More Awesome Than You!

To clarify, I have all EPs up through Pets and they are patched.  I thought this was fixed with Nightlife.

Here are the problems with this lot/household:

1. Carpool gets stuck with Sim in it. At one point I used moveobjects on to delete the car with the Sim in it (probably a VBT).  He returned from work and appeared to be ok. I played another lot, one of his friends graduated, and I moved her in with him.  When I opened the lot again, he was a zombie --no explanation, no memory of him dying or being made  a zombie (and I fixed it with InSim).  Still, creepy.

2. Now the carpool still seems to be stuck, but after the sim gets into the car, it sits there until the hour is up and then it winks out of existence (instead of driving off.)

3. For a while, had the bubbles coming off of the Sim glitch.

4. Some problems with one of the Sims, a former Secret Society member.  Back when he was a townie, he sometimes did not show up when invited, even though he wasn't mad at my Sim.  If I wanted him at a party, he had to be summoned using InSim.  Sometimes social interactions between him and other sims seem to be missing (e.g., when the child in the house aged from toddler to child, they could not interact at all.)  Using Lot Debugger Fix Work State seemed to clear this up. 

5. The child in the house glowed constantly as a toddler.  I mean constantly.  The smart milk glow never went away.  She was reacting as though ordinary bottles of milk from the fridge were smart milk, and every attempt to change her appearance (baths, changing clothes, mirror) just caused a renewal of the smart milk sound and the glow.  She recently aged to child and at least the glow is gone now.

I don't have these problems on any other lot, have never had them before, have never even seen them before. I had no new hacks before this started to happen. Most of my hacks are Awesome anyway, and the others are jfade's vampire nobiting hack, some hacks by Squinge (maternity wear hack, cheese counter, date counter) all of which I've had for months with no trouble.  I recently downloaded some CC--a lot from a trusted source (have played that lot, no trouble there) a few items  including CC hair, some niceish stuff by corvidophile on MTS2 (which includes some other stuff from other makers.  However, I did not install the Sims2Pack, only a few items from the folders that I wanted.  I marked them so I can remove them if necessary.

I'd like to find out what's going wrong and fix it if I can, but bear in mind I have a Mac, and so no SimPe or Clean Installer, so suggestions involving either of those tools won't help me much. I don't know if it's the lot, one of the Sims, or some of the CC (though I've noticed that a lot of the stuff from pronupsims works very oddly in my game, if at all.)

PB

Have you tried installing Crammyboy's Portal Monitor?  This should alert you if any lot you enter has a problem with a portal, and there is a fix at MTS2.  You don't need SimPe for this.

Although appropriate in this particular case, isn't it now obsolete? I still have it in Downloads, but I swear I read somewhere that it wasn't needed after NL. But then I couldn't find it again when I went looking for where I read that. I'm just wanting to know whether to retire it or not.

Back on topic, I believe that Dizzy made a mod to show all the portals on a lot. Perhaps that might help to diagnose the problem.

With the glowing toddler,  I had that happen once. I fixed it by enabling testing cheats, then shift>clicking on the toddler, and forcing an error. When the dialog came up, I chose reset. The kid was fine after that. Reset helps whenever an effect (such as smart milk glow, bubbles, etc.) get stuck on a Sim.

Problem #1, and possibly #2 sound like there is something in the street blocking the car. Have you tried putting a lot of burninators all over the street?  Be careful, I once deleted a portal doing this. If that happens, leave the lot without saving. The portal was still there when I went back into the lot, thankfully.

Problem #2 on your list was a constant problem for me in the past on one lot only, even though I had CB's fix in place. Moving them to another lot and bulldozing the affected one was the only thing that worked for me back then. This was a couple of EPs ago.

Do you have Zombie Apocalypse installed? It's the only thing I can think of that would cause a Sim to be a zombie without first dying. It happens when they lose a fight to an existing zombie, which could have happened on a comm lot while you were playing another family, or as a visitor to a lot where a zombie was present.

Thanks--I tossed some suspect CC, and when I checked the portal, it worked fine with no fix necessary.  Thanks for the tip on the smartmilk glitch, and if the portal problems pop up again, I will move them. 

I don't have Zombie Apocalypse installed, though.  Even if I did, I only played one residential lot in the interim and I just don't have that many zombies in my game--three in a big neighborhood, and one is one of his friends.  I would love to know what happened, though. 

PB

I'm sure I remember reading Crammyboy as stating that, although it was supposedly fixed in one of the patches, it couldn't do any harm to leave it in, but only the monitor, not the other stuff.



If it's the only option to clear the blockage, then if the lot is very important to you, I'd say go ahead and do it, if the portal is deleted, as I said, there is a fix for this.

The glowing toddler - I've had it happen in earlier versions of the game, but not for a long time now, and it didn't seem to cause any problems, and they lose it when they grow up.

You can leave the monitor in your game. That way you'll know instantly if a lot has lost a portal due to some other crap bit of coding or an in game accident with move objects.  What you don't need, unless you are playing base game only or base + Uni unpatched or base + NL unpatched, are Crammyboy's fixes for the bugged coding.  The "read to me" and juggling bugs have been fixed.

True, my sims juggle constantly whenever they are the slightest bit bored (visitors mainly as always getting in the way!) and it never causes any problems, just annoyance to any sim who wants his caffeine fix!  But the monitor is still in my hacks folder, as I like to play safe and have the option to repair a damaged portal rather than scrap the lot.  When I build lots that are basically complete, I do usually move them into the lot bin and then out again so I have a copy of the lot in its original state, but sometimes my sims start out with a bathroom demarked with those things that came with OFB, and sleep, eat etc under the stars until they can afford walls and roofs (weather off, of course....) and the lot is built as they can afford it, so of course, unless I package it, sims and all, I have no way of backing it up when it gets to the point I'd like to - and moving sims out means all your furnishings are lost - although I have noticed that since Seasons we seem to be back to the base game play where moving the last sim out of a household by inviting them to move into another means they don't sell all the household goods, and the house is left as is and doesn't reset.  (But maybe something else is causing this....but it makes Marry a Rich Sim a bit hard to fulfil if all their cash is tied up in the house....I'm rambling again....

But, back to the point, portal monitor is good, never be without it!

exactly - the portal monitor might save you a world of grief.

Best way I've found to back up an occupied lot is to package the occupied lot to a file, open it with CI and save the lot only to a new file name.  Then if it breaks in game, I can move the sims out, bulldoze the lot, install the back up and move them back in.  That way you keep the furniture etc as it was at the time of the back up. 

Sometimes, though, the lot in use has lost value so much the poor simmies need to take out a mortgage to move back in! ;D

that's what money cheats like familyfunds are for. ;D    Don't know about you ZZ, but my British sense of fair play says it isn't cheating to put them back where they were when the game screwed them over

My British sense of fair play says the same as yours, although it's just as easy to stick a couple of Inge's mortgage shrubs on the lot and then kaching or motherlode after they get in to pay off the mortgage - especially when you have more than one household with the same name and you can't be sure which one will get the cash with familyfunds!

Pescado has said that the things-stay shrub leaves behind unnecessary garbage on your lot. Thus he recommends that one not use this method. It might be easier to use the shrub, but apparently it isn't good for the lot.

Mortgage shrubs are different to the stay things shrub.

I wonder if Pescado's magic wand would be useful in situations like this - I believe it depreciates the value, but I've never tried it so uncertain how it actually works.

I've been using the mortgage shrubs a lot lately, and so far I don't think they've caused any problems. I stopped using the stay-things shrub back with NL when I had problems with it. 

Speaking of which, from NL onwards I found that the last sim leaving a lot either to go to college or to be moved into another house no longer left it furnished and took all the value with them (not, of course, to college), but since Seasons it appears that this is back, the last sim I moved in this way left a furnished lot behind, arrived with only the simoleons in the bank balance, and when I used the lot again, it hadn't reset and he'd even left his leftovers behind!

Hmm - another example of crappy version control there?

The advantage of familyfunds is that you use it on the hood screen.  Unless I'm missing a trick, all the others mean you have to put your sims on a lot, increase their funds, move them out and then buy the house you wanted them to have.  That's all especialy annoying when you're doing it because the game burped.   Now wouldn't it be nice if we could tell the 6 Monty families apart without having to rename them Monty1 to Monty6 in SimPE!  Could the cheat be hacked?  Of course my real daydream is for a lot debugger that sits on the hood screen as an awesome decoration!  Think of all the wonderful things it could do - randomise, delete crap, help you get into lots that won't load......

Not quite.  You enter the lot you want your sims to buy, and place mortgage shrubs to cover the discrepancy in funds.  Check to make sure the lot is now cheap enough, save and exit.  Now your sims can afford to buy the house, and just pay interest each day on the mortgage, which can be redeemed as your sims earn enough money to pay the 1,000 or 10,000 simoleons per shrub.  The only argument I have with them is the interest is just a little unrealistic, but then this isn't RL!

For the Capps most of the men took the name of the wives so I went and changed them to the men's maiden names.  For the Monty's its different bc their all males except Bianca so I gave them the wives maiden names.  Now everyone has a different last name.  I used the lot debugger in debug mode to change their last names bc I hear you not supposed to with SimPe.

I think it's more confusing when you first start playing the Capps and the Montys.  Once you play them for a while, you remember who lives in which house, especially once you have made some changes to the houses themselves, which are so very similar, unlike in PV, where you can marry off the three Brokes, move them each into their own (Broke) house, and you always remember which one lives in which house.

The only time I rename families per se, is when the first teen goes off to college, if for example, it's Dustin, then I would send him to college from the Uni "Send sims to College" menu, and name his household Broke 2.  That's really just for convenience when I want to view the list of households with the lot sync tool.

My favorite way to send a Sim money is to go to a relative or friends house and have them send money to them via Prescado's money order.  My Pleasantview is so rich that I don't bother compensating the family or less it was a friend and not a relative.  You don't have to worry about last names because you are sending it to a specific Sim.

I usually use that for sending sims to college, as you can send them off and then post the money after them without exiting the lot.  However, in my present, fairly new, hood, no-one can afford to send more than a couple of grand, so the mortgage shrubs are simpler and can be used at Uni too.

Thread hijacking in progress: I have what I think may be a portal problem, but I'm not sure. I have a house containing five plantsims, four of which are adults. Every time the adult male goes to work, he 'pops' back onto the lot after only having been at work for a couple of hours, and he is crouched in a driving position as though he is driving an invisible car, only there's no car (he takes the carpool). There IS a car on the lot, but it is normally assigned to one of the adult females. Assigning the car to the adult male seems to solve the problem, as he is the only one affected, but I'd like to find out what's causing the problem, so that I can fix it. His job is a custom career (business owner, night shift, found at MTS2). I don't think the career is the culprit, however, as I use it for all of my business owners, and this plantsim is the only one affected. Is the sim just buggy, or could this actually be portal-related? I've tried deleting the sim, saving, exiting, and re-entering the lot, to no avail.

For Plantsim, read Portal Pooper!  Rose Whatshername in G001 used to walkby and get stuck at a portal and cause the lot to go into constipated time.....I only managed to stop the problem when I got her to drink some of the anti-plant sim stuff given her by McGreggor.

Yes, the plantsims do seem to be buggy. I don't want to de-plantsim them, however, since they are part of my sci-fi 'hood, which has very few 'human' sims, and humanising them would somewhat ruin the theme. I guess he'll just have to be unemployed. Stupid EA.

Well, let him run a home business - that should keep him out of mischief - and if you haven't done so, take a look at Paladin's stuff for fishing and farming in an owned business, also his chocolate maker - plenty there to keep him busy organising the employees (just don't let him employ plantsims.....!) ;D

He does run a home business, but I don't like how the game lists business owners as being unemployed, so I use one of two custom careers for all of my business owners, Business Owner with morning shift or Business Owner with night shift. They are designed specifically for business-owning sims; thus, the work hours are only 3-4 hours per day, 3 days per week, either very early or very late. That way, the sims can still run their businesses but can be listed as Business Owner rather than Unemployed. Sorry if I did not make that clear in my earlier posts.

Edited for clarity.

If you're open to workarounds rather than rooting out the source of the problem, I'd suggest un-assigning the owned car first.  I have only a couple of plantsims, but they've held regular jobs most of their lives and had no issues with carpools.  Both were normal sims who sprayed too much, rather than being spawned from another plantsim.  I don't know if Seasons fixed things, but I always had no end of problems with disappearing cars and carpools when I assigned household cars, even the Maxis ones.

That is really cool. My business owners are all wealth and they freak out if they don't have a job so that would be perfect.  They were only able to run their businesses on their days off so business were kinda pointless.

In my not-very expert opinion, it's not portal-related. The portals are invisible squares that are the entrances & exits from the lot. There are separate portals for residents, visitors and NPCs. (I think residents + visitors share two of the portals and NPCs have the other two, iirc.) If the portals were buggered, you would have the same problem with all resident sims.

You say you use the custom career with all your business owners... are any of the others Plantsims? Does the custom career claim to be compatible with Seasons? I'm suspecting there is some sort of code conflict between the custom career and the Plantsim. If giving him the car solves it, go for that option - otherwise put him into a different career path (one of the standard ones that comes with the game).

You could try asking one of our awesome modders for help, but you know what Pescado will say about the custom career! ("It's the work of the Non-Awesome!"). See if you can find a standard career with the same bug, then he'll fix it ;D.

My solution for business owners is to employ them in another owned business and just not send them to work if I want them to do something else.  I used to think they didn't get fired for not going to work, but actually one did get fired the other day, so I guess you do need to track it a bit.   When you play his/her boss and their business, your sim is a useful employee because of their business skills and when you go back to the sim's life, he/she has extra skills for their own business.  I have a family business empire where a few family members own businesses, but all of them are employed in one of them - even the owners.  I move them around to suit as I play the business.


Does Pes say it's not safe?  I've do that quite a bit so you've got me worried Dea!

Changing a sim's last name in SimPE is safe. Changing a sim's first name in SimPE does not complete the namechange process, and vestiges of the old name remains. Always perform first-name changes in-game...and if you're already in-game, you may as well complete the last-name change in-game withh the Lot Debugger also.

well I've done both in Veronaville  - it's amazing that hood has survived as long as it has!

afterthought - most name changes were for townies now I think about it and that's less convenient to do in game.

I got two custom careers from N99 called 'Self-Employed Sim' and 'Happily Unemployed Sim' that someone here pointed me to ages ago. They don't pay anything, the car never comes, but they do fill the 'get a job' want and keep it from coming back. All my full-time business owners are 'self-employed', and I have a just-back-from-uni-and-living-with-the-'rents slacker or two who are happily unemployed. :)

I'm just wary of custom careers because they aren't maintainance free.  Any new EP can wreck a custom career and it's just another thing to update when you add an EP.  shrugs - my solution works for me and suits the way I play.  I only have one custom career in my game and that was by accident.  I downloaded a "cook pizza"option with lots of kinds of pizza only to discover it was a career!

Yea, but these two are so basic that they're essentially EP-agnostic.  They have only 1 level, 1 work hour a day (that the sim doesn't actually work) and an icon.  Nothing in there to really break in a new EP.

I'm assuming the career is compatible with Seasons, as Seasons is listed as one of the EPs that the hack's creator uses/used at the time of creation, but if it's not compatible, that would certainly explain why it wouldn't work with plantsims. None of my other business owners are plantsims, and none of them seem to have problems with carpools, etc when they have the Business Owner job. I really think that plantsims are just buggy. They behave strangely on their own lots, as well as those of other sims. For example, their motives get screwed up when they are hired as employees by other sims. I've never tried this, personally, but I've read others' accounts of the problem. In my own experience, it seems that every lot a plantsim lives on eventually becomes corrupted, as do the plantsims themselves (e.g. the plantsims' pie menus get messed up and they can no longer 'Give Gift' etc), and the only way to solve the problem is by moving the plantsim(s) to another lot and bulldozing the first one. I'm going to try having the bugged sim quit his job and re-acquire it, just to see if the problems occur the second time around. If they do, I'll have to just get him a normal job or leave him listed as unemployed, even though he runs a home business.

@cwykes: Many hacks that are listed as careers aren't actually careers. For example, some of the controllers for Monique's hacked computers are listed as careers, though they are clearly not careers. I don't really know how to explain why this is, however, so I'll leave that to those more Awesome than I.

So the tools we are using to look at things put the label "career" on things that have "career-type" attributes even though they aren't actually careers.  That's techie enough for me - a user version of techie.... ;D