EgonVM's Ultimate NPC Making Guide 2.0
So yeah, due to how these forums work with the spoilers, the original guide is somewhat messed up and updating it would result in loss of information. So, after some consideration, I've decided to m...
Forum Discussion
Another small but quite effective NPC role-assigning rule I found...
(Note that I don't use Get Famous EP, I'm not sure if it is related.)
Discover University EP has many roles related to the university such as organizations. Most of them need to be in the "Other Household" category (Not "My Household") to be assigned and spawned in the related events.
For example, I always move all sims to "My household" to prevent culling, but then I notice that all of the new student sims (that move to My Household) don't appear as organization members. The game keeps adding new sims to fill the role. But when I move existing sims to the "Other Household", existing sims can appear in the role again.
This rule is used for other roles in DU such as The Secret Society members and Utili-Bot Contest Judge who is Foxbury Professor.
General students and professors can appear in the lot even being in "My Household"
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That made me leave my original university sims in "Other Household" to let them do roles properly. And, weirdly, only this EP has this unique rule. No other packs have this criteria.
P.S. If Get Famous is enabled, new university students and organization members are picked from existing sims (such as premade sims) in the save file.
Interesting... Looking at the files, the non-playerfacing organization filters have the following:
<L n="additional_conform_terms"> <V t="sim_info_lod"> <U n="sim_info_lod"> <T n="invert_score">True</T> <E n="sim_lod_value">FULL</E> </U> </V> <V t="sim_info_lod"> <U n="sim_info_lod"> <T n="invert_score">True</T> <E n="sim_lod_value">ACTIVE</E> </U> </V> </L>What is sim_lod_value and what do Active and Full mean? I know that that there's one separate for checking if the sim is in an unplayed household (has_household_ever_been_played), so I don't think it can be that. The fact that Active and Full invert the score (excluding the sims from appearing in the role) could indeed mean that they have to be in the Other Households...
I don't know about the meaning of the codes unless you explain them here, so this factor is interesting. If the score (is it the term score?) is related to My/Other households, it would be the factor.
This makes me think about the Milestone system from "Growing Together". Households that are in Other Households can't keep many specific Milestone memories.
For example, I moved my active university sims to other households after I changed the active family (to make these sims active as university NPC roles). Later, I found that some milestones were lost such as "Won Lottery", and "Revived from Death".
I heard that the game removed some memory data from "Other Households" to keep better performance. There might be something to divide the data managing rules of two categories of households.
**From this, I have to remind myself not to move the important family to Other Households because they will lose milestones permanently. (unplayed sims can keep the milestones if it's still in My Households)
Moreover, I found that students in Other Households can continue the new terms and gradually graduate autonomously. While students in My Household that I haven't played for a long time will get an F and probation overtime.
So, I believe there are some rules to separate "My Household" and "Other Household" sims. The reason may be about making background university students come and graduate overtime without playing.
That means if I leave them in "Other Household" for too long, every current student will graduate and I have to make a whole new set of university students after a year passed.
(Fortunately, I saved them in time and found that MCCC can freeze university progress, so I can leave them there without worrying.)
Oh hey. SimGurus also shared that on Twitter. Yes, Unplayed Households will re-enroll on their own and eventually graduate while Played Households will wait for the player to return in order to re-enroll.
Played sims failing a term on their own seems like a bug somewhat. Sometimes they do fine on their own, at other times they fail everything. This is the main reason why I'm thinking of replacing University Housing with Residential Rental (as University Housing will kick your sim out when they don't re-enroll or even become too pregnant).
It also seems like unplayed students take 3 courses per term...
Oh, good to hear that there is confirmation from SimGurus. But my point is it isn’t just unplayed but have to be in “other household” too. Stay in “my household” isn’t enough. Or this is for the save file without Get Famous.
Replacing University Housing with Residential Rental is interesting. If it’s safe for bug already, it will be the choice that easier in many ways. You can have manageable roommates that can switch to play too.
