More Awesome Than You!

So... I was checkin out other forums that I frequent, at least one Sim related, and a thought occurred to me:  There are plenty of simmers out there who don't know about potential BFBVFS causing VBTs.

I don't know if anyone has already written up a FAQ about this, as I don't frequent a ton of Sim sites out there... but I think it would be a great idea for someone (i.e. Not ME :D but I wouldn't mind helping out with suggestions :P It's just that... I'm long winded and my grammar is awful... yeah... that's the ticket...) or someones to write a FAQ that basically documents all the VBT you should not do, as well as precautions you can take, to avoid turning your 'hood/game into a BFBVFS.

To start off, we know at least the following:

1) NEVER Lotbin a household and try to install it in a new neighborhood

2) NEVER Download an occupied household from the Exchange :P and install it into your game

3) If you ARE foolish enough to Download such a household, NEVER install it unless you use the pheverstool

4) You should use Empty Templates or in the very least Clean Templates when starting a fresh 'hood/game.

5) You should use Awesomeware (TM), in the very least all Critical and Very Critical hacks/fixes.

Anything else to add?  Anyone care to like officially write it up and make it all neat and pretty (Flowerchile, Venusy, SaraMK? Anyone?)


Ste

Darlin' Ste, that's a good idea.

I'd include some "How to help yourself before whinging to us" info, too, with links to Useful Tools.

You know. Hack conflict Detect, how to RTFM dammit, Clean Installer, Sim Cat, etc.

Answers to most common n00b questions. "What's all this, then?" would not be one.

Link to Quaxi's censor remover? Maybe.

What not to poke unless you are sufficiently awesome? Mandatory.

Quick Guide To More Awesomeness would be nice, too. Hate to state the obvious, but AVOID THE NON-AWESOME HAXXEN, BACK UP YOUR GAME and DON'T FUXXOR WITH SIMPE (unless you are AWESOME) and such.

SimPE can generate the censor remover by just unticking a box, but yes. Perhaps there should be a new gameplay FAQ to accompany the forum rules FAQ.

Ste long winded? Never!
This would help a lot of newbies that don't want to bork things, but you try telling people who have been playing since the game came out that the things they've been doing are bad. I got into a domestic on the BBS when trying to tell someone that deleting from the simbin is bad.  ::)

Yikes!  I have already done some of the stuff you mentioned.    :'(    Long time ago, nothing recently mind you, but done and did nevertheless.  Shall I now frantically bite my nails waiting for a BFBVFS?  Rats, in my favorite neighborhood, too.  Why can't we delete from the sim/lot bin?

Orphaned sim wants & fears, corrupted memories of sims who have met the binned sims. Etc.

This would be lovely, plus ... we need somewhere that either links to the hack descriptions for the Director's Cut is published, or they should be shoved in with the Director's Cut. Some aren't so easy to search out.

If you're going to make such a FAQ, avoid all THOU SHALT NOT phrases.  Someone who has done most of the forbidden actions without seeing any problems is going to start ignoring all your warnings.

Write everything in very simple nontechnical language.  A one sentence summary like "Avoid downloading and installing lots with Sims living on them" followed by a paragraph on why not, also in simple language, followed by a third paragraph containing whatever technical jargon you feel is necessary so people can skip the third paragraph.  And give the reader an alternative:  "If you do download occupied lots, install them in neighborhoods where you aren't too attached to the Sims living there."

If you're going to mention a specific tool, make sure it's linked to a complete description of the tool.  I've installed downloaded occupied lots while not sitting on a stool and I didn't get a phever.  Any mention of things like empty or clean neighborhood templates is going to have to include a SIMPLE way to get and install them.  If it contains more than three simple steps my grandmother could follow, it's going to be ignored.

Then again, this *is* MATY. 

Hook

No rule against offering multiple solutions to Frequently Asked Questions.

You know. "If you wish to do X, try one of these solutions:

A: (Duh, Barbie N00B solution)

B. More elegant solution

C. Totally AWESOME solution

We recommend C, but all will get the job done."

Add "debug mode (sometimes incorrectly referred to as boolprop) does NOT cause errors, it merely reports the errors that were already happening.  Unless you mess around with it".

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/cats/camouflagekitten.jpg)

I made a compilation of all the RTFM for the most recent Director's Cut for a friend. It may prove useful in this endeavor. Use it, don't use it, stuff it up your little sister's nose - I don't care.  :)

evilredduckie - thanks.  Taken and usen.  Stuffen up sister's nose not really an option as she's bigger than me.  But very tempting.

Good idea. Here are some things to possibly add. Though they aren't necessarily neighborhood killers, they can shorten the life of a neighborhood by introducing annoyances that make it not fun to play.

* Why DAC is a bad

* How to change sims' first and last name, and why you don't want to change first names in SimPE

* Saving while a sim is on the phone (do only if you really hate the house)

* What to do when portals commit suicide

* Why the Tricou family should be left dead unless you know how to fix their corrupted memories/tokens

* How to respawn missing tombstones

* Which NPC's should not be made playable


These are all things people ask about (or come crying about after doing something wrong), so a FAQ that includes them would be good.

Good work, ERD, but but most of my issue with DC FAQ's is that it can be a hassle to find the one you want when the hack itself doesn't have a thread to itself.  If JM or some other kind soul feels obliging, it would probably be trivial to gather all the RTFM's individually, zip them all, and include them in the main directory near the hacks.  Otherwise the sort of person who's prone to looking through a list will just look up the standard RTFM, while the sort of person who won't will just come here to bug us again.

As for the FAQ 2.0, I'd actually like to see it broken into two lists.  The first shall be a list of simming commandments, full-out Thou Shalt Not style, where each is followed by a description in soothing, minimally technical n00bspeak explaining why doing so is a bad idea.  The second should be a Not Our Problem section explaining various common problems and their solutions.  Mostly as a shortcut for people to link to when they're tired of explaining the logic behind binary searches, or why MATYites cannot give proper support for non-awesome hacks.  Especially the commandments would be nice, however, as it's all too easy to break one's game with apparently trivial things if one is not careful.

Edit:  to preserve some peoples' sense of reality.  Also, Venusy, baaa.

Ths has been here since October (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6109.0.html). Granted, it doesn't include DC-exclusives, and is nowhere near the main directory.

I doubt anyone will find this useful for the new FAQ, but it's from the unfinished Oops, You Broke It "Fix It Yourself Before Bothering Us" thread:

A downloadable pdf flowchart would be cool.

I would LOVE to see something like this.

There are quite a few technically ignorant 'kids' on another board I follow, and I can't tell you how many times I've repeated some of these things. I also can't repeat how many times someone has come back and said, "I did <insert really stupid, game killing thing here> and I haven't had any problems. You must be wrong."

Then a week or two later, they're whining because their neighborhood is acting stupid. *sigh*

If they say "they did it and see no problems", post Camouflage Kitten above.

I could make a cool Visio flow-chart if someone sends me the text, once it gets decided upon.

I did these things 2 1/2 years ago.  I'm still waiting for the sky to start falling.  Of course, I did them in moderation, and avoided other potentially stupid stuff, but the test neighborhood where I did them ended up being the neighborhood I played the most.

If Maxis is too fucking stupid not awesome enough to write their damn code so it doesn't have potential to break a neighborhood, there certainly are some Awesome programmers out there who could automate the process of following the Maxis code around with a pooper scooper to clean up the shit.  It would have to be someone who knows the hows and whys a neighborhood might break when certain actions are performed.  Someone intimately familiar with the internal workings of the game data.

Hook

:o I move to have the word "other" stricken from the record.

Motion seconded!

All in favour?

Aye.

I seem to recall Venusy already did that. Also, death to all hairy-bellied Nesses (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=295).

Please also don't use abbreviations like DAC, or at least spell it out once.   Also if your referring to someplace on the net or in another form like the Opps you broke it, point to it (url).  You might understand everything, but not someone new coming looking for answers.

I believe I'm a member of the same board.. and I washed my hands of the Games Help section after getting EXACTLY that reply for the fifth time when trying to warn someone or explain why so-and-so just became "invisible".

When that happens, I take a breath, remember they're all 12.. and I am over thirty. Then I smirk and boot up sims.

That being said, when we first started out as simmers (the wife and I, her having previously been a TS1 addict) we did all SORTS of VBTs and as a result decimated several neighborhoods and in the end did some unknown thing so terribly wrong that the computer tried to untangle the program it was reading and just said "I give up."
Now the sims are on my computer.. and I have control of things. I also have MATY to absorb information from like the proverbial sponge.

Incidentally, what started our sim problems on her computer was her unwillingness to keep the Maxis Trio - all of which I was using for my sims. Sooo.. we, the blissfully unaware, lotted up all my sims and dropped the whole mess into her custom 'hood. Which she'd previously done a DAC in. Plus, she had Kitten Killer and god only knows what other UnAwesomeness in her downloads folder. Again, we had no idea what we were doing and we were both avid (rabid) download spree-ers without a worry in the world about where we were getting our content or what the hacks were doing. Even worse, we had fun with the Tombstone and various other unsavory sides of the programmers' back doors. We fully deserved the ass-whipping the computer handed back. LOL

I think most of us have gone through that to some degree or another, Strangel. Perhaps not Pescado, but not all of us can be omniscient. :) I deleted characters, downloaded inhabited lots and definitely mucked up my first neighborhood.

Still, it would be nice to have a one-stop-shopping type of FAQ for the VBT things that people can do to their game. Then it'd be easier to point people in the right direction for some more astute sounding explanation than 'Smart people said you shouldn't do that because it's bad.' It might be over some of their heads, but the ones that get it would eventually not make the same mistake twice.

(It's not so much the kids with technical problems that bother me. What gets me are the ones who pop into various threads to tell you you're wrong because they've done that and it's never caused any problems in their neighborhood. Sometimes I wished Darwin's Law worked online.)

I completely agree with ALL of this.. LMAO It's just those people that've stopped me from telling people the bad news when they talk about 'splodey symptoms.. because no sooner did I post than someone else piped up with "I do it all the time blah blah blah". Well guess what? The Wife does all kinds of wrongcrap to HER neighborhood (including DAC) and so far all that's happened is we had to systematically kill off a downloaded vampire family and occasionally, she gets an error and moves the family to a new lot.

MY custom Legacy 'hood? I do everything perfect and BOOM. I've lost five simselves. That's why Fond-Goo hasn't seen an update in so long. lol I started rebuilding in a new 'hood, only to have a couple of lots error out on planting the newly (and properly) cloned simselves in their lots. Plus, Cupid's Corner (my custom comm lot) seems to be spewing "fountain" errors on all sims who enter and occasionally infecting other lots. Sooooo.. Full reinstall, new NEW hood, fully wiped of characters, and I'm harvesting, cloning, and packaging all simselves and special townies to drop in. Again.

With an FAQ, at least I could say "LOOK! THAT'S THE SMART PEOPLE! I *told* you they said there was a GOOD reason not to do this shit!"
Plus, I get to rub Wifey's nose in it when she can't figure out why one of her families is freaking out at toilets and talking to walls. XD

If you over-emphasize 'doom and gloom' for issues that don't actually blow up the game, people will tune you out. (general 'you's' there) as 'crying wolf' and not listen when the wolf really is at their door. MATY already has a bit of this reputation ('they say *everything* is bad over there.)

Marrying a cheerleader is an annoyance, not a game-breaker. Same with the Seasons family with the twins (Ottowhoever they are) - it's annoying but doesn't seem to cause a BFBVFS. The annoyances can be fun, when someone gives the llama mascot a story-background (furry warning.)

What exactly is the problem with Delete all Characters? My understanding, some time ago was that DAC makes it impossible to batch regenerate townies. I have 3 hoods where I used it, 2 of which I've been playing for months with no issues at all, but as I never intended to batch (or even single-up) create townies, that was never an issue for me.

If you've got fountain errors chances are you have Targa's backdrop. If you do, take that out, it's broke.

Marrying a cheerleader is a harmless annoyance: Other than annoying the hell out of you, it doesn't actually have any negative side effects. The Ottomas brokenness, however, actually damages data integrity.

I suppose we could terror-alert the various wrong things you can do.

DAC is "incomplete". It's not WRONG to use it, but it does not "finish the job", so to speak, and leaves behind some dangling data garbage in your otherwise cleaned neighborhood.

Also, there's a clear distinction between "neighborhood level" corruption (very bad!) and merely instance level (lot) corruption. Instance-level corruption is generally repairable by simply destroying the corrupted lot. Neighborhood-level corruption is junking up your neighborhood files with janky data.

How? I still don't understand how that's different than a sim that has an affair so the parent is not the 2nd adult in the household? I dumped the Ottomas', they're ugly anyway, but I've got lots of simmies born on the wrong side of the blanket.

Probably a good idea.

Dangling SWAFs then? Usually when I do something that causes that, I get kiddos that have weird wants and the like, but I'm several generations into this hood (probably honesly there's only one that I play regularly) and haven't seen that either. If it's not SWAFs, I guess it's just a matter of still having too many files (as they weren't deleted properly) and I can expect weird corruption when I hit the limit?

I, for another one, would certainly like to see more detailed explanations of exactly why certain things have been blacklisted as dangerous to the game.  You can put me in that category of people who have done some of these things a long time ago without serious consequences, so far*.  I am not going to claim that I don't believe these allegations, but I am very interested in more specific details, for obvious reasons.  Generally speaking, tossing platitudes in the manner of, "Doing 'X' is VBT, m'kay," and pointing people towards other forum topics where many others are posting the same is not really useful or making a point.  Forgive me and others for not having read every single post in every topic here since the site began, but I do believe that this information would be most useful to be organized in one place with thoughtful clarification.  Then someone could say, "Doing 'X' is VBT, m'kay, read the FAQ," and link the relevant information.

I have never been one to accept statements like, "'Such-and-such' is true because I/<someone> said so, and I/they am/are right because I/they am/are great/awesome/God (et.al.)."  MATY heresy perhaps, but I am certain there are others who feel the same way.  Having all of the information on the VBT's located in one handy FAQ would certainly be most awesome, and most useful for poking people who are too stupid to read it.  Belittling someone for doing something the game allows without even activating a 'cheat' before they have been clued in that it might be bad is not awesome behavior, in my opinion, especially if the only reason given is 'because'.  If the information is located and explained in an obvious FAQ, then let the abasement and condescension begin.

Then again, helping people or being friendly is something I am only inconsistently capable of, with some effort, so I am unsure why I would think anyone else should undertake this endeavor.  It would still be awesome, though.


*No serious consequences with TS2, however, SimPE is completely unusable.

The first time I heard about SWAFs was when I was a fledgeling (sp?) MATYer. I saw people talking about something called "DAC" and how it was a "VBT" because it dangled "SWAF"...
Several searches later, I knew a DAC from a VBT and a BFBvFS.. and that something called SWAF could be deleted with SimPE - a program that, at that time, I'd never been able to figure out.

Definitely, an idjit-friendly FAQ of "Bad, m'kay?" and WHY it's bad would be great. Especially for most of the simming community (twelve) and the adults (me) that can't decipher the codes of Long Time MATYs. Arr.

Terror alert rankings would be a wonderful addition to this type of FAQ. It would help explaining to what degree people should panic when they start experiencing problems. :)

Question about the Ottomans.  I was following that thread in the Oops... forum, and what I got from it was that the "problem" was fixable.  All you had to do was point the pregger tokens to correct NIDs for the father or something like that.  Did I misunderstand that?  Or is there something else that is even more broken about them?  If this FAQ is ever put together, I think there should be a brief section explaining what sort of things are borked with certain Maxis EA pre-made playables, and there should be references to baratrons thread about bad genetics and how to fix them, as well as references to (or recommendations to use) SaraMK's Clean and Empty templates.  And maybe a brief explanation of how to fix the Ottomans using SimPE or what not.  Sure there are plenty of people out there who might be too scared to use SimPE, but then there are some of us who are willing to take the chance and somewhat reasonably capable of fixing things if given sufficiently detailed instructions.



I third this motion.  In some cases you could "politely" recommend avoiding things, and in other cases you should prod with pointy sticks and threaten with pointing and laughter should someone fail to listen. ;D

Ste

Might as well start putting down some of the things for when we get around to an actual FAQ 2.0 thread.  Add or correct as as you feel the need.

Do not delete sims:  Whether from the simbin or with the DeleteAllCharacters cheat.  The problem is that what looks like one sim is actually many different files; the DNA is different from the relationship information is different from the wants/fears information etc.  Deleting a sim from the bin or with the DAC cheat will only delete some of those files, leaving stray bits that may override the normal data for some other sim born/created later.  On top of that, all memories and gossip about the deleted sim do reference files that are actually gone, so you will have corruption as the game gets confused.  Note, however, that killing sims doesn't cause problems.  All the required information for a dead sim is kept in the right places.

Mind your hacks:  This may sound funny coming from a site that produces a lot of hacks and other custom content.  However, not all hacks are created equal.  Some are just poorly made, some worked well for a given EP but don't work properly with newer games, and sometimes two hacks that cause no problems on their own will conflict and cause problems when they're together.  The modders at MATY can only be expected to take care of their own creations, so make sure to look for hacks that might be causing problems before asking for help, and ask the person who made it for help.  (If someone else could explain the details of binary searching and what hacks are most likely to cause problems, I'd be appreciative.)  On a related note, occasionally see how large your downloads folder is.  While a large downloads folder by itself won't cause any bugs, it will cause your game to slow down if it's lager than half the RAM available on your system.

Do not move an occupied house into the lots and houses bin.  Similarly, do not move a downloaded occupied house into your home neighborhood:  If you've already done this before, you might have an idea what it does to your sims.  In actuality, it's worse than that.  When you move an occupied lot into the lot bin, all relationships and memories dealing with them are severed, and instead attached to dummy files that are added to your game.  At the same time, every relationship or memory dealing with a sim outside the lot creates a dummy file that's attached to the lot, and is added to any neighborhood the occupied lot is added to.  Doing this once just severs outside relationships for anyone in the house in question, and adds invisible junk data to the neighborhood.  Doing this repeatedly can create enough junk data to render the neighborhood unplayable.  It is possible to take special steps to clean up a saved lot like this and make it safe for download.  Notably, the Kim and Kat residences that came with Pets are safe to add.  Some other downloaded lots might be similarly cleaned.  However, unless you know for a fact that the lot is cleaned up, it probably isn't and will cause junk file problems down the line.

So who's writing this thing? Or is everyone just agreeing that it needs to be written?

I'd do it, but the problem is that I mostly just know a single solution to most of these problems, and some of them I don't know any solutions to because I have simply accepted that they are VBT's and have never had to deal with the aftermath. Also, I'm not sure that I do know all the nitpicky details of why all these things are so bad. I guess it could be written one piece at a time, with people submitting details where they see fit.

Too bad it can't be done Wiki style. Now that  would be awesome, with the ability to link words like DAC to expanded explanations that n00bs could click on and everyone else would not have to bother with.

Yeah, that would be an excellent idea.  Wiki style would be neat.  Too bad we can't just cut and paste from the various excellent resources we have here at MATY already.  I know it's been brought up before, but maybe there should be a MATY centric wiki, rather than a Sims 2 wiki, since that wiki doesn't seem to be getting developed any further...

So... in the spirit of h*r, why not have our own MATY wiki, complete or replete :P with snarky, sardonic rhetoric. :D

Our wiki could be More Awesome Than everyone else's wiki!  It would be the definitive wiki, to Rule THEM ALL!!! Muhahahahahahaa!!!111oneone

Or you know, just for fun and mostly to amuse ourselves I suppose. ;)

Ste

Whoa, whoa whoa! This is news to me. How is it that several people here have folders upwards of 13GB (side product of the Compressorizer thread is the inherent folder envy) and still run the game, then? I know they can't have 26 GB of RAM. I have 2 gigs, folder is now around 1.8 again because all compressing and purging did was make me feel free to get more stuff, options all maxed, and my game runs quickly and smoothly, except for a bit of slowdown during snow.

From what I got out of the thread on the Ottamas family, the way to 'fix' them was to nuke the pregnancy before Samantha has the twins. Once you do that, the family is safe to have in the neighborhood.

If there's a way to actually fix the babies once they're born, I don't know.

Speaking of, is there a hack out there less enormous and kitchen-sinky than inSim that allows cancellation of Sim pregnancies? Not that I have trouble with unwanted ones, but it'd be useful to have a tidy way to do it if I ever need it. (I actually do have a plan that it could be handy for, although since it's a PLAN, I have already thought of an alternate solution.)

Pescado's most recent version of the lot debugger has something in it that does it. That's what I used.

You see, I tried making MATY Wiki once.  The problem with it was that it wasn't hosted on MATY's servers but on free servers since I'm broke (Wikia probably wouldn't have hosted it).  This wasn't so bad but I believe only one or two other people even bothered to edit it.  I ended up breaking it one day in frustration towards the MATY community.

If there's going to be a Wiki, it's going to have to be hosted on MATY.  I'm not going to get free servers again since those always have ads (or lack the necessary software), and it's doubtful that people here are willing to put $10 a month for a wiki.  The software that should be used is called MediaWiki and it's damn simple to install.  Of course, we could have the same Encyclopedia on SMF by adding a forum and putting a bunch of explanations of DAC, SWAF, and the like.

Did it work? Some people complained that it didn't.

It worked just fine for me. I can't remember if I had to do it twice on her or not (I did this probably about a month ago). Initially her baby bump didn't 'disappear', but once I had her take a shower, she reverted back to normal everyday clothes.

Unofficial non-Awesome suggestion to add?  "Messing with certain NPCs (i.e. Grim, Crumplebottom, etc) is a very bad idea; don't add them to your household, knock them up, etc."

That might seem obvious but I've seen some pix of an added pregnant Grim that curdled my blood--and what's worse, the poster actually *thanked* me for suggesting it, which I didn't. I think it was a misunderstanding of the use of the Tombstone or InSim's Grimpollination to get a playable preggers. . .but you'd be surprised how many people seem to think this is clever and cool.

PB

SOoooo... how's the FAQ coming along?














Anybody? :P


Ste

Wait, changing first names is bad? And saving while a Sim's on the phone (which I know I've probably done at some point or another)?

... I'm f*cked then. :/

A binary search simply involves moving half of your hacks. Here's a simplified specification:

1) Observe problem condition and make a note of it.
2) Quit the game.
3) Move half your hacks in the "My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2" folder to some other folder. This other folder should always be a new folder.
4) Restart the game.
5) If you observe the problem condition again, go to step 2.
6) If you do *not* observe the problem condition, quit the game and swap the location of the most current set of hack halves you moved. Then go to step 4 (or 3 if you feel confident in your file management skills).
7) Once you only one hack left in the game, make note of that hack and see FAQ about reporting bugs etc.

According to Pescado, if you change first names in SimPE, it's not changed everywhere and some file somewhere will still have the old name. Changing last names in SimPE is fine. Changing first names using in-game tools like lot debugger, InSIM, etc., is fine. Lot debugger can also change last names.

Saving the lot and exiting while a sim is on a cell phone corrupts the lot and you'll never be able to enter it again. (Has Maxis ever even tried  to fix this?)

A while back I downloaded the gender reversed PV, and used SimPE to change all the first names of every character (e.g. Dustin became Dusty, Abhijeet became Abigail, etc).  This was before I knew that SimPE doesn't change the name everywhere.  I noticed that when I got errors in the game - which were unrelated - the error messages referred to the sim by the original name.

Gender-reversed PV? Where does one get that? (And are there any caveats not mentioned wherever you get it?)

I doubt they can. It doesn't happen consistently and it doesn't leave any traceable error log to examine. It just goes BOOM for no reason, and you're going to have to jump!

The gender reversed PV is found right here in Peasantry (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6843.0.html), courtesy of Marhis.

Something I've noticed occasionally when I reenter a lot I haven't played in a long time is that there will be an extra Sim on the lot, usually in some odd place.  I remember once saving a lot when two Sims were talking to the same Sim on the phone at the same time and when I reentered the lot that Sim was on the lot instead of on the phone.  I suspect that a Sim who has been called on the phone will be teleported to the lot.  If the random teleport destination is invalid, I can see why this would crash the game.

It's been a long time since I saved a game when a Sim was talking on the phone.

Hook

Oh, the cell phone. *whew!* Haven't done that.

As for the first names in SimPE thing... So it's not a game-breaker, just an annoying little thing?

The reason this happens is because if you saved while a sim was "off lot", such as on the phone (cell or not), and something has caused a world or partial reset (such as a patch), everyone will be reset, and off-lot sims respawn in the middle of the lot when this happens.

One of us is confused.

If a lot gets reset while a Sim is off at work, for example, that Sim ends up back on the lot.

If a Sim is talking to someone on the phone, it's possible that the phoned Sim will show up on the lot.  It's been over 2 years ago so I can't confirm it, but I believe this was without a reset.  Whatever the problem was, I figured it wasn't such a good idea, so didn't save when Sims were on the phone after that, at least on purpose. :)

Hook

The thing is, the affair-spawn's fathers are at least human (or servo or alien); the ottomas babies can have pets, NPCs with incomplete DNA, or certain objects for fathers, and then the DNA is all borked with garbage data. I mean, it's one thing to have Momma cheating on Daddy with Mr. Handsome, it's another to have her have a kid with the Attackbot some random person built.

Not that that wouldn't make for some pretty interesting, if disgusting, storylines.  ::)

Which NPCs have incomplete DNA, anyway? (So I know which ones to avoid, as I don't know how to fix them.)

I would clarify in this step that the new folder must be in some other location than the 'My Documents/EA Games/Sims 2' folder. Having worked in tech support, I can see the clueless ones making a new folder right in the downloads folder and then wondering why it's not working.

Didn't a noob, just today, try to put a zip file into Downloads?

We shouldn't underestimate the lack of computer / Sims game smarts out there.

IIRC, the shrink and the social bunnies and Crumplebutt are all objects, not really NPCs, so their DNA is likely to be bad

Alright, so basically the ones your Sims can't have romantic entanglements with anyway. :)
(Although... enough people seem to want to get their Sims pregnant by the Grim Reaper that I'm guessing it doesn't BFBVFS the game. Probably. Don't think I'll try it. XD)

Exactly, which is why random fathers can be bad- you're not SUPPOSED to have them fathering children.

(incidentally, one of the maxis-created playables is a spawn of the grim reaper, so he's intended to be safe, though, we all know how wll that works)

Nervous Subject, in the Beaker house in Strangetown.

Hook

Question is, is Nervous the son of the actual Grim Reaper? There's no Grim on the family tree, he doesn't have the typical look of a child who had a parent with no DNA, there's the issue of there actually being two mostly identical character files for him, and he's Maxis-created and probably not game-born anyway.

I think for Nervous it's just a matter of story, not genetics. I don't think they actually created him via getting Olive pregnant via Grim and having a baby. Beyond the fact that they probably didn't take the time, Grim is essentially Face One when he breeds, and Nervous is so not the child of a Face One sim.

Uh, then how would I have known Grimmy was his father?  Unless they've changed something since the base game, Grim showed up in the family tree as his father.

I agree that Nervous didn't get his face from the first archetype face. :)

Hook

Because Olive's memories have 'Did WooHoo with Grim Reaper' followed by 'Had Nervous Subject' with a couple of random NPC deaths in between? I don't remember Grim ever being in the family tree, though I suppose I could have a peek next time I open up the game. I thought the only way anyone knew was to look at Olive's memories.

Basically NONE of the Maxian sims are "genetically" related even if it says they are on the family tree. All of their relations, photos, and memories, are all faked.

My point was that you're intended to discover this and go "ooh, cool, I can have kids by the Grim Reaper!" and then mess around with cheats until you make it happen, thus it's intended to be "Safe", whether or not it actually is (considering that, unpatched, not even the phones are safe....)

Well, while it's possible to pull something like that off and have your neighborhood survive the experience, depending on how you do it, nothing cool will happen. You will not get baby Skeletor.