Critical Fix: Juggling/Portal Fix 2

[gali]

I installed the last Patch of Maxis, without taking out any of my hacks, and one of them is the portal.fix. No problems at all.

[ZephyrZodiac]

There's a "Put Your Books Away" hack that might be worth installing in case the bookcase problem returns!  I suppose a No Autonomous Juggling hack would be a good idea, too - just in case!  GRRR!  Why do we players have to keep on sorting out THEIR mistakes!

It's just a good thing they're in the virtual business field, and not an RL one or we'd have jumbo-jets dropping out of the sky or ocean liners doing a Titanic every five minutes!

[J. M. Pescado]

There's a "Put Your Books Away" hack that might be worth installing in case the bookcase problem returns!  I suppose a No Autonomous Juggling hack would be a good idea, too - just in case!  GRRR!  Why do we players have to keep on sorting out THEIR mistakes!

It's just a good thing they're in the virtual business field, and not an RL one or we'd have jumbo-jets dropping out of the sky or ocean liners doing a Titanic every five minutes!

Considering that their stuff currently malfunctions before it is even available in stores, if they were in the business of making planes, one of them would have crashed into their office.

[crammyboy]

But that would assume that Maxis would actually test the plane by flying it, rather than just sitting in the cockpit making plane noises.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I don't think one should make any assumptions where Maxis is concerned, until the evidence is there to base them on!  Oh, one maybe - one could assume they are making money hand over fist which is why they're in such a hurry to get the next imperfect product out on the shelves!  But they parodied themselves well with the robots - one of my student entrepreneurs had just built on of the gardening robots for the flowerbeds in front of his shop, when it suddenly started to malfunction and water the paving slabs and treble water the plants, so Jimmy Cash and his girlfriend spent hours mopping up, since the staff had been sent home!  Then, when they got back to their house on campus, the same thing happened with the one they had at home!  And unless you check, half the darn toy robots are broken before they even reach the customer, and consequently your sims lose money for each one that is sold for half price - and that's the only difference!  The only people who get sims games that work well are people who wait until an omnibus edition is released at half the price the original purchasers paid - now we dedicated simmers should get a reduction for all the product testing we do!

But I wonder if juggling explains why in a brand new lot that the sims hadn't been in more than five sim minutes, a lot of the furniture just began to disappear!  Maxis as well as custom, so it wasn't a problem related to CC.  Luckily, saving the lot seemed to prevent the rest of it from going too!

[Simsane]

Do I need this if I have installed and patched OFB?  I have S2/Uni/NL and now OFB.  I want to make sure I get all the Critical fixes, but since it says it's for NL do you know if the problem still exists even with a patched OFB?

Thanks in advance.

[crammyboy]

This was supposed to be fixed in the NL patch. It is fixed in OFB.

It is always wise to leave the portal monitor in though.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I have the portal monitor in, but took out the juggling fix when I got OFB, and I've not (touch wood) had any portal problems.  But, I would like to know, CB, are custom bookcases still a threat?  Or will "putyourbooksaway" (which is an excellent hack, never see any books lying around now) be enough to make them safe if they are?

[RainbowTigress]

Or will "putyourbooksaway" (which is an excellent hack, never see any books lying around now) be enough to make them safe if they are?

Where did you get this hack?

[akatonbo]

I believe that one is from DJs Sims.

[ZephyrZodiac]

It is!

[crammyboy]

It would depend on when the bookcase was cloned and whether it includes the semi-globals.

see http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2333.0

[ZephyrZodiac]

Yes, I did read that, but I couldn't find any of the things that you said to look for, so I suppose mostly I'm safe, and the only way to be sure is to try them.  But anything made with NL and OFB installed should automatically be OK?  And basically, if they don't have the College options, they were probably made in the base game and may have the problem?

[akatonbo]

Any (relatively) easy way to self-fix bookcases in SimPE? I'm about at the point where I'd already like to look up how to swap the back end of some of the custom beds I've got that were cloned from criminally cheap beds with the back end of a bed that is actually worth using. Would the same thing work for a bookcase?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Must admit it annoys me how some beds are cloned from an expensive one and then made cheap, and a lot of people do it!  It's very useful, of course, but rather defeats the object of sims having to work to get better stuff!

Back to the point, it would be useful if there were a fairly simple way to fix the problem, as Akotonbo suggests, as I have some favourite bookcases that I'm rather afraid to use at the moment in case of problems, and since there are so few in the game that don't look cheap and nasty I rather miss tham.

[akatonbo]

Must admit it annoys me how some beds are cloned from an expensive one and then made cheap, and a lot of people do it!  It's very useful, of course, but rather defeats the object of sims having to work to get better stuff!

I don't mind paying the real price for a higher quality bed. What I do mind is beautiful beds that were cloned from the cheapest bed and thus are barely more useful to Sims than sleeping on the floor. (Or those cooktop hobs that are cloned from the cheapest stove! What use is that?)

I'm beginning to think that the people who use almost entirely Maxis objects and recolors have the right idea. I could cut out almost everything except the purely decorative stuff...

I'm not giving up the mirrored version of that Nouveau bookcase, though, so I suppose I'd better check the code and see if it needs fixing. (It's boblishman's, if I remember right, so hopefully he'd fix it if it has an issue.)

[ZephyrZodiac]

I like Windkeeper's small version of the expensive bookcase, but since I no longer sub to TSR2, unless it was already OK, I don't like to use it!  And some of Shoukeir's bookcases are beautiful too.

I agree with what you say about beds cloned from cheap ones, and then very often set at a high price - and sometimes the maker actually plays around with the code to try and make it better and merely changes the info which you get when you click on the bed in the menu.  Why on earth they didn't use the expensive bed to begin with has me beat!

[crammyboy]

If you can't find a BHAV called "Read - Loop Reading" in the package, then you are not going to have the problem.  Most bookcases will just be a replacement mesh, so the semi-globals will not have been included and there will not be a problem.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I couldn't find it in any I looked at, but thought maybe I wasn't looking hard enough!  We could do, really, with a list of ones that people find with a problem, or alternatively, a list of ones we find that are OK.

[tIIsuggas]

I have just installed this fix.

Could you please clarify a point for me.

If a service person arrives, and a portal gets deleted, does it then refuse to allow the service sims to leave when their job is done?

In other words is this related to nannies getting stuck on lots?

I have read all the posts in this thread and cannot find the answer to this.

[jrd]

It should no longer be needed in current games if you've patched: AFAIK all known random deletion bugs have been squashed now. You can keep the portal monitor around to be safe though. It won't prevent any future problems but will alert you if it happens so you know not to save.

Nannies getting stuck may be caused by a deleted portal, but there are usually other causes. Nannies are severely broken, although since OFB/FFS patch 2 most issues seem resolved.

A deleted portal usually manifects itself in service personnel or the carpool not APPEARING.

[cwykes]

Jordi explained it all, but I thought it might help if I put it another way and added a bit about cleaning up existing problems.

I have just installed this fix.

You don't need this fix if you have patched NL or added OFB. EA put the fix in the game.  Whoever fixed it - the fix prevents future problems.  It doesn't clear up the mess from old problems.  It doesn't put missing portals back for you.

If a service person arrives, and a portal gets deleted, does it then refuse to allow the service sims to leave when their job is done?

Yes - they may turn invisible, but they all hang around on the lot until you get rid of them with the lotdebugger or whatever.

In other words is this related to nannies getting stuck on lots?

A missing portal will give you stuck nannies, but apparently nannies get stuck for other reasons (didn't know that myself Ta Jordi)
The fix will not get rid of your stuck nannies.

Put the portal detector in your game.  If a lot is missing a portal, the detector will give you a message telling you so.  You can then either bulldoze the lot or add a portal back.  There's a thread on MTS about how to do that.  Hope the links are still good..
portal fix and portal prevention..........
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=83684
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=79045

To get rid of stuck NPC's download Pescados ffslotdebugger from the directors cut.  Put the debugger on the lot (buy, misc,misc) and wait till the your sims are all asleep.  Click on the debugger and get rid of all the offworlders.