As far as I can tell nothing has any effect on it. It's a bug that happens when a sim wears the uniform set for them in a player run business. Nothing alters it, like cc or no cc or anything because its a bug that came with OFB and has been around since it was released. Experimenting won't show you any more than that. It's something EA should have patched. Boiling Oil is retired, Pescado has not touched sims 2 in years and Cyjon I think is retired as well. If it's even fixable would take somebody like Chris Hatch having the time and want to look into it.

@JDacapo I happened to be wondering this the other day too and spent a while reading this entire discussion on it from 2013. It even had BO stumped, but his best guess seemed to be this (though he could have learned more since then).

I even talked with Pescado back in the days and he kinda refused to accknowledge it. His quoted words:

Is changing a last name THAT dangerous?

I wish to make one of my test hoods a more-proper playing hood. I will probably still test there, but will also play it as well. I've gotten attached to Margot, my oldest test Sim (She's in one of the pictures in my last upload ... the lady in the black dress). She's been a good test Sim all these years. Her daughter is also in the picture, by the way. I've given her my failed-hotel-turned-nice-residence (lots of kachings and motherlodes), with lots of toys for her daughter to play with and berries and fruit for picking in the yard, along with spacious bedrooms (each with its own ensuite) inside the house. Margot has been through quite a bit. She deserves to be pampered.

Problem is, she also deserves a better last name. Originally, she was a random CAS Sim, and like I have with many other of my test Sims, I did a quick keyboard last name, intending to ditch the hood after testing ... think asdfafhjh. I did not ditch the hood, and this is going on three or four years now. She and her daughter need a decent surname.

When the Wiki says not to change the name in-game, it means outside of the procedures listed, correct? I plan to use the Blender, since it seems the most beginner-friendly.

The worst that'll happen is that not everything will update and the old name might be displayed somewhere. I've only seen it happen once (which was fixed by changing it the 'proper' way in SimPE) and I've changed the last name in-game at least a dozen times.

Yes, the townie brick can be a problem - clashes with some things. I only put it in my Downloads folder when I want to use it. Otherwise, I keep it in my sims stuff folder.


Gah - I wish I could log in to the Wiki and change some of the hysterical things written in there to something more reasonable. There is an issue with names being changed for certain situations in which the name is used but it's NOT A PROBLEM. The Blender does it just fine.

I don't believe so. I've changed the names of several pixels-one of which was a townie. "Abhijeet" whathisname-because who the heck has such a silly name? The worst thing that can happen is the resulting updates to in-game references to that pixel. Otherwise, nothing. I called that pixel Bob Hogan. But aren't they all called Bob?

Abhijeet is not a silly name, it's an Indian name.

Also about names. The game changes last names left and right when sims get married, so I wouldn't think it's particularly dangerous.
ETA: I believe the SimBlender uses the same procedure of copying last name as marriage. Also, it wasn't me who pressed the disagree button=)

My experience with the uniform bug is that it only happens if I am lazy and try to use a preset uniform, rather than assigning each sim the uniform. For whatever reason the game picks up the entire preset-hair, face, etc-instead of just the clothing, or clothing-and-hair.

Since none of my stores requires the employees to dye their hair, though some (food places) require long hair to be contained, I set the uniform individually to the sim. Sure, I end up with eight presets in the same outfit (assuming eight employees of the same sex and age) but that's not really a big deal.

I change last names and household names in SimPE all the time, especially when households break up, etc. It's much easier in SimPE, imo. I get attached to my test sims, too.

So if a Sim completes a painting and then dies, the painting's value increases. What happens if the Sim is later resurrected?

disc order.
stuff packs 1 through 5 use OFB's engine? also the holiday packs?
stuff packs 6 through 8 use Pet's engine?

Not for me, the first uniform I set at my Light House Restuarant was a server and his eyebrows disappeared, second was the chef, so a different uniform and his whole face changed.

So it might come down to the name of the establishment or the ID or something...

I don't think it matters. There is something wrong in how the game sets uniforms.

Obviously there is. That doesn't mean the problem isn't specific to particular businesses.

I can happen at any business, home or comm lot, cc or no cc. I've played all kinds of business and had it happen at all kinds. It doesn't have to be a particular type of business for the glitch to occur. There is some error in the setting a uniform code itself.

I've not seen any consistent pattern to how the bug occurs, though it seems a bit more frequent if you attempt to change the hair.

I see... well that's why we need some kind of code access monitor to see which lines are accessed and even how they interact with others.

The uniforms for businesses are stored in the lot file for the business as a collection. It is not like a normal CAS collection though, it contains Age Data for each outfit and thumbnails for them. It can't be applied to the sim like a normal outfit because it is not stored in the sim's character file but coming from an external source. The way it is applied seems to be a cross between a normal outfit change and applying a career outfit.

I had a similar problem when experimenting with giving sims separate casual 1, casual 2 and casual 3 outfits, the outfits weren't being saved in the sim's character file and the sim would lose all of her makeup etc. when trying to change into the outfit a second time.

I doubt there can be a real fix for this but there is (or at least will be) a workaround, if you 'refresh' the sim's skin she'll become pretty again. I am experimenting with adding to the global op-code 'Clothes - Change Outfit - Business - Event' changing the skin to zombie then immediately back to genetic and apart from the game lag it causes it does work well.

So no way to force the game to save it to their character file either I would guess. It would be handy if it was in the wardrobe. So would 2-3 everyday outfits, that would be great.

Not sure how you 'refresh' a sims skin, but if you get anything for upload I would be happy to test. I am a huge OFB player who uses playables in my businesses so this is a bug I see a lot of.

If you want to give it a try:
BusinessUniformFix.zip (745 Bytes) -global override
I have only just started trying to find a fix so this is very much an 'Alpha' version. It does cause a game lag similar to when a sim gets a suntan so if a business has half a dozen employees arriving and changing into their work clothes at the same time it could become quite bad, but I haven't got that far in testing yet.

Wish I hadn't just loaded up already, but I will grab it and try it tomorrow. Thanks

For a change of subject: Goopy GilsCarbo was named after two team members, Goopy Rossi and Gabe GilsCarbo.

Why would you name your kid Goopy?

If he was named after team members, why did they make him a sleazy romance sim fashion disaster?