Nine Potato-Head Unknowns?

[Strangel]

Mmkay, prepared for the sticks and fun-making.

I'm building a new 'hood to drop a halted legacy into, since the old 'hood was DAC'ed before I knew what I was doing and began to implode. I've used the various clean templates, followed the tutorials, etc. I made a small test 'hood for fumbling around and I figured I was ready to move on to building the new legacy 'hood. I opened the place in SimPE 0.62 and found the usual suspects.. Father Time, Toddler New Year, Therapist, Grim, etc. I also found NINE "Mr. Potato Head" Unknown files. What are these, are they safe to delete, blah blah blah.

I await the sharpness of poking and the blinding light of teh Awesomeness.



Edit: Base is Holiday version and everything up to Seasons, no BV, I think fully patched.. minus the craptastic Holiday junk that was later released for MOAR FUNDS.

[Sivany]

Some NPC's don't have any identification in SimPE. I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that the remote control car was one of them, although I could never work out why that object had a character file in the first place. I know that there are at least 4 characters that were known to always show up as unknowns in SimPE, although that was a few expansions ago so there might be more characters added to that list since then.

I know relationships to unknowns are safe to delete because they just regenerate next time you play the game if they are needed. I don't know about the actual character files though, I would suspect not, but I'm sure someone more awesome than me can confirm either way. I'm quite interested to know more about these too since I like my neighbourhood files to be nice and tidy.

[pioupiou]

I think there is also the skunk and the bird NPC from pets and the robot NPC from OFB.
I am not awesome but I think the remote (and the bird, and the robot) need an invisible NPC because they move across the lot and can interact with sims (bird, sentry bot).

[Strangel]

Aha! Thanks, guys (or girls, as the case may be  ) now I know I didn't go and make another error in setting up the towns. All's left to do now is.. figure out why Uni sprouted a bunch of professors and why one family (all still living in the same house) keeps insisting on knowing they're related. LOL

[maxon]

When I did my numbers test with Seasons, there were 6 Unknowns - I did it too with BV but SimPE doesn't recognise quite a few of the new NPC types and there were a lot of Unknowns so I can't tell you for sure that the number of Unknowns has increased.  I was told by Jordi though that you shouldn't delete them and, yes, they represent 'NPCs' like the radio car and parrots.

Edit - adding a university always generates 24 professors.

[mitchellcjs]

adding a university always generates 24 professors.

Unless you already have a Uni, then it does not.  The second Uni uses the same professors as the first Uni.

[cwykes]

The 3 I know about from base and OFB are
Remote control car
Robot base from OFB
Mystery Sim

I haven't investigaed what Seasons added, but I have 5 unknowns in the couple of Seasons hoods I just checked in SimPE.  Perhaps the penguin is one. 

If an unknown has a genetics file and/or a swaf file, it's probably a dead/unlinked sim of some sort rather than a Eaxis file that SimPE doesn't label properly.  Those would need proper clean up.

I used to delete them before I knew what they were and clean up relationships to unknown and memories of unknown.  They don't have swaf files or genetics files.  I didn't notice any problems, but I'm not particularly observant or awesome. 

[maxon]

adding a university always generates 24 professors.

Unless you already have a Uni, then it does not.  The second Uni uses the same professors as the first Uni.

Correct but I didn't think the OP said it was a second Uni - adding a second uni will, however, add another 50 students.

[mitchellcjs]

Correct but I didn't think the OP said it was a second Uni - adding a second uni will, however, add another 50 students.

However, the OP said "always".  "Always" was incorrect.  "The first University you add to your neighborhood will add 24 professors, and each University you add will add 50 students" is much better.

[maxon]

However, the OP said "always".  "Always" was incorrect.  "The first University you add to your neighborhood will add 24 professors, and each University you add will add 50 students" is much better.

mmm - as I understood it, the OP said that she was trying to work out why adding a University had added 24 professors to her otherwise empty neighbourhood.  I assumed that she/he meant she/he had added only one - the first - university.  Maybe not.

[Strangel]

Yup, one campus. I believe I have all the NoRegen and NoSpawn and NoRedundancy hacks o'Awesomeness, so I assumed that meant there would only be THREE professors spawned, not two dozen.

[jsalemi]

No, there will always be 24 professors -- two for each major.

[eevilcat]

Each of my replacement pollination technicians shows up as an unknown in SimPE, so I assume that the original does too. I think the plantsim archetype is another unknown (if you have Seasons).

[jolrei]

Yup, one campus. I believe I have all the NoRegen and NoSpawn and NoRedundancy hacks o'Awesomeness, so I assumed that meant there would only be THREE professors spawned, not two dozen.

With the noregen hacks (including nodormiespawn) loaded, and using clean/empty uni templates properly, you will get the 24 professors (as noted previously), but no dormies/students.  If you don't have the empty templates you get the 50 students as well.

[Sivany]

So when I added a second Uni hood to my main neighbourhood I got 50 more students? Even though I have all the noregen hacks?

I'm just checking because this group of townie students looks exactly the same as the students in the first uni. Are they spawned from a special set of templates? I have default face replacements that I installed after creating the first uni but before creating the second so if they are spawned randomly you would think they would look different.

[jsalemi]

Dormies aren't spawned -- the EAxis dorm templates include them as characters.  So of course they all look alike, and since they already exist, they don't use your new face templates.  You have to use an empty dorm template to not get them.

[Sivany]

Dormies aren't spawned -- the EAxis dorm templates include them as characters.  So of course they all look alike, and since they already exist, they don't use your new face templates.  You have to use an empty dorm template to not get them.

Thanks for the info. I can't believe I somehow managed to avoid coming across that piece of information in all the threads I've read around here, especially since I knew how the Professors worked. Also I can't believe I completely forgot about using the cleaned up template when I wanted to make a new Uni for this hood. I guess this now means a few hours spent with the LotDebugger and SimPE. Once I've deleted them all I assume the game will regenerate at least some dormies, won't it? I've got notownieregn installed at the moment so I guess that will have to come out for a while first.

On a seperate note this is my 100th post. I just felt like mentioning it, since it's taken me nearly a year to get to it.

[Invisigoth]

Dormies aren't spawned -- the EAxis dorm templates include them as characters.  So of course they all look alike, and since they already exist, they don't use your new face templates.  You have to use an empty dorm template to not get them.

Thanks for the info. I can't believe I somehow managed to avoid coming across that piece of information in all the threads I've read around here, especially since I knew how the Professors worked. Also I can't believe I completely forgot about using the cleaned up template when I wanted to make a new Uni for this hood. I guess this now means a few hours spent with the LotDebugger and SimPE. Once I've deleted them all I assume the game will regenerate at least some dormies, won't it? I've got notownieregn installed at the moment so I guess that will have to come out for a while first.

On a seperate note this is my 100th post. I just felt like mentioning it, since it's taken me nearly a year to get to it.

Dormies will spawn as needed unless you have nodormieregen by Pescado. If you use this hack then you will have to create dormies yourself by making them in uni CAS and then turning them into townies with Inge's teleporter shrub (or another similar hacked object of your choice).

[maxon]

Yup, one campus. I believe I have all the NoRegen and NoSpawn and NoRedundancy hacks o'Awesomeness, so I assumed that meant there would only be THREE professors spawned, not two dozen.

No - the university only works with 24 professors (as someone else has said, I think).

If you load up a clean neighbourhood using the templates, I think the professors get generated either when you first enter the university neighbourhood or when you enter one of the lots.  That's what happened in Little Carping when I made the new super clean version.  I can't remember properly, to be honest, but I had this conversation a while back with Syberspunk and Jordi (I think it was Jordi) so if you're really interested you could search under one of our names and find the actual details (probably mine since I post far less than the other two).

Each of my replacement pollination technicians shows up as an unknown in SimPE, so I assume that the original does too. I think the plantsim archetype is another unknown (if you have Seasons).

Can't speak to the replacement PTs but the original PT and the plantsim definitely show up with their own icons in SimPE.  The Unknowns, AFAIK, are things like: penguin, remote controlled car, parrot and two others I can't figure out/remember - oh, wait, one of them might be a robot.  There were 5 unknowns in the game with Seasons (contra my earlier post which said 6 - sorry misremembered) but the Universal NPCs that show with their own icons are: Father Time, Grim Reaper, Hula Zombie, Ideal Plantsim, Mrs Crumplebottom, Pollination Technician, Santa Klaus, Stinky Skunk (who shows up as a kitten), Therapist, Toddler New Year so the Unknowns are none of those.  With BV, there's a problem at the moment with SimPE as many of the new sims show up with unknown icons (including the maids and witch doctor but not BigFoot) - presumably Quaxi is going to fix that before the official release.

[jolrei]

I can't believe I somehow managed to avoid coming across that piece of information in all the threads I've read around here, especially since I knew how the Professors worked. Also I can't believe I completely forgot about using the cleaned up template when I wanted to make a new Uni for this hood. I guess this now means a few hours spent with the LotDebugger and SimPE. Once I've deleted them all I assume the game will regenerate at least some dormies, won't it? I've got notownieregn installed at the moment so I guess that will have to come out for a while first.

On a seperate note this is my 100th post. I just felt like mentioning it, since it's taken me nearly a year to get to it.

Yes, we all can't believe it either, but sometimes things are simply the way they are.  Anyway, considering that you did, apparently miss things in some of the other posts, it may be helpful to suggest that perhaps you should consider carefully the method you wish to use to delete these dormies.  Simply pressing "delete" on the character files will not likely do the job, even if you have never played your hood.  See posts on "delete 2" (use that as search keyword).  No point in creating a hood if all sorts of dangling garbage (memories, SWAFs, sim DNA, etc.) simply makes it unplayable.

Depending on how many dormies/townies you want to delete, this is a bit of an 'involved' process.  It may be easier to delete your new hood, install the clean or empty templates (which will prevent the creation of the dormies and townies to begin with), make sure you have all the anti-regen/spawn hacks in, and build a nice new clean hood.  You can then spawn your townies/dormies using the townie creator or CAS-build them yourself.

BV has enough reported issues, causing hair loss in people not otherwise prone to it, that it makes no sense to create new problems of your own design.

Happy 100th.

[Sivany]

Simply pressing "delete" on the character files will not likely do the job, even if you have never played your hood.  See posts on "delete 2" (use that as search keyword).  No point in creating a hood if all sorts of dangling garbage (memories, SWAFs, sim DNA, etc.) simply makes it unplayable.

Depending on how many dormies/townies you want to delete, this is a bit of an 'involved' process.  It may be easier to delete your new hood, install the clean or empty templates (which will prevent the creation of the dormies and townies to begin with), make sure you have all the anti-regen/spawn hacks in, and build a nice new clean hood.  You can then spawn your townies/dormies using the townie creator or CAS-build them yourself.

Thanks, I've already used deleted 2 sucessfully many times, which is why I mentioned that this will mean spending a few hours with the lotdebugger and SimPE. Removing the hood would have been a good option, but unfortunately I've already moved in some of my playables so I think deleting is the way to go. I don't play Uni hoods very often and haven't made one since just after the expansion came out which is probably why I didn't know about the dormies being a standard set.

[jolrei]

Thanks, I've already used deleted 2 sucessfully many times, which is why I mentioned that this will mean spending a few hours with the lotdebugger and SimPE.

Whoops!  My turn to be completely embarrassed, I guess, along the lines of I can't believe I didn't see that.  Good luck.

I'll just go off somewhere else now for a bit and try to find the other braincell.

[jsalemi]

I just get rid of fugly dormies the Pescado way -- put nouniprotect in the game and let them kill themselves off with their own stupidity.

[seapup]

I just get rid of fugly dormies the Pescado way -- put nouniprotect in the game and let them kill themselves off with their own stupidity.

All my knowledge sims graduate with one or two urnstones in their inventory. 

[Sivany]

I just get rid of fugly dormies the Pescado way -- put nouniprotect in the game and let them kill themselves off with their own stupidity.

I've played with that hack in before, but my dormies stubbornly refuse to die. They just end up dropping to sleep in really inconvienient places so that in the end I have to wake them up to get them out the way. The stupid sims don't appear to sleep in beds when nouniprotect is in place even when I plonked a bed right in the middle of the corridor.

Whoops!  My turn to be completely embarrassed, I guess, along the lines of I can't believe I didn't see that.  Good luck.

I'll just go off somewhere else now for a bit and try to find the other braincell.

Don't worry jolrei, I guess we both need to pay more attention to what we're reading.