More Awesome Than You!

One of my sims is stuck on the first day of Adult age ("Becomes an Elder in 29 days). Everybody else in the same house ages normally. This really became quite obvious when her 2 sons came back from college and they immediately showed as older than she was (higher up in the tree on the left).

I know that this is a Maxis sim that became playable (married one of my sims); she was almost certainly a college student and I <i>might</i> have aged her by using the cheat Ctrl-click menu, but since she has a diploma hanging on her wall I think I just made her playable and played her through Uni. (Sorry, this was all a long time ago and my memory is crap.) I really don't think she was a cheerleader though, I had made that mistake in a previous game and regretted it, I'm pretty sure she was simply a dormie.

Basically I'm asking if anybody else has had the same problem and/or knows how to get her aging normally... (I could advance her to Elder by the same Ctrl-click method, but I'd rather have her aging instead.)

They only time I had a problem similar to that was when I tried to use a house built in the University subneighborhood as a main neighborhood house.  The Sim who originally moved in stopped aging, but her husband, who married in a few days later, aged fine.  When she switched places with him on the tree was when I noticed she wasn't aging.  Moving them into another house (built in the main neighborhood) solved the problem.

Have you tried:

1) Forcing an error on her and resetting?

2) Forcing an error on her and deleting? (She should come back to the household eventually.  If not right away, then save, quit, and re-enter).

3) Having her Move Out on her own into the sim bin, and then recombining her back into the household?

4) Moving the entire family out of the house into the simbin and then moving them back (or onto a new lot altogether)?

Sometimes sim data just gets borked.  Reseting or deleting them out can fix things (but not always).  Invisible objects like the various controllers that get spawned on lots can also get borked.  So moving sims out and back or to a new household can reset/respawn or spawn new non-borked controllers.

Ste

Tried forcing error and resetting. Will try the other ways if this doesn't work, thanks. Of course this will take a while, since I can only know if it's worked next time the day changes....

That'd be funny if it happened, a sim that mysteriously doesn't age and lives forever.

Yeah, that would actually be kind of a neat storyline... to have a singular kind of almost immortal sim...

Well... technically, you could already do that anyways.  Just stock up on Elixir and have one sim out live the rest of em. ;D


Ste

I often have a particular vampire throughout the entire timeline of a hood. My self sim has already started taking elixir, she's going to stick around for a while.

Yes, I do have a few "immortals" -- either vampires or through the Elixir method. This sim isn't <i>meant</i> to be one though :-)

(BTW, the force error/reset method didn't work. Now I've tried force error/delete, we'll see what happens...)

Or use your cowplant to drink them all, then find that the fridge is empty and cake sounds awfully good.  :o

If you haven't already, check her in SimPE.
I had a born-in-game Sim, married with a family and suddenly noticed that his wife (12 days younger) was 2 days from elder while he was still at 29 days from...

I tried everything, from negative asp elixer and moving him to a separate lot to deleting and error forcing.  Finally it occurred to me to check him in PE.  Not sure how it happened, but his days left was sitting around the 65,535 mark, (the number that appears for ghosts)

He'd never been anywhere close to death and I don't recall anything odd happening in his home, but that was the only place I could fix him.

i noticed than when one of my playable sims "married" an npc (the maid from strangetown).  he aged, she didn't. 
i didn't want to mess with it so i just killed her off.  her hubby eventually got over it.

 :P

What's the deal here?  Now we're not allowed to marry NPC's?  Considering how many people played the ORIGINAL Legacy Challenge, and married NPC's into the families, and no such problems were reported, I have to wonder what the hell is going on.

Hook

Never had any problems with maids aging. There are some NPCs which should be avoided, but AFAIK maids, gardeners, delivery guys, mailmen, and most others are safe.

I made the mistake of marrying the headmaster back in the days of the basegame.  Very bad move.

When I first got NL, the gypsy summoned a car pool driver as a date for one of my sims.  I believe they're one of the "do not marry" NPCs. 

Now whenever I start a new hood, I go into SimPE and give certain NPCs (such as drivers, social workers, repo men) negative preferences to both genders.  I also do the same for nannies - I believe they're safe to marry in but they annoy the hell out of me, so like the Drama professors, they're not getting any action in my game ;)

Not safe because these are not real Sims, but are pulled from objects.package:
Shrink, Grim Reaper, Hula Zombie, Pollination Technician, Remote Control Car, Mrs. Crumplebottom, OFB driving robots, OFB flying robots, Birds, Perfect Plant Sim, Santa Claus, Father Time, Toddler New Year

Definitely not safe because of incomplete Sim files:
Drivers, repomen, social workers, social bunnies, call-in-sick-guys (but get the phonehack to prevent these from ever being made)

Irritating hardcoded behaviour, but otherwise probably safe:
Drama profs (flirt), nannies (insane), gypsies (spit-polish), diva/mr.big (primp), slob (belch/fart)
Irritating hardcoded outfits, but otherwise probably safe:
cheerleaders, llamas, cows, streakers

Think that's them.
If you don't mind the behaviour or outfits, marry the latter groups if you must.

How do you know if a sim is a driver?  Do they wear something special?  I'm pretty sure that I've never actually seen that NPC.

Drivers wear the ugly brown jumpsuits, and cannot be interacted with. Occasionally they walk by downtown, or get gypsy- or well-summoned apparently.
They're the Sims driving the taxis and carpools.

That pretty much matches my list of sims who get negative gender preferences in SimPE.  Some I don't have in my neighbourhoods, unless I forgot to set up the Visitor Controller to prevent their creation.  Good to know I wasn't missing any.

Did anything change in OFB concerning do-not-touch-type-NPCs?
With the "head for numbers" business reward bonus thing, you can suddenly call and befriend sims that could previously not be contacted in any way, like the drivers and social workers (but luckily not Mrs Crumplebottom).  Is that something that should be avoided?  What exactly is it that makes these NPCs untouchable.  I was under the impression that it had to do with lacking character file data, but I'm sort of imagining that the act of befriending them will give them a character file, but I'm not willing to experiment with it.

Thanks Zeljka, that worked a treat! It turned out that she had 70 days left. I changed this to 28, and once back in the game she was aging normally again (turned to "27 days left" at 6pm). (Well, she was probably aging before that too, but it wouldn't have shown for another 40 days or so...)

Oh, and Gwill? The headmaster is creepy. Marrying him is definitely a mistake.

Gwill: they already have a character file (all Sims except the unique objects.package NPCs have one), but e.g. the drivers and social workers are not real Sims. You might be able to call them and even invite them over, but they cannot be interacted with, they do not behave like normal visitors, so essentually you are clogging up a relationship slot with a useless Sim.
Your Sim can get unfulfillable wants such as winning a game against the driver, falling in love with, etc..

This should be added to the FAQ for things not to do in order to avoid a BFBVFS or just annoying crap.

Also... I thought that Pescado recommended avoiding marrying/moving in Uni NPCs (which I assume covered all profs, cheerleaders, mascots, cafeteria workers/cooks, coaches and streaks - are there any other Uni specific NPCs?).

Maybe a warning should be included for those that are "harmless" per se, but just really annoying.

Also... I like Kyna's idea of setting those "bad" sims as having negative gender pref towards both.  Perhaps this should be done with a patch automatically... or maybe something that twojeffs' ACR hack can include when running the randomizer.  Maybe all NPCs that are considered "bad" should be set to negative pref?

Also... is there anyway to hack that phonecall thing from OFB to exclude all "bad" sims from showing up?  I think it would be a good idea if there was a hack/fix/patch for this, since a lot of people won't know any better and don't realize they should avoid interacting with these sims.


Ste

Oh yeah, forgot streakers. And the diva/slob... Off to edit.

How about "always move sims out and remove hacks before packaging a lot"? I just neglected that (stupid) and then realized that my lot contained files for the family's 25 friends, other randoms they've met, and don't forget family members to the nth generation plus all the custom content these members had...and the phone hack. Then, I went into the original lot and found that I couldn't go into live mode without the game crashing (no errors came up). Yeah. Bad.

I guess that I've been lucky, none of my sims have ever seen a driver.  I rarely use the gypsy because I am sort of a control freak about which sims I allow my sims to get intimate with (plus, I get angry when my knowledge sim's turn ons are vamps and blondes and instead of getting the contessa I get Meadow Thayer...And I had to pay 4600 simoleans for a sim that walks by all of my houses like 30 times a day...woo).  Even my romance sims mostly just find their woohoo-buddies from the walk by parade.  And my community lots seem to be cursed by sadorandom.  I'll take my single romance sim out for a night of dancing and the club will be filled with 300 cats, 200 dogs, and exactly 2 non-NPC sims.  But I digress.

I use TJ's crystal ball (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3018.0.html) instead of the gypsy.  Gives you a choice of sims to pick, and can be configured to ignore specific age groups, committed status, gender preferences, townies, npcs or playables.  Actually, I use it more to find people that my sims will make friends with easily.  But also to find spouses.  Combined with ACR it makes the game interesting further down the track, when they meet their two- or three-bolt best friends on community lots ;)

I use TJ's visitor controller (original version here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2271.0.html), new beta version here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8098.0.html)) to stop the pets appearing on community lots in the neighbourhoods where I have strays.  Since I also use clean templates from the Peasanty section of the board, most of my neighbourhoods don't have strays anyway.

What about the psychiatrist/psychologist/guy who appears when your Sim spazzes out? I've heard he produces hideous offspring, but is that the only reason I should prevent him from bumping uglies with any of my Sims?

tee hee

Thank you thank you thank you!!  I'm already using ACR and I am enjoying the terrible situations it can create for some of my sims.  I always make sibs go to college all together, so I had an older sister, her boyfriend, and her twin younger sisters.  The twins were romance/knowledge.  The romance sim was constantly picking up random visitors and taking them to bed with her, but at least she left the boyfriend alone.  The KNOWLEDGE sim was the bad one!  If I didn't watch her every minute she would try to kiss or flirt with him!  Lucky for her she never did it while the sister was in the room.  That usually would have just amused me, but I want this sim to become an old spinster, possibly with an alien child.  But then I found macrotastics and made sure that she was in power idle anytime I wasn't paying attention to her.  Wow, I kind of got off the point there...

It's already impossible to interact with the Shrink.  The only way to breed him is with copious amounds of cheating, and the offspring doesn't actually suffer any ill effects, aside from the trauma of not having a relationship with their father.

The shrink is one of the unique objects.package NPCs without a character file, so he's not a real Sim. You might be able to lift his DNA if he has it, but not with normal gameplay methods.

I think I read on Varioussimmers once in a post by MaxoidTom that most of these don't really have DNA, but use a generic "fallback" DNA, which is essentially random. The Grim Reaper for example completely lacks facial data.

Uncertain this works. There is some evidence to suggest the preferences of townies and other nonplayables are specifically ignored.

People who don't know any better wouldn't be using fixes from here anyway. It is therefore not considered a high priority.

I sometimes wish the sims community had a clearer set of definition.  We tend to refer to Townies (regular non playable sims) and NPCs (maids and gardeners), but the only true NPCs, in the way most RPGs (which is where the term comes from) use it, are the Grim Reaper, the Hula Zombies, the Shrink, the Pollination Technitian, Mrs. Crumplebottom, Ideal plant sim, and if you have the holiday packs; Santa, Father Time and Toddler New Year.  The Social Bunnies are somewhere inbetween NPC and Worker, and so are the Social Worker, Drivers and Repo Man, I think.
I accidentally generated a Social Bunny with the townie tree once (it said shop worker or something like that on the label) and found that the bunny has a normal face and even a set of casual clothes underneath.  I deleted him (the safe way) to avoid very bad things.

Simpe does differentiate between working townies and true NPCs.  I guess I should be more careful in my wording too.

I use Service NPCs to refer to townies-with-jobs such as the mailman, garderner, teachers etc.. The non-interactables could be called unique NPCs I guess.

Simpe's sorting is useless, since it includes unique NPCs without character data (Grimmy etc.) in its listing.

I guess a golden rule of thumb is; never touch anyone in the default household.

...or don't touch anyone you don't see on your screen/can't naturally flirt with. IIRC, you can't flirt with the Social Worker or the Repo Man. I know you can't with Grimmie, Crumplebum, hulas, drivers.

I have noticed that if I "cheat" to make a townie selectable and move him/her into a household, that newly playable sim does not age, although everyone else in the house ages normally.  I got around this by adding or subtracting a day from the age of the sim (using InSim), and then resetting age (back to day one of the adult stage, for example).  After doing this, the sim aged normally with everyone else.  Hope this helps.

In my experience, the "newly selectable sim does not age" thing happens consistently and I always have to fix their aging as described above.

One of my Sims got a Social Worker as a blind date once (this was several expansions ago -- may not be possible anymore, don't know).  They hit it off great, so I went into SimPE and gave her a real name (it was just "Social Worker").  They married and had several highly attractive Simlings. 

Sorry, I'm procrastinating at work and just felt like sharing that  :D

Well, I think the only "definition" that matters is what the game considers an NPC.  PCs are basically sims that were created in CAS, born in-game from families that originated from CAS sims, or other sims that were made playable via marriage or moving in.  Townies are potentially playable sims.  Auto generated by the game and mostly fully functional as PC sims, except they are "immortal" or at least ageless (until they are married or moved in).  NPCs are similar to townies, but many of them have some kind of "special" job that they perform, and they have "special" uniforms and "special" additional programming to do whatever jobs they are assigned.  In some cases, there are NPCs that you can't interact with unless you cheat or there is some loophole (like the OFB business perks or using hacks to summon/teleport sims in).  Then there are the "special" and "unique" sim types like the Grim Reaper, Hula Dancer, etc. which you shouldn't be able to meet and don't have "full" sim character data.

As jordi points out, there are NPCs that are probably "safe" to move in or marry, but due to additional programming, they are kind of annoying and appear to be buggy, since they have a tendency to revert back to their NPC behaviour in often unpredictable ways.  This may not necessarily break your game or turn it into a BFBVFS, but it is probably best to avoid them anyways, unless you don't mind the weirdness. :P


I thought SimPE does kind of differentiate between them.  If you list sims, townies are kinda grouped separately, no? 

I'm looking at Family Ties and Service NPCs have their own group.  I think townies are grouped by whatever townie names they are (I can't remember off the top of my head), or maybe they are alumped all togehter as Default?


That's the thing is... if you "cheat' and make them selectable, the townie is still a townie.  The "true" way to make a sim playble is by using the Propose.../Move-In or Propose.../Marry options.   Making a sim selectable might not properly set all the sim data that allows the game to properly identify the sim as playable (so Age Controllers can recognize them and make them grow up properly).


Ste

Good heavens!  People actually DO this??


Apparently they do.  Oy.

Making a Sim selectable is not the same as moving them in.  No wonder people have problems.  Do like syberspunk says and use Propose/Move in instead.

I was messing around not long ago with making dormies selectable in Uni.  I noticed that there was a lot of weirdness, including the fact that they didn't get aspiration increases for fulfilling wants.  Even if you cheated them to platinum, it would go back to zero at the top of the next hour.  I suggest quitting without saving if you mess around like this. 

If you want to move someone in who can't normally be invited to move in, like a townie teen (do all male teens fall in love with Meadow?) then invite her over, spawn the Tombstone of L and D and use it to add her to the family.  At this point she can be grown up, either normally or with cheats, and your poor lovestruck Sim can marry her.  I can't guarantee that this is totally safe, but at least she ages normally, or did in the base game when I tried it.

Hook

Or use Inge's teleporters to add to family, that's also safe.
Making Sims selectable does not change their family ID, so essentially you turn them in greeted, controllable visitors. And visitors do not age, or count as babysitters.

The driver in my game is gorgeous, and I have often wondered how I could get one of my females to meet him as I have a real lack of decent male DNA (lookswise anyway); but now I know this is bad, so thanks.

I have also always wondered if the Sims with hardcoded behaviour traits (like the streaker) pass the traits on if they do get the chance to produce offspring? Although I have no interest in most of the behaviours (such as the type of insanity the nannies show and the just plain weird jumping about by the cheerleaders, and the cow? I can't go there…) it has occurred to me that random streaking would be amusing.

Why not just hack a pregnancy with him as the donor? That way your sim doesn't even have to know him & you get all those precious hunky genetics.

Insane behaviour is not passed on, it's controlled by the sim's character file. Only personality and DNA is passed on to future generations.

Floopyboo, thank you hadn't thought about that, pretty maxis males are very rare ;D

Jordi, thanks for the info, its a shame really as behaviour can be coded into DNA in real life, (Evolution; survival of those who learn adapt and all that…not that streaking has any survival value whatsoever) ;D

Never mind I'm sure I would be fed-up with it inside a couple of days anyway.

Alternatively, you can use a hack that allows you to move in all (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6631.0.html) (or well... most really) sims that you might not otherwise be able to, such as children and teens.  Or... you could try using a hack that allows you to grow up townies (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4842.0.html), including children, teens, young adults (who can graduate, drop out, or get expelled), adults, and even elders (making them die of old age).[/selfpimp]

You'd probably have to look for these hacks somewhere, but I'm sure you could find them if you tried hard enough. ::)


Ste

And of course, if you really want to age and play a townie teen, you could  just send them off to Uni from the neighborhood screen.  That's what happened to Meadow in my game -- she and Dustin Broke had 3 bolts, so she went to college with him, and now they're elders, with three gorgeous kids and I lost track of how many grandkids.

Syberspunk: When I want to grow up a townie, I make him/her selectable with the controlcheat menu, age them with the same menu, then make them unselectable again and send them on their way. Is there some advantage that I'm missing in using your hack?

(I have moveinall, which I mostly use for simulating adoption of children or teen, and thanks for making it :-). I'm not slamming your mod, just genuinely wondering if there's something I'm missing.)

The advantage is... do it all in one interaction: technically one click (I think I made it so the sim should always accept even though it is considered a social interaction).

In one of my older hoods, I was using pretty much the same method you did.  Using whatever (hack or debug cheat) to make a sim selectable, age them up, and then de-select them.  Except... in some cases, I found that making a sim selectable with the InSim did funky things.  Also... the original "make selectable" menu option from the debug cheats was kind of... ironically :P buggy.  It's fixed now, but I don't know since when (OFB? Pets?).  Also... I think (although I'm not totally sure now, since it has been awhiles) that using the "Set Age" option does not give the townie any memories of growing up.  With my hack, the townies get the proper "Grew Up Well" (Or Bad, depending on aspiration) memories, and if they actually have those wants (or fears), they should be satisfied too.

I made the hack as an alternative to moving in townies and having to make them playable just to age them up.  I wanted to still have my sims' childhood, teen, etc. friends age up with them, without me necessarily having to "play" them out.  In this way, I can age them up without having to enable debug mode (although now, I keep debug mode on all the time, but before, I only turned it on when I felt like it) and going through the whole select, age up, deselect process.  Sure, it's not all that hard or necessarily time consuming to do in the first place, but for me, it saves time.  :)

Oh... also... depending on what controller type you pick, you could use the hack to grow up other playable sims pretty much any time you wanted, instead of having to wait for their actual birthdays.  Of course you can do this with the debug menu by setting the sim to their birthday, but it's still one less button to click (i.e. you wouldn't have to shift+click). :P


Ste

You has kitten killer, no?

Syber: thanks for the detailed explanation -- I might actually give the hack a try now that you put it that way... :-)

Dea: Do Not Want! I don't haz kitten killer. I can haz haxx?