Can you assign uniforms for a shop?
#1 23-05-2012 
What I mean is - I know that NPC's, we can reset their uniforms. But the Uniform for Restaurant staff is the uniform for all the restaurants, regardless of the type. And etc. (Or at least it was the last time I looked).

Now. What I'm thinking is I'd like to set up a few restaurants. A Japanese/Chinese Restaurant, Burger, fine dining, pizza, etc. (Maybe even a Vegan/Hippy and some other Ethnic types). Plus Cafe's that sell small meals and coffee shops.

And the type of waiter uniforms/host uniforms for the Ethnic food types I'd like to actually fit with the ethnic atmosphere. And alternatively, I don't want to assign kimonos to a burger restaurant.

Now I vaguely remember that in Sims 1, the NPC's were actually linked to the podium, so you could set up specific uniforms by making them and linking them to a unique podium.

Is that how it works in Sims2, or can we make it work that way?

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#2 23-05-2012 
Are you asking from a modding point-of-view or from a normal gameplay point-of-view? I don't know if it's possible to mod podiums to work this way. They certainly don't work that way by default.

What you CAN do is set up the restaurants as owned businesses using the Open For Business expansion. Have a sim buy the business, hire staff, then set each employee's uniform. You can set the owner's uniform too. Then send the owner home, leaving the business empty. You can do this for each restaurant, even using the same owner sim if you want... can give the owner a different uniform in each business. Other sims can then travel to the businesses and use them as normal community lots - your owner will be there as an NPC, as will the staff dressed in their selected uniforms.

Incidentally, businesses run pretty darn well this way. It's a great way to cheat at OFB - just let the game run the business automatically and rack up stars. Big Grin

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#3 23-05-2012 
Let me put up a disclaimer first: I know little to none about playing restaurants, because I've never done that, myself. So it *is* possible that I'm way off.

From what I've found from playing businesses in general, it's always possible to set the business clothing for *all* employees, playable AND non-playable. Now the NPCs (such as the restaurant cook and server) *might* be exempt from this, but if you have playables for those functions (family members perhaps), then I would *think* you just use the same mechanics as always to set their 'uniform'.

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#4 23-05-2012 
Setting uniforms is seriously borked as of Pets I think. It strips off their eyebrows and may in some cases give them an ugly archetype face. It has to do with how the game tries to save the uniforms to the lot file. I always thought it would have made more sense to set the employee's dormant career skin in the character file (if indeed that's where it resides.)

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#5 23-05-2012 
Yeah, that part is absolutely true, RMK: they really screwed this whole mechanism up big time.

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#6 23-05-2012 
Is there any reason you know of that setting the career skin instead would not work?

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#7 23-05-2012 
I wouldn't even know where that's hidden or how to manipulate it, so I don't even dare to *guess*, really.

But, the above disclaimer aside, it *might* work.

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#8 23-05-2012 
I guess it's something for me to do some snooping around for when there's time. I am still trying to get t-shirts into a shippable state, rather slowly.

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#9 23-05-2012 
Thanks fanseelamb - I was actually thinking from both. It's been a long time since I played Sims2, and I've forgotten a lot.

RMK - that sounds horrible. (Apart from that I have nice default archetypes overriding the Maxis ones). I wouldn't want to have my playables get borked like that!

BO if the uniforms are saved to lot files, then they would be pretty hard to find I would think?

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#10 23-05-2012 
"Virtually impossible" would be the phrase that comes to my mind, Kiri. Because from what I've seen, when you open a lot-file in SimPE, there's nothing - and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - that can be recognized as either a chair, or a table, or a food token, or a sim or whatever else you might be thinking of. So finding the information that describes the business outfits for specific employees... I can't imagine what that would look like.

And if we can't find it in SimPE ourselves, I don't imagine we'll be very successful in defining a BHAV that identifies them in-game, either.

The only option left to us, would be to find the code that stores the information just after we've selected the outfit. We might then be able to make the game store the information differently, but we would also have to determine which routines all USE that information, because those then ALSO need to be altered to find the stuff elsewhere from now on.

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