Pescado, or any other modder associated with a hack is not responsible if you blow up your system (or have your head explode) through using the hack.

2) Obviously (to everyone but you, apparently) use of a hack will not cause explosions of body parts or halitosis (although for some, this would be a side effect greatly to be desired).  On the other hand, if it does happen, this also is not Pescado's problem.

3) Halitosis is a mouth and gum condition - symptoms include extremely bad breath.  See your dentist and floss regularly.

4) The hacks are safe - most of us use them all the time without problem.  In fact, use of awesome hacks is arguably better than running the game without the hacks.  Standard disclaimers apply for legal reasons.

Nobody here is forcing you to load a hack.  If you are concerned about a hack, search the forum on it, read what users and modders have to say about it.  Remember that it is your responsibility to know what goes into your game and computer.  Please do not waste our time on this again unless your head actually explodes, and then only as a matter of public interest.

The disclaimer is there to root out the stupid people so we might point/laugh/poke. It seems to be working.

Yes, unless he's doing this just to get a rise out of us.  I did have a "nobody can be this stupid" thought earlier.  Still, I feel better now.  Nothing like a good rant.

I kinda wondered if you were missing that.  ::)

Perhaps I got a bit carried away.  Still, it felt...nice.

The ARR-ficial version. Also, why are you asking that in this thread?

We don't know cheaper - you have the responsibility to check all available internet shops and the stores in your area.  If you want instant gratification, as I always do, then it is "cheaper" to buy an off the shelf copy at a local store.  Then you too can instantly (or considering reported BV issues, not quite so instantly) experience the joys of trying to install, load, find hacks, and avoid load/lag difficulties.  Are you up to this, young Padewan?

Which one is "cheaper" really depends on pricing schemes. Some stores are still treating the Imperial Canadian as being less, despite the fact that current exchange rates place the Imperial Canadian at a hair above the American. yay for the US economy going into the tank. Therefore, if you're seeing schemes like 50$ CDN, 40 US, buy US, since CDN >= US right now.

I've heard the same story with the currencies reversed.  Due to buy rates and sell rates, it may depend on whether you start from inside or outside the Empire.

I know when you create a new hood the game spawns a FEW townies then stops . WHAT I WAS pointing out was that when i created a new hood this time it created ONE ( i repeat ONE) townie until i removed the fix then it created more . I was ASKING if this was supposed to happen . And ONCE again i also repeat i DO NOT have the notownieregen hack in my game . Obviously I am not going to get any further with these questions about the fix so i will now just drop it and leave all the so called super posters to go back to making fun of others .

In a new clean hood (without notownieregen installed) the game will spawn one (or more?) townies when your sims visit a community lot, as I understand it.  It is not unusual that the townies do not all show up at once.  If you are not using clean templates, but have the original maxis hoods, I think the game just gives you the standard bunch of Pleasantview townies in whatever hood you build. 

The antiredundancy fix for BV does not restrict townie spawning.  If no townies are spawning in your game, there is something else going on.  I believe this has been looked at and has been attributed to tight pants.

actually I don't think it is a hack causing only 1 townie to spawn since I had it happen (ages back) with no hacks installed. It still happens to me.

I use clean templates and I have found that if I want townies to spawn I either have to force the game to make them by starting a business (it will then make some for customers) or shift-click on the mailbox (with testingcheats enabled) and have it create a batch of townies.  Otherwise, it might make one every once in a blue moon.

Until the BV bug, I never bothered to use Anti-Redundancy. I don't use notownieregen or any of the other noregens.

Celestra, I know you were only trying to point a bug you thought anti-redudancy caused but it is not this mod causing your issue.

I do not use it normally, only now to stop the tour guide problem and had that 1 townie issue too in a clean hood so do not think we were in any way making fun of you.  We were trying to help but you obviously do not want to believe what we are saying and want to go with your own beliefs.

I'm playing the new hood (made from the clean template) with antiredundancy installed, but without notownieregen installed. (I'm just too lazy to make townies myself) The game starts to spawn tourists to fill vacant hotel rooms after you check in a hotel. It's similar to dorms, the game will spawn as many dormies as the number of vacant dorm door if you don't have nodormieregen installed.

Quite so.  As long as you don't mind and/or if you want EAxis townies/dormies, you do not need the anti-regen hacks.  They are beneficial/necessary for those of us who do not want them and prefer to generate or build our own townies/dormies/tourists and/or limit our hood populations.  For example, I like to control some aspects of "genetic drift" within my hoods, so having more townies is, for me in the long run, largely superfluous and annoying.  I'd rather "connect" playables with the spawn of other playables, as much as possible.

So after I sownloaded the new Maxis patch, I thought to myself, hey, they say this fixes the spawning issue! Guess this means I no longer need Pescado's hack! Ha, ha. They fooled me. I called the gardener and suddenly the game is spawning dozens of gardeners. Sigh. So here I am back again to say, thank you, JM, for keeping me from going on a killing spreee at Maxis. You have kept me out of jail yet again.

Yes, antiredundancy was necessary pre-BV to stop unnecessary spawning of NPCs.  It was updated for BV to include the tourguides and charlatans.  While the "patch" may have addressed the issue of tourguide spawning, it did nothing to stop previous over-spawns of NPCs in the main hood, for example.  Hence, antiredundancy should be left in.

You may want to visit the BV Patch is Out thread - the patch carries with it its own number of new problems.  For example, it will take extra tourguides and make them unlinked, which could lead to serious problems as you play your hood (such as it becoming unplayable).  For this reason (primarily this reason for me anyway) a fair number of MATY denizens are not installing this patch at this time.

If you have "extra" tourguides and charlatans in your hood, you should look at the "Deleted 2: Electric Boogaloo" thread for instructions on how to safely delete these extra characters and not leave the garbage lying around your hood.

At the very least, leave antiredundancy in.

I love it when people answer my questions before I even have to ask them.

Now I must Boogaloo.

Read the FAQ at the top of the Podium, dricabayard, unless you want to be continuously poked with sharp, pointy sticks...

I think this has stopped working in my game. I had the Charlatan show up which is all well and good, but since then I have had all 3 maids show up, different podium people, barstaff etc, etc. There has been no situation where the original NPC has been included as part of an outing. The only thing I could possibly think it is...my sim has got all the business rewards including the one where everyone shows up on the phone. This was before the Charlatan showed up. Do you think that has broken Antiredundancy? :-\

Are you sure that this happened only after the Charlatan showed up? It's the same in my game, though I've never seen a Charlatan in this hood (thanks to TJ's visitor controller), and the only owned business I have is at level 1, so no contact related perks there. I don't mind the variety, though - I only use this hack because I don't want the innumerable tour guides make my game explode. Still, I'd like to know why it stopped to work like it used to, of course...

I think it was just a coincidence. Mind you the Charlatan showed up after my sim had all the business perks. I have TJ's visitor controller, but I usually only have it tweaked to my liking on my home and dorm lots.

Hm, that's interesting - perhaps I need all the business perks to get to see the Charlatan, too :D. I also have the VC only on a few selected lots, but the Charlatan doesn't show up anywhere.

Hi all, I am a noob and I have a possibly stupid question. My first post.  ;D

If I use this hack on a new neighborhood created with the clean/empty templates, will the game still generate an initial 3 (or however many it's supposed to) of each NPC, or am I stuck with just ONE paperboy, gardener, mailman etc. servicing the entire hood? On the one hand I don't want throngs of NPCs cluttering up the hood, but I'd still like to see some variety among them. I've been testing it a bit in a new hood, and it seems like I'm only getting one of each...

The point of the hack is to only have one of each NPC. 

If you want more, you can create them using the townie & NPC maker.  (Turn on debug mode, shift click on a sim, and spawn the townie & NPC maker).

Alright, thanks for the quick reply, I think I will just leave the hack out initially and add it in later or something.

One. If you want another one, you can generate it manually, or just allow it to generate as needed. Otherwise you get 3 of EVERYTHING, including things that duplicates are totally useless for since the sims are unsocializable.

Besides, bad things generally happen when you try to interact with NPCs, so it's just best to treat them as untouchable.

OK, thanks J.M., I guess I will maybe look into the manual NPC creation thing after all and keep the hack in. I just like having some selection of gardener, maid etc. but can do without 3 different cabdrivers and whatever else... Would you mind elaborating a little bit on this no interacting with NPCs thing though? This is really depressing news to me. No more woohoo'ing the maid, or anything?

Your hacks are alright, by the way. :P Thanks a lot.

Many newer NPCs are not rigorously tested for extensive interactions, and it is recommended that you not try too hard with them. Older NPCs like the maid are probably more rigorously tested due to people's maid fetishes, but don't count on other more esoteric NPCs working right.

Thanks again, that's a relief. I wouldn't call it a fetish or anything precisely, but I was mostly concerned about the maid. ;D

If I attach a new university, will this hack prevent the creation of a whole slew of butt ugly professors, or will it reuse the useless bunch that's currently ensconced in my game.  And what about the rest of that sorry lot, the cheerleader and mascot and such?  I'm sick of the look of my university but I won't create a new one if it means even moar undesirable Maxis characters