electrocuted sim - stuck with dirty face forever!

[jennydeenyc]

Hoping someone can help with this...

Joey Hatch, one of the 3rd gen of his overcrowded family, got electrocuted fixing the stereo a while back. Only his face got charred, not his hair or clothes. Thing is, his face stayed that way! Also, I noticed he no longer changes clothes for work, even when directed to at a wardrobe, he'll spin around but stay in his everyday duds. Here's a pic of what he looks like these days:



Please help me get him back to normal! TIA for your help!

jennydeenyc

[buddha pest]

Put some full face makeup on him for a second. That makes it go away.

I don't know about the change work clothes thing though.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you tried to change his appearance in the mirror?  It works for zits that don't go on age transition, might work here too.

[jennydeenyc]

Yay, the full face makeup worked! Now we'll just have to see about the work clothes when the carpool next arrives :-)

Thanks!

[ZephyrZodiac]

If it doesn't work, (and I've had a sim go to work in the altogether for no reason I could see) try buying him a new outfit, that may unlock something that's got stuck.  If you still have problems, try taking your groups.cache file out of your documents sims2 folder and letting the game generate a new one.

[jennydeenyc]

I assume I need to shut down the game to remove that file, huh? I just hate rebooting the game all the time is all :-P

Needless to say Joey went off to work again in his everyday clothes. When he gets home I'll try buying him a new outfit too.

[ZephyrZodiac]

You will need to do that, yes, as any file in the game is being used by the game and you can't remove it while the game is loaded.  But you can find the file, take a look at the size of it, and then decide whether it might be worth closing your game to do so.  A brand new groups.cache file is 14kb or thereabouts, but after I've played a few hours it's nearer 400 - 600.  Just how many errors are being saved in that file I have no means of knowing, but I do know when I take it out, the game starts faster and is definitley faster and smoother.  And it fixes a lot of small glitches.

[jennydeenyc]

I actually just deleted the groups.cache file 2 days ago (and yes, I did it with the game off), it was 425kb at the time. I really didn't notice any performance enhancement after deleting it, but if buying Joey a new outfit doesn't get him into uniform, I guess I'll have to give deleting that file a shot.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Unless he's due for a promotion, that might correct the problem.

[jennydeenyc]

Doubtful, as he was promoted twice since the electrocution, and it didn't fix anything then.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Just a thought.

Have you tried deleting him, and saving and exiting the lot, then reloading.

[jennydeenyc]

Hey again ZZ! BTW, thanks for working me through this :-)

Ok, so I shut down the game & deleted the groups.cache file. I also shut down a few backround processes on my PC, in hopes of making the game less sluggish (on the Hatch's lot, things tend to get stuttery once there's more than 6 people in the family, and right now there's 11 family members & 2 on the way). Anyway, Joey's still going to work in his casualwear. I now actually think that part of the problem was that I couldn't move him home from college properly, and had to use Inge's bush then go into his file in SimPE to uncheck the "On Campus" bit. The reason I suspect something went funky with that transition is because when I went to buy him new clothes, the stuff I'd bought for the other men in the family showed as being already purchased, but only the brand new stuff or the stuff I got for him when he started Uni came up as choices in the Plan Outfit menu, none of the other adult male stuff was pickable. Maybe deleting him as you suggest will cure this, but deleting characters is one thing I've never messed with, so I don't know what the correct procedure is. Care to fill me in?

TIA again!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, all you do is pick him up with moveobjects on and delete him as if he were a piece of furniture.   Then, when you reload the lot he will be standing by the mailbox.  Sometimes this helps to fix an error.

One othre thing I can think of is, if you have simPE, that you check his file and make sure he isn't still checked as being On Campus.

I've never messed around with the teleporter to get stuck sims back from college, there are a lot of other methods, which don't seem to cause glitches like this, so I tend to try them all first. 

These age transitions glitches do happen, I recently has a twin who for no apparent reason regressed from toddler to baby, and neither parent could interact with her.  Debug mode was no help at all, and it was only when I checked her in SimPE that I saw that she was described as "baby" not "toddler".  Once I changed it back to "toddler" she was fine.

[jennydeenyc]

Using the shrub was the last resort to get Joey home, since I tried the Lot Debugger, the TJ money tree move out controller fixer, and the moveoutfix hack. Even after nuking the stuck controllers, I couldn't get him to find his own place because I would get a message saying another sim was trying to move out and to wait (no other sims were moving anywhere). Even teleporting & moving him into another college lot and then trying to move him back to Pleasantview from there didn't work, so the shrub it had to be. I did check his info in SimPE and the On Campus box was unchecked, just like I left it when I had to unset it after moving him home with the shrub. Trying the deletion thing now, maybe that'll help, we'll see...

[ZephyrZodiac]

I am almost at a loss as to anything else you can do it that doesn't work!  One thought does occur, though, would plastic surgery do it?  I mean, if you changed his face to a different one, then changed it back again.  (If you have a backup from before this all happened, you could clone him from that so you would have a copy of his original face to go back to.)

[jennydeenyc]

Nope, deleting didn't do the trick, and I don't have a backup of him. Ah well, let's just hope he gets better after turning into an elder!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I did wonder, if you cloned him as he is now, whether the clone would be ok?  If so, you could put the clone into your game so the face appears in CAS and THEN just get the plastic surgery table and get him to use it and swap faces.

As a last resort, have you tried freckles?  (Face masks)

[jennydeenyc]

I did the costume makeup thing to get rid of the black face, which worked. The problem now is that he seems to be considered a YA as far as the Plan Outfit dialogs are concerned, which is probably why he can't get into his work uniform. He's not marked as On Campus in SimPE, and I don't know what else to look at for this, so I'll just have to live with it for now I guess.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you got the newest SimPE? 

One other thing, have you tried changing him in Simpe to teen, playing, exiting, then changing him back to adult?

[jennydeenyc]

I'm pretty sure I have the newest SimPE, but I wouldn't quote me on that. Haven't tried messing with his age in SimPE, is it safe? Will it mess up his already-achieved LTW? Do you play & save & exit, or not save?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think all you'd need to do would be to enter the lot, check he's talking with a teen voice and has a teen body and face, then save and exit.  I turned Mortimer into an adult, and he had the adult face, voice and body, but still had grey hair and could only wear adult clothes.  But he was able to get a proper job, and had the energy to do it!  I never tried regressing to teen, so I don't know what would happen and I'd back everything up first, then experiment.

[jennydeenyc]

All right, well, I turned Joey to Teen in SimPE (after installing the latest version, just to be sure). Went into the game, he sounded like a Teen but looked Adult. Then I remembered I had this hacked fruit bowl: http://charlotte.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=97359 available & used it to turn Joey to Adult then to Teen then to Adult again. This time when going to plan his outfits, all Adult Male items were available to him. Bonus was that it didn't reset how many days left in his life stage from where it was, so I didn't have to go back to SimPE and edit him down. AND he just left for work in his big puffy Astronaut suit! Yay! When he gets to General again (stupid demotion!) I think I'll paint his portrait in uniform! I love setting up my sim portraits, and try to make sure every adult with decendants is represented on the walls. I especially love when the portraits show up so nicely in screenshots :-)

[ZephyrZodiac]

Great!  I'm so glad it all worked out in the end.  I think I'll get that fruit bowl!