More Awesome Than You!

Has anyone else had this happen? The Contessa just sort of randomly bit Mrs. Crumplebottom. I didn't even know that was possible . . . but it seems to suit her. Can't you just see her saying "The light! I must flee!"

Attached are a few photos of the event. Just after being bitten, Mrs. Crumplebottom proceeded to thwack the offending vampire with her purse.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Hah!  Yeah, it suits her almost too well.

And geez, does Benjamin Long get along with ANYONE?  He's like the world's biggest asshat in my game.

Those two sims ended up spending most of the evening (until my sims left) beating each other up, and then Pong Ng(?), the other guy, would go and cry for a bit, then come back and trade shoves with Benjamin Lee a bit more. Pong later became a vampire himself.

Didn't realise Mrs C. could be bitten!  She's already upset several Sims in my game.  I was really frustrated actually, because they couldn't tell her off.  I always add communal showers to the downtown lots and TWICE she just marched into the gents and told two of my Sims off because they were in their swimwear (actually, they were naked, but perhaps she needs glasses).  What was really annoying was when Castor & Allegra's little boy had just come out of the swimming pool and she told him off.  He meekly changed back into his normal clothes.  She's also an alcholic by the way, in case anyone hasn't noticed.  And she's NOT related to the Goth Crumplebottoms, whatever Maxis may say.  Their name is Crumplebottom, hers is CrumpleBottom (note the capital B).  Different name, you see.

As for Benjamin Long, in my game he made 100/100 with Nina Caliente and was always swooning over her.  This was in the early days and I assumed (wrongly, I later discovered) that he wouldn't be romantically interested in an elder, as she was, so I aged him to elder.  He was the most miserable and awkward elder I have ever come across, but Nina fell for him and they got married.  When she died, I took pity on him and changed him back to adult, then promptly forgot all about him.  He's still sitting in the same house and has never been played since.  I see him wandering around from time-to-time.  I keep meaning to hook him up with Ivy Copur (who I think is his only best friend) but never get around to it.

In Uni, Mrs Crumplebottom is a Mortimer relative (sister or cousin, don't remember). Is it the same relation in NL?

Yes....he kept stealing my newspaper and kicking over my garbage can (five times a day, ffs), so I drowned him.

Was there a male only door on it? Just curious if she can walk through those.  :o

Actually, the first sim I ever made married Benjamin Long and they get along great.  He's also friends with about half the neighborhood.

*sigh* this is bad.  It may corrupt your objects.package file.  I would check to see if that has happened.

In my game Ben Long (ex-Senator, currently heading toward his LTW of Mad Scientist) fell in love with Kaylynn Langerak (after she moved in with the Raptors and then moved out on her own), she saved him from death (http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20050805.html#20050807) (alot of work for eight thousand aspiration points), they got married, and they've now had twins.  He gets along well with everyone, but that's probably because I never leave him alone long enough for him to spin up any annoying autonomous actions, heh heh...     DC

Sorry if this is an ignorant question: how do we check our objects.package files for corruption?

Tx as always,
DC

From a chat on the site:

ringothebulldog (Aug 25, 2005 6:27:34 PM)
Is this the same Mrs. Crumplebottom as in TS1 (although I thought she died), or is it a distant relative or niece?

MaxisLittleL (Aug 25, 2005 6:27:34 PM)
A distant relative, although she's frighteningly similar...

Look at the modification date.  Compare it against when you installed NL or extract objects.package from the NL installation cd and compare the sizes.

Then fix the Goth tree, Maxis. Crumplebottom #1 is Mortimer's aunt and is buried in his back yard. This one is nowhere on his tree.

This probably isn't going to happen, since we cannot modify a user's data once it has been installed (reliably at least).  The new Mrs. Crumplebottom is a unique NPC in any case.  What MaxisLittleL said was for storytelling purposes.  Think about all the ancestors in the Goth tree--where do you think they came from?  It's a game and there's only so much illusion we can create.

Indeed. Sometimes we simmers lose sight of good, old suspension of belief.

Yes, there was a "male only" door on it.  She just pushed it open and barged right through.  Then again, the maids can do that so obviously she's coded the same way.  She tried to ruin a date too, bashing both parties one after the other, but luckily they were in love anyway so it was easy to get it back to where it was.

Ahh. *That's* what was causing that bug. All my sim's memory icons have gone poof. I figured it was something with the objects.package, but wasn't sure what had caused it. Then posting this wasn't just random and pointless.

Will having a Vampire CrumpleBottom mess with the game, or is it just the biting event? Exactly why does this corrupt the objects.package file? Also, will the patch make CrumpleBottom off-limits for bitage? Would that even be possible?

The NL patch is currently undergoing testing and it is unlikely that my fix will make it in for this--probably in NL patch 2.  The problem is that when she becomes a vampire, her outfit is modified, but since she's bundled with the rest of the objects, it nukes a bunch of stuff in there.  Ambitious modders could probably make a hack to see if a sim is a unique NPC (like Mrs. Crumplebottom, the Grim Reaper, the Therapist, etc.) and disallow them from becoming vampires.

I have notified some people here of the problem, but it would be good if you submitted a bug report as well (using the form on the official bbs), just to let them know that users have encountered the problem.

I dunno Benjamin Long gets along with absolutely no one in my game. as for Ms.CrumpleBottom Vampirism suits her all to well ;D

Before NightLife, I ran the game for several months with the objects.package file marked as read-only.  That seemed to prevent large amounts of weirdness and bugs.  I've now done the same thing with the NightLife objects.package file.  Is there any valid reason (other than a Maxis patch release) why this file should not be read-only?

Yep. Objects.package file has a little over 2000 more KB than it should. Am to be replacing now. And I'm going to look into how possible it is to get a vampire to bite Mrs. CrumpleBottom, and if there are any other game critical type NPCs vulnerable to this. If the Grim Reaper can be vampirified, that's a massively bad thing. Don't touch the Reaper. Too bad you can't train sims not to do things by giving them electric shocks . . .

That is an awesome idea! Unless MaxoidTom or anyone else has any word on any repercussions, I will do that too.

And what about vampires randomly biting other sims, like Brandi Broke and Dina Caliente? I've read a few posts over on the BBS about this and was puzzled. I was under the impression that a sim would only be bit if they had a high enough relationship with the vampire. I'm not really into that aspect of gameplay (have very few aliens and no zombies either) so I thought if my sims avoided them like they do the child townies I wouldn't have any other vampires than the ones that came with the game. Are these incidents of "random" biting a glitch also?

I think there may be a relationship bug. Several times (3!) I have, ina  brand new neighboorhood, had a sim meet someone that they have at least 2 lightining bolts for, and after the first contact (generally tell joke for me, but didn't keep track) they are instantly best friends and in one case both crushed.

I also noticed this did not fill the make a freind want on one of my sims, so I assume the game thought it was already set and was just updating it.

I haven't been able to make a save to reproduce, it has only happened on NL town lots.

If this is happening between vamp NPCs and townies/and NPC CAs sims, this could explain the biting, they ARE great friends.

About replacing the objects.package, I'm guessing the one on the Nightlife cd is called objects09.package since it's the closest I can find, do I just copy that and rename it or am I completely off the mark?  I've never done this before  :-\

That could cause the app to crash, depending on how robust the code is (and you can probably guess that).

If the game is crashing because it actually tried to write to a read-only file, it's probably better off that way.

The NL objects.package is inside compressed.zip on the second disc.

FYI, marking the file "read-only" has not caused a crash in Uni, I've had it marked as such for months.

Thanks so much Jordi!

I think MaxoidTom deserves another round of appreciation.

Huzzah!  Huzzah!  Huzzah!

 - Gus

Uh-oh.  I just encountered this one myself.  The file is 2,578 KB bigger than the install version, and the modification date is today at 11 AM.  I noticed the "hang out" icon wasn't showing right, and I remembered this thread.

My first indication that anything was wrong was the abnormal end of a date.  My Sim had returned from the downtown lot with his date still in progress, and then he had to go to his final - I hadn't been watching his clock closely.  This ended his date, but the "go to class" icon was a blue blob like "clean puddle."  Of course that may not be the actual cause of the file corruption.

 - Gus

Marking it read-only should be fine and is a good recommended work-around for now.  For some reason the file gets marked writable during installation (I think)--I'll have to investigate.

Yay!! Thanks MaxoidTom, that's great.  Making the file read-only was my immediate thought the first time I read that the objects file was getting corrupted. 

Hook

I understand that if you never have a playable Sim become a vampire in a neighborhood, the grand vampire will never bite any townies, so you should never have a problem.  And the grand vampire should only bite townies, and other townies who become vampires will only bite other townies, until a maximum of 10% of townies are vampires.

You should only worry if you have a playable Sim become a vampire, in which case they might bite other playable Sims.  And a potion is available from the gypsy to cure the problem if you wish.

Hook

What Hook has reported has also been my experience. One further note is that the Grand Vampires seem to be able to ignore relationship requirements, a power which goes away if they become playable characters. Not *absolutely* sure on that front, but otherwise Mrs. CrumpleBottom would have been able to reject the hypnotism attempt, because technically she can't build relationship with anyone.

For once, this is a problem that Maxis warned us about. Remember in that chat? The choice word was "viral." Too true. Like diseases, vampirism spreads like a wildfire, especially (hypothetically, going to test) in a tight knit neighborhood where everyone's friends.

Have set objects.package as Read Only.

Do we need to change it back to writeable when we install another expansion?

It hasn't worked like that in my game, the first bite was when Alvin influenced the Countess to bite a downtownie, the second was at his home when she autonomously bit him (I swear I didn't know they could do that without user intervention so I kind of panicked lol).  After that she and the Count have made a few new vamps autonomously out of downtownies.  I think once you give the vamps a taste of sim, that's when they start multiplying like roaches.

Tom
I'm glad you are still around, your posts here have helped me more than you know. ;)

If you don't have the Prima guide, check out this link for the info on vampires copied from the guide:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/thesims2/1284926.html

Hook

Sara: No you shouldn't need to change it back if they follow the pattern they've done so far. Each expansion has it's own objects.package and I believe the game will use the objects.package file that belongs to the most recent expansion installed and ignore the others.

re Vamps biting other sims: They don't just do townies, they do service npcs too. In my neighborhood that darned countess bit a waitress and so now she high tails it the hell out of there when dawn hits.  :P

I think they made the vampires a little bit bite crazy, and although they have to be very good friends to bite your sim, they are perfectly happy to bite total strangers among the townies and service npcs. And Mrs. Crumplebottom is obviously a stranger to everyone since it's impossible to have a relationship with her. Seems like they just bite anything that moves.  :P

So if we have problems with memories, should we extract all three objects files and make them all read only?

No, that should not be necessary for new expansion packs.  For patches, we should handle it on our side, but if there is ever a problem patching, you may want to make it writable and then make it readonly again after the patching process.

You should only need to extract the objects.package from the latest expansion pack.

In my neighborhood, once the virus started spreading, the Count was biting my sims (not townies nor NPCs) that were "visiting" the downtown lot while I was controlling other sims. One sim, Emma, was made into a vampire this way. When I went to load her at her lot, she was outside in the middle of the day (from the last lot save) and her needs weren't that high to begin with. Barely was able to get her inside before she turned to ashes. 

That night, I had Emma call the Count for a date - figured they could at least have dinner together after he bit her. He rejected the date and then I checked their relationship numbers. She had a 12/7 for him. So the Count didn't need a high relationship number in order to bite her.

Whenever I've tried to influence a vampire to bite another sim, the bite has been rejected if the relationship score wasn't high enough but this doesn't seem to be true for the autonomous biting that is going on.

Idiots on the BBS are claiming that this thread doesn't exist, and that we are all liars. They probably can't handle that bugs exist so freely in the game, becuase Maxis are above human and can't make mistakes, clearly.

Well tell them Bella Goth is really a vampire countess and she bit Mrs. Crumplebottom and then they'd believe it.  ::)

You found BELLA??!!!??!!  ;D

Well, of course they can't find this thread.  They probably can't afford the monthly subscription ..

Well, hopefully this can help. I've spent the last few hours trying to figure out how to test what type of NPC a person is (if any) so that I could add to the Bite Neck test BHAV a check to see if a sim is a NPC to prevent vampires (Yours or otherwise) from biting them. I finally found another social that showed how the game tests NPC type well enough for me to copy the method, and I've come up with this:

(http://beta.djssims.com/nobitenpcpic1.JPG)

(http://beta.djssims.com/nobitenpcpic2.JPG)

It basically checks to see if the person about to be bitten is an NPC of any type, and if they are, it prevents the menu from being shown. It's working great in my game, and if anyone would like to test it, here's the link to the zip:

http://beta.djssims.com/djsvampiresnobitenpcs.zip

Thanks in advance! :)

Oh great, I'll try it out. Thanks!

I wonder if Mrs. Crumplebottom is considered an npc for the purposes of preventing being bitten.

Yup, she's NPC Type 0x0026 so she's safe now. :) Thanks for testing it! :)

jfade..thanks for taking the time to figuring out a way to prevent this.  I've downloaded your hack so hopefully that will do the job for now!

I was checking out my objects.package files to see if they had been modified, and I noticed the file from the original game is slightly larger and was modified after the one from my DVD. Is this perhaps because of a patch, or should I replace the one on my hard drive with the original?

I hope this will keep my game from exploding in a massive fireball visible from Pluto untill Maxis releases a patch to fix the problem once and for all.

Pull it off the Nightlife disk, not the Uni/Original/SE DVD one.

Yes, but there are three installed objects.package files. One in the Nightlife folder, one in the Uni folder and one in the original. My installed Uni and Nightlife files are the same as from their respective CDs, but the original one isn't.

As far as I know, the game only uses the objects.package of the most recent add-on, so I don't think it matters if the original one has changed unless you uninstall both the addons. The objects.package for Nightlife includes all the stuff in the original one (remote control car, grim reaper etc) plus the new stuff (Mrs. Crumplebottom) so with the addons installed the game shouldn't even need to touch the old one.

WHy do we even need the old folders? Seems like they are dead and gone and are just taking up space. What would happen if we deleted them?

The game would probably stop working entirely as you would have deleted the game engine. Remember the little warning it gives you about not installing expansions in the base game folder?  I assume that is because if you allow the expansions to override base game functions, the game will have no way to refer back to the base function. Delete the base game folder, and you don't have a game.

Think of Sims 2 without expansions as a car, a very basic car without extras. Now think of the expansions as optional extras. Add extras on to your car and it's that much better - but take away the car from the extras, and you have a bunch of parts lying around that don't do jack.

They call a game engine an engine because it works like a car engine; take an engine out of a car to make room for a flower planter, and you may have a very interesting looking car with nice flowers growing out of it, but it sure as hell isn't going anywhere.

You can install the expansions in subfolders of the base game, but you cannot let it override the files.

Apparently how it works is that the "base game" files are used for all files where there is not an expansion one.

ROFL.  Absolutely priceless.