More Awesome Than You!

They tried to make it all pretty but the gender pref seems to be backwards.  Can't get a friggin answer at their website.  Has anyone else noticed this?  It is pissing me off.

Looks like they have "Woman" and "Man" backwards. :P

I'm sticking to the one I have!

It seems the old ones were more stable.  Why try to make it so fancy?  The one before this one hung all the time when I tried to save anything.  I think SimPE is great and sure there are going to be bugs but I would think *someone* would have noticed the male and female backwards thing.

From what I gathered they were so concerned with the object creation point of view that they weren't really bothered about the player's aspect.

Come on, who cares about the player, anyway?

JMP?

True.  I forgot about him. 

In all fairness, the male/female preference slider is not easily noticed when it is in error, as by default, these bars do basically nothing. If the settings are wrong, it won't be noticed for awhile. See if SimPE's result jibes with what you get on a character data dump when you select him and force an error on him.

I already did that before I posted to complain.  I also tested with Lizzlove's gender pref hack as well.  They are backwards in SimPE.  It does matter if you don't want sims autotomisly flirting with a certain gender and also if using romance mod of course. 

Why take a great thing and add all these bells and whistles no one cares about?  christianluv doing same thing with All-In-One.  Taking a great item and making it into a boated piece of crap.  Just fix the bugs.  If I want to see great graphics, I will go outside.  If I want bells and whistles I will go watch a high school band.

I was wondering what was going on when I used InSim's Personal Stats menu in the sims, and they were showing up the opposite of what I had set them to be.  For instance, I set General Buzz +1000 Woman and -1000 Man, and his sats show somewthing like -999 Woman and 995 Man!  So what others are saying about SimPE being backwards makes sense.  How annoying. 

And speaking of the new SimPE, while some things are easier, such as the Family ties editor where you can see the family trees, I don't like how the older relatives without character data now show up as Unknown with a Mr. Potato Head icon!  Someone asked about it over at SimPE's forum, and I posted that I was having similar problems, and quaxi has not responded yet.  It is rather frustrating.

Have you told quaxi of your problems? If you don't tell him, he won't know!

I emailed him today with 3 things that are annoying me. 1 of them's minor, to do with the University grades.

The one that concerns me most is shown in the screenshot below. Basically, it's now possible to use SimPE to make your sim have a relationship with itself. I know that if you use the handheld and don't have JMP & TJ's Too Many Iterations fixes that the game can run multiple copies of the same sim, leading to sims wanting to see/Play with/etc themselves - but it worries me that this option is just sitting there in SimPE for anyone to fiddle with. Does it cause horrible game corruptions? I dunno. I do know that "schizophrenic" (not really - multiple personality disorder is closer to it) sims have character files twice as big as they should be.

You can also see from that screenshot my biggest current annoyance - the fact that in the new uber-graphical user interface, the sims in the Relationship panel are sorted in completely random order. Not by last met, not by name, not by GUID. Just random. In a moderate Neighbourhood (300 characters) it can take 5 minutes to scroll through to find the sim you want to add a relationship to. Multiply this by a couple of sims, and it's just frustrating.

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Why don't you just install the old version, until the new version is fixed? I do it all the times. I have now the newest old version, downloaded only after the needed fixes were made.

It's very annoying to be all the time "beta-tester" - enough we do it with the hacks...:). And even if you write at the forum there, you hardly receive an answer...:).

If you don't have anymore the old version, e-mail me, and I'll send it to you.

Yes, as I said, I wrote him about it on his forum.

It's too bad the old versions aren't available after the new one comes out, like other sites will do, they will keep at least the version previous to the newest release available for download.  I think I will take you up on your offer gali.  I will be emailing you.

Old versions back to 0.28 are available at sf.net -> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133134

This is not good.  It appears that the latest rev of SimPE might corrupt character files.

I just did a test: I edited Meadow Thayer's number of semesters at college in the latest rev of SimPE.  It previously said "2" and I changed it to "8" with hopes of getting Meadow and her twins back to town right away so the kids could grow up.

I reloaded the game.  Clicked on the button to see Meadow's current skill levels.  The game crashed, hard.  The Windows notice popped up: "The application has crashed and will now terminate."  Repeated twice; this is consistent.  (Silver lining: It makes for a very fast way to exit the game!)

Restoring from the backup restored the game to normal operation, so the smoking gun is clearly in SimPE's guilty paw.  The only question is whether the corrupted file was the result of a software bug or an inept user; or perhaps both.

Eww, not good.  Below is what happened to me, which I posted at Quaxi's forum with nary a reply yet.  The thread was started by Zythe, who had a question about not being able to edit characters with no character data.  Quaxi responded a few times but didn't really understand the question I don't think.  Zythe's final question has not been answered by Quaxi and neither has the post by me describing the same problem.  And let me say that in the whole time I have been playing Sims, I have never had it crash my computer to the point where I had to do a hard reset.  Not even a nice little informative message like SimsHost described dumping you back to the desktop.  Nope, I was forced to wait through the whole computer bootup process as well after I finally realized that my computer was locked up nice and tight.  At least I was able to isolate the problem.

"I am having the same problem. I even had a problem with my computer locking up during the game, not just the Sims program, but my whole computer and I had to hit the reset button. I was making changes to Ripp Grunt's memories, and I accidentally changed the subject of his Potty trained by memory. I am sure it was Lyla Grunt, but it just says Unknown. So I used the hex number from his other memories for walking and talking, thinking this would fix it. Well, everything seemed ok until I loaded up the game and played for a bit, and my computer locked up solid. I wasn't sure at the time, but I think he had been caught cheating, and the game was trying to write a memory for it. After booting up my PC and the game and trying again, he was making out with a girl, so I think this must have been a memory marker too, and my computer locked up tight. So after resetting this time, I thought about what I had recently done, and I remembered what I described above. I went in SimPE and changed the three memories for potty, talk, and walk to General Buzz instead, and I had no further problems. However, I would like it to correctly show Lyla Grunt as the one who taught him. This is just one example of the problems I've encountered with not being able to see the names of the dead characters."

If you get the newest one off sourceforge, you'll notice that the archive contains both "SimPe" and "SimPe Classic". I use Classic all the time, myself. Same old UI, but with newer functionality.

rainbow, the file was "returned to sender" (Elvis, lol) - it is 2 mega, and perhaps your server doesn't pass such big files.
Better go to the URL above and download it, or send me an Yahoo e-mail (they pass big files).

I happen to favor the classic, myself. Because I'm old, and I have a long beard.

With the 0.44 version I had a lot of crashing when saving files, with the new ui it happened most of the time, with the old ui it happened every time - so I'm not sure about that either. I use 0.42 which seems to work pretty well, I prefer the old way of doing family ties and editing sim descriptions anyway but I am a huge fan of nice looking programs.

I have version 42 which is all I can get.  No matter how many times I download 44, I get 42 (not sure why I don't get 43, I've never even had a message telling me that was there).  As for the new interface, I don't have this blue one, I have the first new one that was brought in and I HATE IT.  It was bad enough having to alter the screen resolution on the old one to see the memories, with this I have to do it for everything and the text is so tiny I can't read it.  Once I found out how to go back to Classic I did, although it always opens in the new one when I want to edit files and it takes ten times as long because of it.  Sounds like I won't be even attempting to download the new one anymore if it has this many errors in it.

As for the sex preferences, what about the uncle/aunt and nephew/niece (or nice as SimPE calls it).  They've been upside-down ever since SimPE came out and STILL they haven't been altered.  I change them myself when I see them, but I often wonder what effect changing them (or not changing them) has on the game.  SimPE is a great program, but things like this shouldn't go unchanged for almost 50 releases.  Doesn't hold out much hope for the gender preference getting put right!

Okay, so I'm not crazy. I thought the gender preference meter looked backwards. I haven't touched that part of simpe since I dl'd it because it seemed out of whack. In the extended (or "more info" browser, I think it's now called) the values show up correctly, opposite of what the meter says. And I had no idea what was up with the Mr. Potato Heads. They all showed up as "elder" unknowns; I didn't realize they were deceased relatives. I have been losing character data after playing, coincidentally since the last couple of releases, like it's going out of style. Every time I go into simpe now i find two or three characters with "no character data" and have to replace their files. You think it may actually be simpe that's doing this? Then I'm going back to an older one. I think I have a backup zip file somewhere...If not, I'll try the link above.

And is anyone else still having problems with sim surgery? Every time I try to do anything other than "export", I get an error message. Gonna go check out the forum over there, although, like someone said, answers are frustratingly rare. There are a lot of unanswered posts. I couldn't play the game without simpe, though. Must get working version!

Eh, the SimPE portraits have been wiggy for me for ages. Don't really mind it, as they just tend to get stuck on a previous age group. Sort of nostalgic, more than anything.

I don't really mess with my sims in SimPE, except for dealing with corrupted memories, and messing with custom content packages. I don't mind the new UI, but it is a little trickier to work out than the old one, mainly because it's got a bunch more buttons that let you interact directly with the UI, moving windows around and such. Say, I may have to write that down, and see if I can work it out. Increasing the interactivity of the UI itself increases the complexity of using the program. Hmm.

That happens when you haven't updated a sim's appearance in the mirror since their age transition.  Since I use Pescado's clothing tool, all mine tend to be updated now because change appearance is invoked after planning outfits.

You know, that reminds me of Windows...

As part of my storytelling, I went back to a backup from the end of July so that my graduate sims were still students. The last backup I had on the hard drive here had them in semester 7, and I thought that might not be enough time to finish all the photography I wanted to do with them. So I tried to use SimPE to put them back in semester 5.

The game loaded ok and ran, but when the students went to class, they wouldn't come back! They were unplayable and off the lot, with their needs all slowly draining to red. I couldn't X them out of class, or delete them with move_objects on (because they weren't on the lot to be deleted). Moving lot brought them back, but again they went to class and didn't return.

I don't know if this is a SimPE bug or something more fundamental (like you can't just change the semester number and expect the game to send the students to the right time slot classes), but going back to the unedited July backup cured the problem.

Is there an alternative to SimPE for people who just want to edit their sims or Neighbourhoods about a bit, rather than having access to the full object editing stuff? Like SimEnhancer for TS2?

In lieu of a "thanks" button, Thanks for this useful post, Dizzy2. :)

Baratron, there actually is a SimEnhancer for TS2, now. If you don't mind forking over 20 bucks for it. And I don't know how often he updates. I think only recently it was adjusted to work with Uni.

I had that happen to me once too. I kept them alive with Merola's painting, and I finally got them back by using Inge's teleporter shrub. I still won't buy the 'Enhancer'. I distrust anything that has gotten such bad reviews about the owner not supporting the product, especially when I have to pay a whopping 20 dollars for it.

Baratron, you might be better off trying the older models of SimPe first. I have problems going onto the site where they are housed, but with the help of a friend, I was able to get the older model and it works fine. (Thanks again ZZ :D).

Yes, they simply ignore us and pretend there's no problem. Nice to see you here as well, rainbow.

Hey, nice to see you here too.  I saw you posted again.  I posted too.  We'll wait and see what happens (as if we had a choice :( ).

I don't think "they" are ignoring us - EA maybe, but Quaxi responded to my email to tell me what he's going to do about the issues I raised. If he didn't respond to the forum, that might be an issue of time or difficulty in understanding colloquial English.

I'm happy to slag off EA for not fixing some of the show-stopping bugs in the various Sims games, because they're a supposedly-professional company whose business it is to provide functioning software. But I don't think it's right to slag off the various coders who write add-ons to the game. While large companies rush out improperly-tested software all the time (and should be criticised for it), very few home coders deliberately release buggy software. Sure, slag off the ones who do, they deserve it.

I don't know how many people are involved with maintaining SimPE, but if it really is just one person, it's a labour of love for him to keep doing so. SimPE is a complex program, and the more complexities you have, the more bugs you get - that's inevitable. Also, it is difficult for coders to get involved with something like SimPE because,
being a Windows application, it runs using the Microsoft .NET framework. This means that anyone who wants to help with the coding needs to spend $BIGNUM on a proprietary compiler (http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vstudio/), which puts it out of the range of a lot of people, unless they have free access to the compiler at college or work. (This is also, I guess, why the guy who writes SimEnhancer charges money for it - he has to make back the $799 US somehow).

I won't repost private email in public forums, but Quaxi reckons that the Unknown sim/Mr Potato Head is being fixed in the next release - it occurs if you click on the Sim Browser before the GUI has loaded the sim listing. Until then, the best thing to do if it bothers you, is use Classic mode SimPE.

I don't mean to "slag" Quaxi or anyone.  I know he is doing this without getting paid, and SimPE has helped a lot of people.  I was frustrated because of a lack of response to my problem, and I guess I've gotten used to guys like JM and TwoJeffs who are on the ball and respond rather quickly.  But when I realized it had been nearly a week and there had been no response, and I heard others saying they had not heard anything from him either, I became more frustrated and vented a little here.  I also heard some comments as though Quaxi did not care so much about those of us that use the program for other things besides modding, and I became worried.  Of course, that is probably not true at all.  Quaxi has done a great service for all of us in the Sims community that want to get under the hood and tinker with stuff that we wouldn't be able to otherwise.  It is just my hope that it will continue to keep up with the changes and be a relatively user-friendly program.  Of course, I am more technically minded than some, so the degree of user-friendliness is relative.  Having good tutorials helps too.

Ok I am done rambling here.  I just don't want anyone to think I am "dissing" Quaxi.  :)

I would not like to diss Quaxi at all, especially since he's invented such an amazing program and doesn't have to answer us about anything ;) unless it's out the goodness of his heart, which so far, it has been. It's also hard when English isn't your first language, and you have to understand problems with a foreign version, you know? I saw you on ambertation again, rain, and Quaxi did respond to say he hadn't investigated the problems yet :)

Amen to the above. I hope I didn't give the impression that I was complaining about Quaxi, himself. I was only venting a bit about the forum, and I don't think he is the only one running that. Or at least that was the impression I got. I have nothing but respect for Quaxi, especially when you consider the fact that he was seriously injured yet still selflessly puts so much time into Simpe. Very few people would be so generous.

Over at ambertation.de/simpeforum, I posted a BIG clear .png screenshot of the problem taken in version 0.45j which is "the next version", available for beta testing in QA. Hopefully pictures are a universal language :)

I wish I had, as well. Too many strange errors about .net stuff not being installed when it damn well is. Only reason I installed the new version was because the one I had pulled its' "oh god! There's something terribly wrong with me and I can't open! You'll have to reinstall me again" thing that it likes to do.

Off to sourceforge for an older version for me! :(

I'm also still using the older version. I inadvertently (sort of) let SimPe install the newest version and I couldn't for the life of me get it going in sourceforge. Thanks to a friend for the boards I got the older version back, let me know if things work out for you.

I have to look around in the english forum, I'm using the german one (now there's a shocker)

This is why I keep a backup of the original dl SIMPE, after I install I put the dl in a folder used for backups, that why if I have to reload I dont have dl it again on dial up! (not that they are particularily huge or anything) I have also learned not to download any new versions of SIMPE until most of the kinks are worked out. I mean after all it is an ALPHA program not Beta, sometimes I just dont feel like testing, I just want to use. Also belonging to the QA section helps as well, seeing how the builds are progressing, known issues, what they are fixing in the next version...etc.

The new QA version has fixed this - yay :)

Quaxi has said it was backwards.  Now it just hangs when I try to save.  Hear that Robin, HANGS!  Something YOU are not doing in those green panties!!

I bought SimEnhancer for Sims1. I was totally disgusted to find that I had to go to the SimEnhancer site to get a new registration code every time I reloaded my machine - which I do up to 6 times a year approx. There was even a limit on how many codes per year could be obtained - three maybe? That's not a purchase, that's a frigging rental! I swore then I would never purchase software off this person again and have not, nor will.

I mostly use simpe for changing interests, personalities and the odd relationship. I have an older version, don't know what - I'm at work, but it works fine and I won't be updating till I know there are no bugs.

I agree 100%, witch. I would not pay for that program.

Especially since SimPE can do anything for free, and now is "prettier" too. Even DatGen owns SimEnhancer.