More Awesome Than You!

I am currently considering a hack rating system, with soon-to-be-made graphics, based on the terror scale, as follows:

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/red.gif): Your game needs this to avoid bugs that cause lots, sims, and even entire neighborhoods corrupted/killed/turned into a BFBVFS. EX: Portal Deletion Fixes, Greek House Amnesia (Uni V1.0).

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/orange.gif): Your game needs this to avoid bugs which will cause (sometimes seemingly random)forced resets and jumping, or data corruption that is reversible or has not yet exhibited extremely destructive side effects. EX: Vampire Fixes, Clothing Event Fix.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/yellow.gif): Certain avoidable aspects of the game will not function correctly due to bugs and may produce undesirable effects, data corruption, and/or loss. EX: Dorm Billing Fix, Piano Fix, Pool Light Fix, No Corrupt Death, Lot Debugger

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/blue.gif): Addresses stupid and annoying behavior associated with aspects of the game, which are not major bugs, are still annoying. EX: Crumplebottom Fix, Coffee Cup Hack, Phone Hack

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/green.gif): Addresses flavor-related aspects of the game. May make your game shinier but is not necessarily required for preservation of sanity. EX: PregForAll, Macrotastics, No20Khandout.

Ideally, it can be applied to the contents of the entire site.

Thank you this is great.  ;D

Seriously, I'd like to see it as a site-wide system, with twojeffs and Crammyboy participating as well.  It sounds like a good system.

I'd really like that too.

I'm new to downloading hacks from here and when I just downloaded the entire NL MATY zip I was so confused as to what did what, and what I really needed and what I didn't even want at all.. Luckily I found the "hacks description" which tells which does what, but still, I'd like to know what's optional and what's definitely needed.

I'd certainly go along with that!  Good idea, JM!

Very good idea ;D

Awesome idea. :)

Great idea, go for it!

This looks to be an excellent idea.

Great idea, and would be very helpful for anyone wanting to know just exactly which ones carry the most importance for keeping their game from going nuclear!

*jumping on the bandwagon*

I really like the idea. There are some hacks that I'm not too interested in because they don't suit my game play style, but I would include them if they were critical fixes (and I was just too unawesome to realize it). Considering there are many of us that aren't as awesome as el presidente, it would help to know whether the modder considered the hack an enhancement or a necessary fix.

I don't think that it's any great secret about some of my messes, so yeh, I would like to see some sort of rating system.  2nite for example, my sims froze...I let them go thinking that it's not all roses, all Sims must die eventually,  (well I couldn't do much else as it wouldn't even let me return to the neighborhood), but even when they were at critical levels, no Reaper.  So maybe what you are proposing would help things like that occuring.

Crap. Are we on DefCon Red already, JM?

This is perfect!  I'll be able to create yet more sub folders.  Organization here I come

Annoyances will be the top of my list.  I re-installed sims a week ago with no hacks/cc and tried playing.  I lasted like umm 15 mins!  

The hack rating system is a fantastic idea, it will be so much easier to get the fixes/hacks we need.

Good idea. I think this would be very useful for people.

Great. Start applying the Terror Scale to your existing stuff using the guidelines as above. Most Critical hacks probably fall into the Red (permanent data corruption) or Orange categories. More esoteric bugs that come up slightly less often in Yellow, Annoyances in blue, and all the weird flavor-mods in Green.

This is an awesome idea JM but then we have come to expect the awesome from you, oh fearless leader.

Superb. Simply Superb.

Thank You This Is Great!

Awesome idea, now I know which one to download right away. :)

What a very Awesome idea! Thank you!

What?  No Blackwatch Plaid?  How dull.

Dear me could the ass-kissing get much worse?
Watch this space!!!

In which level do we need to get out the duct tape?

But seriously, thank you for this.  I don't like using hacks, but the fiery ball doesn't appeal to me either.

Don't green and blue need to be swapped to correspond with the color spectrum, or am I just crazy?

I guess because green is a more neutral color...

I am very glad to see the groups.

But I am too lazy - I would like to see the "red-group hacks" in one group, not to search IF they belong there. Thus we shall have "group colors".

Awesome idea! This would help me out quite a bit. Thanks Most Awesome One!  ;D

You're not crazy, at least in this sense. That immediately struck me when I first saw it, also. Nonetheless, that's how the actual Terror Scale is.

Yeah . . . it's taken Americans five years to understand the Terror Scale, and even then it's iffy. Doesn't really matter, since they're never actually going to use blue or green. This isn't quite as bad, because none of them are named "elevated."

EDIT: And it's so quintessentially Pescado to devise a rating system that makes me go "Aagh! My eyes!" every time I see it. Yeeowch. Go easy on the technicolor, wouldja?

I wouldn't really say one can "understand" the terror scale: There's no point to it. Vague warnings with no useful response that people can take serve no purpose except to cause more terror. If anything, the constant reminders of terrorists are more effective than anything the terrorists themselves can do, seeing as terrorists remain less deadly than swimming pools or even toilets. But there are no apparent warnings of swimming-pool-related terror.

Causing more terror *is* the point of it. More terror = more votes for the incumbent.

We need a color coded scale for the risk of toilet related terror.

JM I first noticed this on one of your mod download threads - brilliant! Thanks yet again.

Maybe they stuck blue in between yellow and green as they are somewhat similar colours, easy to be confused in a panic?

Very useful idea, it will help us know how important (or not) a hack is to install in our game.

Great and original system.

Actually, it's a ripoff and mockery of the Terror Alert Scale. Which is a very typical MATY behavior, ripping off and making fun of things.

This is a good idea, but this hack is not working for me.
I think it may be conflicting with other images in my browser cache.

Perhaps if you use WMF instead of GIF it will work better.
I only recently discovered the MS feature to run code in WMFs, but I think we have to wait for their next innovation to get the same behaviour in GIF's.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/update/bulletins/200601.mspx (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/update/bulletins/200601.mspx)

...? Not working? There's nothing special about those, they're just regular, non-animated GIFs. Common images. Did you expect them to do something? There's no associated index, if that's what you mean...

 ;D. Sorry, that was funny.

Great idea JM. You rock my world. ::)

This is awesome. The lack of organization before was freaking out the librarian part of me, but it didn't occur to me to complain because these hacks have actually made my game fun. I'm just sorry it took me a year to discover them.

It was meant to be funny ;)
I suppose I should have put some smilies in there for the Americans ;D

Seriously though, I am absolutely gobsmacked today having found out that the MS bug in WMF files can give you a virus from just opening an image, such as when browsing.  You've got to laugh, or else you'll cry.
So those out there (like me) who don't have the automatic update feature turned on should follow the MS link I posted to get this fixed.

Of Course, Pescado's GIF images above are fine, and a brilliant idea for the site.

I don't trust "automatic updates" because they'll install godknowswhat with no oversight. And the manual updates are increasingly incooperative.

I thought you were being serious, tunaisafish.  It was hard for me to believe someone could be that ignorant, but I've heard plenty of stories.  I am relieved to hear that you were just joking.  I was just waiting for JM or someone to burninate you. ;D

Whatever it is, it surely have its place here... I always found the terror alert scale a bit crazy (since sneezing would put america on a red alert) so you making fun it is awesome!

Exactly why I don't have it enabled too.  The thought of 'MY' machine wanting to call the mothership to install patches that are likely fix one thing and break others at the same times gives me the shivers.  Incoorperative you say?  I spent the hour between my first two posts in this thread being told my browser was no good, then it needs to update IE to read this 'special' webpage, then I need to reboot because I farted, then my registration fails as I've upgraded my machine too much. >:(  Bah, I'm gonna remove the wmf stuff from the handlers.

Rainbow:
There a Techie saying; "Never attribute to malice what could be explained by ignorance."
So along the same lines; "Never attribute to ignorance what could be explained by an Englishman trying to be witty" ;)

I'm getting out of here now before I make any more a fool of myself.

My solution is to defect to Firefox. And use that Russian guy's patch later.

Now I have this image of a popup on the right-hand side of my vision every time I get in a pool saying "An omniscient being has removed the ladder.  You will now float here until you die."

Great idea, JMP!!!  Thank you so much!!  Finally a good use for the Alert Scale!! ::)

BTW:  I heard a speaker on the news this morning talking about the terrorist warnings, and calling the government "terrorists" themselves, because they are using these warnings to keep us all afraid to move forward their own desires (such as stay in power).  I thought it was a deep thought and had some truth to it.  Just thought I'd share. 

If you've seen "Bowling For Columbine," you know that Fear is the US government's most useful weapon...against US citizens.

Anyway, my husband (a truck driver) just informed me that he's been to only one place that actually displays the Terror Alert Scale, and they manufacture fertilizer. Go figger.

It does actually make sense that a fertilizer company should display it.  You can create some interesting things if you know what to mix.
A schoolfriend used to make smoke effects with them.  Note: I deliberately didn't use the B-word, as I don't want Pescado' bunker being raided by the EnEssEye  ;D

I don't think we have any kind of public alert system here in the UK.

I used to be in the military, and never did understand the securty alert status.  Yeah, I understood the range of colours 'black, black alpha, amber....', but I just didn't get why it was called the "BIKINI STATE".
I don't remember being issued an amber bikini :)
Of course, we all had black ones for personal use.

LOL!! Keep'em coming! I love British humour. <----note spelling.

Anyway, love the rating system.

Possibly something to do with nuclear testing on the Bikini Atoll? Around here, the official Bikini State is Hawaii.

I think we do in Norway, but it's called something like Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, no fancy colours or anything.

Hairfish: lol :)
You could be right.  A quick google found that the costume got its' name from the atoll.

Gwill:
I found out why we don't have one here in the UK, our Govt. doesn't want to scare us.  The conclusion of
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmdfence/518-ii/2013002.htm
The fact that Blair was soon up for re-election and campaigning that the UK was so much safer has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I don't recall buses and trains blowing up (without warning) in my neighbourhood in the decades preceding.

Obviously none of the people who designed this system had ever heard of the phrase "blue and green should never be seen without something in between" or a variation "blue and green should never be seen except in the washing machine".  If they had, they would have realised that by putting blue and green together they were creating a massive faux pas.  I can't really get worried or worked up over a scale that ignores basic fashion lol.

Seriously though, maybe blue is the next stage up because the sea can become turbulent?

Blue and green can look perfectly fine together, next to each other, providing they're done right.  Also, I've seen more color-wheel compliant color disasters than I can shake a stick at.  Brick red and bright blue just don't go together.

To be fair, the only way they could create a totally non-offensive color alert system would be to do the entire thing in shades of gray, ranging from black to white.  You know, like "Medium Gray Alert!" and "Dark Gray Alert!"  Or "Black Alert" in those really dire situations, like when your brain's been smattered against your carpet courtesy of the latest A-bomb to stop by your house.

I don't think it's necessarily an issue of offensive colors but that if this system is supposed to be effective, one should be able to tell the alert status and for many people with colorblindness, they wouldn't be able to distinguish between the green and the blue.

To me, this sounds much more like heraldry than fashion sense. In heraldry one doesn't put a color next to a color because they blend together at a distance and make recognition harder (makes sense for an alert system too, I suppose, except the next bit) - one would put a "metal" or something to divide the colors (furs debateable, tinctures frowned upon) on top and metals should really be the metal and shiny.

Except the system ISN'T supposed to be effective. And that's why we're mocking it by parodying it on MATY.

Gwill! I never realized I had a fellow Norwegian on the board! Cool!
I am from Stavanger.

I bet your name is Ingvild?

I wish.  It's a lot more Viking than that.  But too uncommon to reveal.

Scibirg is norwegian also...my grandfather's family all second generation Norwegian immigrants.  Any Testmans left there or heard of that name?
 

Just thank the gods that they didn't use blue with brown. That will never be acceptable. Hmph.

Brown allert! Brown alert!
I'd run like hell!  ;)

I don't remember what it's for, but Wal-Mart has a brown alert for something or other.

In my book, brown and blue can work together perfectly fine, providing they're done right.  It's not so much the colors themselves as the shade of the colors, really.

Shootings. 

Could this system also include an update "notification" of some sort. When a hack has been updated (for whatever reason) it's sometimes hard to figure out if the one I already have is the most resent version or if I have to reinstall it.
I'm in the Software Quality Assurance field so I can't stand to see new Development "releases" without some kind of version number/configuration management system in place.  :-X
(Do I still have my lips?)

I completely agree, Playlives.  Too often hacks will get updated with nothing said from the creator (Pescado  :-X), and it is a pain in the ass to go check all his hacks to make sure they haven't been updated.

I try to post an update notice for major changes, but remember, time I spend writing update notices is less time spent working on stuff.

I think putting the version date in the subject line (like you've been doing recently) is helpful. A quick scan of the subject lines tells you if something has been updated.

I agree, simmiecal.  Also, the ability to sort posts according to date helps, so if I see the date in the subject line has changed, it will be one of the most recent ones near the top.

Well, this is what I use to see what's been udated recently.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/nl/hacks/?M=D

Shame we can't do the same with 2J and CBoy hacks.

Yeah, I use that too, tunaisafish, when I remember to do it. ;)  Usually when I see one of the other mods has been updated, then I go back and look to see if anything else has been as well.  I discovered the RSS feed from this site through Google Desktop, and it notifies me of new posts even if I'm not subscribed to a thread, so I've seen a few that way as well.

.... ::) typical Developer/coder...never anytime for documentation

(by the way, I always thought you needed a Secretary)

Probably a wise thing to do.   Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Oklahoma City, 1995.

And would a silly color coded sign have prevented that?

Wouldn't it be sad if something similar did happen, and a silly little sign could have fixed it, but there wasn't one?

The color coding is ridiculous, yes, but reminding ordinary folks to keep an eye out and LET SOMEONE KNOW if anything makes them suspicious is important (if only the government had a way to filter through the crazy foil-hat people who report alien invasions every day). And that's what the sign-posting thing is supposedly about.

But the silly little sign doesn't fix it. The sign doesn't recommend any useful course of action that people don't already know about. "Don't do anything different" and "report suspicious behavior" is not a course of action! The terror alert scale is just there for politicians to cover their ass, claiming they're making some kind of effort, so if something does happen, they can go, "Hey, we warned you!". It also serves to keep stirring up terror so people won't forget about terrorists. After all, when was the last time terrorists did anything, and really, have terrorists really proven to be that dangerous? You're more likely to be run over by a bus than blown up in one.

I don't think we have a colour coded system in Australia but I do remember the 'stay alert but not alarmed' ads that were everywhere.  Unfortunately they didn't work and they had to put a stop to the anonymous 1800 number as people were dobbing in others they didn't like for 'suspicious' behaviour.  There was also a story circulating about a woman reporting a white panel van across the road from her house as suspicious...it turned out to be a plumber out on a call.

/me hides behind her all-powerful anti terrorism defense-fridge-magnet

That fridge magnet will protect me even from JM and his tank!

We have a boring set of levels without colours as far as I know - low, medium, high and extreme, although we only use medium. But I work for the Queensland government, so for a while when we started work and opened the department homepage we'd see a notice header saying something like "Terrorism: Orchid Alert".  It turns out that Orchid Alert was actually the code name of an anti-terrorism exercise. Which we would have found out had we ever bothered to read the notice, but we were too busy making jokes about how if it ever changed to 'Righteous Daffodil Alert' we all had to duck and cover.

This is why the 1800 number didn't work very well. If even those of us who work in large, unpopular government departments and got caught right in the middle of the public transport bomb hoax can't take it that seriously, I doubt anyone else can. I loved the posters, though.  Beware of shifty people giving each other cash or mysterious packages in the street!  And people buying inexplicably large amounts of fertilizer!  Terrorists!  Because we don't at all have thousands of people in this country producing outrageous amounts of pot or anything.

Now that the rating system is in place, I just wanted to say that I love it. Very, very helpful.

As an infrequent - but very appreciative - visitor to this site I have a related suggestion. Is it possible to flag hacks that have been updated? Currently, unless I'm mistaken, there's no way to tell if, say, TwoJeffs' "Casual Romance" or a similar hack-to-updated has been altered from its original incarnation. If I go to a hack forum page, there's a "last post" entry. Maybe there could be a "hack last updated" entry as well.

Just a thought, and the LAST thing I want to do is give you more work...unless it's a very easy thing to do. As always, thanks for all of your hard work on this site. I don't like to imagine playing the game without your collective hacks!

TwoJeffs, at least, tends to update thread titles when the hacks update. I think You'll get JM to implement a consistant system of showing when hacks update when Satan can go skiing.  :P

I've been harassing JM to implement some sort of system for updating threads, even going so far as to volunteer to do it myself because I really hate when the thread is not updated with a hack update.  :-\

Should happen now, since there is a rumor that hell has frozen over, because the Seahawks have made it to the SuperBowl....

Way to go flower power!  you think they could at least use an Aussie plant - Terrorism: Lilly Pilly Alert has a much nicer ring to it.

Funnily enough I work for Qld Government too, although I take care to hide my ID badge when I leave the building so the general public won't know :D.  I'm leaving though and Friday is my last day!!! 

Our pop up message in our department warns us not to access porn etc - I guess we have slightly different priorities - yours tries to keep its staff alive, ours tries to ensure they are behaving responsibly. 

Have you seen the great bomb alert notices next to phones?  They give you a set of questions to ask bombers e.g. what kind of bomb is it, when will it go off, how can I difuse it, what is your name and address?...and yes some people have been stupid enough to give their name & address.

I left mine on all the way home last friday.  And I wondered why I didn't get asked for proof of age when I bought wine, probably because it was prominently displayed on my pants.


Weird, my last day is also friday - my contract's up then.  And I have that same list of questions at my desk.  *suspicious*  You don't work for Justice, do you?  It's entirely possible the popup when I log on warns me about porn, I never read it...  (I do, however, refrain from porn at work.  Since our internet access is almost entirely blocked.)

Nope, I work for Health - which is why I take care to hide my ID.  you wouldn't believe the down right hostile looks I & some of my fellow co-workers were getting last year.  My contract is up on Friday too - I have been found and I quote my supervisor "surplus to requirements" lol. I have also been told to organise my own farewell party because everyone in my old team is either a deployee or moved on to a new job  :P

Ratings is an excellent idea - anyway you can make the rating obvious on the main firing range and armory screens?  That way you can see at a glance which hacks are critical fixes without having to go into the thread.  It would be particularly useful to newcomers to see the critical fixes at a glance.  colour coded titles?  icon in the title?

Sucks don't it Vilia? I"m a H grade in charge of an entire Burns-and-Plastics Unit and because two of our consultant surgeons have retired  we are faced with closuure and the loss of the service
Never trust a suit.

Well, so far it's pretty easy to search for them. Just search the hack boards for "terror/<color>".

Seeing as that can be turned into a bomb, like the one Tim McVeigh used, it doesn't surprise me.

But the terror scale is still dumb. I live near Washington DC (okay, 1/6 of the year, anyway, it's rather complicated), and whenever it goes up to orange they put "stay alert" signs on the bridges into the city... it's irritating. What are we supposed to stay alert for anyway, brown people? Traffic jams from random closings of the main roads?

Stay alert everyone, you could die at any moment, and you don't want to miss it! And personally, I think the terror alert scale is just a rip-off of lifesavers. Whenever I see it, I think, "mmm... candy"

Same here. School sucks.

Could something like this be added?


Requires :(http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/5636/gamehassims22ox.gif)(http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/5348/gamehasep12yc.gif)(http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/1589/gamehasnotep21hb.gif)
I used the maxis images.

I would love an icon shown somewhere for which game someone owned, so it was easier to help them if they post a problem.

But maybe change the nightlife one to something understandable, not a shadey pig head.

It is not a shadey pig head, it is the nightlife logo grayed out. So if that way applied to a hack, it would mean that it only needs The Sims 2 and University.

Oh, Avie - you take care of yourself ok?  It's rough out there and for a while it is probably going to get rougher ;)

btw I actually did get a farewell gift after all and it was all due to my farewell card.  I bought one for myself (as I was the last of my team to go) and put "Thanks for everything, you're a top operator" on it  :P.  Everyone I had worked with or gotten to know felt so guilty they did a surprise whip around and I got a really nice flower arrangement  ;D

Brilliant!!

This idea merits a "You can't argue with perfection!", if implemented.

Would it be possible to make it so that the rating system were searchable, so that one could, for example, go under Advanced search and search for all critical hacks?

Ah, thanks for that. Guess I missed that post.

We've got one now. I feel so proud and special.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/security/current-threat-level/?version=1