The Mysterious Choking Death

[schmoopee]

I finally had this happen in my game! And sure enough, it was a pregnant sim. Luckily her husband stopped making himself a hamburger long enough to plead for her life and she was saved, as I wasn't finished breeding her yet.

I've had 97 pregnancies in this hood, and this is the first time I've seen it.

It's of course not listed in the guide as an "official" death - but we all know the guide certainly isn't complete or correct in many cases.

So what's the scoop behing this? What triggers it, or is it completely random? Is there a possibility of a "no choking death" fix? Or is it somehow preventable within the current confines of the game?

[RainbowTigress]

Some of us just talked about this on VS just recently.  No definite solution, but a lot of different theories and ideas.  You'll find it here:  http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=1460

[schmoopee]

Oh thanks! Sorry I missed that thread, must have been when I was away. 

[Kristalrose]

We talked about it over at World Sims too:  http://forums.worldsims.org/showthread.php?t=4455&highlight=pregnant+choking+death

[ZephyrZodiac]

We also had a thread at SimFreaks forum, but it was a long while back, way before Uni!  I think the main thing to beware of is a pregnant sim (breeding!!!!!) eating rotten food, that was certainly what happened when one of my sims died of it, but was successfully pleaded for by her distraught husband Beau - who wasn't even thinking about food!!!!

[HRH Posie]

SimMasterDemos studied this phenomenon back in January however she was Demosthenes1713 then   For further information please see here.

[ElviraGoth]

I just read the thread you indicated, Posie.  This must be a really picky bug, as I've never had it happen and I've been sending 1st day pregnant women (or their hubbies) to community lots, and I've saved after hearing the baby lullaby.  The only times I've had  pg sims die was when their hunger was almost empty and couldn't get them food fast enough!

But it seems I never get a bug until I read about it, so now I'm afraid to save the game (community lot or not) before the first bump appears.  Odd that the same thing doesn't happen to everyone - I wonder if there's something else on the lot that triggers it?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Dunno, when it happened to Devine Broke, it was all entirely Sims2 and no downloads, so if it was something on the lot, it was a Maxis something!  And it was just fortunate that it was Beau's day off, or she'd have been a goner as no one else live there - though in that case I would have exited without saving!

[ElviraGoth]

Oh and we KNOW there's nothing wrong with ANY of the Maxis objects, right, ZZ? 

It HAS to be a downloaded object to cause a bug! *extreme sarcasm*

We actually don't NEED any of JM's fixes, it's just our imagination!

[HRH Posie]

lol, I'm afraid I'm not too sure ElviraGoth as this is Demosthenes1713's research.  You could try leaving SimMasterDemos a gb entry at the official site and ask for further details about the families?  She's very nice and I'm sure she will be able to give you further details on the setup of her experiment.  Maybe the pair of you could work out what is the same in both games and locate the exact problem?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I certainly didn't intend to imply that Maxis items are ok and downloaded custom stuff isn't!  What I actually meant was that, if something in the game is causing the choking death, it seems to me it probably is a Maxis object - and from the original game as well!

[ElviraGoth]

lol!

She really DID do extensive research!  I don't know if I would have had the patience to go to the extent she did to try and figure out what was causing the pg sims to die.  Great job!  And that pg death rate!  Whoo!

And it didn't seem to matter if it was a Maxis sim or a CAS sim, either.  Or what kind of lot.  That's the only reason I think that maybe it's some object in the house.  Maybe the infamous diagonal wall... I don't use those at all.  And the fact that some people reported that their sims died just from saving the lot when a sim was in the first day says to me that it's not the community lot that's causing the problem.

schmoopee, did you save or send the pg sim to a community lot on the first day?  And had never done that before?  Would like to know it this is something that develops over time in a hood, or if it always happens in a hood from day one. 

It seems that most of the bugs I've had didn't start until after I had played a hood for awhile.  The only ones that happened right away were the maid/nanny getting stuck on a lot like they lived there and bills not being registered as paid when they were - of course, right after I'd installed Uni.  And I didn't even know about any websites except the official one at that time.  So my help was pretty much nil.

I'll definitely have to watch for this one.  I hate watching my good sims die!  Even of old age.

Might have to see if I can make it happen on my comp, just out of curiosity.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I do think there's something in the programming that starts to break down after you've been playing for a while!  However, for what it's worth, I don't remember either Devine or Beau going to a community lot on the first day, nor do I remember saving while she was in her first day - but it's a long time ago now! - I do think there was a diagonal wall in the house as I think it was one of the Maxis lofts which I'd improved, but I've had sims have babies in houses full of the darn things with no problems!  Now, I think she was in her second or last stage when this happened, so I'd probably got them the crib and stuff, since Devine was a fortune sim and had probably demanded them! so whether it's something deliberate and based on the old superstition about buying the pram before the baby's born, I wouldn't like to say, but, well, go figure!

[ElviraGoth]

I'm debating about which kind of list to make - Maxis objects with NO bugs, or those WITH bugs.  Wonder which one would be shorter?

Just read the thread on the instant meal bug again - will have to get the new and improved lot debugger to see if it will fix another weird bug I've been having! (Not fridge related, but who knows?)

My latest pg bug was a sim who didn't "show" at all.  Checked her stats with the InSiminator and she was 48 hours along.  Finally had to move her out, move her in to another lot, where she was fully pg and had the baby, then move her back home.  Did this when she was the only one home, so (hopefully) no one else has a bad memory of her leaving.  Haven't checked that yet. 

I'd had that happen with Dina Caliente (I had her marry Beau) and, not thinking, I had her drink Elixer of Life on her first day of being pg.  I forgot she had gotten pg.  That night, I was going to have them try for a baby, but the option didn't come up.  She was pg for about a week before I read somewhere about moving her out, so I did that and she did the same thing - had the baby, had her move back home, Beau and the other kids ran out and hugged her and wouldn't let her OR the baby out of sight!  I almost cried! 

Last time I played PV that baby was grown up to a YA and away at Uni, and I haven't gone back to them since I started my own hood.  Should check on those guys and see how they're doing.  I also had an alien baby by abduction that was Alexander Goth's son, and he look like a green-skinned Michael Jackson - down to the teeny weeny nose!  Need to get a screenshot of him.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Dina has a baby in my game, but she married a CAS sim with a little daughter.  Her pregnancy was totally normal, can't even remember her getting morning sickness very badly!  They did have a problem with night time visits from about six nannies, though!  Next time I play them I may have to move them to a clean new house!

[Oddysey]

List objects with bugs. Then it can be expanded to include documentation about the bug(s) themselves, such as what happens and what triggers them, and whether it causes computer explosions.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I imagine it'll be the longer of the two possible lists, though.

You could do with a stickied thread which people can post their experiences with a particular object so you get a little help with all this research!

[Motoki]

People most commonly refer to this bug as effecting pregnant sims, but it seems it can effect any sim with a disease (and the game seems to count pregnancy as a disease). I've had it happen to a little girl sim and a (non pregnant) adult male sim as well as to a couple of pregnant females. I've also had it happen before University and before adding any custom content save the alienware computer by Maxis (since that was released pretty much right with the game). It doesn't have to involve going to a community lot either but it does, in my experience, seem to happen soon after the home lot that the sim who chokes lives on is loaded.

I've read a lot of discussion about it and the best theory I've heard was that the 'sick' sim is somehow cured on another lot (a community lot or by being a guest at another lot you play) and then when you load their main lot, the game doesn't know whether they are sick or not and they just die. Now that may not be the case at all and I'm not sure how a pregnant sim gets cured, though I certainly have had pregancies that just spontaneously aborted somehow (and miscarriage is not a feature of the game so obviously it's some bug). I do know that it always seems to involve a sick and/or pregnant sim and having them on another lot and then going back and playing their main lot. I guess the safest thing to do is not go to a community lot if a sim is sick or pregnant and not save and play a different lot if you have a sick sim until they get well on their main lot.

I used to have a problem with seems getting sick as guests on lots I played from bad food, but J.M.'s no eating crap hack does help that. Also having jello around as a backup can help that since they'll always go for any good food over spoiled stuff.

[schmoopee]

Ahhh, wow, I had no idea about any of this, thanks for all the links, folks.

She was indeed one day pregnant, not showing. I was going to post that she hadn't been to a community lot, but you know, it just occured to me that she might have been! Not from her own house, but I had a couple of weddings on some community lot chapels I dowloaded, and she may have shown up. I may have even used the teleporter bush to teleport her in as a wedding guest - I'm not sure. I had 24 sim weddings in a row and it's all a blur as to who was at whose wedding. *lol*

I'll have to be extra careful from now on - no more invisi-preggos at community lot weddings! It's the only thing I use community lots for, for my poor sims who can't afford a nice wedding. Maybe I'll just get them a loan from the bank of Kaching from now on, and then money order the cash away after I've sold off the wedding deco. It's my no-cheat hood so I don't like to give them money.

[RainbowTigress]

All you need to have a roof raiser Wedding party is the wedding arch, and then spend lots of time socializing with your guests, making sure that you invite people who aren't already at 100 daily relationship with your sims.  The game scores your party based on the average boost in your sims' STR.  I have had many roof raisers this way.  Make sure your sims get married before time runs out too, lol.  Sell the arch before midnight for a full refund.  You really don't need any other fancy, expensive stuff to get a good score, unless you just want it.  You might be able to do it without the wedding arch just by proposing marriage, but you don't get the cinematics and everyone doesn't come over to watch.  I've never really tried it that way.

[schmoopee]

Oh, I don't have a problem getting roof raisers - I spend a lot of money on decorations and take a lot of pics, is the problem. *lol* Fountains, sculptures, plants, you name it! I like them to have nice wedding pictures. So my financially challenged sims, I send them to this really pretty community lot to get married, so they can get pretty pictures without having to buy the decorations, because I don't like to cheat and buy it for them.

[RainbowTigress]

I haven't tried community lot weddings.  I try to avoid community lots because they take so long to load anyway.  I was disappointed when I first got the game and discovered that sims couldn't get married at other sims' houses.  For instance, the Goths had that pretty wedding setup in their backyard, and it would have been nice if their friends could come there and get married.  But no, you have to set it up for each and every house where sims want to get married.  It's kind of gotten to be annoying, although I like weddings.

[Ancient Sim]

From my experience, I would say the "mysterious choking death" is totally related to the disease token the Sims get when they first become ill.  This is why so many pregnant Sims fall victim to it, because they always get one along with their pregnancy token (which is why the first 24 hours are the dangerous ones).  According to what I read, the Sim has to be ill for 10 days before they can die of the 'flu, but this isn't the case.  I had a Sim catch the 'flu during her wedding party (around 7 or 8 of the 12 guests present had it) and she died under the wedding arch within seconds of taking her vows.  She hadn't sat down since the message about her 'flu had come up, she'd been socialising the entire time, so that might have been the reason.

Since my last reinstall I've had 4 more choking deaths (which I've gone into on the variousimmers thread mentioned earlier).  Three have been male (one YA and two former YA's) and one was Allegra Gorey, former YA, who died less than one sim hour after giving birth.  All 3 males recovered from the 'flu on another lot, one at a wedding party, one at a graduation party, and one whilst sampling the delights of the neighbourhood bordello.  Allegra never went anywhere during her pregnancy, but she did catch the 'flu somewhere in the middle of it.

It could be a similar situation to the problems that can be caused if a Sim becomes pregnant on one lot and then moves to another one, although I've never had problems with that.  If the disease token is personal to the lot rather than the Sim, there could well be problems if the Sim recovers on another lot, insofar as the game will become confused as to their state of health.  Shouldn't happen of course, but it seems to me that it's definitely a programming bug of some sort.

Personally, I don't mind it.  I enjoy the drama, the break from routine, the surprise element ... I'm just waiting for the day when they can have accidents and I can finally stick a nanny in the middle of the road and just wait (rubbing hands together gleefully) for the arrival of the school bus ...

[RainbowTigress]

The first time I hired a nanny when I first got the game was for Brandi Broke.  She had just gotten a job in Politics, and I didn't know if the nanny was going to make it in time for her to go to work, but she did.  She was taking her time walking across the road when the carpool came up, and I thought it was going to run her over, but of course it didn't.  I kept clicking on the carpool and finally Brandi went to work but it was close.  Another time a sim kid ran in front of the carpool, and he really would have been dead if it weren't just a game.

Back to the choking death, your theory about disease tokens makes sense, Ancient Sim.  I have never had this happen in my game, but I think it's because I use Inge's no disease patch.  I also use JM's no eat crap mod.  Visiting sims were always getting sick because they would eat spoiled food even when the residents wouldn't.  When I take out my hacks to troubleshoot, and the no disease patch is gone, I will usually get an error message about the disease controller whenever I enter a lot for the first time.  (I play with debug mode on.)  Resetting it usually fixes it, but this leads me to believe that each lot has a separate disease controller just like the pregnancy controllers and aging controllers.  I believe Jase, who made the InTeenimater, says there are two controllers for pregnancy, one is a pregnancy token the sim has, and the other is a controller on the lot itself.  I may not be saying it exactly the way he did, but I think that's the general idea.  So I think somewhere in the disease controller lies the problem.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, this is all too confusing for me!  If my sims gets sick, I send them to bed.  If they wake up, I let them go to the bathroom and have something to eat, then they go back to bed again, until I get the message that they are well again!  If necessary I stick the TV in the bedroom so they stay there!  I've never lost a sick sim yet!  If I see one puking up on another lot, I exit and go back to their home lot so they don't show up anywhere else and spread the disease, and get them better fast!