More Awesome Than You!

I´ve got my second toddler with 6 wants slots (no intervention from my side).
The first one was adopted and the social worker got stuck so I had to debug her, I thought it might be related to that. But the second toddler is normally born and normally aged from baby (cake) without any visible problems. In the same neighbourhood there are 5 toddlers with 4 slots.
Anyone ever noticed this effect? Known causes (game-related / hack related?). Any trouble to be expected when they go to university (should I reset them to 4 slots?)
I don´t really mind (in fact it makes it easier to satisfy their wishes ;D), but I am curious to find out how this happened.

Do you have only 6 slots, or 6 slots *AND* 2 locks? If you have multiple locks, that's a problem. Multiple slots appears to eventually fix itself after Uni, though.

Two locks at least (I did not try for more, just did my usual locking routine. Will check for more during my next playing session).
So better to revert to normal in your opinion?!
And - any known causes?

Probably. How did you intend to do that?

No idea. If your method is anything like what I think it is, probably dangling SWAF.

Good lord, your talking to a complete nitwit in specialised english TS2 terminology: What the hell is dangling SWAF???????????????????????
To the method - ??????.
Either there is a tool somewhere ( I have a faint remembrance I have seen one, but I might be wrong. TwoJeffs Collegeadjuster allows only adding, not removal of slots if I remember correctly)
or I will try if SimPE can do anything
or I will check on the ingame cheats which I rarely to never use (but I suppose there´s nothing in there)
or I WILL COME RUNNING FOR HELP TO YOU, which I think would be the most sensible thing to do from the start on!! Any chance?
You are always immensely amazing me - I did not expect an immediate answer to a 03:14am local time post!!

A SWAF is Sims Wants And Fears, a data entry in your neighborhood's files. It can be nuked in SimPE, which would cause your sims to reset themselves to 4/1. There are no in-game cheats or hacked items that can undo wants and locks.

Sleep is for wussies, and this is why I am more awesome than you.

Sleep is for wussies, and this is why I am more awesome than you.
[/quote]

Too busy smacking penguins for sleep more likely ;)

He has a script for that, so doesn't even have to watch it now...

Thanks a lot - that helped. I will try if I can handle it on my own this evening. If not - I hope little nitwit is allowed to ask for more help!  ::)


I know, I know! No one else I would come running to at this time of your day with neverending hopes of my game being saved!  :P

Did you really expect any less from the people who brought you Macrotastics? We programmers hate repetitive drudgery. We'll spend 40 hours writing a program to avoid 8 hours of repetitive drudgery. :P

Sorry to mismatch you, JM. There is an hack to restore the wants panel during game.
I know you consider it as not awesome but...
It's the InSim module of aspiration.

I am at home now and did some checking. The problem seems to be more complex than I thought at first.

1)There are three kids involved: the one who was adopted as toddler but is now child, her younger brother born in game (toddler) and a toddler from another family also born in game. So the problem must have started with the bugged adoption (the other 4 "normal" kids had their toddler-birthday before that event) - unluckily I did not take notice of the problem earlier.

2) There is also a problem with memories and lifetimewishes. The memories of the child are correct and there is no LTW. The 2 toddlers have wrong memories (like a towny having been in game for some time) followed by the few correct memories they aquired during their real life. EDIT: They also own ADULT LTW´s! (like wohoo with 20 sims)
I remember when the slots first appeared at their toddler-birthday there were wishes of an adult sim (like buying a car, earning money ..) and also two of these slot were blocked at appearence - like the lifetime-history of another sim being copied to the toddlers (some cases of sim reincarnation?  :P). Both have different wrong memories.

3) I tried to delete their SWAF´s, this reverted them to 4 slots, but those stayed empty and were not filled anymore in game.

What now? I don´know if this bug will attack all of my future babies since I don´t know the reason for this "reincarnations". Something seems to have gone VERY wrong. And I would be very happy for any kind of enlightening!

I will try this non awsome tool (forgive me, lord of all  modders :-[) to revert the bugged toddlers to normal. And then I have to wait for the next birthdays (but this will take some time, since I hate overcrowded neighborhoods).

You need to reset the wants controller for that lot. Enable debugging cheats and shift-click the aspiration icon ("grow up"). This will re-spin the wants normally, and in your case should pop up an error. Delete the wants controller, and shift-click the asp icon again. Wants should now be rolled.

You mean when I have those 4 blank slots after deleting the SWAF? But in SimPE the wants/fears file of this sim then simply does not exist anymore. Will this create a new SWAF-file for this sim?


Massssster isss alwysssss right (gollum coming creeping back). This inseminator thing cannot remove slots or locks - at least not for me. And this really IS a very unawsome tool ....

Have you tried spawning the Sim Modder through testing cheats? It has an option to reset want/fear slots/locks as well as LTW.


Just in case you don't know, though I am sure you do - shift-click on a sim and spawn it there.

It should create a new one, does so in my game anyway.

Jordi and Nec: Thanks a lot for your tips, I´ll give it a try.
I´ll report the result (will take a day or so until I have time again).

NB: Still searching for explanations what really happened. What can cause fake towny memories and LTW´s to be copied onto a baby on his/her birthday?

Most likely cause is improper deletion of a previous Sim. Eventually the game rolls up a Sim with the same ID as the townie had, and it sees wants&fears already existing. These then get assigned to the new Sim and chaos ensues.

The Aspiration-module of the InSim, ALLOW you to re-set the wants panel to the standard 4 wants. Then you can re-add the other two wants slots if you desire so.

I had this problem too. 

Seems to happen with DAC with OFB installed.  Never had the stupid issues with DAC before OFB.


I just nuked all the SWAF that didn't have owners.   It hasn't fubar'd anything yet...that is visible to me anyways....but I've also decided to stick out my 'hood until the bitter end.

I like this explanation and it sounds really very logical to me!

I now remember when I tried to debug the stuck social worker with the first child she tried to deliver she got deleted unintentionally  (I was experimenting how to separate her from the child which was fixed to her and could not be interacted with, although it was already shown as family member). Although I quit without saving something within the game must have been corrupted then.

When I reloaded the lot the social worker got stuck again with another child, but this time I had already JMs debugger tool positioned which was able to separate the child from her (interstingly neither she nor the kid had responded to boolproping force error).

Perhaps the game then assigned a wrong SWAF ID (of an already existing sim) to this finally adopted child (how does the game create the adopted kids in fact?) and the following inborn kids subsequently got wrong ID´s (in fact they have serial numbers in ascending order, there is only one towny interponed).
But this would give me hope, since those kids have high IDnumbers and are close to the end of the SimPE SWAF list.

I think deleting the few (about 10 or so) townies with higher ID´s than the kids with SimPE would not be a good idea, I seem to remember this can cause all kinds of troubles?
Or just deleting their SWAF files (I would not mind the slots of nonplayables being blank).

One more unaccounted for thing: If these files are copies from townies - why then 6 slots? This would mean these wishes, memories and LTW´s are copies from a playable sim (because only these were upgraded). I have to check on that too!

Read through pages of Insim-explanations. Downloaded INSIM OFB version. Tried to download the aspiration module, but there was no downloading option, instructions said it was included in the main version. Tried the Insim-tool on several lots, clicked on all sections and submenues but could not find the option to reduce the wants to standard. Especially could not find the option to spawn the aspiration-tool. My pie menue differs from some of the pictures there (less items, although I have all addons installed).
I will go there again and read through some more pages.

Nadira: make sure you have only ONE insimenator installed. I prefer the object edition myself as it is the least likely one to break stuff.

You must spawn additional modules like the asp module, in the object version you can find the spawn menu on the chair.

Adopted kid spawning is simple, it will first try to find a child in the adoption pool (kids taken away by the SS worker) and if this fails just randomly roll a male or female child with a skintone in the S1-S4 spectrum and with Maxis clothes from the catalog. Personality will be fixed for the first few generated Sims per session unless you've already made many new Sims or used the FFS debugger.

In case you're interested, these are some of my spawning notes:
Townies, dormies, and service NPCs (cashiers, cops, etc.) are randomly assigned a skintone in the S1-S4 spectrum. Townies and dormies will additionally roll random clothes from the default Maxis list (excluding the hidden items). Service NPCs will get assigned their uniform. Age is for Service NPCs usually set, as is gender in some cases (nannies will always be elder females, but maids can be adult men or women).

For townies the game seems to aim for the following statistics:
children: 4 (2 male, 2 female)
teens: 4 (2 male, 2 female)
adults: 30 (15 male, 15 female)
elders: 2 (1 male, 1 female).
These stats are seldom as exact (the spawning module sometimes makes too many teens or elders for example), but usually you'll end up with something like the above. Note of course that this refers to the natural spawning of one townie per lot load—new neighbourhoods start with a full load of townies already taken from the N001 template.

??? Very strange.
So, download the InSim SIM edition 2.3 universal and install it into your Sims2 downloads folder. Make sure there is ONLY one version of the InSim installed.
Play the game and enter into your lot.
Click everywhere you want in the lot, garden, floor or wathever..
You must see the voice "spawn..." into the following menu.
Then choose the "aspiration adjuster" that is the little green stool like the one the children use to step up for eg washing their hands.
Clicking on it, you should have a new menu, choose "wants" and in the following sub-menu, choose "restore panel wants".
Should works.

Thanks a lot for all that information!
Will report results (not home until tomorrow)

Finally found the "dangling SWAF" thread
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4249.
I will check specifically for that problem.
If it´s true, than I am a case of dangling SWAF WITHOUT doing DAC.

To make it easier for me to understand all that special language: Can anyone tell me what BFBVFS means?

Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space

i havent seen it.  there is a hack, i think its the baby doll at mts2 . vincents?  that will add or take away slots and locks

 :) Thanks to akatonbo for having mercy on a poor non english speaker!

Last report
1) I found 2 dangling SWAF (the last 2 on my SimPE list) and deleted them. One of these even contained 7 (!) wishes.
So the case seems proven - dangling SWAF CAN happen without DAC solely due to ingame bugs. (The lot in the bugged adoption case most probably would have been lost without using Pescados debugger).

2) Finally found the option in the INSIM aspiration adjuster (used INSIM OBJ edition). It´s "Reset Panel". All 3 kids are back to 4 slots and 1 lock and ageappropriate no LTW´s.
I have to apologize myself to the INSIM. I would not use INSIM regularily due to my way of playing the game, but it IS a well designed tool.

I thank everyone who popped in and helped me in solving the puzzle and (hopefully) restore my relatively new neighborhood to normal. I´ve learned a thing about terminology and more about the usefulness of SimPE!  :)

NB: Also found a lot of Unknown to Unknown relationships. Where were these derived off?

The sim modder can be got without a hack - you just need to use testing cheats to spawn the sim modder - I can see that it has the option to reset wants and fears, but I'm not game to try it with any of my currently playable sims.