Is this a bug, hack conflict or a "feature"?

[IgnorantBliss]

I just installed Freetime (and have all EPs except BV), and this one sim on the Law Enforcement career has been promoted twice now. Each time he received an unusually large amount of money (over 7000 simoleans even though he's at the bottom end of the career ladder, who did he sleep with?), but see what the pop-up message says:



I have the newer versions of all MATY hacks that I used to have before, and I don't think I have any other career related hacks in my game at the moment. I'm not willing to test my game by playing without all my hacks, because that would suck too much. So, I'm wondering if anyone has any idea if this is Freetime related or something else entirely?

[nekonoai]

This is being discussed in another thread.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11277.0/topicseen.html

[IgnorantBliss]

Sounds like a very similar problem to mine, but there was no solution to the problem there, either. And in my case no money was subtracted, but added, to the household funds.

[Jelenedra]

No kitty killer?

[clem]

And actually, I've just had the same thing happen again, this time with a promotion. This time, I'm not sure what it did to the family funds, since I wasn't paying attention to what it was before. Where the devil is it getting such weird figures?

ETA: No kitten killer for me.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have not encountered this bug yet. Did you select any LTA perks pertaining to work or paychecks?

[clem]

I haven't used any of the LTA perks in the most recent household where this happened.

[IgnorantBliss]

No kitten killer here, either.

I checked, and the only LTA perk I had selected for this sim so far was a secondary aspiration, but no further options in that panel, either. Another sim in the same household has some work related LTA perks selected, though, I think.


Edited to add:
I tried removing the harder jobs hack, but that didn't change anything. Now another sim in the same household is also getting this glitch.

Edited again:
I also tried removing relevantwages, but that didn't fix anything. Then I took out almost all my hacks, save for a couple, like the age duration hack from twojeffs whose removal would have permanent effects. After that, when the same sim as before got a promotion, everything worked normally. So, it seems to be a hack related issue. Now it's just up to figuring out which one of my tens of hacks is causing it.

[clem]

Show me yours and I'll show you mine. 

Might be a quick way of narrowing down the culprit.

ETA: Of course, you're probably already doing the troubleshooting, whereas my hands are tied except for these limited forays: I'm getting killed at work today.

[IgnorantBliss]

I don't know of an easy way to copy the names of a long list of files, so I took screenshots and combined them into this huge image you can see here: http://www.ignorantbliss.org/images/forum/hacks.jpg
The hacks I've had in my game while this problem has been occurring, in alphabetical order.

I will be doing more trouble shooting tomorrow, now it's bed time

[clem]

HA! When you said tens of hacks, I thought you meant, you know, two dozen.

When I'm free tonight, I'll do a comparison to see what we've got in common and post my results here.

Edited to add:

Here are the hacks we have in common:

antiweatherreaction.package
commlightson.package
ffsdebugger.package
gctowniefix.package
lesswhiny.package
nocorruptdeath.package
noplagiarism.package
novelprogress.package
petsp0-jobfixes.package (hm, I wonder about this one. I can't remember what it fixes, so I'll go look when I'm done here. I guess I do have a career hack/fix in there.)
phonehack.package
phonehack-talkmodule.package
sneldercareeroutfitfix.package
stuckobjremover.package
vampwerefixes.package

It doesn't narrow it down a lot for me, but there are a couple of possibilities. I'm going to do a little experimenting and see what I can find.

ETA again: I have an outdated version of petsp0-jobfixes, so I'll run once with the old version and then again with the new and we'll see what happens.

NAILED! Try updating petsp0-jobfixes. Once I updated that, the correct amounts came up with the promotion.

[jsalemi]

Novelprogress is a no-no for FT; Pescado has not yet updated it.  That may be one of the causes right there.

[IgnorantBliss]

Cool, thanks, both of you! I don't know how I missed the updated version of petjobs. I have not been as careful as I should about making sure my hacks are up to date, I had only removed obvious culprits and tried to update the ones that had updates available. I will be doing testing later today after work.

[J. M. Pescado]

I notice you're STILL using teh old "pettempadfix", which was scrapyarded ages ago and isn't part of the FT DC. And yes, your jobfixes is a year old and was updated for FT. So now we know exactly what causes fucked up job payouts, anyway.

[jsalemi]

I have not been as careful as I should about making sure my hacks are up to date, I had only removed obvious culprits and tried to update the ones that had updates available.

I've learned, by both experience and the suggestions of others here, that when a new EP comes out it's just best to delete all of Pescado's hacks, and put in the new DC for the new EP.  Then update from there.  That solves the problem of having very old versions or outdated hacks still laying around.

[clem]

I've learned, by both experience and the suggestions of others here, that when a new EP comes out it's just best to delete all of Pescado's hacks, and put in the new DC for the new EP.  Then update from there.  That solves the problem of having very old versions or outdated hacks still laying around.

I don't actually use very many hacks, which was why I thought it easier to update by hand. This'll learn me not to do it when high on cold meds, though.  I did a wackily haphazard job of it this time. And I noticed that I have hacks that haven't been updated since 2005. Those came out. Kinda surprised that I don't have more things FUBARed.

Thanks for your help, everyone.

[KatEnigma]

I do it all by hand,since I don't use half of what's in the DC, at least.  I go through the list when the new EP is out and take out everything that's borked, outright. Then I go through and replace everything else- download it, then delete the one in my folder, then when I'm all done, unzip everything back into the folder. After that,  I go in through this link every day, so I can sort by Last Modified, and replace anything that's been updated. For the first couple weeks, that last step is important, since some hacks get updated constantly at first.

[IgnorantBliss]

I updated the petjobs hack, removed novelprogress and the obsolete petadsomething. Problem fixed.

[jsalemi]

I don't actually use very many hacks, which was why I thought it easier to update by hand.

That's where the Clean Installer comes in handy, since it can enable and disable hacks right from the list. Since hacks are listed in red, you can go through and disable the ones you don't want without having to worry about it.  They'll just take up directory space then, since the game won't even load them (it disables them by changing the extension from .package to .off).

Then if you change your mind about a hack later on, you can just enable it again.

[witch]

I create a brand new sims 2 folder. I initialise the hood. Then I get Pescado's hacks and TJ's as they're updated. I play for a bit. I remember other annoyances and add those hacks as needed. Always going and updating to new, or checking they're still compatible. That way I build a complete set of non-conflicting and updated hacks for each EP. I tend not to have too many problems. I use the hack scanner frequently.

After a while I take the new hack folder over to my current playable hood and blow away the test hood.

[Emma]

I create a brand new sims 2 folder. I initialise the hood. Then I get Pescado's hacks and TJ's as they're updated. I play for a bit. I remember other annoyances and add those hacks as needed. Always going and updating to new, or checking they're still compatible. That way I build a complete set of non-conflicting and updated hacks for each EP. I tend not to have too many problems. I use the hack scanner frequently.

After a while I take the new hack folder over to my current playable hood and blow away the test hood.

My method exactly, witch

[Jelenedra]

Mine too. Only difference with how I used to do it, is that I always keep anti-redundancy installed because of Bon Voyage. After that, I made sure everything in the Director's Cut for FT was in my folder. Then I added my Jfade's hacks and Argon's fixes. I still don't have anything other than ACR from twojeffs in my game. He seems to not be updating the threads with the hacks themselves to let people now they're FT safe, and I hate going back and forth between his compatibility list and the rest of his stuff.

[jsalemi]

He seems to not be updating the threads with the hacks themselves to let people now they're FT safe, and I hate going back and forth between his compatibility list and the rest of his stuff.

Yea, he is, for at least some of them.  In any case, all his hacks are FT safe or have FT versions now, plus he's added some new ones.