S.S.o.W.'s The Proper Persim for the Proper Position Project

We at S.S.o.W. understand the importance atmosphere; ambience is everything. Not only has your equipment got to fit in perfectly, your staff needs to as well, inside and out. We've taken care of the inside ... and here's a quick and dirty guide to finishing them off ... um ... up.

It's all done in the STR# 200 resource. This is the "bodystring" resource of a Sim (even if it's named/labeled something else. the STR# resource with the id 200 is always the bodystring). String Scavenger could also be used.

The following instructions are for PC users and uses IffPencil2. A separate set of instructions has been done up for Mac users explaining the IffSnooper method.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR NPC's LOOK

Open your cloned cashier in IffPencil2. If this is your first experience with IffPencil don't panic � it's not as un-friendly as it look. Down the left hand side of the program you'll see several resources listed starting with with "All Resources". This is simply a filter system. Click on STR# (7) and you'll find much of the gooble in the right hand window frame disappears leaving only the seven (7) STR# resources.
Open STR#200 by double clicking it in the right hand window frame. There's tons of interesting stuff in here: Which skins to use in various situations (including hands), the gender, the age, the skintone, the height (which is, interestingly enough, different from age)
Change the skins listed in STR#200. The lines that control the skins assignment always list the cmx first then the bmp. You don't want to delete the ",BODY= "or ",HEAD=" portions of these lines and you'll note the file extensions are not listed here.

Here's a breakdown which of the lines in the STR# 200 resource that you need to change to change your cashier's look skins:

(note: the lines start at #0 so Line #1 is the second line)

#1: Which body skin and mesh to use (cmx first, bmp second)
#2: Which head skin and mesh to use (cmx first, bmp second)
#12: Sim's Gender (female or male)
#14: Sim's Skin tone (lgt, med, drk)

Give your cashier a new name. In the list of resource types in the left hand window frame You'll see one called CTSS (2). Highlight that to filter everything but the two CTSS resources out of the right hand window frame. The CTSS resource is the Catalog information. With objects this is where you name your object and enter anything you'd like to see appear in the buy/build mode catalogs in-game. With an NPC this is where you put the Sim's name which shows up when the player Mouses over the NPC. The S.S.o.W. Cashiers use CTSS #2000, the cash registers use CTSS # 2001

After entering your changes to the cashier's name click the "Set All LAnguages button otherwise the only people who will see the Cashier's new name will be those using the USEnglish version of the game.
Save your new cashier and test.

TROUBLESHOOTING

The Cashier is just a pair of floating hands
That could be caused by not having the skins installed in your game while testing or by a typo in lines #1 or #2 (VERY easy to do). Make sure the names are typed correctly, the comma (,) and equals sign (=) and the word in between are still all there and that the two parts in the correct order (cmx first, bmp second)
The Cashier has the wrong colored hands
The NPC's skin tone (#14) must be. Use lowercase letters only
My Cashier's voice is for the wrong sex
The NPC's gender (#12) must be set. Use lowercase letters only.
When Sims think about my NPC the old NPC's face shows instead of mine.
The NPC is still using the old thumbnails. The fastest way to fix that is to delete all of the BMP_ resources. This forces the game to generate new ones while playing the game.
My cashier's CTSS wont open - It generates an error message instead
That can happen with resources that were edited on a Mac. You can make a new one by right clicking on the cashregister's CTSS (#2001) and choosing "Duplicate" from the menu that appears. In the little "Duplicate Item Menu that appears you leave the "CTSS" part alone but change the id from 2001 to 2000. You can also change the "Name" to something more relevant like "Cashier" so you wont be confused later on about what's what. It'll ask if you want to overwrite the one that exists, yes. Double click the new CTSS #2000 too open it and edit away as instructed in Step 4. Remember to "Set All Languages"

EXTRA INFO: CUSTOMIZING OTHER NPCS

Following the same steps outlined above you can change the look of any sim. You may find other types of NPCs will need some additional editing, particularly if your game contains hacks that effect the clothing of everyone on the lot. (Fancy resturant doors that force sims to change to formalwear, for instance, have revealed Janitor Sonya wears a rather dashing tux)

Additonal Skin assignment would be taken care of on the following lines:

A couple of other interesting, if mostly useless for NPC editing, lines assign the Sim's height and age

Author: Raeven