More Awesome Than You!

Reposted with Enthusiasm-fix. Because community lots just weren't worthless enough, apparently.

(http://thesims2.ea.com/images/mysimpage/gamehas_ep8.gif):(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/yellow.gif)
(http://thesims2.ea.com/images/mysimpage/gamehasnot_ep8.gif):(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/blue.gif)
OFB+: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) comm-skilling.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ft/hacks/comm-skilling.zip)

Community Lot Skilling (v3b) for TS2OFB v1.0 - TS2AL
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado & Doctor Boris)

Special Thanks To:
Aggie von Shitdisturber
Fat Gwilly People

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

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

FEATURES:
Controlled sims, NPCs, and townies may gain skills while visiting community
lots, including non-college community lots. Notifications of skill-point gain
will only be displayed for controllable sims. Enthusiasm may now be gained on
community lots and while visiting. Fixes Physiology Borkedness in AL. Rep may
now be gained both on and off community lots.

COMPATIBILITY:
This hack is fully compatible with all FFS hacks. For TS2OFB+.

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

Pardon my ignorance please, but what do you mean by 'enthusiasm'..? ..that aside, AWESOME job, Pescado! I'm sure this'll make a lot of people happy!  ;D

'Enthusiasm' is the FT term for building hobby skills.

Oh, duh.. thanks. Even better! ;D

My sims and townies are getting the normal skill BUT they are not getting any hobby enthusiasm points at all despite long sessions of bug hunting etc

Also they dont get any enthusiasm on hotel lots (is this fix supposed to enable it for hotel lots)

No enthusiasm on community lots here. I have a gym going and no one is building Fitness enthusiasm (body skill points are building as advertised). On my community lot basketball court, playable and a few townies played for a few hours and no enthusiasm for Sports was gained.

I have to report the same.   I took my sims to community lots and while there was much skill building.. no hobby enthusiasm. 

I think it's just the icons and messages not showing up. I had a sim visit a community lot with a stereo yesterday and let him dance a while. He definitively had 0 points in music&dance when he left, but 1 point when he returned. The enthusiasm builds slow, though.

I thought this might be the case, but have been unable to verify conclusively.  My sims appear to be unable to gain enthusiasm of any sort (tested with nature, music/dance, and sport hobby activities) on a community lot.  I will try to test this later again.

My sims went from 0-8 on body when they went to the gym. But they did not gain any enthusiasm at all about fitness, sports, music or any of the other doo-dahs that were there. I did notice that other neighborhood sims were at the gym and they did get the "boing" effect for working out while on the lot. For those neighbor sims, I have not checked their own enthusiasm levels yet, though, as I have not yet played their lots since the gym visit.

I can do check-on with this mod. Make sure you don't have something else that is conflicting with the parenting interaction through binary search (basically removing half of your hacks, seeing if it continues, then adding or culling as needed until you find the culprit).

To "erase" a mod, all you have to do is remove it from your downloads folder.

What's the new "father" interaction?

$NameLocal:0, I am your father!

Gosh, that's very existential for EAxis!  :D

omg...do you mean to say that with this expansion pack, that EAxis didn't even see fit to allow us to have our community lots that we build gain enthusiasm?!  So if I build a gym and send my sims there, they would not gain enthusiasm?  (hadn't done this yet)  That's just as ludicrous as it gets...wtf were they thinking??  I wondered why there were "secret lots" for all the hobbies.  What a load of crap.  Well, I will definitely be getting this puppy when it's all uber-perfected and such.  Thanks for doing this!

Precisely. I'm not even sure that the secret lots build enthusiasm, as mine are blank expanses of land.

Sorry, missed something.  Is this by default or by design?  I personally have not "found" my secret hobby lots yet (my sims are incompetent and not particularly enthusiastic about anything, it seems).

I would say "by bork".  Some people have "missing" hobby lots.  My hobby lots function, and one can build enthusiasm.  One doesn't get the "rewards" for enthusiasm, subscription, card, or plaque, until one returns home, though.

Thanks Mitchie - I have been trying to confirm this, but my tests have been inconclusive.  I will continue to live in hope that my comm lots and hobby lots allow sims to hobbinate.  At this point, I despair of any of my sims maxing out enthusiasm until just before death.  :P

New version should fix.

Thanks for this. I hate to seem uninformed, but it works for the vacation lots, too, right? I was able to borrow BV after getting FT, so on my first vacation I was very disappointed that my sims didn't seem to be enjoying their hobbies. Aren't hobbies one of the things people take time for on vacations? Honestly, I would've thought that with the shininess of FT, they would've polished up their second-newest expansion as well....

It's neither, it's buggy. My main 'hood is custom, and either the coding for the hobby neighborhood doesn't always play nice with custom neighborhoods (predictable from EAxis, who think we are all 12-year olds who can't handle keeping a couple sims alive, much less pressing the buttons necessary to make a custom 'hood) or I screwed something up.

OK then.  I'm going to try one of my custom hoods tonight (not the MATY hood yet) and then we'll see what happens.  Come to think of it, my Emma-Test-Hood is custom, so I could just push Emma up to the required enthusiasm level in dance, and see if she can get to the secret lot.  Damn, and I wanted to test this with my alien uni student in my other hood.  Too many choices! 

Zazazu, did you delete the files from the Lots subfolder when you cleaned out F002? The secret lots in my custom neighborhood are okay but I left that folder alone. I peeked at the lot files in CleanInstaller and they look like the hobby lots that are in my hood.

I believe so. I generally delete new lots from the lot catalog before installing, as I hate the fug EAxis calls houses. Blech. I'm wondering if I didn't delete the contents of the wrong folder.

It looks like the new lots in the catalog come from C:\... Res\UserData\LotCatalog - I recognize the sports plaza type place from the thumbnail in CleanInstaller. I doubt restoring the Lots folder in N002 would help at this point, but maybe you can copy them and replace the blank lot files in your Neighborhood folder?

Neh. I want my own lots, I've decided. If it can't be done, no one will be going to the membership lots. They serve no real purpose anyways. My sims have a dance club, a couple furniture shops, a gym, and in Prospect Proper a basketball court and three community gardens. They're busy as it is.

There is an instructor and two hydroponic garden career rewards at the Nature secret lot, I'm guessing the others will have various career rewards for skilling too.  I'm using a custom hood, except it's the normal type of custom hood rather than cleaned templates and such.  The premades all died a fast death before gameplay commenced.  The sim gained in nature while doing things at the secret lot, though I don't recall if there were icons and I haven't yet taken him to a normal community lot.

I use the hobby lots as weekend cabin and love nest. Too bad you cannot enable build mode, but I have a sim with too much money gain memberships to all clubs and refurnish the ones that have at least a bearable floor plan.

Hobbylots can be buymoded?

With 'boolprop dormspecifictoolsdisabled false'

jolrei, by any chance, do you have 'Always Perfect Plants' in your downloads folder? I was having a similar problem as you and removing that hack fixed the problem.

I did have TJ's Perfect Plants installed.  Not sure if that version was cleared, but I now have his latest version which he has cleared/updated for FT.  With new version of comm-skilling and macrotastics, comm lot hobbination seems to be working fine.  All tests last night were successful.

Baaaaa, Pescado!

Installed and tried the updated version . Comm lot skilling and hobby enthusiasm works fine for me now     Thanks Pes

Now just need to wait for Maxis to fix the violin so that when you play for tips it doesnt leave an invisible tip jar to bork squares > At least till then the stuckobjectsremover works great

With the dorm cheat, as MistyBlue said. They can then be buildmoded by selecting a floor tile (I use the sidewalk as I have a modified floorpattern file in order to do street partking. They just can't be saved while set as a hobbylot.

Now, here's what you can do, and I'm playing around with this in my game to see if I can either create custom lots and code them to replace (or add to the list of) existing hobby lots, or edit the hobby lots. There is a cheat "changelotzoning secrethobbylot". I can set up a new lot, make changes, save it, then apply the cheat. After applying the cheat, the game pops me out of the lot and it appears green but no sims are able to move to it. However, it doesn't appear as an option to sims who have access to the particular type of lot (in this case, Fitness). I made sure that I'd included all items in the Desiderata fitness lot (the premise being that they behave similarly to the BV secret lots and need a key item to function, especially since you can't specify that it's fitness or cooking, etc.). My theory is either that the cheat isn't behaving correctly, the issue is that the sub-hood isn't coded as a hobby-hood (this is my #1 suspicion), or it's because my sim already has access to a fitness lot.

Next up is to try changing my existing blank fitness lot to a community lot when my sim is on it, make some changes, save, and then do the cheat. I'm afraid I may lose a sim temporarily, but meh.

EDIT: I've figured it out! Yay! Requires that you have the original lot files from Desiderata, but I was able to edit my existing blank lot, then through some fanangling involving the original Desiderata lot, get my changes to stick and the lot to keep functioning. As soon as I get it set up, I'll post instructions in the Podium so that everyone can edit their lots if they want.

I realised that, too :D. Too bad, because money for buying new objects comes from your family funds. On the other hand, you'd have an inexhaustable source of free money just in case.
Oh yes, please :)!

I have a high-reliability method for editing all hobbylots, but it is not very easy to do, as it involves file-cleaning and shadow neighborhoods.

Would you mind to Can you be bribed into explaining this method?

Well, first, you have to clean all the file debris out of the "auto-added" subhoods with templates. This means youhave to clear all the extraneous text strings, SDSCs, etc. Basically, garbage which is left over from templates. To do this, create a BLANK subhood, then compare it to one of the "dirty" subhoods, and delete everything which is not supposed to be there. Then, copy the lot descriptor and lot descriptor strings from the now cleansed "Hobby" autosubhood into the blank subhood, and perform terrain surgery. Go to the subhood and use the Loadlot and changelotzoning cheats to edit the Hobby lots. When you have completed the editation, quit, go to your neighborhood, and manually remove the Dummy Suburb: Don't delete in-game. You can save this stub-suburb for later if you want to re-edit.

Do my eyes deceive me or did I read in this thread that in the game as it left EA, when I take my predestined sport Sim to the sports park, she doesn't actually build enthusiasm for sport while she's using the stuff there???

Oh, and Baa-aaaa-aaa by the way :)

I did most of that, except without the dummy suburb. I used a sim to get to the lot and edit it. It's still kind of annoying, because you have to have a sim who has gotten the card to do so. It's unfortunate that we can't use LoadLot from the main 'hood to get into a lot from a sub 'hood. I've done the Fitness lot so far, and started on the Nature lot. Building the Nature lot is part of my 'hood's story, so I'm doing it in stages. More work. Meh.

This is, in fact, the case, yes.  Continued comm lot stupidity which has existed since Base -- playing chess at home built logic, but playing all day at the local park did nothing.  Why would hobbies be any different (just because EA has had years to fix this and never does)?

Oh dear, what's the point of having "special" hobby lot then, if Sims can't even build enthusiasm in it? *Headdesk* It's about as useless as runway lots for H&M.
Comm-skilling should really have been integrated into the core game.

My comm skilling does not seem to be working.  I have sims that I am positive are townies and when they use items that skill they do not get either the progress bar nor the enthusiasm symbol.  Does this not work on home lots anymore?

Also I'm not sure where to put this comment so I will put it here.  I have been getting this want "Buy unnamed wantable object category 10100" and the slot is blank.  I had heard that this is a problem with either the LTW variety or Uni LTW's but I am not sure.  So I thought that I would just let you know.  Sorry if this is out of place, please don't tear me a new one. :-[

If you are using Pescado's hack to enable uni ltws, then you need to update it as Pescado has now fixed this glitch.  This hack is not included in the Director's Cut (as not everyone has the uni EP installed), but it is in the hacks directory.

I'm wondering the same thing.  I haven't really gone to a community lot, but non-resident sims don't seem to be building skills or intrest by doing things at residential lots.

I thought I read that only your playable sims get the progress bars, but the other sims would be skilling silently?  I have just remembered that yesterday I got a pop-up saying some townie had just got a skill point, so I think it is happening.

Kyna, thanks muchly, I will try to track that one down.

Everyone else thanks also, I hope that it is silent skilling because that was one hack I really really loved!

Edit: I checked the hack list and I did download the update for it.  When I updated all my other hacks.  So either this is not a uni ltw problem or it is not completely fixed.

Pescado updated uni_ltws_sns for FT, then he updated it again when people reported the glitch you mentioned.  So this hack has been updated at least twice since FT.  Getting the most recent version of the hack fixed the same glitch in my game.

You say "when I updated all my other hacks".  I hope you've been checking back every day for updates and didn't just update once and think you're done.  In the first few days and weeks after an EP release Pescado updates his hacks frequently (usually daily, and sometimes several times a day) in response to reported glitches with his hacks, to fix reported glitches in the game, and to add new features to his hacks (such as the constant updates to skillinator as he improves macro/hobbinate).

I can double check even redownload the hacks again.  It is just that the time and date stamp was the same.  No worries, I will redownload and run the game either later today or tomorrow.

This (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7.0.html) is always a good thread to watch, since we announce new hack updates almost as fast as they're posted. :)

Yeah but you never say what they do or anything :)

If I'm not sure what the mod is about, I just download it and check RTFM. If that doesn't answer my questions, then someone gets a p.m.   ;D

What am I, your mother?  ;)




(Sorry - channeling an old snarky comeback there....)

Thanks, I will bookmark that one!

Not bad--for a guy.   ;)

Does this hack enable badging on comm lots too, or is that already in the game?

Enables that also, yes.

Excellent thanks!  Now I just need to find out why I can't put those telescopes in my Museum of Science and Industry...

I've noticed that skill progress bar sometimes can appear and sometimes not for the same non-playable.Or maybe it's time for me to
visit oculist? :)

I've noticed the same. Also, sometimes visitors show the bars on my home lots (while playing chess), sometimes they don't. I've never cared much about that, but it would be interesting to know if they still gain skill points anyway.

This is annoying,but not too much and seems Mr.Pescado will not be waste precious time to investigate this.

I don't find it even annoying, as I only care that sims gain points when I play them. I just noticed.

This happens because certain classes of visitor are permitted to skill while others are not: Nonplayables will skill anywhere (since you can never play them), playables will only skill when they are the active family (but they will now do so even on community lots).

Actually that's not entirely true.  I had a sim marry one of the social workers.  Might it be a better idea to treat all the currently non-selectable sims the same way?  Personally I am happy to have them all skilling without discrimination (they would in real life after all), but I can understand why others would prefer only the currently in-play sims to be affected.  How about two flavours?

That is, A: A Bad Idea, since the SS is not intended to be socializable, and B: Not relevant: Nonplayable sims do not become played until you convert them into playable sims.

I only maintain one flavor of anything: The flavor *I* use. Anything else results in exponential overhead growth. The reason I have only the currently-in-play playables affected for playables is that skilling the wrong skills will totally destroy your want tree tuning.

Oh right, well, I don't do want tree tuning and stuff like that, I quite like to be surprised by what my sims have been up to when they decide to turn up on a comm lot of their own accord.  Ok, so be it :)

This hack is more awesome than I thought, then - I don't care if my playables ruin their marriages while not controlled, but I would definitively hate seing a carefully locked "max skill x" want fulfilled before *I* decide to fulfill it.

   Damn, i forgot all about those Wants i have locked, i was wishing for this hack to allow my playables who aren't being played, to skill while visiting other Residential lots.  But you went and reminded me about a personal pet peeve.  Those 'Make Friends with X' that i hoard, and then have fulfilled when i'm not looking.

Those are minor problems compared to the bigger issue: A sim that decides to forget his level 9 cooking skill and fixate on his randomly gained logic point instead, permanently ripping you off from being able to get the Maximize Cooking.

 

 Oh, having their carefully crafted wants panel all scrambled up once i get back to their lot is something i've gotten used to.  Unless you've got an undiscovered shiney that freezes those wants, until you return to playing them?

I got a problem   :-\   when I clicked on macro/Hobbinate for my sim to birdwatch I got lots of those Insimenator machines popping up all over the place. I used the hack conflict and it said I didn't have any.... so do they clash because the Insimenator is not updated for FT   ???

If Insim isn't updated for FT you Should Not Be Using It *points and laughs*

Remember the microwave dog piss?

I know....I know  :P  but I haven't really had an issues with it til now  ::)

The point is, you wouldn't have *known* if you were having issues with it, as the damage is being silently done in your data files.  All your sims could be completely wrecked before you find out anything was going wrong.

 :o  well I didn't *know* that !!
Thank you Inge for letting me know I will take it out right now.

What version of Insim do you use? Only use the OBJ version when a new EP comes out -- DEST and SIM affect the globals and the pie menus, which Macrotastic also uses, so that could be the conflict.

I use the DEST one...... maybe I will try one OBJ one until they bring out the new one....thanks for the tip  ;)

Orrr, you can NOT USE IT UNTIL IT'S UPDATED.

Which is the smart thing to do.

From a post on the InSim website:

That apparently being the case, you may want to try the OBJ version, but it is very much a "use at your own risk" issue.  I was an Insim user, but used it mainly for things for which there are other hacks (i.e. teleport, exporting townies, etc.).  I have chosen to use alternate hacks for these functions and will wait and see if Insim gets updated, by which time I may not care anyway.

Macrotastics uses the "plugin" functionality, which does not alter any global anythings. However, the Birdwatching function is something that is part of the destination globals, so if you have something which alters that, it will break.

This is really not a kindness from you to ingore me this way, OK? Am I nul?

I Asked you to instruct me how to alter this package to make all sims having enthusiasm gain points markers above their heads, not just the family you play only.
I'm not new in BHAVS so I will make all changes by myself, I just need a hint, ;)

thank you

Look through your own posting history. You have never asked that question before. Before getting snippy, make sure you actually have the right to.

Confirmed: no earlier request.  And - Why would you want this?  The enthusiasm gain points markers are spam, IMO.  They serve only to show that your playable is actually gaining something.  Having the culinary enthusiasm ++ marker above every sim at a downtown restaurant, just because they are eating, would get very old very fast, and make getting pictures for stories hopeless.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/pancake_bunny.jpg)

I have no information about this subject at this time.

Eric has suddenly unsouped from InSimenator.net

Edit:  Oh - sorry I just posted this here cos we were talking about InSimenator a few posts back.

I deleted my request before posting this new one. That post have been hanging here for a week and no one paid any attention to it. So that is why I repeat my ask.As far as I know moderators can see the posts deleted by users. ;)


 The enthusiasm gain points markers are spam, IMO.  They serve only to show that your playable is actually gaining something.  Having the culinary enthusiasm ++ marker above every sim at a downtown restaurant, just because they are eating, would get very old very fast, and make getting pictures for stories hopeless.
==============
I like equality in the game, like skilling, fitness, motives, aspiration, badges, and hobbies. for all, not just for those you play only. ;)
I guess these BHAVs can be modified in the way J'M' Pescado did with badges..
please help me!  ::)


so that's why you "missed" my post. OK I see

Oh, ok, so what you want is the ability for non-playable sims to gain enthusiasm while on community lots, something like Enthusiasm For All; I thought you were just talking about making progress bars show for enthusiasm  ???

This is already included in the hack:  "Controlled sims, NPCs, and townies may gain skills while visiting community
lots, including non-college community lots. Notifications of skill-point gain will only be displayed for controllable sims. Enthusiasm may now be gained on community lots and while visiting."

Yes I know that all sims gain enth. on community lots but I'd like to see the results of this above all sims.
Also I'd like to have a mod that autoban all PRE-FT NPC to visit secret hobby lots. they are still horrible looking in my game so I'd like to not see them.

The "enthusiasm ++" marker that pops up above the head of a playable sim merely means that some gain in enthusiasm has been accomplished.  It does not provide an accurate measure of how much.  Even if the non-playable gains several points of enthusiasm, you will not be able to see the real amount of enthusiasm gained.  As the hack already notes that they gain enthusiasm, the ++ popup is entirely superfluous.

If you want to know exactly how much enthusiasm they gain, you have to make them selectable so you can see their stats.

Why, though? Because you don't trust the hack? Because you like having your view filled with superfluous icons?

For an autoban, I'd use TwoJeff's Visitor Controller, over at Simbiology. You can autoban NPCs with it.

Yes I wanna see this "++" markers in the way like badges "+" do. You tell me this is bad and useless, may be you finally give me a tip how to modify the mod in the way I'd like to?  ???

I'm afraid if I ban all NPC the hobby lot leader would vanish too. or no?

We've been over this already: I have no idea where it is. And since I don't care, I'm not inclined to do the research to find out. My guess is that it's somewhere within the Stop Enthusiasm call on the Enthusiasm tracker, as this would be the logical place to start. Have fun.

I noticed that they gain enthusiasm just fine on BV vacation lots, at least. WTF EA?
(okay, so I did have the FT director's cut version of comm-skilling in, now that I think about it.)

I had an odd issue with this last night (I think).  Sim goes on vacation (Far East) and does activities that should be gaining skills (ie, swimming).  Sim gets the skill meter, but DOESN'T get the Autumn bonus.  NPCs who are in the same pool do get the Autumn bonus, and build skills faster.  Very strange.  Bug with this, or bug in FT/BV?

Define "doesn't get the autumn bonus"? Because the autumn bonus is only visible by measurement, and I don't think the skilltracker even CAN bypass it.

No swirling leaves appear around the skill tracker, and her skill didn't go up any faster than normal.  She only has body level 3 or 4, so a hour or two of swimming should have make a noticeable rise in the skill level in autumn, but it didn't in her case.  Yet NPCs in the pool at the same time jumped up 3 or more levels during the same period, according to the pop-ups.

Great hack but i have noticed that I get a pop up for any townie who gets a body skill point through swimming

None for the other skills they get just body when swimming

I hate how reputation changes so fast. I don't want to install this hack because of the reputation building, however I am desperate for the skill and enthusiasm building. Can you make an alternate version?

I reinstalled my game to only allow Base+OFB+Seasons and AL.  Can I still use this if I don't have Freetime installed?  I could live without it if I had to but I really like community lot skilling.

Yes.  AL is a later EP than Freetime.  If there are FT specific functions, they will not work without FT.