OFB Preventing Visitor Death?

[Mirelly]

Haven't turned up anything meaningful by searching so raising this as a question to find out if anyone else has the same problem.

Using JM's directors Cut + 2J's age duration hack. + Merola's painting

A townie came home from work with my sim and got stuck in the garage. By the time I noticed and realised it was due to FFS security system he was already crying like a girl so I figured I'd leave him there as the teenage son was a knowledge sim and would sooner or later roll up the see a ghost want. After 3 days of him stinking up the place I wondered why he was still alive. I used Merola's painting to truncate his life - he aged to an elder and then I took all his remaining days cos I was getting bored. I waited another day and still he wouldn't die. Eventually I used debug mode to summon the Grim Reaper. But he refused to die by all normal means. He spent 24 hours in the pool (he was utterly redded out when he got in), he stood inside a 3x1 attic room while a grill went up in flames, then the floor he stood on burned around his ankles then the fridge caught alight. He wasn't even smoldering 

So wossup. Can't we kill townies and NPC's anymore?

[sintrinity]

Hmm, I don't know about townies but on NPCs they seem to have to leave the lot first and then their tombstone shows up at the portal next time I load.  At least that's what happened to me with a nanny.  I haven't had any visitors die recently though.  Good reason to go on a killing spree all in the name of testing 

[cwykes]

My playable Sims weren't dying on community lots yesterday even when they were right out of energy and almost starving. Bad trip in the energiser...  I was trying to save them and not kill them, so I can't be sure on this one.  Might be worth testing, because if it's true, maybe it's just harder to kill sims on lots they don't live in.

[jsalemi]

No problem bumping off NPCs or townies in my game (all 3 eps).  In fact, I just had my 'Black Widow' kill off the cop she was seeing because the cop rejected her for a woohoo (she gets VERY unhappy about being rejected, as the now 5 gravestones in her private cemetary attest  ). And I still have stupid dormmies dropping left and right because they'd much rather sit in a chair or go to class than like, ummm, eat.

I wonder if the rest of the police force will ever notice their AWOL member?

[J. M. Pescado]

My playable Sims weren't dying on community lots yesterday even when they were right out of energy and almost starving. Bad trip in the energiser...  I was trying to save them and not kill them, so I can't be sure on this one.  Might be worth testing, because if it's true, maybe it's just harder to kill sims on lots they don't live in.

Dying on community lots is impossible, because if your family died on a community lot, you'd be unable to leave or go home! Then you'd have to kill the process, and quit without saving, thus undoing the death anyway.

Plus, the spawned tombstone wouldn't save, since you can't make permanent alterations to community lots.

[Dark Trepie]

This reminds me of an incident I had in a test hood a couple of days ago.  I had a household there that consisted of a married vampire couple, a servo, and his zombie wife.  (an interesting house that was.)  Anyway, Amy Jones, the NPC newspaper girl, came walking by the front of the lot one morning like she always does, but before she had a chance to lay the newspaper down on the ground she disapeared.  I get this message that she died on another lot and her spirit will return to the place of death.  And her tombstone pops up in front of the cowplant.  The game went on normally though, and the next day I had another newspaper delivering NPC doing their job like always.

This had to be the strangest thing I've ever seen in this game.  Has anyone else had NPC's die spontaniously for no good reason?  I'm more worried that this isn't limited to NPC's and that random walkbys will croak as well.  That would be a bad thing in my normal hoods.

[Ancient Sim]

And her tombstone pops up in front of the cowplant. 

This sounds like a very suggestive sort of sentence, particularly the last word of it ...

Which reminds me, I need to go into your household soon.  When I left it, your pregnant wife Lilith was due to deliver your twins in a few hours, depending on whether she survives that long.  Both of you are alternating between trying to sleep and gagging because you're starving and why?  Well, we all know that hitting your true love with a pillow over & over again is far more important than eating.  Trepie, you have already died of starvation once because of Lilith.  Do you really want to do it again?  Or do you just want the dubious honour of being the first ever Sim in the neighbourhood to die for love twice?  Maybe you won't be lucky enough to be rescued this time and your poor twins will grow-up without a father.  Stupid way to carry-on when you've only recently bought Similar Sights Sculpture Park and somehow persuaded Kaylynn Langerak to manage it for you, even though she has her own Petite Cafe to run and prefers to spend her time blowing bubbles rather than selling sculptures anyway. 

And did you know that Angela also has the hots for you?  Well, you do now.  Just don't let Lilith find out about it, because although you're not aware of it, she absolutely ADORES fighting.

[Dark Trepie]

Man, I have the most interesting life.     And I have twins lusting after me.  Nice.

And for the record she didn't grab the cake.  Her tombstone just decided to pop up there for whatever reason.  The only time I used the cowplant was to make the servo's wife a zombie.

I will require pictures of Trepie and Lilith's twins of course.   

[jsalemi]

And her tombstone pops up in front of the cowplant.  The game went on normally though, and the next day I had another newspaper delivering NPC doing their job like always.

This had to be the strangest thing I've ever seen in this game.  Has anyone else had NPC's die spontaniously for no good reason?  I'm more worried that this isn't limited to NPC's and that random walkbys will croak as well.  That would be a bad thing in my normal hoods.

I had that happen with a cheerleader -- she was in one dorm, and the "died on anothe lot" message popped up.  Same thing -- when I went to the dorm that has the cow plant, her tombstone was in front of it.  But the thing is, that cowplant is kept inside a fence that's only opened on 'special occasions'  , so there was no way she could have wandered into it on her own.  I figure she died of starvation (seems to be how most dormies spontaniously die in my game, thanks to the nodormieprotect hack and the fact that sitting in a chair, playing darts or going to class is more important to them than eating), and the game didn't quite know how to handle it so it plopped her tombstone at the most likely source of death on that lot.

[J. M. Pescado]

I had that happen with a cheerleader -- she was in one dorm, and the "died on anothe lot" message popped up.  Same thing -- when I went to the dorm that has the cow plant, her tombstone was in front of it.  But the thing is, that cowplant is kept inside a fence that's only opened on 'special occasions'  , so there was no way she could have wandered into it on her own.  I figure she died of starvation (seems to be how most dormies spontaniously die in my game, thanks to the nodormieprotect hack and the fact that sitting in a chair, playing darts or going to class is more important to them than eating), and the game didn't quite know how to handle it so it plopped her tombstone at the most likely source of death on that lot.

Was the gate locked? If there was a gate, that you locked, sims that are trying to leave are suddenly allowed to use the door, so you can't trap anyone with them, and thus may have wandered in there and gotten eaten if they were leaving from low hunger.

[aussieone]

  Has anyone else had NPC's die spontaniously for no good reason?

I had the pop up message that one townie (I can't remember his name and THE GYPSY had died on another lot too. I sorta freaked out (seeing as any deletion of 'one off' NPC's is supposed to result in the BFBVFS syndrome), so I quit without saving, reloaded the lot and got the pop up again. So I thought if the BFB does happen, no biggy I'll just start a new game and so I kept playing.

Thus far, the game has motored on without a hitch, so I don't know happened except that now the Gypsy is called someone else rather than the game's old Gypsy, Chris Bruty.

[jsalemi]

I had that happen with a cheerleader -- she was in one dorm, and the "died on anothe lot" message popped up.  Same thing -- when I went to the dorm that has the cow plant, her tombstone was in front of it.  But the thing is, that cowplant is kept inside a fence that's only opened on 'special occasions'  , so there was no way she could have wandered into it on her own.  I figure she died of starvation (seems to be how most dormies spontaniously die in my game, thanks to the nodormieprotect hack and the fact that sitting in a chair, playing darts or going to class is more important to them than eating), and the game didn't quite know how to handle it so it plopped her tombstone at the most likely source of death on that lot.

Was the gate locked? If there was a gate, that you locked, sims that are trying to leave are suddenly allowed to use the door, so you can't trap anyone with them, and thus may have wandered in there and gotten eaten if they were leaving from low hunger.

No gate, just a solid fence around three sides of the cow plant, with the dorm wall on the fourth. I use the dorm building cheat to delete a section of the fence when I want someone to wander in, or use  moveobjects on to just plop a really annoying dormie in the enclosure. So there's no way the cheerleader could have wandered in there on her own without SOME intervention on my part.

[Pegasys]

Resurrecting this thread...

When playing around with the Townie generator today (the tree object), I decided to try to kill the townies and then create new ones.  It does seem townies are now invincible. They can pee and pass out but death? Nope. I waited 5 days while they were enclosed in a room;  they were stinky, passing out, etc. but no death. Then I added a cowplant, waited a few days - nada. Then finally I made a Sim selectable, had her start a fire. The entire room was on fire - nobody caught on fire. And the townies I made selectable (through boolprop) didn't die either.

It seems to me since OFB they've definitely tweaked this. I suspect there's some change where new townies are invincible but the ones spawned before OFB are not, which is why other people have been able to kill their townies? That's my theory, anyway...

[Ellatrue]

I had this problem too. I had some townies in a swimming pool for 2 days and they wouldn"t die, so I let them out, and used the buyable fire on one of them (always worked before!). Instead of holding still in one place and burning, the girl ran all over my house and spread the fire without actually burning herself, killing my playable sim. When the fireman arrived, he put out the flames on HER first. Treacherous townie sympathizer!

[J. M. Pescado]

Looking over the new added code "Can Sim Die", it seems that any visitor who has is in greet state 2, I.E., "wants to leave", is no longer allowed to die. This means you can no longer murder sims by trapping them in walls or the pool ladder thing, since they will want to leave well before it kills them, and go into "can't die" mode. You can still kill them via cow plant or any other form of "quick" execution. I am uncertain as to *WHY* it is set this way, perhaps there's something that will go wrong if someone potentially dies in such a state.

If you just really can't tolerate having your urge to do the pool ladder or Cask of Amontillado kills stymied, you can try the experimental "killablevisitors" hack in the OFB test directory. Or you can kill them with something else, like buyable fire or cow planting, but BEFORE they want to leave.

[Ness]

another thing to add is that the gypsies don't appear to be unique NPCs - The game generates the usual three of them so far as I have observed.

[J. M. Pescado]

The gypsy is not a unique NPC, no. The gypsy is just an ordinary NPC with a special uniform. Why Maxis felt we needed DIFFERENT gypsies is unknown to me.

[Ness]

could this sim death code be the cause of my dormies suddenly up and moving out?

problem discussed here

[Pegasys]

Thanks, JMP, I downloaded your killablevisitors hack. Not that I even want to kill my visitors, but it bugs me that they can't die once they decide they want to leave - MY sims can die, so THEY should be vulnerable too.

[skandelouslala]

I had the same thing happen with the tombstone of dead NPCs plopping down in front of my cowplant.
One of my houses had a ghost wandering around... I had no idea where the ghost had come from b/c to my knowledge noone had died and I never got a message that anyone had died.  When I went searching around the lot I found the tombstone of a nanny in front of the cowplant and there was no way she could have gotten in, the cowplant had a large stone fence all around it with no gate.
Strange that others are experiencing the same thing...

I might have to try the killable visitors thing...again I just like having the option.  I've still had visitors die of course (my most recent one died of woohoo overload muhahha).

[anyeone]

Are we not supposed to allow player characters visiting a different residential lot to get eaten by the cow plant?

Iriana invited her spooky (and hideously ugly) Uncle Frankie over for a visit and unlocked the cow plant gate.  He got eaten.  She cried a little but got over it.  I moved his tombstone by all the nannies who keep getting eaten DESPITE the gate being locked (other NPCs don't go through the locked gate now that I chose a different fence but nannies I can't seem to keep out).

I played a bit more, then saved the game, but Frankie was still listed as living in his bunker.  I decided to just move him out and then delete him, but shouldn't he have been dead?

[Ruann]

Death by Cowplant is an odd thing.  I think this is because it skips most of the standard Death antics.  So who knows.

[miramis]

Were any of you running Debug mode while these events happened?  (I'm just curious)

[jsalemi]

I wasn't running debug -- I usually only turn it on as needed (the alias capability in the userstartup.cheat file is a wonderful thing).

[miramis]

The reason I ask is because I caught my game killing off Npc's just to put their name on gravestones which were being spawned by the Cowplant.  When I wasn't in Debug mode it would do that, but when I was in Debug mode I would get a couple of error messages once the grave spawning began, saying something about not finding owners.  I mentioned it in the link below
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/smf/index.php?topic=8.100  .

I was just wondering if your mysterious NPC deaths were happening for the same reason my own were, since you mentioned the cowplant aswell.  I'm still waiting hoping for some word back on that post as to whether or not there is a problem with the file *hint*.