Don't fear the Reaper?

[moniquinin]

...especially when he looks like this:


A few weeks ago I posted here that this was happening to one of my maternity outfits, and after Lilith Pleasant died on one of my lots, this guy appears like this.  Is this terribly borked?  Does anyone know what possible hack, type of hack, whatever could have affected this?  The only hack I have that involves clothing is one I got from here (Peasantry) that hides from CAS and Bodyshop all the crap default stuff.

I also have a couple of questions regarding this current situation.  Lilith Pleasant was brought home from school by my teen.  She immediately got stuck walking ON the pool.  I thought it was funny so I let her get on with it and wanted to see if she'd actually die, which eventually she did.  Is this going to be a problem in the future, her dying in one of my lots? I don't really play the Pleasant house - don't know if it makes a difference.

Also, you can tell by the left side of the pic that I have twin babies at present in this family.  This is my gay couple, Puto and Pato Maricón.  Puto was abducted and impregnated.  I use the hack from MTS2 that allows for four different aliens to do the pollination.  When the Puto came back I used the pregnancy scanner (ACR) to check how many babies and he just had one.  Pato has the LTW of marrying off 6 children (or something like that) so I decided to feed Puto cheesecake for twins.  Lo and behold, he gave birth to twins, but only one looks like an alien.  The other has Puto's skintone, although his family tree says he has the same alien parent as his sibling.  Is this normal?  I have changed the default alien skin to a nicer one and Puto does use one of the few customised skintones I use in the game.

[Gwill]

IT's not a hack, you've got corrupted game files.  The easiest way to fix it is to back up and re-install.

[moniquinin]

I'd love to understand how this actually happens, and if it's self-contained?  What I mean is, you say I've got corrupted game files -- is the extent of the damage going to be this -- weird looking clothes?  Or is it going to start seeping into other things, causing more problems and eventually blowing up my game?

How about the twin thing?  Is that also due to corrupted game files?

[J. M. Pescado]

Alienbabies aren't guaranteed to be green, I don't think. Do a simDNA on him to see what he has. Perhaps he's only green on the inside.

However, the damaged files thing is very bad, and will likely lead to destroyed crops, stolen babies, and family bike rides.

[Gwill]

It's usually one of the sims##.package files that goes bad, those are the ones that contain textures.  It is possible to replace those (replace the ones on your computer with the ones on the CD), and thus avoiding the re-install, but I have no idea how to do it on a mac.
I don't know what causes it, but it's probably a combination of things like the game crashing or computer re-booting without ending processes correctly.
You can get similar problems with deleted default replacements and some other stuff, but when it happens to several unrelated textures, it's almost certainly the game files.  You can try write-protecting the games folder to keep it from getting funky, but I'm not sure that's a good idea.

[J. M. Pescado]

It is. There's absolutely no good reason the game should try to write to those files ever, and if it does, the operation rightly SHOULD fail.

[Gwill]

Just remember to mark them writable again before installing new EPs or petches, or you'll get bad warning messages telling you your game is broken and you need to re-install.

[Marhis]

On Macs it's better to reinstall, because the archive of EPs is in .pax format and it's much more a pain to uncompress and such. Definitely takes less time to reinstall the game, and it's even harmless. Move your EA Games/The Sims 2/ folder out of Documents, reinstall everything and re-put it in place.
Oh, and yes, set all game files read only.

In my first six months of play, it was a pain, and because of corrupted game packages (now I know, but in that time I was totally puzzled). First, Don Lothario got green legs; then the Grim looked exactly like yours. Then I could have wedding parties no more because of some (not custom) corrupted formal dress, that keeps crashing the game. Then became corrupted a female elder swimsuit, and my solution was to remove hottubs and pools when some female sim grew elder. In the end, whenever a child talked to someone else, both in person and on the phone, the game crashed. I raised a bunch of kids who had no contact whatsoever with anybody, and the only way to raise their social bar was chatting on the computer or with the social bunny. Not a funny way to play.
Trust me, reinstall.

[moniquinin]

I am impressed with the awesomeness - that IS a brilliant idea.  I'll write-protect the files after I do the reinstall then.  Back to the alien question - What is a simDNA and how do I do that?  Is that done with the lotdebugger thingie?

[Marhis]

simDNA is a command cheat, very handy. You can also use simoutfit, for what the sim has, besides of its dna.
You need to have the boolprop testingcheatsenabled true in the userstartup file, otherwise it will not work. After this, when you're in a lot

simdna <name of sim> will give you its genetic specifications
simoutfit <name of sim> will report what the sim wear, hair and skintone included (and that can be different from genetics).
I' ve noticed that in Pets the simoutfit command is different: it doesn't accept the name of sim, but reports the selected sim anyway. The main problem is, to me, that the report message is so huge that the close button is not available on screen, and has no timeout, so you have to play with that message on screen until you exit the lot.

[Theo]

And you can use the list posted here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1423.msg50659#msg50659 to know what the numbers are supposed to mean.

[seelindarun]

Alienbabies aren't guaranteed to be green, I don't think. Do a simDNA on him to see what he has. Perhaps he's only green on the inside.

Well, 1st gen alien babies born to abductees with default (or custom but geneticised) skins are always green.  The PolliTech has two dominant genes for his custom skin which dominate any of the default skins.  I can only assume that replacement PolliTechs are also this way.  However, Puto also has a custom skin.  If it is ungeneticised, and he was CAS, then Puto also has two dominant genes for his skin.  The game sees his genes on equal footing with the PolliTech, so there's a 50% chance the alien baby will express either skin.

Moniquinin, if you do a simDNA on the two babies, you should see that they have identical entries for their skin genetics, but the gobbledygook for their expressed skins will be different.

Anyway, bottom line: in this instance nothing is corrupted.  The game is behaving as it was meant to.

[moniquinin]

Thanks seelindarun - you answered my question wonderfully.  I just wanted to know if this was normal game behaviour or if there was something else screwy with my game.

[Lyall]

Now, I don't know anything about the problem so I won't comment on that, but...

Also, you can tell by the left side of the pic that I have twin babies at present in this family.  This is my gay couple, Puto and Pato Maricón.  Puto was abducted and impregnated.  I use the hack from MTS2 that allows for four different aliens to do the pollination.  When the Puto came back I used the pregnancy scanner (ACR) to check how many babies and he just had one.  Pato has the LTW of marrying off 6 children (or something like that) so I decided to feed Puto cheesecake for twins.  Lo and behold, he gave birth to twins, but only one looks like an alien.  The other has Puto's skintone, although his family tree says he has the same alien parent as his sibling.  Is this normal?  I have changed the default alien skin to a nicer one and Puto does use one of the few customised skintones I use in the game.

Oh my. You just had me laughing out loud at the names (while, of course, another little part of me screamed "Shut up! That's not funny! Don't laugh at that kind of stuff, it makes you look an idiot." But what can you do about uncontollable giggles?). I love bad jokes, yes I do. Now I'll just go off and pretend I didn't laugh at such a thing.

[moniquinin]

You should hear the rest of my names - I have a family of romance sims who are the town sluts - Mia Whore, Ura Whore and Ima Whore    The Whore family are quite popular. 

[Lyall]

...You win!

[jsalemi]

You should hear the rest of my names - I have a family of romance sims who are the town sluts - Mia Whore, Ura Whore and Ima Whore    The Whore family are quite popular. 

Heh -- I was making some CAS YAs to serve as dormies in my custom hood, and named one of them Ima Whore.  She's very popular in the dorms.

[moniquinin]

I wonder of other people do this type of thing - or names like Bart Simpson's crank calls, you know?  Most of my names are in Spanish though - don't know if there are any other Spanish-speaking people on here who could appreciate them.  I do have my poly threesome family though - one straight male and two bi females, last name Lingus - I know, kinda rude.

[maxon]

Heh -- I was making some CAS YAs to serve as dormies in my custom hood, and named one of them Ima Whore.  She's very popular in the dorms.

My whores are a family named Trollope.

[morriganrant]

Thanks seelindarun - you answered my question wonderfully.  I just wanted to know if this was normal game behaviour or if there was something else screwy with my game.

yah. i just had this experiance myself. one of Enayla pixie skins on a sim i turned into a plant, had him abducted (maxis defaults by mistake) got him to have twins, one baby green one with his pixie skin. unsure which came first however ..and ugly as all hell, pixie skin one looks like micheal jackson.