Stupid QOD: Which Uni hack was it that disabled neighborhood moveout?

[Jamdoss]

I used to have this written down.  Since I had no computer for a while and since I cn't find where I wrote it, I have to look idiotic in asking the question.

I know that one of the hacks/fixes for University disabled neighborhood move out for some players.  I thought it was the no class or final exam one, but removing that did not allow my neighborhood sims to move out.  I then tried removing the no finals at night.  Which one was it?  I'll write it down in a safer place this time!

Thanks!
Jenn

[Dea]

inteen seems to be a cause of brokeness lately.  if you have it, try removing it.

[jrd]

Inteen + FFS clothing mod globals will conflict, as it says in the Inteen documentation which noone ever reads, because reading is hard.

I don't know any other hack conflict that causes this exact error.

[Jamdoss]

Hummm...I don't have Inteen.  But, what do you mean by FFS clothing mod globals?  Do you mean that Family Fun stuff directly conflicts with find own place?  Or does FFS stand for something else?

Yesterday, I removed all of my hacks and annoyance fixes except for no20khandout.  My sim still could not use either computer or paper to find own place.  I nuked scenarios, re-enabled controls and killed stuck bills.  There might be some stuck homework somewhere though.  Teen came home from school in car the day before, caused a jump and then child also was home, thereby missing school.  Merola's mirror is on the lot, but I have never known that to cause conflicts.

I have all expansions though OFB installed and all stuff packs though Celebration.

Thanks,
Jenn

[jrd]

FFS = Pescado's hacks.

You run OFB+Celebrations? That there could be a source of problems. Basically your game is now schizophrenic, and doesn't know what version it runs (blame EAxis and their weird coding for the last two stuff packs).

Other possibility:
Have you run the HCDU from simwardrobe.com? It should conflict any hack conflict. Unless you know two conflicting hacks work together (i.e. are designed to conflict), remove one of the pair and see if it works.

When did this problem start by the way? After installing Celebrations?

[Jamdoss]

Thanks for the info!  I ran Sim Wardrobe's hack detector.  No conflicts were found.

Long story short.  I had finally bought Glamour, Famiily and Celebration while computer was in the hopsital.  After Best Buy said nothing was wrong with computer and nVidia replaced my 5500 graphics card with a working card, I brought the computer home.  I uninstalled Pets since the nVidia issue was driving me wacky and installed all three packs.

The roommate was in the process of moving all his sims into a new 'hood, having completed the move out process before the computer went to Best Buy.  He spent the next couple weeks moving in and building.  I have spent the last month or so creating a new neighborhood since mine bugged out just before the graphics issues.  So, it was not until this past weekend that we noticed the inablility to move out.

I guess if I have to, I can uninstall Celebrations and it can gather dust just like Pets.   

[kuronue]

The roommate was in the process of moving all his sims into a new 'hood, having completed the move out process before the computer went to Best Buy.  He spent the next couple weeks moving in and building.  I have spent the last month or so creating a new neighborhood since mine bugged out just before the graphics issues.  So, it was not until this past weekend that we noticed the inablility to move out.

tell me this wasn't through the sim bin...

[Jamdoss]

The roommate was in the process of moving all his sims into a new 'hood, having completed the move out process before the computer went to Best Buy.  He spent the next couple weeks moving in and building.  I have spent the last month or so creating a new neighborhood since mine bugged out just before the graphics issues.  So, it was not until this past weekend that we noticed the inablility to move out.

tell me this wasn't through the sim bin...

I can't.  It was...he got some good reading done while doing it too!  He actually left all of his "ugly" sims and most of the elders in th old neighborhood.  I trashed the old one about three weeks ago.  Is this what's causing a problem?

[Marhis]

Is this what's causing a problem?

I don't know if it causes that specific problem, too, but I'm sure it will cause a lot of various problems - including BFBVFS - in the future.
Moving sims between hoods through the bin is the most reliable way to create a total mess in your hood.

First rule is: never, EVER, move sims between neighborhoods by meant of sim bin lot bin.

Anyway, of course you may enjoy playing a messed up hood for a lot of time in any case, it works - I did it in the past, for months, and therefore I can witness that - but you should consider that from that moment on, you may experience pretty much any kind of malfunctioning sims/lots/etc, the older the hood is, the worst.
As previously stated, the hood works anyway, but if some day your toddlers suddenly wants to woohoo 20 sims, and/or your sims start disappearing from the hood for no reason, etc., just be prepared to throw away the hood and restart from scratch with no or less sadness, because those issue are not repairable.

EDIT: because I'm stupid.

[rohina]

Is this what's causing a problem?

I don't know if it causes that specific problem, too, but I'm sure it will cause a lot of various problems - including BFBVFS - in the future.
Moving sims between hoods through the bin is the most reliable way to create a total mess in your hood.

Ruh roh. That not being able to move out problem was one of the things that happened in my hood just before the BFBVFS went critical, so I would say, yes, this is what happened.

[J. M. Pescado]

First rule is: never, EVER, move sims between neighborhoods by meant of sim bin.

Specifically, do not bin an occupied lot. Moving sims by evicting them into the family bin and moving them to a lot in a different subhood is safe, but never move across NXXXes.

[Marhis]

Specifically, do not bin an occupied lot. Moving sims by evicting them into the family bin and moving them to a lot in a different subhood is safe, but never move across NXXXes.

Oops, yes I meant the lot bin, not the sim bin (sims in sim bin cannot be moved in different hoods anyway, right?).

[Jamdoss]

  BFBVFS.  Please define.  Because I was away from Sims so long and even stopped running around the forums, I am not up to date on all of the abbreviations.

The longer explanation of what happened to our neighborhoods, as short as I can make it.  We share the Sims desktop, so that I don't have to duplicate the downloads folder.  We share the same game, then, but with different 'hoods.  Originally, I had N004 and he had N005.  N004 was my neighborhood.  In the end, the game accidentally allowed 9 Sims on the lot after cheesecake incident.  I hurriedly moved one adult off of the lot.  I saved and exited.  The adult got her own lot, but I did not build.  It was about a week before I played again.  I went to another lot.  A sim was looking though the expensive telescope when I had major graphics errors, although I still had control.  Since I hadn't saved for a while, I saved and exited.  My roommates neighborhood was fine all this time.  The next time I played, I went into an older house.  A created teen who was now an Elder and also grandparent of the sim who was stargazing earlier was nowhere to be found.  In fact, she had disappeared from the Family tree.  I sent the youngest of the family off to college, saved and exited.  I then decided to build a house for the earlier moved out adult.  She was also missing.  I went into a house where she was related, she was also gone from that Family tree.  A little bit of thought later, realized that Justin (the stargazer) was the grandson of Auel (disappearing Elder) and the father of Alilbit's (adult) twins that caused the 9 sims.

I trashed the neighborhood and started from scratch, with a SC4 created terrain after installing Pets.  I also uninstalled the 3 Maxis neighbohoods, so I now had/have N001.

Around this time, the roommate realized that his ever-expanding family trees would overfill the neighborhood.  He also created his own hood in SC4.  He started moving out people who would not make the tranisition to a new hood from N005.

When the card started glitching badly, I just trashed my new neighborhood and made another one.  After uninstalling Pets, I again trashed and restarted.

So, after a few weeks, all of his Sims were in the Sim bin and I wan't playing.  I was downloading after totally forgetting to backup the download folder when uninstalling/reinstalling.  He didn't use the lots and houses bin at all.  I knew of the other way...packaging sims and lots, but figured it would take longer than what he was doing.  He began the slow process of moving his previous N005 sims into N003.  When he was done, he asked me to trash his neighborhood.  By the way, these are the 3rd and 4th generation Sims of his originally created sims! 

From what you guys are saying, especially J.M., is that the roommate's N003 is or will always be problematic because of the moving from N005?  He said he doesn't care if a toddler wants to who hoo with 20 sims, just so the toddler can move out with the appropriate person.

Thanks again for the enlightenment!
Jenn

[rohina]

Moving sims to a new hood creates problems, yes. Your friend should have created a downtown or something, rather than a new hood. Moving houses with sims in them or sims from hood to hood is a bad idea.

[akatonbo]

BFBVFS = Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space -- in other words, a totally b0rked, unplayable neighborhood -- something that will surely result from the unbelievable character file bloat that results from moving occupied lots from one neighborhood to another.

I've occasionally been tempted to test how fast I can make a brand new test hood blow up by plugging in some occupied lots from the exchange, or maybe just using a second dummy hood to generate a few households with a truckload of townie friends.

[Jamdoss]

OK, I think I get it.

First of all, I was wrong.  After talking to roommate, he actually moved people from the original lot onto an empty lot in N005.  He then moved each into the lot bin from there.  Finally, he moved them all into N003 from the lot bin.

Also, I have not downloaded any lots from the exchange or elsewhere.  (Mostly because I have dial-up!)

So:
1.  Can we redo this the right way?  Or, is there a right way to do this?

2.  How long does it take for the BFBVFS to explode?

3.  Should he just scrap and start over?

4.  How does this effect my neighborhood N002 and why can't I move my sims out?  They were created in N002.

5.  I'm thinking that I have to uninstall Celebrations, so that means that I have to reinstall everything else. 

Sorry if this didn't make much sense.  I just got a call from my cousin who had to put her Persian kitty to sleep.

Thanks,
Jenn

[Marhis]

He then moved each into the lot bin from there.  Finally, he moved them all into N003 from the lot bin.

That's the exact point in witch the problem is: moving sims to the lot bin scrambles the original hood, and moving them from lot bin to new hood scrambles the new one.

1.  Can we redo this the right way?  Or, is there a right way to do this?

It's possible, in theory, to clean the hood a bit from the rubbish, in SimPE, but I'm pretty positive it would involve a lot of time and effort, and probably you'll have a not truly safe result.

Another way - with some effort too, but way less - is to clone those sims with SimPE surgery, take note of their characteristics etc., then recreate them from CAS, in a completely new hood, and manually add them in SimPE the parts you can't set in CAS. They will be, though, sims with no ancestors, and their story will exist only in your memory.
I did this for my old exploded hood, I even recreated their memories (at least those involving existent sims), but it's a long and tedious work, and you should consider if it's worth the effort.

2.  How long does it take for the BFBVFS to explode?

It's hard to tell: it varies a lot. IMHO, though, you face the risk that your hood suddenly blows up just in the middle of an interesting game session.

4.  How does this effect my neighborhood N002 and why can't I move my sims out?  They were created in N002.

Neighborhoods are completely independent; what you do in one neighborhood will not affect in any way what is going on in another (unless you move stuff between them).
No sims can't be moved in or out a neighborhood without causing the mess discussed above. Basically, when you evict a sim from a neighborhood, they lose any relationship with that, but in the same time they must retain their family tree, memories, memory history, etc.
So, the game substitutes all those dangling resources with fake ones, both in evicted sim and every other sim that remains in the hood.
When you move that sim (with all that rubbish attached) in a new hood, it will drop all that crap in it.

Consider also that if EvictedSimA and EvictedSimB shared a common liason with SimC, now they will have as a reference,  one of them FakeSimC1, and FakeSimC2 the other, multiplyed again.

Now, multiply this for every sim you moved, consider that their descendants will all have a full copy of all that stuff, and so on multiplying... this might give you the idea  .

[rohina]

If you want to remove sims from a neighbourhood, and not kill them, just disappear them, then I believe there are Awesome instructions for preparing sims for deletion. I have not tried this myself, because when I read the instructions they made my brain hurt.

Cloning sims in SimPE is not that hard, and there is an easy to follow tutorial for it at MTS2.

[Zazazu]

To see just what kind of tagalong crap you bring into a new neighborhood when moving an occupied lot, package and occupied lot to a file. Then go to reinstall with the Clean Installer. It'll shock you just how many references to other sims that lot carries. Actually, I always check my vacated lots with the Clean Installer before sharing them anywhere, because even my contest house that had been occupied during one generation of my Alphabet Legacy carried tons of sim references...unoccupied.

A lot of times, what I do with sims I no longer really care to play or see on the 'hood screen is remove the family only - leaving the lot there or moving it separately - and place them in a subhood (downtown, especially) of the same parent 'hood. You don't often get downtown walkbys in a main 'hood. The only ones I've had have been relatives of the current residents.

[rohina]

Isn't there a hack in the Director's Cut that stops interhood mixing? localwalkby? I take it out myself.

[Jamdoss]

OK...over the weekend, I decided to do a test.  I was on the desktop without downloads.  With 20K and moveout fix, I was able to move out.  After adding agetransitionfixes, censor, college clock captainhero and bublebathfun, I was unable to move out.  Luckily without downloads and people it takes hardly anytime to relead the game.  I tried many combos of these fixes and hacks.  None worked, except 20K and moveout fixes alone.

So...In order to move out in my base neighborhood, I just removed all hacks.  We'll be getting around the 20K by just buying all the household stuff before leaving the lot they are moving from.  Granted, they will now get 20K for free, but oh well.

As for the BFBVFS, Bobb decided to just start a new neighborhood.

Thanks for your help, everyone.

Jenn