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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 1:08 AM
Default Question
So I recently downloaded a community lot made by SpringSims and inside of the lot there were already sims in there.. Now this hood has never been played before but I was wondering, do I delete the lot or remake the neighborhood. I ran hoodchecker and nothing was wrong but once again this hood has no sims except some landlords and breakdancer npcs and these sims that were in the lot I downloaded.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 1:16 AM
Any type of residential lots with sims already in them are bad, and those will corrupt any neighborhood you place them in.

Community lots don't come with sims. If they seem to do so it's probably a restaurant or shop with items that spawn in NPC sims if you visit the lot with a sim (these show up immediately when their work stations are there), or sims from the neighborhood making a visit (they tend to show up pretty quickly). Community lots should not have sims if visited in build mode from the neighborhood.

If you have mods to limit NPC spawning, I think the game will check to see how many NPCs are needed to fill the stations and only spawn in that number.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 5:25 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 12th Sep 2021 at 6:45 AM.
^ Community lot visitors (apart from NPCs) and residential walkbys/visitors are by default limited to somewhere between 2-8, I think. There are mods to edit that. The cheat intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims # in your userstartup (replace # with a number, around 10-15 shouldn't wreck havoc on most computers) also helps, but it may take into account NPCs and possibly also playable sims, time of day ingame, your computer specs, and various other things.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#5 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 8:01 AM
Quote: Originally posted by panicdrillz
So I recently downloaded a community lot made by SpringSims and inside of the lot there were already sims in there.. Now this hood has never been played before but I was wondering, do I delete the lot or remake the neighborhood. I ran hoodchecker and nothing was wrong but once again this hood has no sims except some landlords and breakdancer npcs and these sims that were in the lot I downloaded.


Community lots can generate npc's occasionally by going live as they are saved. The builder may not even know. I would clean the lot of sim refrences.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 8:24 PM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
Community lots can generate npc's occasionally by going live as they are saved. The builder may not even know. I would clean the lot of sim refrences.


how do I go about cleaning the lot?



also I've found out that they were NPCs generated by salon chairs. did not know the game was capable of doing that with these objects
Mad Poster
#8 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 10:56 PM
Chris Hatch made a Lot Cleaner. I'm not sure where to get it now. Maybe someone could post a link? Myself I like to clean lots manually by opening the lot file in SimPE and deleting all the Sim-related records. The ones I delete from lots are Sim Relations (SREL), Sim Scores (SCOR), and Sim Information (SIMI). The last one contains the price / value of the lot, so you really have to let the game generate a new one. Deleting all of these manually (especially the SIMI record) is probably a sign of paranoia on my part. I suspect that Chris Hatch's Lot Cleaner is more than adequate. I really only do a thorough manual clean on lots that intend to share. I really don't want anything bad that just might be in my game, to contaminate another Simmer's game.

I'm really not quite sure what's been going on here. Are you quite sure these Sims were in the lot when you downloaded it, and weren't generated after you added it to your neighbourhood? Sims can generate when a lot is opened in Build/Buy mode, but it's comparatively rare. It's only happened once in my game (a restaurant chef in an otherwise Sim-free building 'hood). It is however perfectly normal for Hairstylists to generate when you add a makeover chair to an unowned community lot. Similarly chefs, hosts and waiters/waitresses will generate in a restaurant, teenage cashiers at every cash register, bartenders at bars, etc., etc. Despite what Aspersim says, these are not Object Sims -- they all have character files in their neighbourhood Characters folder. Object Sims have no character files; their character data is held in the Program Files, and is therefore shared by all your neighbourhoods. Despite having character files, some NPCs (the Hairstylists for example) are thought to be unsafe to make playable. A full analysis of the subject of safe and unsafe NPCs can be found on the Fandom Sims Wiki here.

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retired moderator
#9 Old 12th Sep 2021 at 11:02 PM
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#10 Old 13th Sep 2021 at 12:03 AM
Quote: Originally posted by panicdrillz
how do I go about cleaning the lot?



also I've found out that they were NPCs generated by salon chairs. did not know the game was capable of doing that with these objects


One of my lots generated a salon chair worker twice! So I had to clean it twice. And another lot it was a bartender, but any item that spawns an npc will, if the lot goes live, for even a fraction of a second, as you save it while building. It's a huge annoyance.

Use to be it was a manual task in SimPE but Chris Hatch made an add-on file to the Lot Compressor. I have a tutorial here: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=609188 scroll down to method 2.

Just adding if the NPC spawns in your own game where you are playing the lot, that is fine. You just don't want to bring NPC's from outside in.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
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