Slap Dance: I Are Fail

[Mirelly]

Locals at Three Lakes resort are unable to slap dance.

Information. FT-P0. I have found the problem continues even after removing all non-awesome hacks (there was only ACR and a couple of other minor semi-awesome products anyway).

I found no other instances of similar troubles via Google or searching here ... or maybe I just suck at that as well.

Ideas?

[J. M. Pescado]

Slapdancing works fine in my game. Define "Can't Slap Dance". Do you mean they CAN'T, or that they simply WON'T?

[Mirelly]

The order -- whether autonomous or forced -- fades without any sign (eg route failure). I have tried with various music making devices in various positions. Even made a "dance square" com lot for Three Lakes where the only catalogue object was a wall speaker ... unsurprisingly that was cosmic phail.

[Mirelly]

Fixed after removing:

dancepositioner  (Feb 2008) ... currently looking for an update ...

[J. M. Pescado]

Dance Positioner is in /test, so isn't expected to work, but I've never seen such a malfunction unless you deliberately placed the positioner someplace really dumb.

[Mirelly]

I installed P3 and did a line by line reinstall of the DC. I then performed a binary search with little hope of being surprised since I do not install CC contaminated with stealth hacks.

I was down to the last few awesome hacks when "dancepositioner" slapped me around the chops ....

It was one of those "duh" moments.

Re Pescado's question (above) ... I have only placed the dance positioner object on a couple of comm lots. I placed them all on the disco floor tiles in front of a DJ booth. There are no DJ booths in any of the Three Lakes resorts I tested. (1 Custom hood and Pleaantview vanilla).

[Emma]

I had the same problem with the dancepositioner, but in my Bigfoot lot. I also found it interfered with Tai Chi in the ethiopian secret lot. I couldn't get in those lots to actually place the positioner so I just removed it from my downloads folder altogether.

[Millie]

I also have a problem - with all of the dances in BV (hula, slap and Tai Chi)

They can learn to do it, if I marry a sim off to a local, or bring bigfoot home, as the locals/bigfoot still have the learned ability. Nobody does it autonomously on the lots anymore.

I've had this problem since installing freetime, and I didn't have any hacks in place then.

Could this be caused by a non hacked object (before I remove my downloads folder? It's massive and takes ages! - don't want to do all of that if there's no chance it's caused by that)

I have asked at other places, but nobody has a clue, and google didn't turn anything up.

The only other thing I can think of, is that freetime somehow reduced the autonomy? I have read that others say it doesn't happen often, but in my game it doesn't happen at all, whereas it used to be quite common.

[SnootCB]

I do still get autonomous slap dances and hulas, but I have never once since installing BV seen Tai Chi.  Ever.  I never thought about marrying in a local; seems to me like that's the only way I'll see the Asian "dance".

[talysman]

That's probably not the same issue, and might not be FT-related.

Before I installed FT, I noticed two similar, but probably separate, problems like this:

(1) Sims kept rolling wants to learn the hula/slap dance/tai chi, but no one was dancing. I think this is just sadorandomism. The Random Number Gods seem to want all the locals and tourists to go through obsession phases, so you go through a day or two when no one dances, or no one does the local gesture. This is especially true if there's something else on the lot the locals like more; on hotel lots with the espresso machine, they obsess over cup-juggling. My solution: always go on vacations of at least five days, so they can work through their obsessions. Also, learn gestures and dances elsewhere. Tai Chi will usually happen at night by day three, at least.

(2) Playable sims can't always join a dance in progress. I'm not sure what causes this, but it seems to be lot-specific. Had this happen on a beach hotel lot: manual or autonomous "Hula" or "Slap Dance" would just fade out of the queue. This seems to happen specifically when locals or tourists are dancing to wall-speaker music, but I haven't seen it happen enough to be sure of the pattern. My solution has been to send them to another lot. I haven't seen this happen with tai chi, but if a sim tries to join tai chi but spends too long finding a good position and the person they're trying to join stops exercising, "Join Tai Chi" will drop out of the queue. This is particularly obvious when non-playables start doing the Tai Chi Dance, doing tai chi for five seconds, spinning around into normal clothes, then spinning back ino sweatpants and exercising again for five seconds.

And, in case this needs repeating, it's not just locals and Bigfoot who can teach this stuff. Once any playable learns a dance or gesture, they can pass it on to others. Especially if your tai-chi master playable starts a dojo as a business.

[Millie]

Talysman, in the days where I could use the slapdance etc, I found they couldn't join in if there were over (six I think) a certain amount of sims already doing it. I didn't have the same issue with Tai chi. Not sure why that would be, but that seemed to be the case in my game.

I did have another neighbourhood where the sims had married locals and learned the various dances, and as you say they can then pass it on. I got bored and deleted it though, so I'm starting again.

Thanks for the tips - I shall try those out and see if I get anywhere.

[Millie]

Worked it out!

I had in my DL folder (not in the hacks one stupidly) a xxxsims hack that I got ages ago because I fancied doing a bit of storytelling. Anyway, got rid of those, and they are slapdancing all over the shop! So, it was tight pants. Lesson learned - always put hacks in different folder, doh. That way, they don't escape attention.

[Mirelly]

always put hacks in different folder, doh. That way, they don't escape attention.

Also, too, as well ... keep Director's Cut awesomeness separate from all other hacks. It was my accidental dumbness in dropping the dance positioner in my \_FFS\ sub directory that caused my original problem ... it was the last place I looked. It should gone into \_MiscHacks\

[Millie]

I will take that advice, thanks Mirelly. I have a few hours spare tonight, so my downloads folder shall have an overhaul. It's awfully messy in there