All My Downtownies Have Duplicates

[myskaal]

Ok not exactly complete duplicates so much as just body doubles.
The first time I saw this I though. "Ha. I should make those two linked twins." Now it's not really so "ha' able as basically every single one of my downtownies is an exact replica of another. The bowlers, the ravers, the high society looking types, the biker guy... all of them. There's 2 of every one. They all have different names, personalities and aspiriations.. but looks wise (clothes and all) they are exact replicas.
It's both adults and teens and in the case of 1 particular teen (the trench coat wearing/fullface makeup/elvis hair one) there is 3 of him.

Example:



I'm not exactly looking for a solution. I have plenty of doodads and gadgets I can use to change how they look and their DNA. I am curious, though, if anyone else has had this happen as well - especially those who have used the empty templates and batch created townies/downtownies.

There are 11 bodies. 10 of which are doubles and 1 of which is a triplet case which equals out to be 23 downtownies. I have notownieregen in and on batch creation I recall there were 30 downtownies made. The rest are unique unto themselves... so far.

I notice I am missing the pool shark (the guy in the hawaiian shirt) in this hood, also. 

[LFox]

I started playing a clean hood with townies i personally batch created and i haven't seen this happen and i use all my hacks still.  Weird problem though, somewhat cool but weird.

Oh and if it helps to mention i did not change the clean templates out for the maxis ones when i put seasons on.  I figured there is absolutely no reason to do so.

[myskaal]

It is wierd and I must say I've never seen it happen before - but then I also never used empty templates or had Pets installed before either.

I'm tempted to do a mass deletion and SimPE cleanup (in a test version of the hood) and try another batch generation to see if it happens again.

[Emma]

That happened to me once with my dormies-I don't know what caused it, and didn't know how to solve it. I ended up binning that neighbourhood and starting again

[SaraMK]

Myskaal,

Unfortunately, batch creating Downtownies, or in fact creating Downtownies one by one, is something that simply does not work. I'm a little mystified about why you got only 30 downtownies but so much duplication though.

There is also a possibility that the Tree has been broken by Seasons. Pets broke the tree, so I would not be surprised that Seasons did, too. Next time, try creating sims one by one rather than using any of the "create all" options.

The reason creating Downtownies does not work is that Downtownies are ALWAYS based on the templates. Townies are created based on facial templates, and recieve random hair, eyes, skin, and clothing. Downtownies on the other hand, get their skin, clothes, hair, eyes, and skin from a template sim. That  lady in the brown coat is one of the template sims. If you generate enough downtownies, you'll eventually get her. If you persist in creating more downtownies, you will eventually get her again. And again. And again.

If you need downtownies, it's best to create townies and use Inge/Jordi's shrub to turn them into downtownies.


EDIT: Wait, did you say you just installed PETS?

Oops. I think you just ran into the "Pets broke the Tree" bug. Go read Jordi's thread in Peasantry.

[jrd]

This is perfectly normal. There is a very limited set of downtownies, so batch-creating them /will/ cause duplicates as SaraMK explains.

This is not dependent on the tree by the way… it was "broken" ever since NL. Since there is a limited set of templates to chose from, and the game doesn't know which templates it has used before, it will roll over and reuse already existing templates if you create/spawn enough DTs.

My preferred method of creating truly unique downtownies is either using CAS and then shrubbing them as DTs (major advantages: allows you to set clothing, hair, makeup as you like), or spawning individual /townies/ and marking them as DTs later (unique Sims using Maxis outfits, but no makeup applied).

[myskaal]

I created with the mailbox in debug. Not that it really makes much difference as it allll makes sense now with the downtownie templates vs. facial templates.

I really can't believe how short sighted the devs were on that stuff. I mean obviously (hello Legacy Challenge) people were going to be marrying off to townies/downtownies, thinning the pool and causing regeneration of new ones. Why the heck would they not add something to prevent such quick re-appearances of the *same* template? Gah!

I have a nice combination of my own creations vs. maxis templates running around downtown now. I used the shrub + the DMA facial/clothing/appearance adjuster and then edited the facials for DNA in SimPE.

Interesting to find such a limit was placed on appearances by default.

edit: Yes, SaraMK, I just installed Pets. I haven't played the sims at all in months and then a friend gave me the Pets XP as a birthday present mid Feb and it got me playing again. Won't be buying/installing Seasons for probably another month or two.