Beware creating NPCs with the NPC creator

[AllenABQ]

Not certain what is causing this to happen, but I recently offed a bunch of my old NPCs still hanging around from the base game installation (the firefighters, delivery persons, and such).  I was fine with letting the game create them as needed but I figured I'd use the Townie/NPC maker to create a few in advance.

Now this only happened trying to create base NPCs and I have Nightlife installed. When I went to create a FireFighter a Nightlife downtownie type in a bowling league shirt was what was created.  I have another Nightlife guy that looks almost identical to this one that was created when I made a Delivery Person, and a Nightlife "club-type" guy for another Delivery Person.  I confirmed these as new creations in my Characters folder with SimPE.

I can vouch for the fact that I allowed the game to create my third Delivery Person by going to a lot and having the residents request grocery delivery.  That NPC was generated just fine (a female in the usual blue uniform).

I have not tried to make Uni or Nightlife NPCs.  Likewise I have successfully used to generator to take custom sims and turn them into townies and downtownies with no problems.  The only problem seem to be generating some kinds of NPCs at this point.

(I tried to attach a jpg from SimPE for visual reference, but gave up after twice getting an "attachments upload directory not writeable" error. )

[dizzy]

Are you using *my* hack of the NPC creator? Because you should be aware that I've dropped support for that. You should be using the built-in one for Nightlife (but carefully, of course).

[AllenABQ]

I never put your hack back into my game after installing Nightlife.  However, I'm suspicious about the Maxis object found in Collections.  I might try to start it up from the boolprop cheat instead and see if I get different results.  I've had several people tell me they didn't have the object in there, and I'm wondering if the game sorta remembered your hack because I had a lot with the object on it when I installed NL despite having removed the hack from my Downloads directory.

[AllenABQ]

Update:
There's definitely a problem with creating single instances of NPCs in my game.  I started out with a test town that I completely wiped clean of characters using "deleteAllCharacters".  I then created a new sim in CAS, moved him into a house, and invoked the NPC/Townie maker in the lot.

It turns out that each time I attempted to create an individual NPC for either the base game or for Uni, I got an error and had to click "reset".  This continued UNTIL I made an NPC Nightlife character -- Mr. Big.  He was generated just fine and in doing so, my Maker object switched to generating downtownies.

It turns out that as long as the NPC/Townie Maker is in "downtownie" creation mode, you can generate single NPCs for the base game and Uni just fine.  I had killed a handyman and was only able to create a new one in this manner.  Switching back to "normal townie" mode, I got errors again.

So just a warning for anyone interested.  You might this problem too if you have Nightlife installed.

[SimSherry]

It turns out that as long as the NPC/Townie Maker is in "downtownie" creation mode, you can generate single NPCs for the base game and Uni just fine.  I had killed a handyman and was only able to create a new one in this manner.  Switching back to "normal townie" mode, I got errors again.

Thank you so much for this tip.  I was just getting set to create a custom neighborhood, and wanted to research custom NPC creation first, when I came across this post.  So glad I read this, thanks again!

[radiophonic]

Yeah, and always make sure you "Kill" them if you don't like them and chose to roll another otherwise you'll wind up with 10 different versions of the same NPC.

[Regina]

Yeah, and always make sure you "Kill" them if you don't like them and chose to roll another otherwise you'll wind up with 10 different versions of the same NPC.

If you "kill" them you're setting up the early phases for the big old fireball visible from space because their character file(s) will be left in your game.  It's tedious, but the best way to get rid of the ones you don't want is to exit to the neighborhood without saving.  In other words, when you generate an NPC you like, save, then move onto generating the next one.  If you like it, save again.  If not, exit without saving, come back in and regenerate.

Allen, thanks for the info.  I'll keep that in mind should I decide to generate townies and such again.  The only real problem I ever had was that I couldn't generate a cop without first having created a burglar. 

[radiophonic]

No, you kill them before you release them. By doing so you prevent another character file from being created upon lot save.

[Renatus]

Hm... I remember when I created townies with the NPC Creator, that the option I chose that discarded them did indeed keep the character file upon lot save. They never showed up anywhere in the game, but upon checking the neighborhood with SimPE there they were, full character files, which I ended up deleting manually. Is there more than one option for discarding them? It's been months since I did this so I can't remember. If there is 'Kill' and then something else, that would explain why I ended up with junk characters. If not, perhaps it's something unique to townie/downtownie sorts of characters and NPC files really are deleted. I don't know; I didn't try making NPCs.

[radiophonic]

Indeed. I set up a test hood to play with that utility and wound up with 15 datable slobs. Discard didn't seem to work but 'kill' did.

However, It was quite humorous to see them all walking around and farting when I went downtown.

[Li'l Brudder]

I don't use the one that is spawned with the debug cheat.  I shift click the mailmox, hit more, and hit the make townies and the same thing for NPCs.  It works great!

[Renatus]

Indeed. I set up a test hood to play with that utility and wound up with 15 datable slobs. Discard didn't seem to work but 'kill' did.

Good to know. I would think it would be the other way 'round, considering how the game handles dead characters, but hey! Now it seems useful again.

[radiophonic]

Good to know. I would think it would be the other way 'round, considering how the game handles dead characters, but hey! Now it seems useful again.

It's not actually "killing" them, it zaps them so that they don't become character files when you save the lot.
Try it out in a test hood after you've deleted all of the characters.

[Renatus]

Yeah, I get what you mean, haha. I'm really tired and bad at stringing words together today.  It was that I thought (when I first used it) that discard would get rid of the character as if it never existed, and kill would result in a character marked dead. I thought this because when actual sims die they leave enough behind to be resurrected, but as it is my assumptions were incorrect, and now I'm glad I know what's what.