Lot Sync Timer: All BlueSoups Suck Edition

[Kyna]

When I send my teens off to college I set an event day for +4 on the lot if they're going to be returning to live at that lot, so that I'll remember to return them on the appropriate day.  Every other household gets the event notification, but not the one lot that I want to be notified - the lot the sim will be returning to.

Can we can please have the option to toggle whether we display the event notification on the lot the event refers to?

[miros]

If the lot sync timers work on Uni lots, you could set the lot time on the uni lot and get the notification at the correct time on the home lot.  If not... just make a dummy lot with some stupid ugly Maxis Sims as residents and set it on their timer.

[J. M. Pescado]

Lot sync timers can be placed on Uni lots, but since Uni time is asynchronous, you will have to manually advance the clock.

When I send my teens off to college I set an event day for +4 on the lot if they're going to be returning to live at that lot, so that I'll remember to return them on the appropriate day.  Every other household gets the event notification, but not the one lot that I want to be notified - the lot the sim will be returning to.

We will take this under consideration.

[Avalikia]

Any plans to enable season changing via the time warp?

[J. M. Pescado]

Any plans to enable season changing via the time warp?

Use the Weather Machine, cuz that's what it's for.

[gethane]

Does putting this in the downloads folder cause a lot reset?

[J. M. Pescado]

No, this is not a global hack and will not reset your game.

[Clarina]

Problem. 
Yes I'm a noob, but I'm not new to downloading, even mods, it's just I've stayed away from hacks for obvious reasons.  I even thought about installing this one for over a week and then I finally got the courage and ended up being so excited that I forgot to back up my game (BIG mistake). 

So when I first installed this it erased all info in my families.    All their personality points were gone, their careers and their relationships were empty and their aspirations are in lowest red.  All this before entering one house.  I naturally went into a house uninstalled the thing from neighborhood, got rid of the object and now my house catalog in neighborhood window is gone.  All the houses, even Maxis, let alone the ones I made or had downloaded.    and of course the families are still without their previous lives.  So now what?  I just screwed up my game for good?

I have no other hacks from anywhere else but at the same time as installing this one I also put in game the telephone hack and the flush toilet hack, both from MATY.  I gather those didn't cause such effects.
Any help appreciated, hopefully someone still comes this way.

Clarina

[jsalemi]

Well, there's no way this (or the other two you got from here) could have caused the effect you described. It's not a global mod, and has no affect at all unless you add it to a lot and install it for the family.

It sounds like something else got fubared in your system.  All empty unplaced lots are stored in the LotCatalog directory and your neighborhoods (lots and families) are in the appropriate sub-directories of the Neighborhoods directory.  Both directories are found in your My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 directory, which is also where your Downloads go.  Look there and see what's in those directories to start finding out what happened.

[Clarina]

Thanks!  I've actually been at it for about six hours now.  As I closed and reopened the game more times enough I got the lots to appear again in the lot catalog.  They are all in correct folders in correct places, the files never left.  Now the custom neighborhood I was talking about is other wise correct but the families are still friendless, without jobs and in aspiration failure, all of them, including their pets. 

Weirdest things are if I remove a lot in that neighborhood to put in the bin it never appears in the bin.  Also it was Pleasantview and Strangetown that appeared empty.  I never really played Strangetown but in Pleasantview I lost 3 months of game play (I KNOW).

I removed my Sims2 folder and started afresh.  Pleasantview appeared fine, when I put lots in, they showed up correctly.  When I put characters in, nothing changed, just default characters in fresh install situations and when I swapped the neighborhood.package file to the older one all lots were gone again and the neighborhood seemed empty. 

It's just so sad, I went in game again with my own Pleasantview lots, since the characters don't show up it's like they just left, In one house there are still birthday balloons outside and half full pet dish in the kitchen... the kid's bedcovers are crumbled like he just got up...  I can almost see their ghosts, it's all ver tragic... 

But I never installed the hack in Pleasantview (or Strangetown) only in my custom hood, so yes I guess it wasn't the hack, but I can't think of anything else since I hadn't put in anything else long before those and the families in my custom hood were messed up instantly after getting this hack.  So I'm lost... still...

So I wish I knew what went wrong exactly seven hours ago (that's when my neighborhood.package files were last modified) I can't make use of most helpful programs like Clean installer and such because I'm on a Mac...  But I'm willing to try most anything 

[jsalemi]

Best i can figure, it sounds like your old neighborhood packages got corrupted somehow.  You can't just swap an old one into a new install of an existing hood -- the neighborhood.package stores most of the info about the hood and its residents, but you'd still be missing all the lots and character files.

Do you have an older backup of your hoods?  If so, you might try restoring it and see if everything is ok.

But I never installed the hack in Pleasantview (or Strangetown) only in my custom hood, so yes I guess it wasn't the hack, but I can't think of anything else since I hadn't put in anything else long before those and the families in my custom hood were messed up instantly after getting this hack.  So I'm lost... still...

I'm confused by this -- if you properly place a hack, mod, or any custom content in the Downloads folder, it shows up in all hoods currently present in your game.  There's no way to install custom content so it only shows up in one hood.  So I have to ask -- where exactly did you put the mod and hack files?

[Clarina]

Sorry I'm being so unclear.  Of course the hacks were sort of installed in them but what I meant was just that I never entered those two neighborhood while the hack was in game I only entered them once I had uninstalled the hack from my customhood and then removed from downloads.  Strangetown seemed ok at first people were okay and houses there but Pleasantview wouldn't actually load up at all, it crashed my game.  When I reentered the game Pleasantview loaded but then was without houses and without lots and I then entered Strangetown and that was empty too.  But My custom Sim Islands is fine.  Except for the sims.

Another thought crossed my mind though.  I installed Norton Antivirus yesterday as well.  Before hacks, before entering the neighborhoods.  Yes, I've read it's not the best or most appraised, but it was the only thing they could give me at the Mac store.  And yes, I probably don't even need it but now I have it.

I did notice I couldn't swap the package files, but I got my two customhoods working.  the problem was that even if I put in the character folder my characters weren't there, just the originals that come with fresh install.  But lots did show up when I put the old lots folder in the fresh install.  Anyway, my Mac game is only three months old, before that I played on my PC.  So no backups available because I never did any backups since I haven't installed new EPs since I got the Mac game.

Thaks for your help Jsalemi.  I'd move this somewhere else if I knew where to go...

[kuronue]

If you go to the main forum index, near the top is a forum called "the Podium", inside is a sub-forum called "Oops I Broke It". One of those two would be a good place to try, since it's not this hack after all. Good luck.

[Zazazu]

Despite the fact that something deep inside me told me not to touch the shiny, I installed this. I then noticed that aging was off. I can manually advance aging with the timer, but it doesn't go over at 6:00. This is a problem for many reasons, the least being pets. They aren't aging either, and I can't manually advance them.

So. I tried uninstalling from the neighborhood and then removing the hack from my game. Still stuck. I put it back in, still stuck. What can I do, short of restarting the neighborhood again?

FYI, I ran the conflict scanner and no conflicts came up. I also installed Business Runs You and Grow Up Townies at the same time, but not only can I not see how those two would effect age progression, but they were removed and aging still was frozen.

And, to state the obvious...no, I don't play with aging off and never have. Just in case, I entered the aging on cheat at the 'hood screen (shouldn't have any effect there) and in each and every lot.

[J. M. Pescado]

Lots that were originally built in a University will not have a correctly functioning aging controller, and sims will not age correctly on those lots. Check that your lot was not originally a Uni lot.

[Zazazu]

Drat. They were. I built them in University Land because the terrain there was completely flat before I started up Monopoly. Any way to add a functioning aging controller?

EDIT: Forget it, my boo-boo, I can fix it. Just rebuilt the effected lots and time passes as it should. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[V]

Lots that were originally built in a University will not have a correctly functioning aging controller, and sims will not age correctly on those lots. Check that your lot was not originally a Uni lot.

Is this also true for community lots that were built in Uni?

[J. M. Pescado]

Sims do not age on community lots.

[FlyOnTheWall]

I'm having problems with the sync timer. A couple of weeks ago I installed H&M Stuff and Celebrations Stuff, and haven't played other than to check out the new stuff. Today I decided to play. It's been awhile so I didn't remember which family I was on. I went into a lot and clicked on the sync timer to see which household was at the lowest day. The menu looked like this:



There was no "List..." menu. So I entered a few other households to see if they had the same problem. They all did have the list menu, but there was only one famliy on it.



The household that doesn't have the list at all is the only one that's showing up on the other family's lists. I have eight households that use the timer.

Might this be related to the stuff packs I installed? That's the only thing I can think of that's changed between now and when I played last. I have the latest version of the timer.

[J. M. Pescado]

Did you quit without saving after checking? If you loaded your game with no-CC-enabled after installing a stuff or expansion pack, this will result in the loss of all custom tokens, which will render the Sync Timer unable to see the other family clocks. The Sync Timer, however, will still remember the results on the timer and will attempt to reload those results once you start playing again. To avoid this, remove your neighborhood files from the save directory before loading a new expansion pack and fixing all your settings.

[FlyOnTheWall]

Unfortunately I saved the first family. I didn't save the others. If I replace the neighborhood file with the backup one from before I installed the stuff packs, with CC enabled, would I be able to see the list again?

[J. M. Pescado]

You should. The loss of the custom tokens is not a fatal error to the lot sync timer, anyway. The tokens will be regenerated the next time you load those lots, so unless you use other custom tokens as well, the loss of those tokens is merely a minor temporary nuisance until you load every single lot and allow them to be recreated.

[FlyOnTheWall]

It worked, my lists are back now. 

[witch]

Yeah, this happens to me with monotonously depressing regularity, but I always get all the lists back once I've done a round of the lots and saved. In a way, it's good, I know which lots I haven't played again yet. 

[Karen]

Something weird is going on with the latest (12/1/07) version of the Lot Sync Timer.  I have been using it since the first version and I've never seen this before.

I moved some family members from an existing family into a new house.  On entering the new lot for the first time, I did "Install for Family" and set the days-elapsed value to 168 to match the rest of my families.  Then I noticed that the current day on this lot was Wednesday, whereas all of my other lots are on Monday.  So I went into the synctimer's Time Warp function to set the day to Monday.  Ignored the warnings, clicked Engage.  The day now said Tuesday.  I set the day to Sunday via the synctimer.  It set it to Monday.  Every time I do it, it's off by one day (the synctimer sets the day to one day later than the day of the week I selected.)

I know you don't recommend using this function unless absolutely necessary, but it was working fine prior to this version and it seems to me that something broke.  Not a big deal, but could you look into it when you get a chance?

Karen