NRAAS and Celebrity system

How long has this game been running? Generally speaking, under NRaas SP worlds don't start out with sims having celebrity levels. They have to earn them, and if they cannot do so by socializing with those already gaining them it will be even more difficult. Some worlds like Starlight Shores and Bridgeport seem like they should have some to start, can't speak to custom ones though. But I think you will want to "seed" this world with some Level 2s and 3s at least just to get things started.

Oh wow, for some reason I misread and thought this was a relatively new game. Yes, by all means turn on the Allow Celeb in SP (it's not a MasterController command, it's strictly SP) as that would be throttling things so that they never even get started. "Friendship" is the general NRaas category that the celeb system falls under, that doesn't mean its focus is restricted to social interactions with what we call "friends."

It may be easier and you may want to go ahead and allow celebs to overrun the town actually and then work to restrict them. I usually work with all of the ways to get celeb points kept on but set very strict celeb level ratios so that after each level is filled up, no one can enter it from below until someone else moves further up,drops down, leaves town, or dies.

NRaas > SP > General Options > Options:Friendship > Options:Celebrity > Celebrity Ratio Levels (1 through 5).

The defaults are 100/50/25/12/6. Depends on the world I am playing and what I want to see happen, but I'm much happier with values more like 20/10/5/2/2. But also think about your world resident population. If you have 150 resident sims for example, then a cap of 2% is 3 sims (for Levels 4 and 5 each). Is that enough? And a cap of 20% at Level 1 would be 30 sims. Is that enough or too many?

Math can be fun, can't it? :p

I would add...
3. completing something noteworthy
4. completing certain opportunities that promise x number of celeb points
5. someone using MC on them to give them a celeb level

See our FAQ here: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryProgression%20FAQ%20Celebrities

By engaging in these activities, sims gain celeb points. After they reach a threshold, if the ratios aren't already met and the next level is not already full, they get "promoted" to the next level just like how job and skill levels work. There are also elements of celeb point depreciation over time and when...uh, shameful things happen and the public notices, but the SP Relationship add-on module is required for depreciation to work in most cases.

It's really a very sophisticated system but it gets a lot of bad press because under EA progression the points are distributed much more randomly and often the caps are so high that it seems like everyone in town is famous after a few generations, which many of us feel is kind of pointless.

Correct on the last part, what I really should have said was don't worry about the town becoming overrun because that's easier to fix/dial back than running with the entire system pretty much shut down -- except of course for those who don't want the celeb system running at all, which is fair enough too.

"KatyJay88;c-16401215" wrote:
As always, very helpful. Thank you!

Last question - can you change the hours of operation for a club?

It's not easy. A tuning file has to be created to change the venue hours, and that can't be changed for a specific location but only for all venues of the same type. The Role Sim staffed bars' and bouncer ropes' hours of operation also have to be changed to match otherwise everyone is forced outside too early or the staff go home hours before the place closes then turn around and get pushed back to work again. One of the brilliant food related mods I have in play, I think it's the Ingredients Overhaul one, includes what was once (still is?) called the Better Bars mod and that presents a potential conflict to be accounted for.

Every time I attempt this myself I get it wrong in one direction or the other and finally just set it all aside as something to work out in the future.

@TreyNutz - I know you have done up some tuning mods. Have you ever worked with the Venues xml to produce something like this?

@igazor @KatyJay88 Funny you should ask today. This morning I was just playing around with the Venues xml and Bars xml attempting to change the hours of various lot assignments. I haven't tested the two mods I created yet though. Dunno if I was successful or not.

Both xmls look like they control various lot assignments. So, as igazor said, changing the hours for the poolside club assignment will change the hours for all poolside clubs in every world. It's not possible (AFAIK) to change the hours of an individual lot. My impression from the dev comments in the xmls was that bartender hours should follow the lot assignment open and close settings, and that there are separate bartender hour settings (in the bartending xml) in case the lot assignment doesn't have open and closing times. But like I said, I haven't even launched my game since creating these 2 mods; I don't know if I'll run into the same issues that igazor describes. I think I have everything set to the same times though.

Shimrod's 23 hr bars and clubs mod works in my game (and alters the Bars and Bartending xmls). That might be a solution for KatyJay88. His mod is available on simsasylum.com. Free registration required for view and download. Shimrod's forum is in the retired creator's section. I basically followed what he did but set bars and clubs to be open 20 hrs. That mod doesn't alter the Venues xml. I created a 2nd mod for the Venues xml to alter open/close times for other lot assignments in that xml.

The Venues xml is what Shimrod's Townies Out On The Town mod alters. I was looking at his changes after a recent Chatterbox discussion about that mod. I decided not to use his changes to how many sims the game pushes to lot assignments, but I noticed that there were open/close times for some lot assignments that I wanted to change. Primarily the Seasons festivals. I'm hoping my changes work. I'd love for the festivals to be open just a bit earlier. Most of the bars and clubs though are in the Bars xml.

TL:DR - Yeah, just today I took a stab at working with the Bars and Venues xml to adjust open/closing times for various lot assignments. Haven't tested whether they work or not. I spent the rest of the day terrifying myself with a HOPA game. :p

Wow, @TreyNutz thanks for all that info!! I’ll look into that mod. I’m not too concerned about it, but just thought I would poke around to see if it was easy to do. Doesn’t sound like it is lol!

Ah, interesting. Ok I'll manually put some in. I'm about 6 generations deep, so a fairly long time.

Should I turn on the SP>TownOptions>Friendship:AllowCelebrity to true? Or would that cause them to overrun my town?

ETA: fixed mistake :blush:

Awesome, thanks @igazor

So question then, there are two ways a sim can become a celebrity.
1. career progression
2. social interactions with a current celebrity

right? So if I change AllowCelebrity to true, does that mean even interacting with a celebrity will make them become one? Is that how the town becomes overrun with them? So you're saying to turn that on, and then adjust the default ratio settings. Did I get that correct?

As always, very helpful. Thank you!

Last question - can you change the hours of operation for a club?