Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread

[J. M. Pescado]

Oh. Would this also affect the one-shot commander that AwesomeStory is sometimes using?

Yes. One-shot Cmdr uses the same algorithms as Supreme Commander, except that instead of continuing after performing the action, it is a one-shot deal that terminates without a continuing queue action.

Asking because my test nhood is lagging like hell, and I do use "job performance for inactives" and all that, and I don't have all of the EA rabbitholes in there (nor do I have a library, for example). The lagging is the "walk three steps - pause - walk three steps - pause - turn around - pause" etc one, not lagging at a particular time of the day. I have circa 60 playables and 40-50 NPCs in there. I also noticed that sims sometimes stay on "Skill: X" forever, with a message that no skilling items or lessons are available and many of their needs bottomed out (but that was a few Awesome builds ago, dunno wether that still is an issue. The lagging definitely is, though).

Need starvation and skill-X forever are a direct side effect of the neighborhood not having basic motive satisfaction. If you're sticking sims in houses that are unable to address motives and your entire neighborhood is gutted of basic infrastructure, the system will fall apart, as it was originally designed for a neighborhood that had basic infrastructure, so the existence of certain basic skills are assumed without detailed checking: Skills like Cooking, Logic, Mechanical, and all the other "basics" that the game assumes would be found in the form of libraries and free chessboards which were present in every game, are simply assumed without doing a grep of the entire neighborhood for them every time. If you have removed all this infrastructure, the actions will fail repeatedly because NORMAL neighborhoods should have them. We are not sure how to address this issue, as forcing an availability check for every basic item may greatly increase CPU costs anyway, causing more lag.

[Simius]

Oh. Would this also affect the one-shot commander that AwesomeStory is sometimes using?

Yes. One-shot Cmdr uses the same algorithms as Supreme Commander, except that instead of continuing after performing the action, it is a one-shot deal that terminates without a continuing queue action.

Asking because my test nhood is lagging like hell, and I do use "job performance for inactives" and all that, and I don't have all of the EA rabbitholes in there (nor do I have a library, for example). The lagging is the "walk three steps - pause - walk three steps - pause - turn around - pause" etc one, not lagging at a particular time of the day. I have circa 60 playables and 40-50 NPCs in there. I also noticed that sims sometimes stay on "Skill: X" forever, with a message that no skilling items or lessons are available and many of their needs bottomed out (but that was a few Awesome builds ago, dunno wether that still is an issue. The lagging definitely is, though).

Need starvation and skill-X forever are a direct side effect of the neighborhood not having basic motive satisfaction. If you're sticking sims in houses that are unable to address motives and your entire neighborhood is gutted of basic infrastructure, the system will fall apart, as it was originally designed for a neighborhood that had basic infrastructure, so the existence of certain basic skills are assumed without detailed checking: Skills like Cooking, Logic, Mechanical, and all the other "basics" that the game assumes would be found in the form of libraries and free chessboards which were present in every game, are simply assumed without doing a grep of the entire neighborhood for them every time. If you have removed all this infrastructure, the actions will fail repeatedly because NORMAL neighborhoods should have them. We are not sure how to address this issue, as forcing an availability check for every basic item may greatly increase CPU costs anyway, causing more lag.

Would it be possible to check once per day and just keep the info on file somewhere?  Like it would check the world for chess boards.  If none are present it adds "chess boards" to the file and then just references that file for the rest of the day instead of having to check every object in the world again.

[LVRugger]

I have two children traveling with the family in Egypt. They are in the family-owned house with a computer and chessboard. Both are set to SC skill logic. They will play chess all day long until their needs are all low. They will play chess then start popping the SC icon for eat or bath but sit at the chess board. They both have fruit and veggies in their inventory, food in the fridge and a full bath (shower, not tub) available.
I am focusing on the mother who's tomb raiding and ignoring them. When I see their icons turn orange or red I'll click on them and fix them up so it's not that big of a deal.
I also have the father set on SC - fish who will sit at the river bank popping the "go to" icon over and over again and not fish.

[pbox]

Need starvation and skill-X forever are a direct side effect of the neighborhood not having basic motive satisfaction. If you're sticking sims in houses that are unable to address motives and your entire neighborhood is gutted of basic infrastructure, the system will fall apart, as it was originally designed for a neighborhood that had basic infrastructure, so the existence of certain basic skills are assumed without detailed checking: Skills like Cooking, Logic, Mechanical, and all the other "basics" that the game assumes would be found in the form of libraries and free chessboards which were present in every game, are simply assumed without doing a grep of the entire neighborhood for them every time. If you have removed all this infrastructure, the actions will fail repeatedly because NORMAL neighborhoods should have them. We are not sure how to address this issue, as forcing an availability check for every basic item may greatly increase CPU costs anyway, causing more lag.

In my nhood, I think the houses are fine (as far as basic food/pee/sleep motives go, at least), but there's indeed no public chess boards, no library, no gym and so on. I do have a bunch of sims with outdoor chessboard in their yard, though (can't SupCom-skilling sims use those? I thought I had read somewhere that stuff in the yard was considered free-for-all).

I think it would make sense if you could publish a list of what exact items/rabbitholes SupCom silently assumes to be available, and/or link to it from the AM download thread - that would be simpler and more effective than any code changes, I guess. I haven't seen this documented anywhere, and like you say, now that folks start to use more and more custom worlds I'd think it's going to be a recurrent issue.

ETA: the nhood I'm talking about is the one that I've uploaded re. the inventory destruction, if you want to have a look what's in there and what isn't. But the lagging that I see is most definitely not *entirely* due to SupCom (if at all), I was using NRaasStory for a little while and it was still laggy.

[Entgleichen]

Well, if people would tell me what twisted thing they've done to their neighborhood so I can figure out what is going into a loop and detect it...

I did nothing special to my Nhood. Its Sunset Valley, and the loop once occured in one of the three big houses south of the town park. One sim stood before the fridge, had the SC action "Eat", but obviously couldn't reach the fridge. When I cancelled the action though, and had him manually open the fridge, it worked. Just guessing: maybe he had another urgent action to fulfill (for his needs were badly low) and now couldnt decide which to do first and so switched between the two actions endlessly?

A thing I have to understand: I said before that I don't use SC for macros. So, when SC decides to use them on random sims on his own, this is a one shot action and happens on purpose? I took it for a bug. As long as I'm having issues with this feature, I would like to turn it off. Is this possible by changing some options in the config tool, and if yes, then which are they?

[J. M. Pescado]

Would it be possible to check once per day and just keep the info on file somewhere?  Like it would check the world for chess boards.  If none are present it adds "chess boards" to the file and then just references that file for the rest of the day instead of having to check every object in the world again.

Caching tricks are heavily utilized in the new-model code, but the old-model code is obviously old and has to be revisited when I get the chance to improveify it.

I did nothing special to my Nhood. Its Sunset Valley, and the loop once occured in one of the three big houses south of the town park. One sim stood before the fridge, had the SC action "Eat", but obviously couldn't reach the fridge.

No idea why he was unable to reach the fridge. A deadlock situation could happen if he was somehow using the wrong fridge, or performing the wrong action. If you see this, send the save.

A thing I have to understand: I said before that I don't use SC for macros. So, when SC decides to use them on random sims on his own, this is a one shot action and happens on purpose? I took it for a bug. As long as I'm having issues with this feature, I would like to turn it off. Is this possible by changing some options in the config tool, and if yes, then which are they?

Well, if you turn it off, you've just turned off all of Story Progression, as OSC is used to resolve any story action that requires the sim do something. So yeah, you can turn it off, by switching your story driver to something else.

[Silent Dreamer]

I am pretty sure I added back in all of the necessary items when building my world, including public chess tables and a library. If you'd like to at least take a look at the coding (download links are above) and verify that this really is causing the hangups, it would be appreciated. Otherwise, I guess I'll go through and place some more objects for skill building around town and see if that does anything. I'll probably try that in a little while and report back.

[Capitaine Marie]

I've also been experiencing freezing since installing the latest AM.  My Sims have frozen mid-stride a couple times now, in China.  It happened once at the market and once when they were running for the road to go back to base camp.  They live in Sunset Valley, and I've done nothing to my hood.  The only mod I have is AM; I use EA Story progression, and I have not used SC mode.  I have anatomically correct skins and a few custom objects; but before installing the latest AM, my Sims never froze.  My computer well exceeds minimum specs.

Did I give enough info, Pes?  

[J. M. Pescado]

Mid-stride freezes in China are a sign that something is wrong with your computer, because there are no Supreme Commander issues in China. I've been there, run it for ages, it works.

[Claeric]

Yeah, I spent quite some time in china earlier with no issues. Sunset valley with no issues. France? Every so often, mid-action freeze, spinning plumbob, effecting effects, frozen time. Egypt? Same deal.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yeah, I've seen none of those issues in any of the vacationlands, and since the Vacationlands are all standardized, and therefore, we all have the same vacationland, and the same AwesomeMod, something weird must be going on with your computer.

[firstcharmander]

After looking at the wiki, I can't find what the option for Unified Depreciaton is for.  (note on spelling, it's spelled as that in game config)

I'm looking to make it harder for people to make money (or reduce income), because after a while (about 30 days in-game), everyone is freaking rich.  Job scaling in a way helps, but it doesn't directly lower income, just makes it harder to get promoted.

[J. M. Pescado]

Because people haven't updated the Wikka. In the normal game, only items on the active household's lot depreciate. If Unified Depreciation is on, all lots will do this, resulting in a gradual loss of networth to all famblies in the game, while making noob lots more affordable to freshly-generated townies, helping to reduce homelessness.

[zanzertem]

Are there large differences (if any) between freeloader AM and PAY PLUS AM? I've seen it mentioned that there were differences.

I'd consider switching to PAY PLUS but 40 bucks a month hurts the pocketbook and I'd like to know what I'm getting.

[snowbawl]

Are there large differences (if any) between freeloader AM and PAY PLUS AM? I've seen it mentioned that there were differences.

I'd consider switching to PAY PLUS but 40 bucks a month hurts the pocketbook and I'd like to know what I'm getting.

Think about what you are asking in relation to where you are.  Lurk more and read the FAQ.

[zanzertem]

Think about what you are asking in relation to where you are.  Lurk more and read the FAQ.

Strange, I've read the FAQ half a dozen times and it mentions nothing about the pay version of Awesomemod.

If you are referring to the thread I am posting in, I was merely trying to avoid creating another thread. Since my question has to do with Awesomemod, and this is the Awesomemod question thread, it seemed well suited.

If I must be enlightened, please do so with much lulz. I am bored at work.

[snowbawl]

Think about what you are asking in relation to where you are.  Lurk more and read the FAQ.

Strange, I've read the FAQ half a dozen times and it mentions nothing about the pay version of Awesomemod.

If you are referring to the thread I am posting in, I was merely trying to avoid creating another thread. Since my question has to do with Awesomemod, and this is the Awesomemod question thread, it seemed well suited.

If I must be enlightened, please do so with much lulz. I am bored at work.

No, I enjoy toying with people.  Now think about your first statement.

[zanzertem]

Code:

Strange, I've read the FAQ half a dozen times and it mentions nothing about the pay version of Awesomemod.

To me, this either means there are lots of juicy bits in PAY PLUS Pesc does not want the world to know about, or the pay version doesn't exist. The first option is the most likely scenario.

Perhaps there is a third option, but my limited cerebral processing ability fails me.

Either way I will continue to LURK MOAR until someone confirms or denounces my suspicions.

[Roobs]

Are you for reals?

[Zazazu]

Why don't you just subscribe for a month and test it out? The cancellation policy here is pretty agreeable.

[wizard_merlin]

Code:

Strange, I've read the FAQ half a dozen times and it mentions nothing about the pay version of Awesomemod.

To me, this either means there are lots of juicy bits in PAY PLUS Pesc does not want the world to know about, or the pay version doesn't exist. The first option is the most likely scenario.

Post a link to where this improved PAY PLUS version of AM that you speak of exists.

Try putting your brain into gear before you think and type.  What kind of a Moron are you?  You read the FAQ, you browse this site, which is the home of AM and its creator, and are unable to find anything mentioned about the pay version, but somehow your fucking warped logic still manages to deduce that the pay version still exists and is better than the free one.

As Zazazu says, get it for a month if you really believe it's better, then come and tell us what you think of the improved pay version.

Edited to fix grammatical abomination

[immortelleMuse]

Are there large differences (if any) between freeloader AM and PAY PLUS AM? I've seen it mentioned that there were differences.

I'd consider switching to PAY PLUS but 40 bucks a month hurts the pocketbook and I'd like to know what I'm getting.

For serious?
OMFG, this is the most hilarious thing EVER.

[Grimma]

Code:

Strange, I've read the FAQ half a dozen times and it mentions nothing about the pay version of Awesomemod.

To me, this either means there are lots of juicy bits in PAY PLUS Pesc does not want the world to know about, or the pay version doesn't exist. The first option is the most likely scenario.

Post a link to where this improved PAY PLUS version of AM that you speak of exists.

Try putting your brain into gear before you think and type.  What kind of a Moron are you?  You read the FAQ, you browse this site, which is the home of AM and it's creator, and are unable to find anything mentioned about the pay version, but somehow your fucking warped logic still manages to deduce that the pay version still exists and is better than the free one.

As Zazazu says, get it for a month if you really believe it's better, then come and tell us what you think of the improved pay version.

No no, WM, nuke that apostrophe (just leave the mailbox alone).

As for Zanzitard, I think he should stay the hell away from T$R, they'll take him to the cleaners and back and then to the cleaners AGAIN. Zanzibar-flavoured retard, I'm a happy subscriber here with a paid-up subscription, and I don't see how anyone can live without it, but that's just me.

[wizard_merlin]

No no, WM, nuke that apostrophe (just leave the mailbox alone).

I knew that nuke option would come in handy one day for something other than blowing up useless sims and objects.

[zanzertem]

Post a link to where this improved PAY PLUS version of AM that you speak of exists.

I can't post a link, because I wasn't aware of it's existence, or lack of. However, I can post a link where it is mentioned, thus piquing my curiosity.

Did you pay the subscription fee? The free version is crappy, the pay version of Awesome Mod is much better.

I imagine this user was speaking facetiously?