Two for One Offer: tombstones and "be salesman" borked since BV

[Mirelly]

OK. I'm still unpatched, but so what.

Hacks are DC* + ACR. The 'hood was brand new, custom empty, on a Maxis terrain, after a virgin install of the game.

Problems:

(a) Tombstones, once moved to the community bone yard (same 'hood) are never seen again. That is they are not on the kerb at the designated lot either in live mode or build mode. This is a ruddy annoying thing. Any ideas, or suggestions.

(b) At an owned business (pwetty flower shoppe, run by an extended family) I am not able to have any sim, other than the business owner take "be salesman" order. I can't recall if that was always the case, cos business running was never a feature I had much love for ... even with the awesomeness of BRU. Don't tell me I need to hire an employee to make a salesperson?

* to be accurate: the bv.zip in the hacks directory as there is no DC listed for BV. I have the latest updated zip (downloaded a couple of days ago).

[Theo]

a) I don't know what's the cause, but you can try spawning the tombstones using the Lot Debugger. That means a sim must buy that community lot, and once there, spawn the ghost sim (with Inge's/Dizzy's shrub) followed by LD's spawn tombstone option.

b) I think that option was only available to sims with a gold sales badge, but I can't confirm it right now. Do they have said badges?

[Zazazu]

Can't speak for the tombstone, but can confirm that a sim must have a gold sales badge in order to do Business...be salesperson. From the hammer & sickle, you should be able to assign employees to that role.

[Mirelly]

(a) Yeah, I was kinda expecting to have to do that for the missing ones ... not that I'm likely to bother. If they went, they went ... I'm kinda curious as to possible whys.

(b) Thanks for that, Theo & Zazazu. That was the the blindingly obvious answer that I failed to see for myself. Must make appointment at optometrist ... or may I could just clean the crud off these spectacles.

[witch]

You can Macro/skillinator/sales to get family members up to a gold badge, then Business/Be Salesperson to keep them assigned.

[Nec]

BV definitely messed up sim tombstones. The pet ones still work if it is an owned lot - they were disappearing when moved otherwise. I just set up a new cemetery to see if sending them to an owned one works, as all my others are full. The tombstones in his inventory that he placed stayed no problem. I also found that when moving tombstones from a community lot, that they stay (sporadically) at the lot as well as move them home or place them in inventory, and it ends up making clones unless you load the comm lot in buy/build mode before sending a sim back to that lot.
Anyway, will let you know if the owned lot thing works shortly. I can't remember which of my sims has tombstones they can move. I have too many

[Lorelei]

You'd think that, by now, beta testers would have a To Do list that included all built-in parts of the game previously established, thus they'd try breeding Sims/pets, running a business, engagements/marriages/honeymoons, skills, deaths/ghosts/urns/tombs, etc.

Naturally, beta tests would take longer with each ep/sp added.

Logic would demand that they test various base + ep/sp + new ep/sp configurations as well, on various machines / OSes that fit their stated sys reqs.

They obviously don't bother, and the SecuROM fiasco further underscores this. If the stated goal is not to harvest personal data but to protect their IP, using tech that does A (phones home) while not adequately doing B (people have learned to Arrr! who normally would not do so) and then releasing more titles with the same crap is standard EAxian knobheadedness.

It is why we have pools to see what gets borked or unfixed each time something is in the L&P stage. Speaking of, where's the bork pool for Free Time / Hobbies / Numpty Crap / EP7?

[J. M. Pescado]

Go post it.

[Nec]

Okay, finally verified that the cemetery does need to be an owned lot before moving sim tombstones to it in order for them to not vanish. Soooo.....buy up those graveyards!

[J. M. Pescado]

Moving tombstones to community lots using anything other than owned community lots and the inventory seems to result in loss of death-type information. Also, depending on the reset state of the Urnstone controller, your new urnstones may have difficulty appearing.

[Nec]

So does one delete the tokens before or after moving them?

[professorbutters]

Also, does the community lot have to be owned by the family doing the moving?  In other words, if I have one family own and operate a graveyard, can other families also move their tombstones there without having them be lost?

I have "nounlinkondelete."  I'm assuming this helps with the loss of death data on moving tombstones to a community lot as well.

PB

[Nec]

No, the community lot just has to be owned. I generally have servos owning them, since they are the least likely to die of all sims. The lots are free to access for all sims, no selling of anything. A grill or two and bathrooms on the lot. I never let vamps own them, simply because there would be issues during daytime visits. I rarely have the owners play the lots, as there is no reason to. I send them there when I know there are tombstones to be placed. If ghosts happen to show up on the lot while the owner is playable, keep in mind that when you try to leave the lot the owner will try to get the ghosts to leave as if they were customers, and will not leave until all ghosts are back at rest.

[Mirelly]

Ah, bollocks to it. It's too much trouble to maintain a graveyard. I'll do without. If I actually need a picture of a sim weeping over a grave, I'll simply fabricate the scenario ... like Maxis does for L&P promotional "screenshots".

I held a "family reunion" today. With more than 2 dozen sims on the lot I was expecting some traffic marmalade. I mean what possessed me to place the fish tank so close to the double-width archway ...? Note also, the two morons who have traipsed all the way to the locked access to the upper and lower floors of the house. It took more than two sim hours for the snarl up to clear ... and that was probably only because dinner was being served ... I couldn't be arsed to photograph that piece of fun when 17 sims arrived simultaneously to eat six portions of grilled catfish. Eh? Of course the serving got aborted before the second plate could be placed.

Giving my sims free will is a rare treat ... for them.

[danicast]

I just set up a new cemetery to see if sending them to an owned one works, as all my others are full. The tombstones in his inventory that he placed stayed no problem. I also found that when moving tombstones from a community lot, that they stay (sporadically) at the lot as well as move them home or place them in inventory, and it ends up making clones unless you load the comm lot in buy/build mode before sending a sim back to that lot.

I don´t have BV, I have all up to Seasons. I tried to move tombs from one cemetery to another yesterday and my game exploded. I had 1800 chars, all duplicated from the regular ones (936). I posted at "you broke" talking about. I loaded the comm lot at building mode and even so, duplicated my sims.

I am so not going to mess with tombstones again.

[notovny]

Has 'be salesperson' always been limited to gold badges?  I don't remember having that problem pre-BV, even before I installed BRY.  I've mostly quit running them out of boredom selling & crafting the same things.  Since BV lacked sim-owned hotels, I'm not even confident that Lies&Propoganda hobbies will translate to a better variety of businesses.

It has for quite some time.  Possibly as far back as OFB. I rememebr asking Pescado about it  when I was getting one of my secondary business-owners up to snuff.

Personally, I'm still generally making and running businesses. Got about two dozen with  virtually no overlap in spheres of influence.  It's possible that I do it mostly for the costumes, and for sightseeing purposes.

[J. M. Pescado]

The "Be Salesman" option is not available without a gold badge. An Employee assigned to Sales that lacks a gold badge will ineffectively run the Maxis sales routines until it manages to acquire one, whereupon BRY will assert its own sales algorithms.

[Nec]

I also found out (since BV) that you *HAVE* to visit the owned cemetery every single time you move tombstones there or they vanish. I have never tried moving from one comm lot to another. Since the issue seems to be with the lack of saving on non-owned lots, I'd say that is a bad idea.

[Emma]

Can you resurrect the dead sim if the tombstone has disappeared?

[J. M. Pescado]

Tombstones are just an object as long as you have nounlinkondelete. It's character-file shredding, not tombstone deletion, which stops resurrection.

[Emma]

Ok thanks. I only ask because I accidentally deleted a tombstone.