A supposedly empty neighborhood that is full of sims

Thanks, friend! A day may indeed come, that I wish to work from an empty template... who knows.

In general, though, I'm actually happy having some premade simmies around. There are some, like Ivy Copur for example, that I *L*O*V*E* having around. She is by far my favorite (PV) Townie. And with a *little* work, AL's La Shawn Cameron is also a cool sim. In all my games so far, there has always been some household that included either of these sims.

BO said: "In general, though, I'm actually happy having some premade simmies around. " I agree completely.My own list of favorites is a bit different, but the attitude's the same. When I started this thread it seemed coimpletely reasonable to me that the game should have a state where the main cast of characters was there, but the pets were limited to say 20 for variety, the social group townies likewise, and the things like vacation locals and dormies wouldn't spawn until you needed them, and the service townies would be one each until you needed another. What I've learned is that this state can't be made to exist.

So this leaves me with the choice of eliminating all the Maxis sims (or all of certain categories, which I'm grateful to know)and making all my own, or adapting to what the game normally provides. I don't want complete control over everybody who shows up in my game: I save that for my writing! To me, the difference between a game and a job of writing is all about how the game does some of the work and also provides me with situations I don't have to dream up on my own (surprises, too!).

So four hundred sims it is, alas.

At least I know the mods are working, though differently than I thought. Or at least I think they are. After I made and moved in my first family to their apartment (in which for the first time I used the faces the game suggested to me, after tweaking them), I had 404 sims. No, it wasn't "not found:" but no more sims had been added than the ones in the family.

Now I have to spend some time with Bodyshop because I don't have enough of my own faces on file.

I also play with favourite maxis pre-made sims in my game. I cloned them in SimPE and loaded them up in BodyShop (Brittany Parker, Tosha Go, Marsha Bruenig, Malcolm Landgraab IV, Tessa Ramirez and her dad (Checo) renamed to Charles Ramirez, Gilbert Jacquet, Rosemarie Jitmakusol, Tiffany Yang, and Zoe Schehl) I play them all as townies and befriend them when I am ready to make them playable (for the teens and children that is in the university stage as Tosha, Brittany and Tessa ran a sorority) Marsha Bruenig is the only townie who I made a playable. She is a homeless sim who lives downtown next to a public toilet--I have no idea why I made her that way!

Anyway, just letting you guys know that you can play with as many of your favourite pre-made townies as you choose, and with testingcheats you can generate 30 new townies if you aren't up to the task of making them yourself. Hope that helps!

But those characters aren't the exact same as the pre-mades -- they're sims you made with the premade faces. Not the same thing.

...and the same personalities, zodiac signs, skills, interests, etc. In regards to BHAVs they will have the same reactions to object/people interactions because they are clones. Ironically, any changes to the original Maxis pre-mades, happens on their face rather than their personality.