More Awesome Than You!

Here's the skinny: I downloaded a house from a featured creator at MTS2. Played it for about 3 Sim days. I finally had the garden up to snuff and called the Garden Club. When the rep arrived she immediately left stating that ' there's an emergency on the lot'.  During my playing time there was only one thunderstorm.; No flaming bags of poo, no deaths and no fires.

I walked my sim around the lot ,mind you it took a while, this was a massive lot, and narrowed it down to the front of the house. It stretches from the driveway to the chimney. I PM'd the creator to see if they had any of the aforementioned problems  (fire,death,poo) when play-testing the lot. I haven't heard back from her yet.

Here's my question: how do I figure out what is causing this? Do I use the stuck object remover or the lot debugger? If I need to use the debugger, exactly how do I find out what's causing this problem? I haven't used the debugger, and thought that someone with more experience could shed some light on the situation and possible fix. I spent quite a lot of time retooling this lot for my family and I am loathe to give it up without a fight.

If you have produce garden, make sure there are not any broken sprinklers. It is sort of hard to tell, but having one immediately plunges Environment.

I would burninate the affected area using the stuck object remover. This will get rid of any possible stuck "emitters" like stink, etc. Trashed environment is very often the result of something invisible being stuck. This is also the easiest thing to try first.

Thanks Sara. When I fire up the game again, I'll try that first.  Oh, BTW, I don't have any sprinklers. But that's a good call. I've had that problem before.  It can't be the greenhouse, as it's at the back of the lot and the environment scores there are sky-high.

If the stuckobject remover doesn't work, I'll be back here bleating for help with the lot debugger.  :P

Since installing the Seasons patch, I'm having occasional errors popping up for a fire during thunderstorms. I'm assuming something is going wrong with a tree being hit because I'm not seeing any fire. Turning on debug mode could solve the mystery, at least.

I haven't fired up the game yet. But, I will try that also.  One question about fire: can it hit a house? I haven't seen that yet, but have had my share of hottub and pool deaths due to lightning and a few large tree fires. There are no trees anywhere near that part of the house. Like I said, this lot is huge. I placed the trees in the far corners of the lot.

ETA: I am also going to place the lot and shove a test Sim onto it to see if it's the lot, or something that occurred while I was playing it. I'd hate to rattle the creator's cage over nothing.

ETA: I burnated the lot and found 4 windows, 1 trellis, 3 sconces and one fire; all by the chimney. The creator cannot duplicate. Which goes back to my first question, has anyone had a house hit by lightning?  Maybe I had a strike, and the fire never showed and became 'stuck' on the lot?

That was why the Garden Goonie claimed there was an "emergency."

Invisible fire kills millions per year.

Yeah, I figured as much. But what about flaming bags of poo? How many are sacrificed to that particular phenomenon? Something must be done about this under-reported tragedy. I think we need a blue ribbon panel to discuss the problem and a possible fund drive. For God's sake...think of the children.   :'(

I've never had a flaming bag of poo ever.
At one point I tried to stage some bad dates just to see what they looked like, but no dice.

So "emergency" it is? That explains a lot - I have the same problem in one of my houses, but the idiotic German translation says "Tragödie", which would be tragedy or drama. No wonder I couldn't find that issue reported elsewhere ;D.

An invisible fire would also explain why the maid always runs from the lot after having finished cleaning (which is fun to watch, btw). There's been a lot of lightning hits lately.

Poo bags are much more likely to occur in the case of date-time cheating. Many a sim of mine has accidentally triggered this in their search for the One while left to their own devices. A good make-out session while on a date with someone else works like a charm.

Having a Propose->Engagement rejected is a sure date buster too!

So.. if one has no NPC's (<- non possessive, indicating plural) visiting a lot how would one know there is indeed an invisible fire amuck? And is it possible such a fire - of invisibleness - would indeed burninate?

Apostrophe not needed.  Only if you abbr. liked this: N.P.C. would you use the apostrophe.

Fine then. *revokes the ' * My question still stands!

As is.

I would imagine that invisible fire could spawn when normal fire would spawn too.  If fire errors, then you should delete it to prevent invisible fires ravaging invisible pets.  The Invisible PETA would be on your sims.

The way I learned it was that if you have more than one B, they are Bs. But if you have more than one A, they are A's, due to the potential confusion of As.  What I'm not sure of is if you have more than one A and more than one B.  My sense of order is offended by A's and Bs, and wants to make it A's and B's.

This discussion reminds me of the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation .

From what I have experienced with Seasons so far, it's easy to tell: Ever had a thunderstorm on this lot? Then there is a fire ;).

I'm wondering whether this invisible fire pest is caused not just by lightning hits, but by lightning hitting a lightning rod...

No, I was getting the error on a lot without a lightning rod. But it's definitely new since either Celebrations or the Seasons Patch- I installed both together, so I can't say which. Luckily, since I always play with debug on, I don't have to worry about invisible fire, just annoying error messages. Which is almost a novelty because except for the old Rose Greenman every time she comes on a lot other than her own, I don't really get errors all that often anymore.  Not like it was up until OFB, at least.

I had lightning strike the balcony of a dorm once, right by the outdoor staircase (I believe it was the Mille House dorm at Academie le Tour).  A couple of dormies who were using the stairs at the time stopped and made a big deal over it until the rain put the fire out. No lingering bad environmental effects.

I've also had strikes that burned down entire trees because the rain stopped too soon, leaving piles of ashes that tanked the room score.  Maybe somehow your "house fire" didn't get put out and it's registering piles of invisible ashes?

Just a thought.

I had a tree stick on fire because the rain stopped...  but the fire never left, didn't consume the tree, either.  Eventually I had to force an error on the tree to get rid of the fire.

My very own burning bush...

Happened to me too. But I didn't do anything about it because I was done with that neighbourhood anyway.

Very interesting. I get a lot of lightning strikes..but only on trees or Sims.  Maybe I don't see the strikes on other objects or the house because I play walls down and zoomed in medium close.  I'm going to have to zoom out and put the walls up next time I have a nasty storm.

I tend to get a lot of rain/snow . Almost twice a day during Spring and at least once a day during Summer I have at least rain or lightning. Others complain that they don't get the storms. I also get a lot of deep snow.   I am curious as to what others are experiencing in the way of precipitation.

I noticed an error when lightning strikes a particular type of plant,

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a288/miramis82/Sims2%20Problem%20Solving/snapshot_d30caee7_930cf882.jpg).

That flat one at the back is one. The moment it's about to catch fire the errors start getting thrown (in debug mode at least), I had to delete the stupid thing in the end, only to have it start again when another was hit a short while later.  Perhaps other types of plants or bushes throw the same error? 

On another lot though, I had stuck 'go here' things, I think there was a stuck fire (and other stuff on that same square), it was the exact spot that a dormie Spontaneously Combusted in the hot tub several semesters before, only I didn't notice it until I was rebuilding the greek house and laying the foundation - the foundation wouldn't lay over that square and every square around it for a total of 9 squares.  The 'stuck object remover' fixed it up nicely.

Listen for the big "crash" of thunder, and keep an eye on the build/buy mode buttons - they'll grey out after a strike.  When I see that happen, I always pause and zoom out to see what's been affected.

As with all other "random" Maxis coding, weather can fall into ruts. I've had runs of winters with only one day of light snow and nothing else. I've had winters where there was heavy snow from the last day of fall to the second day of spring and two snow days off from school. I've had one year with no rain at all, and others where it rained or hailed almost every non-winter day. I've had lots that seemed to be major lightning magnets with more than one storm a day and a tree that never seemed to get a chance to extinguish with the number of hits it was getting. In my current custom neighborhood (three residential lots so far, about three weeks of play) I haven't had a lightning strike yet, no significant storms, and very heavy snows.

That trellis in the pic above that is being struck by lightning was one of my 'stuck objects' after the invisible fire. That may solve the mystery as to what the lighning struck when I was playing that lot. I've noticed that it really likes the little Lollipop trees also. One would think, like IRL, that lighting should gravitate to the highest object or the lone object in a barren spot of the terrain, like the lone golfer.

I can't remember if the fire was invisible or not, it might have been.  I do remember that it took a while to track down where the error was coming from.  I had thought that perhaps it was caused by the custom fence I'd placed there, but judging by your reply it might be just the trellis plant itself. 

I've found lightning tends to favour the last few objects placed, at least that's the way it looks to me so far.  The large Weeping Willow is a current favourite target on my legacy farm, but before that was placed it was the two gnomes.

Lightning favoured the trellis plants at that dorm in the picture above, and when they were deleted, it went for the trees there instead.

Something is still nagging me about that incident pictured above, I can't remember if the tree on the left had error messages thrown too.

I wonder if it's because more than one object was on the same tile?