Story Progression, Lies and Propaganda from EA

[Simius]

I think we should all just be grateful that in their infinite wisdom they didn't decide to emigrate the active family's sims.

[J. M. Pescado]

The problem is that their definition of "the player's sims" doesn't match ours.  Their definition is "the currently selected family".  We mean "every sim we've added to the neighbourhood plus every premade family we've decided we want to play".

Their definition of "doesn't" doesn't match ours, either.

[Faizah]

I was bemused by the EAxoid's declaration that story progression doesn't evict from the town sims who are in a "relationship" with the player's sims. All the same, I am glad I am a satisfied customer of Awesomeware.

Heh. That's a load of liecake, by the way. I had the household containing one of my sim's spawn and spawn's-mother leave the hood for good. (This was before AwesomeMod closed the borders, and also before I started switching households.) His other children are 6s, 12s, even 18s, and this much earlier spawn is a perpetual 0 in his family tree.

It wasn't a formal relationship with the mother, just 'love interest', but I'd think parent-child would be a sufficient 'relationship' to anchor the kid, at least.

...actually, maybe I should check. Do homeless sims age? The fact that the kid still appears in the family tree is a little odd.

[IgnorantBliss]

Their definition of "doesn't" doesn't match ours, either.

Thanks for the first belly laugh of the day. 

[J. M. Pescado]

Heh. That's a load of liecake, by the way. I had the household containing one of my sim's spawn and spawn's-mother leave the hood for good. (This was before AwesomeMod closed the borders, and also before I started switching households.) His other children are 6s, 12s, even 18s, and this much earlier spawn is a perpetual 0 in his family tree.

Sims that are vaporized from the hood entirely don't age, and exist merely as a piece of dangling corrupt data because the EAxis deleter doesn't properly clean up after itself, something AwesomeMod fixes.

...actually, maybe I should check. Do homeless sims age? The fact that the kid still appears in the family tree is a little odd.

Also, thumbnails frequently go unupdated for length periods of time.

[Faizah]

I chased it up, because I was curious, and the mother is still in the world. The toddlers aren't in her household. Probably vaporised. It's no big deal, I've been planning to torch it and start over for a while now.

[lmind]

Sims that are vaporized from the hood entirely don't age, and exist merely as a piece of dangling corrupt data because the EAxis deleter doesn't properly clean up after itself, something AwesomeMod fixes.

Ugh!  The original code in TS2 and TS3 is such utter trash, it's infuriating.  F-minus.

I'm no fan of EA propaganda, but the "overpopulation" in the blog linked to above, is clearly defined as a variable dependent on the machine. Pescado has already declared that the game engine's register for character head counts is a 32 bit number ... or was it a 64 bit number?

Although there's a multi-quadrillion hard cap on the population, I doubt that's the "population limit" mentioned in the article.  It must be a soft cap variable defined somewhere, and players must be hitting it, because the (allegedly) "population control" move-out code is being readily invoked, as evidenced by the many people complaining about random move-outs.  Unless it's just an aspirational limit, not necessarily defined anywhere, that the original code is intended to achieve.

So I guess my question is: with "No One Gets Out Alive" enabled in Awesomemod, is any consideration given to a "population limit" when new Sims are added to the hood?  What about in Awesome+Indie?

[funkfisk]

When overpopulation starts to become a challenge, some households may completely leave a world.  Currently the game preserves Households that your Active Household knows (i.e. has relationships with).  

this is the most complete bullshit i ever read. the reason i searched for a mod, was because for the third time, a off-house family (he lived with his sister, and had a family with a sim in another house) had "moved out to a better place". after putting hours and hours in that family, i just had to google for a mod. (found 'the awesome mod', and, now i can dictate my gameplay to taste ).

suddenly realize why so many of my friends have grudges against EA. ;P

..and about balancing. couldn't it also be some kind of check of the balance of the gene pool of the city? like, some calculation is done on the current population and how it would turn out in the future, and if it would lead to a over-population of a certain "family of genes" they get evicted. and then some other family moves in, with "fresh" genes.

[Motoki]

Overpopulation is an issue. I did an experiment starting a new hood, then destroying all humans, made a wolfrun character and run the game on speed 3 shortest life span with Indie Stone running silly fast event updates.

At first the game ran very very smoothly with no one in the hood. It seemed to run well for a while but Indie was working overtime moving in lots and lots of sims.

At some point my game started to run like ass. I tried lowering the resolution and turning down graphical settings and it did not help.

It seems that just like the number of sims on a lot, the number of sims in a town has a threshold beyond which your game will lag and be horridly slow. That threshold, like the sims on a lot threshold, probably varies based on system specs but it definitely does exist for everyone. Move enough sims into your neighborhood and your game is guaranteed to run like ass.

Indie does do random deaths but its very, very rare. I had one sim reported murdered for feeding ducks in gang territory. They feathered him. 

You can set Indie to Emigrate people out of the neighborhood but by default it is turned off.

I am not sure what a good solution is? Move outs? More random deaths? Having less houses in town so not as many sims can move in?

Sims that are vaporized from the hood entirely don't age, and exist merely as a piece of dangling corrupt data because the EAxis deleter doesn't properly clean up after itself, something AwesomeMod fixes.

I have noticed that deleted sims still retain file data even with awesomemod. I evicted some doppelgangers then deleted them from the family clipboard supposedly forever every indiciation of them is gone. They are even off family trees. Yet one I poked around in the neighborhood workshop the save still has references to them.

What is the preferred method for uttlerly obliterating a sim so that it leaves nary a trace in the save file?

[Cedia]

It's funny you should mention that, because I think many people have now come to the conclusion that error 13 is caused by EA's catass code cloning and homeless functions.  It seems the game will continually do both until your save file is too big for itself to handle.  (As evidenced by this thread on the ISM forum:  http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=357023.  I'm sure there are similar threads here.)

This is completely unacceptable in a retail version.

EDIT:  I think regularly scheduled "nukimpostors" and "destroyalltownies" sweeps would help, though they do grind your game to a halt and that would freak out many people who are not familiar with these things.

EDIT AGAIN BECAUSE MY MEMORY IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE:  Also, right after destroying townies, my Rock Star had an autograph session, and only three people showed up.  His performances indicator was at the very highest level and it was held at 4pm on a Saturday.

[FrickinIdjit]

What is the preferred method for uttlerly obliterating a sim so that it leaves nary a trace in the save file?

Quoted so the question won't get lost.  I'd like to know as well.

[virgali]

Overpopulation is an issue. I did an experiment starting a new hood, then destroying all humans, made a wolfrun character and run the game on speed 3 shortest life span with Indie Stone running silly fast event updates.

At first the game ran very very smoothly with no one in the hood. It seemed to run well for a while but Indie was working overtime moving in lots and lots of sims.

At some point my game started to run like ass. I tried lowering the resolution and turning down graphical settings and it did not help.

It seems that just like the number of sims on a lot, the number of sims in a town has a threshold beyond which your game will lag and be horridly slow. That threshold, like the sims on a lot threshold, probably varies based on system specs but it definitely does exist for everyone. Move enough sims into your neighborhood and your game is guaranteed to run like ass.

Indie does do random deaths but its very, very rare. I had one sim reported murdered for feeding ducks in gang territory. They feathered him. 

You can set Indie to Emigrate people out of the neighborhood but by default it is turned off.

I am not sure what a good solution is? Move outs? More random deaths? Having less houses in town so not as many sims can move in?

Sims that are vaporized from the hood entirely don't age, and exist merely as a piece of dangling corrupt data because the EAxis deleter doesn't properly clean up after itself, something AwesomeMod fixes.

I have noticed that deleted sims still retain file data even with awesomemod. I evicted some doppelgangers then deleted them from the family clipboard supposedly forever every indiciation of them is gone. They are even off family trees. Yet one I poked around in the neighborhood workshop the save still has references to them.

What is the preferred method for uttlerly obliterating a sim so that it leaves nary a trace in the save file?

So the safest way to play is to be with storymode off? Note that I don't have awesomemod nor Indie.

[twallan]

Overpopulation is an issue. I did an experiment starting a new hood, then destroying all humans, made a wolfrun character and run the game on speed 3 shortest life span with Indie Stone running silly fast event updates.

At first the game ran very very smoothly with no one in the hood. It seemed to run well for a while but Indie was working overtime moving in lots and lots of sims.

At some point my game started to run like ass. I tried lowering the resolution and turning down graphical settings and it did not help.

It seems that just like the number of sims on a lot, the number of sims in a town has a threshold beyond which your game will lag and be horridly slow. That threshold, like the sims on a lot threshold, probably varies based on system specs but it definitely does exist for everyone. Move enough sims into your neighborhood and your game is guaranteed to run like ass.

Indie does do random deaths but its very, very rare. I had one sim reported murdered for feeding ducks in gang territory. They feathered him. 

You can set Indie to Emigrate people out of the neighborhood but by default it is turned off.

I am not sure what a good solution is? Move outs? More random deaths? Having less houses in town so not as many sims can move in?

I've been muddling through a lag issue with my town for the last week or so.  What I eventually found was there are some objects that like to hang around in the background and use up CPU time, even though they are essentially junk.

In my game, I found that I had 869 CarLimo objects running in the background.  After mass deleting them, my town of 123 sims significantly improved in speed, almost back to fresh town speed.  After a while the CarLimo objects start piling back up, but now I have a way of cleaning them out.

I have noticed that deleted sims still retain file data even with awesomemod. I evicted some doppelgangers then deleted them from the family clipboard supposedly forever every indiciation of them is gone. They are even off family trees. Yet one I poked around in the neighborhood workshop the save still has references to them.

While I working through a lag issue with my game, as a test, I removed every sim from my town and bulldozed every lot.

The resulting save file was still 44MB in size.  The largest part of the file was the SNAP elements...  The face pictures and family photos for each sim that ever existed in my town.  These are retained for the genealogy, even though there was no one in town to access that data.

Good Day.

[Zazazu]

In my game, I found that I had 869 CarLimo objects running in the background.  After mass deleting them, my town of 123 sims significantly improved in speed, almost back to fresh town speed.  After a while the CarLimo objects start piling back up, but now I have a way of cleaning them out.

How did you locate and remove these? I'm starting to get a lot of lag in my game. My population is probably higher than yours...I'd suspect we're talking about 250 and dropping as I've disabled immigration and spawning for now.

[twallan]

How did you locate and remove these? I'm starting to get a lot of lag in my game. My population is probably higher than yours...I'd suspect we're talking about 250 and dropping as I've disabled immigration and spawning for now.

You can use my AwesomeMod Variant to locate and squash the cars.  The thread is in the "Pudding Factory" forum.  It's one of the main reasons I posted the variant mod, in case others want to attempt a cleanse.

Use the "objectstats" console command to list off the various objects and their counts.  If your lag is caused by the CarLimo, as mine was, it will be listed there.

For comparison, start a fresh town and perform an "objectstats" on it.  The counts you receive from that town should give you a concept of how many global objects there should be in the world.

Then use the "cleanobject CarLimo" command to remove all the limos from the system.  Do it at night, in case one of them is actually being legitimately used.

After that, you can return to the regular AwesomeMod if you wish.  You need only use my mod to clean out the junk.

Remember to backup prior to cleaning though.  If you cleanobject on the wrong thing, you can seriously screw over your town.

Good Day.