More Awesome Than You!

I had a really strange glitch in one of my lots last night.

I usually don´t bother with fire and burglar alarms and just use the call emergency option, when something happened. So the burglar came and I woke my sim to call the police. He picked up the phone and dialled frantically, then immediately hung up. The dialog, which let me choose between police and fire station didn´t pop up.

As I play with debugmode on, I gave my sim a cellphone, thinking the phone might be corrupt. When he used that I didn´t get the choosing dialog either, but he must have called the firestation, as a firefighter showed up. He fined my sim for calling, when there was no emergency and poked him. The burglar got away with the piano, the stereo and the karaokemachine. All the sims in this house have Music and Dance as their one true hobby.

It was really bad, because the family is quite poor. Everyone else in my newly created prosperity neighbourhood is doing much better.

Later I bought them a birdcage and when I directed the same sim to stock it, no option to choose the bird and name him came up. Instead they got the red one and he got a really long name with the word Tropical in it. I think that´s the object name for the bird.

No errors popped up at all. I don´t really expect a solution, I just had to share that. It was so frustrating to not be able to interact with the burglar at all. In fact as my sim wants to be a general and had just maxed his bodyskill I teleported the burglar in the next day and let him beat her up. That was somewhat satisfying. I really wish one could fight the burglar, while s/he is burgling, though. It is a tad unrealistic, that my sim would just stand there and let an unarmed burglar take all his most priced possessions.  >:(

Sorry for the useless post. If someone has any kind of solution, I would of course be grateful to hear them. At first I thought it might be the phonehack, but as no errors popped up and the same thing happened with the bird, I am pretty sure that is not it. I couldn´t recreate the problem on another lot either.

This is how the game is designed. Once the burglar arrives, sims have no way of stopping her/him. This is meant to teach silly simmers that, unless their sims stay awake 24 hours per day, and never leave the house, then they need a burglar alarm.

notveryawesome, did you even read what their issue was? The issue is that they were unable to call the police because there was no popup dialog, and the same happened with naming their pet bird. Had they been able to call the police they'd have been able to free the burglar and thus interact with them.

I'd say first, glitched lot, or second, hack conflict, or third, old hack for new EP.

...not necessarily in that order?

Have you installed anything new lately? I had the same problem with Sims dialing and then hanging up after downloading a mod that was supposed to add the "call to meal" option to custom plates of food. o.O Don't think I tried using a cell or adopting a bird though. Either way, that was the only thing I had added to my Downloads after the last time I played and the phones seemed to work normally again after removing it, so I don't think it was a fluke.

Edit: Oh yeah, and I always run the HCDU after installing any mod to lower my chances of doing something dumb to my game. It came up clean with my other stuff so I'm thinking it was just outdated or totally put together assbackwards. It was by Morague from MTS2, by the way.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think it was just a glitch, though. I couldn´t recreate it and I very recently installed freetime and updated all my hacks. Ran the conflict scanner as well and only the usual TJ/pes conflicts showed up, which according to TJ are not harmful if I make sure his hacks load after pescados.

All my other lots get choosing dialogs. In fact it might even be all other sims get choosing dialogs, as I didn´t test with any other household members. It was just very frustrating. I sat in front of the screen yelling at the firefighter: "What do you mean, calling when there is no emergency? Can´t you see the burglar. It´s not my problem, that you show up instead of the police."

And I really hate, that my sim can´t beat the burglar up himself. He certainly could the next day. Unfortunately he is very nicepoint heavy and now wants to apologise to the stupid burglar all the time.  :-\

I thought notveryawesome meant, that the police can´t be called after the burglar entered the house. It is possible, that I always managed to call before the burglar actually entered the lot before. You can definitely call the police after the burglar shows up, as I do that all the time. Sometimes the police is too late, but I think that is kind of realistic. Not beeing able to fight the burglar by themselves is not.

I guess it wouldn't be too PG-13, but I'd love it if you could fight the burglar and DIE! Now that-- would be interesting.

I just posted the same wish in the wishlist thread in the podium.  ;D

I am pretty sure sims killing other sims will never be a feature, although that graveyard lady in strangetown was certainly set up that way.

Once again, I point the blame squarely at tight pants.