Sims Abhors a Vacuum

Sims Abhors a Vacuum

In the course of my game, I've changed two archetypes to player characters: the slobby girl who always wears her pajamas everywhere and the diva in the black dress. Or is it the red dress with the black scarf? I can never remember ...

The game created replacements! Suddenly there's this chick named Chris London who always wears her jammies, and a new, blonde diva is on the scene, primping it up at every opportunity.

Just an interesting thing I've observed ...

Lynet, after you made the Count a PC, did the game make a new one? Just wondering ...

 

Yup, another Count. I don't remember his name or anything because I had no interest in him, but I saw him at one of the downtown clubs. I remember once that I had three vampires at one of the clubs, watching a fight that occurred spontaneously between two characters that I wasn't playing. The vampires, including the new Count who happened to be there, all gathered to watch the fight. I thought I'd taken pictures but I've got so many pictures now I can't recall where these might be filed. If I ever find them I'll post them.

Just think--if you court the Count and marry him off, another Count comes along to replace him. You could fill the town with Transylvanian royalty.

 

My game did. After Count Houston moved in with Eirene, Count Eric showed up and started biting townies left and right. Countess Rebecca is very shy - I hardly ever see her at all.

My diva, Barbara, has an interesting story. Count Houston and Eirene (now also a vampire) wanted to buy the House of Fallen Trees, but had very little money. Eirene befriended Barbara the Diva and moved her in. They now had enough to buy the house! After they all moved in, Eirene bit Barbara too.

When she moved in, Barbara had a night job, professional party guest. She lost it due to a chance card. Doh! So she went jobless for a while, but being a fortune sim, she was getting depressed. I forget now what her LTW was, but it was career related so I got her a job in that field. I built a bigger garage so she could keep her coffin in there and not have to go outside in the daytime.

Well, when I expanded the garage I missed one section of wall. When she came home from work, she tried to get off the driveway (Watch Out!) and ended up outside. I couldn't stop her. Her needs plummeted and she died. It was then that I noticed that a section of wall was missing from the garage. Poor Barbara.

So I moved on to another family who has a cowplant and grimmy phone. This family already has a zombie in it, who was their former maid before they fed her to the cowplant. They wanted a free slave and nanny and now Gina the zombie-maid-slave cleans house and babysits all day and night. Well, when I played with them after Barbara's death, the wife wanted to make a zombie of Barbara too. So, she did.

Barbara was resurrected as a zombie, and cured of vampirism. They make her wear a maid uniform just like Gina does. She now has long snaky black hair and ghastly looking makeup. She looks a fright these days.

I had a plan in mind that when the kids grew up and no longer needed a nanny I would kill them and resurrect them again into normal sims, but I hear now that they can never go back to normal? I'm not sure now what I am going to do with them. I had images of Barbara marrying Sterling, the Mr. Big, and having lots of stuck-up, snobby children.

Sorry, I kind of went off on my own tangent here!

 

Yeah, but it was very funny.

 

I meant to say after all that, that Barbara was replaced by a new Diva!

 

lol, going off topic within your own post...priceless!

 

I found two pictures. I missed them the first go 'round because they were so dark--taken at night in a dance club. I've brightened them considerably so that you can see the vampires better.

First picture, there are actually four vampires watching the fight, one to the left behind another citizen (simizen? ), one in front wearing a hat (I know Duke was a vampire at that point because of the hat) and my bad guy, Vampire Quinn (way in the back,) and the Count on the right.

The second picture is of the two Counts. The Count on the left was generated after the Count on the right moved into a household.

I'm pretty sure I was playing with the Vampire Duke at that point and all the others just happened to show up at the club. It was an exciting night.

 

Simizen. I like that.

And I love the story of Diva Barbara. Too funny! Mine's named Heidi, but she's the same chick. She and Lola are loaded, now, with 230,000 simoleans.

Wonder if blondie is also a rich Professional Party Guest ... Heidi's kinda nasty, though, so I'm not in a hurry to "playerize" the new one, just in case they're two peas in a pod.

I wouldn't have had Heidi become a PC, but she was Lola's best friend and the obvious choice.

 

Well, Death By "Watch Out!" is certainly new. You should get the Anti-Watchout hack, which stops sims from trying to watch out....for unmanned vehicles. Because, you know, unmanned cars are such a health hazard and people really have to worry about blocking an unmanned car from leaving, right?

 

I'll have to get that. I hate the stupid Watch Out!

After I fixed the missing wall section in the garage, my vampires no longer try to walk outside when they get out of the car. At least not because of Watch Out! They always want to take out the trash first thing, but I can at least stop them if I'm paying attention.

 

I'm afraid vampires and autonomy don't mix. When you have a sim that will die instantly if it doesn't adhere to a rigid, fixed schedule without deviation or exception, letting them just wander about on their own using crippled Maxian AI is a good way to get them killed.

You may be interested in the "Sleep Control Clock", another fine item which helps suppress the desire of vampires to constantly awaken during the day (and die).

 

LOL @ JM aka "Hustle Man"...whatever you need...he got it!

 

One of JMP's hacks that he neglected to mention is the "notownierespawn" or whatever it's called. I have it installed in my game, along with it's siblings that control the population of dormies and SS members. That keeps my population down. But, I have noticed that after killing off PJ girl, another one did pop up.

 

The Slob, aka "PJ Girl", as well as the Diva/Mr. Big, and the Vampires, are not townies, they are NPCs. The game will stubbornly generate new ones to replace old ones removed, until there are at least 3, more if needed. Suppressing this behavior is not feasible or particularly wise, since the game assumes it will happen if intentionally short-circuited, the game will malfunction when it cannot generate a necessary NPC.

It is generally recommended that you not kill or marry NPCs for this reason.

 

And the difference between townies and NPCs being ... what, exactly? I thought everyone had all the same "bodies" although some have different names ... so how do I know which is which?

 

LOL Don't worry SBW the rules didn't change while you weren't looking. Pescado was simply drawing out attention to the fact that his notownieregen hack takes a finely tuned look at those characters because one or two of them are treated by the game as indispensible (eg the Primpadonna and the PJ Slobette) and that he therefore considers such characters as being above mere townie status and entitled to the more reverential NPC title. I don't think he was deliberately overlooking the fact that all townies are by definition non-playable characters ... just using the two terms differently within the context of the game. On no! my headache has come back

 

I've already "playerized" two of them, so I was just wondering how to avoid it when I don't know which is which. So confusing ...

Obviously, Smoking Jacket Guy and the Count and Countess are NPCs, and probably pajama slob guy, in addition to the Diva and pajama slob girl, but are there others?

Should I avoid marrying a cow or llama, not that I'd want to anyway ... but are they NPCs? How about cheerleaders? Coaches? Professors? Headmasters? I assume they're all NPCs too? How about Firefighters, maids, repairmen, nannies ... Oooh, now I've got a headache.

As far as I can tell, what y'all are saying is, Joe Carr and the like are OK, but anyone unusual should be avoided. That is, someone with a job a PC can't do, or someone with unusual quirks.

Yes?

 

Yep, I'm kindof feeling that headache coming on as well.

Okay, my definitions as I understand them are as follows. JMP or anyone more awsome than me please correct me if I'm wrong.

1) Townies: basic Maxis-generated sims that came with the base game. Marsha, Orlando, Sophie, and such are of this nature.

2) NPC's: Service Sims that must be present for the game to function right. If you marry/move in/murder one off, another on generates, which can add to your character files, therefore bloating your neighborhood. These sims are Maids, fire fighters, nannies, gardeners, cooks, baristas, wait staff, DJ's, college mascots, and chefs.

3) Specialty NPC's: These sims are non-playable and most are non interactable. They are mainly just there to either make you laugh or annoy you. These would be "Dr. Feelgood", the social bunny, Grimmy and his hula honeys, the coach, and Mrs. Crumplebottom.

4) Dormies: UNI Vermin who inhabit your dorms, eat your food, take up space on the couch or at the bubble blower, and drink all of you juice keg. They serve no purpose except to fill space in the dorms and fulfill social needs.

5) SS Members: Same as Dormies, just at the Secret Society House. Oh, and better dressed.

6) Downtownies: (Now, here is where my confusion lies). These are the new Maxis-generated Sims that inhabit Downtown. I have several different ones, but I think that everyone can agree we have the same basic archetypes, but different names. In my game I have PJ boy and PJ Girl, Diva and "Don Juan", Club Boy and Club Girl, The Count and the Countessa, hat-girl, a couple of "hip" elders, and a couple of teenagers who hang around the clubs. Oh, there are a few more Downtownies than that, but those are the ones that are in everyone's game. Now, JMP, you're telling me that they are really NPC's and not to be interacted with the same way we would service sims if we don't want our neighborhood bloated up? Because so far I've already married Luc the Club Boy and Cara the blonde hat girl.

 

Well, since marrying an NPC adds points for the Legacy Challenge, I've already done it, but I've made a neighborhood specifically for Legacies.

 

This poor baby will be scarred for life...

I'm posting this in this thread because this is where I posted before about my former diva, Barbara.

Barbara has now died for the second, and probably final, time.

Picture 1: Barbara is taking the baby to give to Mom who's standing near the couch. She doesn't make it. She puts the baby down, is frightened by the ghost of an angry cowplant victim, and collapses next to the baby. Ghost is gleeful.

Picture 2: Grimmy arrives and the baby gets the most frightening sight of it's poor young life. Mom couldn't care less, she's going to go lie on the couch.

Picture 3: Dad shows up to sigh over Barbara's death. Ghost tries it's best to kill him too. Might as well, since Grimmy's already here! Dad survives though, and the baby is put safely to bed after the drama is over.

Barbara makes a very vengeful ghost also! She almost killed Dad the very next night after she died. He just loved seeing her ghost though.

Mom really really wants to resurrect Barbara again. I'm thinking it's time to let poor Barbara rest in peace.