I have never used the allmenus cheat and my initial search turns up nothing. Is it a boolprop cheat or do I just type in allmenus on?

ETA: OK, so, I am an idiot. If finally occurred to me to test this in another household (the neighborhood being all backed up, so it doesn't matter what I do), so I went into another household with a business owner, and decided to start from first principles and leave no point untested, I clicked on another household member, chose Propose -- and there was Transfer Business.

So I took Madge and MJ back home, and sure enough, I could Propose/ Transfer Business. I did, and though a deed didn't appear (it didn't appear for Margaret, either, no biggy), when I moved him back into his own house and chose walk to/community lot, the store showed up with the little ownership icon.

Apparently, you can't transfer ownership of a business you're in. You have to do it from the home lot. And whether it's my ever-worsening eyesight, or that phenomenon where you look straight at something and can't see it, the first time I tried to do that, I just missed the interaction.

I am so tired. Last week was stressful on a lot of fronts and this was not helping. But I can play this neighborhood again and if this is the stupidest thing I do this month, I'll be well off. So, cheers.

You need to edit the GlobalProps file too.
There's a guide here: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_guide:Allmenus_cheat

You could put sculptures up for them to view. Even hide them in the walls, so they look like they're admiring the ruins. Souvenir shop, food place, campfire, maybe put the Uni camera up so they can look like they're taking pictures of the scenery.



Get some rest! Hope you feel better soon.

I think you may be over thinking it, @Zarathustra. Charity gave you some good ideas, but I'll throw in my two cents, too. Unlike say, TS3, I think that in TS2, it makes perfect sense to just have a vista or landmark/park to visit! Sims can go on tour anywhere, including community lots. I know I have my sims go to some lots and take a tour to simulate touring the lot they're on. So that's one activity right there, . And there is some photo functionality--sims can ask others to take pictures of them so it also makes sense to set up a spot for all the tourists to line up and take their photos at. You can always put a little sign to indicate where the photo spot is, even if users have to manually tell their sims Go Here. Though again, depending on your lot, you can set up a visitor's center with a gift shop and photo area, complete with a backdrop and the Uni camera for pictures. You can make a little walking or hiking trail, depending on terrain, to set up different photo spots, or just different areas to eat. Or maybe there's a secret hot spring. Idk. Charity was spot on about the food--is there a camp area and a place to barbeque? Or a rest stop with a food stand? Or maybe there's spot where people park their cars and trailers and you can set up some folding chairs, barbeque, and a game of poker or chess? Do sims come and set out some easels, to paint the scenery? Or maybe bring their telescopes to stargaze at night? Oh, and there's always birdwatching and bug hunting, so you don't really need to place down objects for sims to have something to do.

@Zarathustra

Sims are rather good at keeping themselves busy.

Enough seating, and the many of them will happily sit and chat all day long.

Others may find a space somewhere and start playing Kicky bag.

I like using the BBQ, because Sims will also just sit and talk at the tables, even if they are not eating.

Sorry for the late reply, had to do some playtesting. The NPC stylist doesn't appear to interfere with the salon at all. I teleported her in and she just stood around talking to other townies, even when my playable wasn't actively being a stylist. I'm wondering if she can be made a townie the same way as carpool drivers.

For me, a stylist NPC always stands still waiting for orders to cut hair. She does not talk to townies and does not move around to satisfy motives. In function main my person type := npc and my misc flags || disable free will. Hence a mod of stylist improvement would be needed for her to do anything when visiting. If NPC is on the job, do job, return to the styling chair when disturbed, else become a normal visitor.

Alternatively, on could change the original guid to make her a TemplatePerson, but then she wouldn't be a stylist anymore.

Despite what jonasn said on 15th June and today, and despite hairstylists previously being called problematic on the (fandom) Sims Wiki, I seem to recall that April Black (who seems to have become the accepted authority on such matters) said in her recent YouTube video, that hairstylists are in fact quite safe to befriend / make playable, without too much odd behaviour. If, as you say @pinkdynamite, she was quite happy to chat with townies in your salon, it sounds like making her a townie shouldn't be a problem, even without a mod. However, before I say anything definitive, I'll have to find April Black's video and watch it again. I may be misremembering.

I've been wondering if it would be OK to give my NPC hairstylists gold Cosmetology Badges, because, it turns out, they're not all that good at their job. I hope that would mean that, if my Sim paid for a makeover at an unowned community lot, they would have a near-100% guarantee of it being successful. (I have four generated NPC hairstylists in the spa in Bluewater.)

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1qJLry_MWY
(around 5.00) + the rest of the video for how to fix glitchy NPCs if you want to make them playable.

Here's a thing I wonder about semi-regularly...why are we still doing separate recolours for the two Hemnes dressers (3-drawer and 6-drawer)? There are a gazillion recolours, and we have to have them all twice over.
Surely one could have been repo'd to the other by now, but I have never seen such a mod, nor any discussion about it. Perhaps there is some impediment?

Not really a question just sharing a little frustration

I have never really tried to modify the game past a few mods but tried to create my first NPC. Seemed to work, I created a maid called Kate Bussy and when I try to employ them as a maid it seems to work but another of the maids turned up. Will have to try again

Maybe she's bussy with some other clients

Too many maids, I made one playable so there were only three left. She turns up now but in the maids clothes and hair but her make up.
Still so much to learn and figure out after so many years.

Thanks simmer22!

@pinkdynamite : I've now watched the start of that video again, and I remembered right: starting at 4:40 April Black says that Hair Stylists are completely safe to make playable. She's had one marry a Sim in her game. So it should be totally safe to make your stylist playable or a townie. I think she demonstrated that she was safe, when she chatted with other townies.

Does anyone know if there's any reason why I shouldn't give my NPC Hair Stylists gold cosmetology badges as I mentioned in my post 37333 above? I can't think of any reason why that shouldn't work to make them into better hair stylists.

You might already have a mod for stylist, maybe in a package that offers a thousand fixes. Of course you can add skill badge tokens if you want. They will either be used or serve for flavor. If they didn't make the NPC professional by default as maid or gardener is, that indicates little attention to this job, which everyone can do on a mirror.

April seems to think that non-functional is still "safe" and therefore ok. An NPC is a (not very) random generation without soul. You could make another just as good with a few clicks if you need a new family member.

Thanks @AndrewGloria - I honestly had forgotten hair stylists were part of the game until I was poking about in SimPE and noticed a new character. I think she must have come in with a salon I downloaded and put in my neighbourhood because I never had an NPC stylist before that.

Thanks for sharing that video @simmer22 - I can never find these things when I'm looking for them!


This should not have made me laugh as hard as it did.

When you put a salon chair on a community lot, it generates the NPC immediately. If you have a look at lots available for download (hair salons) you may actually see the NPC's in the pics!

The Lot Cleaner will remove them from the lot, but not from the hood.

When I made Traderville, I only got the hood empty with the 4th try (at that stage I had disabled the empty N1-hood) - not sure if the disabling helped, but the hood finally did not have a stylist.

I think they have always been deemed safe to play, like most NPC's? I only knew not to play Crumplebottom, the Social Worker, the Grim Reaper and dear old Unsavory and some others like that.

Do they spawn even if you put a chair on an owned lot?

No, but you can't put any owned lots in an empty hood.

They probably spawn because a hair salon works without being owned.

I don't think they are affected by the anti-redundancy mod, like cashiers and bar tenders, each chair spawns its own stylist.

But if you didn't place any chairs until someone had bought the lot then you shouldn't get any stylists?

I'm sorting some statistic from my game file and 52 of my 413 sims does not have a predestined hobby (or natural talent as also seems to be called).
How come?
I thought all of them had one with a few exceptions. (52 is a lot more than I thought.)

My sim-owned salon bought her comm lot and then bought a chair and no stylist spawned. I downloaded this other lot because I liked the building itself and it came with two chairs yet only spawned one stylist when I placed it in the neighbourhood. Not sure why that happened, but those were my findings anyway.

No. Or at least not in my game. Like restaurant chefs, they may occasionally spawn in Buy Mode when you place a makeover chair on a lot. But I have placed these chairs on both owned community lots and on home lots, which Sims registered as home businesses. In none of these cases has an NPC hair stylist appeared. There were none at all in my game until I attached Bluewater Village to Veronaville, and even then I think they may only have spawned when I first sent a playable Sim to the Bluewater Baths and Salon. Then four of them spawned, one for each makeover chair. They are all males -- Shaw Marsden (Popularity, Aries), Oscar Meadows (Family, Cancer), Garrick Avery (Family, Aquarius), and (Spencer North (Romance, Libra). I wasn't yet using default replacement face templates, so they have Maxis template faces. So some of them (Shaw Marsden in particular!) look a bit challenged in the beauty stakes. I didn't find any good pictures of them, so I sent Chester Gieke and Joseph Lambert to the salon yesterday to get pictures. I'll post them in male Sims picture thread, and post a link when they're ready.

@jonasn : if you look at what both April Black and pinkdynamite say about hair stylists, they both say they were behaving fairly normally. They do interact autonomously with other Sims and talk with them. They don't just stand doing nothing (like the motor drivers and some other NPCs) until they have someone in their chair. But, as until very recently I believed they might be dangerous to my game, I had no contact with them myself, except for two or three of my Sims getting haircuts in their salon. So, yesterday (after a full backup of my game) I encouraged Chester and Joseph to talk to them. As with other NPCs, no all interactions were available, but they did respond, and relationships developed. I can't help thinking that, if I were a Sim living in the Veronaville conurbation, I might be attracted to some of them despite some (Shaw Marsden in particular!) being a bit facially challenged. In particular, Joseph (Chester's teenage boyfriend) spent a bit of time with Oscar Meadows, and they seemed to get on quite well. So when he had got back to Chester's place, and Chester had invited him to stay the night, Joseph rang Oscar and talked to him for a while on the 'phone. The next morning (which happened to be Sunday), Joseph rang Oscar again and invited him to breakfast. After some initial hesitation, Oscar accepted the invitation and came round, bringing Craig Royce, the Warden of the downtown "Teen Townie Hostel" and originally a Maxis Downtownie (the male Slob), with him. As a visitor, Oscar seemed "normalish"; some expected interactions with him (like Entertain) didn't seem to be available. But I'll continue to play the situation and see how it develops. I'm not looking for anything beyond friendship, certainly not as far as Joseph and Chester are concerned. They both have each other. But I suppose that Craig Royce might conceivably look for something more. I think he is looking for love. I don't know why you think they will be soulless: Joseph and I think that Oscar probably does have a soul, but, for the moment, the jury is still out.

I'll post this now, and proof read it tomorrow, so apologies for any howlers meantime!!

Without mods, the stylist does not autonomously interact with other people because her free will is disabled, and other people won't pick her as a target because she is an NPC person type, which also limits the interactions available to the player.

I started a test neighborhood in Mansion 1.77.0.66. Here I created 4 stylists in the Bluwater spa. Then I loaded another lot and spawned the NPCs to visit, and also spawned a normal townie. I also moved the same 4 NPCs into the Townies family and spawned them again. They kept standing idle at the spawn point while the townie was walking around and using a toilet. I highlight how their person type is 2, semi flag 24#5 is set, and that only a small menu is shown on them.

No mods were loaded, except bare essentials to spawn and observe people.

https://imgbox.com/g/7a0P7cjNhs

If you see stylist interacting, you must either have a mod or maybe a patch to a later version. She may be "safe" (and most things were later to be found safe), but is not "functional". It is very easy to make an NPC functional, as I did with the food stand chef.

My test subject also got his hair mangled on the first try without her asking what style I wanted, and not waiting for Notify.