Having problems w/the cheat box, help please!

[idtaminger]

I'm having trouble with my cheat box nowadays. It only started recently, although I'm not sure what I might've done to trigger it.

Initially, I can bring up the cheat box just fine. But after a while of playing, all of a sudden the cheatbox just won't come up. I had a sim stuck in her car, and I couldn't force error, delete, anything. Had to exit the game and spend another 20 minutes loading the damn thing. Drove me batty.

A common factor, now that I think about it, is that all of the sims have made transitions between lots (SS lots, community lots to home, dorms). Taxis were used as well as cars.

I've got all EPs to OFB, patched. Any help in this would be muchly appreciated.

[Fish Dude]

Do you have CursorXP? That makes the cheat box really hard to bring up.

[Emma]

You haven't left the caps lock on have you? Sometimes I catch it with my nail and I can't get the cheat box up because of it. It is always the first thing I check if it doesn't work.

[gali]

When you are able to activate the cheat box, at the beginning, activate "moveobjects on", and play with it all the time, just in case.

When I have toddlers, I play with it all the time, to give the parents some sleep at night, taking them from the craddle to the floor, so they can play.

I deleted many times carpools, if some sim was stucked in them. The stucked sim appeared in the middle of the room.

But, if you are going to build - you have to deactivate it, or save, exit to windows, and enter again.

[LK]

How will entering the moveobjects cheat solve the problem of the box now showing up?

[gali]

LK, this way:

"Initially, I can bring up the cheat box just fine. But after a while of playing, all of a sudden the cheatbox just won't come up." [idtaminger]

Makes sense?...

[LK]

Yeah, but idtaminger can't access the box now, so entering the cheat isn't possible.  Unless s/he can access it in the neighborhood screen immediately after entering the game.

* LK swigs some coffee

[ElfPuddle]

LK, it's like a missing dirty plate...if the box was there, and it's not now, then it was moved. If someone moved it to where you can't get it, use the moveobjects!

*exchanges LK's coffee for something stronger*

[nocomment]

I think gali is saying having "moveobjects on" is handy for a lot of problems.  She's suggesting that idtaminger turn it on at the start of play, when the cheat box still works.  Then later, when the cheat box doesn't work, moveobjects will already be on, and it may be used to fix certain problems.

idtaminger - Do you have the lot debugger?  That's an object you can buy.  It will force error on all the objects on your lot.  So you could use this even if the cheat box doesn't work.  WARNING - it messes us photobooth pics, career reward camera pics, and sim-made paintings.

It's here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,72.0.html

[J. M. Pescado]

I have not observed force-error to mess up paintings, but paintings can often become messed up on their own for no particularly obvious reason.

[idtaminger]

idtaminger - Do you have the lot debugger?

Bah. Totally forgot about it. I don't use it a lot except for reenabling save so I keep forgetting about it.

Anyway, I was playing some more yesterday, and it appears that the cheatbox won't come up b/c the whole keyboard is screwed. "i" now comes up "c", "l" is "n", etc., etc. My sim had a baby and I tried to name him, and it was all screwed up. I'm thinking it's a keyboard problem...but it's a shitty keyboard anyway, so I won't miss it much.

On a related note, does anyone notice how ridiculously easy it is to mess up the more expensive keyboards, but the crappy ones are as resilient as a cockroach? Seriously. A drop of soda in the cracks on a $30 keyboard, and the keys start sticking and the whole thing's a pain to use. The craptastic $10 ones you can drop all the shit you want on it, and it still works perfectly fine. Really, what's up with that?

[KittKitt]

Anyway, I was playing some more yesterday, and it appears that the cheatbox won't come up b/c the whole keyboard is screwed. "i" now comes up "c", "l" is "n", etc., etc. My sim had a baby and I tried to name him, and it was all screwed up. I'm thinking it's a keyboard problem...but it's a shitty keyboard anyway, so I won't miss it much.

On a related note, does anyone notice how ridiculously easy it is to mess up the more expensive keyboards, but the crappy ones are as resilient as a cockroach? Seriously. A drop of soda in the cracks on a $30 keyboard, and the keys start sticking and the whole thing's a pain to use. The craptastic $10 ones you can drop all the shit you want on it, and it still works perfectly fine. Really, what's up with that?

Wait.  Wait wait wait.

I'll agree with you that often (though not always) the cheap-o keyboards tend to have more resiliance.  The issue you're describing however sounds more like your regional settings (either for the Sims or for Windows/whatever) have become borked.

Considering you've typed messages here both before and after deciding your keyboard was to blame, I'm guessing it only happens while playing TS2?  Or only there that you've thus far noticed it?

There's a lot of things that can go physically wrong with a keyboard.  Hitting one letter and getting another though isn't exactly one that happens very often, if at all.  What kind of keyboard is it, and do you have any software running to support enhanced functions or the like?

Really, I'd check those regional/language settings first, coupled with possible issues with any software the thing may be using.  Things like that can get messed up for any number of reasons.  Even a CTD in Windows could in theory corrupt a setting if somehow it borked an INI file or somesuch when it happened.  It'd be a cheaper fix than buying a new keyboard anyway, and in fact if that is the problem, a new keyboard might not even solve the problem in the first place.

-Kitt

[idtaminger]

It's only happening with the game, and only halfway through. All of a sudden it'll just decide to bork up the keys.

No software, since it's really a bare minimum, plug-and-play keyboard.

Come to think of it, though, I do have Chinese language typing enabled in Windows. You think it's somehow switching to the Chinese in the middle of the game?

[KittKitt]

It's only happening with the game, and only halfway through. All of a sudden it'll just decide to bork up the keys.

No software, since it's really a bare minimum, plug-and-play keyboard.

Come to think of it, though, I do have Chinese language typing enabled in Windows. You think it's somehow switching to the Chinese in the middle of the game?

Possible, but not likely.  If it works for a while and then doesn't, chances are something else (and more weird) is happening here.

Frankly, I've never actually had quite that sort of problem before, so most anything I could think of would be completely shot in the dark guess work.  If no one else has any insight, my reccomendation at this point would be to borrow a keyboard from someone/somewhere else, get it working and then go simming for an extended period.  See if it happens again.  If so, then we gotta keep looking.  If you can play for eons though and it never seems to happen, then as odd as it may sound we can assume that the keyboard itself is somehow to blame, though be sure to give it a rigorous testing period before you just go buy a new one and expect it to be all better.

Cheap or not, buying a new piece of hardware only to have the exact same issue a day later is really damn annoying. 

-Kitt

[jrd]

Possible. Windows loves to randomly switch keyboard layouts if more than one is installed...

I believe you can disable the keyboard shortcut for it in the language bar properties.