Oh this is so frustrating! (The way the game now generates Townies)

[Regina]

Oh wow!  How on earth to say this so as I don't sound like I'm as sleep-deprived as I feel!

I started a new neighborhood for my new Legacy sims and although it creates a huge extra challenge, I wiped it clean of all default characters, then set about generating the needed players.  I went ahead and took out my No Townie generation mod because I just didn't want to take the time to create Townies for this neighborhood and figured I could generate teens then some adults and things would be a-okay.  After all, my non-heir generally ends up finding a teen love, and sometimes my heir does too.  Granted, the won't marry them but it adds fun to the challenge (not to mention the awesome gifts that can be had--Brady's girlfriend brought him a DJ station!).

So, my sims were running around like mad trying to get the teens generated so we could get the adults started.  The first generation mama is a former maid and popularity sim (shy at that!) and at the rate she's going will probably never manage to make her 30-best friends want, so I've been trying to hustle on this.

Well, this evening after I played I loaded up SimPE to take a peek at the new Townies and low and behold, stuck in there in between the last couple of teens generated are a couple of children!

Originally, the game generated teens then adults, but it would seem it's now generating teens then children.

The problem is, we (or at least I) really, really need a no Townie children mod!  I'm begging!  I'm pleading!  Not only are my sim kids not allowed to play with Townie children (they just have too many other more important things to do) they clog up my game just way too much.

Well, now that I've vented about this (and no, I don't feel lots better) I think I'll slink off to bed.

[witch]

So... how do you get the game to stop generating townies at all? I thought the n'hood generation happened in one hit. I don't mean notownieregen, I have that, but I wouldn't mind generating SOME townies, just not a whole n'hood full. And like you, I think townie children are a waste of space (and rather spooky the way they hang round generation after generation).

[Ruann]

So... how do you get the game to stop generating townies at all? I thought the n'hood generation happened in one hit. I don't mean notownieregen, I have that, but I wouldn't mind generating SOME townies, just not a whole n'hood full. And like you, I think townie children are a waste of space (and rather spooky the way they hang round generation after generation).

You only want to do this on an empty neighborhood, but what you do is, while in the Neighborhood screen, open the cheat box and type "deleteallcharacters".

It will warn you that you're about to nuke your neighborhood into oblivion, but it will literally delete every single character.

[Regina]

I'm still scratching my head over some of the differences in the way I've seen townies generated.

I've played at least three neighborhoods since installing NL and really should've been taking notes all this time!    In one neighborhood where I already have a bunch of Townies generated pre-NL with the no children townies mod in my game, the Downtownies were all spawned when I first went to that neighborhood and set the Downtown area.  (Before installing NL I had taken out all my game mods.)

In another neighborhood, I decided to put the no children mod back in and see what happened.  My daughter had left it in her game and my other daughter noticed a couple of problems when she was playing and I wondered if they were related, so that's how I ended up with the no children mod back in my game.  When I took a sim from that neighborhood to a Downtown lot things acted very strangely.  At first there were no Townies, then about the time they were trying to go home the game started sticking then jumping to full speed.  At the time I thought it seemed like it was generating Downtownies, and later when I checked in SimPE that's exactly what it had done.  It had generated a bunch of them--all adults, no children or teens.  Oddly enough, though, this neighborhood has never generated any vampires (which is okay because I don't care if there are never vampires in that 'hood anyway).

The problem is, the no townie children mod is sporadically and inconsistently problematic.  Sometimes a community lot simply won't load--it just gets stuck in an endless loading loop and will sit there forever.  The only way out of that is to re-boot the computer.  At other times, if the lot does load, it may or may not at some point in the visit put game speed on high and if you try to click normal speed it will slow down then practically immediately speed back up to high.

In that same neighborhood I've been using Inge Jones' teleporter-plus shrub for making my own Townies which is working out exceptionally well, but I don't really want to take the time to do that for my other neighborhood.  Basically what I do is create the family I want to play, then use all the empty family slots to create extras for Townies.  Once I get the family moved onto their lot, I use Inge's shrub to turn the extras into Townies.  I wasn't sure how all that was going to work out but interestingly enough I'm finding the game gives them jobs, sometimes skills and sets friendships with other Townies, just as it would with a freshly-generated Townie.

[themaltesebippy]

I always use the Teleporter Painting to make townies.  Will notownieregen work to prevent downtownies if I use deleteAll..?  I have it installed in my game but the game made a bunch of worthless downtownies including the dreaded kids.

[Regina]

Yes, if you have the notownieregen mod, you won't have Downtownies spawning after you've deleted all the characters.  

[themaltesebippy]

Thanks!  That's good to know because I am doing a whole new hood.  Taking my time though!  Need that phone and romance mod

[witch]

You only want to do this on an empty neighborhood, but what you do is, while in the Neighborhood screen, open the cheat box and type "deleteallcharacters".

It will warn you that you're about to nuke your neighborhood into oblivion, but it will literally delete every single character.

Yes, done that. I have also created maybe 20 townies and YAs using Inge's 'make me a townie' option on the teleporter bush.

What I thought you said was that you could get the game to only generate some types of characters, or was your comment related to the 'no children' mod, which I don't have?

[witch]

Thanks!  That's good to know because I am doing a whole new hood.  Taking my time though!  Need that phone and romance mod

I took my time, weeks, read all I could, made custom n'hood in simcity and so on. It is so worth it to create your own, I love seeing the townies I created walk past, not one of them has a mutant frog mouth or lips they could trip over. None of them have eyes bigger than Bambi's and they are not the grinning fools that CAS makes them.

I lost my first n'hood because of all the bugs in the game, armed with the critical fixes I'm hoping I've built this one to last.

[Regina]

After reading everything I've read over the past months about exploding neighborhoods I don't know if it's possible to build one to last. LOL  But at last I think now building one to last longer is doable.  I've still never managed to play a neighborhood to ruination.  I end up letting myself get overwhelmed with too many sims, then deleting all the characters and starting over.  I've rarely even got past gen 2!

For the moment in that neighborhood I'm just going with a few teen Townies and service workers.  I gave myself a good scare today, thought I had royally messed up something and it turned out that a mod I'd installed didn't like my game.  It was the darndest thing!  My sims kept jumping out of interactions, they'd try to call a sim on the phone and instead of talking to them, the sim would suddenly appear in their living room, then disappear as soon as they hung up the phone--it was bizarre!  My kids were wondering if sims were suddenly working on some kind of holographic projector communications and their own brand of teleportation.   

[Process Denied]

I use the nochildrespawn and it is awesome.  Whenever I see a child townie,I capture it and use the mindcontrol mirror and the insiminator to turn them into a teen. Usually,when kids are in your casual group,it works out well to change them.  They have a lot more fun anyways.