boolprop -- I'm so sorry!!

[bluecatvon]

I just had to know! I'm sorry!

i can't seem to find a post here about boolprop, and i don't trust the people in the sims bbs, cuz they're like "oh it's good" and there're others like "oh it's so totally wrong", so here goes!

1. is it safe having boolprop true all the time?

2. there's no harm using force error when a sim is stuck right? Daryl Gregory the groceryman's needs didn't drop or raise at all, so i force errored him.

3. i'm curious, there's so many hacks made, but some of them can be achieved using boolprop. so why not just use boolprop?

4. i've seen the dreaded squiggly lines in one of my sim's talk bubbles, just once. what does it mean? i've checked my objects.package, and it's fine, hasn't been overwritten and it has been marked read-only since.


thanks so much! take my lips if you have to, JM! so sorry!

[reggikko]

I just had to know! I'm sorry!

i can't seem to find a post here about boolprop, and i don't trust the people in the sims bbs, cuz they're like "oh it's good" and there're others like "oh it's so totally wrong", so here goes!

1. is it safe having boolprop true all the time?

I run my game with it on all the time. If something wonky happens, I want to get an error log. Plus, I use it a moderate amount and it would be irritating to type it in all the time. I don't think having it running in the background causes problems. It's people clicking on things they shouldn't. YMMV.

2. there's no harm using force error when a sim is stuck right? Daryl Gregory the groceryman's needs didn't drop or raise at all, so i force errored him.

None whatever. I reset Sims and objects whenever necessary. It's handy for getting non-controllable Sims off instruments, the poker tabe, etc. when they won't respond to anything else.

3. i'm curious, there's so many hacks made, but some of them can be achieved using boolprop. so why not just use boolprop?

Many of those hacks were written before the cheat was known. Also, some people trust a hack more. I use hacks for some things and boolprop for others.

4. i've seen the dreaded squiggly lines in one of my sim's talk bubbles, just once. what does it mean? i've checked my objects.package, and it's fine, hasn't been overwritten and it has been marked read-only since.

My understanding is that this usually comes from unlinked character or object data of some sort. I can't really explain it because I'm computer-tech challenged.

[bluecatvon]

the squiggly lines occured when Loki died and his daughter was mourning, with squiggly lines in her talk bubbles. made my heart skipped, but afterwards no harm was done. but i'll keep an extra eye for them.

thanks reggikko! from now on i'll treat the answers in the sims bbs with extra care. and that's why i trust this page so much

[Diala]

Basically what Reggikko said. With 1, just as long as you avoid holding shift while clicking, and try to keep your mouse arrow away from things such as needs and skills, you should be fine. However, for something like moveobjects, it is best to turn it off when you are done. You might just accidently move or delete something that you shouldn't have.

[Kukes]

the squiggly lines occured when Loki died and his daughter was mourning, with squiggly lines in her talk bubbles. made my heart skipped, but afterwards no harm was done. but i'll keep an extra eye for them.

That's the corrupted death memory bug. JM has a fix for it here, but I'm not sure if it's Nightlife compatible (if you have Nightlife, I don't so I'm not really aware at the moment).

I use testingcheats quite a bit myself for the error logs as well, without incident.

[Hook]

I've had debug mode turned on in my game ever since I first heard about it.  At first I was worried that I might do something with it by accident, but I've never invoked it unintentionally.  Basically, it's never caused me any grief, and has caused considerable good.

As for the hacks, I saw a hack a couple of days ago that duplicates Vincent's Sim Modder, one of the objects you can spawn if you shift click on a Sim and select Spawn.  Now, why someone would duplicate this is beyond me, unless they spent more time looking at the code than playing the game.  Me, I played the game and tried all the stuff.  I must assume the modder didn't know about debug mode's Spawn for the item.

Some people are afraid to use debug mode at all, so for them, having the object as a hack might be useful.

Note:  there are a couple of hundred "boolprop" cheats.

Hook

[KatEnigma]

I have it turned on all the time as well, and I've only had it cause a couple problems.

Twice, it froze because an error popped up in the middle of a cut scene.

And 99% of the time, if I leave it on when the headmaster is due to come over, he errors out before he hits the lot, and even if I turn it back on for some strange reason when he's there (like an emergency refrigerator stock) he will manage to error himself out/disappear.  The only way to get the kids into private school after either of those situations is to move the family off the lot and back in, which does not make me happy, so I just turn it off by 4:30 when I've invited him over, and don't turn it back on until he leaves.  If I need to use it when he's there, I pause the game, turn it on, do whatever I have to do, turn it back off, and then unpause it.

I've been known to force errors when someone gets stuck, and sometimes (gasp) I've even been known to hit delete on those damn dream errors!    With it on every single time I play for months and months, even with my allegedly bad behavior, I've never had to reinstall the game once or had any other major problems.  However, I will admit to being very sorry the one time I decided to invite the whole neighborhood over, and will never, ever, ever do that again! LOL (despite being curious as to how my new machine will handle it)

Heck, even if you want to experiment with all the shiny buttons, there's no permanent harm to it- the most it will cause is a reinstall- some BBSers seem to love to reinstall the game constantly, anyway.   I'd just suggest backing up your EA Games folder in My Documents before you conduct any experiments so you don't lose anything.

[DrBeast]

Been running the game with testingcheatsenabled fired up along up with the game for about a tenday now. 70 hours of gameplay later (yep, I play a lot!), no problems whatsoever (plus a couple of error logs fished out - one of these days I HAVE to remember to bring the logs with me and post them here, as I'm pretty clueless as to what they mean!).

Footnote: don't eat and type! I managed to drop my chocolate treat on my newly washed pants while typing this post! Duh, becoming 31 sucks!

[U_Dog_U]

I've had it in my userstartup.cheat file for a long time. It's a lifesaver if you're trying to load a lot with a bad object on it because you can delete the object and continue loading the lot. And being able to slide your sim's needs bars can be helpful sometimes.

[Hook]

Debug mode doesn't automatically cause the headmaster to error.  I've run 50-75 headmaster scenarios with debug mode enabled, never had a problem unless I caused it on purpose.  I did a lot of headmaster testing once upon a time.

Turn debug mode one, invite the headmaster, get the error log and post it here.  I'm sure one of the modders would be able to tell what the specific problem was.

Hook

[linolino]

"boolProp" can be any cheat that works with boolean values. as hook said, there is a lot of boolProp cheats. if you are referring to testingCheatsEnabled, then you're talking about debug mode.

And debug mode is just what it is: debug mode. with it turned on, any error ocurred while playing will either cause a sim or object to reset or have an unexpected behavior or pop up a error window. Erros always ocurs, however they are suppressed when the debug mode is off, but will show themselves if debug is on, because it IS deBUG mode. Also, it will write all the error logs in the ceat console.

Other than these, it won't crash your game unless you missuse it. It doesn't cause errors, it will just not suppress them if they happen.

I don't like it turned on all times because of these things, so i use the userStartup.cheat file to create an aliase for that commmand. this way i only need to type:
t    to turn debug mode on
t-   to turn it off

and also have some cheats turned on automatically when the game starts: the 45 angle feature, the maxVisitors, and the tvVolume.

[dizzy]

3. i'm curious, there's so many hacks made, but some of them can be achieved using boolprop. so why not just use boolprop?

Some hacks do these things automatically at random intervals or allow certain things to trigger them, rather than rely on you to activate them. Part of why people use hacks is because they add this dimension.

[Regina]

3. i'm curious, there's so many hacks made, but some of them can be achieved using boolprop. so why not just use boolprop?

I tend to use the mods folks have made because debug mode takes extra time on my part and requires time to learn whereas most of the mods I use are fairly straightforward.  Of course I also tend to use plenty of mods that aren't covered in debug mode.

and also have some cheats turned on automatically when the game starts: the 45 angle feature, the maxVisitors, and the tvVolume.

At one point I was going to fix the maxVisitors so it would be on when I turned on my game then forgot the syntax.  Would you mind sharing?  I would really appreciate it!

[reggikko]

intProp MaxNumOfVisitingSims (number-no parentheses)

[Regina]

Thank you, Reggikko!  I'll write it down and put it in a safe place until I can fix it up.  I've noticed I don't use it as much now as I did pre-NL but it's still really handy when I want to throw a party! LOL

Of course, there's an upside to having to actually invite people over once you've got the party thrown.  The non-son that had moved out of my Legacy family was about to get married.  I had him throw a wedding party and invite the 2 guests (his parents) then call and invite over his fiance and his brother.  His fiance asked if she could bring a friend and I thought, 'Sure, why not? After all, it may be someone his popularity sim mom hasn't met yet.'  Low and behold, she brought over Jack Lind, one of the cooks at a Downtown restaurant.  Now these guys aren't exactly the easiest to 'meet' so he'll be passed down as a family friend from generation to generation until someone has a daughter who can marry him for the hefty little marry-the-cook bonus!  So far, this Legacy family has a thing for boys.

[reggikko]

  Low and behold, she brought over Jack Lind, one of the cooks at a Downtown restaurant.  Now these guys aren't exactly the easiest to 'meet' so he'll be passed down as a family friend from generation to generation until someone has a daughter who can marry him for the hefty little marry-the-cook bonus!  So far, this Legacy family has a thing for boys.

Oh, now that's cool! I was wondering how you get to meet them.

[gynarchy]

The cooks will also randomly walk by on Downtown lots. I've also seen exterminators, nannies, and professors hanging out downtown on occasion. I like that the NPCs take more part in the neighborhood in Nightlife, especially when it saves my Sims money by not having to call the maid 40 times just to get the right gender.

[Motoki]

In my experience, the 'friend' another sim brings over can be any kind of sim, even drivers who you can't directly interact with because you can't do any action that requires clicking on them, but they can autonmously interact with your sim.

[Regina]

The cooks will also randomly walk by on Downtown lots. I've also seen exterminators, nannies, and professors hanging out downtown on occasion. I like that the NPCs take more part in the neighborhood in Nightlife, especially when it saves my Sims money by not having to call the maid 40 times just to get the right gender.

Yep, they will do that, as do many of the other service workers.  Without NL I used to have my sims hang out on community lots just to meet service workers.  Since NL I haven't seen any service workers walk down the street on community lots, though.  Seems kinda weird.  I guess more excitement happens Downtown so they want to be where the action is. LOL

In my experience, the 'friend' another sim brings over can be any kind of sim, even drivers who you can't directly interact with because you can't do any action that requires clicking on them, but they can autonmously interact with your sim.

I think it was one of your posts I was reading about sims bringing over drivers as friends.  That seems so weird!  With the base game I had the friendlies only mod installed, so when a sim wanted to bring a friend they only brought ones they already knew and were at least a bit acquainted with.  I'm thinking I like the original way better, even if it is a little odd someone should ask if they can bring a friend, then show up with a perfect stranger! LOL

Of course I'm also liking the whole blind date thing.  My Legacy sim met a gardener that way and although he didn't marry her at least the friendship will be able to be passed along down the family line until such point when someone might marry her.  And doesn't that seem a bit odd?  I can see it now:  "And to you, Cato (or Caspar, whichever one inherits), I leave the bulk of my estate:  the property, the house, the furnishings, the cash on hand, $10,000 from my insurance policy and all my friends!" 

[Hook]

At one point I was going to fix the maxVisitors so it would be on when I turned on my game then forgot the syntax.  Would you mind sharing?  I would really appreciate it!

intProp MaxNumOfVisitingSims (number-no parentheses)

This works well in userStartup.cheat, but keep in mind that if it's entered manually, you'll need to do it in the neighborhood screen to get the proper effect.

I've also noticed that just because you have the number set to 8 doesn't mean you can invite 8 Sims.  Often this number will be lower.  You might want to set it a bit higher than the number you actually want to invite.  The only problem I've had with this is the secret society;  you get as many members on the lot as you have invitable Sims in your config.

Hook

[Motoki]

I'm thinking I like the original way better, even if it is a little odd someone should ask if they can bring a friend, then show up with a perfect stranger! LOL

I do too. I never used that hack because I like the unpredictability of who they will bring. I once had a sim bring her arch enemy as her 'friend'. It was so funny, while they were walking done the street the 'friend' was walking behind her giving her the dirtiest look, then as soon as I greeted them they got in a fight, and this was before NL when fighting was rare.

[bluecatvon]

That's the corrupted death memory bug. JM has a fix for it here, but I'm not sure if it's Nightlife compatible (if you have Nightlife, I don't so I'm not really aware at the moment).

the corrupted death memory bug? what is the fix? i don't have NL too

[bluecatvon]

thanks guys for all the answers!

[DrBeast]

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/uni/hacks/
It's called nocorruptdeath.
FIXES:
The formation of the corrupted death memory, as seen in gossip of the form
"jagged lines", "tombstone", "dead Sim", is now suppressed. Existing
corrupted death memory markers not affected, and will continue to spread
unless eliminated in SimPE. You can usually identify corrupted death markers,
because one will follow every directly-experienced death of visitor or family
member, and is flagged "invisible", with no event owner. It will spread to
other Sims in gossip, and all memories of this form (no event owner,
$Subject Died, Dead Sim), are corrupted "jagged line" memories. Delete these
whenever they show up in gossip, noting which sim possesses them, and which
sim received it. Find the corrupted memory in both Sims and expunge it from
anyone you can find.

For non-advanced or lazy users, you're stuck with your existing jagged lines
for now. New neighborhoods will be clean.