Does anyone ever feel this way about some of the in-game faces?

[Brynne]

I think all of the in-game faces look more or less ridiculous. They're too cartoony for me - I could live with the oversized eyes if they weren't so malproportioned overall! It's a shame Gigge's site is defunct now, she had a tutorial on it with an image that showed that the default faces are too long, the eyes are too big and too far apart, and a lot of the noses too narrow. I make my own sims with more realistic features now and they look a lot better, and I grab any NPC that bothers me and make them over as well. Eyes a click smaller, narrower, and closer together, face a click or two shorter, nose a click or two wider. I then alter things from there to get interesting variation, like small or long noses, wide or narrow mouths, rounder faces, etc. .  I tend to make them all good looking too, which isn't strictly realistic, but hey, at least I have a wide range of what I find attractive...

I use the same method. The eyes are always made smaller- much smaller, and set much closer together. The nose is usually shortened. The problem is, when doing this in-game, the limitations of the CAS cosmetic surgery make it difficult to put a whole lot of variation in their faces. So my townies are prettier, but all look like siblings. I'm with Motoki- I wish the surgery used more of the options that bodyshop does.

[AllenABQ]

Having been experimenting with the Townie/NPC maker in Nightlife, I've noticed that there are some new "downtownie" templates that have been added with the expansion pack.  But unlike the base game townies, these templates seem to be not just faces, but clothing, hair color, make-up, etc. all locked such that you get an identical sim every time the template is used.  I discovered this after wiping a new neighborhood of all sims then using the generator to auto-create a set a new downtownies.

The list includes:

Blonde woman with braided hair on both side wearing a cowboy hat and a pink-striped shirt.
Nice looking African-American male with short, braided hair.
Another nice-looking African-American male with close-cropped hair, green-lenses aviator glasses, and wearing one of those new vests that came with Nightlife.
A grumpy-looking African-American male elder wearing a suit.
Shaggy, red-headed white male with facial stubble.
Good-looking African-American woman with short hair in two knots on either side of her head, wearing lipstick.
African-American woman with short RED hair and a semi-cirle tattoo around the front of her neck.
Shaggy-blonde haired white male with green aviator glasses.
Blonde white woman with hair hanging straight down wearing a flat cap and dark lipstick.
A sim of what looks a lot like Joe Carr except with that medium-long hairstyle that is separated in the middle.
Medium-skinned Latin-looking guy with black hair and facial stubble wearing a nice blue shirt
Medium-skinned Latina-looking woman with long, full black hair.
Another nice-looking light-skinned African-American male with sunglasses and NL clothes: (bright scarf tied around neck and some kind of leisure suit I guess)
Medium-skinned guy with black hair in bowling shirt
Tan-skinned woman with black hair in bowling shirt

Every one of these is as exact replica of downtownies found in the default NL installation.  Except remember I generated these guys supposedly at random after wiping everyone out at the beginning.  They also happen to be quite A LOT better looking than ones made with the standard templates.  But it appears that as the game kicks in to regenerate downtownies (and let's face it if you want to marry off your townies, THESE guys will be the pick of the crop), your going to end up with some degree of "identical twins" running around. 

BTW, there are other downtownies as well that are based on the base game templates.  And it looks as though some of the new NPCs like the slobs and Mr.Big/The Diva are also regenerated with standard templates (yes I got a Diva with those HUGE face-stretching lips).

[Regina]

I've got both Kennedy Cox and Benjamin Long married to a couple of my Sims.  I never considered them unattractive.  As for Goopy, I cheated him into college to see if it would work (it didn't), and when I moved him back to the neighborhood I gave him the hair with the long pony tail and a little face stubble and he actually looks pretty good.

I figured some people find the Kennedy Cox/Benjamin Long face attractive and in reality it's a good thing there are those different strokes for different folks. LOL  It's definitely not the worst face in the game--it's the nose I can't get past--looks an awfully lot like Richard Nixon's profile! 

And depending on where you live, a visit to the local Wal*Mart to look at the people should give you a new appreciation of our Sims 2 townies.

  Our WalMarts have scads of Hispanics in them and for the most part they're very beautiful people.  OTOH, some of the white locals are enough to scare a person half to death!

The ones I dislike the most are those with the ridiculously wide mouths that stretch from ear-to-ear, especially when they have huge flappy lips as well.

Exactly!  And that's just the thing.  While I don't have a problem with my sims looking a bit cartoonish (it is a game after all) I've always wondered just what these people were thinking when they designed all the faces of that kind!  I don't really care if my sims aren't all beautiful--beauty is so far beyond looks--but some of those templates are the stuff nightmares are made from.

What I find puzzling is the fact that all the good-looking ones are hidden or unusable.

I agree.  There are many already made sims in the game but when a townie or service worker is generated, none of those are used.

Having been experimenting with the Townie/NPC maker in Nightlife, I've noticed that there are some new "downtownie" templates that have been added with the expansion pack.  But unlike the base game townies, these templates seem to be not just faces, but clothing, hair color, make-up, etc. all locked such that you get an identical sim every time the template is used.  I discovered this after wiping a new neighborhood of all sims then using the generator to auto-create a set a new downtownies.

Uh-huh.  In one neighborhood I was experimenting in, I put the no townie children mod back in my game (didn't know at that time it caused problems) and found some interesting results.  My sim made it to a Downtown lot (remarkable in itself because generally speaking that mod causes the lot to get stuck in a perpetual loading loop) and in that one trip umpteen gazillion Downtownies were generated.  I ended up with major duplicates of the sim looks you've listed.  Oddly enough, not one vampire, slob or big are in that neighborhood, just scads of blonde girls in braids, cowboy hats and the striped shirt and several other duplicates.

Which NPC generator did you use for that?  I haven't taken a lot of time to go look around for everything NL compatible and the one I had in my game is in need of updating.

[themaltesebippy]

It's a shame Gigge's site is defunct now

Her site still works for me http://www.simplyskintastic.com/  It was down for a while but it's up again for whatever reason.

I hate the uglies too and like Motoki I change them all.  I usually nuke and make my own townies but the NPC's all get makeovers.  I use Danny's DMA most of the time and sometime I use inSIMinator which is good for changing ages.  A far as changing skin tones in SimPE, I have had no problems with the new versions.  Eye color is still AFU though.

[Gus Smedstad]

And I grab all the townies I see too and give them surgeries, makeovers and sometimes changes of clothes.

How are you doing this?  SimPE?

 - Gus

[Renatus]

Ooooer! Thank you, MalteseBippy! That was one of my favourite 'stuff' sites out there, and I was sad when I was running out of good clothes for my adults and went to check her site, only to remember she had taken it down. Motoki, her site is also what got me started on making my own townies. I knew something bugged me about the sim faces, but it wasn't until I saw her site that I realized what. I do think she makes the mouths a bit too wide, though, mouth corners generally seem to line up right with the center of the pupil. I find anything too far outside of that to be venturing on frog-faced. 

Lefty, I think Goopy is kind of cute too. Shh. I actually had him married into a family at one point... but I did give him a complete name change and makeover!  He actually made a very distinguished elder, with the longish hair and a goatee. Too bad his daughters were a bit monkeyfaced. Benjamin Long and Kennedy the Ass aren't too bad, either, but like Goopy they don't seem to breed well.

Brynne, I make all of my playable sims and homemade townies in Bodyshop ahead of time because of this. I could afford to do so since I don't have any long-standing neighborhoods... I get pretty frustrated sometimes making over NPCs considering the limitations in surgery.

I don't generally worry about the skintones on the sims - if their features don't work with their skin, I change their features entirely. I just can't be arsed to use sim surgery very often. *g* They eyecolours... well, it can be some alternate universe thing. In which they have vampires, zombies, and aliens. Yeah.

[Motoki]

And I grab all the townies I see too and give them surgeries, makeovers and sometimes changes of clothes.

How are you doing this?  SimPE?

No, I make them selectable then stick their faces in the surgery machine, have em use a mirror and if I feel like it, Pescado's clothing tool.

The only thing I do in SimPE is copy their new facial data over their old so they don't pass on their old ugly genes to the next generation, but that's only if I decide to breed them.

[Gus Smedstad]

And how do you make them selectable?  Is that a console command?

 - Gus

[Motoki]

I use boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and then hold shift and click on them. Prior to NL, this didn't work, but since NL it now does. You can also use the mind control mirror or the Insimenator or you could move them in with Inge's shrub and then move them out into the townie bin again with the shrub when you are done.

*edit to add some other stuff*

The Insimenator has options to give any sim on the lot a facelift or makeover without making them selectable. The Woohoo npcs set from Valdea.com also has an item that looks like a red burglar alarm and let's you do surgery on a sim without making them selectable. It also lets you plan their outfits. I haven't used this item since NL so not sure of it's status with it.

Lastly, the vanity mirror that came with university (it's under tables > other) will let you make over (use the mirror to change hair and makeup) any sim on the lot without having to have them be selectable. You sim with approach them for a makeover and bring them to the mirror after which you get to pick out their hair and makeup etc.

[KellyQ]

Having been experimenting with the Townie/NPC maker in Nightlife, I've noticed that there are some new "downtownie" templates that have been added with the expansion pack.  But unlike the base game townies, these templates seem to be not just faces, but clothing, hair color, make-up, etc. all locked such that you get an identical sim every time the template is used.  I discovered this after wiping a new neighborhood of all sims then using the generator to auto-create a set a new downtownies.

Ok, I give...what Townie/NPC maker?

What I find puzzling is the fact that all the good-looking ones are hidden or unusable.  The Tricou family in NL, for instance, are all dead, and they are certainly better-looking than the average townie.  The llama mascot now married and in the neighbourhood in my game is absolutely GORGEOUS, but he still goes everywhere in his stupid costume so I have to boolProp him out of it whenever he appears so I can go all gooey over him.  I also have a cow mascot in the neighbourhood who's quite pretty, certainly more so than the majority of dormies and Uni NPC's.

And who are the Tricous?

[Gus Smedstad]

I use boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and then hold shift and click on them...

Useful information.  I knew about the vanity, which helps with some of the deliberately ugly hairstyles that Townie college students have.  It doesn't help with hideously overwide mouths and cheeks, though.  Inge's shrub is clearly the most useful for doing a mass makeover, since you needn't have them on the lot.  On the other hand I may just go with the red alarm from Valdea, since it says it can do surgery on visitors, and usually it's more of an on-demand kind of thing.  As in, ye gods that face is hideous.

Edit: Hmmm, I don't know.  It seems you can't get just the red alarm object, and I definitely don't want the hookers in my neighborhood.
 
 - Gus

[Regina]

I also use Merola's mind control mirror to make them selectable.  What I've done in one neighborhood that had absolutely no Townies at all, was used Inge Jone's teleporter-plus shrub, moved in service workers, changed their clothes, hair styles, make-up, etc., then made them into Townies.  This actually works pretty well when you don't want to take the time to make CAS Townies but you're also stuck with the game generated sims.

Isn't there a way to generate Townies in Debug Mode?  I was thinking there was but haven't pursued it.

[Motoki]

There is yes, you do boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and then I think it was shift click on the mailbox and one of the options there. It does take a while too and you will get ones from the ugly Maxis templates, so don't say you weren't warned. Also you'll get tons of the same exact name Sharlene Walton, Aberjit Cho, Tosha Go, Brenda Sims bla bla bla.

There's also the new debug npc generator that comes with NL (the old dead tree, you get it by shift clicking on a sim with testingcheats on then doing spawn and I think it's called NPC Maker or something like that) but I haven't really messed with it yet so not sure if it does mass spawning or just one at a time.

[nectere]

There's also the new debug npc generator that comes with NL (the old dead tree, you get it by shift clicking on a sim with testingcheats on then doing spawn and I think it's called NPC Maker or something like that) but I haven't really messed with it yet so not sure if it does mass spawning or just one at a time.

You can do both, you switch to DT townies, make GVs, select gender of what you are going to generate, make sims into townies and so on. Try it, you might like it. Its called NPC/Townie Maker.

[AllenABQ]

Having been experimenting with the Townie/NPC maker in Nightlife, I've noticed that there are some new "downtownie" templates that have been added with the expansion pack.  But unlike the base game townies, these templates seem to be not just faces, but clothing, hair color, make-up, etc. all locked such that you get an identical sim every time the template is used.  I discovered this after wiping a new neighborhood of all sims then using the generator to auto-create a set a new downtownies.

Ok, I give...what Townie/NPC maker?

What I find puzzling is the fact that all the good-looking ones are hidden or unusable.  The Tricou family in NL, for instance, are all dead, and they are certainly better-looking than the average townie.  The llama mascot now married and in the neighbourhood in my game is absolutely GORGEOUS, but he still goes everywhere in his stupid costume so I have to boolProp him out of it whenever he appears so I can go all gooey over him.  I also have a cow mascot in the neighbourhood who's quite pretty, certainly more so than the majority of dormies and Uni NPC's.

And who are the Tricous?

The Townie/NPC maker is a cheat object availble in the game.  It forces the game to generate townies, downtownies and NPCs of all varieties.  It also has a specialized function that allows you to turn a playable sim into a townie or downtownie.  So you can create your own townies in CAS first if you want.

You get the object by doing 'boolprop testingCheatsEnabled true'.  Then shift-clicking on a sim.  It's in the Spawn submenu.  In Nightlife the Maker is a leafless tree.  In Uni it was a box.

The Tricous are a family of dead sims that shipped with Nightlife.  Their headstones are in Gothier Green Lawns.  SimPE indicates they are full ghosts so I imagine if you visit the GGL at night you might run into them if you're lucky.

[Brynne]

There are also 3 Tricou headstones on the "house of fallen trees" lot, for Fricorith, Gvadouin, and Rainelle (I am sure I mangled the spelling of the second one). With very active ghosts.

[AllenABQ]

I thought I would post a rogue's gallery of my newly generated downtownies.  This was what I meant by downtownie templates.  All these guys were "randomly" generated in a new town that had been wiped with "deleteAllCharacters" first.  You'll notice that I even got a few duplicates in the new pack as well.

But it appears that the new templates are even more rigid than the base game ones.  All these people show up as default NL downtownies as well, although the default ones include a few more that I believe are templates as well.

http://home.comcast.net/~hairysims/images/gallery1.jpg

 

[Motoki]

Those aren't so bad, but I instantly recognize about half of them. I guess we have to sacrifice variety for better looking sims and I really don't think there is any good way to randomize makeup. 

[AllenABQ]

They are a cut above the regular FUGLY townies, but the game also generates some downtownies using the FUGLY templates as well.  Also, all the new downtown NPCs were generated using the FUGLY templates.

In my neighborhood I play, I began to kill off some downtownies to the point where the game started making new ones.  I ended up with TWO MORE of the exact same guy in the bowling shirt (2nd row, 4th column) for a total of three bowling-shirt-guy clones running around my neighborhood.

I've held off killing any more downtownies until I can spend some time making my own that I'll import with the tree.

[Regina]

There's also the new debug npc generator that comes with NL (the old dead tree, you get it by shift clicking on a sim with testingcheats on then doing spawn and I think it's called NPC Maker or something like that) but I haven't really messed with it yet so not sure if it does mass spawning or just one at a time.

I tried this last night and now my vampireless, Bigless, Slobless neighborhood is no longer without!  It took something like 10 times of re-loads without saving to generate a halfway decent looking Mr. Big (for crying out loud--someone that conceited has to have something to be conceited about, right?).  I struck gold with the Diva first go-around and it only took a couple of times on the Count.

It works almost exactly like the one I had downloaded before NL which was really just a 'buyable' version.  I did notice an oddity, though.  Under the option for generating Downtown NPCs there are no waiters or bartenders.  You can, however, generate plain vampire Townies which could be fun.  Oh, and generating sims like the Grand Vampires, Mr. Big & Diva and the Slobs is done under the 'special' Downtownies section.

[AllenABQ]

There's also the new debug npc generator that comes with NL (the old dead tree, you get it by shift clicking on a sim with testingcheats on then doing spawn and I think it's called NPC Maker or something like that) but I haven't really messed with it yet so not sure if it does mass spawning or just one at a time.

I tried this last night and now my vampireless, Bigless, Slobless neighborhood is no longer without!  It took something like 10 times of re-loads without saving to generate a halfway decent looking Mr. Big (for crying out loud--someone that conceited has to have something to be conceited about, right?).  I struck gold with the Diva first go-around and it only took a couple of times on the Count.

It works almost exactly like the one I had downloaded before NL which was really just a 'buyable' version.  I did notice an oddity, though.  Under the option for generating Downtown NPCs there are no waiters or bartenders.  You can, however, generate plain vampire Townies which could be fun.  Oh, and generating sims like the Grand Vampires, Mr. Big & Diva and the Slobs is done under the 'special' Downtownies section.

Something else I also noticed about the NL Townie Maker.  There's no option to generate EP1 townies -- in other words students and professors.  You can generate University NPCs, but professors were always listed in the townie group.  Then again... maybe you need to invoke the townie maker on a University lot in order to get that option... hmmm......

[Regina]

There's no option to generate EP1 townies -- in other words students and professors.  You can generate University NPCs, but professors were always listed in the townie group.  Then again... maybe you need to invoke the townie maker on a University lot in order to get that option... hmmm......

That's something to think about anyway, but it does seem odd some of the Downtown NPCs can be generated while others can't.  Still, you could have a point.