More Awesome Than You!

In poking around with SimPE I noted that a number of my sims, particularly some of the townies, have invisible memories of things which they most certainly did not do. All these memories also have a note that they belong to some other Sim. So far as I can tell, the sim they belong to is the one they actually happened to.

Why are these memories showing up for sims that didn't have them?

a) SimPE's memory display clearly states it's experimental, idiot!

b) The neighborhood is borked and will soon become a Fiery Explosion Which Is Visible From Outer Space

c) Other

Usually the townies are witness to these events.  For instance, my two sims are making out for the first time on the front lawn, and a townie walks by.  When the townie witnesses this event, he receives an invisible memory of "made out with X for the first time."  Later on, he might pass this on to another Sim in conversation or as gossip.  Other sims receive memories like this, not just townies.  I don't know how many memories I've seen where a sim gets an A+ and then a memory of his mother having the memory of his A+, in addition to the memory that his sister got an A+ and his mother's memory of his sister getting an A+.  Gah!!!  I am so happy for the no A+ memory spam.  Obviously, this was all before I got that mod.  Cheating is an especially popular memory that gets spread around, as well as someone peeing at a party.

I've seen several instances where a sim will meet another sim, and then they will have memories that were passed to them from the other sim.  Like when my sim met Brandi Broke, she received memories from her of Brandi potty training Beau and about Skip dying.

In my neighborhood, the conversational topic of choice is burned food, closely followed by woohoos.

This confused me at first.  I remember seeing a memory in Cassandra's file of something that had happened to Herb Oldie even though he'd been dead for ages and Cassandra had never even met him.  I thought "Wow, she really IS weird" and I was quite excited about it, until I found out that someone else had passed the memory on to her.  Since then I've seen quite a few Sims get memories about dead people.  Mainly, it's about them burning food (in fact, most gossip seems to be about people burning food).

One thing about the cheating side of it puzzles me.  From what I can gather, if a Sim passes on a memory of someone cheating to the 'wrong person', they will react as if they witnessed the cheating.  This makes no sense, because how do they know it happened after they became involved with the cheating Sim?  It could have happened before they even met them, or they could have been cheating on someone else.  The memories don't say who they cheated on, just who by.  As an example, if Cassandra were married to Don and Mortimer passed on a "Caught Don Cheating" message to her, how would Cassandra know the details?  He might have been cheating on Dina with Nina or on Nina with Kaylynn, possible before he even met Cassandra.  Or do they pass on the details in some 'hidden' way?

I think they either just ignore it, or go ballistic in some way. This is not entirely clear, as I can't find any reference to it in the code anywhere. That's the problem with the "cheating" memories by default, you can even cheat on people you don't even have a relationship with...like crazy professors.

In the Sims' world, burned food is more interesting than any other topic of discussion, including promotions, weddings, or deaths.  Also, I once had a mother talk to her daughter about last night's WooHoo with the father.  And they seemed to both find it amusing, even though I was gagging, trying to decide whether to laugh or throw up.  

Hm, mine do talk about death, and it worries me a little. They get a bubble with jaggedy lines, then follows a tombstone, the dead sim's image, and concludes with them giggling about it. Now, the last three items don't bother me, but the jaggedy lines do a little. I have all the critical fixes from JM and TJ, so I am hoping it is not a little bug waiting to grow up into a big, bad bug-monster.

The other topics off high interest for the sims is burned food, someone who has been burglarized, and woohoo (idiotic word, that is).

G.

Ah, you seem to have the jaggedy line "Corrupt Death Memory" problem. You need nocorruptdeath (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/hacks/nocorruptdeath.zip). You also need to do a search and destroy memory for every single "invisible" death memory with no event owner. It's a somewhat lengthy process that spreads virally and gets worse the longer you ignore it, so you're going to have to bite the bullet and do your search-and-destroy now, or just burn the neighborhood.

I have the corrupt death mod JM, I faithfully get all your fixes. I guess I downloaded it too late then, no?

As for going memory hunting, I have no clue on how to do that, where is saramk when I need her? I rather like the neighboorhood, its a facsimilie of my village, you know for homesickness events.

If I end up having to destroy it, if I clone all the sims in SimPe and then put all the empty houses in the lot-bin, can I then plunk them into a new neighborhood without dooming it from the outset? (As you can see, I heed all your cautions, I don't even turn my computer off anymore, as I used to do)

G.

The "lazy man's memory hunting" is to simply systematically destroy every invisible "death" memory in SimPE by going though each of your sims in your neighborhood in the SimPE memory editor sequentially. Wipe them all out. This will also wipe out the valid "gossip" memories, but these will simply be regenerated when your sims gossip again. Mass-destruction like this also means you are far less likely to miss one.

Yes, if search-and-destroy proves too onerous for you, you may do this safely. Don't package sims. Ever.

Ah, that's how the dirt gets dished. Thanks.

I'll probably still create a new neighborhood, since this one was played for awhile before I discovered the various critical fixes, but it's better to do it on my own schedule.

Well, I try (most) everything at least once, so I'll give it a shot. Luckily the neighborhood is not very large (my home village has only 356 inhabitants, 200 of which are old stock, the rest is new, meaning their family lived there for only 300 years or less). I have about 150 people in there now excluding the NPC's. Do I have to wipe them too? (the NPC's I mean)

G.

Yes, the NPCs must be searched for memories also.

What is it with the burned food obsession? Is it an artifact of the Maxis craptastic conversation topic generator? What is so titillating about burnt food? My sims talk about that more than they talk about people cheating. It gets a little annoying after a while.

It seems that Sims talk more about their most recent memories, so if a sim recently burnt food, I guess that would be foremost to them rather than somebody cheating last week.