More Awesome Than You!

Hrm... I keep running into these things lately... :P

Ok, so... I had the eldest sibling at Uni, and she's a Knowledge Sim, although aspiration doesn't seem to matter. Sims keep rolling up those stupid wants to have their siblings go to college as well. Fine, I say, whatever... I plan on sending them anyways so why not lock those wants. However, I'm planning to stagger them so they are at least one year apart. I moved in the next eldest sibling, and that seemed to work fine. The 2nd eldest is a brother and the eldest is a sister. I'm purposefully segregating them based on gender. With the help of twojeffs dorm controller hack, I'm having one dorm that is all female and another that is all male. Well, I went back to her dorm, and the want was successfully satisfied. She had two memories of her brother growing up well and going to college.

I played the brother's dorm for a year and then I moved in the next eldest brother. I played this lot for a while, and then I went back to the sister's dorm. The want for her 2nd brother to go to college was still locked. >:( The icon changed tho, it looked like his YA self instead of his teen self. The thing is, she got the memory of her 2nd brother growing up well... but this time, she did not get the accompanying memory of him going to college.

So... my questions are:

1) Does this happen often? Where sims (family members) don't get the proper memories sometimes?

2) Can I fix this in game somehow? Maybe using the puppy killer? And if so, how can I do this? Is there a way to add the memory?

3) Or... is the only way to fix this is add the memory outside of the game with SimPE? And if I add the memory this way... will the want be satisfied in the game? Or will I have to use the boolprop shift click to manually satisfy this want? :P

ETA:

4) Has this happened to anyone else? And is there a known cause for it? Or is it just one of those random flukey things that just happen? Or is it just something is unique to my game and I screwed up somehow? :P

Ste

I haven't had this happen to me.  Unless someone else has some ideas, I would say that #3 is the only way I know of to fix the problem.  :(  I don't think that adding the memory manually in SimPE will satisfy the want, and you'll have to use boolprop shift+click as you described.

I have never, ever been able to satisfy this want. Shift-clicking doesn't work either. I have a hack that eliminated it, it is an Awesome (tm) hack, but I can't recall what its name is. I'll see if I can figure it out.

Nocollegeobsession?

That's the one!

Hrm... but I have nocollegeobsession and afaik, I don't have any hacks that would conflict with it.

I was looking at the code and it calls

###
# Group = 0x7F575EBF, Instance = 0x201D
# Title = Relative - Memory Distribution by NID

which iterates through sims via

5: Set to Next: Local 1 := next Neighbor with non zero var3 relationship to neighbor ID in temp 0; true: A, false: true

Now I'm not sure exactly what non zero var3 relationship is. Does this type of Set to Next specifically search only through relatives? I mean, I assume that's what it is supposed to do according to the name. As far as I know... I'm pretty sure that, at the time, the sister and the 2nd brother did have a 'non zero' relationship. I'm pretty sure they were best friends.

I can only think of a few reasons why it would not be satisfied:

1) I totally imagined that they were best friends, and it is quite possible that they did not have a 'non zero var3' relationship. As a result, the Set to Next wouldn't have found the sister in the search...

2) The memory was set... but maybe, since I did not go to her lot... the change was not saved? The first time it happened with the 1st brother, after he transitioned, I quit and saved, and went to her lot, just to check if it would work to begin with. So, when I did it the second time... I just assumed it would work and I didn't bother to go to the sister's lot. Maybe, because I did not go and visit her lot that 2nd time, that change wasn't saved? ???

3) It's a total buggy fluke and just didn't work in this case for some crazy phantom/unknown/magical reason. :P


Incidentally... since the game only satisfies the want for sims with a 'non zero var3' type of relationship... could the 'CT - Test - Sim Goes To College' in nocollegeobsession be edited so that it checks if the sim who has the want actually has a 'non zero var3' type of relationship with the sim who is the subject of the want? Is there a way to check for this and add this check in the want? Maybe that will help reduce the occurrence of this want rolling up.

What is a 'non zero var3' relationship anyways. Does it just check if the sim is a relative and has a non zero relationship? Or is it checking if the relationship is above some threshold value. Does that mean it could show up if the relationship is negative? Maybe you could add a check to see if the sims are at least friends or have an STR >= N, some threshold that you deem appropriate. Maybe at least 25 or something. I dunno. But that could probably help reduce the clogging of want slots, especially in large families. :P This family in particular has 7 siblings, and in the beginning, the elder sibs kept having their wants clogged up with wanting all their younger sibs go to college, which is really annoying. And even when I played the eldest to the point where she added her 5th slot, it just opened up another space for yet another sibling. ::)

Ste

From "Global" (0x7FD46CD0):


My guess is there's something that breaks the "CT - Add Memory" chain every now and then. Given the overall flakiness of the memory system, there's no telling what kludges are there that deliberately break it for one reason or another. I've noticed that in general the Add Memory has been totally unreliable since Uni patch1.

Ahh... well, it looks like I think I broke it myself. :P I went to look at the memories of the rest of the family members and what not, and I think I screwed things up a bit when I did some manul editing with SimPE. Heh. This is why I hate manual editing, because I'm bound to screw things up. ::)

I had added another sibling in the game manually. I started him out as YA to begin with, and then I went and added the relationships and what not in SimPE. I also went in and added memories to the rest of the family so they had one of him going to Uni. Except, I did something very stupid and just copied the "Went to College" memory instead of changing it to "$Subject Went to College" memory. Stupid me. I don't remember exactly when I did this... but I think I did it in between the time that I sent the sister to Uni but defintely Before I sent the other two brothers to Uni. So that is probably why the memories did not get properly distributed among the other family members. However, it doesn't quite explain why the sister got a memory of One of the brothers going to Uni and not the other. *shrugs* Maybe that might have to do with my theory that, because I played her dorm after sending the 1st brother.

In any case, I went back and fixed all the memories. I will keep an eye out for what happens when I send the remaining of the brood to Uni. Hopefully it will be fixed now, and when the next sib goes in, the memories will be properly distributed.

Ste

Could it be because they only tend to get memories of the first child in a family going to college?  That's always irritated me, the fact that only the first one is recognised.  Maybe it has something to do with that?

I also read somewhere recently that if the new YA doesn't move into the same dorm, the want won't be satisfied until the other Sim either talks to them on the phone or comes into physical (pixel?) contact with them.  Did this actually happen in your game?

Also, do you have "No duplicate Memories"? I realized in another thread that was causing a problem for me. I had a woman pregnant with an alien and no memory of being abducted.

Maybe something similar with your problem, since I have the same problem as you, only having some of the teens being recognized as going to college. I've even had the parents not recognize that their child had left the nest for college and their want was still locked.

I just removed it from my game, so I'll see if that fixes the college want problem.

Well, it wouldn't technically be a duplicate memory because it would be "Brother C went to College" not "Brother B Went to College."

The no duplicate memories would be for things like "Son A got an A+" every day he comes home from school. Or "Burned Toast" each time a sim with no cooking points burns food.

I used to have problems with college memories if I moved a fresh YA into an already populated dorm.  I dn't know if that's till the case, since I never risk it anymore.

Bleh, I started a reply with a lengthy explanation of what I did, but my browser ate it somehow. :P


I don't really have evidence to support or refute this, at least not in my game. This is actually the first time that I have ever sent more than one child to Uni from the same family. When I searched through the memories of the rest of the family that was still at home, they had the 'artificially added' memory of "Went to College" that really should have been "$Sim Went to College" for this sim that I added to the family via SimPE. They had correct memories for the first sim that I moved to Uni in-game through regular gameplay.


That might be a possibility since, when I moved the 1st brother into a separate dorm, I probably did have phone contact between the sister in the other dorm. However... I am fairly certain that I also had the 1st brother call home and speak to his other sibs and his parents... none of which had memories of him going to college. BUT... I did not actually go and play the home lot. I Did play the sister's lot. Maybe... if I had gone to the family lot in Pleasantview and called him from their side, it might have made a difference? But if it requires playing the 'other side' to make sure the memory gets distributed... I don't think I had the sister contact the 1st brother when I played her dorm. I just entered her dorm, right after I had moved him in, and the want was immediately satisfied. This led me to believe that the want for the 2nd brother should have been satisfied the next time I just entered her lot.



Hrm... sounds like it might be similar... but no, I do not have that mod. However... I did stare at the code for a bit, and I saw something where, if a memory is of a certain type, it might not be generated. This might possibily be an inherit, built-in feature to prevent duplicates of certain types of memories.... I suspect that, since I had wrongly added the memory of "Went to College" that maybe the game detected this on the brothers that I moved in, and therefore did not generate them properly. And additionally, because of that, maybe it screwed up the distributing of the memory to the rest of the family members?



So... are you saying that, everytime you move a sim to uni, you use a totally new dorm? As in one that is totally unoccupied and requires the generation of new dormies? I think that would be a bit extreme, and open your game up to excessive generation of dormies... well, unless you use nodormieregen or something. In which case, you'd have pretty sparse dorms...

I did move the 1st brother into a dorm that was already occupied... but then it is still kind of weird that the sister in the other dorm got a memory for the 1st brother and not the 2nd brother.

Oh well... in anycase... since I've fixed the memories (hopefully... *crosses fingers* :P) I should be able to observe what happens when I move in the next sibling in. I looked at the code for nocollegeobsession, which checks to see if their days left in age is < 5. However, it seems that, despite the fact that I've used the elixir to rewind their days left in the teen stage, their older/uni sibs still keep rolling up these wants. So I guess I'll just lock them and see what happens next. ::)

Ste

I'm wondering if this is connected to how you don't get the Going to College cutscene if you move them into an already occupied place?  The times that has happened in my game I wasn't trying to satisfy a Sibling Goes to College want, so I didn't notice whether the older sibling got the memory.

I 've had problems with that cutscene. Every single person in a household of six wanted their own cutscene. I'm not sure how I managed it, but I somehow turned off cutscenes between two of them. That was a bad start to what would be a tedious household.

These days I use nodormieregen, but in my experience the game recycles dormies anyway, it doesn't have to create a whole new set for each sim.  I did use to just move my sims into an empty lot, watch the cutscene and save, then move them to the dorm.


That's what I've been thinking.  The stupid parents in my game seem to need to actually see their kids off themselves to realize that they've gone to college.  No cinematics = no memory (although turning cinematics off works).

I have cinematics off because my computer is technically not up to spec and can't run them anyway, so would I still need to move each child in seperately as if I expected the cutscene or could I put them all together since it's turned off anyway without the risk of lost memories?

I also have cinematics off (simply because I don't like them).  It's not the video that's important, it's the act of getting out of the taxi and doing the age spin, and they only do that when they move into an empty lot.

Hrm... when you say empty lot... you mean a totally empty lot, with no house built on it? And if you do this multiple times (i.e. moving a sim onto the lot, saving, and then moving them out to a dorm), does the game still think of it as 'unoccupied' and you get a cutscene every time? Or do you have to plop down a totally new empty lot each time?



Hrm... wait... are you saying that, if you don't view the cutscene, then the memory doesn't get created properly? I'm confused, because then you say:


So... do you mean you get the memories correctly if you turn off the cinematics? And I'm still confused about what you mean by 'emtpy lot' i.e. is it a totally empty lot with no building on it, or empty residence or dorm that has a pre-built house or dorm on it but  has not yet been moved into?

Ste

She means any unoccupied lot, be it a dorm, rental house, or empty lot.  The first teen that arrives on an unoccupied lot gets out of a taxi and does the 'spin change' into a YA, even if you don't have cinematics on.  If you move a sim from the student bin into an occupied lot, they don't get the spin change -- you just get the 'merge households?' dialog.  You also don't get the spin change if the student is already a YA, and just moving between lots.

I believe Gwill is female. ;)

I don't usually have probs with this(used to have it happen all the time).  If this is the first time that it has happened to you, then it is probably one of the many Sim quirks.  I have four vacant lots that correspont to my four greek houses.  I send the one sim in and they have the cut scene--then I plop the rest in.  I go in and have each of them call the greek house(at this time there is only one person in it)and they get accepted, then I move them one by one to the greek house.  I always do this and out of three generations in two neighbor hoods--that has never happened again---after nightlife and the Uni patch. 

D'oh!  I fixed it...

If you're playing in one of the pre-existing colleges (and not one you created from scratch) the dormies are already generated for each of the pre-existing dorms on the campus. They show up as random college students wandering around the campus, but will populate the same dorms.

I learned this because I tend to move my college kids into a dorm, then have them inducted into the Greek house where all my other playable sims are. I began noticing the pattern of which dormies showed up in which dorm. There is a definite pattern and they're already assigned to a specific dorm. I don't think you would generate more unless you create a brand new dorm on the neighborhood grid.

this always happens to me but the want is always "new family memeber". like the mom has a baby but the sibling's want isn't fulfilled.

That's more of a sadorandom behavior. What actually happens is that the game starts grabbing the first available non-residing dormies it sees and starts populating your dorm with them. If you go to another dorm, those dormies now have tokens saying they're already living at another dorm, so the game will pull from further down the list (or generate more if you don't have norespawn). If you evict everyone from the occupied dorm, those dormies still retain their tokens, so the game still thinks they live there....until you move someone else in, which resets all the doors. The game then begins pulling from the list to populate the dorm....which means it pulls THOSE dormies again, because they were first on the list, and are available again. So no, the preexisting dorms do not have preassigned dormies associated with them, but may appear to if you play them.

So wouldn't that mean that if no dorms are occupied by a playable sim, no matter which dorm I choose, it would populate it with the same dormies, right? I think that's what you're trying to say. If it is, that's not quite what I've observed with the dorms in my version of Academie Le Tour.

By the time my Sims are ready to go to college (and I'm ready to send them) they usually have the aspiration to go. The parents do too (for them). So I right-click to lock it in for both (mom and teen). Then I have then teen select "move to college" from the computer. The taxi shows up and every Sim in the house runs to say goodbye. However, no one (mom or teen) ever gets the want satisfied and I dont get the influence for either Sim. It still sits there when I continue to play the mom (and of course the teen is already gone from the house) and the now YA Sim doesn't show the additionally influence when they get into uni. What am I doing wrong?

1. Lock the wants.
2. Send teen to college. Put into a new dorm which does not have any of your playables in it. (You can send them to a different dorm or residential housing later)


You have to actually leave the home lot and physically place your teen into a dorm so that they spin and "grow up". Then the want will be satisfied. That is why you have to use a dorm that doesn't have any of your playables in it yet. If you "combine households" they don't do the proper spin thing that seems to "kick in" fulfilling the wants.

When you return to the family lot you'll see that the parents no longer have the want as it was satisfied. If they still have the locked want, then you probably didn't put your teen into an unused dorm. (The dorm can been used previously, it just can't have any of your playables in it at the time you put the teen into college).

ok - so the teen has to go into an "empty" dorm.  Do they then have to call home also?

No.  I've never had them call home, and the want for both is satisfied, usually putting the new YA into platinum, if they weren't already.

I have one dorm that I only use for the purpose of getting the wants satisfied.  Once they're there and have done the age-up spin, I immediately save and exit, move them back into the bin, and then into whatever dorm/residence I'm putting them in. 

There aren't even any dormies present on the first lot yet when I exit.  And this dorm is close to a clock that I hear tolling the hour every time I put a new sim on it!

Yep. That's the way I do it. You have to if you are interested in fulfilling all the "go to college" wants.

Yea, I do the same -- that tiny, otherwise pretty useless 5 room dorm is handy for this. I also have it setup with Inge's teleporter plus bush, so I can turn CAS YAs into custom dormies, or get rid of pre-made Maxis YAs I don't intend to play.

Hrm... sometimes necromancy isn't so bad, eh?

magicmoon, why didn't you mention that in the first place? Or was this something you newly discovered since your first post in this thread?

Probably woulda saved me a lot of time, trouble, and aggravation. Heh.

Anyhew... just to further clarify, because I need the "How to Play the Sims 2 for Dummies" version :P I've got  couple of questions:

1) Does this "empty" lot have to be a "new" lot i.e. one that has never been used before? Or... as implied by ElviraGoth, I can create create an empty lot (literally empty that is devoid of playables, dormies, or even a building) and I can use (AND re-use) this lot to satisfy the "Sim Went to College" want?

2) Does this also result in the YA transition "special" camera/movie event thingie, with the parents all the time? Or does that always have to be an entirely new i.e. never been lived in/moved in lot?

In other words, can I re-use the lot to get the special movie event thingies all the time?

If not... then can I just lay down a new lot, use that to move the sim onto, move them back to the sim bin after everything, bulldoze the lot, and repeat the next time I have more YAs move in. It would be tedious but I guess that would be the only way to ensure you get the special camera event all the time, that is if you can't reuse an "old" lot.

Oh wait, does it have to be dorm type lot? And if so, does it have to be uninhabited or is it ok for dormies to be living there?

Ste

In order to get the special event movie, or just the spin to YA if you have them turned off, it has to be an empty dorm, as in no playables currently living there.  Doesn't matter if it's been used before -- what you're doing is avoiding the 'combine households' message. So you could pick any dorm currently devoid of playables, move your new student in, get the SE movie/spin to YA, save, and move them back to the student bin if you don't intend them to stay in that dorm.

I don't know if the same is true for a rental house, but I imagine it'll work there too.  But really, it just has to be an empty dorm.

It's something I *thought* might work earlier, but it wasn't until lately that I have been able to confirm it.

What you have listed in #1 (empty lot devoid of playables) is just fine, as long as you don't have inteenimator. Inteen is made to keep teens at the teen age at residential lots on campus so that a child raised on campus doesn't enter college automatically as soon as they become a teen.

If you do have Inteen, an empty lot is still ok as long as it is classified as a dorm when you place the lot. (Use boolprop changeLotZoning dorm)

You can reuse this "initial" dorm as long as you have moved all playables out to another lot before sending another teen to college moving another teen into the lot. The key is putting them on a lot (which is a dorm if you have inteen) devoid of playables. If you have the special event camera on then you will see the parent say goodbye. If not, you will still seen the teen age into YA. You miss this event if you "combine households" and when you miss the event, you don't get the memories.