OFB and DeleteAllCharacters

[jrd]

Anyone else running into problems with the DeleteAllCharacters cheat in OFB?

I have made a new neighbourhood, added a uni, the downtown, and the shopping district, and then cleaned it with the cheat.
After adding a family the 'business'/'management' and 'real estate' options are completely missing -- as if the game expects to find some Sim or NPC.

Additionally one townie is somehow generated or left behind each time I d-a-c. I have tried generating all NPCs and some townies, but the options stay missing.

No such problems if I add a shopping district 'after' d-a-c.

[Emma]

Do you actually add the Bluewater district, or is it a blank neighbourhood?

[jrd]

Doesn't seem to matter. In case your next question is 'are there any buyable lots?' -- yes. I have several (unowned) comm lots in various subhoods.

[Emma]

The community lots shouldn't really make a difference because they are empty of all characters until you actually load them anyway. I am wondering if it is because there are sims left in your sim bin? I had a problem with the DAC when I decided to empty Pleasantview. The Burbs and the Oldies were not removed from the bin, but were reduced to the toddler life stage. I had to reload the base n/hoods and delete them from the sim bin before using DAC.

[jrd]

Err... no, I deleted ALL characters.

The only Sims in the game are my CAS created Sim, the default NPCs pulled from objects.package (crumplebottom, therapist, abductor etc.), and --if I chose to generate them-- the townies/NPCs generated by the spawnable tree. Before generating I have exactly one (1) character file -- you can't get any cleaner than that.

[Emma]

I don't know if this is related, but I created a new neighbourhood, and added a uni, downtown and shopping district. I went into some of the downtown community lots in build mode to change them around and stuff, and every lot that had a restaurant in, the chef was standing there! It was the same chef everytime, an elder woman with a ponytail... I am going to create a blank neighbourhood, make a restaurant, save and exit, then re-enter in build mode to see if a chef has been generated.
Something is definitely screwy....

[Jade]

I've gone into community lots and had npc types there during nightlife.  This was with all characters deleted, and even in my base neighbourhood.    The lots tended to be slow loading, so I figured there must be something wrong with them.  I did find that taking the npc related object out and then saving and reentering the lot made them vanish, but there was still character files added.  I'm not sure if it is quite the same problem, but the characters were in build mode.  I had this happen with the chef, dj, bartender etc.

[Renatus]

I've had NPCs appear in build mode as well, but so far when it has happened they have always been NPCs that were already generated in my neighborhood, so there were no new character files added.  No idea why it does that... I thought it might be some weirdness with imported lots, but I had it happen with the Maxis community lots that appear in the lot bin after installing OFB.

[Li'l Brudder]

I don't deleteallcharacters, I find it very untrustwry, considering it told me it was going to take a little bit afterwards to create new Townies and NPCs whichis the whole reason I deleteallcharacters in the first place.  Anyways, I use the trust cursor to rip all of the Character Files into the garbage.  Same effect, with no useless sim regeneration.

[Regina]

I don't deleteallcharacters, I find it very untrustwry, considering it told me it was going to take a little bit afterwards to create new Townies and NPCs whichis the whole reason I deleteallcharacters in the first place.  Anyways, I use the trust cursor to rip all of the Character Files into the garbage.  Same effect, with no useless sim regeneration.

The reason it tells you it's going to make new Townies is that if you don't have the notownieregen mod in your game, that's exactly what it does, but only at the rate of one Townie per visit to a lot.  With the mod, they simply won't be spawned.  I wipe my neighborhoods all the time and the ONLY character files I get are the ones I create or NPCs as needed (for example, if I want to have pizza delivered, a delivery sim is created).

If you randomly rip character files from your neighborhood you could be setting yourself up for BFVFS syndrome.

[MissDoh]

I have had a weird problem after I deleted all characters in a new hood.

I added a downtown section and University but not the business section and after adding them I deleted all the characters.

Created a couple I place in a house.  Turned-on the "boolprop testingcheats" to create townies and NPC's.  Creation of NPC was as normal, I did not experience any problem with it.  But when I "dbg force to create townie" some ended-up with the Grim reaper head, Mrs crumplebottom or the psycharist!!!  I even had a pop-up because there was some problem in creating the townies I needed to hit reset the process started over again and after creating 2 or 3 the pop-up came back again I had to hit cancel since it was the only way out. I went back to neighborhood without saving, try it again with the same result.

Anybody else experience that problem and is there a way around it? Maxis seems to have screwed-up the townie gen tool.

[Regina]

I just happened to be starting a new neighborhood last night so went through a ton of rigamarole and ran across a few weird things being described here.  First off, I used deleteallcharacters (DAC), so the that neighborhood was empty.

I was able to use the dead tree to make Townies with no problem.  I also made 18 Downtownies using CAS and the upgrade of Inge's shrub.  There's been absolutely no problems with any of that.

I did, however, run into one of those NPCs standing in a restaurant lot I went to fix up.  This is a lot I picked up from another neighborhood.  I actually have two copies of the lot in this hood, one a swingin' teen hangout and the other an upscale restaurant.  I never checked the teen hangout (which was the original), just played it as usual with some visiting sims before I deleted all the characters in this hood.  However, when I went into the second copy of the lot I'd placed, there was a DJ that had traveled over from the old neighborhood.

Now there's one thing very odd about this DJ.  After starting that hood with the first family I put in it, before DAC, I noticed this DJ in SimPE.  I thought it was odd because I hadn't taken any of those sims to a community lot and she looked very familiar.  Now that I think about it, the reason she looks so familiar is because she came from Strangetown!  Of course, that might explain everything! LOL

I wish I had some good info to add to this thread instead of just saying, 'Hey, this basically happened to me too.'

[MissDoh]

Sorry to say but what do you mean by "I was able to use the dead tree to make townies".  Were you talking about the same option I did in testingcheats or another option?  What is that "dead tree" you are talking about?

[BlueSoup]

With testingcheats, there is a Spawn...NPC & Townie Maker.  It's a tree object that spawns.

[MissDoh]

So it is not the same as the "dbg force create townie" option I guess?

[BlueSoup]

I dunno, I've never used that one?

[MissDoh]

Ok, I use the mailbox to create townie so we are probably not talking about the same option.

I was not aware there was another way to create townie.. Blue is the option you are talking about avaible on the Tombstone of L&D?

[Regina]

The dead tree is the NPC spawner that came with NL (looks just like the dead tree available for purchase in the Garden section).

You enable the testing cheats, click on the selected sim and choose spawn>NPC maker.  It generates the dead tree.  You click on that and choose from the options.

I have an NPC maker collection that I downloaded a long time ago and with that I have access to the object without testing cheats turned on.  I just find the tree and plop it in and go to work.

It has tons of options.  You can choose gender, skin color, townies, downtownies, service workers, etc. (just don't try to generate a burglar without first generating police).  If you don't like the results spawned, you just exit to the neighborhood without saving, then return to the lot.

Don't ever use the 'kill townies' or 'kill' feature, though, because this will just make them all dead and their character files will still be in your game. 

[MissDoh]

Thanks Regina for all the details.  Probably the collection you downloaded is helping you out in some way since I have the same results weither I use the mailbox to create townie or if I spawn the dead tree.

NPC's are not a problem, only townies and downtownies.

I remember reading about this a few days ago, someone did have the exact same problem as me, I know I am not alone. 

I even deleted the Sims 2 folder and try it without any hacks in and I still have the pop-up coming when I create townie, again with npc's there is no problem.

Something is definitely wrong since I never encounter any problem prior to OFB.

EDIT:  I added an error log in case someone can look it through and find out what is wrong

Please look a few post below for the right error logs

[Regina]

If I think about it I'll try using Testing Cheats Enabled and see if I have the same problem.  It always amazes me when even the 'cheats' are bugged! 

[MissDoh]

I sent the error report to Maxis too whatever this will worth 

[MissDoh]

I see that nobody have an idea yet of what is wrong.

Oh well.  I guess I am stuck with Maxis default townie for now, sure hope they will fix this.

EDIT:  After looking I notice I included a log that was generated when I tried to create headmaster, here are 2 new error logs directly related to making townies.  I also notice the game added a file call cigen.package in  c:/mydocuments/Thesims2 folder, it was not there prior to trying to make townie with the dead tree or mailbox.  If I can, I will join this package file too.

[404'ed!]

[BlueSoup]

I have the cigen.package too, but no idea what it is or what it does.

[Emma]

I think the cigen package is related to bodyshop, I didn't have it until I ran bodyshop for the first time....I could be wrong though

[kaarinah]

I think so too, as far as I've seen it will be there after I have used Bodyshop. I usually delete it, a couple of times my game wouldn't start and I found a thread where that advice was given. It worked so both times so now I delete it as soon as I notice it.