Apparently, they're not made the same way we use Inge's teleporter cat, aren't they? I have Cyjon's fewer tourists mod. I created some Sims and turned them into tourists with teleporter cat. The thing is, they don't behave like real tourists. I never see them around, and they never appear in hotels nor even check in. Can anyone help me how to create custom tourists?

Oh, and I also have a clean stealth hood for BV, so there's no premade tourists.

You might need Argon's townie brick for that. I haven't created any tourists myself (the only type of townie I've not done). I might try creating some loud Americans for my sniffy English resorts and see if I can make it work.

It's said that the townie brick cannot make tourists. Only locals. :/

I thought I did that before, but now I'm not sure. It's certainly worth a try using the brick and, if not that, then Inge's teleporter cat after you've created Sims in CAS yourself.

I found myself fighting with this about a week ago! It took me forever to figure it out. The only way I found that actually WORKED (as in the tourists showed up in the vacation subhood and did their tourist-y things) was to use the testingcheatsenabled NPC and Townie Maker (with Cyjon's Fewer Tourists). There should be an option on it to "Generate Vacation Sim" or something similar, and clicking on that will give you a whole bunch of "Tourist 1" options. Pick one; from what I can tell, there isn't any difference(?). It's kind of tedious, seeing as you have to generate them one by one, but on the upside, at least you get to control how many you end up with.

Using the NPC and Townie maker gives you a bunch of families you can group your tourists into. The family groups I think determine who share hotel rooms.

I had a bunch of sims on a lot which I was changing to tourists, for some reason the last sim on the lot woudn't automagically leave the lot and change into a tourist, so I had to temporarily add another sim to the lot so that the last one could leave. YMMV

Ymmv means? Sorry, there are soooo many acronyms, I can't keep up!

Your Mileage May Vary = Individual systems work differently. A phrase borrowed from the auto industry, which advertises cars as getting X number of miles to a gallon of gas, with the caveat that "your mileage may vary," since how much gas a real car uses under real conditions depends on a lot of uncontrollable variations, like the driver's habits, city vs. country driving, high traffic vs low traffic, etc.

I find most acronyms are comprehensible if you look at the context and then try to plug in stereotyped phrases that suit it. Heck, that's the only way I can ever spell IYKWIM&ITYD (If You Know What I Mean, & I Think You Do) right - say the phrase in my head as I type the letters. I often feel bad for people who's primary language isn't English, trying to make sense of a site like this and having to deal with non-standard usage, idioms, misspellings, bad grammar, and then acronyms on top of that!

I guess I just don't have a head for it, because I never would have gotten YMMV or that last long one, so thank you for explaining. Maybe I just don't understand the context or I don't have enough stereotypes on hand. I can figure out most vanity license plates.

Thanks again, you are most helpful!

I never play vacation hoods, but when I DO play them the lack of tourists and locals is frustrating.

I installed empty templates and now my Sims are always alone in the hotels with only the NPC showing up :/

I've tried Inge's teleporter cat, but it doesn't work. And I've always been confused by the last 2 options "Goopy" and "Bob the Builder". What are those???


NPC and Townie maker is kinda broken in FT and AL, and I never wanted to risk choosing those neverending "Tourist 1" option. How are you certain that the "Tourist 1" you chose was the Sim you actually wanted to be a tourist?

What do you do with the teleporter cat, and in what way does it not work?

I tend to scan the pie menus for the family name I'm looking for, so I couldn't swear there's no "Goopy" or "Bob the Builder" option on mine; but I don't think there is. Explain fully what yours does, and perhaps someone here will respond with the piece of information that makes it all make sense.

The tourists generated this way are done the same way as whenever you specifically generate a single sim using the NPC and Townie Maker -- that is, it gives you a sim that you can choose to keep or kill. (This is what I meant when I said you had to do it one by one.) I recognized the tourists I made this way as the ones that showed up in my vacation subhood, took up hotel rooms, and did the usual tourist-y things. (When I first tried this method, I started with a small handful in an otherwise completely empty neighborhood, just to see if they'd show up. They did.)

I had the same issues you did with Inge's teleporter. I've never been able to get it to work when it comes to tourists; townies and everything else seem to work fine. But the tourists created with it never show up in the vacation hood; it's like once they become tourists, they just cease to exist in the 'hood. Doing it like I mentioned above is the only way I've successfully been able to make tourists that actually show up and do what they're supposed to.

ETA: I also have FT and AL. (By broken, are you referring to the issues the NPC maker has with creating vacation locals? Or something else?)

The "Bob the Builder" and "Goopy" appears in the "Make me" option in the teleporter, after the "Garden Committee". I just turn the Sims into tourists with teleporter cat, just like how we make townies. Selecting them, choosing the "Make me... Tourist", and then they leave the lot. My issue is just exactly similar to Victory101's above.


By broken I meant that when selecting a Sim I want to turn into a hobby instructor for example, only dead Sims will appear in the selection. Actually, since AL is my first EP ever, I never really realized how it originally worked, because I usually hear that NPC maker is broken in AL. It's only broken in the options, not the object itself.


Your method sounds promising. So you generated them instead, not created them from CAS and made them into tourist with NPC maker? I'm going to try it!

Oh wow, I've never heard/seen that, but that does sound broken. I never bother to make NPCs, usually, since the game creates them for you on an as-needed basis. I generally just use it to populate my hoods with random townies. So that might be why I haven't encountered it.


Yep, that's exactly how I do it! I hope it works for you

I've experimented it, and it worked! Thank you victory101!!! I had been very hesitant to use the townie maker before! Now I understand how it works. :D

Glad I could help! Have fun with your new tourists

I tried using the NPC/Townie Maker to generate tourists using your method, victory, but it's not working for me. I made 2 tourists and despite sending my test sim to Twikkii Island, she was alone the entire time. They never made an appearance. The game generated one local, but she was wearing a snowsuit!

Google is an excellent resource. Type in the phrase and "meaning". Most times, that answers my question.

Have you considered removing the empty templates?

People should be aware that rejecting a sim still leaves them in your neighborhood, in the Default family. I helped someone recently who found that they had hundreds of additional sims in their hood, because they had rejected so many.

Those are two special families in the sims. I've never seen any documentation on what they do. You could always create a test neighborhood, add sims to those families, and then see what's special about them.