Where the fuck is the game pulling this character from?

[Gwill]

First of all, I want to say, I'm a firm believer in clean templates, and will not allow any kind of maxis ugliness in my game.  There is not a single character file anywhere in my game files (and I mean the %program files%/EA Games/Sims 2 folders, not the "My documents" folder), they are all zipped up and saved on a completely separate drive.  So why do my game keep spawning identical sims:




The one with a different hair style has manually been given a makeover.

Also for the record: I'm currently not using notownieregen.package; because I want my game to spawn some townies.  What I don't want is multiple copies of the same fucking townie, therefore the first thing I do every time I start the game is to Randomize Sim Generator with the lot debugger.

It is also worth mentioning that these three sims were in no way spawned at the same time, but on different days, the first and the last more than two weeks apart.

There's also another hideous sim I've seen spawned in two different neighbourhoods, a teen male in trench coat, with Elvis hair and most annoyingly; the fucking red carnival mask.
All my adult, YA, elder and child townies appear to be spawning normally, with random binned hair and towniefied CC clothes, while most of my teen townies are obviously pulled from some kind of template, because they spawn with makeup and glasses and only maxis content (although it might not look like it because I use replacements for just about everything).
Where are these templates and how can I kill them?

[Zazazu]

Hmm. That's not one of the duplicates I get. I have a blond girl with the Marsha cut and that pink flowery dress...two of 'em in Queen's Cove...and the red-shaggy haired guy in the jacket outfit...two in Urban Paradise, one in Queen's Cove. I believe they are from the Seasons template as I neglected to add it back in before adding the neighborhood.

So I don't think it's Seasons, but I do kind of remember a shaggy-cut blond in that outfit at some point.

[Gwill]

Hmm. That's not one of the duplicates I get. I have a blond girl with the Marsha cut and that pink flowery dress...

This one?


The first two of my "triplets" are N001_User00104.package and N001_User00105.package, so apparently they did spawn at the same time.  They are the frist two townies I have, everything prior to that are Service NPCs and custom vacation locals.  The latest one is N001_User00261.package!

Here are some sims I only have one of each (in this hood), but are definitely from some kind of template:


Edit:  Upon closer inspection; they are downtownies, not townies.  And since at least some of them are wearing Nightlife outfits, I assume that's the culprit somehow.  But hopefully someone can point me to the exact place to look.

[Emma]

I think your blonde is a Downtownie, I'm sure I have seen her in my game with the short choppy cut and the silver dress thing. Jordi mentioned somewhere that Downtownies have very limited templates and duplicates occur even when batch creating using the NPC and Townie maker in Debug mode. Yours definitely don't have the Maxis Cas Faces anyway. If you don't want duplicates of townies, put in No Townie Regen, make a few of your own D'Townies and use Inge's shrub.

a teen male in trench coat, with Elvis hair and most annoyingly; the fucking red carnival mask.

 

Funny!

[Doc Doofus]

What Emma said.  Err... then why am I posting?  I recognized that girl right away.  She's in every downtown neighborhood I have ever created, along with that weird teen Goth boy in the trenchcoat and black lipstick.  They have templates somewhere in the EA/Nightlife folder.

It's difficult to make new downtownies.  When you try to do it using NPC maker, you just get more of the same (unless they changed it).  Even if you have changed your CAS default faces, newly-generated downtownies will still have the same faces, makeup, and clothign. 

Kill them or give them makeovers.  The only downtownie worth keeping is the grand vampyre.

[Zazazu]

Hmm. That's not one of the duplicates I get. I have a blond girl with the Marsha cut and that pink flowery dress...

This one?

Yup, except both of mine are lily-white. I plan on marrying them into my playables eventually, either at the same time, or to a father and son for optimal creepiness.

[neriana]

Those all look like Tricou teens, I think.

[SnootCB]

Those all look like Tricou teens, I think.

I thought all the downtownie teens were Tricous?

[neriana]

Those all look like Tricou teens, I think.

I thought all the downtownie teens were Tricous?

Quite possibly.

Maybe that particular family is somehow bugged?

[SnootCB]

Hm.  Gwill, have you checked the family trees of the mystery townies?  If they are all related to that Tricou guy, this whole thing might make more sense.  I mean, downtownies are spawned from a limited template anyway, as I think has already been mentioned.  But maybe the game somehow feels compelled to spawn Tricou teens for any attached downtown neighborhood?

[Emma]

I am not sure, but when I was making my empty hoods yesterday I read somewhere that SaraMK's downtown template might not be completely empty, something about the Tricou teens being left in as they knew the ghosts and potentially could resurrect them. Great if you actually play with downtown as-is, but not so great if you want to eliminate all of the fuglies and have no interest in any of the tombstones. I could be wrong though, so gonna go check it out.


[edit] Nope, just checked and there are no character files left in there whatsoever. Your downtownie is a mystery Gwill!

[Gwill]

Hm.  Gwill, have you checked the family trees of the mystery townies?  If they are all related to that Tricou guy, this whole thing might make more sense.

They are not related to anyone, including each other, and there is no Tricou guy in my hood.

Like I said; I have a clean downtown template, the nightlife character folder is empty, as is every other character folder for every EP.
I'm playing a custom downtown I made from scratch, not as much as a single lot from EAxis.  I did not use the townie tree/repo gun to spawn sims, I let the game spawn them "as needed".
And I do not appear to have a single adult downtownie.

I really don't get it.

[Emma]

Downtownies have a limited template, so when they do generate there isn't a big 'pool' of templates for the game to choose from.

The only other thing I could think for you to do for future neighbourhoods, is generate one set of townies then manually turn half of them into downtownies using the NPC and Townie maker (arduous and time consuming most probably) then have the game generate another set of townies for the home neighbourhood. You will probably still get duplicates of the facial features, but hopefully skin colour, hair colour, clothing will be different. If they aren't you could always use the clothing tool to change them before setting them as downtownies/townies etc. Like I said, it would probably take a lot of time but worth it IMO if you want fairly individual (down)townie sims

[pioupiou]

Like I said; I have a clean downtown template, the nightlife character folder is empty, as is every other character folder for every EP.
I'm playing a custom downtown I made from scratch, not as much as a single lot from EAxis.  I did not use the townie tree/repo gun to spawn sims, I let the game spawn them "as needed".
And I do not appear to have a single adult downtownie.

I really don't get it.

Well I think the templates for spawning new downtownies are somewhere else than the templates downtownies you would have gotten with the standard downtown without the empty templates. Arr it's hard to express in english : I mean the empty template for downtown only prevents the premade downtownies to be dumped in your hood when you add the sub-neighborhood. If you let the game generate downtownies (or if you use the NPC maker) the game always uses the same templates (so there are big chances of clones) of downtownies with make-up, hats, glasses, beards, etc... i don't know where those templates are located, and I have no idea if the game would appreciate that you delete them if you found them....
Do I make sense ??

For all downtownies being teens, it is normal in my gameplay experience : when you let the game regenerates downtownies (idem for townies) it always starts by making teens. Once it has the number of teens it needs it switches to another age group. Don't remember if it does children or adults then, but you get the idea.

[Gwill]

But these "recipies" have to be stored somewhere.  And if they are stored somewhere they can be killed.
Where are these templates?  Are they in the objects.package?  In one of the Sims0X.packages?

I understand that the reason I'm getting several similar townies is because there is a small number of templates to generate them from, but WHERE are the templates?  Is there anyone who understand game files who can tell me where to look?

[cwykes]

can't answer your question either....  so why am I posting? .....
If you're going to make townies/downtownies etc, I'd say forget the NPC maker.  Make a houseful of sims in cas and use Inge's teleporter shrub to convert them into townies/downtownies. That way you get what you want.

[Invisigoth]

can't answer your question either....  so why am I posting? .....
If you're going to make townies/downtownies etc, I'd say forget the NPC maker.  Make a houseful of sims in cas and use Inge's teleporter shrub to convert them into townies/downtownies. That way you get what you want.

If you're like me what you want is moar randomness. I feel that when I make CAS sims I tend to let my own preferences get involved, and that's a bad thing, IMO. So I make them with the help of Hook's randomizer. I have it set up to pick gender, name, age group, face template, turn ons, turn offs, and aspiration. It also gives me a random number which helps me select eye and hair color (I do this the lazy way, the random number is how many times I must reroll the sim and then I get the hair and eye color they randomly rolled up. The number is between 1 and 10 so that I don't spend all day rerolling. But with the number of eye colors I have it would be a pain in the ass to do it any other way, IMO). I also roll yes/no for hair from the custom bin, although I don't have them change from their natural color until I get to my townie teleport lot (so that they aren't genetically FUBARed).  Yeah, its a lot of effort but I've gotten some really great results this way. I batch created all of my townies in my current favorite hood but I've created all of the vacation locals and dormies using this method (well, the vacation locals were given faces that match their reigon rather than random templates, of course). In my next hood I think I'll CAS create everyone but the NPCs.

[Gwill]

I made all my Vacation Locals manually, because there I wanted a certain look and feel.  I also made two (one of each gender) of all the different freaky sims; vampires, werewolves, plant sims, zombies and servos.  All except for the plant sims have been turned into downtownies.
The townie tree thing has not been entirely reliable, so I shun it, but it's in my oppinion WAY too much work to make all townies manually. And anyway it gives me the feeling of wrapping your own Christmas gifts.  I want to be surprised.

I've spent a hell of a lot of time binning hair and townifying clothes and eyebrows, making hiders for the worst of the maxis wear and replacing the rest.  I've done all that so I wouldn't have to create townies manually.

[Doc Doofus]

The file you want is in

Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\D001\D001_User00105.package .  That's the last file in the folder.

Her name is Rose.  She's the dark-skinned blonde teen in the flower-dress and sweater.

The blonde with the short shaggy hair and the heavy make-up (in the picture at the very top) is Hailey, in D001_User00091.package

Argh...  I just messed up Simpe so it is opening extra windows instead of showing things in panels.  You're on your own now.

[Emma]

Yeah, but Doc, if you run with empty templates you shouldn't get any of those default downtownies. All that information is removed. That is what Gwill is saying, she can't understand why 'Hailey' is in her game.

[cwykes]

can't answer your question either....  so why am I posting? .....
If you're going to make townies/downtownies etc, I'd say forget the NPC maker.  Make a houseful of sims in cas and use Inge's teleporter shrub to convert them into townies/downtownies. That way you get what you want.

If you're like me what you want is moar randomness. ...................

You can use that "random sim" button in CAS and refrain from tweaking them.   I've done that to get random or sado-random townies..

[Doc Doofus]

Did you delete all those character files from the NeighborhoodTemplate folder (not Neighborhood)?  If you did, then I'm baffled, too.

[Gwill]

You can use that "random sim" button in CAS and refrain from tweaking them.   I've done that to get random or sado-random townies..

You still have to pick aspiration and turn-ons, which is a bloody hassle.  There are probably ways to randomize said things later.

The file you want is in
Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\D001\D001_User00105.package .  That's the last file in the folder.

No it is not.





And yes, that's a clean neigbourhood template.  It contains no Sim DNA (SDNA), Sim Relations (SREL),  Sim Wants and Fears (SWAF) or Sim Scores (SSCOR).
Unless the characters are somehow hidden in the lot catalouge (which shouldn't matter either, since I'm using a custom terrain and none of those lots anyway), these characters should not be able to exsist!

[mommytotwo]

I REALLY hope you figure out where they spawn from. I got 4 of the teen with the poof( ) tails and white shirt in one hood, and all were spawned at the same time. Ended up ditching the darn thing. It's really annoying. 

[neriana]

Edit: Never mind, I see you already removed the lot in question. I have no idea what's going on then.