Sim's Free Will Messed Up?

[PipotronBlue]

When I installed this mod into my game, I noticed that my sims' free will has been modified. It seems like they stand idly more often, waiting for me to tell them what to do. On seldom occasions, they would act on their own. I made one of my sims visit another family's house to observe their behavior. I observed the nonactive family and they just stood around the living room, complaining that they need to go to sleep. Then, they would fall on the floor because of their lack of energy.
The only features that I have enabled for this mod are:
NoKillWantsOnUnselect
NoRouteFail
NoAdultMoveRequirement
ShowNumericalValues
UseHigherPrecisionTime
TrackAllMovingCars
UnifiedBilling
NoInventoryDestruction
LawOfConservationOfMass
NoPsychicCurfewPolice
AllowNPCAspirationGain
FulfillWantsWithoutLocking
NonActiveTraitLearnings
NoAutomaticSchool
AllowInactivePerfGain
BetterVehicleDisembark
AllIngredientsEdible
NoAdultCASRequirement
BetterBBObjectInfo

Do I need to turn anything on (or off) for my sims' free will to return back to normal?

[J. M. Pescado]

I can't think of anything that would cause such a thing, and no one else has reported this. I can't reproduce it, either. It sounds more like something you did pushed the computer into overload. Try a smaller neighborhood?

[ILikeChocolateMilk]

This has happened to me as well. Although, I can't exactly pinpoint who/what to attribute this bug to. I don't know if it is an EA thing or Awesomemod. I have made comments on the EA forums because others have had this problem as well. Sorry I can't offer a solution, but I can feel your pain. LOL

[wizard_merlin]

Have you checked the in-game options and made sure the freewill is set high, and not to off/low?

I am not seeing this with AM which means it is either a mod/CC conflict, your settings have changed or your system is struggling too much.  You could provide the basic system specs for comment.

[PipotronBlue]

Well, I tested the game without AM and their free will returned to normal. I'm thinking it's conflicting with one of my mods (I have like 20 mods installed). When I have time, I'm going to run the game with only AM and twallan's Master Controller (because it's confirmed that they don't conflict) and see what happens.

My hypothesis is that it might be conflicting with twallan's Story Progression because I noticed that inactive sims' free will has also been affected. Even though I didn't turn on AM's story progression, it might still be a problem.

[J. M. Pescado]

Unlikely. None of these things have anything to do with autonomy. And again, this problem appears to be both non-reproducible and not-unique-to-AwesomeMod, as EAxis-only players complain about it also with sims getting stuck and not doing anything. The reason this stuff happens is because the game is designed to compromise gameplay integrity to preserve the gameplay "experience", so when the game starts to overload your computer, instead of lagging up but producing accurate results, it dumps processing to keep the game running at the same speed, but with the result that the game doesn't do anything.

[ILikeChocolateMilk]

What can you suggest we do to help alleviate some of this pausing, and sims taking 10 human years to get in the car when going to work, get the clothes out of the laundry, get the mail, or anything else for that matter. I think my computer specs are pretty up to par, but if you want to know more about my computer in particular so you can make a suggestion I'll be happy to do so.

[kissing_toast]

Well one would think the obvious choice would be to lower your graphic settings, both in game and for your graphics card. Are you playing on a large lot this lots of stuff? Sometimes that can lag your game. Is your town over populated?

[spockblock]

What can you suggest we do to help alleviate some of this pausing, and sims taking 10 human years to get in the car when going to work, get the clothes out of the laundry, get the mail, or anything else for that matter. I think my computer specs are pretty up to par, but if you want to know more about my computer in particular so you can make a suggestion I'll be happy to do so.

Are you playing on a Mac? If so you're screwed; everyone gets those pauses on a Mac, nothing you can do about it.

[Tangie]

I actually started having this problem, also. My game started to lag noticably at about 20 weeks in. This was around the time I noticed "hauntings" at neighboring houses, complete with the ghostbuster music and special effects. No sim that I had played was employed in the ghost hunter career; some EA sim had been assigned to this and I actually watched him go around and suck up ghosts at the neighbor's house. Very bizarre, and not something I had ever noticed in the game before, although I am not sure if AM was responsible for this or NRass Story Progression, since I was using both at the time. And of course I have no idea if this is even relevant.

Anyway I removed NRass SP which improved things a bit as far as the lagging went, at least for awhile. But it came back, along with sims standing around doing nothing. Later I tried to remove AM and lost all my sim's icons in the UI until I put it back in. I guess I've been pretty lucky because I have been able to remove AM in the past with no problem, which I put down to not using a lot of features like auto commander or whatever it's called. Started playing a relatively new 'hood and it was lagging also. Tonight I checked my CC with Dashboard and didn't find any conflicts except one duplicate file, which I removed, and I merged a bunch of package files. I'm going to start a new hood without either AM or NRass to see what happens, to see if it's some other CC problem, although I doubt I can stand playing without either mod for very long. 

I play on a laptop with an i7 processor, 6 GB memory, and an Nvidia 230M. So not top of the line, but not ancient, either. Like I said, everything was fine until I updated to the latest AM and NRass SP.

[Billmonaghan]

... EAxis-only players complain about it also with sims getting stuck and not doing anything. The reason this stuff happens is because the game is designed to compromise gameplay integrity to preserve the gameplay "experience", so when the game starts to overload your computer, instead of lagging up but producing accurate results, it dumps processing to keep the game running at the same speed, but with the result that the game doesn't do anything.

This has happened to me several times both with AM running and without it. I deleted quite a few saved games before learning to be more patient with it and work around it.

This'll probably get worse as new EPs add more processes to run (or dump), but in the meantime I've found I can reduce the glitches by simplifying my home lots. Taking out eight of the 12 heather along the walk way. Replace flowers with terrain paint. Having less "Buy" mode objects outside generally (move stuff inside or wall-in and roof-over parts of the yard). Having less unique art and relics around.  Replace three Environment 3 paintings with one Environment 10 painting.

Moving a household from one highly developed lot to a new lot, then developing it, seems to add a lot of glitches and lag too. If you must move your Sims to a bigger lot, I'd recommend bulldozing your old lot and replacing it with something simpler, or leaving it vacant in the hope of discouraging NPCs from spawning.

So far I've been able to keep my game running by playing through the glitchy patches until they heal up. Sometimes it helps to save and reboot or just restart from the main menu, sometimes you have to use "resetsim NAME NAME" or go into a lot via "enablelotlocking" or use other cheats to jiggle things and get them working again. Only once since I've start really trying to play through the glitches have I had to revert to a prior save (to get the user interface to reappear) and lost about six hours of gameplay, but that beats losing five or six weeks of gameplay.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I'm not sure using resetsim is such a great idea. You're forcing the game to do something it's already telling you it can't do under present circumstances. Sometimes you have no choice, but I think it should probably be the last resort short of reverting to a prior save, instead of the first thing you try.

[ILikeChocolateMilk]

What can you suggest we do to help alleviate some of this pausing, and sims taking 10 human years to get in the car when going to work, get the clothes out of the laundry, get the mail, or anything else for that matter. I think my computer specs are pretty up to par, but if you want to know more about my computer in particular so you can make a suggestion I'll be happy to do so.

Are you playing on a Mac? If so you're screwed; everyone gets those pauses on a Mac, nothing you can do about it.

I am on a mac, and I have learned that the custom worlds downloaded that are large and have a lot of things do slow it down and so I deleted a bunch of random sims and that helps as well. I don't know if I am running a good graphics card or not, but i'll let someone who recognizes the good from bad be the judge of that. Also, the lowering your screen size, sorry I forgot what it's called in the game, helps as well. It sucks I can't play the worlds that are the most amazing because it causes my game to lag to the point of me wanting to chunk my laptop at a pedestrian walking down the street. But anywho, thanks for the suggestions, they worked.

[Jeebus]

What can you suggest we do to help alleviate some of this pausing, and sims taking 10 human years to get in the car when going to work, get the clothes out of the laundry, get the mail, or anything else for that matter. I think my computer specs are pretty up to par, but if you want to know more about my computer in particular so you can make a suggestion I'll be happy to do so.

Are you playing on a Mac? If so you're screwed; everyone gets those pauses on a Mac, nothing you can do about it.

I am on a mac

You will want to rectify that immediately.

[J. M. Pescado]

I am pondering a "force fidelity" mode that will not allow this kind of shenanigans and thus force the processing of everything regardless of what effect it has on load, just to see what happens.

[BaronElectricPhase]

I am pondering a "force fidelity" mode that will not allow this kind of shenanigans and thus force the processing of everything regardless of what effect it has on load, just to see what happens.

With lots of options for fine tuning I hope. Sounds like an interesting experiment. Have you any intention of releasing it? (when working of course)

[J. M. Pescado]

I doubt it will be terribly fine-tuneable, more a "damn the torpedoes" switch.

[yathelia]

My sims free will is also messed up and I have awesomemod and twallans story progression with awesome mods story turned off. I dont know how to fix it and NOTHING I read seems to help.

[DMDye]

I doubt it will be terribly fine-tuneable, more a "damn the torpedoes" switch.

I'm getting a comp that should be able to handle that, in a couple of weeks - just in case you need a Tester.

[BaronElectricPhase]

I doubt it will be terribly fine-tuneable, more a "damn the torpedoes" switch.

Fine tunable in the sense of choosing which Sims fidelity would be forced upon.
Not only individual control, but groups as well:

Sacreds vs. non-sacreds vs. townies (vs. NPCs?)  (not sure I see a use for hi-fi NPCs)

Additional candidate groups:
Love Interests?
Co-Workers?
Friends?
Acquaintances?
Family that does not live on the same lots?

I am not trying to make busy work for you.
But I am skeptical that my computer would handle having Hi-Fi turned on for *everyone*.

[J. M. Pescado]

That is precisely why it isn't.

[uknortherner]

I would like to see such an option too. In Twallan's Master Controller, there's an option to open up all lots, with the side effect of this being the game literally running all households in high detail mode. I've never noticed any lagging on my i3-equipped PC, so on an i5 or i7 it should be smooth as anything.

I seem to recall there was an AM command for displaying AI latency, though I've long forgotten what that was (and for some reason, search as come up blank).

[Jeebus]

I would like to see such an option too. In Twallan's Master Controller, there's an option to open up all lots, with the side effect of this being the game literally running all households in high detail mode. I've never noticed any lagging on my i3-equipped PC, so on an i5 or i7 it should be smooth as anything.

I seem to recall there was an AM command for displaying AI latency, though I've long forgotten what that was (and for some reason, search as come up blank).

IIRC, it's "aistats", and you need to have debug commands on.

[uknortherner]

I am pondering a "force fidelity" mode that will not allow this kind of shenanigans and thus force the processing of everything regardless of what effect it has on load, just to see what happens.

Did this ever get implemented?

[J. M. Pescado]

Not yet. It's on the todo.

[DMDye]

Got my comp, ready to test before it gets bogged down with 'the usual suspects'...good antivirus  (not the crappy McAfee that came with it) - and all the other good stuff (SpyBot, Gimp, etc. etc. etc.)   Nothing on it so far that I can't bear to lose or can't replace.


Let me know if I can be of help.