Do NPCs = Inactives? (thinking specifically re: apartment blgs)

OriginalMara

So I've seen both of these terms used for the Sims that populate your town that you are not currently playing/are not the active family.

But I've also seen them used for different things. And so I wonder, are these names interchangeable or are they actually different sets of people?

Are inactives simply just the other townies that you can switch to, and the NPCs are like the service Sims that are around?

TreyNutz

I usually try to go by this breakdown. "NPC" is noted at the bottom. Not everyone uses those terms as defined by that page, so what people are referring to (any non playable sim, or just service sims) is often confusing.

OriginalMara

Okay, thanks. That helps a bit, haha.


I was mainly wondering about it in regards to apartment living/building apartments. Because I thought I saw somewhere that only NPCs can live in them (besides the one active family), and it seemed like they meant that inactives couldn't. So I wondered if they were actually different sets of Sims.

TreyNutz

I think a lot of people use the word "inactive" to refer to residents, sims living in houses that you could potentially play. The only roommates I use in the game are dormies in University. I've never played an apartment in a homeworld. I am not sure, but I gather that roommates in those situations are not residents and if you dismiss them they don't move somewhere else in town. I could be wrong though. Hopefully someone will clarify that situation.

OriginalMara

Yeah... I think that's what I thought too. Because the NPCs in apartment buildings, if you visit them, you cannot go inside. The apartment is blacked out. Whereas if you visit an inactive, in a house, you can be invited inside and etc.

I've just been trying to figure out if there is a way to put inactives in apartment buildings, so they can be visited like other residences/residents.

Which means a lot of YT video watching and Googling haha.

Surreal

I believe there are mods for that - it cannot be done with the way the game is programmed.

OriginalMara

Yup... I had been looking at Ani's Apartment mod. Just not sure about others.

igazor

There are two kinds of apartments in TS3. This does trip a lot of players up until they get used to the differences.

LN Style Apartments - These are really Regular Residential lots with public room markers and NPC doors that lead to blacked out space. They are often highrises, but don't have to be. They have one usable unit that either your active household or one inactive household of residents can live in. NPCs who would otherwise go off the map to hibernate when they are not on duty will appear to "live" in units behind the NPC doors and can be summoned as if they are neighbors by using the call box. But these are Service/Role Sims, not actual fellow residents. They help give the illusion of a busy apartment building in the public areas as they come and go.

Uni Style Apartments - These are residential lots with lot type Apartment. Again, they can only have one household, either your active one or one of inactive residents. Others sims will live there as well as nonplayable (NPC) Roommates, all sharing the same living space. Unlike with regular residential lots, you cannot switch off the Roommate service by telephone with this kind of Apartment type lots. If your actives live there and you get rid of the Roommates somehow, new ones will just show up the next day. This kind of lot is really the Uni World dormitory concept ported over to homeworlds.

There are mods and door locking strategies out there to help make the second kind feel more like distinct households are living on the same lot, but they do fight the game the whole way and odd things can happen. Especially if you like to switch active households throughout play.

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Apartment+Mod

http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=554197

Surreal

@igazor - thank you for that as I'm not sure I was clear on the difference. So... if you use Uni style apartment designation, can you assign specific people from your town to live there, or are you stuck with the non-residents the game will generate?

OriginalMara

But there is no way for the LN-style apartment buildings to have entirely all inactive (no NPC/service Sims) as residents, then?

Was thinking of this merely to have a way to add to a town's population but not take up as much lot space (as would adding a bunch of houses would).

igazor

@Surreal - You are stuck with the non-playable Roommates unless you use the one or the other of the mods I linked to. You could ask real residents to move in and become your Roommates or use MasterController to add them as such, but then they become nonplayable as well.

@OriginalMara - The NPC doors with blacked out "living quarters" for Service/Role sims are optional. But if you remove them, you will still have a large, fancy looking building that can accommodate at most one resident household, usually but not necessarily on an upper floor.

OriginalMara

Yeah, so there would be no way to build, say a four-story apartment building, put 8 apartments in it, and have them all be occupied by 8 different inactive families (or 7 families + one active).

Kind of sucks, but it is what it is, I suppose.

igazor

OriginalMara wrote: »

Yeah, so there would be no way to build, say a four-story apartment building, put 8 apartments in it, and have them all be occupied by 8 different inactive families (or 7 families + one active).

Kind of plum, but it is what it is, I suppose.

Afraid not. We were all hoping for something like this ever since LN, but it never came to pass. Although by using one of the mods I linked to and the other kind of Apartment lot, some players have come close more with side-by-side townhouse type units than highrises. It's never going to be perfect though, and I believe both solutions are still pretty fallible if you switch active households. Although, to be fair, I've never tried either one myself.

The best space saving trick I've seen to shoehorn more sims into a world with limited room on the map involves extensive use of 10x10 or 10x15 residential lots rather than apartments. There are some very ingenious space-efficient ones available on MTS and TSR, among other places, that do not resemble living in a cardboard box or trailer. Unless you are after that effect as well.

OriginalMara

Yeah... I have watched some videos and stuff with the townhouse type residences. But again, not quite a perfect solution.

I suppose everyone will just live in houses! haha

And I may look into those smaller lots as well... I don't necessarily need to add more people to my world, but I thought, if I could, why not? Especially if I wanted to add some venues or something like that later on and didn't want to evict anyone.

IreneSwift

@OriginalMara I built a two unit apartment building and had two families living in them, but they were both active, and officially one household. I locked the door of each apartment to the members of the other family. If you play on high free will, and used NRaas mods to make it possible to have more than 8 sims in a household, you could do something similar to what you're talking about, by just playing one family and letting the others do what they will.

Also, I didn't see anyone else respond to what you said about putting NPC's in apartments so that they could be visited. You can move NPC's into residences where they can be visited, but as soon as you do, they lose their NPC status and their service roles. The game will then generate new NPC's for those service positions. So, it would be counter-productive.