More Awesome Than You!

Choose your version here (http://thesims2.ea.com/update/?pid=Help_patches)

Complete list of changes:
Fixed an issue where pointed-ear dogs would become corrupt when moved into a lot.
"Get a puppy" want is now satisfied when buying a puppy from a neighbor.
Custom college lots will no longer be deleted if no Sims are living on it.
Sims will no longer have Grand Vampire's hairstyle after being bitten by the Grand Vampire.
Nightlife Game Tips are now correctly located in the Game Tips section.
Influencing Sims to fight another Sim will no longer cause non-werewolf Sims to turn into a werewolf.
Ground covers from lots can now be seen from Neighborhood view.
"Barstool by Simulated Comfort" can now be used when 3 barstools are placed side-by-side.
Werewolf, Vampire, and normal Sim skin types are now updating correctly at proper times.
Graves moved to a community lot are now movable in Buy\Build Mode.
Last member of a household can now be moved in when invited.
Selling pets to other playable Sims now cause an exchange of Simoleans.
"Rub Belly" want no longer appears for cats.
Sims can now return home after visiting the Secret Society lot.
Saved Headmaster scenario will now function correctly when Pets is installed.
Pet houses no longer move off tile after a Pet Wohoo.
Infants and Toddlers no longer appear in the "Invite Household" dialogue.
Pet born of archetype breeds will no longer lose archetype attributes.
Sims can now correctly try for baby under the maximum Sim limit.
Cats no longer can become stuck in the litter box.
"roofslopeangle" cheat will now function correctly.
Custom Sims' face will no longer revert to a default face when moving them into a lot with pets.
Turned on "HydroBot" and "SentryBot" are no longer deleted after installing The Sims 2 Pets.
Two or more teens will no longer refuse to go to school if there is no nanny or adult on the lot.
Hair no longer separates from Sims' head when werewolf teens turn into adults.
Pets will no longer visit Downtown alone.
Floor textures on stages no longer appear corrupt using the Eyedropper tool.
"Tropico Avian Sanctuary" and "FMCU 3000" objects can now be deleted if the last Sim dies on the lot.
Pets can now properly use helicopters to go to work with other Sims.
Fixed a Chance card issue where Pets were fired instead of being fined.
Sims are now able to call the fire department on an owned community lot.
Awning can now be deleted from a saved lot.
Sims will no longer lose career rank when pets retire.
Puppies and Kittens can no longer be taken to work.
Teens and Elders will no longer be promoted without meeting necessary requirements.
Customer NPCs now change into new outfits that they have purchased.
Breeding puppies now show genetic traits from their father.
Pets Bodyshop is now compatible with older expansion packs.
Extra erroneous panes in the "Glasses" category have been removed.

K, who wants to go first?

I'll go first as I'm overly-eager to test whether the roof slope cheat actually works.

I downloaded it but will wait to install. :)

I agree with Katze. I'd rather find out about the implications of the patch on the hacks first.

Installing now...

It took them long enough. I'm sure it's not a coincidence that they're releasing it less than a week before LifeStories ships and a month before Seasons, but at least they learned their lesson with the Uni patch fiasco.  ::) People do sort of insist on the last game being fixed before they go out and buy the next one.

Yay.  I guess I've got some "work" to look forward to when I get home from... uh... work. :P

Ste

I uninstalled Pets a few days ago, heh. Now I'm back to running NL with OFB.

There's a lot more bugs with werewolves (especially wants) than included in the patch, argh.
One issue I experienced was "Turn <sim> into werewolf" never got fulfilled after a successful savage attack.

Here's to hoping Seasons does not follow the Uni/Pets buggy archetype.

I'm so happy about the ground covers fix! But I'll wait for the install, maybe until JM and 2J say which mods are now obsolete. If they don't, I'll just patch the game this weekend.

Gah. I just made a new empty neighborhood and now I have to replace the original game files... and I don't know which ones I need to replace for the patch.

Does the patch only mess with the Pets expansion folder, or the original objects.package in the Sims2 folder?

I've installed the patch, but I'll wait until running the game again due to a recent game explosion (some of the files for the base game and Pets somehow got screwed up, and I had to reinstall both).

And blubug, it only affects the Pets expansion folder.

Mine says I need to reinstall Pets because of an error in installing the patch.  Go figure :)

Did you remove your downloads folder before installing? If not, don't blame EA, blame yourself.

I didn't remove mine and the game is running and working just fine...

BUT the roof slope cheat still isn't working!!

Ditto, and my ground covers still aren't showing in neighbourhood view. Bah, still got green beaches happening here *sigh*

I'm pleased to see that no pets can be Downtown alone. Strays wandering in and destroying my Crypt O'Night club was really annoying. My vampires should have attacked them, but they are more tolerant than I am.
The fridge bug is not mentioned. Neither is one of my favorites, sims having pet wants for other sims. in my Uni Delilah  thinks Roxie Sharp is a dog and wants to rub her belly  ;D

I removed the downloads folder, but still the same message.  I guess everyone's game is different, different hacks and such.  Oh well, I'm sure it can be fixed eventually.

Patch failed for me. My objects.package on disk had somehow grown in size.
Filesize was 58,888,153 bytes, should have been 52,358,858 bytes.
I restored it from compressed.zip and the patch worked.

Bekka, check your objects.package size.

 ::) Well that's definitely EA's fault. I was hoping the cheat would work now, I was looking forward to it since we were told about it, damn them.

bekka:  But don't feel alone in this, I forgot to remove my folder too, I just haven't fired up the game yet to see if I borked the whole thing or not.  Just if I did, I know who to blame.  :D

I did not remove my downloads folder or anything else prior to patching.
I only restored my modified base game folder files (wants and nhood template).

Mmmm... just had my first post-patch crash. :-\  Bianca Monty was trying to return home from a community lot via taxi, but before the car could pull up the game threw me out. Weird. I'm not sure though that it was the patch which caused my game to shut down, it might have just been the fact that I've had my computer on for so long now it's memory must be stuffed to the ceiling.

Is it wise to patch a game if you've never had any of the issues it fixes?  The only one I've seen is toddlers coming along when you "invite household" and like the house breaking "bug" with the original game I happened to like it.  I'd hate to patch it and end up fixing a problem I like, and gaining ones I don't.  ....maybe it's wise to just wait the 26 days unitl Seasons and enjoy my toddler-filled birthday parties for another month.

If it's not bothering you that much, I'd hold off and see if anyone else reports problems, and see if JM and TJ weigh in with what hacks are affected.

I don't see anything on that list about fixing the always starving birds - I know TwoJeffs fixed it, but you'd think EA would wanna give it a shot :p

Something tells me that that is supposed to be a feature, even though you end up feeding the bird more often than you do Sims.

Of course since they didn't fix it, they will say it is working as intended. ::) They rarely bother to fix the bugs JM and I have already fixed.

I suppose I should do a hackdiff to see wtf they've blown up. Joy.

I was unclear about things... but is the savage interaction supposed to turn other sims into werewolves as coded by Maxis EA? Or... is that something that Pescado added with the new and improved Fight Club?  I'm just wondering... because in the thread for my Teen Savage Hack, he mentions me using the Fight Club version of savage... and I wasn't sure how he knew that. ??? Does the regular Maxis EA savage differ somehow?


Uh... heh, you do know that the "buggy archetype" isn't exactly isolated to just Uni and Pets... well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "buggy archetype" but the other EPs (NL And OFB) were equally buggy. Heck, even the FFS SP was buggy. And so was the basegame. If anything, I would say that the "buggy archetype" merely applies to Maxis EA in general. :D

As for whether to patch or not... I suppose if your game is stable enough as it is, and you aren't experiencing any major problems... then holding off would be fine.  Realize tho, the next EP will pretty much have the changes from the patch included (or at least it should It might revert things back again after the patch... and we will most likely need a patch for Seasons anyways ::)).


As for fixes needed but not yet included... obviously Maxis EA was probably working on the patch for awhile, and they can only manage to address so many things, and not everything is gonna make it into this patch.  Be glad we got a patch at all, that actually seems to have fixes for things that I hadn't heard about.  Any other major issues, they will probably make a 2nd patch or roll them into the next EP.  In the meantime, I'm certainly thankful we can rely on fixes by modders more awesome than me. ;D



Hey twojeffs, you replied while I was in the middle of composing.  Would you be a dear and post your hack diff results between the object packages.  I'm lazy and don't want to deal with patching tonight. Plus, I want to back my data up before I patch anyways. Heh. Thanks! :-*

Oh, I hate Maxis EA features. ::)

Ste

Twojeffs fixed it? Thank fuck!

*tigerlilley runs to go download

Ste - in Litter Box (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5929.msg201222.html#msg201222) TJ says that the puppy-kitten parentage hack is the only one of his that conflicts with the new patch.

Yes, and I posted the diff file in Teh Bowels for lazy Ste's. :P

You know you have to make something in Buildmode. Because your Lotfile needs an update to show Terrainpaint after Patch !

Why does the link point to the German version of the page? ???

Try setting your language at www.ea.com

About the roof slope cheat... they didn't explain how to use it very well. I've got it working in the patched version of the game and this is how I had to do it.

Make sure you have placed the roof that you want. Type in the cheat (individualroofslopeangle [#15-75]) then you hold alt and ctrl and click the roof you want to change the angle of. It should work since thats how I got it working in my game.

So they made it work the way the Prima Guide said it would?


Whoa.  :o

Are you more shocked that Maxis got it right or that the guide did?  ;)

Ctrl & Alt, you say...must write this down in case of future forgetfulness.

By-the-by, is anyone having any problems with the bed ownership hack? Um, like it doesn't work anymore...

Shocked that Maxis fixed something to actually work the way they told Prima it was going to.

Thanks Jordi, I checked it and mine is the wrong size too.  How does one go about fixing that? I don't have a copy of those files anywhere I can get to easily (I can't seem to find them on my disks either, but then I'm not very good at this sort of thing). :-[

And thank goodness I wasn't the only one who forgot to remove it.  I felt very silly even though I recalled reading that advice as soon as I clicked run on the installer. :P

I know things don't always seem to work this way with sims games, but if I hold out until Seasons should I theoretically need this patch? That is to say, would these problems be 'fixed' (my past experience with sims patches says that's not precisely the word anyway :P) with seasons or will they be written off as 'pets problems' and not dealt with asides from in the patch?

I just don't trust them any more and the only problem I've had that's listed there, I can avoid with daily backups - I noticed the thing about breeding dogs but I only have cats now, and I can't be bothered with werewolves.

Well, insert your Pets CD or DVD in the drive.
Open it in explorer and open compressed.zip
Inside compressed.zip go to TSData\Res\Object\Objects.package
Extract this file over your existing Pets Objects.package and the patch should run.

Arina: even if you get Seasons, you still need to patch Pets.

TS2 expansions are like an onion: each one wraps around the old stuff. So you still need to fix errors in the old layers, by patching them.

Has anyone else had weird side effects of the patch?  My red headed npc maid is now blonde, yet her thumbnail pic is still showing her as a redhead.

Doesn't the lot debugger have a thing to regenerate protraits?

Arina: Most likely, at the very least, when you install Seasons, it may force you to update Pets anyway. The new EP doesn't patch the previous one because they, for a change, aren't trying to assume that you've installed every EP, plus, there's no requirement to install them in order, as there was with TS1. However, the last step of installation sometimes has been to check to make sure your entire game is updated, and forcing the patch then, if it hasn't been.

Same happened to me followed your instructions and the patch installed then.

Pushing the thank you button. :)

Same deal for me.

Forcing a thumbnail refresh did not fix it — I fixed it by vamping her and curing her with the cheats to force a full body redrawing.

Well, something is messed up in my game.  I had an adult transition post patch and she is screwed up.  Her age says 26 days instead of 5?.  I went to send her to the community lot via her car and I had to delete her and get her back(InSIM).  When she reappeared it said she still had 3 days to elderhood.  I had to manually change her back to the right age.  I tryed to send her by Taxi but she would get in then get right back out again.  She also can't use her car to go to work.  Her husband transitioned pre patch and can use his car fine for work but when I sent him to a community lot, he left but I didn't.  The teen can go to and from school and work fine but they are running out of money so I don't want to sacrifice another car.  I also had a stuck save buttons.

Has InSim been cleared for post-patch use? If I were going to choose a hack that I thought would be the likely to make things go haywire post-patch, InSim would be it.   ;)

Installing a patch is just like installing a new EP- it changes the basic inner workings of the game, and most of the time that means, at the least, that the hacks break, and a lot of times, the hacks cause the game to break. The more complicated the hack and the more it reaches in and changes the basics of the game, the more likely it is to cause problems.  That's why most in this thread are waiting to hear from the modders before installing the patch.  You can't just install a patch over all your hacks and expect everything to work.

(And no, I still haven't been brave enough to try to see how badly I screwed my game.)

Cheers Jordi, did you use boolprop to do this?  Or is there a vamp turner and cure cheat i am unaware of?

LMAO! So it stinks, I presume?

And they make you cry.

Just the testing cheats. Pause the game, the nshift-click the maid and 'make vampire'. Then 'cure vampire'.

Since the patch I've noticed that the way the game deals with inherited custom hair is somewhat changed.  I'm talking about non-binned custom hair, which is all I use in my game.  So far since I've installed the patch, I have had three or four babies age to toddler and all of them ended up bald.  Their DNA still shows correct, but I have to do a Change Appearance to assign the hairstyle that I want.

This seems to affect only baby-to-toddler age transitions.  It annoys me because part of the reason I use custom hair is to get variety in toddler hairstyles *without* having to do a Change Appearance every time.  Has anybody else seen this?

If  you use the Lot Debugger to randomize the lot before the first baby is born in each play section, they'll have random hairstyles with binned hair.

It's weird, cause I read earlier in the posts about Two Jeff''s parentage hack not compatable and I checked my Two Jeff's folder and it wasn't there.  After I wrote the post, I checked other sites to no avail, then I got persistant cause I could of sworn that I had that hack, so I went through clean installer and found it in the wrong folder.  It was the parentage hack and everything is fine now.  I went back to my back up game, but I think I could of straightened it up without it.

Mine always get random hairstyles with binned hair and I don't randomize at all. I don't like the way the hairstyle that the parent has is the only hairstyle that the child will get with un-binned hair.

Last night I played for a couple hours and it ran better then it did before the patch  :o

The game 'felt' more stable (like it did before installing Pets) and when going to a community lot I found it loaded normally again

before Pets or OFB (can't remember which), community lots would load quick - I would see the taxi or car drive up and then stop and let the sims out,

after Pets or OFB, community lots would load slower - the screen would be black (but I could hear things happening) until the taxi/car stopped and let the sims out, sometimes they would be out of the car and heading inside the place by the time I could see, no big deal but it bugged me so I'm glad it's back to how it used to be.

Thanks for the update, Sleepycat. I'm hoping that the patch will have the same effect on my game. I haven't had time to play lately, but I hope to do some playing this weekend. I'll post my findings once I do.

Several people in the forum I chat in have had baby-to-toddler hair issues. Not only are random documented townies suddenly changing hair (Dagmar Bertino a brunette, Lucy Hanby a blonde, etc..) but toddlers with black brows are tossed and come down with blonde hair and the like. A check in SimPE shows all of them have NEW genetics, whether townie children or CAS-descendents.

That's interesting.  I had a dark-skinned male ex-townie in one of my families yesterday who suddenly had red hair, even though I was positive I'd changed him to black hair weeks ago.


Do you mean they have different genetics than they had before the patch?  The SDNA information is different?  If so, that really stinks.  Let's hope it gets fixed in Seasons, at least.

Well, we've all been wondering what EA would break with this latest 'fix.' Now we know.

Well, this is why I haven't downloaded the patch yet.

Is there any hope of having a patch for the things that the patch breaks? I would like to have this dealt with before the new EP is available, if it is remotely possible.

Aside from Lucy Hanby now being blonde in my game, they've fixed being able to position/save graves in build mode in community lots - this alone makes the patch worthwhile. Other than that I created a new CAS sim ok, aged up a bunch of sims then let them transition to elder and they had sensible ages (using the age duration hack). I then aged them up to the day before death and grimmie turned up right on queue. There's also been a risky pregnancy (terminated) and two intentional conceptions via ACR, though I haven't run the pregnancies onto full term yet.

The only oddity was the guest list for one elder sim's anniversary party; I invited 3 of their children, forgetting that they were in the sim bin without cell phones having just graduated from college. They didn't make it to the party and instead the game substituted them with 3 zombified friends who I'd deliberately not invited as (in my opinion) zombie apocalypse and anniversary parties don't really mix. Three fights later, everyone had a good time and the uninvited zombies left right on cue at the end of the party with the other guests.

I've read about the hair bug but I also read that the genetics didn't change.

When I played last night I didn't notice any sims having different colored hair and I don't currently have any babys or toddlers so it isn't something I can check myself right now *has a couple pregnant sims*


Many people are reporting the hair bug on the bbs and all of them say it started after installing the patch so I expect maxis/ea will have no choice but to admit they have to fix the patch, maybe they will also fix the other pet bugs *isn't going to hold her breath*

I'm currently filling in lots of QA forms (http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php) in the vain hope that someone will a) read them and b) act on them

One of my maids turned up with blonde hair, that default style with the parting in the middle.

Is anyone having trouble with toddlers being able to use skill objects? I read on another forum that the toddler objects weren't working correctly post patch.

Hmm, I'm not having any of these problems. *knocks on wood* I just had twins babies transition into toddlers and there weren't any problems with their hair or eyebrows. I haven't seen all the townies, yet, but the ones I did see had the right hair, too. I guess I'm just lucky so far. No problems with toddler toys, either.

I have a question. Do you people who have patched the game still have your mods/hacks in. Because I'm going to install the patch but as I'm playing the game quite frequently lately, and can't even think of playing without my mods, I'm too scared.

I know Twojeff's mods are okay (except the one I don't have anyway) but should I put my other stuff in after I install the patch? Or if everybody's playing with their mods, I can try playing with mine. I also know that even if it works for everybody with their mods in, it's not necessarily going to be the same with me.

I only took out JM's experiment outfit fixer, I didn't have 2Jeff's animal parentage hack, I played all yesterday with a patched game & 18MB odd of hacks and didn't notice any problems - except for player induced ones.

Okay, maybe I'll give it a go tomorrow. I can always back up the Programfiles/Eagames Directory and put it back right? I mean, if everything goes horribly wrong :)

Back up your Sims 2 folder under My Docs, that'll get all your hoods, your CC, any packaged lots and your pics.

That's what I'm understanding from what they are posting. I haven't (won't..) installed the patch yet, or I could confirm it. I'll snag them tonight if I see them in chat and ask them to copy down the SDNA info for me.

I'm just not touching this one. I'm not even really playing right now anyway. It doesn't fix anything important we didn't already fix, and if it ain't broke...

While both my maids have the hair change, none of them have changed genetics. As mentioned before vamping and devamping them seems to have fixed it.

I just saw the Diva at a community lot and she has brown hair instead of black--I haven't noticed any other hair changes except for the toddler hair.  I am only growing up babies and adults right now and every toddler(about ten)grew up with a bald head even though their siblings who had the same hair didn't(pre-patch).  Something is screwy--probably due to the new hair changes that are coming up in seasons??  Better work on that before seasons comes out.

While I completely agree with this, didn't someone say that when Seasons comes out we will have this patch thrust upon us during the last step of the installation that checks for updates?


Ah, found the quote:

Of course we do have at least a couple of weeks before this is an imminent threat.

I've tried to fix Lucy Hanby's hair by shift-clicking on her, selecting 'make vampire' and then 'cure vampirism' as suggested and it does work temporarily but the changes don't stick. The next day when she comes to work her hair has turned blonde again and is still blonde when she shows up on other lots to clean.

Any other ideas? Please

The most important fix in the patch which no modder had fixed yet, is the stopping strays visiting downtown lots. I was growing so tired of having to continually chase them off because of furniture destruction.

Maid hair -- I'll take a look in my game if the changes stuck this time. Did you try making your selectable and having them change appearance after vamping/devamping (just change lipstick or whatever)?

Hi Jordi,

Yes I vamped/de-vamped Lucy (her hair turned red), made her selectable and gave her some eye shadow via a mirror. She left the lot early in the morning and when she came back for her daily shift, her hair had turned back to blonde again. I don't know if this helps but the eye shadow was still there when she came to work so at least part of it is working.

I have checked her dna and she is definitely still down as having red hair as her dominant and recessive genes.

That is disappointing... looks like the NPC uniform is somehow incorrectly set then.

I wouldn't be surprised if the fix for "Customer NPCs now change into new outfits that they have purchased." caused this....

There's a "lady who hates critters" painting in TJ's Visitor Controller.  Doesn't that fix the problem?  I've only used it on home lots, and not had any strays visit the lots where I've put it.  I assumed it would also work for community lots, including downtown.

I finally bit the bullet and installed the patch about ten minutes ago.  Opened my game and checked my downtown cemetery.  Was delighted to see that Mikey Bisgrove's headstone sat next to the lot garbage can. 

Mikey had cowplant birthday cake for dessert last week.  But his headstone never showed up at Peaceful Dreams Cemetery and I thought it was lost forever.  He is now in the Bisgrove family plot.

One point in the plus column for Maxis/EA.

Are those of you that are having problems playing with custom hoods or maxified hoods? Not that I think it matters, but I'm have 0 problems and play a completely custom hood.

And what are these "new hair changes with seasons"?

I've been running the game, heavily, for a few days post-patch and some fixes seem to have taken in my game. But, I too have the toddler hair syndrome. In the last case, late last night, a baby transitioned to blonde hair and black eyebrows. The genetics 'should' be black/brown.  I don't have SimPE, so I am not able to check the DNA.  My children still 'float' whilst chatting. BAH  Does anyone know if the dead parrot syndrome has been fixed?  Instead of installing the fix, I have just avoided parrots.

I have noticed a lack of strays on my community lots, though. Thank God for that.  I do not use maids on the lots I have been playing the last few days. I guess I will have to fire up the game and go to some lots with maids to see if the hair problem has also struck me. Question: is this only a problem with the female maids, or are male maids also infected ?

....yeah, definirely not touching this one.

Get TwoJeffs' caged animal fix to avoid dead parrots.

I had been mulling over installing it, but with the patch coming out, I just thought I'd wait and see if the 'brain trust' at Maxis would fix it.  I shoulda known better.

Since Maxis has successfully broken other stuff, I'm glad I didn't patch.  I'll be recommending the "prepatch" hacks until Seasons comes out, and maybe longer if I can convince myself to wait til the hacks are fixed this time!

Yeah, seriously. As annoying as the pets are at community lots, the whole random hair issue is a mess.

I just patched a few hours ago. The terrain paints problem is fixed, so I'm happy about that. But the game crashed in the first 10 minutes, now my second try and it's been running with no problems. Except for the whole gameplay being really really slow. The lots load much faster, but when they do, they crawl. It definitely wasn't like this before.

And to add one more thing. It seems my original Pets CD's exe file is sort of corrupt. Every time I fire up the game I get an error message asking me if I want to send the error report to microsoft. You know, the kind you get when you close an unresponding program.
I know it's the exe because I started playing with a no-CD exe a few months ago, and I never had any problems. Now as I've installed the patch I use the CD, and the original exe. And the problem is back.

Has anyone noticed any weirdness with household pets post patch? I have a family with three cats and one dog and everything was fine until after the patch. Now the cats sink into the floor/ground, they won't eat unless I call them specifically to do so and all of their motives are suddenly in the red all the time.

Also, I tried to visit a couple of community lots in build mode that have only EA content and they wouldn't load. I would get the loading screen for about an hour and after that I got annoyed and shut down the game. One of them was a community lot in Pleasantview and another was Fresh Rush grocery in Downtown. I've been to a couple of other community lots in both 'hoods before these and they were fine but now I'm nervous to let my sims go anywhere.

Like many of you, my redheaded maid is also now a blonde but I haven't noticed any problems with toddler toys and haven't had any new babies since the patch.

Lots of modders made signs that check for pets. Can't they be placed on community/downtown lots to prevent strays?

I stopped paying attention to strays on community lots when I realized that the damage they cause is only temporary.

I've been in four lots this afternoon, all with pets.  No problems with any of them. I have one family with an infant and will play that later tonight to see if there is any issue with the kid's hair once she spins into a toddler.

Community lots are working okay.   Maid Lucy Hanby is now a blonde, although her thumbnail shows her as a redhead.  No changes in my male maids houseboys.

Have not noticed any decrease in game play speed, which on my system is pretty decent. 

Keeping my fingers crossed...

I just took Dina Caliente Downtown to the Crypt O' Night Club (which loaded just fine) and I still had strays running amok. I did install the patch with all my cc and hacks still in (except twojeffs' puppy/kitten parentage hack, took that out first) but it installed fine and everything else is ok (afaik) so *shrug* I guess.

Since inatalling the patch Ive been getting a lot of "random" crashes(i.e game closes and I get the "this application has crashed. this application will now terminate")
The first happened when I was just in the neighbourhood screen.
The second when choosing a lipstick in CAS.
The third while a sim was returning from work.
And the last happened when I was moving a family into a new lot.

Okay. Asked around with some people at the forum, someone with the patch and SimPE experience opened their maid file and the brow color IS showing as the genetics color, people are still reporting problems with toddler tossing. Most noticable is blonde brows with CUSTOM hair. A couple people have grown students to adult in custom/hidden clothes, as well.

Okay, I finally braved a test on my game. Lucy Hanby is now a blonde, and her portrait showed her as a redhead. So I made her a friend and then took her to the vanity for a makeover. First, I turned her into a blonde, to see if her portrait regenerated, which it did. Then I tried to turn her back into a redhead, and her portrait changed, but she didn't. Obviously Maxis screwed up the uniform for the female maids so that they are all blondes- I've done it myself in OFB, when I've "set uniform" and then picked it for a new employee, and it made their hair change style and color.  :-\ But since, AFAIK, there was nothing wrong with the maid's uniform in the first place, I don't know how or why they managed to break it.  ::) Anyway, so I changed her back to a blonde so now at least her portrait matches her face, and it didn't change back or anything the next day or when I (saved and) exited and came back.

I also sucessfully aged a baby to toddler and he had hair, but since I bin all my custom hair because I also hate how the children get stuck with that hair in every generation, I doubt I'll run into the problem anyway.

The only problem I had at all is that I'd removed my downloads folder before playing (but not installing, stupid me), and apparently removing the phone hack breaks the phones? No doubt this is my fault for installing the patch over it.  I discovered this in the middle of a Christmas tree fire (I hadn't played in a couple months, can you tell?  :D) when my Sim couldn't call for the firemen and had to risk her life extinguishing it herself. I got an error on that, but afterwards, when I tried to have her call the nanny to test the problem, it didn't even kick back an error at me, she just jumped out of the action.  :-\ Replacing the hack fixed the problem, but I see I'm going to have to do a clean install before Seasons.   >:(

I removed my entire downloads folder before patch install and backed up my neighborhoods. The maids have turned blonde, as in most other games, but the one child I had transition had the correct hair color upon toddlerizing. No strays downtown for me plus my game is loading faster, both of those are bonuses. My game isn't jumping back to the desktop during title screen loading and pausing either.

Cassie Avio transitioned with black brows and brown hair.  Changed her hair color but the more serious problem is her face.

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/Cassie.jpg)

That's one sad looking kid (her older sister is gorgeous).  Guess I should be glad she didn't morph into a toddler with long ears and a snout.

I took my hacks out of my downloads folder before patching, then stuck it back in.  Phones still working properly.

Minus ten points to Maxis/EA

Not to take away from your problem there; but where did you get the cute toddler hair? ;D

LOL MsMaria!!

Of course now I want to know too. :D

Am on dialup here at home; will check and get back to you.

Thanks so much ZiggyDoodle! :-*

BTW, I'm not patching for the time-being, just to stay on topic here. :P

www.peggysims2.net/  - am pretty sure it was one of the free ones I picked up before PMBD came online.

You're an angel, thank you!  :)

Here's the link if anyone's interested.
http://freearea.peggysims2.net/hair.do?pagemethod=searchpage&direction=thistenpage&searchpage=44&pagesize=2&number=87

well... shit guys, i think i might clean reinstall without the patch
Although i could live with blonde maids even though it annoys me, borked kids and genetics is a little bit too much.  The only thing i hoped the patch would fix is any pets at all turning up on community lots, no stress there as someone said theres probably a lot of no pets signs around the place.

Once again i am immensely disapointed in EAs non caring attitude and crappy excuses for fixes.  Pets, in my opinion, was probably the biggest failure yet.  Bug infested, lacking creativity.  I mean something like the dogs could fetch the newspaper, just little shit, the little quirks that we love from the other EPs.  And cats and dogs have exactly the same animations when playing with each other?  Come on.  Put a bit of effort into it.  Remember in unleashed, instead of cockroaches there were mice and the cats could catch them?

And now the patch has caused bigger problems than it has actually fixed.  Am I alone here when I say I'm fucked off?

</rant>

edit:  Additionally, can anyone confirm if the DNA of the borked sims has *actually* changed?  Or do they just have random hair colours.

You're most welcome, MsMaria.   

Tigerlilley, agree that borked kids is bad, but I sure don't miss the dead mice being dropped throughout the house.  I hated those damned things and just hope that the moles/voles/groundhogs that destroyed TS1 gardens don't show up in Seasons.  No doubt there will probably be something equally irritating.

Cute as the pets are, I have to admit I'm as underwhelmed as everyone else. And now I'm afraid to install the patch. :/

Shame on EA. I was vaguely considering buying Seasons before, but I don't dare now. XP

Actually the mice did suck i was just giving a example of little quirks and creativity that eps used to have.

Well I'm still awed by the animations of the animals. I reckon they got lots of things just right, for instance, I love it when the pets beg at the table and the sims feed them scraps. I like how the animals can have relationships with each other, I've created several breeding pairs that ended up fighting all the time, just like real life. I'm looking forward to a greater variety of animals, not just cats and dogs, though I could be wishing on a star here.

I just tried breeding two redheads fresh from CAS in a custom neighborhood and their twins ended up with red eyebrows and black hair. :-\  My NPCs' hair has changed, too.  Derek Viblahblah the paperboy showed up with black hair.  This is the only patch I've had any problems with, oddly enough. 

Does anyone know if the dogs' ears work correctly now?  ??? Pre-patch (still haven't installed it...), my dogs with hanging ears got puppies with upright ears and vice versa. Very irritating, my salukis looked like farao dogs.  ::)

Oh, my. Can we see the parents, for reference?

 

First line of the list of fixes:  Fixed an issue where pointed-ear dogs would become corrupt when moved into a lot.

Not sure if that's the fix you refer to but they did fix an ear problem.

Here they are:

(http://www.qosmic.net/salukiparents.jpg)

and the offspring:

(http://www.qosmic.net/strangepups.jpg)


Maybe. That's why I'm wondering if anyone have noticed this issue being resolved now; I don't trust Maxis, and I'm not 100 % sure this is the same problem as mine. If not, for me it's not worth it to install the patch.

actually my puppies from floppy eared parents have point ears as well

With or without the patch?

Not really, since a) I don't use the VC, and b) it is not global: it requires placing the painting on all comm lots. I don't want to have to edit all lots to override a global change.
Besides, I want visitor playables to be able to bring their pets. Just no bleedin' strays.

I'm going to re-install without the patch, none of the listed fixes are worth the ugly offspring my sims have started spawning.
A pair of sims with the "heart" face template manged to produce a baby with tiny eyes, fish lips and balloon cheeks.
Anyone who has not yet installed the patch, I would advise you not to

regarding that hair...  anyone else having huge problems with peggys right now?  The direct link won't work for me, and the site keeps giving me connection refused errors.

Well, Inge posted a no pets sign which seems to work for me.  But hopefully, I can take that out now.

Or maybe not - these reports are not encouraging.  What's the consensus, d'you think, patch or not?

I've patched. Asides from NPC hair (and only maids thus far), no issues. I see no reason to wait... even if Seasons comes out you still want a patched Pets.

I have patched to.
But yesterday one of my Sims got autonomous friends with a stray at the HansTrap?  Lot  and could it adopt before i sent him home.  :D

Hmm i remeber it should be fixed by Maxis. No Strays in Downtown?
I visited 3 Lots, 2 had one Stray there. Prepatch i got 2 Strays at every Lot there.

I still get stray walkbys, but no longer stray visitors (destroying furniture).

I think that Inge's sign checks for unattached pets. In theory this would mean that you could bring your pets with you to community lots and still not be plagued by strays.

I have not tested this theory, though. As I mentioned before, I have ignored strays on comm lots for the most part since I learned that the damage they do on there is only temporary. And it has never occurred to me to have my sims bring their pets with them on an outing. IRL I generally leave my pets at home when I go places. :P

So what about the borked hair, Jordi? That is a bit of an issue.

Nah, it only affects NPCs when they are performing an NPC job.

And the problems people have been reporting with their toddler hair being messed up?

I haven't had those problems myself. I haven't seen (m)any reliable reports of it either.

I actually caused the toddler hair mixup myself once, when I binned all my custom hair. The Sims were wearing the correct hairstyle, but the wrong color. Best I could figure was because the GUID is the same for all colors of the same style. All the Sims that had their hair the wrong color would have the correct eyebrows. I just went to a mirror and changed the hair to match the eyebrows and thumbnail, which was still showing the correct color. Some toddlers would also transition with the wrong hair color.

Every since I put the correct colors on the Sims, I have had no further problems. New toddlers transition to the correct hair color just fine now.

Could something similiar have happened when they patched it?

POST PATCH: I haven't checked all my Sims yet, but I haven't seen the color problem...yet.

Ness, I can get to the main site but the free area seems to have issues.

As to borked toddler hair, that doesn't bother me as much as the facial disfigurement.  Won't know if that is permanent until tonight, when I can play the kid to childhood. 

What do you consider reliable then? Ziggy has one with screenshots. And I've counted more than 5 claims that the toddlers are getting mismatched hair and brows. One is on this page.

I experienced a toddler growing up bald with mismatched eyesbrows from the babies genetics, not disfigured though.
Nonetheless, I went back to NL & OFB and plan to wait it out until Seasons becomes well-seasoned and stable. :)

Which patch should I be getting?

The digital download, or the other one?

If you installed Pets via CD or DVD, you want the CD patch. If you got it through EA Link then use the Digital Download patch.

Thanks Venusy.  They could've explained it better.

I think I used the other one, does it matter?

Does anyone have a no CD crack for version 1.6.0.273 of the game? Game Copy World is outdated.

Nope. Either you'll have to wait until one comes out, or go with the DT/hider/image route.

You know, I took my cd crack out, installed the patch, and then on a lark gave the crack a try, and mine still worked.

However, one of the problems the patch was supposed to fix, a problem I'd not had (people moving in with a pet already being reset to some sort of CAS default) started happening then to me.

who knows? *sigh*

I once patched my game and put the wrong exe in (the no cd one) and the game played fine but it was as if the game hadn't been patched at all. And as for the toddler hair. My toddler aged up just fine. She was bald, but I just changed her appearance and got the right hair color when the bin loaded, and she had the right color eyebrows. No facial disfiguration at all. In fact, she looks almost exactly like her mom :)

I have no problems with toddler to child transitions.  It seems to affect baby to toddler transitions.  That is when the hair gets borked.

hmm, wonder if that happened to me. Odd though since I'd never had the problem before. I'd been moving this particular sim and her cat in and out of houses for weeks because she is my house playtester and only last night, when I tested a new one and then moved her out, did she then end up with straight blond (default maxis) hair and a different face.

By replacing the exe with the older (cracked) version, you're essentially rolling back part of the patch. You are now running an unholy hybrid.

hehe, nothing new there then, at least not for MATYers

I have just become victim of the eyebrow/hair mess-up -  take a look at this poor tyke. Why doesn't EA think of the children when they release patches with problems??  :'(

(http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c278/thalia20clio/Snapshot.jpg)

Eeew, gross. What's SimDNA say?

I just had a baby with black eyebrows transition to toddler with brown Maxis default hair.  His SimDNA is exactly what it should be (black custom hair for both recessive and dominant).  Both parents have black custom hair.  It's almost as though the game is assigning a random hair color when the baby transitions to toddler, totally disregarding whatever the SDNA says.

I have checked all the babies and toddlers in my hood in SimPE and they all have SDNA set up correctly.

Hair according to SimPe should be brown with a recessive gene of black.

I had called her Molly but I'm tempted to rename her Elvira lol.

Awesome!  :P I wonder if I should stop that.

shit patched up.
I'm scared of what would come out as

Growing up did nothing to improve the borked face.

Elder sister Sienna holding Cassie as a toddler.
(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/SiennaCassie.jpg)



And now, Cassie after she spun into childhood.
(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/CassieChild.jpg)


As this now appears to be a genetic defect, I wonder if it can be passed on should Cassie have kids. 

As soon as she's old enough to use the plastic surgery machine, do so! 

Then run her through SimPE to copy the modified face to her inheritable genetics.

You don't want those genes reproduced!

Or use Sim Surgery right away instead. That's what I'd do. Maybe export her older sister, tweak her features a bit in BS or CAS to not have an identical sim, and then use her as an archetype.

Simsurgery doesn't work for actually changing sims at last check. For some arcane reason it possesses only the capability to copy one sim that is ALREADY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD onto another similar sim. This is rather useless, since copying a sim in such a manner thus requires you to CREATE AN UNWANTED TEMPLATE SIM, which means fun-with-deleting-crap.

But I thought it was safe to delete sims from the Sim Bin if they hadn't interacted with anyone or been put on a lot? Without any extra deleting of memories etc.

Anyway, another alternative would be to use the older sister as the archetype directly, and just modify the dominant face parts perhaps.

The wrong NPC hair is not limited to maids: I also get it on my papergirls/boys. But not all NPCs are affected, police and gardeners appear fine.
Still no problems seen on Sim aging (I've had a baby - toddler- child and a child - teen transition thus far).

There's a child at my school with naturally red hair and naturally black eyebrows.

Wrong. Deleting sims from the sim bin does not fully remove them. You should instead delete them with the deleter tool from the Lot Debugger and cleanup in SimPE.

SimPE's simsurgery cannot import a modified face in any form. You would have to manually extract a LXNR and import it over the one in your sim file.

Has anyone else had a jump bug explosion since installing the patch, or am I just extraordinarily lucky?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by simsurgery not being able to import a modified face. I also don't know what LXNR is, but what I meant was using the existing older sister (as she is) as the archetype, transfer her looks onto her sibling (when they're of the same age), and possibly edit the dominant facial features in the Sim DNA afterwards. But sure, plastic surgery would probably be simpler (including modified genetics) than this method.

in my game any sim that looked as scary as Cassie, would die  ;)





I noticed the night before last that I have a Maxis/ea female vampire (the Contessa or whatever she is called) that has blond eyebrows and brown hair. I haven't noticed any other hair problems yet but I also haven't been able to play much.





I have had 1 jump since patching pets, female sim was playing the piano and husband walked over (not sure what he was going to do) and suddenly she was standing next to him. The same sim had used the same piano before with no problem (after patch) but the husband wasn't in the room so I figured it was caused by whatever he was going to do or a hack. I wish I had remembered to turn testingcheats on before playing that Lot.

Wow. I'm glad I haven't bothered patching yet.  :P

That poor, poor child. 

I am with you, dizzy...  all the way.

I may be wishfully thinking, but perhaps EA will catch these things with whatever patch goodies go into Seasons.  Was it just me or did it seem like GLS cleaned things up and made them run nicely?  I find myself wishing whoever was in charge of that would have been put on this project.

*glad she listened to Pescado*

I've played only Cassie's lot since "patching."  Naturally I made a backup of my game folder before installing the patch.  If I remove my current game folder and replace it with my backup, will this effectively remove the patch?

Am guessing it won't, so perhaps Cassie is destined to be the old maid of Pleasantview, surrounded by lots of cats.

Presuming she lives that long.   :-\

mmmm ... it looks like her cheekbones are falling out of her face.

crapcrapcrap... is it possible to, um, un-patch my game? Or would I have to reinstall?

One of my legacy heirs married and had kids with a redheaded maid... I don't want to suddanly have blond hair mucking up my photos >.< I havn't gone in game since I patched I think

I thought the issue was with NPC outfits...? So if the maid's no longer wearing her NPC outfit, she should have the correct hair, I think. One of my sims moved in and married Lucy Hanby; she still has her red hair. (The blonde maid who replaced her, however, has suddenly become a brunette. ::) )

You can't uninstall the patch. And replacing the game folder won't do it either. You'll have to uninstall/reinstall Pets. Which I finally did last night so that I at least have the option of taking out my phonehack without breaking all my phones.  ::)


I need to play some more in other lots, though. I did age 2 babies up to be mildly ugly toddlers, but I can't tell if that was just coincidence or not since they were the first kids born to their parents. The one did improve when he aged to child, the other is still a toddler. I HAVE gotten kids who look like that in the game, or at least in CAS. I usually only play CAS sims and test out in CAS that I can get children from them that aren't malformed like that, otherwise they're not allowed to breed or I adjust their features.  :D But this time I just made Hilary Duff a brunette in CAS and then married her to Malcolm Landgraab.

In my experience this is correct. The NPC outfits are messed up, no doubt due to some improper merger of Seasons hair+outfit code.

I don't think I made her change clothes ever.. but, ok, so putting her in some decent CC would fix it, or prevent it, or whatever? Got it.

Borked Cassie is not worth reinstalling the game, plus I'm curious to see if her, ah, delicate cheekbones will continue into her teen years. 

If so, a cowplant is in her future.

I haven't installed Pets yet much less the patch and I have had some rather unusual looking toddlers.   They don't always grow out of it as children but usually do by adulthood.  The worst I had was the boy with two faces.  Like Janus he had an extra face on the back of his head.  And also an extra eye in each temple.  Really weird.  But that one did grow out of it as a child. (I'd post a pic but can't figure out how to do it.) The ones with weird cheekbones usually take longer. 

 Also  with one of my neighborhoods shortly after installing Uni/NL or possibly one of their patches,  all the born-in-game sims in the neighborhood had their DNA reset as if they were CAS sims.  Both dominant and recessive traits were the same.  It was a b**** to fix but I did have a hard copy of all of them so I was able to fix it with Simpe.  And it was only one neighborhood that was affected.  The hood was only in second gen at that time.  Now it's in fifth and has over 400 characters.  NO npcs or townies.   Sure would hate for that to happen again. 

I think if that happened in my game I would probably scream and cry irl. That is terrifying!

Thanks for the advice on the patch and Seasons, and thanks to everyone who's posted their horror stories, for you have saved my sims' future children from an ugly (literally!) fate :P

The patched version is still running ok for me, in fact the loading times appear to have decreased considerably across the board (initial, neighbourhood and lot). I did have a couple of babies age to be bald toddlers but they miraculously regrew their hair when they transitioned to children. All new offspring have inherited sensible hair/eyebrow colours and look like either one/both their parents. Risky woohoo seems to have struck a bit more often, but that's probably one of those law of average things, a bit like waiting for buses; nothing, nothing, nothing... then 2 or 3 arrive at once!

Ok..I think I did a VBT. 

I backed up my Sims2 folder and installed the patch, but I forgot to remove the phonehackOMGpetzzz version.  What can I expect if I  remove the hack in the future, like when I install Seasons ? ( At least I have my backup if I have to uninstall Pets)  :-\

All your phones will break. BDTD. And that's why I uninstalled/reinstalled Pets last night.  ;)

It does get fixed if you re-buy every phone on every lot, right?

Is fixing the problem with vampire hair worth doing if the consequences of installing this patch are...well...what y'all described?  I find it humorous that a vampire Sim went on a "biting spree" and the women he bit transitioned with Grand Vampire hair.   :D

I'd like to know also, obviously.  That sounds a tad easier than an uninstall/reinstall.  I can't believe what a moron I was not to remove that hack! :P

Oh...what about cellphones? Are they also broken?

I didn't remove any of my hacks when I installed the patch...including the phone hack, I doubt it really matters *shrugs*

I removed the downloads folder, installed the patch, and put the downloads folder back in.

It did fix the vampire hair problem!   ;)

I didn't try cellphones.

I guess it depends on how populated your neighborhoods are. I cram a lot of houses into my neighborhoods, and to go in and delete every single phone would have taken forever. Just uninstalling/reinstalling Pets was a lot less work since you don't have to uninstall all the EPs like in TS1, just Pets.

And sleepycat, it doesn't matter unless you ever actually want to remove the phone hack- or replace it with an updated version for Seasons, for instance, if that's needed. Before I upload anything, I take out my hacks since I don't assume that everyone else wants them and not everyone is smart/informed enough to use Clean Installer. I suspect that you might be able to take out the hack and then install Seasons over it, and it would probably be okay, but Sims installations can be so delicate that I didn't want to risk it, personally. Leaving it IN while installing Seasons would be an even bigger risk, since Lord knows what it will break.  It's much more annoying to me to have to mess around with reinstalls on the day I get a new EP than just a regular day I'm firing up the game.

I've been having the odd eyebrow and hair thing going on some of my NPCs, too. Since I don't ever breed my playables with them the DNA doesn't matter, so whenever I catch one I use the Insim temporal adjuster to do a makeover on them and match the hair and brows again, whatever color I feel like or remember, and send them on their way :P

I've had some ugly toddlers fill out surprisingly nicely as teenagers/adults... some a bit less so, but that's due to extreme features on their parents' part. And sometimes that's just part of using the sim rerandomizer, I've found - one sibling will get a good mix of features and the other not so much. Better than clones, anyway. I've started breeding for the orc nose strain I accidentally got on one of my Sims now, just for some fun and variety. (Well, they DO live in a little rundown shack in the woods... it seems fairly X-Files, with appropriate story added :P)

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y138/swiftgold/ashe.jpg)

I've used Theo's Alternate Sim Surgery Plugin on several Sims to good effect. Granted, you still have a template Sim in CAS to delete, but I'm assuming deleting those don't cause the complications that deleting a fully fledged Sim from the bin would create.

Swiftgold, are you saying there's hope for Cassie and her cheeks with the horizontal ridge? 

I've just had the opposite happen in respect to cute vs fugly. Heath was a rather handsome baby, toddler, child and teen. Then, he grew up. Get a load of that nose. His brother, who is a genetic clone btw, turned out incredibly handsome.

(http://magicbeanssims.com/rw/HeathTeen.jpg)
(http://magicbeanssims.com/rw/HeathAdult.jpg)(http://magicbeanssims.com/rw/HeathAdult2.jpg)

And I've had a baby just born to a father with D-black/R-black and a mother with D-red/R-red hair. The boy has black eyebrows and blonde hair. His new little sister (different mother, D-black/R-black) has red hair and black eyebrows.

And my mail lady miraculously switched from blonde to black, without changing her thumbnail.

I can't begin to tell you how PLEASED I am to have installed this *expletive deleted* patch. At least now my vampires won't have the Grand Vamp hair.  ::) (/sarcastic tone)   I'll be uninstalling/reinstalling pets without the patch tonight...

Technically, that bug was fixed as part of the Vampire fixes on MATY. :P

Of course it was! LOL  I have to learn to look HERE first. I'd much rather install anything you guys can come up with, over the patches anyway.  >:(

How long til you hack right into their brains and rewire their way of thinking? You know from "get it out quick" to "get it out right"?  ;D

Priorities like "get it out quick" vs. "get it out right" are set by management.  Management wears tinfoil hats so their brains can't be hacked.

Neither getting it out quick nor right, or even really at all, appear to be priorities for EA. Note how their patch was neither quick nor right. Technically, our official favor leans towards "quick". We figure "right" is something you zero in on through a succession of quick attempts.

So very true.  :-\

I patched my game, but my new RAM arrived so I figured I'd do a complete reformat of my laptop. This time I'm not patching pets, simply getting the MATY fixes I need. It's easier that way.

Good girl, PandaGirl!

heh, I've decided to uninstall Pets and NOT reinstall it...

The only reason i found to reinstall pets is I quite like the floor divider thingy and the flatten to road level tool.

I only had two problems with the EP itself. The Grand Vamp hair thing, and another one that the patch didn't even fix. There were a few times that I'd have a sim invite a townie to live with them, and a pop up would come up saying the townie had a pregnant pet at home, and couldn't move until the pet gave birth. But of course, the townie didn't have a home, much less a dog or cat. lol It's a glitch that I know at least one other person had as well, causing her Black Widow challenge to come to a screeching halt. I'm willing to put up with that (ha, unless there's a fix for that on here! lol), seeing as it now feels like an incredibly minor glitch compared to all this DNA crap from the patch. 

I believe there is, in fact, a "pregnant pets fix". probably from Syberspunk, here.

I love you. And I mean that in a non-romantic, you've-solved-my-problems kind of way LOL

And, might I add, that my current status of Asinine Airhead is SO fitting.  :D

Is it not the pregnant pets move in patch by the NA^TM Jase over at the 'other' place?

Still haven't decided on installing the patch - am leaning heavily towards not installing the patch.  I think I'm scared... well, I was scared by those cheekbones anyway.

Patch evil. No patch.
Hacks good.  Lots of hacks.

Yes he does, and I am using it.  I reported this problem here some time back, and Syberspunk made a fix for it.  I believe it was a typo Maxis had made.  :o  I believe Jase said his fix was the same, but I have only had Syber's in my game and I know it works well.

I am staying far, far away from this "patch."  My game runs just fine with all my hacks and mods at this time, thankyouverymuch.

His fix did, afaik, does the same thing as mine.  I also threw in another fix that pinhead came up with for reporting the amount of $ that a sim moves in with.  Without the fix, if you moved in sims from within the same 'hood, sometimes you could get a really odd $ in the notification message that did not match the actual amount added to your household funds.  This only fixes the reporting.  This does not fix the issue of weird amounts when moving sims accross/between hoods/sub-hoods.

Jase has a separate hack called the no_lottery_move_in_fix (or something like that) which addresses this problem mostly.   You still sorta get weirdness if you move sims from across/between hoods/sub-hoods.  But that is only because it is not currently/easily possible to determine the value of the moving-in sim's household, if their household is in another 'hood.  This seems to be due to a limitation in the core code (a generic sim call, not a BHAV in the object code).

In any case, it really blows that Maxis EA totally borked the genetics and NPC hair/outfits. WTF? is up with that?  How the hell do you break something that wasn't broken to begin with? Ugh.  I'm kinda bummed that I patched now. :P I've been wanting to play, but it would feel like a waste of time if I ended up with buggy maids and fugly toddlers.

I looked at the code for the move-in stuff, and it should have fixed the pregnancy pet thing... their fix was essentially the same as mine (and Jase's), but they also threw in two extra lines of code... I didn't follow the "logic" to see what they were actually supposed to do, and whether or not they were really necessary... I kinda just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

In which case, if it turns out that these two new lines break things even further... then you can always revert back to my original non-patch/non p1 version.  I purposefully kept the non-patched Pets versions of the move-in hack and fixes available.

Ste

Using the expensive telescope and doing the crossword puzzle are no longer fun for my dead serious sims.  Yes, I have the patch.  Yes, I'm a frickin' idjit.  Point and laugh.  Throw things.  Have fun.  I have a game to reinstall.

I'm wondering if somehow some of the coding for Seasons might have gotten mixed in with the patch. If I remember corectly, isn't Seasons going to be offering new "options" for hair/outfit choices, to go along with the Seasonal theme? Just a dumbass thought, since I don't really know enough about programming to make a even semi-educated guess.

In any case, I'm following this thread avidly. I'll patch eventually, but not until I have the next expansion pack in hand. By then, hopefully, there will be a fix for the fixes, from here if not from EA.

Well I unpatched by uninstalling pets and am rolling back to a backup I made a few days prior to patching.

Now I'm going to be scared to install seasons. They surely put this patch on their disk and it will frak everything all up again.

well I decided that I will reinstall Pets... (I want the new phones and the clock and the new fishtank and stuff)

There was some good things about the patch but if it is the reason that toddler ended up looking like that then I want no part of it... Has anyone else had toddlers or any other sims for that matter suddenly get really scary looking after growing up, after patching? the cheekbones on that toddler scared me, I don't want that to happen to any of mine!

screwy hair can be dealt with/ignored easily but screwed up genetics...

Yeah, did you see the pics (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7192.msg203545.html#msg203545) of my teen boy turned fugly man?

ahh yes, I did see those pics *had forgotten*  oddly enough I had something similar happen before installing the Pets patch - decent looking teen boy grew up into a scary adult (and was then killed off) and I had another teen boy who had very scary cheekbones as a teen that got much worse when he grew up (he also died) so I wonder if that bug is actually in Pets itself and not the patch  :-\   I also have a few other sims that I thought would have to die when they were teens but when they became adults the worst features improved enough that I allowed them to live (again, all before patching)

The Pets patch won't be on the Seasons disk, they don't do that with TS2. Which is inconvenient for the whiny babies who don't have their Simming computer hooked to internet. I'm sure Seasons will have problems of its own, but not the Pets patch ones. 

And I suspect that yes, coding from Seasons got into the patch to mess up the hair because they are idiots and didn't take the precautions to prevent it. I also suspect that the ugly Sims are coincidence, as I often had odd things like that happen since the very beginning.  It all depends on how the genetics mix. Sometimes in CAS I have to generate half a dozen children before I get one I can stand the looks of as an adult. I've since given up on that and now go straight to generating the offspring as an adult and work my way down. If I can't get anything halfway attractive, I go in and adjust the parents' features.

ok so I reinstalled Pets, figured this time I would only install the Bodyshop patch and stuff...well feel free to point and laugh at me because I ended up installing the wrong patch  :P  I refuse to uninstall and reinstall again so I will just have to deal with it  ::)


atleast I remembered to use SaraMK's empty Pets template! I also followed her directions to get rid of the maxis/ea pre-made Pet familys.

It may be potentially possible to roll back the worst of the changes by replacing the ZOMGPETZ!!!111oneoneone executable with the one from your CD. You'll end up running an unholy hybrid, but someone did it and their game didn't explode, and you may be able to dodge many of the bugs while gaining some of the object code benefits.

Perhaps both - I never had "awwwwww" toddlers, but you could look at them without puking, and they all looked okay as adults. Since Pets, my game is like a freak show, and it seems to have become even worse with the patch.

I make my sims with bodyshop, though, and I wonder if that's the problem - there are way more possibilities to adjust the features than in CAS, and perhaps the game just can't handle them (anymore). 

you can't be JM!!!  JM would have pointed and laughed  :o

I'm not going to worry about it, I have a backup of my hood from before the patch that I can use if I want after the patch gets fixed. For now I'm going to play an older version of my hood and make a few changes concerning who lives and who dies  ;D


sloppyhousewife, I made a bunch of sims in Bodyshop not to long ago and I had no problems with any of them (only one has had a baby so far though in that version of my hood)

I must have missed it. What was funny again?

me installing the wrong patch...  :P ...never mind, just go back to ignoring me, we will both be happier  :D 

/me points and laughs.

I think that's a coincidence, not a bug. I've had sims who were absolutely adorable as toddlers/children, only to be hit with the ugly stick repeatedly on their way to their teen transition. A friend of mine also had a whole family where the boys were ridiculously attractive as teens, only to turn into young adults and develop some disturbing noses and cheekbones almost identical to yours, MagicBeans.

Edit to clarify: Both of these incidents were pre-Pets--pre-NL and OFB, even.

I've never had an ugly born in game Sim.  Of course, now I've cursed myself and my twin boys who were adorable babies/toddlers/children and are quite handsome teens will become grotesque when they go to college.  Maybe I better get them some girlfriends now!

I'm using the "unholy hybrid" now. There are some small GUI errors (under settings - music the song titles are not displayed), but at least NPCs get the proper hair again.
I haven't yet gone down town to check if strays are still excluded.

I reckoned one of my recent Sim children was the ugliest on record - very squashed face, huge eyes, and tiny mouth. I was very surprised when she grew up into a somewhat pretty teen (face is still a bit short). On the other hand, the del Rey twins, whom I'd been grooming as the prettiest children in the game, grew up somewhat on the down side of average.

I've decided not to stress about making my neighborhoods all pretty. I'd rather have Sims with a strong sense of personality, which means a large variety of facial types. The Sellers kids may all look lumpy (their mother and father are actually quite attractive), but I know them all for a Sellers kind of lumpy.

That still doesn't mean I'm letting hatchet-chin Freddy Forth procreate, Family Sim or no. And I'm not above letting my prettiest Sim, Lorenna Sunset, sleep around more than a Knowledge Sim normally would.

EA is having a chat session on the 15th re Seasons. Given the time difference I probably won't be able to make it but it would be great if some people posted questions regarding the Pets patch and if a new one will be released...hint hint

We can ask all we want about the Pets patch, but I guarantee they will ignore it. And if you ask the same thing over and over too much, they kick you out of the chat.

Judging by past history, they will also edit out any of these types of questions from the official transcript.

Hmmm, I seem to have missed something along the way during this thread. What is the unholy hybrid, and where can it be found?

The "unholy hybrid" is a patched Pets installation with either the unpatched exe or a Pets noCD crack over top.

Ah, I see. I don't use cracks (or crack for that matter ;)), so I prolly won't be using the unholy hybrid. Too bad the patch is so broken. Stupid EA.

Edited to add that I have no idea how to use the unpatched exe with the patch installed, so I prolly won't be doing that either, unless somebody would care to explain it to me.

Yeah mate. Copy the sims2.exe from your CD or DVD and put it in the program files folder. (C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSBin)

Thanks! Now that you've explained it to me, it seems quite obvious - definitely a 'duh' moment on my part. :D

Edit: Sorry, just making sure that I've got this right - the .exe file from the Pets CD goes into the TSBin for the base game, not EP4? Also, should I delete the old one first, or can I just overwrite it with the one from the CD?

Actually I'd make a backup of the old sims2.exe Sims2EP4.exe. You can rename it sims2.old Sims2EP4.old or something and leave it where it is.

Hmm, you're right about the EP stuff.
 C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSBin\Sims2EP4.exe

Another potential form of Unholy Hybrid to try is to take a ZOMGPETZ!!!111oneoneone objects.package and place that in over your original objects.package, getting all the BHAV upgrades and none of the other things. This may halt the loss of the song titles.

Should a person replace the objects.package file as well as replacing the .exe file, or would one or the other of these methods suffice?

Copy the Patched objects.package over an ORIGINAL ZOMGPETZ!!!111oneoneone to create this alternate variant of the Unholy Hybrid.

Ah - apologies for the non-intentional slur there Ste - I acknowledge your hacky-worthiness. 


Yes, I have that one.  It might be to do with Inteen as I have a few of his fixes rather than Awesome^TM ones since I have (and will never give up, never, never I tell you) Inteen and one has to have special versions of some stuff.


I am wondering whether it's to do with the new hair possibilities coming with Seasons (Lies and Propaganda my arse).  If we are going to be able to change hairstyles with outfits, might that have something to do with the problems of the NPC hair/outfits issue?

Just thought I'd report I have a child born in game sim who has changed skintone from fairly light to quite dark after patching the game.  She has stayed the darker skin tone after her transition to teenager.  Her mother is dark skinned and from what I can gather in game, they are both similar tones.  When I have a moment I will check in SimPE to see whether her genetics have changed or not.

I've never known a patch actually break stuff before  :o  Will they be patching the patch does anyone know?

I'm pathetically desparate enough to try that Unholy Hybrid method out.  I'm aiming to get rid of the toddler hair bug, while keeping the fix for the 'suggest outfit' bug.  This is the only solution I've seen anyone come up with so far *sigh*.

Anyone having any marriage issues post Pests Pets patch?

David Thomas Pitt and Emma Avio were married yesterday; had the big wedding with cake, champagne, bartender, dancing, etc.  Was a barnburner of a party in spite of the fathers of the bride and groom leaving before the nuptials.  All is well except that Emma Avio is still Emma Avio and the LTWs of her parents to have a relative marry were not fulfilled.   

They are shown as being married/joined.  Could this be a new postpatch "liberated" policy of EA, as my previous brides took their husbands' names?

Doubt it. The names thing isn't really so much a "liberated" thing. Hell, I'd do away with the names thing myself, but it would mean complex fiddling of the baby name code.

Every now and then I forget which name I intended the couple to have, so the "wrong" Sim does the proposing and the couple gets the other name.

Ziggy, do you have the traditional marriage hack?  I'd be more concerned about the relative married want not fullfilled part than the name...

**Edited**

..never mind - the brain went on holiday and left this idiot in charge.  Not only did I forget about the Suggest Outfit Fix completely, that Pes had up  for download, but it had somehow disappeared out of my downloads folder in the first place - which is why it stopped working when I came back to the game a little while ago.  *dances* don't need no patch...yeah baby!

No, Miros, don't have that hack.  And I completely forgot about the proposal option.  Not that it would matter since David's surname remains Pitt and Emma's remains Avio.   ???

I guess the relative (mother) could have rerolled that want since there are other unmarried Avios (as a result of my stupidity in one family having eight kids). 

 

Oh yea, Family sims will usually reroll the want immediately if there's still other kids to marry off.  Same with the 'relative gets engaged' and 'have a grandchild' ones.

Has anybody noticed anything weird going on with their townies' hair post-patch? I had a Bluewater townie drop into one of my sims' stores yesterday with some sort of bizarre scalp disease or something.

SimPE says she's genetically blonde/blonde, but she's always walking around with brown hair. I could've sworn she used to have brown eyebrows, too, but I may just be remembering wrong--anyway, she has blonde ones now. And a blonde...scalp?

(http://pics.livejournal.com/tyraarane/pic/000wz9h0)

(http://pics.livejournal.com/tyraarane/pic/000x0sqk)

I do use default replacement skintones (obviously) and bin all my custom hairs, but I don't think they're causing the problem here, as all my other sims are fine. I also have playables with this same haircut that don't have this problem.

Almost all of the OFB female townies are like that.  :( It is really annoying because I had to change all of their hair styles to long ones that cover the scalp.

Ok, these are the first screen shots of a Townie with the problem (wrong hair color)... so far it's only been reported with NPCs and born in game toddlers!

Really? Weird that I never noticed...what did MaxisEA bork that causes that?

I don't really want to have to uninstall the patch, since I have vampires and whatnot, but could somebody make a fix where a toddler with a dormie black haired dad and a red/black haired 5th gen mother does NOT get red hair and black eyebrows? 

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a192/Chee-Z/snapshot_7209a828_b2db8026.jpg)

I have had this issue for quite some time, way before patching Pets.  I also use different default skintones, but was using them before without this happening.  I have my game loaded on another computer and it doesn't seem to do this and I haven't found what is causing it.  It does drive me nuts though.

That's a hardcoded problem. The vampires problem is already fixed in the vampirefixes here, so you won't have any problems with vampires even without the patch if you install that.

Do you need the puppy/kitten parentage fix with an unholy hybrid?

Huh I thought I had your fix installed and I still had problems.  I go and check and apparently I do not have it installed.  Funny considering I do remember downloading the darn thing...

Edit:  Apparently I may've had either an old version of it and it was deleted out of my folder, or I just never did stick it in the ol' dl folder *smacks head*

Ok...mainly I ask because I don't want to have to uninstall this patch.  Pain in the ass, IMHO. 

Well, I tried the unholy hybrid, and it caused my game to stop loading, yet when I removed the .exe file that I'd copied from the CD, changed the patched version back to its original name, and then went to restart my game, suddenly all of the core game files went missing from the Program Files, and I had to do a manual uninstall, which is a real PITA. Grrrrr. Stupid EA and stupid me. I'm fed up with all of this buggy crap!

Just in case you might have missed it, Maxoid Sam has posted on the BBS that EA is aware of the hair issue and they are looking into it now. Admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery so I for one am proud of EA's management team  :P

You can read it here (http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=8d0502ca0d3e54cf2b9516d19aecd497&directoryID=108&startRow=1&openItemID=item.108,root.1,item.43,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23) but it is just a one liner.

Well, at least they've acknowledged the issue. They should really do that more often, it really does fend off the angry mob. In all likelyhood, the issue is likely to be squashed in the next expansion, but ignored in the patch as being noncritical, as users can avoid the bug rather trivially through the expedient of not installing the patch.

I agree about it probably being fixed in the next expansion but the way things stand at the moment, many people are still unaware of the issue and happily downloading the patch. It would be nice if they either removed the Pets patch from general distribution or put some sort of caveat notice next to the patch so more people don't unwittingly get affected.

/me shrugs.

Sucks to be them.

Playing devil's advocate here a bit -- the patch fixes some more critical issues, and only introduces a cosmetic bug (haircolour mismatch). Since the majority of players do not get the third-party bugfixes by Pesc and several others, this is their only chance to fix critical gameplay errors.
That group is probably better off with the patch, even if it does introduce new errors.

Of course if EAMaxis hired some QA people they might have caught this bug and not released a broken patch. I hope we will get a patch for the patch. We did get multiple patches for TS2 base, OFB, and FFS after all.

Bummer! I did the same and it worked fine.  :-\ I've been playing all evening with no problems.

Sucks to be them also.

Isn't Pets supposed to be the relatively "stable" release? I seem to recall somewhere about them cycling between "stable" and "unstable" EPs. To put this in developer terms, basically the "Seasons" EP is the testing tree and Pets was the stable tree from the old OfB testing branch.

In short, they tried to backport features of a testing tree into a stable tree, and that's what this patch is.

Maxoid Sam Made a sticky about the issue and a second patch in the pets tread.

Author:  MaxoidSam - Rank: Stammering Sim - View MySimPage Profile 
Date:  Feb-12-07 12:52 PM PST
Subject:  Pets Patch has created hair color inconsistencies 
 

We are aware of this issue and are looking into the cause. If another patch is required to fix the problem we will issue a 2nd patch. Our apologies for the error.
-sam

 
 

This sounds like crazy talk to me. I'm pretty sure they just do these things by voodoo, hence why they undid things that they FIXED in OFB and randomly rearranged other things for no apparent reason other than to be contrary.

Hmm, well, if you can't stand the suspense you could always grow them up to see what they'd be like? I've generally had them go from squooshed and ugly to not too bad, though...

As for that scalp problem, I've had that waaaay back since Uni at least. In my case, it came from binning certain hairstyles - I believe the really old ones, because the textures I recognized replacing the Sim's scalp came from hair that was made just by alpha edits of Maxis meshes, before there were new meshes available at all. At that time I used Datgen and then I just started binning by hand. It affected my custom skins at first, but now I am still getting that scalp problem with Maxis skins, so I have to wonder if it's the binning issue again, as I've binned everything and my downloading vice is hairstyles :P I can't tell which hair texture is causing it like I could with the other one, though (it had a big flower painted on the hair, so that gave it away right there). I'd definitely like to know what the real deal is with that stupid issue, though!

I played earlier today and two more babies transitioned to toddler.  Neither had hair problems, they came with the hair SimPE said they'd grow up with.  I guess that hair thing is a random glitch. 

As for the borked genetics, I have a ton of fugly Sims, and they're all pre-patch.  Do not breed Sims with Blake Lawson, for example.  He has a gigantic nose when he grows up.  I was unfortunate to have a Brittany Upsnott spawn marry him, and here's their decendent:

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a192/Chee-Z/snapshot_52a41561_32a417d3.jpg)

Also, the unfortunate Sim who grew up from teen to adult with the awful genetics, he reminds me of Alvin Curtin.  Do not breed a Sim with him either! Here's his kid, and oh lord, his nose! 

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a192/Chee-Z/snapshot_1296cc76_3296def6.jpg)

My kids would call this one the Adrien Brody of sims  ;). (Personally I think Adrien Brody is hot but the kids constantly make fun of his beak nose.)

Why is it that so many people are obsessed with breeding perfect sims? Ugly = variety and I'd rather have that than a 'Midwich Cuckoos' style neighbourhood of idealised conformity.

It's all in the eye of the beholder anyway - I, personally, can't tell the differences between Hollywood actors/actresses and models and all the rest (unless they are very distinctive).  I have a small problem with recognising faces.  They all look completely the same to me.  And dull - dull, dull, dull.

I'm obsessed with all my sims being perfect because for me at least Sims is an escape from reality. If I want to look at something hideous, I can just look across the street or in the mirror.  ;D

I would imagine it's because people don't want to look at ugly things on their screen. I don't think a distinctive nose necessarily makes a sim bad, though.

I used to date a beak. I used to date an imperfectly formed guy and he was great. Never underestimate the package based on the beak bow.

Beaks Long noses are okay, but cheekbones that protrude past the nose are not so okay.  Makes putting on mascara a bit challenging.

I can live with ugly features, but not the nose. IRL, the nose makes or breaks a face, in my opinion. I can't even bear to look at the hideous looking noses my sims sometimes get. Those sims become unplayable...

Personally I don't see a big nose being unattractive. A deformed nose however, (see Owen Wilson for example) is highly distracting to me. I spend a majority of time during movies featuring Owen Wilson wondering WTF happened to his nose, lol.

Hes deffinatly had it broken a few times... interesting that hes never had surgery to get it fixed though, especially being a hollywood actor

Maybe he likes it that way. Maybe it would cost money to fix. Not everyone is willing to blow money on things they don't technically need even if they could afford it.

Not to mention there is a small risk of dying with any surgery/anesthesia

I figure he must not mind it or he would have had it fixed. It just makes me wonder what happened to it. That is all. ;D

And the fact that recovering from having your nose taken apart and chopped into bits and reassembled is never pleasant no matter how much money you invest in it. In fact, it will probably be less pleasant than how it got there in the first place. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Well, my nose looks the way it does because of battle damage. A similar explanation is likely the case here.

Probably not. He probably got hit in the nose with a football, a la Marcia Brady.

Funny, I just thought of Marcia Brady when I read Owen Wilson a few posts above! When I hear Owen Wilson, I remember Zoolander, then I remember Ben Stiller, then Christine Taylor (a.k.a. Marcia Brady- in the Brady Bunch Movie). Just as I was picturing a scene she talked to Owen Wilson in Zoolander, I read your post. :D

As per usual, I am taking the great advise of this site and not installing this patch and will wait for the patch for the patch!  ::)

However I would like to mention that after breeding Regan and Cornwall Capp, I was surprised at the result, although they do not conform to the "beautiful sims category", I am sure they will breed some unique and more humanly normal features.

(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r146/lovinspoonful/Sims2%20pictures/snapshot_0da007fd_92dbbedb.jpg)(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r146/lovinspoonful/Sims2%20pictures/snapshot_0da007fd_f29ef816.jpg)(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r146/lovinspoonful/Sims2%20pictures/snapshot_0da007fd_b2dbbe4d.jpg)

o.0
They would make good vampires...

Since the patch my toddlers are bald  :) As the two I have had so far are both alien I rather like the look. I plan to keep it for them, even if they transition to hair at childhood. I haven't seen the maid glitch, the only maid in my game seems to be Alyana Dallas and she is fine.

As a follow-up to this event, when I returned to that lot last night (I play a rotation), Emma has disappeared.  David and the two dogs were the only inhabitants.  Although I had played this Sim since her birth, graduated her from Uni (before I installed the college adjuster hack), and gotten her to plat stat post graduation, SimPE revealed no Emma.  Her husband, parents, and six siblings had no memories of her. 

I again wonder what would trigger a Sim to be vaporized since this is the second time this has happened in my game.

Whatever the cause, it occurred during/after the wedding and after I exited the lot, because she was missing from the three backups I made after Feb 10.

Had to restore my Feb 4 backup (made just before I installed the patch).  Cassie of the protruding cheekbones scheduled to pop into toddlerhood tonight.  Hope her weird cheekbones go wherever Emma went.

BTW, David and Emma had a second (quiet) wedding; her surname is now correctly Pitt.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: For the second time Cassie transitioned into an ugly toddler.  However, she then regressed back to an infant while keeping her toddler abilities to walk, go to the potty, and skill.  Her mom aged to an elder the same day, but also popped back one Sim day. 

Not a good sign so elder sis Sienna (who is perfectly normal) was sent off to Uni and Cassie and her parents were moved out of the house and now live in the Sim bin, where they will stay until my game explodes (probably soon).

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/screwup3.jpg)

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/screwup2.jpg)

That is freaky!

And strange that "holy platinum diamond halo" (a phrase which I like much more than the boring official one :)) is still sideways, like it is for "normal" selectable babies.

It's a gifted baby!

Yup, a plat stat baby with three charisma points, two logic, two creativity, who can walk and is potty trained!  Reminds me of that dancing baby on the 'Net.

Perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment, but I don't like unresolved issues so I moved my Feb 4 (pre pets patch) backup in the game and played that household a bit last night, but not to the age transition of Cassie and her mom Katie. 

I had aged Cassie early in the morning and then Katie that evening the first time around - at that point I had the age duration hack in.  Moved the hack out of the game before sticking my 2/4 BU in and will see what happens tonight.

If things go bonkers again, will do a reinstall of everything except the pesty pets patch.

The patch really borked this family.  Katie became an elder and Cassie a toddler tonite, however, when I attempted to change her hair and clothing, no toddler clothes were available and the reflection in the mirror was of a half-headed infant.  Katie had custom hair so that remained brown, but her eyebrows were gray.  An attempt to change her appearance resulted in binned brown hair only.  No elder slouch or shuffle.

So I bit the bullet, uninstalled Pests, and reinstalled it (but not the patch)  That resulted in the current incarnations of Cassie and her elder mom, Katie: 

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/WalkingCassie.jpg)

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/Cassie-1.jpg)

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/CassieKatie.jpg)

Checked them in SimPE and Cassie is noted as a toddler and Katie as an elder. 

Gameplay in other lots and in Uni is normal. 

This was the patch from hell.

Cassie is much cuter now!

I dunno.  I'm worried about how skinny her arms and legs are.  How can they possibly hold up her round, pudgy tummy?  :o

Soooo creepy. It's like a horrible gumby baby.

Yeah, she is quite creepy and strange.  Must be her destiny since she's popped back in time twice.  Have decided to keep playing her for a while simply because I'm curious what will happen next.

Gonna be a mighty interesting transition to childhood.  Will she go through life wearing only a diaper?  Will she get boobies?  Stay tuned... ;D

Cassie ditched the diapers after a very interesting birthday.  Her cheekbone extensions are gone (as is the patch)

Lesson learned.  No more patches until they are force fed.  Only took me a week of messing around to undo the damage.

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/Birthday.jpg)

(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i20/Ziggydoodle/Unpatched.jpg)

Well with Seasons starting to be released around the world it looks as if EA has missed an opportunity to surprise us all and fix the Pets patch.

I don't think that because Seasons is released there will never necessarily be a Pets patch. What does Seasons have to do with the Pets patch at all? Seasons was done before they ever released the patch, after all, or maybe finished at about the same time. Why would they stop production until they've fixed the patch? They need to sell Seasons to continue to pay the people who will make the new patches. Sims is what keeps EA running- almost everything else loses them money.

So what happens for those that buy Seasons and had updated their Pets with the broken patch?  You wont be able to install the fix for the Pets patch should they put one out.  You would have already installed Seasons and not be able to patch the Pets patch.

For the love of old ladies having heart attacks!  Oh no, I've gone cross eyed.  :P

I uninstalled Pets after the fiasco with the patch and reloaded Pets sans the patch.  I get Seasons this week and will load it over the unpatched version of Pets.  Will this mean I'm screwed or what? 

I don't use pets in my game so I suppose it really will not matter.

This is what I'm kind of wondering also. I never did install the patch because I had read this thread and decided against it. Any issues that the patch supposedly fixed, JM and TJ already had hacks for.
Will Seasons force me to patch by the "checking to see if TS2 version is up to date" part of the installation?

Someone who doesn't mind getting banned should go ask this over at the BBS.

Hey, I never post over there so I suppose I could do it.  I have never made a topic so what area should I put it?  I'll never post over there so I could care less if they ban me. 

Why would they ban me?

im writting one up now...

..for daring to have less than complete, blind, sheepy loyalty in the Mighty Maxis EA Gods?

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=item.2,item.43,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23&threadID=685cbf89807c42d922bbf3014765b806&directoryID=2&startRow=1

Edit: for the love of all things holy, someone get in there and write something intelligent before the sheep take over.

Edit: too late Thread was eaten in record time.  Answer to will Seasons install Pets patch: No. 
Is installing Seasons over a unpatched Pets a good idea?: Not answered.

I don't believe that thing about the patches, anyway; I seem to recall having to check for updates whenever you install a new EP.

Now I'm getting used to the patch.  I find the maid with the newly dyed hair amusing.  I've only had two babies grow up with the wrong hair color, and their eyebrows tell me what color the hair should be.

But still, I'm wondering what stuff will happen to my game when I install Seasons.  What silly bugs will be introduced?  Will I have glitched houses because I left the Renu-Orb on my lots again? 

I'm now in no rush to install Seasons, as interesting as it sounds.  I'll read the guide first.  Besides, I've got to be sure all my Simmies are in bed in my hood and in Uni since they will all be reset.  That will take me another week. 

Just as a point of interest about the patch, I've been running with the unholy hybrid for about a week now. Babies are turning into toddlers with the correct genetic information, maids have proper hair colour, all is well. Except the pet spam in the wants, I've just got an artificial booster running for aspiration and am ignoring the wants for now.

I have TwoJeff's No Pet Obsession.package and JM's antipetobsession.package. I've tried them singly and together, still mass pet spam.

I don't mind testing things out, I'll be buying Seasons as soon as it arrives, I'm keen to see the weather.

I've already prepped my game for Seasons.  I have removed all hacks and hacked objects and more than half of the CC.  I went through my CC, all 7 gigs of it.  ::)   I will however be pulling my downloads folder prior to installation.  I am starting from scratch on this one.  I took out all of my neighborhoods so I could start with a clean slate.

Hopefully the less whiny and what's this hacks will work.  Those are the two hacks that I will go crazy without.  I did this with Pets so I could test hacks and I plan on doing that again with Seasons.

When you install a new EP, it checks to see if the base game is patched, it doesn't check to see if the EPs are patched. And I could have sworn that they didn't release the Uni patch until after NL was released. There's no reason that they couldn't patch Pets again once we've installed Seasons.

Personally the main problem with the patch, the  hair, I suspect will be fixed with Seasons, anyway, since I have a feeling it was Seasons code that broke it in the first place.  ::)

Edit: After the problems I had when I installed Pets, I'm removing my Sims2 folder from My Documents entirely when I go to install Seasons. If it installs okay, I'll add in my walls,floors and genetics. If no one else has objects make the game explode, I'll add them later with the neighborhoods. I can play happily enough without most of my hacks, so that will be fine. I just need to play one family in particular through a few more days, since I started playing around with Inteen for the first time last week, and I don't want to risk leaving the family in so unnatural a state for the new EP.  :D

Same here. When installing EP's it always say it's up to date even though I have not installed any patches.  I'm not concerned about it forcing me to run the Pets update as it's never done that with any other EP.

No, that's not true -- I've installed patches for older EPs/SPs with no problem. The patch just looks in the directory where the program it's supposed to patch exists. It doesn't care about other directories and programs.

Exactly.

Theisz -- sadly you're incorrect. Only files directly replaced in later versions will contain the fixes in your case, you will still run into any bugs in other places unless you fix the individual expansions as well.

Newer expansions don't use the object or executable codes of any previous expansions.

They do use the meshes, and objectscripts, right?

Mesh, texture, sound, and anims are what each EP provide. The engine and the scripts (both Edith and Lua) are replaced with a newer build (or thereabouts) for all objects that exist in the game to that point. The exceptions being the Holiday packs.

Ok, then why was everything fixed ONLY if you applied both the OFB and FFS patches? Is it because FFS was a SP and not an EP? I would think that even if it didn't add new game elements, it came with all the objects-to-date-just-not-activated like other EPs.

Because only the OFB patch patched Bluewater Village. FFS doesn't read the rest of the OFB code, so it needed to be patched separately.

Thanks for the info.  I had not realized it was setup this way.

So I need to go ahead and bite the bullet and install the Pets patch prior to loading Season's and hope the fix they come out with will work with Seasons.

Only if you actually WANT the patch...otherwise go on without.
You could always install the patch later, should a better one come out.

When the Uni patch came out WAY overdue and after NL was released, there were two patches: one for Uni only users, and one for Uni+NL users.

That is what I am hoping for but not holding my breath.  I would think they would need to put out one patch for those with Seasons and one for just Pets because the new EP is coming out before they can patch their patch.  :P

Ah ha, that's what it was.  :) I knew the Uni patch came out after NL but also knew I was forgetting some detail.  :)

Thank you.

The answer has been posted above.

Augh, my eyes.
Seasons. No apostrophe. It isn't possessive. Please.

At least he's being consistent. And it is a sad state of affairs that I have come to the point where I will say that. Sigh.

I thought you were busy getting married.  ;D

TheISZ is female. 

yeah, well you know that only takes up a day. The rest of the time I get to be bitchy at everyone as my nerves fray at the thought of having to be around... you know, people... It's mostly the next couple of weeks you won't hear anything from be because I'll be too busy having fun & watching my husband spend money like water.

And who gets married in the middle of the week, anyway?


Feh. So am I. And strangely I still get people who claim to be my bestest buddy in the whole wide world who refer to me as he. We'll both live. :D

Ok then.  Sorry to have offended you so.  :P  All fixed.

I am ever so grateful, theisz.  :)

I'm sorry, I missed if there was a clear answer for this somewhere: Is it possible to patch a previous EP after having installed (and possibly even patched) a newer EP?

i.e. Could you install the patch for OFB after having installed Pets?

Thaks Elfpuddle. I tend to skim and miss things of such importance after the 3rd page.  :-*

*giggles

I have had a lot of folks think I'm a guy and I never corrected them.  It's one of those things that has never bothered me.  I think it's funny.  :D

I thought you were a guy until this thread...

It's probably because you're so mean.  ;)

I thought Theisz was male until I saw Countess as a title.