Testers Wanted: Secret Society Lot Lottery and Finals Fix - (Updated 3/15/2008)

[Kochanski]

I've had a slightly different problem now I've finally got my ss lot to load. My sim went to her final exam whilst at the ss lot and returned there. When I sent her home the secret society kept the money she received for passing. I cheated to get her money back up so it's not a major issue but thought I would mention it.

I don't know if this was the way it would happen pre OFB as I haven't played Uni in an age so please point and laugh if this a known glitch/feature.

[Kochanski]

As far as I know that has always happened.  The SS has always 'stolen' my sim's good grade bonus.

Has it? Shows how often I play uni doesn't it Thanks for that meyersyoung, I'll just make sure not to take them to the ss close to a final.

[jsalemi]

As far as I know that has always happened.  The SS has always 'stolen' my sim's good grade bonus.

Has it? Shows how often I play uni doesn't it Thanks for that meyersyoung, I'll just make sure not to take them to the ss close to a final.

Of course, the way around it has always been to buy something on the SS lot equal to the value of the grade bonus (and maybe more, if you want to do a little embezzlement ), and plop it in the sim's inventory.  Then sell it when the sim gets back to the dorm -- it won't have lost any value.

[Kochanski]

As far as I know that has always happened.  The SS has always 'stolen' my sim's good grade bonus.

Has it? Shows how often I play uni doesn't it Thanks for that meyersyoung, I'll just make sure not to take them to the ss close to a final.

Of course, the way around it has always been to buy something on the SS lot equal to the value of the grade bonus (and maybe more, if you want to do a little embezzlement ), and plop it in the sim's inventory.  Then sell it when the sim gets back to the dorm -- it won't have lost any value.

Cool, nice plan. I always like a bit of embezzlement!

Also, Syberspunk, Thankyou for this, it seems to be working perfectly

[syberspunk]

Great! I'm glad that last fix worked! Ok, I've updated it again, but I have made it a separate version for now since I can't test it myself right now, so I'm just going by the code. If your visiting sim goes to an exam, when they return, it should check if the lot is an SS Lot. If so, then it should switch funds again, add the funds to the visiting sim's household, and switch back to the SS Lot funds.

So... the SS Lot funds should not be affected and hopefully, when you return to your regular household, your funds should now reflect the money earned from the final. This part definitely needs testing, so I wouldn't recommend putting in your real game, just in case it doesn't quite work the way it does. Unless of course you don't mind keeping track of the funds and fixing things manually with SimPE.

Maybe I'll leave both versions up in case people have a preference. *shrugs*

If you think about it, there aren't many ways for the SS Lot to earn money while you're playing on it, no? Unless you throw a party and/or invite other sims to visit and do some busking? So... eventually, the SS Lots funds could potentially be deleted. Alternatively, I suppose you could do the opposite of embezzzling and bring objects to sell while you are on the SS Lot.

Ste

[Kochanski]

Tested this one out in a clean neighbourhood and it works. My sim went to the final from the ss lot and returned there. No funds were added the the secrect society and when he returned to his dorm his funds had increased correctly. I only tested a couple of times though. I'm putting this in my main game now.

Thankyou Syberspunk.

[syberspunk]

Awesome, and thank you Kochanski for testing and reporting back. I'm glad this works properly. I can't always think of all the 'edge' cases (ahem, as Maxis might put it... ) so I really appreciate the feedback. Hopefully this works now for visiting the sslot with several different households and any money coming in from finals should always go to the visitor's household funds insted of the sslot.

I'll leave both versions up in case people do want the money to go to the sslot for some reason. As I mentioned above, I can't think of many ways for the sslot to bring in money, and I'm not sure what would happen when the sslot funds inevitably deplete.

Ste

[syberspunk]

Ok, I've checked out the code, and it looks like they did a decent job fixing this problem. They even used the same token instead of creating a 2nd one, which was an interesting solution. They also changed around the the code a bit for managing tokens, and they have an extra BHAV which seems to check for the case where you may have multiple sslots (presumably due to adding more than one Uni 'hood). So, I decided to roll these changes into the sslotlotterfix, since it is slightly more efficient, and cleaner when it comes to having multiple sslots.

I have separated the sslotlotteryfix and the sslotfinalsfix into two files. You only need the sslotlotteryfix if you do not plan to patch, or if your version of the game is older (NL or Uni only - obviously not needed for the basegame). The sslotfinalsfix requires the sslotlotteryfix if you have an older version of the game. On the other hand, if you have the 2nd patch for OFB/FFS, you do not need the lottery fix.

I hope that all makes sense.

Ste

[syberspunk]

I fixed a bug that Ancient Sim mentioned here.

Silly me, I tried to reference a new BHAV that Maxis added to check for multiple Secret Society Lots, but I forgot that BHAV was private, and so the code couldn't 'see' it with the sslotfinalsfix.

It should work properly now. Please redownload, overwrite, test it out, and report back if any errors persist. Thanks.

Ste

[Ancient Sim]

I didn't realise I had this mod, I thought the only one I had concerning exams was something called finalfix-nlp2, whatever that is (maybe something I don't need anymore).  Anyway, glad you saw my post on the other thread and thanks for sorting it out so quickly.  I've put the new one in now so next time I have an abduction (shouldn't be too long if I force myself to go play Uni again ... yawn) I'll let you know if it isn't working, but I'm sure it will as you seem to know what the problem was. 

Oh, and just so you know, you won't be bothered by Lucy Burb anymore 'cos she's dead.  Silly girl spent too long playing with JMP's daughter's dolls' house and starved to death.  She'll haunt you though, I guarantee it.

[syberspunk]

Gah1111!!!! Stupid necromancy skeletor!

Anyways, I've added a growuptownies compatible version. Please read this post for details.

Ste

[Ancient Sim]

I've just noticed that this isn't working for me, but that's probably because I didn't have the Grow-Up Townies compatible version installed (don't think it existed when I downloaded) so I will have to try again with that one.  The first final I had, the Sim had the same problem of coming back with it still in progress, but the second one was OK.  It may be because in the first case, the Sim actually graduated, maybe the game couldn't cope with that.

In actual fact, though, I may be better off without this mod.  My SS lot funds are more or less wiped-out now due to resurrections and I have no idea how to get anymore apart from cheating.  I suppose Maxis never expected more than 3 dormies to need resurrecting, but they probably didn't expect nouniprotect, either. 

[syberspunk]

Alright, fixed a bug that Ancient Sim reported with the sslotfinalsfix. Please note the following changes:

Edit: 9/21/2006
Original version deprecated, changes in grow up townies will now be consolidated into single version. Note: These changes basically prevent unselectable dormies who are returning from finals to add their funds to the dorm lot. Thus, this will not affect normal gameplay. This can only happen if you are cheating anyway i.e. using a hack to enable dormies to go to finals, such as my growuptownies hack. Duh. As a result, this hack will still appear to conflict with growuptownies, but this is harlmess and intentional. Otherwise, this change should not have any adverse affects.

<snip>

v1.03 - Fixed bug with funds not properly being calculated, original version deprecated

Hopefully that all makes sense. Please download, test the new version and report back if you find any problems. It should work now. It was probably screwing up funds before, so... sorry about that. Basically, when I had cloned some lines, I forgot to change a couple of properties, so it wasn't restoring the funds properly. I'll probably test it out later this evening myself, but if someone else gets a chance and can either confirm that it works or it doesn't, that'd be great.

Thanks AncientSim for reporting the bug!

Edit: 12/28/2006
I found another minor bug when I was playing today.  I think it should be fixed now. I stupidly forgot to change the local used for an index, so it was throwing up undefined transition errors. Anyways, if you are using the sslotfinalsfix, then please update it, and let me know if you run into any other problems.


Ste

[Hegelian]

Um, is one of the two links for the lottery fix supposed to be the finals fix?   

[jrd]

Is this bug fixed in Pets?

[syberspunk]

Um, is one of the two links for the lottery fix supposed to be the finals fix?   

Whoops. Doh! Yes. Thanks. I'll fix it when I get home later today. Sorry about that.

Is this bug fixed in Pets?

The lottery bug should be fixed. The only update was for the finals.  I had that as a separate hack so that, if your sim goes to finals while at the sslot, they actually keep the money for themselves instead of going into the sslot funds. Of course, using this would probably mean that the sslot funds would eventually get depleted, unless you throw parties and busk, use the money tree, the counterfeiter machines, or other methods to get some money flowing back into the sslot funds.

Ste

[jrd]

Thanks

Amazing, EA Maxis actually fixed a bug!

[syberspunk]

Thanks

Amazing, EA Maxis actually fixed a bug!

Haha, yeah, I know! Imagine my shock! What's even more amazing, is that they did it in a better way. Not only did they manage to recycle the token (in my hack, I created a separate token to temporarily store the visitor's own household funds), they added a BHAV to determine the specific sslot. This doesn't matter if you only have one SSLot, but necessary for those people who actually installed multiple Uni subhoods. They also deprecated one of the BHAVs that was adding to the bugginess (I basically had to disable it for my hack, it was re-saving funds or something like that, everytime you went into Buy Mode, so previous changes would be lost, and the sslot funds would keep increasing/doubling or whatever).

I have to wonder if that bug had been there since Uni. I don't think it was fixed until the OFB patch, no? In anycase, I snarfed their "cleaner" code and backported it for people who don't have OFB.

Ste

[Hegelian]

Um, is one of the two links for the lottery fix supposed to be the finals fix?   

Whoops. Doh! Yes. Thanks. I'll fix it when I get home later today. Sorry about that.

Not to be a pest, but. . . .   

[miros]

Right now there's 2 lottery fixes and one finals fix.

[syberspunk]

Doh! Damn pests!

* syberspunk sprays and stompinates the creepy crawly Hegelians and miroses.

Alright, alright, it should be posted properly now. Heh. I got caught up with house chores and then family stuff this past weekend, so can ye blame me?

Ste

[Hegelian]

Hey, I'm not complaining. It's free stuff that works and I'm happy to have it at all. Thanks!