Awesome Story Driver Beta-Testing reports

[J. M. Pescado]

The ability to be killed and eaten has not yet been fully implemented, so this is not presently possible.

[twoftmama]

I uploaded neighborhoods with cribs in every house. If you don't want to take the time to add them to your hood then you can find them here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,16383.0.html

Just move your family to the new hood and you're all set. 

[moosemonk]

Are cribs alone enough for spawnage?I moved a married couple into a starter home with one crib and one double bed but nothing happened for about a week.Then I moved them to a larger home with a crib and four beds and they pollinated the same night.

[keirra]

Are cribs alone enough for spawnage?I moved a married couple into a starter home with one crib and one double bed but nothing happened for about a week.Then I moved them to a larger home with a crib and four beds and they pollinated the same night.

I think you also need a bed. When the baby grows to a child it will need a bed to sleep in.

[J. M. Pescado]

You don't need a bed for the baby as well as a crib: When the child grows up, the fambly will just move to a bigger house.

[keirra]

You don't need a bed for the baby as well as a crib: When the child grows up, the fambly will just move to a bigger house.

That's good to know. I've been shoving cribs and beds into the empty houses.

[kimmyfrmtx]

You don't need a bed for the baby as well as a crib: When the child grows up, the fambly will just move to a bigger house.

That's good to know. I've been shoving cribs and beds into the empty houses.

I have also determined that leaving a few of the 1 bedroom starter homes without cribs will attract the family elders.  Several families in my aging hood got married & started spawning, I received notices that the (grand) parents relocated to these homes.  Nice feature (side effect) to clear the old folks out of the family home.

[Figwit]

Well I had lots of babies in my game last night  and I was amazed when Jocasta Bachelor had twins - a boy and a girl.  I have never played that family and only noticed when I moused over their house.  I know you can get boy and girl twins in the game but it requires a bit of fiddling around with watermelon, apples and doctors.  Storymode managed it in one fell swoop on the first night.  Does this mean that you fixed this issue, Pes, and we can expect girl/boy twins in normal woohoo births or is storymode pregnancy different?

[twoftmama]

I have what is probably a stupid question, if so feel free to spork me. I just started using the Awesome Story Driver today. I enabled it and InformOnStoryAction in the config, removed ISM, deleted all 4 cache files and started the game. Everything loaded and ran fine for the 3 hours I played. Problem is I didn't get any Story popups. No births, deaths, job notices, moves, ect. I read somewhere that you needed to have Story Progression enabled in the game options. Then I read some here that if you have Story Progression enabled in the game options then you are using EA Story Progression. Which is it? Do I need story progression on in game options, or is there another reason why nothing is happening? The rest of AM's functions are working perfectly.

[Tenjho]

Yes, I believe you need story progression on, as Awesome Story Driver replaces EA's story mode.

[Eliste]

I have babies in my hood now, thank you J.M.

But...

     Marriage move in choices annoy me to the point that I have to go to Edit Town after seeing every other story popup.
I restart default Sunset Valley + cribs test hood for every announced build. Jared Frio married a different girl every time and without failure moved in with her family into most crowded houses there are: Bunch, Langerak, Single Moms. Steel sold his nice house to move in with Blair into student's shared house, whatever it's called, by the pool.

Suggestion: can you please code separate rules for marriage move in? One of which should be "Choose more expensive house only if there are 3 people or less living there (including marriage victim), otherwise choose less crowded house". This way ancestral homes will preserve at least one heir and get rid of the rest of the spawns and Single men moderately well off could get a bride to come to live in their house.

[moosemonk]

Yes, I believe you need story progression on, as Awesome Story Driver replaces EA's story mode.

This would appear to be the case.I had Story Progression disabled in-game and got no messages for several days,but on enabling it AM story mode began producing messages.

[Gelina]

I am running a wolfrun in my test neighborhood and everything appears to be working now (4 babies have been spawned).

Would it be possible to get a notification when the baby is actually born, not just when it is pollinated?  I keep track of the entire family tree of my main family in my real neighborhoods, so I need to know the names and if there are twins/triplets and I can't get this info until after the baby is born.

[J. M. Pescado]

I restart default Sunset Valley + cribs test hood for every announced build. Jared Frio married a different girl every time and without failure moved in with her family into most crowded houses there are: Bunch, Langerak, Single Moms. Steel sold his nice house to move in with Blair into student's shared house, whatever it's called, by the pool.

This doesn't really matter. They don't lose any funds doing tihs, and there is a subsequent event that fires to split them off and move them into their own place. Just let them work it out on their own, they will. Once they are *IN* that house, which, incidentally, is required to have enough space, so it must clearly have enough space, they will feel the population pressure and then move out since selling the other house makes them have money.

Suggestion: can you please code separate rules for marriage move in? One of which should be "Choose more expensive house only if there are 3 people or less living there (including marriage victim), otherwise choose less crowded house".

There's no need. The system resolves itself.

[Zazazu]

I've been playing a fresh 'hood for a sim week with AM story progression. The first two days were using the 8/9 version, but the last five were using the 8/11 version. I had gassed all sims before starting. My test family is a bit unusual: a teen with part-time job and a child. I've had 32 NPCs added, but absolutely no residents. I have ten homes available. Seven of these ten homes have six beds and a crib and cost a tiny bit more than $14k. The other three have either three beds or three beds and a crib and cost $30-$50k.

Shouldn't I be getting some action by now?

[J. M. Pescado]

This sounds normal: AwesomeStory currently does not include an innate immigration engine, so if your neighborhood is nuked clean, no one will actually spawn unless the Job Engine generates a fambly for boss/coworkers. It is not entirely clear what the rules for an immigration engine should even really BE at this time, given that the approach of "constantly create MOAR, MOAR, MOAR" tends to result in a quick neighborhood explosion and it is not known how to assess how much a computer can tolerate.

[ProfPlumbob]

I've been playing a fresh 'hood for a sim week with AM story progression. The first two days were using the 8/9 version, but the last five were using the 8/11 version. I had gassed all sims before starting. My test family is a bit unusual: a teen with part-time job and a child. I've had 32 NPCs added, but absolutely no residents. I have ten homes available. Seven of these ten homes have six beds and a crib and cost a tiny bit more than $14k. The other three have either three beds or three beds and a crib and cost $30-$50k.

Shouldn't I be getting some action by now?

Yeah, I realized this too and a simple solution is just ctrl+shift click a lot, and make a random sim or sims to live there.  Bif bam boom.  I started with an empty hood and plopped a few single sims into some low income homes and after a few days there was a new homeless family.  Just remember the cost of homes compared to how much the homeless get which on average is around $20K, sometimes more sometimes less, but not by much.  

I split my town into three parts; low income, mid income and high income along the shores.  In a matter of maybe 10 sim days the low income neighborhood was filled(12 houses).  I haven't had any crazy musical chairs, only those moving in with their new spouses.  Homeless sims were slowly started to emerge as more and more boss/coworker interactions were taking place.  So far only two families in my hood have breached past low income and moved into the middle class neighborhood.

my sims have a huge fascination with touring the science lab and town hall with a future significant other.  It's been the "must do list" on date locations  

[Eliste]

I restart default Sunset Valley + cribs test hood for every announced build. Jared Frio married a different girl every time and without failure moved in with her family into most crowded houses there are: Bunch, Langerak, Single Moms. Steel sold his nice house to move in with Blair into student's shared house, whatever it's called, by the pool.

This doesn't really matter. They don't lose any funds doing tihs, and there is a subsequent event that fires to split them off and move them into their own place. Just let them work it out on their own, they will. Once they are *IN* that house, which, incidentally, is required to have enough space, so it must clearly have enough space, they will feel the population pressure and then move out since selling the other house makes them have money.

Oh yes, they do lose money to the point that they can't actually move out. Because once they move in, their cash is shared between all residents and starts depleting to feed/house bride's younger siblings and unemployed parents or roomies. When they try to move out they have to purchase a house with cash, which is now divided by about 3 (in the case of Bunch family: 7 residents - two moving out) and that is not enough for a starter home not alone for a bigger house that was left behind.

And in case of Frio brothers the house was not actually sold. The other brother was left there, so Jared Frio moved out with a bit over a thousand in cash to join Bunch making it 7 residents so nobody can move out because they were poor at that point (he married the youngest daughter - Darlene and all the others were still in the house).

Steel can't buy his house back for the same reason: he has to share his cash with all other young adults -roomies of his bride.

In a generation of Sunset Valley only 1 (ONE) family moved to a bigger house because they were better off. The rest of the moves were into smaller houses, whether to downsize and cash in or to make room for homeless moving in.
I have never seen households split other than through marriage. When they have money in the beginning they move to a bigger house straight away and struggle with the bills, then downsize.

[Kyna]

I restart default Sunset Valley + cribs test hood for every announced build. Jared Frio married a different girl every time and without failure moved in with her family into most crowded houses there are: Bunch, Langerak, Single Moms. Steel sold his nice house to move in with Blair into student's shared house, whatever it's called, by the pool.

This doesn't really matter. They don't lose any funds doing tihs, and there is a subsequent event that fires to split them off and move them into their own place. Just let them work it out on their own, they will. Once they are *IN* that house, which, incidentally, is required to have enough space, so it must clearly have enough space, they will feel the population pressure and then move out since selling the other house makes them have money.

Oh yes, they do lose money to the point that they can't actually move out. Because once they move in, their cash is shared between all residents and starts depleting to feed/house bride's younger siblings and unemployed parents or roomies. When they try to move out they have to purchase a house with cash, which is now divided by about 3 (in the case of Bunch family: 7 residents - two moving out) and that is not enough for a starter home not alone for a bigger house that was left behind.

And in case of Frio brothers the house was not actually sold. The other brother was left there, so Jared Frio moved out with a bit over a thousand in cash to join Bunch making it 7 residents so nobody can move out because they were poor at that point (he married the youngest daughter - Darlene and all the others were still in the house).

Steel can't buy his house back for the same reason: he has to share his cash with all other young adults -roomies of his bride.

In a generation of Sunset Valley only 1 (ONE) family moved to a bigger house because they were better off. The rest of the moves were into smaller houses, whether to downsize and cash in or to make room for homeless moving in.
I have never seen households split other than through marriage. When they have money in the beginning they move to a bigger house straight away and struggle with the bills, then downsize.

That "student's shared house by the pool" is a very nice house, and is much better than Steel's original place.  The furniture is better quality, there are more bedrooms, more bathrooms, it's closer to most jobs, closer to the gym & the library for skilling, and closer to most of the social amenities (park, pools, theatre, etc).  Of course he'd marry into it, rather than her marry out of it. 

I've found one of two things happen in that situation - either the singles eventually end up moving out, or the couple move out if there is insufficient breeding space (i.e. no cribs).  BTW, you'd be surprised how much money those shared households can earn between them, even if unplayed.  It doesn't take long to build up enough cash for someone to be able to afford to move out.

With the Bunch house I had two spouses marry in (the second one was after Jack had died).  Eventually I ended up with two single Bunch kids there, as the married offspring moved out.

Give ASM time to do its thing.  It helps if you make sure you have inexpensive lots available for sims who split out of households, including some lots that the sims will outgrow (e.g. put down some cheap lots with cribs but no spare single beds - under ASM the sims will move on to bigger homes when their toddlers turn into 6s, freeing up the cheap housing for the next couple or single sim to split out of a household).

[Solmyr]

About those shared houses, would it be possible to stop the game from automatically renaming them to the family name of the eldest member living there? As it is Single Moms gets renamed to Kimura every time, Working Friends to McGraw, etc.

[Inge]

So is it the case that a couple will not breed *unless* there is a crib in the existing house?  Or do they breed anyway, and move out of town if they can't find a house with a crib?

[Inge]

Then supposing your house has a double bed and a crib and that is all?  When the todder grows up, what do they do for the bedless kid?

[cassblonde]

As I understand it once the kid is a 6 the family will move to a house with more beds. I think I read that in this thread actually ...

[J. M. Pescado]

Oh yes, they do lose money to the point that they can't actually move out. Because once they move in, their cash is shared between all residents and starts depleting to feed/house bride's younger siblings and unemployed parents or roomies.

Not quite: Sims living in a house don't "split" their cash as such when splitting off to buy a house: What actually happens is that the house is bought out of the main pool of funds, and then the sims in question are just kicked out into it with only some change. The "cash is shared" effect only applies to player-initiated move-outs and splitoffs which don't include housing, such as when a homeless fambly splits.

When they try to move out they have to purchase a house with cash, which is now divided by about 3 (in the case of Bunch family: 7 residents - two moving out) and that is not enough for a starter home not alone for a bigger house that was left behind.

Well, they can't move to ANOTHER house, no. They do, however, apparently fit in their current house.

And in case of Frio brothers the house was not actually sold. The other brother was left there, so Jared Frio moved out with a bit over a thousand in cash to join Bunch making it 7 residents so nobody can move out because they were poor at that point (he married the youngest daughter - Darlene and all the others were still in the house).

Yes, but apparently, your Frios are broke. That tends to happen. Since NEITHER of them had enough money to buy a new house for themselves, they had to pick one or the other. This tends to happen more or less at random, based on which sim initiates the action.

Steel can't buy his house back for the same reason: he has to share his cash with all other young adults -roomies of his bride.

No, he's fine. He can move out just fine...if they want to. Try it: Nuke some of their beds and watch as someone splits.

I have never seen households split other than through marriage. When they have money in the beginning they move to a bigger house straight away and struggle with the bills, then downsize.

That is because the usual motivations for being able to split a house are rarely met. In order for a house to split, it has to consist of at least two fambly units. A sim that splits off will take its spouse, and non-adult children with it. The original fambly must have enough funds to support purchasing an appropriate house, otherwise, for obvious reasons, they can't do it. To motivate the desire to do so in the first place, the presently existing house must have become inadequate. This is tricky to arrange, as they wouldn't have moved into the house in the first place if it was inadequate to start, so the only event that can cause a house to suddenly become inadequate is 0s growing up to become 6ses, or the player sabotaging the house.

Yup, that's how it works: once the toddler becomes a child, the family will move to a house with one more bed, if all beds in the current house are filled. One thing I'm not sure about in this equation is whether or not the driver considers double beds as two beds.

It does.

[Gelina]

When AM is determining if a family should move, is it counting the number of beds or bedrooms?

The reason that I ask is that I have a completely cleaned out Sunset Valley that only has 2 types of houses, 1.) a 3 bedroom, 3 single bed, 1 double bed, 2 crib, 2 bath house and 2.) a 4 bedroom, 6 single bed, 1 double bed, 3 crib, 3 bath house.  It seems like AM always moves a family that has a baby from the smaller house to the larger house and I'm wondering why - there should be plenty of room for them to stay in the smaller house.