More Awesome Than You!

I had a bit of bovver in the hood last night. The game hung as I was moving a family into a new house. It was a NL compatible house I built myself.

When I reloaded the game - after rebooting my PC - and entered the house the adults had really weird want slots. Tonight when I went to a completely unrelated house, the same thing happened. I've tried deleting the sims and reloading the house.

This is what happened:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/1.jpg)

JM's lot debugger didn't give me an option to upgrade pre-uni sims, so I tried 2J's 'add want slot'. This is what I ended up with.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/2.jpg)

Any ideas?

Yes, I have the answer.  :D  I had this problem myself in several houses, and at first JM said it was due to using houses built pre-Uni.  The answer was to go into them and save them before moving in sims.  But I was still having problems, which I describe here:  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1236.msg79142#msg79142
I had an error log, which I posted there, and TJ figured out the problem, as described there in the thread.  It is because the Lot Debugger would upgrade pre-uni sims but they wouldn't have a major, which apparently the game checks for when moving sims into a new lot.  Get TJ's new college adjuster as well as JM's updated Lot Debugger.  You will have to upgrade all your pre-uni sims again, but this time you'll need to choose a major for them.  This should solve the problem.  I was so frustrated like you, and I was so relieved to find the solution!  Now about those other game frustrations...  :)

Did these Sims really go to college, or did you 'upgrade' them? If so, make sure they have a valid major set.

Other hints:
-Try enabling the debugging cheats before loading the house and see if you can delete the wants controller.
-Send them to a community lot to reshuffle wants (again with debug mode on so you can delete)
-Start a date or outing
-Shift-click the aspiration icons to manually reroll wants

I tried deleting the wants controller (I had no other choice to get the lot to load, it was called CAS - Import Lot.)  This seemed to work except when the baby became a toddler, she had no wants.  They all had the blue background shown in the first picture.  Nothing I did to try to get the wants to reroll would work, except ctrl-clicking a fear would make a want come up such as Learn to Talk, but all the others remained blank.  She had no wants, only fears, so I could not ctrl-click any wants.  Even moving the family to a different house when she was still a toddler did not fix the problem.  When she grew into a child, she appeared ok, but I was afraid something was messed up.  I've had problems down the road with this in other houses I've had this problem with as well, even when I thought it appeared to be fixed. 

It is not possible to ctrl-click or unlock the black background want slots shown in the second picture.  They are pretty much "unclickable." 

So it seems that deleting the controller does something that cannot be reversed, and I did not like that.  But it may be possible for witch to fix the problem with the new Lot Debugger.  It wouldn't hurt to try.

The black background want slots and phantom lock, as well as blue boxes, are basically graphical artifacts. They will go away eventually after your sims perform some actions to trigger more wants. Try talking to other sims, that usually gives you some wants.

I get that sometimes when I move sims to a new lot, usually all the want they have is to woohoo in bed! I send one downtown and the wants roll back ok.

thanks for the replies.

I've just re-installed sims2 & EPs anyway, simmiecal's huge Matyville crashed my video card and I've had other odd game happenings since. I'm also going to stick the patch in while it's a vanilla game.

I'll try just playing the sims and see if they roll new wants. If not I'll try the newest debugger. If those don't work I'll leave it at that. I'm too wussy to delete the wants controller Rainbow! Even if I knew how.

This Pleasantville hood is one I'm playing till I get a custom one up and running, so no big loss if it gets fubared.

My god, now I'm laughin'...I have had this before but I never thought it was a bug, I just thought that my Sims were so content, they didn't want anything else.  What a dickhead!  *slaps self in forehead* ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Not sure if this will help you, but I had the same problem with base game only so no Uni wants slots or majors. The problem did go away after a time - they'd wake up and roll something real or visit a community lot and roll something sensible.  It was mainly with sims who had no wants and fears history on that lot - moved in townies or moved out sims.  Someone did tell me that often happened when moved in townies had unachievable wants.  I rationalised it as either a)my game was fubarred anyway or b) the game didn't have anything to base the wants and fears on and chose unachievable things or blank boxes.  The fact that it often sorts itself out after the sims have been played a bit seems to support that theory.

On the other hand my hood did explode shortly afterwards as the sims ended up with NO memories at all.  That was probably my fault, but I was trying to fix real problems - grey sims, corrupt death etc etc.
I thought it was contol click that rolled the want, but there you go.

Yes, actually, it is control click.  I said shift-click because Jordi did. :P  I'll correct my post.  :)

Tupos ate bell.

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Deleting the wants controller is harmless from what I can tell, it is rebuilt all the time.

Well, taking a sim downtown worked.  ;D²

I still had to add the want slots and a want lock, but as soon as Cassandra hit the nightspots, all her wants came back.

Thank you.