Empty and Cleaned-up Templates. [UPDATED]

[Invisigoth]

Are templates just for the playable sims going to be made for Riverblossom and the 'stealth' neighbourhood Seasons dumps on you, as well as clean template with just the playable sims for Bon Voyage going to be made?

I don't mind the playable sims. I just can't stand the townies EAxis made.

There already is an empty template for the Season's stealth hood. In the first post on this thread cleverly called "Empty Seasons Template" in very large letters.
For the Bon Voyage thing I am sure that someone will make an empty template. The game did just come out and I imagine that this takes a lot of effort. We should all appreciate the hard work that SaraMK put into this and her genorosity in sharing it with all of us.

There is a workaround that I have tested to remove all of the unwanted character files that the Bon Voyage stealth hood puts into your game. Pescado taught me this in chat the other day, so he gets full credit for this. I am merely the messenger. I have tested this and everything seems to be working fine so far.
1. Back up N0XX folder. Pay attention to how many suburbs you have attached (suburb01, suburb02)
2. Go into the game and enter the hood. The stealth vacation hood will be created. You'll see somewhere around 60 new character files appear (ZOMG!)
3. Exit the game
4. Go into N0XX folder and delete everything except for Suburb0X (the newest, in my case this was suburb03.package). Replace everything with the backup.

When you add an actual vacation subhood it will add another 14 or so characters. I have NOT TESTED this, but in theory it should work. The only changes that you would make would be to NOT replace the LOTS folder from your backup and to NOT delete the vacation0X.package. I am going to test this a bit today, but I cannot guarentee that it won't break your hood. You might want to do the second part on a test hood before actually attempting it on a hood you care about.

[IAmTheRad]

That link removes all sims, including the maxis made families. I wanted clean, not empty. As I've said, I don't mind the playables.

[IAmTheRad]

Found out making clean vacation won't exactly be easy without an updated SimPE.

So, SimPE needs to be updated to make a proper clean bon voyage stuff.

V001 contains the 'stealth' neighbourhood. If someone else figures out how to make a clean one, that'd be awesome.

[Ashman]

Found out making clean vacation won't exactly be easy without an updated SimPE.

Details? Does Invisigoth's extension of Pescado's method (i.e. restoring from backup leaving in vacationXXX.package, Lots directory, suburbXXX.package) not work? I just tried it but haven't had time to test it properly. Simply loading the hood didn't result in a BFBVFS at least.

[selzi]

There is a workaround that I have tested to remove all of the unwanted character files that the Bon Voyage stealth hood puts into your game. Pescado taught me this in chat the other day, so he gets full credit for this. I am merely the messenger. I have tested this and everything seems to be working fine so far.
1. Back up N0XX folder. Pay attention to how many suburbs you have attached (suburb01, suburb02)
2. Go into the game and enter the hood. The stealth vacation hood will be created. You'll see somewhere around 60 new character files appear (ZOMG!)
3. Exit the game
4. Go into N0XX folder and delete everything except for Suburb0X (the newest, in my case this was suburb03.package). Replace everything with the backup.

When you add an actual vacation subhood it will add another 14 or so characters. I have NOT TESTED this, but in theory it should work. The only changes that you would make would be to NOT replace the LOTS folder from your backup and to NOT delete the vacation0X.package. I am going to test this a bit today, but I cannot guarentee that it won't break your hood. You might want to do the second part on a test hood before actually attempting it on a hood you care about.

Thanks a lot for posting this! I tried this last night (including the second part with the three vacation subhoods), and I haven't had any problems so far. My normal neighborhood loaded properly, and I could enter one of my families and play. I'm a bit reluctant to send them on a test-vacation though because antiredundancy and notownieregen apparently need to be updated because the game spawns excessive tour guides all over the place as well as tourist townies (in a first attempt I killed the Maxis tourists off, but I restored my backup when my game created around 50 new tourist townies on its own ...)

[syberspunk]

Question about the new stealth hood.  Are these zOMG 60 sims that are added... are they all regular townies?

Or... are these sims vacationie locals?

I also noticed, that for each of the 3 vacation lots, they have their own sims as well, somewhere around like 14-16 sims each, give or take.  I am assuming that these are suppoesd to be the vacationie locals...

But then... what are these new 60ish sims?  Are they just completely 'new' regular ole townies that would wander around your main 'hood?  Do they look as fugly as the other townies?  Do they have regular default Maxis EA faces?  Or are do they actually look different?  I'm curious why Maxis EA would bother creating these new stealthy townies... if they are just stupid, fugly looking as usual with same ol boring face templates.  Why clog up my game with moar of the same crap? 

Ste

[jsalemi]

I *think* some of them are regular townies, because I've been noticing some new walk-bys and townies on comm lots in my test hood. Haven't wandered into a vacation hood yet. Some are probably also NPCs for the vacation hoods (bellhops, maids, tour guides, etc).

And yes, they get the fugly Maxis faces.  Time for another mass grave! 

[IAmTheRad]

The way I did it was the wrong way. By deleting every sim that I didn't want to use. Yes, it might result in a BFBVFS, but at least it works, but not quite.

The EAxian way of generating them makes them wear random clothes, and random hair. Not the hair and clothes that are appropiate for that region.

Only the NPCs get their appropiate clothing. The locals don't wear their proper clothing, nor do the tourists. They just look like regular people. Okay, so the tourists I'm fine with them being random (because it just looks creepy if they all look the same), but I'd prefer I could tell the locals from the tourists...

Maybe somebody, like Pescado, could make something that tourists would look like tourists (because it's hard to tell the locals from the tourists the 'wrong' way I did it)

HOWEVER, after I looked at the files, opening the actual character inside SimPE, only the playable have pictures. The rest do not. Is it possible that EAxis actually made a way to make characters based on a template they have, however it'll make them still random?

(The stealth hood adds all those sims)

[jsalemi]

It's possible SimPE doesn't recognize the new NPCs, and thus can't generate pictures for them yet.

[Aggie]

* Denimjo anxiously awaits getting a version of SimPE that actually works.

[KLGFCG]

So, if the locals get deleted they don't regen with correct outfits? How about the behaviors... the gestures of the region and such? I guess I'd been blithely assuming that they were some type of special NPC (a la the grand vampires) that, if deleted or pulled from the local pool (i.e. moved into a playable family or, far more likely, tragically consumed by a cow plant they were locked in a room with) new ones would spawn as needed.

I haven't played a ton yet, I've been too busy building my own vacation locales, but it seems like I'd see 1-2 locals/lot with the rest being regular tourists without special outfits... is it possible your game just hasn't seen fit to generate locals yet so you're only seeing tourists, hence the randomness of dress, or have you confirmed that they're actually locals?

Finally, count yourself lucky that SimPe even lets you get as far as seeing that they don't have pics - on both my comps SimPe barfs out about a gazillion errors (Warning: Sim Found Twice type of stuff). If I get through all the errors there's a bunch of gobblygook - the BV sims don't seem to register (empty family infos, etc.) and my playable families show unknown members and stuff. I'm hoping it's not truly that screwed up and that SimPe is just not reading it right. Sigh, I tried to sign up for the QA about six weeks ago but never got a response... wish I had it now, I think there's a version out there for testing.

And just for the hell of it, fuck EA for screwing up my neighborhood. I just know I'm going to BFBVFS trying to get rid of the crappy characters I don't want.

[Mike]

Does any one have the Clean/Fixed Pleasantview + townies (yes, I want Goopy and Benjamin Longnose)? The files in the link aren't there anymore.

[selzi]

So, if the locals get deleted they don't regen with correct outfits? How about the behaviors... the gestures of the region and such?

As I posted earlier, a newly spawned local vacation sim didn't even know the proper bow for his region (Asia). He was spawned with regular clothes - I can handle that, I can move him in and change it, but I have no idea how to make him behave like the local he's supposed to be!

I haven't played a ton yet, I've been too busy building my own vacation locales, but it seems like I'd see 1-2 locals/lot with the rest being regular tourists without special outfits... is it possible your game just hasn't seen fit to generate locals yet so you're only seeing tourists, hence the randomness of dress, or have you confirmed that they're actually locals?

My game autonomously spawned like 50 tourists after I killed most of the Maxis tourists off, and they were all dressed normally. When a local vacation townie is created via the Townie repoman's gun he/she also looks totally normal though ...

Finally, count yourself lucky that SimPe even lets you get as far as seeing that they don't have pics - on both my comps SimPe barfs out about a gazillion errors (Warning: Sim Found Twice type of stuff). If I get through all the errors there's a bunch of gobblygook - the BV sims don't seem to register (empty family infos, etc.) and my playable families show unknown members and stuff. I'm hoping it's not truly that screwed up and that SimPe is just not reading it right. Sigh, I tried to sign up for the QA about six weeks ago but never got a response... wish I had it now, I think there's a version out there for testing.

When I signed up for the QA I never got a response either - I noticed I was admitted when I was suddenly able to see the QA subforum. Have you logged in there and checked if you can see it?

And just for the hell of it, fuck EA for screwing up my neighborhood. I just know I'm going to BFBVFS trying to get rid of the crappy characters I don't want.

You could try the method Invisigoth posted a couple of posts above yours - I tested this yesterday, and my neighborhood is still alive ...

[SimFeliz]

I gave this a test and the same happens to me. I did notice that the Sim will have the vacation memories of being able to do those things, thought they can't do them.

I don't know enough to be able to do much more. I will just have to wait patiently. I'm scared to attach a vacation neighbourhood and visit as I don't want to have maxis tourists and locals. The above fix seems to work, but I'm assuming it won't stop the game respawning more if I visit.

[IAmTheRad]

When I did it my idiotic way (deleting the .package files that the sims were contained in...) the locals to the region DID have their actual vacation-ish skills. The slap dance, the chest pound in three lakes, specifically. Just their clothing was wrong, and the hairstyle. Yes, I can change it to normal, but it'd take a long time. Perhaps eventually somebody can force them to wear a certain outfit.

[selzi]

When I did it my idiotic way (deleting the .package files that the sims were contained in...) the locals to the region DID have their actual vacation-ish skills. The slap dance, the chest pound in three lakes, specifically. Just their clothing was wrong, and the hairstyle.

You're talking about the newly spawned local vacation sims, right? How did you spawn them? Did the game spawn them by itself or did you use the NPC and townie creator?

EDIT: I'm seriously confused now. I let the game spawn new vacation townies (it did this by itself after I had deleted the character files using InvisiGoth's method), and those new vacation townies DID know the correct greeting. One of them even performed Tai-Chi by herself. When I tried to convert a normal townie into a vacation townie it didn't work though. What's the sense of this townie and NPC creator-thing then?

Anyway, I'm glad that problem is gone. It still annoys me to no end that the game spawned something like 60 or 70 new sims when loading up a vacation hood for the first time, even though I have notownieregen installed ...

[IAmTheRad]

They did spawn with the correct behaviours. The game spawned them automatically, but of course I did the bad way of removing them. I deleted the exact .package file for the neighbourhood they exist in, but didn't modify the neighbourhood.package file to remove all referenced to them. This probably will create unlinked, and make my game become a BFBVFS.

And the 'stealth' people? They're added by the stealth neighbourhood. Look in the V001 folder in the neighbourhood templates. It's there, and will add itself whether you like it or not. They're an EAxis screwup.

EDIT:
Upon further testing, using SimPE 0.62 (yep, the Seasons one), and opening the .neighbourhood files AFTER the characters are gone, it's actually editable. It's just very finicky and yells at me. But at least it works.

EDIT Mk. 2:
And created a worse BFBVFS. This time when adding the files. Good thing I made backups.

[selzi]

And the 'stealth' people? They're added by the stealth neighbourhood. Look in the V001 folder in the neighbourhood templates. It's there, and will add itself whether you like it or not. They're an EAxis screwup.

No, they're not. I deleted the Maxis stealth people after they were added out of their V001 folder, just like I had said earlier. What I was complaining about were 60 - 70 NEW tourist townies that the game had to spawn since I had deleted the old ones. I had thought the game would spawn only as many tourists as needed (with notownieregen), but notownieregen doesn't work for tourist townies yet.

EDIT:
Upon further testing, using SimPE 0.62 (yep, the Seasons one), and opening the .neighbourhood files AFTER the characters are gone, it's actually editable. It's just very finicky and yells at me. But at least it works.

EDIT Mk. 2:
And created a worse BFBVFS. This time when adding the files. Good thing I made backups.

Oh no, I'm really glad that you were able to undo those changes with your backup ...

[IAmTheRad]

When a new SimPE is out I'll try to make an actual clean stealth neighbourhood and vacationhood.

[selzi]

When a new SimPE is out I'll try to make an actual clean stealth neighbourhood and vacationhood.

Oh, I would love you forever for that ...

I just got done with my new vacation townies. I let the game spawn new ones (way too many though), then decided which ones to keep by summoning them to my home lot one after the other and closely inspecting them. They were dressed appropriately using christianlov's clothing rack, given random personalities and so on, the usual stuff I always do with townies. Then I deleted 2 the extra vacation locals and tourists, 55 sims to be exact. My neck hurts and I'm tired, but finally my neighborhood is neat and clean.

And if the game spawns new vacation sims when I load a vacation hood next time (because it detects there are too few) I'm gonna uninstall this crap and wait for the update of notownieregen as well as your empty templates!

[Miss-BD]

There is a workaround that I have tested to remove all of the unwanted character files that the Bon Voyage stealth hood puts into your game. Pescado taught me this in chat the other day, so he gets full credit for this. I am merely the messenger. I have tested this and everything seems to be working fine so far.
1. Back up N0XX folder. Pay attention to how many suburbs you have attached (suburb01, suburb02)
2. Go into the game and enter the hood. The stealth vacation hood will be created. You'll see somewhere around 60 new character files appear (ZOMG!)
3. Exit the game
4. Go into N0XX folder and delete everything except for Suburb0X (the newest, in my case this was suburb03.package). Replace everything with the backup.

When you add an actual vacation subhood it will add another 14 or so characters. I have NOT TESTED this, but in theory it should work. The only changes that you would make would be to NOT replace the LOTS folder from your backup and to NOT delete the vacation0X.package. I am going to test this a bit today, but I cannot guarentee that it won't break your hood. You might want to do the second part on a test hood before actually attempting it on a hood you care about.

Do you actually mean for us to delete everything in our N0XX folder besides Suburb0X? Or just the newest created suburb? Because I was thinking if we delete everything in the N0XX folder (I'm guessing that is the N0XX folder in our "user" folder not C: Drive?) then wouldn't all the Sims, lots, etc also be deleted?
Yes, I admit that I am non-awesome and don't quite understand.

[Soylent Sim]

It's probably easier to store the copied N0XX elsewhere, copy the freshly added suburb to the copied 'hood, and then delete the neighborhood-plus-townie spam and replace it with the unspammed-neighborhood-plus-suburb.  The reason for this is that the game looks for the stealth subhood, and if one isn't found it proceeds to add the subhood and then townie-dump.  If the stealth 'hood is found but there has been no townie-dump - if you, say, copied the stealth 'hood to an otherwise clean backup of the neighborhood - the game won't feel the need to do anything more.  Although it will recreate townies and NPC's as needed, naturally.

And yeah.  Just to be clear, do everything in the My Documents subfolder.  Attempting to do this with core game files will cause massive barfage.

[Miss-BD]

Sorry about that, I tried to edit my post. I had actually copied the instructions to notepad but I didn't realize that I hadn't copied all of it, so I didn't have the part about replacing with the backup. My mistake.
In the thread with creating a clean neighbourhood, it tells you to replace the templates in the C: drive folder. I've done that before and nothing bad as happed, definitely didn't experience any barfage.

[IAmTheRad]

Now I can make a clean template for the 'stealth' neighbourhood. Expect to see it tomorrow.

[SimFeliz]

Now I can make a clean template for the 'stealth' neighbourhood. Expect to see it tomorrow.

I love you so much right now! It was driving me nuts as I wanted to start setting up my neighbours hood, but couldn't because of the shitty tourists the game dumps on you. I was about to go ahead and use the walk around but I was worried that would cause problems. Thank god for people who can do this for us. I'm too stupid to work it out myself.