More Awesome Than You!

I've just played a 3 day cycle of the Aspirs. Louis was 108 when I started. On 3 consecutive nights he has beaten Death and kept his life. He is now 111. Does that damn genie give never-ending life? This is the first time I've ever had a sim win against Death and this is 3 times in a row.

I've been looking forward to my first Desiderata ghost.  >:(

I noticed that last night, when I made him marry one of my legacy founders. (I know, hes not a townie/NPC, but its for my personal enjoyment.) I haven't played that lot long enough for him to meet his demise yet, so that's going to be interesting...

Destroy his portrait. If you destroy his portrait, he will die instantly.

Well, I was wondering if maybe there was a bug in the genie wish that allows a sim to cheat death.


Srs?!?  :D God knows the sims have some bizarre bugs but that just seems a little too weird even for the sims. His name is Louis Aspir, not Dorian Gray.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/280708004.jpg)

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/280708012.jpg)

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/280708024.jpg)

Yeah, but I make that joke whenever someone complains about a sim that doesn't die. The BBS sheep never get it, though. I've actually been trying to make a Dorian Gray painting for the game.

I played them almost 10 days and Louis was still hanging around, so I used Inge's 'days left' shrub to find out what's going on.  He may not have ever-lasting life, but at that point he still had 12 days left, which would make him something like 140 by the time he actually died.  I used TJ's blender to knock 9 days off his lifespan, and after 3 more days he did  die normally.

Luis Aspir lived a long time in my game, as well--I think around 120 days. Of course, that just meant he had more time to cheat on resurrected Noriko, which he did frequently.

Terrence Rowe beat Death about six times, which is pretty darned lucky because I believe the odds were only 10% the last couple of times. After three times, I let him drink a bottle of elixir in between, since I figured Death would be getting pretty miffed about coming over all the time and getting nothing for his trouble. After six, I set his days left to 5,000. I figured Death would be right sick of him. Though I do imagine that he takes more pleasure in taking Terrence's relatives and pets away.

Eventually I may allow him to be offed. I'm not sure. I have my own idea story-wise of why he was winning, and I'd like to work that in. But at the same point, I've had this sim around for four/five generations of a prosperity-type 'hood. I've become accustomed to his face.

How do you get the chance to even beat death?  My Sims never get a chance.  Death comes and takes them unless a child or spouse pleads for them.  The only Sim I've ever experienced doing anything at all was Brandi Broke.  When death came for her she punched him and screamed at him.  I had never seen that before ever.

When Death comes, you have to have someone nearby that has a really good relationship with the "deceased to be", and they have to plead with Grimmy to spare that sim's life.
Then Grimmy will toss the dice, and usually (but not always) the pleader has even odds of beating death. Of course I just have NL, so the "deceased-to-be" doesn't turn into a zombie, but whatever.
The sim to be taken usually doesn't have a chance in hell for pleading. They have to have someone else do it for them.

With FT, you can get "long life" from the genie when the "Otherwise Useless Gypsy"^(TM) drops off a lamp.  This, I believe enables the corpse-to-be to play for his/her own life.

This idea is appealing and full of unbridled win.

Ja, I want also. Just the kind of thing for Koschei the Deathless as well.

"Cheat Death" is the one that gives a chance to play find-the-shiny. "Long Life" works just like the elixir.
You're getting things mixed up, which isn't surprising since you don't have the EP for the features. Pleading for a loved one results in them either losing and dying or winning and living. It is, IIRC, only an option for deaths other than by old age. There is no chance of zombification. Zombification is possible when using the Resurrect-o-matron (sp?) from the Paranormal career included in Uni. Resurrection is also an option from the genie lamp from FT, but I'm not sure if there is a chance of zombification. I haven't played with that option.

Edit: I just saw a story the resurrected using the genie, and the target did turn zombie. So unless they messed with the settings (and I don't think they were imaginative to do so) zombies are a possible result of genie resurrections.

Resurrect-o-Nomitron? o-Nomatron? o-nomi-... The Bone Phone.

Right, exactly like I meant to say.  :-[ ::)

But I guess I'm still confused because in the original pictures that are posted at the start of the thread the person is playing for their own life.  How is that done?

It's done by having an FT genie and wishing for said ability.

You know, I have a feeling I'm going to get poked for this but here it is anyway, how do you get the gypsy to come to your house, she use to wander onto my lots at one time now she never comes around anymore?

Please...if you poke....poke nicely where I can enjoy it!!!

If she doesn't come anymore, you probably have some version of TJ's Visitor Controller in your game -- that bans the Gypsy by default. In order to get the Genie lamp, one of the sims on the lot has to max their enthusiasm in a hobby.  She'll then show up sometime in the next couple of days to drop the lamp off. The VC lets her drop it off and then chases her away. :)

Resurrect-o-NOMNOMitron.

Sounds interesting. Do you have pics?

...ew

imyourboy, if you don't have TJ's Genie fix in, you can call up the gypsy and she'll deliver a lamp and then leave.

Yeah, must have been Cheat Death I wished for; it's been several months now in between playing all the families and starting new ones and getting sidetracked by building, and HOMMV and so on and so on....

I kept trying to get a family member to plead for Louis the first time, until I noticed he was on his knees in front of Death.

I won't be using that wish again, I want some ghosts dammit!

Oh yes, BTW, Dorian Gray - awesome idea! Of course. Funny thing is, I'd just got Louis' granddaughter to paint a couple of portraits of him before he died and at first I thought, 'how did JM KNOW?!'

I know because A: It's a Dorian Gray joke, and B: Because it plays upon exactly this tendency. You think you're the ONLY person to EVER paint a portrait of a soon-to-be-dead sim? Tons of people do that!

Hur. Well I'm glad I'm not as unique as a bent spork.

I have so few sims die of old age, I did think I was being quite original.

I got him to live to the ripe old age of 117 before death came and got him for good.

Wow. I start getting sick of them if they live past 70... which all of them do. It's sad, really: I love them Infant-Adult, but once they hit Elder, I am immediately annoyed by them and just wish they'd die already.

Why do I even keep the Elders?

Because elders are usually permaplat, I often use them to try things out, like the vacation collections and the bugs one etc. Plus they all develop an interest in gardening, oddly enough. (I was disappointed with the gold sewing badge, I thought they got to make new clothes, not just ones already available). I keep elders with the families, otherwise I probably wouldn't play them. Elders make great babysitters. I enjoy ageing them gradually with the full face masks too. I like my elders to look elder.

I am getting rid of the Joque family once Renee marries out. The female - can't remember her name - Sophia? - has turned into an ageing movie star a la Zsa Zsa Gabor; what she doesn't know is that Marcel is about to undergo a spiritual revelation and move them both into the monastery with Lapsang Souchong. Heh.

They do get to make custom clothes with the gold badge -- not that the custom clothes are any great shakes, but they do get to make them.

...but only if you want to FUBAR your game.

Right, because they still write them to a game file (objects.package, I believe?).

What about recolours of Maxis Meshes?

uh-oh.  I haven't heard of this before just now.  What are the sypmtoms if this happens?  And can it be avoided by just not making any clothes?  That kinda sucks.  Is there no fix?

I have made custom and game cloths as well as special ones at gold level with no issues to my game at all. The only thing I have ever experienced is a slow spot the first time they get to make cloths when the items are loading for choosing.  It pauses like when someone leaves the lot to go to work or school, other than that it works fine. 

What is happening to others?

I use TwoJeff's AgeDurationHack, so they annoy me a lot less now. They only live 10-12 days as elders. I'm currently waiting on a particularly boring elder to kick it for my story-driven 'hood to move forward, which will happen right on schedule since I'm waiting for AL's release, building up the constructed area, and playing Teardrop Isle at the same time.

Honestly, I'm interested in my sims from teen to first reproduction. After that, they are usually just filler to me. Right now, the only adults I like are Asher Bleu (since he pops up everywhere and is just your average nice guy) and Cutter Bryson (narcissistic cultist with a plan).

There are no visible symptoms, until you try to patch, then you discover your core packages are FUBAR.

I use elder grandparents as an alternative to the nanny. Retire, if they're employed (though I'm thinking I might just have them quit in future, I have one retired elder couple gaining $1k/day between them) and pretty much power idle and babysit for the rest of their lives.

What kinds of problems does this cause? Other than not being able to patch, I mean. I've definitely had a few Sims make custom clothes already.  :-\

Where are these custom clothes then? My sim got an option to make clothes and the normal wardrobe popped up. I saw all my cc and nothing new. Are they further back in the Maxis section? I won't make them if it fubars things, but I'd at least like to see them.

I'm not too sure, but I think it is on the original pie menu when clicking on the sewing machine. I've only ever had 1 sim with gold sewing badge and she was the Arts and Crafts hobby maven that I moved in with one of my sim families. I think there is 2 for clothes, 'make>outfit' and 'make>custom outfit' IIRC. I dunno which one it was.

Oh, so it was a fat-fingered problem. Cheers Emma.

Yea, Emma is right -- the option 'make>custom outfit' pops up on the sewing machine when the sim has a gold badge.  But the selection is limited (i.e., you only get a dress for an elder female), and aren't really worth the effort.  Better to have them make regular clothes from the catalog -- saves some simoleans and a shopping trip, anyway.

Most of the clothing (I think of it as Sims3 custom) has horrible meshes. The toddler and boy child items are oddly shaped. Really the only two I like are the elder ones. Terrence Rowe still sports a pair of slacks and sweater vest that Mystery made for him. All her creations were interestingly mismatched, as she was kind of an odd person. She kept her eyebrow and nose piercings as an elder.

Old photo:
(http://bp2.blogger.com/__M-zaydd-rM/SAeStSMgmII/AAAAAAAAABA/YoMPmxX8CPU/s1600/snapshot_750804b0_3512b7a1.jpg)
I was looking for a better-lit one, but apparently the only time he showed up on a lot last round was during Victor & Wilfred's wedding. When there are kids in the founder's lot, he's everywhere.

Well, I discovered it was not so much fat fingers but a failure to notice the sim only had a silver badge. I saw clothing in the menu and presumed the badge was gold. By the time I get back around to playing a lot I've forgotten who's got what.

So now she's making a quilt.

Zazazu, all I can say, is they certainly look home made.


Would it matter if patch 3 was already installed? I mean three, because I installed the first bad* patch, as well as the next when it came out. I haven't yet installed the third and last patch.

*The patch itself wasn't bad, the fact that it altered the objects stuff was bad.  I hadn't made any custom clothing so I went ahead and installed it.

So, does this mean then that sims with a silver badge can make nice clothes (maxis or existing CC from catalogue), and when they graduate to gold badge, they suddenly gain the ability to make less attractive custom clothing?  How...exciting.  That would certainly make that gold badge worthwhile.

In theory? The patch is supposed to fix that. Do you really want to find out the hard way that it didn't? And where are those files being SAVED? Does anyone know? More importantly, why go through all that hassle and risk for some awful outfit that you could do better yourself in MSPAINT?

Apparently the custom clothes are still saved in objects.package.  I had one sim make some as an experiment after patch 3, and when she was done, the date of the FT objects.package changed to the current date, even though it was marked as read-only. It also wasn't read-only anymore.

Compelling points raised here!

The quilts are probably the nicest part of the sewing game. Pity we couldn't have picked colours and patterns for the quilts and flagged the whole custom clothes thing.

I've found that read-only has basically no effect on TS2, TS2 just ignores it. If you REALLY want to make a file read-only, you have to deny write permissions in the permissions settings.

So are quilts okay?

Yes, quilts are fine -- they're built-into the game, so it doesn't change anything to sew one.

Aw, crap.  Here I was, thinking that the patch had actually solved the problem with sewn clothes.  Crap, crap, crap.  *digs around trying to found out how to fix the damn game AGAIN*

When Wilfred Campbell was still the 'hood burglar, he had a thing for stealing quilts. He'd run in, beeline for the quilt, and snag it before the cop came.

It is a pity that they can't make quilts that can be actually put on beds.

Yeah, that was big disappointment for me. Plus it would be nice if we could have put in custom pictures for them to sew quilts to match.

ITA, witch. Haven't actually had any sims badge-ing on sewing yet, mostly because I don't want to bork my objects.package over mishy-meshed duds, but also because I haven't seen anything sewable that I would actually want to keep around the house. Not saying I won't eventually do it, just for the fun of trying something new, but I know I'll just sell all their results for the cash.

Stupid question:  if they can't put the quilt on a bed, WTF do they do with them?

If they're based off the one in the Buy catalog, they hang it on a wall.