More Awesome Than You!

Being a little nervous about installing the Maxis OFB patch, I thought I'd seek some opinions from those of you who have dared to install it. How's it going? Does it address the bugs effectively? Any new glitches with the patch? Sorry if I sound a bit anal about the patch, but I've been around the Sims games long enough to know better. :) Thanks

I haven't noticed anything, but then I also hadn't gotten any of the bugs listed in the patch either. The one thing I did want fixed (the mailbox not able to be moved without that out of bounds message) wasn't fixed.

It does reset your Sims, so make sure you have them all parked at home before installation.

I downloaded it so I wouldn't have to put up with the Stuck on Community lot bug.  I am not going to toss away the crowbar, I still need this just in case.

Did you leave your hacks in?  I was wondering also if you got any report so far from JM as if any of his hacks needs an update after the patch.

we were held to ransom last night in chat...  random kickings started and we were told they would continue until someone was kind enough to send him a patched objects package.

Andygal came through!

I would imagine that the report regarding necessary and obsolete hacks should be out soon, if it is not already and I just haven't seen it.

Ness

I haven't had any problems with the patch, but it didn't fix the one bug that was bugging me (disappearing inventory, described in another post below). I'd recommend it though just to prevent the lot deletion bug that can happen when fiddling with uniforms. That was just plain scary.

Haven't installed it yet because I haven't had any of the problems listed.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

I installed the patch and played one lot and noticed two problems --

1) the headmaster didn't come for dinner (he hadn't disappeared on the lot previously, to my knowledge). Using the FFS lot debugger to "Fix AWOL Headmaster" didn't help.

2) My sim who played the piano for 4 hours had an empty fun bar. Replacing the piano seemed to fix it :/

Granted, I installed the patch without removing hacks, so I'll have to try removing them to see if things get fixed, but so far I'm not so happy about the patch.

So Maxis didn't get the patch right either....geez. I am so disappointed in them.

Does anyone know any part of OFB that makes it worthwhile/makes it good?

There are a lot posting at the BBS saying they have had problems with their games since installing the patch.  Quite frankly I havent encountered any dramas (and I was trying to get the stuck at community lot bug) so I agree with Ziggy if it aint broke dont bother.  Apparently maxis is working on a second patch to fix the things they didnt get with the first.

I haven't installed the patch at all, but I guess that's because I haven't had any problems with vanilla OFB.

I downloaded the patch but haven't installed it yet either. I probably will this weekend, but I also haven't had any major bugs, know what to avoid (I think) not to get them and don't mind doing that, and don't feel like dealing with making sure my sims are all ok to be reset yet again right now, so I'm not in any hurry.


OFB is buggy. Pretty majorly buggy really - big things and small things. OFB is "light" content-wize (only 1 CD, lots of the items are silly stuff that one would rarely use), not a perfect implementation of the concept (really, it's missing features it should have) and all of that.

Personally I don't care. I love the EP. OFB throws the game wide-open. I believe *almost* any scenario I want to set-up I can do now. Most pretty easily. This makes it worthwhile to me. I'm fascinated and have years worth of gameplay that I can think of just off the top of my head.

There's a few things still missing, sure. It'd require some pretty major work to do a travel agency and make it feel like the sims were really going somewhere (subhoods help). That could be done, however. Transportation still has some issues (the ability to *walk* somewhere, bicycles, roller blades, ice skates and skateboards - we can't really do any of those well). I do have magic carpets and carts and wagons, and toddler riding toys, so I imagine with a little willing suspension of disbelief at least some of these could be done.

Babies and toddlers not being able to leave the house is still an issue, as is not being able to really visit your neighbors. And of course, there's still pets (even tho I hated those in sims1) and animals. I'm disappointed in the Family Fun thing. My idea of family fun would be to have a park - where kids can ride on a merry-go-round, teeter-totter, climb the jungle gym, and slide down a slide. BBQs. Things like that. I have some meshes for these things, but there are no animations for them. Really, there's lots more animations I'd like to have.

And if I'm just dreaming, I know what I'd *really* like to have most. I think what Motoki seems to want (at least as I see it) is really what I'd most like to have myself - a scripting tool. Neverwinter Nights (and other games of this ilk) provide scenario-editor type things so you can set up your own scenarios. With something like that, you could make NPCs that do things - the same way Mortimer Goth shoves you if you peek in on him or whatever scripting it is that causes Mrs. Crumplebottom to go off the deep end, etc. The tools for NPC behavior would be available. That's what I'd really like to have.

So yeah, there are still some places to go. But if I'm willing to squint a bit, I can now get almost anything I want to out of the game. All in all, I'm happy - having a good time. And NL and OFB accomplished that for me. What is it that you like best about playing and what kind of EP (or whatever) would you like to see to have that?

I found no problems and surprisingly, it didnt reset my sims.

The one house I check in on after installing everyone had reset. Only problem I saw was one of the toddlers errored 2 or 3 times. I left all my hacks in and am using JM's eye in the sky baby minder thing. I'm going to delete it and add it back to see if that stops the errors.

I have one person in the house that when she juggles coffee cups its really frightening! Her arms distort all over the place and the cups juggle about 5 feet away from her! This happened both before and after the patch so whatever causes it wasn't fixed! Another sim on the lot can juggle cups just fine!

I agree with Sagana, both NL and OFB have added so many possiblities!

I installed it with no drama.  Works great for me.

The only thing I've noticed so far is that the piano doesn't give fun again, as someone else has mentioned.  That's a major pain in the proverbials for me because lots of my kids go straight to it when they get back from school.  I'm going to try the pianofix again and see if that works.

I didn't take any of my hacks out and the only thing I have seen is the sim reset already mentioned.  I also didn't lose piano fun for some reason (must be a hack I have).  I did notice a few times though that kids playing the game for the tv thingy didn't get fun from it.  I haven't really looked into that and didn't notice if it was happening before since I usually have the kids do a skill buiding fun thing anyways after school.

All in all though, I didn't have the problems it said it fixed but it didn't seem to break anything that I ghave noticed yet or that I didn't already have a mod to fix.

The Piano has, to my knowledge, never been fixed despite claims to the contrary.

Nothing was really changed in the patch hack-wise, the only thing that beeped was the obvious one: No Servo Chores. Which you may or may not want to remove, depending on whether you want Servo doing this sort of thing even in Free Will.

Since I don't use Free Will, I'm just declaring it a discontinued product, but it should still work.

Aaand there's two of two modders.  Dang it.  That means I can install the patch.   :'(  I was hoping to mock the patch and laugh at it.

I downloaded it earlier, but I don't think I am going to install it. I am quite pleased with the way my game is running at the moment. And though I do have some of the bugs mentioned in the list, none of them bother me enough or happen often enough to warrant potentially screwing it up [more]. I don't do bakeries or salons, I don't play Maxis neighborhoods, and I don't save at owned businesses. As far as the ReNuYuSenso Orb thing, if I know a lot has one on it and I haven't played it since installing, I just enable testing cheats and delete it when I get the error as the lot loads. The only one I have really noticed is community lots loading at triple speed when you arrive - no biggie, and Besides, I can't handle servo doing chores. Also, I am sucessfully using hacks that are presumably not OFB compatible (my favorite being Dizzy's Daily/Weekly Burgler/Arsonist) and I am not going to risk giving that up for anything. I love watching the burgler torch houses far too much!  ;D

It is easier to patch than unpatch. If it ain't broke (too badly), don't fix it. Yadda yadda yadda.

 ???
What about the problem Nvidia users are having with crashes....I didn't see that on there anywhere.. :'(

I have read about that - the Nvidia problems but I have never experienced any graphical errors or crashes and I have a 6600.  Well, I take that back - the default female children's bangs cover their eyes.  Is it related to the terrains or something?  I can only assume that it is something I don't use that is causing problems.  Please, oh please don't let me find it accidentally on a downloading spree  ... 

Why can't they just get it right the first time? Is it because they a) don't listen, b) don't care cos they know we're gonna fork out lots of gelt anyways or, c) both? And knowing this why do we still suck it up? Sheesh, talk about suckers being born every day.  ::)

I have only one issue with the patch.

Before i installed it, i could select multiple members of a houslehold to go to a community lot, and leave some at home. Now, i can either go as 1 single sim, or the whole household.
I liked it that i could bring the father and the eldest teenager to the business, and leave wife and two children at home.
bah!

Righto, now I know I ain't gonna install it. Stupid Maxis!  >:(

I installed the patch, and I'm very frustrated with the results.  Prior to downloading the patch, I could delete just about anything (in the game) from recolors of Maxis items or custom content. Now, after installing the patch, I can't delete anything. I've been to the BBS, to no avail.  I sent a message to Maxis, and they replied with  a lame excuse.  I've had it!!!! I'm uninstalling OFB, and I'm going to re-install the game without the patch.  Is there anyone else having this particular problem?

I think this is a hack doing this. I think it's Syberspunk's or something. Maybe he'll update it for the patch.

Patching software isn't just a matter of going "oh, that broke?  here's the fix!" and being done with it.  The speed with which this patch came out means that it was in progress when the game shipped.  When a game goes gold, QA doesn't stop.  All it means is that the people in charge of the project felt that it was "complete enough" to ship out and that there should only be minor glitches remaining, if any.  When the patch we just received was going through QA, they were probably already looking for other things to fix and writing those fixes.  Personally, I think most games that are released need about three patches to get "right".  It's not a matter of them not listening or being incompetent, it's a matter of having finite resources to test things with.  The playerbase will always find things that are missed.

That said, there is very clear evidence that EA needs to rethink their regression testing practices, because they routinely muck that portion of it up.

Great for me, finally my takeout food store can restock!  ;D

At least they do patch. If you buy a game system game, whatever you got originally is what you'll always have, no matter how buggy it is. I like the game, so yeah as long as it's still something I like, I'm going to buy it.

Me too.  I personally am happy they don't seem to be taking the lacksadaisical (sp?) attitude they had with Uni, and they are releasing patches without the entire community of literate Simmers screaming on a twice-daily basis for months for them. 

I've got it installed but I haven't got around to playing the game since...considering how quickly this one was released, though, I really wasn't expecting it to be more than an emergency band-aid to stop entire families and lots from getting stuck or vanishing into black holes.  I was rather surprised to see how many bugs it did (allegedly) fix, many of which I hadn't heard of.

Despite what we've heard, I have a sneaking suspicion Maxis deliberately declared the mailbox and its strip of grass off-limits to prevent the lowest common denominator from mucking up their lots beyond repair by deleting critical items, so if a fix is forthcoming, it most likely won't be from them.  And as much as it annoys, I can see their point...for every reasonably intelligent player who knows that (a) you don't delete mailboxes or  garbage cans because it screws up your game, MORON! and (b) there's a buyable collection available to replace them if you do, there must be hundreds if not thousands of complete dunderheads who deluge Maxis with their wails of horror after discovering the shiny Move Objects cheat for the first time...

Re: The thousands of complete dunderheads - perhaps, but I doubt they're the majority. There's an old adage about 80% of the problems coming from 20% of the customers, and after working computer repair for a few years I'd say this seems to bear true. So yay, it may have been a (relatively) few complete nitwits who will now find some other way to screw up their game who got a useful feature removed for the rest of us (unless it wasn't just a complete muck-up by the programmers).

See since NL I've had to have the whole household or only one go to a community lot. I thought maybe they changed it because of the new "group" option in NL.

I don't seem to have that problem.  There was an household in which there was 3 members.  I use the taxi in the transportation option and choose multiple Sims.  When the taxi arrived on the lot it ask who wanted to go by having a pop-up for each member on the lot.  I sent 2 out of 3 members of that house with no problems, they were not part of a group.

I never had an option to choose which sims got to go in the taxi it was one or all.

I thought it was the phone hack that made that possible. Did you have it and then remove it to install the patch?
So the food vanishing from restocking it is fixed right? Anyone tested this?
I'm going to try deleting uniforms next time I play, though my husband and I trade computer days and his is tonight, since our aniversary is tomarrow, I think he would get upset if I played. So I don't get to test for a few days. I'm still upset over a lot poofing, anxious to know if it's fixed.

It was the phone hack that made that possible, I have no idea if it works like that anymore. If not, it can be worked around easily by having one member invite the other family members you want to go on an outing 'just for fun'. If you forget to end the outing once they get back it's not a big deal, it seems to end by itself once they go to sleep.

I've installed OFBp1 and other than the fact that my sims reset there were no problems.  Then again, this patch really didn't mess with anything that we're aware of other than lots dissapearing and the "Do Chores" option with the servo.  I also did notice that the game loads slightly quicker now (I replaced the startup music with custom, and I notice now that the select neighborhood menu pops up about 15 seconds before the song ended and it played through the entire song before.  The song is about a minute long.)

I don't know what to think of EA anymore, sometimes they do something like this and other times they won't do anything and say "It'll be fixed in the next expansion" and we know that they don't fix things with expansions.

I do have the phonehack installed, the latest version from before the MATY implosion. And no, i didnt remove any custom content before patching.

The piano was fixed for me with the first patch.  I took out the pianofix hack and haven't needed it.  The piano is still fun for my sims with the OFB patch installed, as well.

Don't know why it works ok for me and not for others, though.

I don't have piano problems anymore, either, and I haven't used pianofix in ages.

i have this problem as well - no longer able to delete recolours for custom content or maxis made crap. others are reporting this problem over at bellamobilia and a few other forums too.   this is a seriously annoying turn of events, in that i need to house clean my downloads regularly and doing it in-game is neccessary.  i guess i will have to unistall, i don't feel confident in relying on maxis to fix this.  this is definitely the last time i install a patch without first waiting a few weeks to find out what new problems crop up !

but would uninstalling OFB and then reinstalling without the patch make any difference - does the patch change core game files that would remain effected even after uninstaling OFB ?

Wow I hadn't noticed that problem but then again I didn't try deleting anything. I downloaded the patch with all my hacks  and so far have experienced nothing bad. I hadn't had any bugs occur in my game but I downloaded the patch anyway to be on the safe side..

As for resetting my Sims I have no idea. Forgetting I had  installed the patch I had decided to move one of my Sim families to another house (to the house created by BlueSoup, thanks again Blue my Sims love it!) so I wouldn't have noticed it anyway since they all reset when you do that.
 
It's kind of funny that the patch fixes the social bunny kill. Was there a problem with that ,that I wasn't aware of? I had yet come across anyone mentioning it, oh well guess I'm  worldly enough, I don't visit the BBS. They're the type that would seek out and do that sort of thing  :-\

I'm glad you like it.  I've been thinking of going on another building spree.  :)

In order for the "multiple Sims" option to show you must select the "transportation" option on the phone and then select "taxi" in the transportation sub-menu or the "invite a sim to a community lot" option, when the taxi will arrive on your lot you will have options to bring multiple Sims if the other sims are at home when the taxi arrive, if the other Sims are at work you won't be able to bring them with your Sim.

It will not work if you use the "call taxi" option.

If on the phone you do not have the transportation option something is definitely wrong in your game.

Great , keep them coming. now that I have that hack that allows you have familes larging then 8 per household, I 'm addicted to having very Large families.  That family I moved into you house has 16 members and growing. I could of course create my own but all my houses come out looking ugly. I'm not kidding,  I have no talent for building like you do. So I don't even go out and try to build them anymore. However, if you are ever in the need for a really fugly looking house, please feel free to ask me for one of mine :D

i haven't played widely since installing the patch but have 2 things, one of which was pointed out on MTS2 and now here, about not being able to delete recolours in game
the other being when sims are reading books or newspapers, they constantly lower and raise the reading material
oh, and one of my sims was about to write in her diary and clutched it to her chest with a shocked look on her face for ages and a red X over the bubble pic of her housemate. whether this is normal because her friend had done something controversial i don't know, but it's not something i've seen before

That's happened before. She's scared her housemate'll try and read her diary or something.

I installed it last night and played for a short time with no major issues, but I didn't really do anything except grow a baby up to toddler.

I have no idea if this is patch related or something else, but my sim invited a professor over and wasn't able to offer her a makeover with the salon chair.  Why should that be?

The logic of that really confuses me. I mean, why would you scribble things in a book for everyone to see, then try to pretend they won't see it? Wouldn't it make more sense to intentionally fill it with lies and deceit designed to bring about the painful and gruesome demise of anyone trying to exploit it?

btw, regarding the problem of not being able to delete recolours - would uninstalling and then reinstalling OFB solve this or do patches alter core game files, leaving the only option to uninstall the base game and all the eps ?


i did exactly that, waaaaaay back when i 13, when i found out my step-mother was reading my diary - i filled it with so much slightly plausible scandal that it drove her batshit insane.

Patchie workie fine.

I was never able to do that in the first place- it has always been that way for me. How did you get the option to choose who would go?

apparently no, uninstalling and reinstalling OfB doesn't solve it nor does removing cc, restarting the game then outting back the cc (with the intention of resetting the game)
i've not tried either because its not too much of a hassle to me to delete from the download folder with assistance from SimPe where necessary, or via Clean Installer

Well, first of all the Phone Hack has to be installed to have the option for who stays at home and goes to a community lot.  There's also certain requirements that must be met even if you have the hack, like having more than 1 sim that is able to go downtown.  I've had the thing work with OFBp0 but It could just have been a figment of my imagination since I only have about 1 or 2 houses which have more than one sim.

Can you remove the CC from the game manually from the downloads folder?  Chances are, you'll need to do it like that if it can't be deleted other ways.  If you don't feel like doing that, you could always try clearing the groups.cache and see if that does anything.

damn, that's too bad - i haven't yet used simpe to delete downloads, so i'll try that, thanks.  what's the CC ?  i haven't come across this term yet, please alleviate my stupidness...

custom content ?  doh.

i clear groups cache each time i shut my game down so i don't think that'll solve the problem of the missing dustbin

tracy....i don't actually use SimPe itself to delete anything, i use it to open a file if i don't what the hell a string of some random numbers are. i try not to have those in my game though. if i am missing some recolour then so be it. but SimPe will identify them and show a texture image so you know what it is
but you can use SimPe to delete your files, it just takes a bit too long to generate the list and i am kind of impatient ::) ;D

i'm the impatient sort myself too, heh.  i used clean installer to get rid of a bunch of recols i didn't want this morning, but it's not always possible to identify files that way.  since i installed OFB on a fresh install of the base game and have only been playing the new ep for a week, i think i will just uninstall the whole shebang and start anew without this blasted patch.  the few lots i've built are already packaged & i've only made one sim which 've barely played with.  the piss off is all the townie makeovers i've done - don't wanna have to do that again !

Oh my. I consider myself well and truly chastised. However, as the plebs do manage to sustain a pretty healthy business do you not think that more attention could be payed to the little details that make the game more enjoyable? If they did then we wouldn't be here on MATY overcoming the issues that are raised. Just a thought.

As for the phone hack... you know, sometimes I am completely overwhelmed by my stupidity. Course it allows you to choose who goes out with you! *slaps face several times*

I usually disable stuff with cleaninstaller - that way I can change my mind later if I need to.  I just leave the disabled stuff where it was.  I've only ever come across one package that caused a problem by being in the Downloads folder as an .off package (an old hack).   If you want to move them out of the way, you can also do that in cleaninstaller or else quit cleaninstaller and move all the  .off files somewhere else.

Re-installing doesn't usually fix a problem to do with downloads and CC.  If a download in My documents is messing things up, changing stuff in program files by re-installing, isn't going to make a scrap of difference. 

yah i'm aware a reinstall isn't going to fix a bad .package file - my question was will uninstalling OFB get rid of the patch, or do i have to uninstall the entire game in order to be rid of it.  does the patch for OFB alter core game files?  apparently yes.  the problem with not being able to delete recolours is not solved by disabling them, when one doesn't want hundreds of useless files laying around the game - i'm way too retentive to have a disorganized downloads folder, i need it to be tidy and only have files in it that i'm actually using *daffy duck sounds*

even if disabled .package files don't contribute to the game's load time (do they, don't they??) i don't want them in there; they're my version of wire hangers, if you know what i mean 8-)  this is why i need to get rid of the patch - it was retarded of me to have installed it in the first place, since my game wasn't broken to begin with.

neither was my game broken but i installed the patch anyway and aside from the weirdness with the reading and the recolours, i haven't had any other problems.....as yet
my replacement Uni game arrived today (a legit one) so i'm going to see if that fixes the reading thing at all, and a couple of other things i noticed which i think are to do with not having that in for a few days (i lost my disc 1. no doubt it'll turn up somewhere now ::) ). i had to do a reinstall to fix the split level tool

Sorry - mostly I post on a less awesome board.  :-[
The patch fixed things in two ways.  sometimes it created new coding which sits in the OFB folder and is used instead of the old stuff, but other times it is actually modifying files in the Uni and base game folders.  One of the guys kindly explained that to me here in another thread (a thread on the 2nd NL patch I think).  I can't see you getting the old files back during an uninstall can you?

Just because you haven't had a problem yet, doesn't mean you won't get one in the future.  Prevention is a damn sight less work than curing problems after they've happened.  I'd stick with the patch. Also any mods will assume you have the patch.


I'm coming at it from the other direction I think. If you're trying to ID what works and what doesn't disabling things is a good temporary measure.  Disable some things you think might be the recolours you don't want.  When you've ID'd them, then delete all the .off files.  My objects and hacks are all in subfolders by creator.  I'm anal about that.  The clothes are only a mess because we couldn't use subfolders when I got them.  I keep all my wire hangers I'm afraid, just in case I need them some day!


Good question!

The idea is that, since disabling files is done by the very basic method of changing the file extension from .package to .off, then, after you've gone into the game to make sure you didn't accidentally disable something you wanted to keep, it's then extremely easy to find the files that you previously disabled and delete them -- just go into your downloads directory and sort by type and all the .off files will be together. (If you find you did make an error, you go back into Clean Installer first and re-enable the file you want to keep.)

Okay, folks, does installing the patch reset your Sims?  I think Blue said it did and another said it didn't.

Had the college exam/class bug pop up last night so something is broke and needs fixing.

If it does reset everything, then I want to be sure everyone is home and in bed lest a Sim lose a grade or a job by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thanks......

Yes it does do a reset.

Thanks, Pegasys....guess I'll be playing Wee Willie Winkle tonight....

Is the thing with the speakers really fixed? I'm still having a problem with them. I can't change the music in my stores to shopping even when I buy a stereo to try to change the station on the speakers, it just stays at R&B or whatever station it was on when I first bought the business.

I don't have much experience with the speakers prior to OFB, so I may just not know what I'm doing.

I've always wondered about that too, buddha pest (love the nickname btw, lol). I can't change the music coming out of the speakers either.

Thanks, ha.

I should probably mention too, that I've tried deleting the speakers and replacing them, and they still go back to the same damn station.

The description of the patch said something about fixing the speakers defaulting to techno, but mine default to random things that vary from store to store.

The speakers will always play the station they're designed for, and nothing else, that's how it was intended. The problem pre-patch was if you used the white Shopping speaker, left the lot, the next time the lot was loaded, the speaker would play Techno, not Shopping. Only solution was to sell the speaker and buy a new one. But the patch did fix this problem.

You can't change the music on the speakers -- you have to change the speakers themselves to get a different type of music.

Ohhhh. The different colors coincide with the different stations? Well slap my ass and call me an idiot.

Thank you much.

No problem -- took me a while to figure that one out too. :)

OnG1!11! Teh patch br0keh mi game!1! *lmfao* Couldn't resist, my apologies.  I installed the patch and hated what it did to my game, as far as not being able to delete CC in my game and it completely FUBARing other objects..I don't know what I expected from Maxis but anyway.  My question is do I need to installed the damn Nightlife patch again or did they nclude it with OFB (haha)?  I really don't want to think about downloading it again with this dial up piece of shit connection but I suppose I could.  ::)

The patch made my game "glitchier". Instead of paying infront of the cashier as usual, the customers pay beside the cashier. So, they gave me negative loyalty (star with negative/minus sign) because of the delay.

Disgruntling Employees

Managing Manager's Managers

Configuring Lemony Squeezation

Preparing Bacon for Homeward Transportation

Reticulated Splines for Sale: $2000

Mitigating Time-Stream Discontinuities

Loading "First Batch" Metrics

Neutralizing Forth-Rallying Protocol

Initializing Shuriken Oxidation

Roof= Roof(1/3*pi*r^2*h)
 

By the way, you CAN delete recolors from within the game but it's not straightforward - you have to actually place the object first, then use the Design tool, click on the object, and then the trashcan icon comes up. Perfectly intuitive, eh?

(BTW, I didn't figure this out, someone named Andi8104 on the SimPE forum mentioned it.)