I have a new skill. :)

I wanted custom locals for my vacation spots, with better names and faces than the EA versions. But I didn't want to create them fresh every time I start a new hood, and it is traditionally a Very Bad Thing to move sims from one hood to another.

I remembered MeetMe's subhoods, which install stealth-hood families without installing the bloaty stealth hoods, and I figured out how to do it! I now have a suburb for Tropical locals. The suburb gets added to whatever primary hood you want, which puts the sims into your Characters folder. Then you can safely delete the subhood again - it has served its purpose.

I made 12 'natives', separated into three families. There is a full range of ages - 2 kids, 2 elders, four each of teens and adults.

I tested them. They turned up on vacation lots, did the hula and greeting, and generally made the place much more lively. I've played so long without having locals or tourists that I had forgotten the difference it could make.

Family 1 – Kahale

AF - Oliana - Knowledge/Fortune, Arts and Crafts, Beards/Hats
AM – Akamu – Pleasure/Family, Cuisine, Cooking/Creativity
TF – Iosefina – Knowledge, Science, Glasses/Red hair
TM – Manu – Fortune, Music, Black Hair/Hats
CF – Kalama – Fitness

The Kahale family is named for their Polynesian background.
(I clicked 'go' before getting a photo in CAS, so you get a photo made just before they were townified.)

Family2 – Lapasa

EM – Hawea – Pleasure, Tinkering, Red hair/Jewelry
EF – Teuila – Fortune, Nature, Black Hair/Unemployed
AM – Loto – Popularity, Nature, Blond/Glasses
TF – Talia – Romance, Film and literature, Brown Hair/Makeup

The Lapasa family has Samoan naming and some Australian genetics.

_ _Family 3 – Farone__

AF – Tiare – Family/Romance, Music, Black hair/Fitness
TM – Mahana – Popularity, Games, Swim Outfit/Blonde
CM – Hiro – Fitness

The Farone family has Tahitian ancestry.

I forget how many BV locals there are out-of-the-box, but I suspect 12 was correct - so I have the same number of characters, but better ones. :)

Oh, and I'm making a tutorial so other people can do this too!

I am -not- making a suburb to install BV tourists, because MeetMe already did a good job of that - a set of 26 sims extracted from Castaway, which is plenty, but only about half as many as EA gives us.

I have now uploaded the Tropics locals: DOWNLOAD - SFS

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