More Awesome Than You!

Patch 3 for seasons! (http://thesims2.ea.com/update/getpatch.php?appVersion=1.7&variation=cd&languageCode=)


Here is the fix list...
Complete list of changes:

      NOTE: Not all fixes will take effect on existing The Sims 2 Seasons saved games. If you have an existing lot, Sim, object or neighborhood that does not seem to be improved by this patch, we recommend that you replace the affected object, or create either a new family, lot or neighborhood, depending on what is affected by the bug.
          o Custom objects will now be preserved when uploading Lots to the Exchange.
          o Musician Career Track career reward (Rock Hammer) now has audio functioning correctly.
          o Sim Babies no longer cry excessively
          o Sims will no longer pop out of the pool to recognize that it's raining.
          o Sims will no longer use chairs placed on roofs while performing certain interactions.
          o Drinking Orangeade will now add random badge points correctly.
          o PlantSim babies that age to adults will now maintain their PlantSim outfit in their clothing inventory
          o PlantSim Toddlers will now not lose their PlantSim outfit after planning outfit with changing table.
          o In Education Career Level 4, Sim will now actually lose 475 Simoleans as the UI states, and not get demoted.
          o In Education level 7, Sims will no longer lose all their Simoleans and get demoted, but rather lose the amount shown in the UI as expected.
          o Players will now be warned before the Social Worker takes away children for temperature neglect.
          o Skating on rinks will now increase a Sim's fitness level.
          o Children will no longer stop dancing unexpectedly as nanny plays the Rock Hammer guitar.
          o Un-moveable maple trees in neighborhood view will no longer appear at random.
          o Fish will no longer become stuck on lot if set on sale while penguin attempts to eat it.
          o Sims will no longer lose "fun" while playing the piano.
          o Inventory will now update visually when using "undo" after inventory is empty.
          o Items can no longer be permanently lost from inventory by using undo and then immediately selecting other Rewards tabs.
          o Seasonal Progression from home lot will now properly transfer to owned community lots.
          o Trash compactors can now be repaired by Service NPC Repairman.
          o Watering a plant in a greenhouse while it is raining will no longer cause the plant to weep from being overwatered.
          o Sims will no longer remain in the Energizer after all motives are charged.
          o Drinking Orangeade without Open for Business installed will no longer display an incorrect skill badge.
          o Primp self-interaction is again available.
          o Trees placed in Neighborhood View are now again visible in Lot View.
          o Sims will no longer spontaneously combust so easily (hot tubs, exercise machines, etc.).
          o Sims will no longer become permanently stuck on rinks if lot is moved while Sims are currently skating.
          o Barista will no longer stops working after a Sim notices it's raining or snowing.
          o "Latipsoh Green" Linoleum floor is no longer replaced by the "Neutral Sand" Linoleum floor.
          o Sims will now much more rarely route through swimming pools when trying to reach locations.
          o Snow saved on Community Lots will now melt properly.
          o Sims will no longer take repeated baths or showers when cold.
          o Vampires will now not get out of their coffin in the daytime to watch weather.
          o Skill points gained from eggplant juice will now properly trigger wants.
          o Dialogue box to rename your pets will now longer refer to them as a PlantBaby
          o Pets will no longer sink into the ground when Sims interact with Water Wiggler.
          o Children no longer levitate when watching TV Sports Channel.
          o Ottomas twins' father data is now correct.
          o Stuffed rainbow trout will no longer shift below the pan during cooking.
          o Sims will no longer die as easily by being struck by lightning.
          o Visiting "Townie" Sims will not die as often when struck by lightning.
          o Sims will be smarter about seeking out the shortest path to take to player-directed locations.
          o "It's Raining" interactions will not continue to occur after a Sim has seen the weather several times.
          o Teens who happen to age to an adult at the top of Music Career Track on a work day will no longer 'miss work' and get negative job performance.
          o The first semester of a major (in University) can now be completed by Teens.
          o Arch doorways will now not trigger Sims to change to Outerwear during winter.
          o Children will no longer levitate when they watch a birth.

I'll believe that when I see it.  ;) They've promised us that since the TS1 days.

Remember smarter is a relative term. ;)

What's fun about these is that the corrections now need beta testers.  Who's brave enough to find out what's broken here now?

Well eventually they might get it right...though it would probably be by accident :P

I don't understand this one....
o The first semester of a major (in University) can now be completed by Teens.

Does that mean they won't age transition to YA until then?

I second what Twain said.  What the hell does that mean.
Also NOT ME for trying this out... who wants to go first...

Sims will no longer use chairs placed on roofs while performing certain interactions.

I still don't get it....

Who would put it there and why? It seems like it would be all slanty and not very good for sitting.

I guess I'll go first since I'm still building my hood and not actually playing it, yet. So I got nothing to lose. I'll try it when I play test my lots later on tonight.

/me thinks perhaps EA is just throwing out a few wacked out things in an attempt to make it look like they fixed things :P

I'll try it out. I was just about to bin some hairs and then play anyway.

This might refer to a problem I and others have had where a Sim finishes the first semester of Freshman year, completes the final but doesn't get credit for it and has to repeat that whole semester.  I had it happen on the second semester of Freshman year also after I advanced them to the second semester via SimPE.

How many times have they "fixed" the piano now?

I expect to see the piano in evey patch

I haven't patched a thing since getting zapped by the first Pets patch (since removed) so you can be sure I'm not going first.  If at all.

Maybe next year.

I'll probably be waiting until Bon Voyage patches my game for me, thanks.

Director's Cut Updated.

Thank goodness, I got hit by that 1st gen post-apoc in my current family. $200,000 simoleans gone.
Yay! The maples were my favorite. Now to add them all back in...
Yes! My poor self-absorbed sims didn't know what to do!
Yeah, but the kids will still be butt-ugly. And what of the players who've already spawned them?
Boo.

Well, now I know why one of my houses suddenly developed a bloody great tree in the kitchen that totally blocked the fridge.  I worked out that it was in neighbourhood view (there were several of them) and I couldn't delete it, so I had to move the house.  My neighbourhood is so small and desperate for property space that I will probably be forced to dowmload the patch to get rid of these trees.  Pity, because the last thing I want to do is reduce random deaths, esp. amongst townies.

I'm also somewhat confused about the teens/first semester thing.  I thought it meant they could complete the first semester before going to Uni.  Suppose the only way to find out is to play.

I had a tree right in the middle of the living room. I thought I did something stupid to make that happen. Heh, dumb-dumb...I should've known it was an added bonus.

'scalled "duct tape".

The primp action actually increased hygiene for Sims who used it, and refreshed the water need for the plant Sims. It's actually useful if your Sim is desperate.

Heh, primping increasing water is actually a bug caused by Maxis overloading the Plantsim "water" need onto the normal-sim "Hygiene".

I wish there was a way they could prevent deaths of playable sims when they are on another lot and uncontrollable, but keep the risk higher for townies.  I wouldn't mind some of them being zapped, but I've been putting off buying the pack so my families don't die at each other's parties, or on community lots.

I think the teen uni thing is about the first semester not crediting properly.  Supposedly this was primarily a problem with Maxis created teens, thus their weird wording.  The only one who had that bug in my game though was the Ramirez girl, and that was without seasons installed. 

Guess this means I can go ahead and buy the expansion pack now.  I found Holiday Stuff on sale for $9.95 and picked it up to install after I buy seasons, and then I came home and saw the patch was announced.  But I have to finish writing a novel before I can play it anyway.

I'm not afraid to try. All I have to lose is time if I have to reinstall. *shrug* Everything else is backed up.

I even decided to do something completely different this time and have actually remembered to remove my hacks BEFORE installing the patch.  ::)  ;)

Considering I just backed my game up to install the H&M Stuff Pack, I might as well install the patch... but I don't wanna.

I'd install it, but I just  finished putting all my hacked files and cracks back into place after installing H&M. *sigh*

I'd wondered what happened to it.

I'd be willing to try this out 'first,' but I get the 'Must uninstall and reinstall Seasons' error message and don't know how to fix it.  >:( Any suggestions? Incidentally, I am using a No-CD crack, but I've tried using the 'normal' file in its place and still get that message.

Have you edited your graphicrules.sgr file?  If this is like the last patch (and since it does include those fixes, I assume it is) you'll need to back that file up and replace it with the original.

Think I'll wait to see if it behaves oddly before patching. I'm still in the middle of 'I just installed Pets and Seasons and now I really need to clean out all my custom content like whoa but also download stuff for the new EPs and catch up on new goodies in the last six months and oh why not add a few stuff packs' mode and not actually playing anyway, so can't do useful testing.

Now if I could just figure out what's wrong with that damn glasses mesh. :P

My wha. . . ? Hmm, Never heard of that before. The first patch went in fine, but this one is giving me problems. I'll give that a try. Thanks. :)

The most common files responsible for the error are objects.package, graphicsrules mentioned above (usually edited to get around Maxis-imposed resolution/display limits), and a cracked .exe. One patch choked on my empty OFB template.

Here's what you should do. Run the patch and watch the progress. When the error pops up, look at which file the installation had reached. That's the file that the patch is choking on. You need to replace it with the original version (off the CD or mounted image).

Well, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks! It seems it's my TSData/Res/3D/Objects02.package file. How very odd. Oh well, I'll see what I can do. :)

They become corrupted for no reason whatsoever. :(

Who is willing to bet that EA stole. I mean borrowed Pescado's code to fix the problems that Seasons shipped with?

Seriously, it took them 2 months from the 'expected' release to actually ship this. Ironically, it takes them too long to release a patch, but every expansion and stuff pack ships on time...

Seems they don't give a crap about the community and will just release all the crap for the game without fixing their previous issues. But good thing we have pescado here to fix them.

On a side note, what awesome hacks are not needed anymore due to this second patch, or were they removed in the new director's cut?

There are a couple hacks listed in the   /seasons/obsolete/   directory already.

Been playing with the patch installed for at least a few hours now with no hang-ups to speak of. That's a nice change.

One would think that the newly updated DC would have taken out the fixes...

I mean by this things the patch changes that pescado also changed. Not the ones in the obsolete folder (because those ones completely were fixed)

I mean like antiweatherreaction, warmthfixes...

(shame I accidently patched the game incorrectly and must reinstall everything)

Doubleplusungood!  >:(

So far the only bug that I can see is that the bunk bed that I got from MTS2 is flashing blue (like it would without the floor mirror installed). I'll try reinstalling said floor mirror to see if that helps.

Against my better judgement, I'm going to give it a try.

In the last discussion we had about it, Pes said it's not stealing, since they own all the rights, and that he, basically, like the rest of us, was in favor of them using his fixes, if it meant things would get fixed, and fixed right.

Plus, this is WAY earlier than they patched Pets properly, or OFB and NL, let alone Uni.  The first patch came out very quickly, really, and it's only been a little over 3 months since release.  That's about on average with other game companies, for a change, and better than quite a few.


ETA: Forgot to mention that I have installed it. Booting up the game now..

Holy shit, it may be worth getting just for that.

Even though I'll have to probably reinstall seasons to get the patch to work.

Oh good-but.....


Bugger.

I'm pretty sure that warning refers to . If you have G001 imported in My Docs prior to getting this patch, you won't benefit from the fixes in the patched template.

I have the G001 empty template installed for building purposes in my vanilla Sims 2 folder, but I've deleted that actual neighbourhood in my playable Sims 2 folder. Shouldn't affect my custom neighbourhoods....should it?
Just downloaded the patch, and it installed with no problems, so now I am afraid to start up my game.  :D

Shouldn't (can't) affect custom neighbourhoods.

Doublecheck G002 before starting a new 'hood though, it is possible the patch put stuff back in. I haven't patched yet, so no idea what all changed.

They still didn't fix the bug introduced with Seasons where elders always transition with the same hair style (french braid for females, balding for males).  I wish there was a fix for that.

Make sure you have your g001 folder in before you patch, or this patch will make your game explode in a big firey ball visible from space. And they can't be modified. AFAIK, it doesn't touch anything in any other folders of the game except for the ones in seasons. Unless it touches the piano in the sims 2 base game... like every patch before it has.

I didn't add back any of the files I've removed, including the g001 folder before installing the patch, and it worked just fine for me (so far).
The only change I did was unchecking read-only on the folder.

It stopped raining in my neighborhood. The sound is there, but no rain.  :-[

EDIT: okay I removed all of my hacks and it is still not raining. Not visually, I meant. Anyone else?

EDIT 2: I think I'm getting quite the wants galore: All my sims want now is to be werewolves and howl all night long.. Without the hacks. Parley, EA?

They didn't mention changing the bug with elder career clothes in the Seasons careers, boo!  :'(  And I even emailed MaxoidSam about that one.

Hey, at least this time they don't say they've fixed the maid/fishtank thing... :-)

Perhaps they broke it again :P

Ok, so I'm downloading the patch and backing up the full Sims 2 folder under Documents. Meanwhile, here is a list of the hacks I'll be removing because they should be made obsolete by this patch (at least as far as *my* reason for using them...) I expect I will report later about the results...

Officially declared obsolete by El Presidente:
pettempadfix
primpfix
snsp0nrgizerfix

My own culling:
antiweatherreaction (and we'll see what happens...)
indoorplantfix (I don't mind weeds, they're good for building badges -- I did mind the soaking)
pianofix
warmthfixes (I know it fixes more than the patch claims to fix, but I want to see what happens)

Ok, so, first thumbs-up report: Installed the patch, loaded the game, loaded a couple of lots and played for a few minutes each -- no fireball so far.

What did happen:

- Patching failed initially on C:\Program Files\Games\Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Config\Graphics Rules.sgr. I had a .bak version for that, so I swapped it in, and patching succeeded without further hitches. (Went back and checked changes to Graphics Rules.sgr: it re-set my maxnumofvisitingsims to 8 for High, so I put it back to 24. Otherwise, it mostly seems to have replaced "forceLowResolution" with "defaultLowResolution" in several places -- sounds good to me, mind you I don't understand much about these settings...)

- As usual, the Sims on the lot were reset by the patch -- they're standing there doing nothing (including the ones who were asleep in bed when I saved) and their motives are reset. Not a worry to me because I'm always careful to wait until everybody is on the lot and nobody is on the phone or doing "dangerous" things before I save+exit, but for those who aren't as anal, take note and be anal just this once before you patch :-)

- My graphics/gameplay settings don't seem to have been changed from what I can see in the in-game Options screens. Good.

- My custom neighbourhood camera file hasn't been replaced. Good.

- Neighbourhood decoration trees definitely visible from the lot now. (Not a big difference in my game because I don't have a lot of them to start with.)

- Primping is indeed enabled without the awsome hack.

Further reports later if warranted, but so far it looks moderately safe :-)

So the patch was 47Mb+ in size, I'm glad we've got a big fat 8Mb broadband connection... and feel sorry for those on dial-up.  I think I'll wait a week or so before getting round to installing in the hope that any undercover nasties make themselves known.

antiweatherreaction seems to not be needed. The 'it's raining' or other weather reactions don't queue stomp you with the patch in place. So your sim won't wake up in the middle of the night to complain about not having enough sleep just because it's raining.

The official patch seems to have the same behaviour as the awesome hack...

I installed the patch with no problems but now my userstartup cheats file doesn't seem to be working. Anyone else have this issue?

Mine works -- both the "defaults" section (like boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true, boolProp allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation true, etc.) and the alias section (like alias snap "boolProp snapObjectsToGrid"). No idea what your problem could be, sorry, just giving my data point...

Has anyone noticed any new hack conflicts with the patch installed? Or is it safe as usual to throw FFS hacks in without serious testing?

I played for 2 hours this morning and didn't have any problems. I tested uni to make sure they could get past the 1st semester, I'm not having problems with any of my hacks installed, and I even placed a chair on the roof, just in case that ugly bug was still there...actually, I wanted to see it...but alas, I think this patch is actually working and not breaking so much.

I haven't run into any problems either.  It's practically a miracle.  :D

..they fixed the Ottomas thing? So if I was a stupid kuronue who didn't bother deleting them from my game entirely, are they safe now?

I know. Me too, I'm amazed :D

I don't think it is possible for Maxis to fix sims that are already in your neighborhoods. They might have fixed it in Program Files, so the next time  the family gets dumped into your neighborhood, they'll be fixed.

Is there a way to, er, copy-paste the fixed file into the untouched family? Or extract the fixes and add them in like you do with fridges?

If the Ottomas' have already been added to your neighborhood but the twins haven't been born yet, it's possible to hack the pregnancy controller to point to the right father.  This was possible even pre-patch.  It does require some tedious mucking about in SimPE, however.

unless of course you use InSIM, then it's quick & easy  ;D   

you can use InSim before the kids are born? I thought that was the delemmia. And I've never played any version of them, they're sitting in the sim bin with that guy and his dogs, and the critturs, and the cat lady....

yes  ;D 

using the reproductive adjuster (aka the microwave), you have the option to change the fathers NID (I think thats what it's called) so you can give them the correct father before they are born.

Re: The Patch - I've also installed it hacks and all and have had no trouble *crosses fingers*

Re: The Ottomas Family - I used InSim to fix the father situation. Although admittedly I only play them because I am hugely masochistic...the twins are even fuglier than the rest of the family(yes trust me - and my eye bleach - it's true, here (http://cassblonde.blogspot.com/2007/04/playii-my-first-week-with-ottomas.html) is my link to the Blog I did on them).

I will also add here I love this site and the hacks here-in ;D

I did a hack scan and I found these changes.  The striked out ones seem to already be accounted for.

antiweatherreaction.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F609690 0x1002 Sub - React to Snow
indoorplantfix.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F383346 0x2029 CT - Rain Water
no20Khandouts.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F3F8A25 0x1020 Memory - Is Other Sim Rich?
    S 0x7F3F8A25 0x012F name unsupported
nostrayrespawn.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F4DE67B 0x1007 Sub - Validate Adoption Pool
    B 0x7F4DE67B 0x1009 Sub - Choose Age for New Orphan
    C 0x7F4DE67B 0x1001 Adoption Pool Tuning
pettempadfix.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7FBE21F6 0x101F CT - Ad Modifier
phonehack.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7FE2205A 0x1010 Phone - Sneak Out - TEST
primpfix.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F01EC29 0x22F0 Interaction - Primp - TEST
snsp0nrgizerfix.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F3686FF 0x1008 Sub - Main - Do Motives
sshack.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F029114 0x1002 Function - Update
warmthfixes.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7FBE21F6 0x1004 Process
    B 0x7FBE21F6 0x100B Process - Motive Failure
    C 0x7FBE21F6 0x1007 Tuning - Expring


What about the others?  Do they need updating?  Were these actually fixed?  Can we assume that, since they are still in the updated DC, they are still needed/compatible?


Ste

I wish they would fix the acessories crap so my sims don't have stupid little blue things floating over them.  :P

Oh god, seconded. Accessories have been borked since Pets. D:

My babies are CRYING now.

First patch fixed the crying baby problem.

Installed second patch and now I've got wailing infant sims everywhere!

Ya know, I don't mind a little realism, but does every sim baby have to be colicky?

I haven't had any problems with my neighborhood, so I'll probably skip this patch.

Besides, I like the fact that I dumped the Ottomas twins onto an unsuspecting Romance downtownie male.  He's still in my Sim Bin ready for an unsuspecting Romance female.   :P

Then don't just yet.
They pulled another Maxis: (http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=2ea1a9123332162edf612a064334f1d3&directoryID=148&startRow=1&openItemID=item.148,root.1,item.43,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23)

Just wondering, but does NO ONE at Maxis/EA understand the concept of a beta test?

After seeing the same sorts of mistakes made repeatedly I think it's pretty safe to say that beta testing is a completely foreign concept to them. They seem to be stuck in the mindset that we gamers are their beta testers.

I've noticed two small bugs since I installed patch #2.

Characters no longer have the ability to match hair to outfit in CAF.
Members of the garden club have to pay full price for seeds.

The seed thing might get fixed if the garden club gives another evaluation.  I'll have to check that out.

I knew that they unfixed the cryinging babies when I played my first baby post Patch 2.  It was rather irritating.

Has anyone ever made a baby selectable to see WHY it was crying?  I haven't had the excessively crying babies in my game, but I suspected a problem once and checked the baby's motives and it was hungry.

Hook

The babies are crying because of bottomed out social, IIRC. One maxmotives solves the problem entirely (or making them selectable and dragging up their needs)

I've matched outfits to hair in CAF since installing the patch, so it must be something in your downloads folder causing the problem.

Thanks katenigma.  Was it possible to raise their social by the usual methods, like cuddling the baby or playing with it?  I don't know what other people do, but when I get a baby out of the crib I do a couple of socials, then feed it, then do a couple more socials.  Then it usually goes back into the crib until it needs a diaper change, at which time it gets a couple more socials.

Hook

I've noticed that, using a controllable babies hack, the little buggers always need Social the worst from the moment they're born, so I do the same routine of cuddle, cuddle play, cuddle, feed, cuddle, put in crib, cuddle cuddle, change diaper, cuddle, play -- well, you get the idea.

My criers were having issues with Fun, not Social. Just to throw a wrench in the works.

Unfortunately, I had to uninstall/reinstall Seasons, then got H&M, then patched in between plays. So I'm not sure which part is giving me issues. I blame H&M for the 24-hour clock and some renames, but I'm thinking that the Seasons patch is why showers are now warming my sims much too much, and additional issues with not changing out of coats. I expect another note from a Maxoid saying "we know, we know, we fucked up the coats again" soon.

I think the issue was that while their fun/social did go up by being played with, when it hit rock bottom it stuck and wouldn't ever get back in the green... IIRC anyway.

I've never observed this problem. It's probably an initialization thing.

Hmmn, I think I will hold off doing anything until patch #3 appears. I'm quite happy how the game plays with the awesome fixes.

You all might attack me for this, but long, long ago I beta tested for Maxis, for TSO.  ::hides::  Although, I did mention to them that they were basically just setting up a giant pointless brothel.

Warning, more of my excessive opinions ahead!

Maybe I'm dense, but I just don't see much point in patching anymore.  MATY hacks are working just fine, and they allow me the flexibility to pick and choose which things I want patched.  For example, how incompetant must you be to have problems with your sims getting squitted too easily from lightning?  I've almost never seen an accidental death PERIOD and never from lightning.  Just for fun, before I made my clean 'hood, I rounded up the classic Maxis townies I hated and killed them.  It took FOUR smite actions from the lot debugger to kill Goopy.  And then he ended up starving to death, so I got an annoying starvation ghost instead of a cool electrocution ghost.  Not that I really cared, I only played that 'hood for another day before the sim apocolypse happened and a new clean hood rose anew.

Although I have also been lucky, and while I have experienced some of the crying baby issues, it's only been occasional (mostly with babies with high outgoing), so it's actually kind of spiced things up for me.  I don't use a controllable baby hack, but I kind of intuited that a new born baby will probably need a few things straight off the bat; some love and affection, some food, and a bath.  Then they probably want to sleep from all that exausting being born stuff.  I also haven't had the education career problems, and if I do experience them, well, it's not like money is really hard to get in this game anyway.  But for a majority of the things on the "fix" list, JM already has a fix that we KNOW works.  The rest, eh...don't we all complain enough that we don't get enough random consequences for our little simmies actions?

The only thing that really tempts me is having a teen start college from home, but with rampage I don't need to pay attention to the boring parts, and I can just focus on the friend/potential mate meeting and befriending part.  Plus with ACR uni is hysterical now.  ;)

Lightning has always only had a 1% chance of actually inflicting an instakill on hit. Otherwise it will kill by motive depletion, as it applies -50 hunger per strike. It also happens to inflict -150 bladder, so your sim will almost assuredly piss itself.

Right, that's my point.  Lighting is a very funny way to torment bad sims, but its not nearly deadly enough!  I demand accidental death! 
Even when I did the hostel challenege I only wound up with two dead sims, after two seperate groups of 8 went through the same house.  Two died in the first group, and the second group wound up with two of the sims getting pregnant and surviving to labor (at which point I obviously had to intervene to name the babies as they were born, but did nothing else to help them).  The closest I've come to an accidental death (other than the hostel, obviously) in the last year was when a pregnant sim caught fire making crepes suzette.  Unfortunately, I had a smoke detector so she lived; no zombie baby for me  :(

AHAHAHAHAH.

Now I'm glad I didn't bother with the patch.

Everything is either updated or does not need changes.

I just grew up a baby tonight. He never stopped crying, even with cuddling and playing, except to sleep. When he grew up into a toddler, his social was full green, but his fun was completely bottomed out. Now, even more obnoxiously, he keeps stopping playing to throw a tantrum about his fun being low. I hate cheating, but I might have to drag his fun up just so the rest of the house can get something done, and so the toddler can skill.

So yeah- my problem is fun, not social.

Crying babies: I've never really had this problem either(well maybe once on a downloaded household). My routine with babies seems to keep them content even before I awesome patched it. I wait till they get stinky then: bath cuddle cuddle play cuddle feed cuddle cuddle crib. Since I wait the baby usually doesn't gack on my Sim parents and everyone is happy:)

While the water wiggler, energizer, and Japanese maple trees did bork play a bit, the solutions were easy.   

Infants have not presented any problems (three more were born in my game this week and the only time they cry is when they need a diaper change); my Sims don't die from lightning strikes or overheating (though I've certainly tried to kill a few off that way);  I've never seen a kid levitate; and teens sent to Uni complete their first semester. 

Which leads me to wonder why some are affected by certain bugs and others not. 

Unlike many of those on the bbs, I don't want that much reality to creep into my game.  Excessively crying babies remind me of those oh-so happy days when I was raising my own high needs babies.  :P I've left those days far, far behind me since my "baby" is terrorizing the town as he's about start his second day of driving for driver's ed.

When crying babies were an issue the first time, I started using Merola's painting to skip the infant stage.  Sim infants are a real waste of time, imo.  And, I hate it when the parent/caretaker loses points due to a fear of changing the diaper.  The moment they're born and named, I immediately opt to subtract 3 days from their age.  In no time, you have a teachable toddler with a personality.

Generally, I'm all for that. However, I lost half my sim family yesterday. Two to being scared to death (ghost tag-teaming) and one lost her marbles and had to move to a residential loony-bin. I blame her for the second scaredy-death, since it was her father, whose urn she had just smashed, who put the final nail in Mom's coffin. Obviously, Paranormal will be unlocked next gen. If it weren't for the fact that Ivy is serially gay, therefore necessitating unlocking Science and Medicine so that they can discover how to make a nanobot sperm to impregnate one of them using the other's genes, it'd be now. Yes, my neighborhood is weird.

Damn I love that hack. I never fully appreciated it until this run through. I used SaraMK's 2nd House of Lose (the blue one) and remodeled it into a 16-room dorm. I put in a couple of woohoo rooms and a photo booth, plus there was that hottub already in. Then I went through and randomized all the dormies' sexual preferences. Absolute madness. Ivy's girlfriend was two-timing with this girl Myrtle and a blow-out ensued on their last day in school. I rolled only two gay guys, and they ended up together and apparently had a three-bolter as they were constantly together. There was this other couple...can't recall their names now...one was an original townie from Selzi's templates, a rather ugly nosed one, and the other was an oddball face from my templates...they were constantly bumping uglies. Literally. Then this guy Richard ended up having not one, not two, but three girlfriends, all of whom were in mutual love with him, and all of whom were friends. That one never got any rest.

I just sat there and took notes so I know who to move into Urban Paradise when the zombie outreach program + environmental revival has taken place. Richard will be doing his own little Big Love thing.

I think it was only certain Maxis-made teens that had the problem, like Melody Tinker from OFB, and maybe some townies if you set them to Uni.

Anyone else getting the puzzling message patch #2 is already installed, if H&M Stuff was also installed?

My Sims2EP5.exe is at version 1.7.0.151, I downloaded the Seasons patch today.

Patch #2 has been rescinded due to problems. Patch #3 will be out in a few days. Linky  (http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=7e97f8f6089a1b1a2344e262840fc2d6&directoryID=2&startRow=1&openItemID=item.2,item.43,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23)

Thx.
Anyone got the patch downloaded? I need to check something against it.

Jordi, I had no trouble patching Seasons (w/Patch 2) with H&M installed.

For anyone who cares, there's a quick-and-dirty fix reverting the motive-decay changes of p2->p1 here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/seasons/test/snsp1decay.package). This may or may not resolve your screamie baby issues.

Sleepycat: yeah, I didn't see any notice the patch had been removed, so I assumed that it claimed I was patched, because H&M also has a Seasons patch. But if they just put the old patch back up, it makes sense I can't patch!

I wish they would mention what version of the patch it is on the bug list pages, specially when they change them... but I guess doing that would make too much sense  ::)

Since I installed the second patch for seasons my sims are doing things that they should not be doing autonomously anymore like pulling pranks on each other or pillow fights and hacky sack games. So I guess my no autonomous hacks aren't working no more on resident or community lots. Anybody else having this problem too? I all so downloaded InSim for the first time into my game but that woulden't affect it or would it?

I had the same issue with a pillow fight, only saw one but shouldn't have even seen that one. *hugs her hacks* looks like some hacks may need updating  :P


I doubt that InSIM (which I have) broke it/them since up to now my hacks have all played nice together, only change in my game was the patch so IMO the patch is the reason.

The patch doesn't seem to work if you have them in the game but not born yet, my twins were still born with the wrong parent, Brandi broke to be precise.

Great now I have to play the waiting game for the updates :(

Liar, liar, pants on fire. 

And pescado fixed the issue as soon as they announced that they screwed up!

I had a pillow fight in the street happen yesterday - I have noroadpillows and haven't even installed the second patch.
i've noticed pillowfights are happening in the "wrong" places since Seasons installed.

Anilyn, do the lots where this happens have attic bedrooms (e.g. such as upstairs at the Pleasant lot)?

Maybe it's caused by the fact that some upstairs rooms (depending on how they are constructed) aren't seen as indoors post-Seasons, so the beds could also be seen as outdoors for the purposes of noroadpillows.  If there is a bed outside then pillowfights can happen outside.

No, all the houses are regular houses, no beds outside either.
  It's not happened often and yesterday was the first time I'd seen it outside.  Other times it's occurred inside the houses but not in the bedrooms, even in a downstairs room when all bedrooms are upstairs and all with proper doors.
I'll reinstall the mod and see it it makes a difference. 
I don't have any hack conflicts either.

I have no conflicts eather and so far I have seen Pillow fights and alot of pranks on community and resident lots so far. I just let Squinge know about it over at InSim.

I've said my piece about this whole Second Patch issue on the BBS (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=bc9ad64716d91c844adf667b43b85142&directoryID=2&startRow=1)

Honestly it has been far too long since there has been a proper Twain Rant...sorry for making y'all wait ;)

If you go to the download page and look at the URL for the link you'll see what version it is:


This link, for example, contains the Sims2 1.7.0.151 engine.

...


Imagine my delight, as I just downloaded the bloated 45+M patch via dialup.

In addition to such funsies as the patch insisting I uninstall and reinstall Seasons (bastard!) it didn't work when I did. So I downloaded it AGAIN, via dialup, and got it installed.

Then, mere hours later, the Maxtards announce the buggered it all up.

[Insert appropriate commentary here, but shield any small children's eyes, should any be in the vicinity.]

Awesome rant, Twain, and your thread isn't even locked, yet.  :D

A bucket of beanies for you, Twain!  Well done.  Now go and make some soup.    :-*

I downloaded the patch before it was yanked from the official site.  I noticed that my simbabies were still screaming nonstop a couple of days ago, but just now I found some much more serious problems.  The patch appears to have borkened my H&M Stuff Pack.

A few minutes ago, I entered CAS to test out some new hairs I downloaded.  Then I noticed that none of the outfits from H&M are available in CAS!  I had already dressed one of my teens in an H&M outfit, so I entered his lot to see if he was still wearing it.  In fact, he was not.  His everyday wear had defaulted to one of those kilt outfits from the base game.

Then I noticed that the family's car had disappeared.  I had used the street parking tutorial last week to set up their driveway.  I went into build mode and found that the driveway was still there, just facing the wrong direction.  Once I fixed it, I was able to place a new car on it.  I have no idea if the family lost the full value of the original car or if the game treated it like they had sold it in buy mode.  Nevermind, I found the source of this bug.

Finally, I went to the neighborhood screen and checked my lot bin for those pre-made H&M stores.  They were still there, so I plunked one down in the neighborhood.  I entered the lot in buy mode and found that it only contained a few base game items and no wall or floor coverings.  I opened the H&M collections folder and found that it was completely empty.

So I guess I will have to reinstall the H&M pack.   >:( Can anyone else who owns the pack tell me if you are having similar issues?  Also, is anyone else having trouble with street parking?  Thanks in advance for your help!

Once again, I'd like to point out that EA is almost certainly acting with DELIBERATE disregard, specifically crafting these bugs and shipping them with full knowledge that THEY ARE bugs. This promotes the false notion that bugs are somehow magically appearing in their code by accident, and it also makes it impossible for the non-internet using customers of theirs to fix their games without buying further EPs (believing falsely that they are fixing their game).

This, if true, is nothing less than fraud that they are perpetrating, and MaxoidSam would know for a fact whether it is true. Think about it.

I replied to your post Twain but we got bumped by someone who didn't know what a mesh was.  Luckily we are still above the "baby twin boys, need names now!" post  ::)

I'm still waiting for the drama-phobic llama a of a community manager they have these days to tell me off about the anti-paysite propaganda in my signature, but no one's messed with it yet.  ;D

I was blissfully out of town, and by the time I saw Seasons patch 2, it was still up but MaxoidSam had acknowledged there were problems with it and patch 3 would be forthcoming, so I figured that I'd hang onto my awesome fixes a while longer. Then it was pulled.

Yes, well, I installed it.  >:( Got the crying babies for sure. Nothing else seems to be borken at the moment, so fingers crossed.  :-\

I have the screaming babies. Never had them before in unpatched or P1-now I have them. I have also noticed my toddlers are awake all day now! No nap times for them. I Have gone through 2 smart milks in 1 day with 1 particular toddler. The effects of the smart milk doesn't seem to last as long either. I'm going to try Pes's fix and hopefully it will fix this. Not hopeful though. I'm going to end up uninstall-reinstalling, I know it. >:( Stupid farking EAxis.

Wait, that's a BAD thing?

I know, it should be a good thing, but they don't seem to be skilling properly. The bar goes up ever so slow. I think the smartmilk is broken. Sometimes the parents 'jumped' from the toddler when trying to interact. Mind you she is now a child. They have a new baby that screams constantly, and is forever dirtying it's diaper. I think it might just be this family that is glitchy. I will play on another that have toddlers/babies and see what happens with them.

As far as I can tell, this is what typical feeble human babies do. Although gurgling and hissing is more normal in my family, apparently lesser mortals find this to be disturbing and unnatural.

I just get the baby's motives up as high as possible, put it in its crib, and then stick a snapdragon bouquet next to the crib. A bit cheaty perhaps, but considering that the sim-infant's lifestage is only 3 days, this is a minor thing to concern myself with.

Well, I added my two cents to Twain's rant.  Still not locked, thankfully.

I always grow babies up to toddlers when they get the "birthday in one day" notice.  Had too many problems if I waited until the birthday, so I started (since base game only) using the cake to grow them up as soon as possible.

It would be nice if the new patch would stop the crying babies and let the toddlers stay awake all day, or at least sleep all night.

What's really lucky for me is I downloaded the patch the other day but my daughter & her family from out of state have been visiting all week, so I never had time to install it.  Whew!  Glad I didn't!

I too grow them up via the cake when I get the 'one day left' message. Hmmm, I have an 'infants/toddlers sleep through the night' mod in my Downloads folder that seems to work. I think I got it from Squinge at InSim. You might want to give it a try.

It hasn't been that bad for me. The coats issue is an annoyance, and I figured out it's only affecting NPC's. Still need to check on temp data, but it's Spring now in my little sim tower (I get to build again in one generation!) and I haven't been able to observe it. No babies or toddlers since the patch. I'm just about to have one...project nanosperm was a success and Ivy is now pregnant with Isabelle's child. Fingers crossed....the initial crying baby bug only hit me sporatically.

EDIT: Yay. Jasmine hasn't made one sound, except when she dirtied her diaper. That can be forgiven. The fact that the game won't let me move in a 12th family member despite my non-limit hack (Ivy & Isabelle, baby Jasmine, Igor the Servo, two dogs, and four puppies, plus India) so that India can marry her three-bolter can't be forgiven. Looks like I'm loading another hack.

I seem to be one of the very few fortunate ones who did not get the crying babies. I didn't have it before, and I'm lucky I don't have it now. I'm amazed at how lucky my game has been so far.

Everything in Emma's post is what happened to me.

I had extremely lazy parents in one household. On top of that, mom was pregnant. The toddlers woke at 6am and stayed awake until 2am! The father had to take one nap and mom two naps before the day was out, but the toddlers were like energizer bunnies. I finally dropped Toddler sleep blankets on the floor so the parents didn't have to get up again just to put them to bed.

For some reason the toddlers social motives are dropping quickly. For the first time ever, I got a warning that it was a very bad thing to let toddlers social get that low. It said something about them not growing up well, but I made mom get out of bed just to talk to the toddlers again in case it was warning me that the social worker might pick them up if I didn't fix the problem. Their aspirations were fine, it was just social that was really low.

If the toddlers just drank some milk and then skilled all day, it wouldn't be a problem. But the parents are having to actively mess with them throughout the day just to keep them in decent shape.

Ohh my sim-mum was pregnant too-I wonder if that has something to do with it? ??? I haven't played a house with a toddler yet, so haven't really tested any other situation.

I went to another household with toddlers and active, non-pregnant parents. They had to mess with the toddlers off and on all day just to keep their social high enough. It was a little easier since the parents' motives weren't dropping as fast.

The toddlers' hygeine seems to be worse too, but maybe they get dirtier in one day now because they spend it awake and on the floor.

So, for those of us who have the second patch, is there a fix for what they broke again?

Post #108 of this thread has the download that fixes what they broke with babies.

Played on another house with a baby that transitioned to toddler, and the motives and smartmilk are fine. Must've just been a glitch with the other lot.

India's twins were fine as babies. Ron Jr.'s fun fell quicker than normal, but then his playful was max. Haven't observed them in toddlerhood. I grew them to adults to peek at their looks and got mad. Fugly.

Thanks, Magicmoon. Is that the only thing they reborked in the patch?

They've supposedly borked it back together:
G'on - I dare ya.  :P

No, I am NOT patching again ... I only just got my sims back to "normal" after P2-alpha. I'll manage with awesome hacks until something else more exciting comes along.

o.o
someone else go first

I'm not afraid. I just wish I'd have known it was going to be so soon (that's sooo unlike them!). I'd have held off on putting my hacks back in.

Not me, man. I'm on dial-up, and H&M and patch2 borkinated mah game. Not happy.

Don't need to wait around for hours only to have another mess to fix. :(

I'll go. I'm pissed off at my sims anyways (well, one specific one). If the patch bugs her, I might let her children live.

Zazazu has braveness.

Neh, Zazazu backed up recently. So far so good. The toddlers seem normal. Ugly, but normal. The patch did reset motives, but didn't reset position. So my sims are wide awake at midnight. A couple of them work nights, anyways, and it's a weekend. No biggie.

Yeah, nothing blew up in my game, either.  :D I'll put the hacks back and see if anything borks.

I applied the patch, removed snsp1decay from my Downloads, and played for a couple hours. It seems they actually fixed the crying babies. Fun isn't bottoming out anymore.

I only had one odd thing happen, but I couldn't duplicate it. A mom (not pregnant) got up in the morning on the first day of Summer, and did mundane things around the house. She never went outside. When I got the announcement that the carpool was due, I checked on her. She was playing with the infant, which vomited on her and bottomed out her hygeine. She then went into the bathroom where BUY took over. When the carpool arrived, I checked her again to see if she had time to finish her shower before the carpool left. I was surprised to see her temperature guage in the red, although it wasn't maxed out (about 3/4 full). I didn't notice it a few moments before when I checked her, but I wasn't really paying any attention to her temp since there appeared to be no reason to do so.

I had her husband attempt to do all the actions that I remember her doing that morning, but I never did get his temp to rise. I got the baby to vomit on him, but it only lowered his hygeine about 1/3 rather than bottoming it out like happened on mom. Also, mom had been nursing the baby that morning, which dad could not do.

So basically, things look good with the new patch, although I need to keep an eye on things to find out where this weird temperature rise came from. I thought that they didn't get temp changes if they were in the house. She never did anything that morning like get in a hot tub or work out, so I don't have an explanation for it yet.

I have the standard MATY hacks, including warmth fixes.

Maybe her husband was making out with her while you weren't looking- that raises temperature too.

This is normal, showers normally raise temp. They can't overheat your sim to the point where you risk exploding, though.

I noticed with the pulled version of the patch that sims were almost always just barely in red temp after a long shower. Never happened before. I suspect it's part of their whole fixing the issues with sims taking endless showers before.

I had already patched with version 2a of the patch. Normally I would think that I can just go ahead and install version 2b. But since it's from Maxis, I'm not sure if it's wise to do that. Anyone did that without problems? Otherwise I'd say I have to reinstall the seasons EP, which I guess I'm not doing just for toddler's motives. Argh.

Just patch the patch. It will overwrite the bugged files from the first second patch.

Yeah, my game is working fine now since the 2nd second patch. It didn't even reset the sims this time. No more screaming babies. The toddlers needs bars seem to be as it was before the 1st second patch. :)

Anyword from the awesome about the status of the borkedness of the patched patch?

I just applied patch ep5 #3, and it works fine. (Disclaimer: "works fine" = ordinary non-functioning EA crap as opposed to WTF-level EA stupidity.)

Well, I've downloaded the patch.

*eyes patch suspiciously*

One of these days I may actually click on it.

It's currently 49% down, so I'll let you know if something really bad happens.  ;D ooh, 58% now.

I played last night with the new(est) patch, and as Emma said, no reset this time.  Also no crying babies.  Otherwise, everything seems fine.

I tried to install but it said I had to uninstall Seasons first - couldn't really be bothered to go through all that so I'll wait.

Though it says that, that's not necessarily true.  It'll give you that message if it hits a file that's changed (i.e., you changed your graphics.sgr file, or put one of the blank G001 templates into your game folders), and usually if your objects.package is read-only. Also, a 'no-cd' .exe file will cause it to not run right.  Run it again, see what file it borks on (it'll usually say 'can't replace blah blah' or something to that effect) and just fix/restore the original version of that file from a backup or the original disks, and it should go fine after that.

Having just tried my hand, I'm unhappy to say that the n'hood screen bugs are still alive and well.  At least things became a lot calmer as soon as I loaded a lot, but I haven't gone specifically looking for odd combinations either.

Hrm. I'm getting pet sinkage. However, it's possible I borked something when I unistalled Seasons last time. Will try reapplying the Pets patch to see if it fixes it.

I was building houses last night, so I don't know about all the sims related stuff, but that at least worked well.

I'm glad I'm on dialup. It gives me an excuse not to download the patch. XD (for now, at least? I dunno, I'll take you people's word for it that Seasons unpatched isn't actually that buggy.)

*shrug* what can I say, I'm wary after they borked Pets p1 and then Seasons p2.

I patched yesterday and then played, had no problems.


empty templates (including G001) didn't affect my patching.

For those interested Sam Player, has responded in his blog about the problems with the Second Seasons Patch (http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/blog.php?user_id=3104068)
While I don't agree with everything he has said, I did find it to be a somewhat interesting read overall.

/me can't help but notice the disdainful silence Sam treats some perfectly reasonable speculations  :P

BAHA he quoted me.
And has completly taken it out of context at that.


I was arguing with some dickhead who said that we should all stop bitching and be happy with what weve got.  I asked if he'd be happy if he'd brought a tv and only the sound works? Would he be satisfied with that? Deffinatly was not comparing game bugs to broken tvs.
If anyone cares that thread is here (http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=0ec545f15fc7369b542f26e34bbc8c3e&directoryID=148&startRow=1#82c07f761290347ce2ad35686cbd6790)

I noticed that. How come everyone who sounds reasonably intelligent and sane on the BBS also happens to be from MATY?  :D

Hehe  :P
The only time i head over to the BBS is to raise all holy hell when shit like this happens.

Thanks for the lulz, Twain. This one was the best one for me:


He even admits how stupid it sounds, but he keeps on saying it. As I say to my students, doing lots of testing, or lots of work is not what you get credit for, it's doing the right work. If you test in a really stupid way 100 times, then that is not better than testing sensibly once. It just makes you an idiot.

Ah, here's why their testing fails...

 :D, witch. I think you're right, there.

I think they go about testing the wrong way. I mean, there has got to be a reason why they're consistently missing major bugs that players find within minutes of loading the game. Assuming they are  testing, as they claim, there shouldn't be any reason why they don't find those bugs themselves. The question is, how  are they testing? It's kind of hard to imagine that the crying babies, for example, or the vanishing FFS clothing, wouldn't have been immediately obvious under all but the most convoluted circumstances. I just don't get it.

When we test software at Poly, as part of the design process, we write a testing plan prior to actually doing it. If EAxis run on some sort of process like that, they may just be testing things they EXPECT might go wong or testing what they want to get right, instead of noting what really does go wrong. Also testers may not be so familiar with the game. They may just check to see if <<this thing>> works and never notice if another thing doesn't.

They've allegedly hired Simmers to play test after the FFS fiasco.  I think part of the problem is that they hire them as temps, and I'd bet that they only bring them in for crunch times. Both Pets and Seasons were missing the huge obvious bugs from the previous releases, so that was an improvement. But they are just as obviously NOT testing the patches in regular gameplay.

They only had simmers testing the game after FFS?!   :o  That's hilarious and gruesome.  Tho I always suspected their testing involved way too much woolpropping and not enough actual playing.

I'll smack just about anything modders here put out into my game without fear, but that fixed 2nd Seasons patch is still sitting on my desktop uninstalled.  I fear it.  I fear most everything EA puts out for this game anymore.  The anxiety is horrendous.  I need counseling or another hobby.

How many computer setups does one Pescado use to test his fixes...that always seem to work right out of the can on anyone's system?  I'm curious and cynical (of EA) all at once.

heh



guess he hasn't played any console games... yes, sometimes a console game bug gets missed but most of the console games I've played in the past 20something or more years didn't have any noticeable bugs. yet when it comes to computer games - anyone with a brain knows there are going to be noticeable bugs before they even buy it  ::)  and not just in computer games but in other computer software too and it's accepted... because they can always patch it. (and too bad for those that can't get the patchs)

and now we expect the patches themselves to have bugs and/or break things  :P

And nVidia card owners, check back soon for an update. I should have one within a week.


   That right there is what interests me.  Tho i'll have to wait for the 'volunteer' testers here to check it before i download anything.   lol

Not to really agree or disagree with anything MaxoidSam said, there is a really large difference between making games for consoles and making games for the PC.

Consoles are going to be standard across the board. The pieces inside an Xbox are going to match any other Xbox out there, generally speaking (hacked harddrives aside). Designers for a game on the Xbox only need to test it against one machine configuration to make sure the game is going to perform as expected. PCs on the other hand, it's nearly impossible to find two that are put together the exact same way. Motherboards, video cards, ram, processor, etc.

I used to do tech support for a company where I supported photo software that came with digital cameras. The designers for the software had dozens of machines that they tested the software on, and still the new versions would end up going out the door and within a week of the release, we'd find some stupid bug that only happened on machines from Dell (or HP or etc.) with a particular configuration.

And that's not even taking into consideration the crap that people put on their computers. That takes it out of hardware concerns and into software concerns. There's no telling what's going to cause a conflict or a problem.

I'm not trying to defend EA on this one, but comparing putting out games for a console to a PC is a little misleading.

Bullshit.  A bug caused by weird hardware configurations is one thing, but the Crying Babies had nothing whatsoever to do with hardware.  At least test the damn gameplay on some standard system to make sure it works.  It almost looks like they weren't testing gameplay at all, but just possible configuration problems.  This is not acceptable.

Hook

I think part of the problem is, they test it, then try to fix bugs, but sometimes when they fix the bugs, they break more stuff. But they don't test it again to see if there are new bugs, only if the old bugs are fixed.

Like the Crying baby.

It's not just PC games,  in the PSP game Puzzle Quest, it somehow shipped with a major feature disabled.  And apparently, my scenario is what happened. They went to fix something, broke the feature, but didn't notice until too late. At least on PC, they can patch it. But I think developers are just skimping on testing these days (or publishers are)

The DS version of Urbz has a major game-stopping bug, right at the end.

EA sucks.

The problem is that companies like EA think testing is optional, and can be delegated to an external team, in the last month of development.
In the past QA was a process that ran from the start, so by the time something was released, it was already thoroughly tested for any errors by well-paid people who knew what they were doing.
Nowadays some external team is hired, given a week or two to run through the beta of a game, and find as many bugs as possible. Anything that is found and fixed before the release date goes in, the other bugs (unfound and unfixed) are shipped to be solved with downloadable patches.

With very few exceptions all recent games have had day zero patches. This should be unacceptable: a day zero patch means that the publisher knowingly shipped a broken product. No game should require a patch to be playable, or even get a bugfix patch within a month.

It is very much mentality by the way. Virtually all EA & Activision (US companies) games ship broken, whereas most Ubisoft and Atari (European companies) games work from the box.

Disclaimer: my game testing is limited to testing one game for an indie game developer (www.spiderwebsoftware.com if you're into standalone RPGs with retro graphics), so I accept it will be different to bug testing for a big game developer.  Additonally, the game developer writes games for macs first, then ports to windows.   I was one of the testers for the windows version, so he wasn't going to add any new features that weren't in the mac version.

In my limited testing experience the game developer used the testing period to fix bugs the testers found and to start work on his next game.  He didn't keep tweaking to add new features to the game that was already in beta testing.  Earlier, during the mac testing period, it was bug fixes and working on the windows port - again the priority was getting this game working and then moving on to the next project.  It was not on tweaking to add features at this late stage of the process.

EA isn't a one-man coding team, sure.  But as a company they need to consider their attitude towards the buyers of the game, who deserve a playable, enjoyable game (@MaxoidSam: as a customer, my definition of unplayable is when the bugs make playing the game an exercise in frustration rather than fun).  Extra features are always neat, but surely there comes a time when the development team could say "We're well into beta testing now.  Let's save any more features for the next EP and only work on this one to fix the bugs."

And I guarantee that the creators of these mods do not test their code as much as we do before releasing them to the world. Of course, I look like a real idiot for saying that right about now, but ignoring our "crying baby screwup" for a moment...

Ok, what I know about the code for this game is exactly zero…but that said when it's wrong it's well…wrong. Pes has said—

—"Fixes the biotech station medicine so that it will actually work. It was previously broken"
—and again—
"This is the most strangulated and awful piece of Maxian code I have ever seen anyone write. Whoever wrote this is without honour and needs to be taken out back and shot. I really should have just rewritten it from scratch rather than trying to fix it."

Why then do the creators not see this? Yes Mr MaxoidSam you do look like a dickhead but I suspect its' become part of the job description at EA Games. I for one would never load anything from this company without coming here first, nor will I ever buy any other game from them, I have enough grey hair as it is.  ::)

As for H&M? Well my experience of this shop is, 12 year old shop assistants with an orange tan chewing gum ignoring that most of the merchandise is actually on the floor, then after I've found that damn top/thingy for my daughter trying to sell me a storecard with an interest rate that will eventually lead me to owing them an amount that equals the national debt…When I combine the psychological impression of the real life shop with the EA bugs I find that I have no urge to add more stress to an already crowded game experience. A little harsh of me perhaps but I think I'll sit this one out.

I have two words for you: Guild 2. ROFL Made by Jowood, a German company. It was virtually unplayable when it released. It made UNI and FFS look like perfectly designed and tested games. 3 1/2 patches later, it's better.

It's playable now? JoWood is notorious for releasing buggy crap. They rarely, if ever, patch their crap. They are a blight on the good name of German engineering.

Jowood is a budget label. Doesn't count.
Besides, it's Austrian, not German =p

Yes, it's playable now. I'd recommend acquiring the EP. Not only is it relatively bug free (some pathing issues, and a couple other small annoyances but nothing game-breaking) but they improved the gameplay.  I've heard some complaints about the latest patch for the main game still having issues with multiplayer, but I can't be bothered playing with humans. Oh, and the AI still sucks at running businesses, but as a Simmer, I don't find the micromanaging a chore. At least in Guild 2, my characters don't usually go off and get themselves killed.   :D

And I apologize- Austrian.  ;) My point remains that it's not just American game companies. Microsoft's game division, for instance, doesn't seem to have these massive problems. Mainly because as piracy-insane as they are, they actually do extensive Beta testing with real players.  Oh, and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 was made by Atari- not only did Soaked not work from the box- didn't even want to install properly or run on ATI machines-  instead of patching, they abandoned it. There were similar install problems with Civ4 and ATI, but not only did they have a work-around up the day after release, but the patch to fix it within a week. 

There's an EP now, too?

Yes, Pirates of the European Seas, officially out in the US as of the 19th.  You get to PLUNDER. And the workers for the Pirate Cove are Prostitutes.  :D  And if pathing is screwed up so that ships pile up around the counting house going in circles, that just makes it easier to pillage them, instead of chasing them around the North Sea. Once they've been attacked, they move on.

Do you know if Guild2/the EP has any endgame? Guild didn't seem to have any - you'd go on and on and on, until eventually the game would crash :)

Didn't they fix the 'Pet gets §0' from a winning chance card in a previous patch? If so, they broke it again.

The main problem I have with accepting Sam's word for anything is the fact that there is no transparency in anything he explains. His whole apology is a brief and unsatisfactory piece of specious reasoning that only bothers to cover a small portion of the issues. He talks in very general terms about the process but never describes exactly how it works or why they do things the way they do.

And he has the gall to compare EA's QA with a modders? Modders, as I'm sure he well knows, are limited to scripting environments that will work on any platform (given that the game engine has been sufficiently debugged). When we release code in the form of mods, it gets a lot MORE testing in the form of volunteers here who gladly look for bugs. If modders don't debug and revise their code, they quickly become known as lamers. The whole process here is an open one where anyone can take the code they are presented with and modify it further to see whether it holds to various testing conditions. In spite of not being paid for it we have thousands of available testers available on a few fan sites, and what does EA have? Who knows?

If EA coders were unpaid fans like ourselves, I'd be okay with how they operate and this kind of vague hand waving from Sam would acceptable. The problem is that EA coders are well rewarded for their efforts, so it is very reasonable for us to demand more transparency. We've earned that right.

OT RANT


Every time I see someone say how Civ4 was fixed in the patch, I cringe. I've been a die-hard Civ player from the day Civ 1 was released. I've played every engine change since. Civ 3 never was balanced correctly to play a decent game so I rejoiced when Civ 4 was released. Much better, but several bugs that would crash you to the desktop. Patch applied. Better, but not fixed. Warlord expansion applied. Fixed a lot of stuff the patch never touched. Only a few bugs left. Patch applied. Doggone if they didn't fix a critical crashing bug, so I have to keep the patch, but they broke several things they fixed when I installed Warlords.  Grrr....

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

This is starting to remind me eerily of the ongoing IE vs. Firefox war...

I imagine that one of the main reasons for screwing up the patch was lack of testing resource i.e. testers and machines. Being realistic, this was a second patch for the fifth EP and I'll bet that the majority of the test department are tied up with the next round or two of lies and propaganda (life stories pt2, bon voyage). They will also have concentrated their test plans on fixed Seasons bugs/functionality with likely very little regression testing against normal gameplay hence the crying babies creeping back in. This doesn't excuse what happened but it is probably a fairly accurate analysis. Yes, PC games are shipped with known bugs, it's just a question of where the publisher sets the threshold for what it believes the target audience will tolerate.

The real question is why the unnecessarily fucked with something that wasn't broken just to break it again.

Maybe they fuxxed up their source control? They probably branched for the first patch and screwed up on the code base they started from for the second patch. I got the impression that the entire crying baby fix was absent.

Well, in all fairness, even with the minor puttering I do I know it can be annoyingly easy to lose track of which version of a file is stowed where, and what changes were made in which version...that being said, though, you'd think a bunch of people who do this sort of thing for a living would have some kind of procedural policy to minimize that kind of confusion.

Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer

  10. Specifications are for the weak and timid!
   
   9. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!

   8. Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!

   7. What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.

   6. Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

   5. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.

   4. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment on his code!

   3. Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.

   2. You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.

   1. Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Oldie. Substitute EAxian for Klingon.

For those who have tested the new patch....
I never got patch 2a, not because people said it was buggy, but just because I didn't feel that it was necessary. Is getting 2b needed, or should I just continue without?

Oh. So. Maybe patch bug, maybe unaddressed bug:
Ivy made a boo-boo on the level 10 Medicine chance card. She turned away the intern, but the greedy upstart went and reported her. She was supposed to be fired. She wasn't.

It always did have an endgame as long as you weren't playing in Dynasty mode.


I said that the installation problems were fixed. ;)  Which they were. 

Something I just noticed, not sure if it's patch related or my game being stupid:

All computers, even custom computers, are depreciating before they should. If you place a computer, go into live mode and play for even just a second, then come back to buy/build mode and delete it, it's instantly depreciated as if it stayed past 12:00 AM. No other objects seem to do this, as I tested a few objects to see if they were affected in a similar way; no dice.

Standard game practice.  The computers depreciate the moment you buy them.

Hook

Really, never heard of that. Guess I need to pay more attention...

I think this is to stop the "buy a computer; check for jobs; sell computer - if your dream job hasn't come up, do the same again tomorrow" exploit.

If it ain't broke, why fix it? 

I have a patch folder containing all the patches, but the last one installed and running in my game is the patch for EP3. 

Patches are cumulative (as all good patches should be). One of the few things they did right.

I don't get why some people make patches that require other patches. That is the epitome of stupid programming.

I've got the empty template for G002. Do I need to replace it with the original before I attempt to patch? I read through this thread, but I'm still chicken not sure.

Try to patch and see if the patch complains. If it does, replace the G002 with the original. No need to do extra work unless it's actually necessary.

After patching, check the G002 folder to make sure the patch didn't replace your empty template with a full-of-crap version.

I'm having a problem trying to install the patch.
It won't install for some reason but give me the "Please reinstall seasons before you try this patch again" error message

Move the dialog up, and replace the file it borks on from the CD. Probably objects.package.

tried your suggestion but somehow it didn't work.
I think the patch is borked or something

No. It installed without problems on my machine, and after I replaced objects.package from the disk, it did so on my sister's. So the patch is fine, your game isn't. Unpack compressed.zip over the Seasons install so it will overwrite everything and try again.

Of course EAxis could also start using a working patch mechanism instead. But that's wishful thinking. The RTPatch system sucks as much as installshield :/

If you watch, it will tell you where it's erroring out. Pay attention to the file it freezes at. Then go in and replace it before trying again.

ugh.
I tried and I tried but it still won't install.
bloody heck, something's wrong with my game.
does anyone have the first second patch?

Here's some advice from earlier in this thread:


Have you edited your graphicsrules.sgr file in the past?  If so, that may need replacing.

No not really that's the key thing.
I replaced every file on the system in the seasons folder to when it was installed and still I get this message
What now?

Uninstall Seasons and reinstall.

You also DID remove your downloads folder, right? And you're not playing on a hacked exe.

I reinstalled it over and over and OVER again.
I give up

Before uninstalling seasons, backup or rename your The Sims 2 tree in My Docs. The uninstaller will delete it.

I tried everything you guys suggested in which none of them worked, I don't think the patch will ever work for my game, I don't know why it won't bloody install!

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/pancake_bunny.jpg)
What is this nonsense about "branches" and "source control"?

Has anyone else noticed that when a sim is invited out downtown they now don't even have time to even get in a taxi before the 'why did you stand me up & don't ever call me again' message pops up?

I don't remember it happening before patch 2a & b but I could be wrong  :-\

That's been fucked up for me for a long time. As far as I can tell, the timer for how long you have to get your butt downtown speeds up disproportionately from the gametime; I have to leave the speed on "1", because when I speed up to "3" like normal, I end up "standing the sim up" somehow, even if I slow back down the instant the taxi appears so I don't miss it.

thanks, y'all.


makes me want to go burn my computer now. :'(

The jobs are actually generated the moment you check for the first time in the day, so if you save before you look, you'll get a different list every time.

From my past experience of working on large projects (code + data) using a decent source control system (Perforce based) it is standard practice to branch off (take a copy) at certain points (beta, alpha etc) for archive purposes. It would make some sort of sense that the Seasons code/data was branched at the point of release, while development continued on the main branch e.g. for the next propaganda & lies release. The first bug fix release would have been done on the branched code and I'm suggesting that they might not have used this as their starting point for the second bug fix release. I'm not sure it's really as simple as this, given the comments on which game engine version has been used for particular stuff packs e.g. I seem to remember that one SP used an earlier version than the EP released just before it. In which case their source control may be some unholy mass of spaghetti with various bugfixes/updates having to be pulled in from different locations meaning they could miss one (crying babies). Parallel development sucks.

*sigh*
Ok, has anyone successfully bred kittens/puppies since this patch? India's attempts at zombie outreach have been curtailed because the zombies aren't as drawn to dogs as they are to puppies, and try as I might...no chimes. I've tried 12 times now, different parent combos, and nada. It could be sadorandomness, but it's a bit coincidental.

Zaza? Are you trying to breed the zombies with the dogs? Because I don't think that EVER worked.

 :D Thanks. I needed that.

I have a question about community lots.  Just trying to figure out if it's working like it should or not.  I have Bluewater Village set for winter first, while the main 'hood starts with spring.  When sims in BV go to a community lot in BV, it is winter and the snow cover is exactly the same as in the house they left.  When they go to a community lot in Veronaville, however, it's not winter.  I thought it was supposed to be whatever season it was at home, but is this normal when you go between subhoods? If not, the patch isn't fixing it.

Sounds normal to me.  If it's day 2 of season 4 at the sim's house, it will be day 2 of season 4 at the community lot.  If your seasons aren't set to the same sequence across the subhoods and the main hood (as in your case) you will get this change of seasons travelling to a community lot in a different subhood.

I use this to my advantage in one of my 'hoods.  Nobody lives downtown, and the only time I use it is for outings to make friendships.  So I've set downtown to be summer for all 4 seasons, for the friendship-building boost.  In the same 'hood, Uni is set permanently to autumn for the study boost.

Now you tell me! I've waited a half a sim's lifetime before the job I wanted showed up in the paper/computer.

Once upon a time we never had to wait more than 3 days to find a job in any career.  I figure if I haven't seen the job in either the newspaper or on the computer by the third day, I might as well cheat it with the newspaper.  Yeah, you start at a low level, but you can keep checking the computer every day until you're above the job level the computer will give you. :)

Hook

I have the latest (3rd) Seasons patch installed, and I've bred dogs not once but twice. Well, the puppies aren't born yet, but both times I got the chimes.

Note that I have installed Monique's hack for breeding animals who aren't friends, but I don't think it affects breeding success once the dogs retire to the privacy of the doghouse, only the initial "shall we?" interaction  :) (But you never know, I haven't actually looked at the code.)

So that's what I've been doing wrong! :'(

Nope, only dog-on-dog action. And my zombies are now warm and cuddly, though still obsessed with cheese and decaying. I'm now wondering if maybe it's my lotfullofsims hack not working that is restricting it. I probably have to re-update something somewhere. Will make a test family tonight well below the normal limits and see if I can get some chimes.

My dogs in one family have had puppies successfully both pre and post patch.

 ::)

i downloaded and installed the 3rd seasons patch yesterday, like the good  little automaton that i am, and so far, besides the fact that bella goth was dead again, my sims refused to dress in outerwear when it was "cold" outside.  it looked like a meeting of the polar bear club. 

never mind, i think i just figured out the problem.



why did they fix the levitating children?  if an adult can do it, why can't the kids???

Well, mine are still not changing out of coats correctly. During spring, I had all sims coming into the house and keeping their coats on. So, they still didn't fix that one. I'll have to get nounneededcoats.

Something else I've also noticed, a beard has been missing ever since I installed Seasons. It's the big scruffy 'hermit' beard. The mayor of my neighborhood is wearing the beard, so it still works, it's just missing from Change Appearance and C-A-S. Is that Maxis stupidity or just my game being stupid? I hate it when things go missing...

Edit: Only the Black hair hermit beard is missing. The Brown, Blond, and Red haired hermit beards are all there. Not sure about the Elder version, don't have any Elders in my neighborhood. Great, this is a conspiracy...

Me too. I think there might be one or 2 others missing too. The bald hair head with comb-over is also weird with strange patches on it. I was assuming that one of my downloaded hairs had messed these things up, but I never noticed the problems before installing Seasons. I've been planning to check a clean game, but haven't done it yet.

Levitating children refers to the graphics glitch where children would float above the floor during interactions with adults, rather than just looking up like they're supposed to.

Oh, not sure if this is the patch or Seasons, or something I never noticed before, but teen-on-child tag has some borkified animations. Jasmine (teen at the time) was playing with Ron Jr. (child at the time) and whenever he would tag her, she did this weird knee-bend thing, then popped back up. Didn't break the play cycle, but just...odd.

Honestly, I think I was better off pre-patch. I may just uninstall and reinstall Seasons yet again.

I think that's actually been like that for a while, Zazazu. I remember seeing the weird knee-bend tag before Seasons. Maybe even before Pets.

I think that might be a downloaded hair causing problems...I just tested it on two adult male sims and had no weirdness issues.

[q]Well, mine are still not changing out of coats correctly. During spring, I had all sims coming into the house and keeping their coats on. So, they still didn't fix that one. I'll have to get nounneededcoats.[/q]


mine are also still not changing out of their coats.  i thought at first it was the fact that i had an arch on an outside wall, which i changed into a regular door, but it seems the sims don't pay any attention to the outside doors at all except for not walking through the walls.  if that makes sense.



my toddlers were levitating while dancing in front of the stereo, but it's been a while since i've seen it happen. :P

Toddlers can dance in front of the stereo?

I had one dancing while someone played the electric guitar the other day...

Weird... i shall try this out when i get home..

The toddlers don't stand up and dance.  They just kind of sit and bop.  It's really cute.

I didn't know they could do that either until I came across a hack that made it menu pie selectable.

I play with free will on. I was concerned when one active toddler did nothing except bop to the stereo her entire toddler-hood. When she was a teen she qualified for the dancing scholarship. This was back before we had skillinate>dancing and I was still unfamiliar with what scholarships were available.

So now I keep a stereo in the playroom. It keeps them awake so don't put it where they sleep. I even downloaded a stereo meshed to look like a baby mobile so it doesn't look out of place.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=184648

WTF? Someone just recommended an object made by feeessen?
I think I've stumbled into an alternate dimention... :\

Why is it so much of feeessen's stuff is all spiky? I do have things she's made that are cute, and things other people have textured on her meshes that are, or are so unique it doesn't matter, but...

Anyways, I think the kid's stereo in the Far From Perfect recolor here:
http://www.all4sims.de/board/filebase.php?fileid=933&lim=0

is lots cuter and looks just fine in a playroom, even if it's not a mobile-type.

Hm, actually the stereo is in the original set as well as the recolor. The set is here:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=193348

Can be downloaded either place (or others) because the meshes are in with those recolors.

If you search among the rubble, she does have a few gems.

ETA: Thanks for the other mesh link. I missed that one. It is cute.

It seems more plausible that the gems belong to those unfortunates who were crushed to death by the falling rubble.

That thing was no gem.  It looked like something made of papermaché.

Sometimes, it's a matter of video card. What doesn't look so bad to someone with video card A, looks like crap to someone who can see the object in minute detail on video card B. I had to delete some of my favorite clothes when I upgraded my video card.  :-\ 

Are you dissing my video card?  Huh?  HUH?

No... silly fat Gwilly people.  I think she's saying the opposite... suggesting that perhaps your video card is so much better that you see crappy minute detail that someone with a shittier video card wouldn't be able to see, and therefore doesn't realize that the object looks like papermaché.

Silly bassackwards Gwilly people. :D


Ste

*scratches head* So, uh, is there actually anything that's fixed in p3 that isn't fixed with p1 + Awesomefixes that I should actually care about?

Yes, people with good cards can see things like papier mache textures and meshes with uneven edges.  People with not-so-good cards think those same objects are OMG AWESOME!11!!  ::)

It's not all the card: my biggest improvement came with my new screen even tho I had two asus en7900gs's running in SLI. The game PLAYED much better with the SLi, new procesoor etc etc--but the LOOK was dramatically improved with a widescreen LCD.

I like fee Essens ideas, but the execution lacks a lot--probably because she's on a less than new PC and she simply doesn't know or can't help it.

My graphics card is terrible. The computer came with an onboard one and I upgraded to the best one it'd handle, but that isn't much. I got no shaders, no fishes, no bumpmaps. An itsy bitsy ugly screen.

I still think that mesh looks like... like a baby-colored iron maiden or something. Not pretty bright baby-colored either, but gray pastel baby-puke colored. Sorry, I do have some of her meshes and like them and she does a lot of stuff nobody else does, and I appreciate it, but all this about it being the graphics card is just too much. I have trouble resisting toddler stuff too - I have way too much of it.

holy cow, i've seen sunburned (or super-flushed, hard to tell the difference) sims!   i thought sims were supposed to get sunburned but mine just got super over-heated and burst into flames. :o :o :o  that is, until i installed the hack that kept them from bursting into flames.

Having just read through all these 6 pages, I'm still looking for the answers to some questions:

Re warmthfixes:  Do I still need these with Seasons patch installed?  Are they basically the same, or different in any way?

Re patching:  I just reinstalled all my games from scratch after being Sim-free for 6 months (try Sim-Anon), and I patched Seasons before installing H&M.  I read above that H&M includes the Seasons patch, so should I expect problems?  Should I have omitted the patch altogether?

Re pianofixes:  Has EA finally fixed this?

Re Ottomas genetics fix:  Did this also fix Patricia Wan's memories?

Thanks for any help!

Max

Warmthfixes hasn't been obsoleted by the patches, so yes, it still fixes issues that EA hasn't.

The Ottomas genetic fix only fixes the templates -- if you already have them in your game, they're not fixed.  It will only fix any future versions that get added to any new hoods.