More Awesome Than You!

So, confirmed Story Progression OFF players ONLY: If you've ever turned it on for any reason for any amount of time, you don't count. Include details on whether global aging was on or off, and the ages of the spotted anomaly spawn.

Has anyone noticed that, despite story progression being off, certain sims appear to still manage to be spawning somehow? And if you've noticed anomalous spawn, who were the parents? Also, have you noticed any suspicious roommates that weren't there to begin with, or "intruder famblys" that lack a description, except you didn't make them?

So far, suspicious babies noted:
Ursine Fambly, spawns a babby with the father as one of the Frio brothers, who the mother doesn't appear to like or even know. However, fambly description hints at such a possibility, so it's possible that this is a tribblesim that was born pregnant. Anyone else?

Claire Ursine starts off pregnant according to the wiki http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Claire_Ursine (http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Claire_Ursine)

I have story progression off but don't really have anything to report yet. FYI, Ursine is confirmed to start pregnant. There is also an old lady playable who starts with an adopted baby on her doorstep.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the playable sims have been "pre-programed" to have children, with or without your help. IE, Daniel Pleasant might grow up and have the twins all by himself. Maybe some story progression is really forced in the town. Maybe not, could just be a giant bork. Of course, since the town has to keep its numbers up, I'm sure that there's plenty of new babies that are forced to be spawned.

I think someone who has deleted all the premade families, set sim ages down to normal or short, makes several of their own test families, and has just let the game played with some observance could do most of the investigating.

I feel I should step in here to say:

Don't believe ANYTHING you read on the Sims Wikia, unless you know for a fact it's true. That place is full of lies and bullshit.

It claims Jocasta Bachelor is pregnant with Michael Bachelor and her husband is already dead. Nope. He's very much alive and Michael is a TEEN. Kaylynn doesn't have a sister and her father is not black, her mother is not a blonde maid either. Many of the Sims they claim are in Sunset Valley don't exist at all.

Sims Wikia IS total BS. But Claire Ursine's pregnancy is also confirmed here: http://thesims3.ea.com/view/pages/blog.jsp?author=Jennie%20Hozman

My current belief is that story progression only affects the premades. That, or it's completely borked. I haven't seen any new pregnant townies, and my sims are hanging out in the town square every single day. The only true townie toddlers I see are one I know came from a sim pregnant at game start (Claire or no, I don't pay attention to townies much) and one other, who is probably the adopted one. I've forgotten the spawn's name.

At current moment, I can't speak to it since it's always possible that I had it untoggled for five seconds before I started playing in earnest (as in, with my first family), and since you had me try it with it retoggled. However, I intend to restart the 'hood to do a challenge of sorts as soon as the eldest son in my current family reaches adult.

I had the Hart fambly spawn ANOTHER baby. Where are all these filthy babies coming from?!? I turned that off!

I had my Sim go to the gym last night, and there was a hideous little baby on the floor inside the door for everyone to walk on and around. I took a picture of it. Why it was lying on the gym floor without an ounce of supervision, I don't know.

I may have miss read the first post, I'm not sure if this is only for Story Progression Off players, if so, please move this post to the proper thread...
(Also, this is my new account, I was jellygoose before this)

I have Story Progression on HIGH, and Life span on EPIC, running 2 different games:

In the first game, I moved a chick in after a while, we "Tried For Baby" bam.. done... She was preggers, and was for about 2 sim weeks for memory, Baby was born and the Simolgy says: Baby grow up in 40 days (no problems)

In the second game, I got down with a chick, she stayed over, I wasn't wearing protection, the bells went off. she got preggers, (still playing EPIC mode) she went home, she came over 2-3 days later, fat as ever... and then, she wanted to goto the hospital. so I took her, she had the kid.. and walked home with it. All good, she invited me in, then i went home for a sleep. I then invited her over couple of days later, tried for another baby.. then she went home, not thinking about it.. I saw a pop-up saying that she had a baby boy and its name was Locke... all this in less than a week... but then I noticed her walking around town, with a toddler under her arm, this was the first kid... but this was defo not 40 days after!

It seems as though regardless of having it on EPIC or not, the aging will remain on NORMAL, this sucks.

Anyone else noticed this kinda thing?

(Again sorry if this is in the wrong place.)

I believe that Zazazu (and others?) have mentioned that, no matter what settings you choose, only your current household is affected by them, and the rest of the neighborhood ages per the game's default settings. Apparently, this is a "feature."

The parents realized it was hideous and abandoned it?  The other sims were as disgusted with it as you were so they were walking on and around it paying it no mind? Maybe the sims are really showing intentional thought?

nah.  That would be beyond EAxis capabilities.  Must be a glitch.

There is no high setting for Story Progression. There is only TICKED and UNTICKED. You're thinking of Autonomy. Also, you're insane.

Yes, but with story Progression off, she wouldn't have a kid would she? and yes i mean aging set to HIGH... why am i insane? ur right though.

That's my point: It's not SUPPOSED to be happening, but it apparently is anyway!

I had a thought. (Horrors!)

What if "Story Progression" doesn't refer to the progress/progression of the story of your neighborhood/families, per se.  What if it refers to the progression of the "Sim history" story?

Has anyone noticed/played long enough to notice whether Mortimer and Bella autonomously get married if Story Progression is on?  Or if they don't get married if Storry Progression is off?  Plus other "historical" liaisons like that?

Just a thought, like I said.


Edited because I realized I'd misspelled liaison.  Damn borrowed word, anyway!

That's what I was starting to think, too, Phyllis. My plans were to keep M&B from each other, or kill Bella in a fire, but I'll leave them be.

Confirmed pregnancy out of the box: Justine Keaton is pregnant and will deliver on the second day. News of such is in the paper. In both tests, she had a baby boy named Benjamin. I just started testing last night, so haven't gone past three days.

This would be consistent with EAxoid tendencies, I would think.  I always thought the Pleasantview stories were a stupid idea, but apparently people liked to play them out (no really!).  When I first heard of Story Progression, I thought "now they've found a way to code the story into the game itself so it plays itself out, with the option to disable it and play your own story.  Under this scenario, sims would not be subject to the story, but would still be able to sadorandomly have babbies.  Considering the normal sadorandom features of TS2 as a baseline case, one might then expect that this would mean that babbies would be spawned more often than not as soon as you leave one house to play another.

If I ever get downloaded, I can join the test.  At present, I am just philosophizing (with a sort of ongoing morbid fascination).

For the story to go totally as planned, the Caliente sisters and Don Lothario would have to show up eventually. And Dina's ugly enough in TS2 already.

If that is indeed it's function, what would happen if you killed Mortimer?

Bella would marry his just-a-sim-with-a-translucent-skin-and-a-glow ghost, of course.

Report back from one week of Story Progression disabled from starting new game, fresh neighborhood, Sunday-Saturday:

• Justine Keaton had baby boy Zane (names seem to be random, was Benjamin in another instance)
• Moon family moved to neighborhood
• Sofia Moon and Santos Christy married
• Racheal Ursine born
• Scotch household left neighborhood
• Brook Kofi born
• Hilda Wainwright born
• Mae household left neighborhood

Pretty conclusive that disabling progression does not prevent marriages and spawning. I'll report back again after the next week. I'm not really strong on what the Pleasantview setup is supposed to be since I only played it for a very short time (long enough to kill Don Lothario in a pile of pestilence). If anyone notices things that look like they contribute to that history, please say.

I can confirm a little something here. Story progression has been set to off since a little time after starting the game. Recently, I moved in a family I made into a house on edit town mode, never switched to them. Saw them walking about town for about week. My kids met their kids at school. Then, I check the newspaper to see that they've moved away. I mean, wtf is that? My own family moves away without me? I figure it's because I plopped them and forgot them. So I re-plopped them, and this time I went to visit them. They were all still standing outside their house when I went over a few hours later. I introduced my dad character to the parents, and everyone went inside. I'll wait and see if they move away again. At least the auto-keep-copy of family feature is a nice addition.

Now I've got a couple other families I plopped and forgot, although I did briefly switch to them as active households. So I'm thinking that only families you literally put down and never even switch to might move. Still, this means it is possible for the game to simply move out/even kill any of your playable families. The possibility is there, and that's just messed up.

For the  story to work completely, we need the now-completely-removed alien abductions/pregnancies as the Caliente sisters have an alien grandfather. No alien pregnancy = no Calientes.

There was actually an interview with MJ Chun recently (the one in which she confirmed Render Girl wasn't in the game) and she said the Lotharios are in the bonus European neighborhood ... Riverview or whatever it's called.

After I got Bella and Mortimer to marry, I left them and went to play some other households. They later had a girl...

... named Tracie.

I got Bella to rename her Cassandra at City Hall, so good enough, I guess. But it seems Sims 3 won't go on to become the story of TS1 and TS2. Bella and Mortimer seem more like easter eggs than anything, and a ton of Sims needed to create the TS2 Sims are missing anyway. Most of the TS1 Sims don't even exist either.

WHAT?  How could EA stuff this one up so badly?  What's even worse is that it sounds like a feature, not a bug.  The moron at EA who decided to include this "feature" needs to be fired.

I know. I didn't believe it myself at first. But sure enough, they had left. I don't know why it would matter whether or not I actually played them. I put them there for a reason. It shouldn't matter if I make them active or not.

What an asinine feature.

It probably just runs a random roll among households for possible eviction. Anyone but the family you are currently in is included.

Week Two report:

• Wedding report for the family in play (private home exchange in pjs is an extravagant ceremony? Ok...)
• Pate family moved to neighborhood
• Brandie Pate and Marco Carbone married
• Frio family left neighborhood
• Baby announcement for family in play
• Pate family moved out (that was fast)
• Bennie born to "Working Friends" household

Going slower right now, but that's because I'm raising three toddler boys at once. I'm hating that maternity leave is enforced, and on the mother only. Way to be sexist, EAxis. My workaholic has to stay home with the babies, while the father goes to work.

That explains the missing ONE and ONLY Friend my starting sim lost.  This will also play havoc with any future planning on which family I might like to marry my spawn into.  Who's to say they'll even be there when my now teenage son grows up?

Sounds like that would be a big deal breaker for people who would want to play legacy style!

Wow. I've read a lot of negative stuff about the game but for some reason that one really irks me. I love my non-traditional families where Mom hands off the baby to stay-at-home Dad and heads back to the office.

WHAT? That is ridiculous!

How is this any different from TS2?

I can see myself getting used to families randomly leaving town for no reason - I'm getting the feeling generally that playing TS3 is going to involve forgetting about any kind of micromanagement of the neighborhood and accepting that the game is often going to play itself, and that might actually be a relief from TS2, since my TS2 neighborhood is going through a period of being extremely boring and predictable (or that might just be because my sims are all in college now...).

Both TS2 and TS3 seem pretty inherently sexist regarding maternity leave, but at least TS2 doesn't FORCE the mothers to stay home. They had the option of going back to work, and either having the father stay (if he had enough vacation time) or calling a babysitter. Apparently, EA is intent on cramming this outdated bullshit down our throats.

Yeah ... though I actually forgot that for a minute, because I have the hack that lets you choose which parent stays home in my game. But at least you don't HAVE to stay home in the vanilla game.

Uh, I've never been able to send pregnant sims to work.  They have to stay home.  Always, until the baby is born.

They had to stay home after the first bump, until NL.  Once the household had a car, you could send pregnant sims to work in the car.  if you have AL you can make pregnant sims walk to work, just like you can make snowbound kids walk to school.  The only time a pregnant sim can't go to work if you have NL and/or AL is if they are due to give birth before they'd get home from work.  If you have these EPs and your pregnant sims can't go to work by driving themselves or walking, then a hack must be interfering.

Zazazu is talking about after the birth.  In TS2 you could choose which sim stayed home, by not letting them go out to the car pool or school bus.  It sounds like Zazazu is saying there's no way to send the mother to work in the few days after the birth in TS3.

No matter what method I use to try to get the sim to go to work, it complains that it is too pregnant to leave the house.  This has been the case since long before I installed any hacks or even downloaded any CC of any kind, although I obviously did not have AL at that point, so walking to work may in fact work.


Well, that sucks.  :(

This. Even if Mom had 3 days' paid leave, she could still go back to work the next day (or heck, the same day depending on when the birth was) as long as another adult was there to babysit. If I'm understanding correctly, Mom is not *allowed* to go back to work till a set time.

I haven't been religiously checking the paper, but every time I do, I get none of those announcements. All I've seen is random useless news tidbits.

I also happen to be playing with free will OFF and story progression ON, and lifespan set to epic if that makes any difference. Could free will somehow be the option that does what we think Story Progression should do?

I'm gonna make more of a habit of checking the paper every day, to see if I get any of those kinds of notifications.

Maybe everyone should also make a note of what your free will setting is on, to see if that might have anything to do with it. Either way, something is seriously wonky. Story progression should be controlling ALL of it, and thus has to be broken somehow.

OR the toggle is indeed flipped, and story progression ON is what stops all that from happening. ???

If your Free Will is off though I'm surprised the Sims you aren't playing aren't dropping dead!

Exactly. If you try from the career tab, it tells you that your shift does not start until 2 days, X hours from now, despite it definitely being normal work time. If you try from map view, it says your shift has not started.

This is outside of the main topic, though, and we already have a random gripe thread. On subject, I'm now doubting the newspaper headlines. On a Sunday, I was told that the Wainwrights had moved out. On Tuesday, first spawn brought Hilda Wainwright home from school. A quick check shows the Wainwrights sitting pretty in their old house.

Actually, I've been wondering - is it possible for adults to leave the lot when there are <= 6s there?  Does the social worker come?

That's the thing: everyone else does things autonomously PERFECTLY fine from what I can tell! When I go to the park for example, people arrive and eat and hang out and talk to people and whatever. It really doesn't seem like free will is off for them. So it seems like the free will setting is only affecting my own playable sims.

Edit: And setting free will to high didn't seem to make a single difference. They all still did the same exact things they did when it was off. Only difference was my sim was doing things on her own.

rufio: I think they can? I'll have to test further.

Zazazu: More EAxis borkedness?


Heh. I'm actually kind of having fun- I guess because it's different, but Sims 2 is really better in a lot of ways.

Either an adult or babysitter must be on lot if a baby or toddler is left there. This does not apply to children, who can be latchkeys.

This is perhaps the only improvement I've heard about.  I've always thought that it was dumb that kids couldn't be left along in the house for *one single hour.*  I put it down to the helicoptering parents of this generation.  The women being forced to stay home for maternity leave does sound irritating, though, and I hope that's moddable or fixable. 

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the legacy-style gameplay really IS the intended was to play the game.

Yes, we can switch houses, but the option is hidden away in 'Edit Town', sort of like a last-resort option. That's why we lose the wishes and some sims move away if you don't use them. It's probably bad design, but switching households shouldn't have to have such dire consequences unless they wanted to discourage it.

Like I said on the 'HORROR' thread, this is starting to feel an awful lot like 'My life as a king' from the Wii and other similar tactical games, where you send your little people on missions and you twiddle your thumbs while waiting for them. You're not suppose to see the action, only buy them the right equipment.

See, I kinda like that realism - people in meatspace move away all the time. Though I think it should be NPC famblies only, not a fambly you've made.

It's pretty RIDICULOUS for the lifespan slider to only affect the sims you are playing (I did read that it's a per-sim setting) because the whole POINT of the whole hood getting on with their lives is so that people are growing up at the right time to match your in-play sims.  If not, we're no further on than we were.  Unless of course we always play with default lifespan.

This made me think. Has anybody tried to see if the Story Progression button is made to be set per household as well? Maybe Story Progression and/or autonomy has to be adjusted in every single household to stop the random babies and fluctuations. If not, then hmm...

It says that the neighbors will stop doing things on their own, not your family. To be sure I checked and yes, it is global.

This will play merry hell with trying to do a MATY hood, if all your MATY townies just progress, move out, die, etc. before your playable family has time to even meet them.

Still it solves the problem of the townies that live forever and the Jefty-is-five6 issue.

Is it a per sim setting, for the aging scale?  I haven't noticed children aging faster than mine, where I'm testing how child play works.  I know I'll adjust it to default when I test things like toddlers and such, but my child with epic lifespan is friends with Mortimer, Bella and some other children and they are still children halfway through her 100 days a child.

Perhaps it is either a bug that it is acting universally for me, or not acting universally for others.

I can confirm that. I had a headline announcing a certain couples marriage with one type of ceremony and few pop-ups later the same couple had their marriage announced again with a different type of ceremony. Lucky them. I'm not convinced that the newspaper is giving you real information as to what's actually happening.

Just to add to the confirmation queue. I have Story Progression turned off in two different scenarios and my hoods are being littered with spawn. Given that situation, I'm starting to get a bit edgy about how many character files are being created with the birthing of babbys, townies coming and going, a different maid showing up everyday and God only knows what else. I'm keeping an eye on the size of my saved games files. They're growing after each session with almost no purchases aside from books and food. Food gets eaten and books get resold so I'm assuming the growth is character files. However there's no way to tell. I have little faith that there's not massive redundancy happening.

I did the same test as Zazazu (but was unable to post earlier), so the information here may be redundant.
I had Story Progression unchecked, Free Will on High and life span - Long and played one CAS made sim for a week. I checked the thumbnails for all populated houses in the town at the start of the week and at the end of it. At the end of the week there were the following changes:
- Alto household: three new adults were added to the household (I really don't know how this happened. I opened the lot to try to figure it out, but couldn't).
- Goth household: + one toddler
- Ursine household: + one toddler
- Wan-Goddard household: + one baby
- Bunch household: + one child
- Keaton household: + one toddler + one baby

The following households were new (I am not sure if the sims come from the bin):
- Marin household: 3 adults
- Pagehousehold: 3 adults

There is something strange that I noticed in one of the first games that I played: I created a sim in CAS and moved her into a house. After a while I sent her to the library, where she met an exact copy of herself (the names were the same too). This probably happened because there was a copy of the sim in the sim bin (as by design), but is this supposed to happen?

Yes, sims in the simbin are townies until placed, the same as TS2, though I am not sure if TS1 had this feature.

In TS2, sims in the bin stay in the bin unless they are 6s and 12s, or you gave them jobs, in which case they occasionally get brought home as friends.  But you never see them wandering around community lots.  I actually have an extra Pescado sim in my game, somehow, who is sitting jobless, in the bin, and I have never seen him except in the phonebooks of sims with the call-everyone-in-the-neighborhood perk.

This was something I was gonna ask (although it seems to be disproved elsewhere)--any chance the newspaper announcements are somewhat akin to some of the random, repetitive news ticker stories in the SimCity series?

One thing that bugs me is coming back to a certain character to find her with a newborn baby girl, but having no way of knowing who the father is. I think it's kind of whack that it doesn't list the father, even if it was just a one night stand. I've had it happen with two characters - one, I could assume who the father was because, well, she had a boyfriend and everyone else was barely acquaintance, but the second character...she barely had one friend. Who did she woo hoo with? Or did she adopt? How am I supposed to know?

Actually that's a relevant theory on the cloning spawn. Maybe they are adoptions rather than pregnancies (it may even explain the wierd time lines involved). Maybe one of Pescado's first moodlets (or whatever they are being called) should be an adoption killer to test demon spawn origins.

Yes, the time-line is very off. As in, I leave a character alone for a few hours and come back and they have a baby. So it must be adoption. That part doesn't bug me, I just wish I could know which it was and who the father is. I realize why they couldn't include memories, but I feel like it should be included in a child's family tree who both of their parents are, even if the two aren't married.

Another thing - and if there is a way around it, please let me know - filling the entire neighborhood with characters I've personally created and having story progression on to let them advance when I focus on one household for a while leads to...a whole SLEW of new characters, not created by me, entering the neighborhood. I wish there was an option to prevent this.

You could check the baby's family tree and see who his father is. If the mother is not your sim then maybe it's safe to assume the baby is adopted. Unless the game makes no distinction between adopted and biological parents.
EDIT: Nevermind, I see from your post above that they're not listed in the family tree. It makes no sense considering they were born in game. Maybe they have no father and are just the result of the game generating new sims to keep the population constant. Think of the father as a spermbank donor.  ;D

The post I made above you already stated that it doesn't mention the father in the family tree, and that's what I'm frustrated about. I've yet to officially adopt a baby so I don't know yet if the baby shows up as the mother's kid or if it makes a distinction that she isn't the real mother.

They couldn't all be fathered by townies that later up and "moved" and now don't actually exist?

It just bugs, bugs, bugs. They weren't kidding about enforced Legacy play. I made my entire neighborhood up of Lost characters and I come back to find that Kate has a baby girl who she leaves screaming on the ground while she goes and works out and I have no idea who the father is. She has no friends, who could she have possible woo hoo'd?

Some of them, yes. I'm specifically doubting the move-in, move-out ones. Not the births, as I've confirmed seeing babies or toddlers of the name given, and have been watching them grow up from afar. In fact, one was born on the exact same day as the eldest spawn of the family. They have hit age transitions at exactly the same time (and are now dating, which is besides the point).

I also have seen newly pregnant sims after two weeks of playing. I saw them before, normal. Now pregnant, then a couple days later a birth announcement. Then a couple days even later, walking around carrying the spawn. I watched Sofia Moon go through the whole process.

This Story Progression Bug realy makes this Game unplayable, if you want to play with more than one Household.

Let's say you make 1 Household. Play with it a bit, then make a Second one and switch to that one. The original Household you don't play only needs to be left alone for 10 RL Seconds, that's enough for them to move out of town and dissapear forever. (That's what happened to me)

I found out that the Game makes no differences between the Sims, it doesn't matter how rich a Sim is, what kind of House, Friends or estate he has, and what Job he's doing.
It just seems (like someone else posted this before) the game randomly selects some Household and tells them to adopt some Child or leave town.

This Game is useless with this Bug, because it basically means you can only play with one Household.
Why the heck take the risk of creating new Households, building Mansions and all, when they can instantly leave when you turn your back to them? This annoys the crap out of me ...

I wonder if there's a workaround to it, possibly, with a hack/mod. Hmm.

Mr. Snooley, please Quit randomly capitalizing Words. It's becoming Quite Irritating.

Sorry dude, but English ain't my first language.

I'll try my best though ...  ;)

Heh, English is a tricky language even for native speakers sometimes. :)

So the game is randomly creating unwanted, ugly, random Sims and tossing them into families.  Then it suddenly looks at the numbers, decides there are too many Sims for your system, and deletes ones you've made.

What the Fuck are those idiots at EA smoking, inhaling, injesting or shooting up? 

Okay check this out:

Another Sim of mine mysteriously dissapeared!
But this time I was on the lookout and always read the news papers ( I know that they might give you false info ).

It said, that my Sim drowned in a god damn public swimming pool!
And some stupid other random Sim with a baby (what a surprise) moved into the house of the dead Sim.

She was a young adult and athletic, how the **** could she have drowned?!

EDIT: Like I said before, how are we supposed to play this game when everyone dies / leaves town / adopts a child? XD

Yep, that's been reported a lot in the other thread.  Entire families up and move out of town.  Cute, ain't it?

I have confirmed through an extensive code rummage that the Story Progression control option on the panel is nothing more than goggles upon the face of the game.

I'd like to seriously know though (IF that button would actually work) who'd use that crap.

They should have called it "Killing Mode". :)

It seems to me that EA is trying to incorporate SimCity's random destructions. It doesn't offer the typical natural disaster, so this is a weak imitation to that effect. It's time for some havoc, so one of the Sims is going down.

I have confirmed the Story Progression option is simply utterly borked as nothing in the game actually checks it, so it appears sims will continue to do their thing even if you toggle the option. The Goggles do nothing! I have also fixed it. yay Awesomeness!

This is exciting news! Can you say yet whether this fix will be Mac-applicable?

Now that is an interesting question.

In theory it should. I could do the guinea pig and report back.

It won't. Not unless someone knows what the equivalent of DLLs in Mac are and how to replace them. Mac users are totally SOL this time, although hope exists if you run in Boot Camp.

What are DLLs exactly?

It's unfortunate, really. I wonder if there are any Mac users who have a lot of knowledge about this kind of stuff. I was so excited when I realized the Mac/PC release was simultaneous, etc. The game looks so pretty on my Macbook Pro and runs perfect, my video card supports it and everything. My PC is just too old to run this, in all forms. Blah, :'(

(And for the record, I probably wouldn't be in so much of a pickle if my CD drive wasn't completely inaccessable. I can't put a CD in my drive and therefore there isn't an easy way for me to go through Boot Camp. I did it once and it involved having three other computers and a few external hard drives and about 8 hours of patience to get it installed on this thing. And, unfortunately, the friend I had with the resources is in a different state than I am now.)

Are you anywhere near releasing this?

Wait, is that a new dll, or a modified already existent in the game installation? Because in this porting there are DLLs (see some below, evidenced in yellow).

(http://www.fantasiadomain.com/ts3/ts3-03.png)

Very interesting.

The mac version is just a cider/wine wrapper around the PC version, all the files should be the same.

I am guinea-pigging it now.

oowEE!  oowEE! oowEE!

Well, I'm done reporting since His FOJness has confirmed the bork is in the coding. Yay for fixes. This even brings a smile to my hung over self.

Any luck?

We should like to think that EAxis would fix this in one of the several patches that they release a day after the release of the Official Game. And I have no doubts that patch will stuff something else up, and then they will have to roll back Patch1 with Patch2, then release Patch3 three days later, just like they did with TS2:Pets. Cheers to Pes for being more awesome then EA!

Re: Mac version--it seems to be using a wine-based windows emulator, and based on the fact that the *same* cracked .exe (literally) is used for the Mac version as the PC version, I'm gonna guess mods will work (I'm pretty sure someone already has that no-censor one working on Mac?). I suspect it'll just be a matter of opening the Mac app package contents (as you must to drop the cracked .exe in) and drilling down to the correct analogous directory.

Which is exactly what I did with the censor crack, and it works fine, so the logic is sound. I've seen others confirm it's working for them as well.

This development excites me.

Is it possible to have Story Progression ON but prevent the random Sims from breeding? (I was under the impression that setting Free Will to "Medium" would let them go to work, go out, etc. but not let them breed.)

Also, is there any way to prevent the other families from moving out? It seems random, but is there any way to prevent it all together? (It seems like I can't make my mind up as to whaether I want Story progression on or off, but the random moving and spawning is a big DNW.)

dont quote me, but Im of the impression that FreeWill is only House based (from what Ive read in all these pages on MATY, my brain has possible gotten fried though, and ive messed up)... If you set it to off.. you have to do everything for your sims.. but in the world.. they will continue to do their own thing...
I would like to see a patch/fixes to disable certain things for Story Mode, relating to what your talking about.
Being that the game isn't so much officially released.. I'm wondering if EAxis has found these bugs/shit features, and are going to allow more of an option in upcoming patches.

You seem unable to decide whether you want it on or off. This is why the game currently lets you have it both ways: You can turn it off and it will still be on.

Mine is the opposite of everyone else's. No spawning, marriages, moving-in or out and so far no deaths. Is that even possible? I tried toggling it but nothing changes. So far I only see townies aging.

mine works fine. when i first started to play it i turned off story progression. nobody aged or got married or etc.
when i turned it back on, i got my sim to read the newspaper and there was an article about the hospital in town claiming that they had their lowest death count in years (or something like that) obviously pointing out the fact that story progression had been turned off and nobody in town had died.

now new and old sims have moved in and out of town, and people are getting married and having babies, even twins.

my sims was married to an older guy and he had an affier with the maid. i made him move out to any default house (kick out i think the option was).
for a while he wasn't in my phone list, but then he randomly showed up in the neighbourhood in his own house. he had progressed in his career.
since he had a son with my sim, i saw on his family tree he now had a half brothewr and sister from his dad side (but they have no mother). i even made him vists his dad's house to see them which was pretty cool. =)

i love that they've added step-son/half-sister/niece to the game. =)

Where and when did you get the game version you are running?  I understand thee are now different version out there and there has been some speculation that right now there is a "more complete" version out there.  Maybe yours is the newer version and this could help prove whether the original truly was a bad beta copy.

True. I guess I'll just keep it off, unless there's a way to prevent the Sims from moving away- I can -maybe- deal with the spawning, but the moving is too much.

It would be good to see some hacks/mods that come out, to allow certian Story Progression things to be turned off, such as a: Sims_NoMoveAway, and other options, that we could put into Mods folder, and take in and out and all that jazz, I got no idea how hard/easy this is, but just putting the suggestion out there. No doubt after a few weeks this kidna thing will happen?

Don't forget, modding for TS2 got to be where it is today after what, six years? Pescado is Awesome, but the kind of mods we're used to in TS2 will most likely take time.

i got it from an underground site last Wednesday.

idk what version it is..but the file was modified on the 17th of may if that helps. =/

Yeah Defo, and in time im sure it will happen for TS3. It was like when a new EXP came out for TS2, we had to wait around for updates, and things wouldn't work, but apart from a couple of issues with TS3, they seem to have built it a little better than orginal TS2. and its nice to see that babies actully look like their parents, and we don't need to run the Awesome Batman Box thing that I have forgotten the name of. (mybad Pes)

Babies look LESS like their parents than they do in TS2, due to extremely poor male-female feature analogue mapping. For instance, both parents can have angry eyebrows, and in TS2, ths meant that the kids would have angry eyebrows. Due to TS3's weird analogue-feature mapping, this is no longer the case.

Eyes and face structure looks alot better in TS3 though, then TS2, before running your wonderful Box, I had a kid,, and then flicked between the Mother and Father and kid, as it was a Teen, and looks better.. mind you I didnt get fully into the details of it.. but you make a good point. we can always rely on EAxis to bork shit up, other wise you wouldn't have a 'hobbie'?

That is because eye and face structure is heavily restricted in TS3, meaning the possibilities for changing them are very limited and you can't really produce combinations that jar clashingly on accident anymore.

Ok, now thinking about it.. I retract my statement, and say that with both your Batman Box, and mods for TS2, its alot better then that of TS3, and hope that something becomes avail to allow more awesomeness with in TS3.
I hope new CAS templates come out to make new created sims in TS3 look more real... and the eyes.. what the hell is the go with them.. there is only like 1 or 2 real looking eyes! Mothergoose went horribly wrong in this one.

I've had story progression and no one seems to be progressing! no babies or anything, also i cant play any of the pre made families or the game just closes  ???

That is how story progression works. If you try to make a story, it crashes on you. If you check error_log.txt in the Game/Bin folder, it'll say "Please do not the defaults. No matter what you do, we are going to get Mortimer and Bella hitched."

that's weird cause in my game, Mortimer is dating Kaylynn at the moment.
but in the game i had before this one, Bella and Mortimer were dating. =/

Are you by any chance related to one of the TS2 nannies?

I was willing to experiment with the Story Progression Mode until I heard about the "moving out feature"...

WTF!  How did this ever get past anyone in EA without someone saying "oh that's a bad idea" or "maybe we should ask the fans"???

Like I want to spend hours creating a sim, their home, etc only for them to be deleted by the game when I switch families???  I'm absolutely furious about this aspect. 

That in mind, I pray to the gods that are More Awesome Than Me to make a story progression mode that completely eliminates this feature - a "No one Leaves this Town Alive" mod. (except townies.  Fuck townies.)

There is no longer a clear distinction between "townies" and "playable sims" in TS3. All sims now take up a house and live somewhere, unlike TS2's townies.

You're right, of course.  They..are all townies now...   :(

I just don't get how they can take a game that makes many millions of dollars and decide "We'll just change the most intrinsic feature of the game and take control away from the players! Yeah, That's it!" "That will go over great!"

Everything should have been made optional in steps.  There should be checkboxes for:  Can your sims marry autonomously? Can they reproduce? Can they have relationships? (Move out should not have even been an option - that's the most ridiculous thing I've heard of)  And of course, it all should have worked correctly. 

I'm to the point where I wish they had just made another Sims2 expansion that allowed traits and CAST.  CAST is badass. 

Except for the ones that apparently live on empty unplayable lots.

For those who are playing the Razor version, does Story Progression seem to be working now? In the first week and a half in a new neighborhood, I had two births and one marriage. There have been several deaths, all but two from old age (the two were lightning and fire). After the first week and a half, though, no births. No moving out or in. This has been the case for two weeks.

Rod Humble gets in on the L&P for this "feature":

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1748767&postcount=231


http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1748818&postcount=233


Why don't you come visit MATY, Rod?

Because we would EAT HIM ALIVE?

Only with chili sauce.

Do you think we could test the Babby BBQ on him? Pretty please?

Talk about humble pie!

Yeah, belated update on this statement. Turns out homeless townies still exist, as discovered after incinerating all the houses and finding that they were still sims moving about, and trying to find out where they came from.

Oh, and belated update on my earlier statement. Babies are popping up again, so Story Progression toggle is still ineffective in the later game version. Four new sprogs in two days.

Tests are currently being conducted in #grah. The Pumpkin may want to appear more often.

I read in the paper that somebody died of starvation.  I also have had kids who I thought were doing their homework (because I saw them do it) grow up and deny me the option to choose a trait for them because of their "indifferent study habits." 

So this makes me think that when you're not looking Sims can do things like NOT do their homework and not EAT. 

Story Progression turned off doesn't work for me at all. In 8 sim days I've had 4 births, two deaths, one wedding, one new family in town and two moved away (including the one I made and played earlier - nice  :-\ )
And I checked, they really are gone.

I've had Story Progression enabled and Free Will on low for about 2 sim weeks and I haven't had anything happen.  None of my sims have gotten married, had babies, or moved away while I was playing another family.  I've been checking the paper and have seen from the neighborhood view that nothing has happened except the normal aging.  This seems very odd.

Maybe turning free will down to low is more effective than story progression off? 

I thought I read that turning Free Will on low is like giving your neighborhood a death wish? It may have just been complete speculation that has since been debunked, but if someone could confirm this for me, that would be great.

But shouldn't it work regardless of whether free will is high or low? Those settings are global, I don't want my sims to stand around waiting for every order, especially in large households. I assume low means they will only do something when their needs are in the red and otherwise just stand there, no?

Where exactly in the newspaper does it say about sims moving away, dieing or getting married? Whenever my sim checks the newspaper there are only news about sporting events, chess tournaments and eating contests. From what I've noticed around the neighbourhood, the original townie sims are all still there and the houses I've entered had only one family in them. My game is set on high free will, epic lifespan, aging is disabled, story progression is on.

In the read part.

You can test it, invite a part full of sims over. All the ugly ones. Add them to family, drag their hunger to starvation, and then read the next day's paper. It will have lots of obits. Then you can be sure you are reading the right part.

Days nothing happens you only get athletics stories. And I have noticed that not all things appear int he paper. Babies appear without notice sometimes.

I have now moved some of the adult kids out and turned free will on low. Now all my sims just stand around and story progression still doesn't work as it should. Two days after I turned it on low one of the sons adopted a baby (he didn't even have a job yet, just moved out of the parents' home) and some couple got married  >:(

Unrelated, and the baby parthenogenesis issue has been noted already.

I stupidly recreated all of Pleasantview to match Bella and Mortimer.  I then made them all houses to match their needs and money status.  Decorated them, moved each family in and got them jobs. This part was fun.

Then I was playing with Mary-Sue in the park and noticed this old man carrying Darren Dreamer.  I was like...why??  Went to "Edit Town" and found:

The Lotharios just up and disappeared, the Dreamers MOVED in with the old couple, the Clavell's. and then Darleen Matlapin's (Dirk Dreamer's Mom) up and moved off the planet as well.  In one sim day!

No messages in the newspaper of their moves either :(

Will this be fixed in the upcoming Awesomeness?  Why the hell can't the game move around the stupid EAxis townies!  Why my carefully made sims!  I didn't even get to enjoy them for 1 day...lame.  I knew this could happen because I saw it before...but 3 families totally changed in 1 day.

It's a feature!  You're going to learn to love it, honest.  Real Simmers keep assuring us that you should only play one Sim at a time anyway.     :P

Could it be that changes to the town population are affected by the life length of the neighbourhood, and they happen with a lesser frequency on epic lifespan? I have played for about 30 more sim days and I still haven't found any notices in the paper about sims moving, dieing, or new births. Eventually, I did find a new baby in the Clavell household where I knew there wasn't one previously. I checked on the baby and indeed it has no mother.

How did you fix it?  How can I do it?  I HATE this feature, I want to control my sims utterly!!!

I've had Progression toggled off and Free Will on the medium setting forever.  There have been no spontaneous babies to my knowledge; in fact, the only one I've ever seen is a mother with a toddler in the park on occasion.  I once got a phone call announcing that $random_old_townie wasn't going to live forever, you know, and then another call the next day announcing that she'd keeled over.

I haven't been keeping up with the newspaper, unfortunately, so I can't say whether these things are happening without my knowledge or not.

Pescado is awesome and can bend files to his will. Learn to do so, consolidate your exclamation points, and then come back.

Of course he can, he is more awesome than I am.  But how do the rest of us mortals do it?

You join the testers for Awesomemod. Due to the monolith blob format, we can't put out individual minifixes like TS2, so everything has to be done at once.

Would love to, sign me up.  How do I do that?

Count me in for wanting to sign up as well.  It's very irritating seeing created sims move away.

David

Check the downloads section.

In one of my families they had 3 children, 2 of them I threw out after they became Young Adults. They showed up fine in the family tree after that, but when the newspaper and a visit in their home revealed they had children of their own, those and their new husbands did not show up in tree at all.
I'm wondering if that's a bug (inside the story progression thingy) or a feature. Does someone have an idea?

Cousins, nieces and nephews do not show on the tree. Strict generational line from progenitor to progeny only, with immediate siblings. Click on the spawn to get their tree.

No husbands and kids showed up even if i clicked on the mentioned siblings in the tree.

I just found this link over at TSR from the official site, and EA's confirmation of story  progression  being broken, and how to fix it. Rather strange way to "fix" it, but if it works, then I'm ok with that until Pescado fixes their mess or EA patches it.

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/6537.page (http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/6537.page)

^There's a comment in that thread that literally makes me want to puke.


WTF

This issue is long-concluded now.