The more characters and the more buildings you have, the more difficult it is to track everyone down. I’ve already done a post on finding characters (which you can find here). But that only works for characters doing tasks outdoors or wandering aimlessly around your town. How can you find a character when they’re inside one of your buildings?

You may not be able to find a specific character easily, but there’s a very easy way to tell whether your buildings (or most of them) are occupied, and that’s by the animations. When a character is inside a building, or doing a task that involves the building, there is often an animation to indicate that something is going on. While there are a few exceptions to this, it’s a great way of knowing whether a not a building is occupied.

So, in construction order, here’s the first part of a particularly geeky animation guide (not including the premium buildings, which will be covered in a separate post):

The Simpsons’ House - the second floor window opens and the curtains blow in the wind
The Kwik-E-Mart – the doors open and close (and the ventilation fans on the roof sppin (thanks Leonard!)
The Brown House – the windows flicker as if a TV is on
The Flanders’ House – a sprinkler operates on the front lawn
Cletus’ Farm – there’s nothing to show that Cletus is inside, possibly due to the crop-growing animation
The Purple House – unless I’ve missed something, it doesn’t have an animation
Krusty Burger – the ventilation fans on the roof spin and so do the eyes in Krusty’s sign
The Blue House – again, no animation I’ve noticed
The van Houten House - Milhouse’s remote control car runs around the driveway
The Pink House – no animations
Springfield Elementary - the flag flies in the wind
The White House – no animation (probably because it didn’t come ito use until Dr. Hibbert entered the game)
Gulp ‘n’ Blow – no animation
Willie’s Shack – no animations to tell if he’s inside (probably because it’s too small)
The Power Plant - steam rises from the Cooling Towers (thanks Steve)
Bart’s Treehouse – no animation (again, probably due to size)
Springfield Library – like Krusty Burger, the ventilation fan on the roof spins
The Android’s Dungeon – smoke from vent on the roof
The First Church of Springfield – a dove perches on the roof of the Church
The Java Server – no animation
Moes’s Tavern – a rat runs around the roof

More to come…