I am thinking of creating a set of custom townies for my own use and possibly for download if my tests go well. I am thinking of making a group of Maxis Match sims (one by one in Bodyshop) that people can put into their game and make into townies or downtownies using Inge's teleporter. I have tried to find a tutorial for this, but have yet to find one, so I have some questions.

Are there any dangers I should be aware of?
What are the minimum number of adults/teens/children/elders/toddlers required?
Apart from notownieregen, nodormieregen and the teleporter, what mods are needed for this to work?

Thanks!

Well, you don't need any toddlers. Since they don't appear on community lots, they aren't a valid townie type. Since they can be aged up and down in CAS, you don't technically need to make more than one age available, but due to the randomization of clothing the different categories might be handy. Bear in mind that elders made in bodyshop might have any hair color genetics assigned randomly when aged down.

If you make them in bodyshop with no CC, and package them from bodyshop, there shouldn't be any safety issues.

As for how many - that varies a lot! The minimum number of townies is 0. And since you'd be packaging them in individual bodyshop packages, people will be able to decide for themselves how many townies they want.

If it were me, I would want at least one of each skintone and each hair and eye color available in each gender and age category, with enough choices that I could discard the ones I didn't like the look of and still get a good range of townies with diverse appearances, aspirations, and zodiac signs. If I were making it, I'd probably make at least one sim per template. But that's me.

Make what you're comfortable with and let the downloaders sort 'em out.

In case you would be pleased just to see tutorials on creating custom townies, I know of two that always look pretty detailed to me, but I'm not experienced enough on the topic to be sure.

Here's the one at Wooden Simolean.

Here's the one at MATY.

You may have meant that you wanted tutorials specifically for creating custom townie sets for others to download, and if so, I don't know of any either.

I'm interested to hear about your progress!

Very helpful. I will be using CC, and will make a varied group of sims both with ages, skin colors and eye colors.

Another question. Is it possible to make custom NPC's as well?

I don't think hair eye and skin color are all that important since those things can be changed rather easily. Clothing, style, age and overall facial features and structures are what matter to me. Give me a preppy, a goth and nerd each with distinctive facial structures so i can have a well rounded neighborhood.

Exactly. I love realistic facial structures and some variety and personality in my townies.

Hmmm... In order to create personalities I should probably add them to a lot in an empty hood. Or is there a better way to do that?

They won't be able to keep their personalities in bodyshop. You can package a text file with suggested point spreads, zodiac signs, etc.

I thought of that, but it's also very non-intuitive and cumbersome to have to go into CAS, select existing sim etc.

for townies, I take the only steps would be these::
1. create them in Create-A-Sim/Create-A-Family
2. move one set into a lot
3. use whatever hack to change the set into townies
4. save lot
5. repeat from step 2 until all sets have been changed into townies

custom NPCs would be more difficult than custom townies; if you want them to function like the NPC type. all NPC types have certain programming.
safest way would be to create the look of one in create-a-sim/crate-a-family then use SimPE's Sim Surgery with a current one as patient and the look as architect.

I think that's really gonna depend on the amount of time you want to put into this project? were you thinking of playing them on a lot to get a sense of who they were, hobbies, interest, etc...and then including a bio with personality points and back story, because that would be kinda cool if that's what you were thinking. I'd definitely be interested in some townies like that, especially for my legacy hood.

That is what I have been doing. But the problem is I have to do that over and over again, whenever a hood glitches or I start a new challenge/hood etc. If I could create a clean hood, make the townies with personalities (and maybe even bios etc.) and then SAVE them for the next hood, that would be ideal. Any idea on how to accomplish that?

The trouble with that is you won't be able to upload them here - MTS doesn't accept occupied lots - at least AFAIK.

If you wanted to make them with their personalities, you could make a stealth hood only then people wouldn't be able to pick and mix. I think supplying your Bodyshop sims with bios and personality profiles in a text file is going to be easiest to do.

Edit: Ah yes:
'A lot that contains Sims in the file will not be accepted. You must move your sims out before packaging the lot.'
http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...Lots_and_Houses

Have you tried this tutorial packaging & extracting your sims? Its pretty handy. Basically you only have to create the sims one time, extract them, package them as you like and then use Clean Installer to unpack them. Its pretty handy because you get a base collection of playable sims. You can also extract your born in game sims. You'll still have to load CAS, but you won't have to go through the full process of sculpting and dressing them. Your only other option is to install your own face templates, your own towniefed custom clothing and batch generate random sims for your townies.

It seems to me the only way you could do complete townies without requiring the downloader to make them in CAS and change them yourself would be to:

Create a completely empty custom subhood (as per Mootilda's tutorials: http://modthesims.info/t/420196 and http://modthesims.info/t/455403).
Create the sims, complete with full sets of clothes, personalities, aspirations, bios, etc.
Move them in to empty lots (thus setting their LTWs) and change them into townies.
Store/Upload the subhood as a shopping neighborhood, with instructions to place it in the OFB shopping district templates files, add it to the desired neighborhood, and then delete the subhood as surplus to requirements. This would leave the townies behind.

I don't know any tutorials for creating an actual stealth neighborhood from scratch, but that's basically what Jawusa's doing with the empty templates, right? Maybe consult with her.

In that case, you'd want to document each townie and provide clear pictures of them, so downloaders would know if they were willing to take them all on in any given neighborhood.

I am not worried about uploading it here, I would probably upload them on my tumblr instead, but I want them to be safe if I do. If I make a clean subhood and all that, would it be possible to just extract/package the character files instead of the whole subhood? So me or any downloaders would only have to paste the character files into a new hood to get the custom townies? Plus paste the CC into the Downloads folder?

No, because that would be the same as moving a townie from one neighborhood to another. It will corrupt the hood you extract it from, and carry that corruption into a new one.

You'd have to make a new, empty hood for each individual townie for this not to be true.

the only safe thing to do is extract, package and reinstall.

There's a set of 'default replacement townies ' by Queen of France here on MTS. She used the subhood method.

Maybe there is some useful information there?

Use AnyGameStarter to create an empty environment.

Create a new neighborhood. The game will give you the number N001 - keep that number. This is the number which the game copies the townies/NPCs from.
Create the sims you want and move them in somewhere. Set things like relationships, skills, careers and such. You may want to include some townies that have dyed hair. Use the mirror's "Change Appearance" option for this.
Finally convert them all into townies using a teleporter.

Don't bother creating NPCs. The game generates them if they're needed and you usually only need 1 of each NPC type.
If you still want to create some NPCs, then let the game generate an NPC first. Quit the game and use SimPE to extract the NPC sim to BodyShop. Here, you can change his/her skin, hair, eye color; modify his/her face; add glasses; make-up; beards, etc.
Save the modified NPC, delete the other one and close BodyShop. Open your neighborhood in SimPE and use Alt Sim Surgery to replace the NPC's appearance. If you're replacing an elder NPC, don't forget to give your NPC sim proper hair genetics. To do that, open the NPC's SimDNA and change the 5 under "Hair Color" to 1,2,3 or 4. Both need to be changed (dominant and recessive genes)
(1= Black Hair, 2= Brown Hair, 3= Blond Hair, 4=Red Hair)

I guess that's that then. I was hoping to avoid either packaging the looks only with Bodyshop or having to include a subhood, but it seems it's the only way to do this safely. I don't have AGS since I have UC.

Argh! If only there was a way of stripping sims of their dangerous references in SimPE and extracting them. They don't have to know anyone at all, but including at the very least aspiration, personality points and turn ons/offs would have been very nice.

Yes but you must use SimPE to make them. Sims never use the coding from their character file but they use the code in the template they were made from which is determined by their original GUID. This is quite clever of Maxis as it allows sims created in lower EPs or Base Game to work flawlessly in the higher EPs.
Make them however you like then open their character file and change the original GUID to suit, for example to make a maid change the original GUID to 0x4C5BA139. Service sims must be in the service sim family (Const 0x013A:0x00 or 0x7FFF) before the game will find/use them, also (without T&A or A&N) the game will only use the first three it finds so adding new ones won't do anything unless you remove or replace existing ones.

Thanks!