Bork List: Freetime Ed.

[KatEnigma]

I'm getting random complaints about the middle chair on the side of the 3 tile table, intermittently. 

[cwykes]

My husband can't add custom outfits to the wardrobe in his game. The option isn't there for him, but it is there for me. Which is strange, we both have vanilla games and identical EP/SP set ups.

I didn't see a reply to this one.  Just wondered if hubby is using a CC wardrobe rather than Eaxian.  New options probably won't show on old CC.

[claudiasharon]

It's not that, my sims will read with their fun meters full. But when they try to read the parenting book, the sim will sit down then jump up and the book will no longer be in her hands. So none of my sims are able to study parenting, no matter what house it is that I tried.

This with maxis bookcases as well? Seems like you have a wonky file somewhere, either a hack that needs updating, a hack conflict or just a badly made bit of custom. I once had a custom sink that caused errors on all the other sinks.

I've only been using regular bookcases. But I suppose I could take out any custom ones that in in my downloads folder. Even if I'm not using them, they're still there to cause problems. Strange that it worked once with a bookcase but then after that, not at all. I also had my sim jump from the desk whenever she tried writing a novel using the desktop. But it's fine if she uses the laptop. I've taken out all my custom computers, but I may have missed one so hopefully that'll fix that too. Naturally, the simplest answers are obvious ones.

[claudiasharon]

Someone at N99 has isolated the problem regarding super-fast dropping motives and no-autonomy:

I have been having trouble with two things in particular. One involves their needs dropping too fast. They will not eat, bathe, use the bathroom until they are in the red - and even then, sometimes I have to direct them to do it or they STILL won't. One thing I did notice, is that even when they are eating a meal, for every tiny bit the meter goes up to the right (filling it), you can visually see it jump to the left (depleting it!). There is definitely a problem with this, and frankly, I think this is one of the most serious game issues I've seen out of any expansion pack. It definitely affects gameplay no matter what you are doing with your sim.

The other problem I've noticed is what I call the "standing around like an idiot syndrome". Specifically, sims will queue up to do something, maybe talk to another sim who is obviously busy (maybe riding the exercise bike), and the sim will stand there forever, never giving up and moving on to something else. The way my game used to play, before FT, was this might happen but within a reasonable amount of time, the sim would either get distracted and move on or would realize this won't happen anytime soon & move on to something else. With FT, they will DIE standing there if you let them. I notice that they even do this THROUGH walls! If they are in one room and another sim is in the adjacent room, they will queue up at the wall parallel to where the other sim is and stand there forever waiting on them. Also, there is an issue with the attraction system where they will follow someone around that they are attracted to even when they are in complete needs failure with SEVERAL things all at once. More times than not, I find all my sims in a household (I've been playing Uni dorms/greek houses), all bunched up outside the front door swooning over some highly attractive sim that has just returned from class. They won't come back into the house/dorm for 6-7 hours, no matter if they are starving, stinking to high heaven, etc.

Anyway, back to my experiment -- I tried playing several households and refused to assign any of the new Lifetime Aspiration Benefits. Guess what? None of those sims had a problem. They function as normal. When they are even halfway hungry, they cook/eat. When they are dirty, they bathe. So, all these newfound problems in my game are definitely tied to the Aspiration benefits. I plan on having all of the ones I had previously assigned use the ReNuYuSenso Orb's "reset lifetime aspiration benefits" feature today to get rid of them (until EA comes out with a patch that fixes this) so my game can function enjoyably again.

My sims haven't been having that many problems. They still can take care of themselves, as well as they used to, at least. They go shower when they are still in the yellow/green, eat, all the usual things.

Also, either it now takes forever to get flower arranging badges or there is something wrong with the lot (the same one). Unless I'm mistaken, it shouldn't be taking several days of constant arranging (enough to max the respective hobby from zero to max) without getting to bronze.

I just thought they always took this long to meet the badge requirements. I'm trying to get my one sim a robot badge and it's at least been a week or so and she's not even bronze yet. She keeps making little toy robots. She's spending so much money on it I just made her go into business.

I kind of like the gyspy bug. Not all my sims get random lamps, but I do miss the old sims 1 lamp. I need my sims to make friends easier, not love. Because it's hard enough to get them to friendship without worrying about the love.

[purplehaze]

Update: I hope some of you recall the problem I was having regarding not getting tendable (is that a word?) weeds with my vegetables in a greenhouse. I removed the indoorplant fix and now the plants are getting the 'tend' option. So, apparently this was not a bug with the game but a side-effect of the mod.    Now I can send my tots to the salt mine to tend the garden to gain badge points.

[Kyna]

Update: I hope some of you recall the problem I was having regarding not getting tendable (is that a word?) weeds with my vegetables in a greenhouse. I removed the indoorplant fix and now the plants are getting the 'tend' option. So, apparently this was not a bug with the game but a side-effect of the mod.    Now I can send my tots to the salt mine to tend the garden to gain badge points.

Actually, it's a feature of the mod.  That's one of the reasons why it took us so long to work out what the problem was, as it's not a glitch, it's the mod working as intended.

[KatEnigma]

Update: I hope some of you recall the problem I was having regarding not getting tendable (is that a word?) weeds with my vegetables in a greenhouse. I removed the indoorplant fix and now the plants are getting the 'tend' option. So, apparently this was not a bug with the game but a side-effect of the mod.    Now I can send my tots to the salt mine to tend the garden to gain badge points.

I posted this after your last post, which you obviously completely ignored. It is the entire PURPOSE of the mod.

Do you know what RTFM means? It means Read The Fucking Manual! I suggest you do that before installing hacks, since you obviously have no clue what their purposes are. Geesh.

[purplehaze]

I'm terribly sorry. I did read the description but *thought* that it referred to indoor (as in a house grown with grow lights) plants. I have a few lots with that feature. So, I guess I thought wrong. Again, sorry for the trouble.

[spambi]

I'm terribly sorry. I did read the description but *thought* that it referred to indoor (as in a house grown with grow lights) plants. I have a few lots with that feature. So, I guess I thought wrong. Again, sorry for the trouble.

I thought the same thing. I wouldn't apologize; yelling at people for failing to read the manuals is a competitive sport around here.

[Aggie]

I'm terribly sorry. I did read the description but *thought* that it referred to indoor (as in a house grown with grow lights) plants. I have a few lots with that feature. So, I guess I thought wrong. Again, sorry for the trouble.

I thought the same thing. I wouldn't apologize; yelling at people for failing to read the manuals is a competitive sport around here.

I agree. Also, you were yelled at by someone who is supposed to have souped a while back. Just continue ignoring her and maybe she'll go away.

[J. M. Pescado]

The interaction "Paint Grilled Cheese" cannot be resumed if the action is canceled or interrupted. The only option is "Scrap Painting".

That is basically an artifact of EAxis reverting the OFBp2 easel fix back to its broken state, and they NEVER RE-FIXED IT.

[croiduire]

Did EAxis break the grand piano, or is it my game? After installing Freetime the regular piano provides fun as usual, but all my sims with grand pianos are losing fun when they play. The grand piano was working fine before.

[friendlyquark]

Is anyone else having trouble with custom lots? I cannot seem to get any of my custom lots to load. If I make in within the game it runs fine, but any lot I download will get stuck in the loading screen forever. I can hear the Sims moving around, flushing toilets etc., but I can't seem to play the lot. Is this like the Pets CAS thing? No pre-FT lots are allowed?

[gynarchy]

Is anyone else having trouble with custom lots? I cannot seem to get any of my custom lots to load. If I make in within the game it runs fine, but any lot I download will get stuck in the loading screen forever. I can hear the Sims moving around, flushing toilets etc., but I can't seem to play the lot. Is this like the Pets CAS thing? No pre-FT lots are allowed?

Have you tried loading the lots with the testing cheats enabled? Perhaps there is an offending object on the lot that can be reset or deleted. I haven't had any problems loading downloaded lots.

[Hejira]

I moved a male sim into a mansion that had been made a few years ago (I found the Queen Bee 'challenge' and wanted to know if it was feasible with the Knowledge aspiration perks to do it with a guy) and everything works just fine.

I did serve up a six pack of instant meals one time, and my only guest took the whole six pack and drank it. I took a picture for the lulz (and can't be fucked finding it), but then the plate was unselectable and I couldn't clean it up. The maid did when he came over the next day, though.

I'm playing a very safe game at the moment, too. No violin, no pre-existing sims...it's fun, in a playing-the-grand-piano way.

[friendlyquark]

Is anyone else having trouble with custom lots? I cannot seem to get any of my custom lots to load. If I make in within the game it runs fine, but any lot I download will get stuck in the loading screen forever. I can hear the Sims moving around, flushing toilets etc., but I can't seem to play the lot. Is this like the Pets CAS thing? No pre-FT lots are allowed?

Have you tried loading the lots with the testing cheats enabled? Perhaps there is an offending object on the lot that can be reset or deleted. I haven't had any problems loading downloaded lots.

Not yet, will go and try now. Sigh. Was hoping to avoid long and drawn out. Its every C lot I have right now.

[Zazazu]

I've played my own custom lots, binned pre-FreeTime as well as installed from the package post-FreeTime (still pre-FreeTime created lots) on my test account. All load fine. Sounds exactly like the issue I had several EP ago with some custom no-water flowers. I had to use debug mode and choose delete for all errors, then go into the lot and delete the offending items and resave.

[friendlyquark]

Okay, it gave me a message for which I am clueless (not a rare occurrence, admittedly)

"Object id: 244
name: Controller - Lot Load - Curtain Pull-Down
Stack size: 5
Error: Invalid constant."

I have attached the log. Any clue?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[witch]

If you have curtains the sims can close or which close automagically at sunset or something, remove those.

[MuseEgo]

I knew my luck wouldn't last, though I'm not quite sure if this is strictly a FT bug, it wasn't doing this before.
I have a strange error occuring on one lot only - a custom lot that didn't come with any CC, but has a jack-in-the-box and a kite in it, not sure where they came from. When I first loaded the lot, my sim started birdwatching and the game slowed down a lot. Switching on debug mode gave me a lot of errors relating to the Climate Controller. I attached the first error log to this post.

So, is this hack related (I checked all my hacks but may have missed something obvious) or a FT issue?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Liz]

Can't speak to the errors, but the guy-in-a-box and the kite are toy bench items.

[jsalemi]

I knew my luck wouldn't last, though I'm not quite sure if this is strictly a FT bug, it wasn't doing this before.
I have a strange error occuring on one lot only - a custom lot that didn't come with any CC, but has a jack-in-the-box and a kite in it, not sure where they came from.

It's a game issue -- there were discussions here a long time ago (at least a year or more) about custom lots that came with odd objects having problems, and putting weird files in your downloads folder (usually 0 bytes).  Back then it was things like a single toy from a toy box, but no toy box on the lot for it to be associated with.

You can try deleting the two stray items from the lot, leaving the game, and checking to see if you have any 0 byte files in your Downloads folder.  If yes, just delete them, and that may fix the problem. Or, a simpler approach is to use the Clean Installer to scan your Downloads for 'empty package files' (they show up highlighted in light red/pink), and deleting them that way.

[friendlyquark]

If you have curtains the sims can close or which close automagically at sunset or something, remove those.

How do you remove something from a lot if you can't get into the lot?I assume SimPe. or somesuch? What I did was remove my neighborhoods folder, etc, un-install FT and then reinstall it and add everything back in, for some reason this unborks the lots, don't know why, but they all work now. However, when I add new ones this will all have to be repeated, unless I can figure out what the underlying problem is.

[Nec]

If the error pops up when it is loading, hit delete instead of reset. That error will pop up until you have deleted all of the curtains on the lot.  Also, remove the curtains from your Downloads folder.

[MuseEgo]

It's a game issue -- there were discussions here a long time ago (at least a year or more) about custom lots that came with odd objects having problems, and putting weird files in your downloads folder (usually 0 bytes).  Back then it was things like a single toy from a toy box, but no toy box on the lot for it to be associated with.

You can try deleting the two stray items from the lot, leaving the game, and checking to see if you have any 0 byte files in your Downloads folder.  If yes, just delete them, and that may fix the problem. Or, a simpler approach is to use the Clean Installer to scan your Downloads for 'empty package files' (they show up highlighted in light red/pink), and deleting them that way.

I'll try that, thanks. Though, I did use the clean installer to install the lot, I always do, and the only file was the lot itself.