Wolf Watcher

[Doctor Boris]

In Soviet Russia, you do not watch wolves, wolves watch you!


wolfwatchers.zip

Wolf Watchers for TS2PETS
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (Doctor Boris)

Special Thanks To:
Hobbsee the Pencilneck
BlueSoup Fathead

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.

FEATURES:
Wolf fears no longer satisfied unless sim actually witnesses appearance of wolf.
Wolves much less likely to appear in densely populated areas (areas with high
community lot and residential density), like downtown.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS Hacks. Tested for TS2PETSp1.

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

[ElviraGoth]

Oh, I've been needing this.  I'm tired of my toddlers/children going into aspiration failure because a wolf walks onto the lot when they're in bed asleep!

No plans on installing the buggy Pets patch, but I assume this works ok without patching, right?

Now if someone would just make a mod to stop the annoying dogs-rolling-in-flower-beds I'd be ok with strays showing up.  The holes are annoying, but since filling them adds to cleaning skill, I'll live with that!

[J. M. Pescado]

See Awesomespec v5 if you have problems with this.

[ElviraGoth]

Yeah, I had to rebuild a bunch of fences I had just gotten rid of prior to pets because I was trying to keep poly count down.  Not that I need to watch the poly count with my computer, I just read something awhile back about how fences can slow down performance because of it.  And I have lockable gates, disallowing pets.  Just don't like the idea that I now HAVE to have a fence to keep the pests out.

[J. M. Pescado]

One trick is to use a very low-poly fence, I think the atomica or anything simple and square look very low poly, and run it across the front face of the lot only. You do not need to wrap the whole lot, just block it off end to end. The atomica fencing is also invisible from the neighborhood level and thus will not affect your neighborhood appearance. With this hack, you may also be able to avoid wolf appearance simply by clustering your buildings together, creating a more urban area, which naturally wolves avoid.

[ElviraGoth]

I used to run the fence around the whole lot, but when I started adding them back since Pets, I did the "doh!' thing and realized I only need it across the front.  So that's what I've been doing.

And I've been using the simplest fences that fit the look of the lot, too.  I just got used to not having them is all.

On most of my lots, the houses (with garage) tend to go nearly from one end of the lot to the other, and I still get wolves.  Lots are also placed side by side with no space in between.  I've always done this in the custom hood I've played the most.

Don't think I've tried the atomica.  I usually use the "ether" or whatever it's called.  Sometimes a stone wall.  I avoid the wrought iron and rail fences as much as possible.  I think I was going to use the atomica on one lot but didn't like the look for that particular lot, so I'll look at it again for some of the other ones.

[V]

But what about the driveway? In order to block the pets from the yard using a fence, do we have to run the fence up the driveway up to and against the garage and then back again?

*V stomps her foot

I don't like it!

I'll do it, but I won't like it.

*V considers options

Ooh, what if I use moveobjects on and I put the fencing right over the driveway? Will the car be able to come and go as needed or will that completely confuse my game?

[floopyboo]

cars ignore fences & walls in my game. I've done the moveobjects + fence thing & it works fine.

[V]

*V is encouraged and plans to try this some time "tomorrow"

[J. M. Pescado]

cars ignore fences & walls in my game. I've done the moveobjects + fence thing & it works fine.

I'm pretty sure this will block the path and cause teleporting cars, which is not considered an acceptable artifact to have persistently occurring in an Awesome house.

[floopyboo]

that may well be, but they just appear to drive right through them, thus my comment. I don't pretend to be geeky about coding, just about art.

[dizzy]

Just a quick note. I think this may conflict with this hack that syberspunk posted a while back:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6266.msg178412.html#msg178412

[cwykes]

Yeah, I had to rebuild a bunch of fences I had just gotten rid of prior to pets because I was trying to keep poly count down.  Not that I need to watch the poly count with my computer, I just read something awhile back about how fences can slow down performance because of it.  And I have lockable gates, disallowing pets.  Just don't like the idea that I now HAVE to have a fence to keep the pests out.

I think the slowdown caused by fences is to do with routing not poly count.

[ElviraGoth]

On my old computer, which had a crappy graphics card, lots like the Goth house were incredibly slow to do anything.  The day/night transition would take 5 minutes.

I upgraded the card & power supply, which improved things, but some lots, like the Goth's, were still slow at day/night transitions and moving from one story to the next.  I had read somewhere - maybe MTS2 - about fences and high poly count.  In particular, that wrought iron fence has a high poly count and will slow down the performance in general.

So I tried getting rid of a few fences and noticed that it did seem to make a difference in the amount of time it took to move from one floor to another, and the day/night transitions were faster.  Some trees can also affect the performance, so I got rid of one or two (who needs 10 trees on a lot, anyway?) and that also helped.

So when I got my new computer 18 months ago, I just kept in mind that the more fences, trees, etc. there are on a lot, the slower that lot will be in transitions.  This includes, zooming in/out, rotating the lot, etc.

My sims get from point A to point B fine, fence or no fence.  I'm not worried about the routing.  Just the overall performance.

And I have noticed that the lots I put fences on take maybe a second longer to transition than they used to.  My comp is 3.8 Ghz, 2 Gb RAM, GeForce 6800 w/256 MB RAM, so the time addition caused by the fences is negligible.  I just got used to not having to wait even a second for it to do anything!

[cwykes]

The point about routing, made by someone more awesome than me, was that the game seems to find a lot to calculate when deciding the sim's route and that slows the game down.  If the fence has a high poly count as well, thats a double whammy.

I remember the dawn/dusk grind to a halt vividly!  I started playing Sims2 with Intel integrated graphics.  I deleted all the fences and stuck to small lots.  I built my own community lots with 1 NPC on a small lot and put them on TSR because there were so few around.  They're still there earning me "points".  I did use water and willows in them, which are both slowdown factors, but they still played fine.

[ElviraGoth]

Yep!  I had Intel integrated, too.

And I downloaded a "mini-mall" from somewhere, I think it had two floors, small lot, clothes and magaziines/games downstairs and groceries and toilets upstairs.  I still use it in one of my hoods.

The routing wasn't mentioned in the article I read, it was only about items with high poly counts that can slow down your game.  I remember the thing about fences mostly because of the Goth house.  That place was set up so stupid.  The paper would be delivered over around the side of the house instead of in the front.  And that's where Alexander would take his homework, too.

But it makes sense that the routing would slow things down a bit while the game calculates the sim's moves.