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

The following instructions are for Mac users and uses Iff Snooper 1.1.9

This tutorial explains how to swap the NPC skins of the S.S.o.W. "EZ Clone" NPC objects only: to clone other kinds of NPC objects you need to do more hacking than this to have new NPCs appear in the game.

1. This method uses a basic resource swap...you will need to create a Sim that has the exact skin you want for your cashier to start with, so go into your game (being sure you have your new cashier's skins installed) and create your cashier as a Sim using the head and body skin you've selected. Move this Sim onto any lot in your game, Save and then quit. (Note which neighborhood # you moved your 'cashier' Sim into)

2. Once you are back on the desktop, open your game folder and look inside the Userdata/Characters folder for the neighborhood you created your cashier Sim into. (if it was neighborhood 3, then it's Userdata3/Characters.) Each of the numbered files in that folder is one of your Sims, pets, Townies etc. for that neighborhood. The Sim you just created and moved in will most likely have the highest numbered file, but you can tell for sure by checking the dates of the files (listed to the right). The most recent one (assuming you moved in the cashier Sim and quit directly) will be your new cashier Sim. Note the file number, and open Iff Snooper and choose Open... from the 'File' drop down menu. Navigate to the the Userdata/Characters folder where you just found your Sim and open the character file you just noted. You can look in the BMP resource to see the head thumbnail to be sure you got the right one. Then choose Disassemble from the Export drop down menu. A box pops up offering you an opportunity to name the file or cancel. Go with the default name: you'll throw it out later anyway, and click Save.

3. Now you have a folder of resources on your desktop, containing all the bits of the 'cashier' Sim you created. The only bits you need are STR# resource 200 and BMP_resource 2002. Find those two files in the folder and take them somewhere safe. You can toss everything else out.

4. Clone the cash register you wish to make a new NPC for. DO NOT 'sub-clone'! The way this object allows you to easily swap the skins is by having the register and NPC file cloned at the same time so they 'match up' their GUIDs. If you want to change the graphics of the actual cash register, do that as normal, either before or after you do the cashier swap.

5. Open your cloned cash register in iff snooper and choose Disassemble from the Export drop down menu, just like in step 2. This produces a new folder on your desktop, containing all the bits of the cloned cash register and cashier. Take the STR# resource 200 and the BMP_resource2002 files that you took from the folder you created in step 3, and drop them onto your new cash register resources folder. You will be asked if you want to replace the STR#200 and BMP 2002 resources already in the folder: yes, that is what you are doing.

6. Go back to iff snooper and choose Import-Resources from the Import menu. Select the cash register resources folder and assemble. Now your cash register has a new cashier.

7. Open the new cash register in iff snooper and click the CTSS window. There are 2 CTSS resources for this object, one for the cash register, which you will see in the Buy mode catalog. The other is the cashier's name, which you will see if you mouse over the cashier when you are playing. Toggle to CTSS 2000 in the CTSS window and click the Edit button. Change the name of the cashier in the Object Title field and tick the 'Replace text in all languages' button. Click OK and Save. (you can also change your catalog buy description in the CTSS 2001 while you are at it).