More Awesome Than You!

Impending FBVFOS.  :'(
I recall vague references to this little thought bubble and what it means for the future of my 'hood. Anyone able to give a full explanation and ..ahem.. HELP!

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/rnkis/snapshot_d08e7518_30d2fed8.jpg)

I think you need to check in SimPE for (a) unlinked duplicate sims, and (b) for memories of "unknown" sims apart from the great Unknown that the unwed CAS sims all did woohoo with! and (c) A+ spam that got into the game before you added the noA+spam hack and (d) invisible memories that don't have the required icon.

In fact, you need to clean up your neighbourhood, pronto!

I'll start searching.

It's a new hood - about 4 sim weeks old - that wasn't played a day without MATY fixes (critical and otherwise) so to see this shocked me.

I'll bet!  Maybe it's just one or two memories that are corrupted.  But whoever he is with the thought bubble would be the first one whose memories I'd check!

I appreciate the help there, ZZ. I wouldn't have known what to look for otherwise as I thought the lines had only to do with deaths.

 I found 1 owned by unknown memory and 1 invisible with nothing attached to it on that particular sim and am weeding through to clean out the rest of the neighborhood.

FBVFOS may have been deflected. ;)

I hope so!  After only 4 weeks it would certainly be a shame!

I've started getting those as well and my hood is only 1 week old. Very odd considering I have JM's fixes.

So far I haven't noticed them, even in this old hood I've resurreected and was very nearly fubared until I cleaned it up, but I'd be inclined to check the memories of any sims who get the squiggly lines!

So when you see those squiggly lines, it means your neighborhood is heading toward a BFBVFS? I've had those squiggly lines now and then for months; not often, but I've had them now and then....

The things I learn. Squiggly terrain paint...

I don't know if just occasional squiggly lines would be a sign of impending disaster, and if you clear it up straight away by finding the corrupt memory (hard if it's a food one, though) it shouldn't present a mammoth task!

I think that the squiggly lines are linked to a corrupt death.  I remember JM and Twojeff brought out critical fixes for this: the NoCorruptDeath is part of the MoreAwesomeThanYou package and is alsol available seperately in the Hack Directory. 

The squiggly lines mean that the subject of the memory couldn't be found.  The corrupt death memory showed these symptoms because sims would get a duplicate invisible memory of the death that had no subject, so the game would display the squiggly lines.  In other situations, the squiggly lines can usually be linked to corrupted memories, which for mysterious reasons do not have a proper subject.  The solution is to track down the memory and either replace it with a valid subject or just delete the offending memory.  The problem creeps in when your sim starts spreading the corrupted memory via gossip and chatting with friends, and they then get a copy of the corrupted memory.  I think that this doesn't mean a BFBVS is imminent, but it could be a sign of a problem in your neighborhood.  It could mean there are invalid sims as ZZ pointed out above, which will definitely lead to a BFBVS sooner or later.

I remember before I got NoCorruptDeath, every time someone died, they used to get a second memory after the first one. This second one was the corrupted one with no subject.

And some ghosts think they've died twice!

As to corrupt memories, why do some sims display a "Pregnancy modifier" token?  Should these also be removed?  I mean, it's often townies, and NPCs who have it, often too they're male, so it seems illogical that they should have it!
And why do some townies etc. have a complete pre-load list of memores, while others are simply initialised?  And why have some "been to college"?  I can understand it with NPCs once they have worked there, but the Strangetown Bella Goth also has this wierd "Been to College" memory!  And some have this memory even if you haven't actually loaded a college campus!

Pescado explains the pregnancy modifier token in the "Myths, Urban Legends, And Apocrypha Of TS2 Explored And Exploded" thread here. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3.msg417#msg417)  It affects sims' chances of having twins.

I see, so a male sim can actually cause the mother of his child to have twins?  Now that's something extremely odd, don't you think?  I mean, how does the father influence either the splitting of the embryo (which since twins in the game aren't identical, doesn't happen) or the mother producing two ova in one month?

It's about time Maxis programmers learnt a little basic biology!

When I was first pregnant, way back in 1977, my ex and I applied for twin insurance due to the fact that he was a twin and twins also ran in my family (my great-grandmother had 5 sets out of 13 births, my grandmother being one half of a set - she had twins herself, one of whom was my father).  We had to get a certificate from the doctor and we were described as moderate-high risk (or something like that, hard to remember that far back, but I know the premium was high).  When we discussed it with the doctor, we were told that the latest research indicated that the father could influence this if he had a history of twins in his family.  Whether that has been refuted since I don't know, but certainly at the time it was valid.  I always thought that the only way the father could influence it was if he passed the gene on to his daughters, but according to what we were told, there is more to it than that.

"Twin Insurance"? That sounds ridiculous. Were you trying to get them, or not get them, and why would you buy this "insurance"? It seems like there are better ways of not-getting-twins than to buy some kind of hokey insurance, which is undoubtedly a waste of money.

Also, did you know that your kneecaps are particularly susceptible to breakage, and that for the low, low price of $99.95 a month, we can sell you kneecap insurance?

Ancient, I suppose there is a chance with identical twins of the father being able to influence whethr or not the embryo splits, but the sims don't have identical twins, (at least, not without help from us!) and I just can't see how a father can influence the number of ova which the mother has that month!

And JM, you take out twin insurance to cover the extra costs involved in having twins, so I imagine you are actually making a bet with the insurers that you will have them, while they are betting that you won't, then, if you win your bet, you get paid out - and that's all any kind of insurance is, really, isn't it - a bet!

 :D :D 
C

Y'know, my kneecaps have been sounding rather creaky lately... :P

In the case of my squiggly lines, I believe it was a memory that was owned by an "unknown". Where this memory came from is a mystery to me. The sim pictured above is the only one in the whole hood that had this memory. I could not find any dupes in the hood. There has been only 1 death ( that of the founder). I have nocorruptdeath installed and have had it since before the creation of this hood.

Random wonk ala Maxis I suppose.

I'm sure I was being overly paranoid about it blowing up my game but I know those particular lines have been related to implosions in the past and wanted to get rid of it before it spread.

Maybe it was one of those insidious bus and car pool drivers!

Can squiggly lines disappear?  I did have them at one stage, and had corrupt deaths, but I waited for Nightlife and since then they've all gone away and deaths are back to normal. 

I've got 624 character files, but only three from CAS, the rest came by themselves.  I don't want them all to blow up!

I can think of one way the father could influence chance of twins. I read somewhere twin conceptions may be relatively high, but one of the pair terminates in the first week or so, so nobody notices.  Maybe twin-gene fathers help produce extra-sturdy or twin-friendly embryos, so more pairs of twins survive to be counted.

Well, NL does seem to correct some missing memories - for example, I've noticed a lot of long-term couples are suddenly "having very first woohoo with.."  (Special Event camera etc) and they gain a second woohoo memory which relates to the one (often with CAS sims) which they came into the game with , but maybe twenty sim days later!

Those bubble with lines appears in my game when a Sim would "talk about" (or something like that) another Sim that it is furious with.  Ex:  Sim A is furious with Sim B, Sim A talk about Sim B to Sim C result, bubble with lines in it. 

No Sims in that hood is dead and I do have JM fix but those lines still appears when I use that action.  Depending on the reason why they appear, I think in this perticular case they are harmless, but then again they might not be, I have no idea but did not notice anything wrong following that action happening in my game.

Wouldn't it be better to keep the money and use it towards insuring that you will not be having twins? Anytime you deal with insurers, you generally lose: Remember, these people are running a business for profit. This means that the expected yield involved here is always negative in their favor. The house always wins.

Just to add to the confusion: A friend told me that all left-handed people were actually conceived with a twin only it didn't develop in the womb... That evening when he told me that he was the only one out of 4 people that was right-handed.

So: My maternal grandpa was born as a twin, my paternal grandpa was left-handed. Both parents were right-handed, no siblings are left-handed. Considering the tendency of twins skipping a generation, I will refrain from having kids other than my stepson, thank you very much.  ;D

Twins sorta run in my family too; my dad was a twin, although his twin died when he was a baby.  And I am left-handed, so it wouldn't surprise me if I was a twin originally.

As for the insurance, I can definitely vouch for the fact that insurance companies are out to make money.  I work for a car dealership and recently we had a customer come in who purchased his car in a different province.  When he purchased it, it cost him $2000 and when he came in for a problem with his 4WD, it was discovered that the part was not covered under this warranty.  Although, if he purchased a similar warranty from a different company, for less money, it would have been covered.  The kicker?  The two extended warranty companies were underwritten by the same insurance company.

I'm right handed, not a twin, and can't afford any insurance because all my monthly wages go to my MATY subscription fee.

I got my MATY subscription fee as a Christmas present...it's now paid up for the year.  ;D

The only time I saw the squiggly line memory was when  the maid "asked" the child something.  The response was squiggly lines.  His icon had the maid's face on it and said"be asked".  Probably had to do with homework( I have the All-in-One NPC) but they never went to do the homework.

Wow, Blue, that's some Christmas present!  That's worth $480!

Can I ask something(s) here while we're on the subject of the contents of the neighbourhood memory?

I have been deleting memories that don't belong to anyone - I figured that if no-one is owning up to them, they can't be that important.  And then I have also been deleting memories without a subject for a similar reason - can't be that memorable.  And then there are those memories that belong to the sim I am looking at but are an invisible copy of a memory they already have - I'm assuming they have had that passed back to them by some other sim.

But what about all those tokens for 'foods cooked well' and 'foods eaten'.  Can I get rid of those?  And also various other oddities.  I get the pregnancy modifier token now and the attraction markers and the furious and furious reverse stuff, but what about the Tokens for Misc Skills and why do they all seem to have the Gastronomique Podium Marker in the memories - sometimes more than once?  And what's the personal wealth one for?  Sorry - I probably shouldn't ask in someone else's thread but my fingers are itching to delete some of this.  Please tell me I can.

JM or someone can probably give a more definitive answer, but I believe he said that deleting tokens and things other than the regular memories and invisible memories can screw up your sim.  I know the personal wealth token keeps up with how much money your sim has earned, which is important for Fortune sims to satisfy their wants to earn $X, especially the LTW of Earn $100,000.  Foods cooked well I believe has something to do with whether the sim "knows" how to cook a particular food and their chances of burning it or making it successfully in the future, so I wouldn't mess with that.  The attraction markers are new in NL, of course, and I'm not sure if it's ok to delete these.  I don't see that it would hurt, but I was waiting to hear from JM on those specifically.  They certainly get passed from sim to sim, because I see Sims having those hearty thought bubbles about sims they haven't even met, let alone be attracted to.  I think the Gastronomique Podium Marker must have something to do with whether your sim has dined downtown, whether they paid their bill, whether they should get a coupon, or something like that.  I'm not certain, but I wouldn't mess with those either.  Perhaps Misc Skills has to do with dancing skill or their progress toward the next skill point on various skills?

I have a feeling most of those shouldn't be messed with.

I wouldn't touch any tokens myself, heh, after accidentally deleting half an attraction marker which made my Sim jump and be unable to use the toilet/shower. Fixed by removing the other half, but I generally leave that stuff.

I've gone through the memories many times but I just saw this squiggly bubble, but when my Sim was looking out the window... I wonder what it was about then, since they usually just "see" random objects outside...

Heh, that's funny when they "see" the maid's van coming, someone out in the yard, or a bush or yard light.

Swiftgold, I wish, oh how I wish, you'd been around when I had my problems with poor Liz!  That's what caused her to jump!  Now, if I can find a back-up from BEFORE i swapped her with and unsatisfactory clone of herself, maybe I can get her working again!!!!!

Hope you can find one... I've had to do some clone swapping myself, once when my Sim changed her (Maxis) skin from S1 to S3 randomly and I couldn't fix it. Tried to play on but it just wasn't her, so I made up the clone, heh. Now I have a way to actually fix that kinda thing, but I don't have any old backups anymore. Guess that's life!  :\

Always the way!  But somehow the clone just wasn't her!  Didn't even have the same LTW!

i had squiggly lines in the chat bubble of Loki's daughter when he died. That was some time ago. Haven't seen another since, *knocks wood*, though i may have seen another out of the corner of my eye...is it true as long as they don't gossip it won't spread? i'm holding on to that hope...

Ssh.  don't tell anyone but I found a back door in where you don't have to pay the subscription fee.  Ssh.

dun da dun dun....



so busted...points and laughs at speedreader

Aww man, apparently someone didn't tell speedreader not to brag about stuff like that.  :(

Uh-oh, he knows, speedreader, run for your life lips!

Heheh, just goes to show you, what goes around, comes around, also true to TheSims2.  Don't gossip about fubared memories and the neighborhood won't fubar into a BFBVFS!

Back in the early days I did things that I never knew we shouldn't, such as installing occupied houses.  I installed only one such house (a couple of other attempts were so disturbingly unsuccessful I stopped doing this all by myself), and fortunately it dragged in only 5 non-linked characters.  I've never seen the corrupt memory squiggles, but that of course doesn't mean they won't show up in the future.

After much reading here, I got seriously worried about the BFBVFS potential, so I've spent a great deal of time looking things over in SimPE.  First I moved the house occupant into a different home.  Then I deleted all his memories of the unlinked sims, removed his family connections to them, checked every damned sim in the neighbourhood for memories of these unlinked sims, and deleted them when I found them (not too many).  Finally I deleted the unlinked sims.  Today I'll enter the lot again and see if things get -- well, "exciting".  Also, I made sure that any sims I ditched directly from the sim bin were safe to delete, then I roasted them too.

Apart from that, the only unlinked characters I see now in Pleasantview are -- wait for it -- ones that were supplied with the game.  For example, there were two Diane Pleasants, two Jeff Pleasants (hmmmmm . . . . ), and the Burb family is so fucked it's beyond belief.  Any attempt to load any Burbs in Family Ties results in an object reference error, neither of the Dianes nor Jeffs have any relations, and John's memories are of only one pair.  I noted the ID number and deleted the surplus Diane and Jeff.  That's another household I have to load today, too; more potential "excitement".

I've also found a number of screwed-up memories (lots of things wildly out of order, or duplicates, or completely unconnected to the sim) for sims that existed prior to Uni being installed.  If this has been discussed then I've missed finding it here, but I wonder if anyone else has noticed this.  Sims I created post-Uni installation have been fine.

There are also two Darleen Dreamers, two Michael Bachelors, two Skip Brokes - need I say more?

the only way to get the correct one is to resurrect them, and then edit their memories and relationships in SimPE.

Thanks for everyone's advice about the tokens and other stuff in sim memories.  I just thought I'd pop back and mention one real oddity with this though.  I've just started a new sim in my neighbourhood called Bob Newbury (yes, that one).  I made him a janitor of a block of flats.  I've literally played him for three sim days and that's not long to get a lot of memories.  He has one token in there with this description:

Token - Misc Skill (owned by Therapist)

I really can't think what that is about.  He hasn't bottomed out with his aspiration (yet) BTW.  In fact, he's been quite happy and pretty social too (he's just met Betty).

Well, as long as it's owned by someone, I wouldn't touch it!  And it could be gossip that's been passed to him by a car pool driver or any other sim he's spoken to.

I have a lot of those also.  Also some from dead sims.  I haven't touched them but I am curious.

I can't remember what the Misc Skill refers to, but the owner doesn't mean anything.  JM says SimPE doesn't know how to display the data for the owner in this field for this type of memory token, so it displays seemingly random Sims.  This doesn't mean anything, but they shouldn't be messed with.  I have a lot of Toddler Skill tokens owned by Mortimer Goth in one neighborhood.  I think he is the first sim listed in the Sim Description, so his Instance number matches whatever data SimPE is pulling up for that Memory.

Seems that to Maxis 0000 and RANDOM mean the same!  And why, whatever direction you set the telescope, is it ALWAYS the sim with that number who charges in and attacks the peeping tom?  (I remember, before Uni, that both the Calientes were also able to rush in and attack Don Lothario, so they must have changed something!)

For ages there was no other sim besides Mortimer who barged in and poked the peeping Tom.  Once Mortimer died I wondered what would happen . . . like father, like daughter.  She suddenly appeared in a dorm, and walked up to one of the dormies and poked her.  I thought something had gone very seriously wrong, but she left the lot normally and the game seemed fine.  The next time she barged in was back in Pleasantview, and I made the connection:  the dorm lot and the neighbourhood lot both had telescopes.

In SimPE, the list that populates when I click "Sim Description" is in Instance order, and now that Mort's dead, Cassandra is the next playable sim on my list.  It looks like the game is moving down this list, so once Cassandra dies the barger-in should become Alexander, then Dan Pleasant (not likely, as he's older than Cassandra and I'm playing the lots in rotation), Mary-Sue (not likely for the same reason) then Angela. 

It was always Mortimer and John Burb in my game, until I installed TJ's fix.  That's what I was told though, that the game choses the first sim in order of appearance. 

Well, obviously once Mortimer is dead, the next on the list would be the new Peeping Tom poker - but I just wish it was a little more random!

Funnily enough, in a custom game where I hadn't played the main hood (deleted all characters there, then chose a University and played that) the character chosen was Joshua Ruben!  He even attacked his best friends!

I've always played custom hoods - it's always Phoebe Vaughan at the moment in my present main neighbourhood, the first sim I created and the first in the list in SimPE.

I wnder what would happen if Maxis ever got in first and stuck the grim reaper at 0000!

Every time I've done the numbers experiment (how many sims does Maxis put in an empty meighbourhood before you even begin to play?), the numbering always starts at some number other than 0000 - damn I forgot to make a note of that in my anal quest to work out exactly what was going on.  I can tell you exactly how many sims though - it's been the same each time and I've done it three times.

Hey, are you some kind of tease ?
Tell us! Tell us!

Really?  Crikey, you're the first person who has ever wanted to know.

Well, ok, with the base game, University, Nightlife and the Xmas Pack installed:

263 files exactly (three times the same remember) are added to your Characters folder for one neighbourhood plus one University plus one Downtown.  This is in a custom neighbourhood with NOTHING in it before I started - i.e. not Plesantview or other Maxis neighbourhood.  SimPE will tell you 272, however, and this is because there are 9 universal characters which appear in every neighbourhood but do not appear as individual files in neighbourhood folders.  I think these are:

Santa Klaus
Therapist
Unknown (Potato Head Man is the icon)
Grim Reaper
Toddler New Year
Father Time
Hula Zombie
Pollination Technician
Mrs Crumplebottom

Making a neighbourhood adds 87 characters and these are numbered 71-160 (with some numbers missing) - yay! I did make a note of the numbers.  Plus there are 8 of the universals shown in SimPE (1st eight - obviously there are fewer of these if you don't have the Xmas Pack).  All the names of the NPCs and townies are the same in every fresh neighbourhood unless you murder and/or rename the lot of them (which makes them distinctly unfresh). 

Adding a university adds a further 98 files, 24 of which are professors and 50 of which are students.  Names are 'random' and I think the file numbers are filled in up to 70, and then after 160.  A further universal is added - Mrs Crumplebottom. 

Adding a Downtown adds another 78 files.  Obviously, Mrs C came with NL but she seems to get added with the University (look, ask Maxoid Tom).  Names are random except for the Tricou family (my Tricou short story is called Tricou Treat BTW - sorry, I'm absurdly pleased with that for some reason).  If you add another University, the game will generate another 50 students (the same with a third University).  The game uses the same physical archetypes for the students so you end up with sets of physically matching students (same face, same hair, same clothes) but with different names. 

Adding a second and third Downtown adds no further files.  Deleting the test neighbourhood made over 2MB of space on my hard drive. 

Is that enough?  (There's more - oh yes)

Oh, that was a happy afternoon that was.

NPCs and townies get different names with Strangetown and Veronaville.  Downtownies' names are different too, as are dormies and SS members.

Yes, I did say it was an empty neighbourhood, not a Maxian one.  I also said the Downtownie and student names were 'random'.

Well I might be the first to ask you, but I know I'm not the only one who is very grateful you posted this.
It's not just you who's the addict here :)

It's now a text file in my sims info folder.  You did a good job there.
I know some of this has been discussed here before, but good to have it one file.
And there's more you say ?

This info will be good posted in 'The War Room'.

If you like that sort of thing, then "Maximizing personalities" will probably interest you too.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=323.0


Oh, about the names.  Do you have Live.package ? From variousimmers.
This gives more names to choose from, but I didn't know that townies/downtownies/dormies pulled from different lists.

I think that it skips NPCs if they come in first.  It skipped Mortimer and went to John Burb, who was not the next on the list because there was the Grim Reaper and another NPC, but John Burb was the next playable character listed.

Probably just as well! ;D

I just had that problem in my barely-played-with Strangetown, and I thought I had all of the appropriate fixes installed. I got Loki and Circe good and mad at each other and she threw him out of the house, and then I let her Bad Mouth him to Nervous and one of her speech bubbles during the Bad Mouth social was a big mess. Was there an issue related to furious state or to breakups that I might have missed a fix for, or that is known to occur but hasn't been tracked down well enough to fix yet?

I've had this in my new Pleasantview and other neighborhoods as well.  I have not seen where this problem has been tracked down yet, but I sure would like to know.

One of my sims got it and when I checked his file there were half a dozen furious reverses one after the other (and since I'd only just created this family and moved them in, he hadn't had time to fall out with more than one of the three visitors!  And although he had a minus score with them, he wasn't actually furious at all!

I hadn't seen this in Veronaville before and I've played a lot but,Isabella just bought a restaurant and whenever they would show the menu to someone the thought bubbles would be squiggles.  I don't have any custom foods on the menu--didn't want to take a chance.  Don't know why--it's not a memory.

i want to get rid of the squiggly lines for good. however my SimPE is lagging like hell..i'm using version 0.50.2120.35905

can anyone direct me to an older version? i've searched by apparently i'm at a lose. all i can find is this current new version i'm using. thanks so much!

I DL this recently - I don't know if it might help?

http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=8524&highlight=hacked+painting

I was checking my Sims' memories with SimsPE and found over half of them were invisible gossip memories from other sims!  I have JMP's Director's Cut for OFB installed, and I thought there was a hack in there that took care of this? 

For example:  I'm looking at Noah's memories.  Someone has gossiped to Noah about Leia's recent infielity on her husband John.  So, Noah has 4 memories about the event!  "Leia cheated on John." "John caught Leia cheating".  "Leia lost John as a best friend." "John lost Leia as a best friend."  He even has one listed as a "Toddler Skill Token:  Gossip about Jasmine Olshlinksi"!

So, would these memories be causing squiggly lines?  And, will removing them damage my neighborhood?  Because, so far, I haven't experienced any problems with this hood, and it's 8 months old, my longest surviving hood ever.  :)

Don't delete the skill token but you can delete the invisible memories.  And no, it's not these types of memories that cause the squiggly lines - I believe it's the ones that don't have an owner (you can see who owns the memory in SimPE).

Great!  :)  Thank you, Maxon.  :)

Same thing happening with me.  I've never seen the squiggly lines before...only in my new OFB restaurant.  Everytime a customer starts browsing the menu...the squigglies appear for a moment, then their favorite food appears in a thought bubble.

(http://i3.tinypic.com/zirbds.jpg)

I wasn't sure if this was happening because I forgot to plan the menu or not.  I thought I did plan it.  I tried to be careful about putting custom foods on there, but I may have...don't know.

Any suggestions on what I should do about this? 

--green