Story Mode

[Zazazu]

I do have the notifications enabled. I see lots of antagonizing and befriending, some new jobs, and some new babies, but no promotions, demotions, firings, or moves. It's a new town, though. This will probably change over time.

Mine are barely reproducing now, but moving like crazy. I blame myself, though. I had a bug unrelated to Awesomemod. I chose to kill it in a particularly rough way that I knew was going to bork things up, without realizing that it would have effects other than those for the specific sim. At the end, I had approximately 30 new homeless households. Oops.

I built myself a nice little economical 3 bed/2 bath home that would sleep six under $14k, and filled one section of Riverview with copies. I placed families. And I placed families. Then I merged singles and placed more. That night, story progression went bonkers. After one more night, it has calmed down.

[chaos]

I don't know why my game is behaving so differently from other people's games. I even placed a family on a vacant lot, yet they haven't moved, and I'm pretty sure at least one of them has a job. My active sim once passed their lot while collecting rocks, and they were all just standing by the mailbox. I often see them at community lots, even when my sim is at home (she lives across the street from the bookstore, where I regularly see non-playable sims visiting). It's possible that my game is borked somehow, but since the sims are staying put, I'm not really complaining. I have no 1 AM lag, btw.

[Nevearo]

IndieStone mod was designed to counter the retirement community situation. Massive births was a deliberate decision. It will be toned down as things are balanced better. Of course the speed at those changes cannot be compared to what Pescado does. As has been pointed out several times, Pescado is just quicker by too much of a factor to really compare.

Life uses a bottom-up simulation.  There are a few elegant rules that spawn great complexity, and the interest is in the chaos that arises from the simple beginnings.  Unfortunately, chaos, although interesting, is the typical (even desired) result of A-life simulations.  But a village simulation like TS3 requires some kind negative feedback mechanism to prevent chaos.  (Like, too big, too small, too old, too unemployed populations).  And that is best instituted from the top-down level. 

So top-down and bottom-up are BOTH REQUIRED.

Actually, no. The goal of A-life generally is to create emergent patterns, and not be chaotic. Chaos is desired because from chaos comes new order. If it was unpatterned chaos, it would quickly be pushed aside as having no ultimate value to the development of A-life.

Bottom up works just fine alone. It's just a matter of finding the perfect set of simple rules to ensure that things stabilize in a believable state that is required. I believe Awesomemod is taking that approach, and I believe that it will be accomplished.

[nanacake]

Turned Story Progression on in a save copy of my regular small hood that never had story progression on it quickly got to work moving in new random generated sims and creating chaos. Basically every few minutes the game would freeze (similar to that freeze people report when textures are loading), but everything would freeze not just sims. Then it got worse to the point of screen not able to move (scroll on edge on) even with pausing. Turning story mode off fixed it immediately. I wish there was a way to just work story mode with the sims I already have (so they can breed on their own), instead of trying to generate new ones to fill the quota en masse. Like ala notownieregen

[moondance]

  I believe it was Story Progression and not marketing which is why they pushed back the date.  EA I think did a rush job on story progression.  And, it will take hackers like Indie and Pescado to completely fix it. 

That's about what I've been thinking. I think they threw in "story progression" at the last minute to try and cover the fact that their living, breathing town full of sims who lived their own lives was actually full of zombie sims who did nothing but sit on park benches and read about Raymundo all day.  So they changed the release date and threw together a random event generator--calling it "story progression" to make it sound better.  When they realized that their random event generator didn't do anything worthwhile, and the new release date was fast approaching, they said "screw it, our customers are stupid anyway," and threw in the ability for sims to clone themselves.

Ya know, I thought I was kidding when I wrote this, but it actually seems more reasonable than if they actually meant for it all to work the way it does. 

[StormchaserOne]

Moondance we are onto something.  You make it even more logical.  That it was when they found they have Zombie Sims reading Rambo Part XXXVIII The Rambundo.  So Story Progression was made for all those who read Rambundo to become a John Simbo.  

And, you hit it right on, that is exactly what it is a random event generator.  OOooooo Ahhhhh I'm a mental retard who loves Story Progression since it generates a stupid moronic event.  And, EA knows you loves SIMs you will buy SIMs 3 and has a random event generator which was made by a mentally retarded EA Staff Member.    

[Enelen]

Pescado, I did not understand your comment that the sims are not motivated to get jobs :-) If I start a new family one of their first wishes is always to get one. If I would have to create a concept how to micromanage sims by the PC I would follow the path created by the wishes that appear. Most often they make sense.

Yes, but here's the thing: While the wishes appear, sims do not, in any way, act upon their wishes, and simply hang around listlessly in Story Mode until forcibly dragooned into a random job by the job boss-and-coworker engine.

I know you have better things to work on, but I would dearly like a story progression where all they do is act on their wishes  Then I could make myself a coffee, sit out in the park with a wolfingrun (or equivalent), and watch. Would be fun. Sadly, I don't think that is moddable, though...

2. A population that dies out simply fails the evolutionary test and will be replaced by new random immigrants. (The evolution simulation alone makes this interesting!)

The evolution simulation is pretty much the only thing TS3 has over TS2. And it doesn't work 

Also, I know this is still not the requests forum, but I think random moving ins should be configurable on/off, so that if a population I created wants to die off despite my efforts and your storymode hack, then I would get a ghost town with empty houses I can use for my sims rather than random townies taking over and stealing the show... That is pretty much what EA gave us, no? I should be able to make a house and leave it empty so that it would lure my young sims in to create their own families, but now if I make a house, a townie will always move in at the next update. In fact, empty houses and empty beds/cribs could act as birth regulations: if I have living space and a loving couple, they will spawn kids. If the young adults have either space at home or an empty house, they will marry and move in together. With traits and a little randomness added in of course.

_{Then you could just drop the Awesome name and call is TS4} 

[Kaliban]

That's about what I've been thinking. I think they threw in "story progression" at the last minute to try and cover the fact that their living, breathing town full of sims who lived their own lives was actually full of zombie sims who did nothing but sit on park benches and read about Raymundo all day.  So they changed the release date and threw together a random event generator--calling it "story progression" to make it sound better.  When they realized that their random event generator didn't do anything worthwhile, and the new release date was fast approaching, they said "screw it, our customers are stupid anyway," and threw in the ability for sims to clone themselves.

Ya know, I thought I was kidding when I wrote this, but it actually seems more reasonable than if they actually meant for it all to work the way it does. 

It looks more like they spent much time "tuning" other aspects of the game play, at the active sim/household level, and ran out of time for developping the "neighborhood" gameplay/gameflow. It also looks like some decision takers thought the players didn't want any kind of story progression anyway, and would rather play TS3 as they played TS2, without using story. Sacrificing story design to respect the deadlines seemed not a big deal...

EA (and most of the industry) have problems understanding what building big games for a lot of customer means. They made a lot of work on "user content and creativity", but they still think they can produce a "one for all" game play, satisfying everyone - what TS2, Spore and TS3 showed is that, if you create a game that attracts a great number of layers, you HAVE to give the players way to personalize the game play itself, to easily configure each point of the game.

Back to the point. There are many ways to design a "story progression". Some players only want to have a "changing" neigborhood, where they can play without having to find jobs and lovers for everyone in the city. IndieStone does that well. Pescado has another approach, it is a good thing and will please other kinds of players.

The only problem is that as long as the highlander rule can't be cheated with, a player will not be able to take only what he wants from a modder. IndieStoneMod and AwesomeMod are not so much "mods" than different versions of the full game.
With TS2, the players could customize their gameplay by chosing the precise mods they wanted... At present time, gameplay customization on TS3 is just chosing between different "visions" of the game by different authors.

[CheritaChen]

The only problem is that as long as the highlander rule can't be cheated with, a player will not be able to take only what he wants from a modder. IndieStoneMod and AwesomeMod are not so much "mods" than different versions of the full game.
With TS2, the players could customize their gameplay by chosing the precise mods they wanted... At present time, gameplay customization on TS3 is just chosing between different "visions" of the game by different authors.

The Highlander Rule is not something inherent to TS3, though. It's true of any software that if you throw multiple instances of how to handle situation XYZ at it, all of which have equal priority, the program is going to barf. Even with TS2 mods like default skin replacements, this was true.

A more accurate description of the issue is that each modder (of the major mods we're discussing) has tackled so many different pieces of code that they were bound to have at least one or two overlapping. People keep requesting new functions and fixes to be added to AM, and Pescado obliges where he can. Each one of those additional core changes is a potential conflict with something else done by another modder. If you want to have more a la carte selection for which mods you use, you're going to have to either persuade el Presidente to modularize his fixes, wait until someone else does it for you, or learn to do it yourself.

I don't really see a problem with having a Packages folder full of single-function mods. You just better make sure they're very descriptively named.

[J. M. Pescado]

A more accurate description of the issue is that each modder (of the major mods we're discussing) has tackled so many different pieces of code that they were bound to have at least one or two overlapping. People keep requesting new functions and fixes to be added to AM, and Pescado obliges where he can. Each one of those additional core changes is a potential conflict with something else done by another modder. If you want to have more a la carte selection for which mods you use, you're going to have to either persuade el Presidente to modularize his fixes, wait until someone else does it for you, or learn to do it yourself.

Actually, the underlying problem is imposed by the structure of TS3. Like in TS2, a given resource by TGI must be overridden in its entireity. However, in TS2, there were many resources, all distinct: A given modification required only that you override a small set of BHAVs, possibly only one, out of tens of thousands. An analogous situation exists in TS3, except that there are only about 3 BHAVs, and they are frequently interlinked. There are also many modifications in TS2 which could be performed by modifying only BCONs, which in TS3, are analogous to the many XML mods. While not as numerous as TS2 BCONs, XML tunings are still many and frequently seperate, so the potential for conflict is not quite as glaring here.

I don't really see a problem with having a Packages folder full of single-function mods. You just better make sure they're very descriptively named.

The problem is that because there are only the equivalent of about 3 BHAVs, any change to the game essentially modifies these. Since a resource must be overridden in its entireity, this means that even a "minor" core mod is still a full core mod, and cannot be made compatible with another core mod. XML mods, are, of course, compatible with most things, except in cases where AwesomeMod has specifically also commandeered an XML tuning, such as Socializing/Careers/Traits.

Some research has been performed into improving the compatibility of core mods, but so far the requirements of those methods require that the core mods be assembled in a non-plug-and-play format that requires the user to assemble his own custom core mod from components, and furthermore, subjects the creator of the modifications to a number of constraints which are not suitable for advanced modification methods. As these present limitations are simply not acceptable for the purposes of AwesomeMod, we have not adopted this strategy at this time.

[tjstreak]

As far as story progression, EA used this as one of the selling points for the game.  Remember all of that hooplah about what you do on one side of town affects what happens on the other side?  All that hooplah appears to be unadulterated B.S.

In my more recent games, I simply have turned on TS2 aging (i.e. only the active lot ages) under the theory that the N.P.C. just are color for the background.  After all, the town itself does not "age" -- new buildings being built, old buildings being torn down.  It's a quick and dirty solution, but it does maintain the demographic balance.

It seems that another quick and dirty solution would be simply to create a few families to serve as NPC's and move them into an unoccupied house.  I started to do this in TS2:  creating an orphanage of children, a group home for teens, and otherwise creating households of sims who otherwise were missing from the game.

I like AM and keep it installed for other reasons.  It has a lot of really neat features, like being able to turn off the sort for clothes, or preventing books from acting like magic scrolls.  Some of these little things bother me a lot more than EA's failure to implement a functional story progression.

[Motoki]

Ugh, I had like the megapost from hell where I kept responding and then cutting and then pasting it into the next one etc etc and somewhere along the way I lost it. I wish you guys weren't so god damned anal over the double post thing. I still never get why people care. Who gives a crap? Responding to a different topic is okay to do in another different topic as far as I am concerned. /rant.

I just wasted the better part of an hour. 

Oh well, I guess I will paste the god damned replies in Word or something and assemble them all together at the end to make you posting nettiquette queens happy. 

The problem is that because there are only the equivalent of about 3 BHAVs, any change to the game essentially modifies these. Since a resource must be overridden in its entireity, this means that even a "minor" core mod is still a full core mod, and cannot be made compatible with another core mod.

This is an irritating design on their part. Now stupid little things like Interacting with the Grim Reaper or squelching the bathroom privacy rules have to be a "core mod".

XML mods, are, of course, compatible with most things,

I like the XML mods. They are really, really easy to deal with. Any idiot who takes 5 minutes can learn them. They are basically just text. And you can thankfully edit most aspects of the game with them. In this respect, I think it's a step up from TS2 modding.

except in cases where AwesomeMod has specifically also commandeered an XML tuning, such as Socializing/Careers/Traits.

Yeah, but you can still override it by setting different permission levels in different directories and then giving another XML mod higher permission than Awesomemod. The Teen Woohoo mod in the Pudding Factory does this and it works just fine.

Some research has been performed into improving the compatibility of core mods, but so far the requirements of those methods require that the core mods be assembled in a non-plug-and-play format that requires the user to assemble his own custom core mod from components, and furthermore, subjects the creator of the modifications to a number of constraints which are not suitable for advanced modification methods. As these present limitations are simply not acceptable for the purposes of AwesomeMod, we have not adopted this strategy at this time.

That's disappointing but it makes sense. You need to mod in a way that makes sense for you and shouldn't be forced into methods that are not efficient or conducive to your goals.

As far as story progression, EA used this as one of the selling points for the game.  Remember all of that hooplah about what you do on one side of town affects what happens on the other side?  All that hooplah appears to be unadulterated B.S.

Oh that's usual gaming company par for the course marketing lies to brag about how great its supposed AI is. They always do that. I remember Ultima Online bragged in the late 90s about how it's npcs were so life like it fooled one of the developers into thinking it was a real person. They stand around and say a few generic things. I could be drunk and half asleep and I would still never mistake them for a real person. Ditto for Elder Scrolls Oblivion and all it's bragging about it's 'Radiant AI'.

Actually, to this day I still think the npc schedules of Ultima 7 way back in 1992 is some of the better town/life/people simulation stuff I've seen and that's sad. That was almost 20 years ago.

[CheritaChen]

The problem is that because there are only the equivalent of about 3 BHAVs, any change to the game essentially modifies these. Since a resource must be overridden in its entireity, this means that even a "minor" core mod is still a full core mod, and cannot be made compatible with another core mod. XML mods, are, of course, compatible with most things, except in cases where AwesomeMod has specifically also commandeered an XML tuning, such as Socializing/Careers/Traits.

I thought about that after I left for work; the modularization wouldn't be possible if all that stuff is part of the same piece of behavior. What people seem to be asking for is a way to change different aspects of behaviors that have been interwoven into the same routine by EA. It's the pieces that can't be separated that everyone is wanting to separate, and I wasn't thinking about just how few of the seemingly unrelated behaviors were really independent in the code. (Like I said, I never have looked at it and probably wouldn't know what I was seeing if I did.)

Some research has been performed into improving the compatibility of core mods, but so far the requirements of those methods require that the core mods be assembled in a non-plug-and-play format that requires the user to assemble his own custom core mod from components, and furthermore, subjects the creator of the modifications to a number of constraints which are not suitable for advanced modification methods. As these present limitations are simply not acceptable for the purposes of AwesomeMod, we have not adopted this strategy at this time.

It sounds like a nightmare to try to support, too. When you look at what they've done, does it make sense the way they tied it together in such a big knot? I mean, does it look like there was a legitimate purpose for the design, or does it really look like an effort to thwart third party modification?

As far as story progression, EA used this as one of the selling points for the game.  Remember all of that hooplah about what you do on one side of town affects what happens on the other side?  All that hooplah appears to be unadulterated B.S.

Indeed. When I first read about the story progression, I actually thought I'd want to keep it turned off and just play in the old TS2 style. But now that I've messed with just the little taste of progression that we do get (neighbors aging, random births), I'm actually more interested in having real progression. I want the little surprises of new couples getting together and reproducing, or breaking up. I want to have my Sim talk to an acquaintance and learn he's in a new career or romantic attachment. I even want to occasionally have my Sim be surprised to discover that his potential mate has suddenly adopted a rugrat (just not every time in every game--I'm looking at you, Christopher Steel). Every other aspect of TS3 is so similar to TS2 that without story progression, I really don't see a reason to play this one over the other.

[pbox]

I like the XML mods (..) I think it's a step up from TS2 modding.

Same here; this is particularly true for Mac users. Perhaps I was a wee bit lazy, but I never got into actually modding TS2 (apart from lights and suchlike) since the workflow alone was so tedious (let alone learning how to actually do stuff, and then do it) -- I'd have to boot the other machine, connect, transfer files, start SimPE, yadda yadda .. just to LOOK AT something. Now I can simply open any package in TextEdit and see what the values are, right on this machine, while the game is running -- and it's all so obvious and self-explaining that I had already tweaked a lot of things before I even *had* the game. There seems to be a little trend towards Java now, as well -- I don't think I've ever seen any TS2 Java tools.

Re. the so-called AI, somebody on here called it "Artificial Stupidity" lately.

(And I'd be surprised if anyone would take issue if you replied to the god damned replies in separate posts .. you're not going "**bump**!! ne1? ne1?" after all. I believe I've been doing that too, and I've yet to be slapped.)

[Zazazu]

(And I'd be surprised if anyone would take issue if you replied to the god damned replies in separate posts .. you're not going "**bump**!! ne1? ne1?" after all. I believe I've been doing that too, and I've yet to be slapped.)

Yes, issues would be taken. There is no reason why double-or-triple posting is warranted. Motoki obviously knows where the edit button is. An alternative is to post, then wait for a bit for someone else to say something.

[Motoki]

(And I'd be surprised if anyone would take issue if you replied to the god damned replies in separate posts .. you're not going "**bump**!! ne1? ne1?" after all. I believe I've been doing that too, and I've yet to be slapped.)

Yes, issues would be taken. There is no reason why double-or-triple posting is warranted. Motoki obviously knows where the edit button is. An alternative is to post, then wait for a bit for someone else to say something.

Feh. If someone has something to say and it's relevant then who the fuck cares? I was on some other board related to a TV show and people were nazis about that, though most boards I've been on no one cares.

I don't see the hurt. It's not like it's asking the same damned thing over and over again and going ne1? ne1? bump bump bump.

My mind works in a way that I respond to one thing at a time. When I start having to cut and paste and organize stuff to the point it feels like an essay to pacify a few prissy people it's irritating. 

I honestly think people should just get the fuck over it and you know what? Next time I will just hit reply, reply to that person, then reply and reply to the next person instead of losing the better part of an hour trying to organize it all into one.

And whoever doesn't like it then TOUGH SHIT!!!

[joker]

More things, like sims having affairs and fights, ect used to happen more in my game of sims 2 apartment life...........  I played this game to death  ( Sims 3 ) for a few weeks but with nothing happening, other sims not not upgrading furniture, or even buying new stuff for their homes, I have got fed up with the game, AwsomeMod makes it a lot better, although I miss the memorys and other stuff, like attaction and having a crush on a sim.  I think, the first pack EA produce should be a gameplay pack where there are more things going on, rather than having the player, seeming to interact with zombies.

[moondance]

Even when the sims almost create a story on their own, the game stops them in their tracks.
I had a male sim who was happily married to his second wife. They had three children of their own, and his daughter from his first marriage.
He worked with his ex-wife, so despite their divorce, their relationship bar was in very good shape. Then he rolled up the wish to move in with his ex-wife.  My thought was "oh, that could be interesting," so I decided to indulge him, and invited her over. I had them talk and joke around a bit, but there was no option to ask her to move in.  Then I saw an option for him to ask her to "just be friends." I'd never seen that option before, so I gave it a try. The "ex-wife" icon in their relationship disappeared and was replaced with "best friend," and THEN the option to ask her to move in appeared. I had him ask her to move in, she accepted and the entire family lived in perfect harmony. How boring is that?

[StormchaserOne]

More things, like sims having affairs and fights, ect used to happen more in my game of sims 2 apartment life...........  I played this game to death  ( Sims 3 ) for a few weeks but with nothing happening, other sims not not upgrading furniture, or even buying new stuff for their homes, I have got fed up with the game, AwsomeMod makes it a lot better, although I miss the memorys and other stuff, like attaction and having a crush on a sim.  I think, the first pack EA produce should be a gameplay pack where there are more things going on, rather than having the player, seeming to interact with zombies.

I had WWF in my neighborhood in SIMs 2 there were non-stop fighting.  With families when they had a baby *poof* instant cribs and beds.  And, lots of furniture.  EA really needs to fix this game up badly.  And, I do not think a patch will do it.  It will need to be one large expansion pack.  Memories actually caused the lag in SIMs 2 and I for one do not miss it. 

And, Moondance your neighborhood sounds like Zombie Valley or Zombieview.  Boring.   

[CheritaChen]

Holy crap, that really is lametastic. What a wasted opportunity for drama! I'm not really into soap-opera or Springer-esque style gameplay, but when it's a random thing like that, I'd enjoy it if things were realistic. Oh well.

I had WWF in my neighborhood in SIMs 2 there were non-stop fighting.   

Was this with, or without, the FightClub mod? My neighborhoods were lively enough, but they weren't full of pugilists.

[Motoki]

I wish I had WWF in my neighborhood. At this point I would be ecstatic if I had that. Hell, I had two townie sims that were not under my control autonomously talk to each other last night and I about wet myself with joy. It was the first time I even had that much interaction. Sad.

[Wolfeyes]

(And I'd be surprised if anyone would take issue if you replied to the god damned replies in separate posts .. you're not going "**bump**!! ne1? ne1?" after all. I believe I've been doing that too, and I've yet to be slapped.)

Yes, issues would be taken. There is no reason why double-or-triple posting is warranted. Motoki obviously knows where the edit button is. An alternative is to post, then wait for a bit for someone else to say something.

Feh. If someone has something to say and it's relevant then who the fuck cares? I was on some other board related to a TV show and people were nazis about that, though most boards I've been on no one cares.

I don't see the hurt. It's not like it's asking the same damned thing over and over again and going ne1? ne1? bump bump bump.

My mind works in a way that I respond to one thing at a time. When I start having to cut and paste and organize stuff to the point it feels like an essay to pacify a few prissy people it's irritating. 

I honestly think people should just get the fuck over it and you know what? Next time I will just hit reply, reply to that person, then reply and reply to the next person instead of losing the better part of an hour trying to organize it all into one.

And whoever doesn't like it then TOUGH SHIT!!!

I agree w/you here and think the "pettiness" of some online posters is really un-amazing to put it lightly... as long as you are adding info or w/e to the discussion then if should be fine to double post... geez... there are so many more important things to address than this microscopic issue...      

[Swiftgold]

My experience with Story Mode, pretty much with AwesomeMod in the whole time, though early on there weren't as many of the limiting features.

I finally investigated the status of some of the townie families the game spawned when I first set it up after gassing the default Sims out of Sunset Valley. The Bradford father had moved out by himself into the trailer; when asked about his relationship status he replied he was single, but his wife still had him listed as her husband. I ended up kicking him back in with his family to free up the house, because there wasn't any indication he moved out because of a divorce or argument, and he was good or best friends with his wife. I just set them as spouses again, though it doesn't want to show up on his panel for some reason. He's stayed put so far.

Then there was Garland Bateman who was living with Beth Ingram and, I discovered, their two daughters, one who started as a teen and one who started as a kid but is a teen now. One had the mother's last name and the other had his. They were engaged and I don't know how long they'd been engaged, or if they started that way, but obviously the Story Mode never pushed them to marry and they never did anything about it, so I had them get married manually through the menu option rather than the cheats. Oddly, though he proposed the marriage, he and the whole family took the mother's last name, even the daughter who was born with the father's.

All the other townie families are apparently already married. They spawned or were created with a couple toddlers early on, which are now children, but there haven't been any new kids with them for a long time now, and so the only new kids have been with my playables. I had one pregnancy early on come from Story Mode with one of my pre-married CAS playables, and the rest I had to get going on my own.

I have had two Sims so far form romantic relationships on their own, both from "sacred" families with a non-sacred townie, so I don't know if Story Mode pushed this on them from the townie side before the notification option or if they actually did it on their own. However, I've played about 20 Sim days over the past couple nights, and I haven't gotten one single Story Mode notification at 1:00 AM. Now that they can't move houses like they used to (hurray for persistently moving out to become homeless and leaving your toddler with your roommate) I actually took "sacred" off my playables to see if something would happen. Nothing yet, but it's only just started.

I've been playing on a mix between Long and Epic and the toddlers I started with out of CAS have just become teenagers. And, apart from the usual random antagonizing and befriending, and one parthenogenesis baby that was shot down before it got off the runway, that's all that's happened. I turned on the Bus Kills one time to see what would happen, and a random homeless Sim I'd never met or even seen around was killed each night, so I turned that off again, because I imagine they'll just spawn more if they kill them all...

So I guess all this is to say - I really hope for Awesome Story Mode, because it sure seems to be needed

[Tangie]

Re. the so-called AI, somebody on here called it "Artificial Stupidity" lately.
[/quote]


That's pretty darn acurate. In the beginning when created sims were losing jobs or being moved into oblivion, I started calling it 'story aggression'. Lately I've personally been fond of the term 'Artifical Inanity'.

[J. M. Pescado]

I finally investigated the status of some of the townie families the game spawned when I first set it up after gassing the default Sims out of Sunset Valley. The Bradford father had moved out by himself into the trailer; when asked about his relationship status he replied he was single, but his wife still had him listed as her husband.

Yeah, that's one of the fun bugs. When a SplitHousehold event occurs on a household where someone is married, the game tries to assume they broke up. However, the relationship is only severed unilaterally, so ONE party thinks they're broken up, the other one doesn't, and now the neighborhood has a bad pointer thing going on. Things can go rapidly downhill from there until a results.