More Awesome Than You!

I've been playing the same hood for about the last 8 months or so and I try to follow the MATY guidelines to prevent disasters... not moving lots or families between hoods, not installing lots with sims, etc.... I also don't have any subhoods

I started the hood using Jordi's method of a clean hood and creating my own townies and families... I think that's why it's functioned so well for so long.

I would use CAS to create a group of townies... load a playable lot, use the teleporter bush to bring the new townies to the lot and then move them in for the moment, use the lot debugger to upgrade pre-uni sim, and wipe mystery sim memories, use the dma teleporter to give a cellphone to each sim, use ACR to set gender preferences... then i would make them townies and then move them from the lot to the townie pool.. I created about 200 townies using this method and didn't encounter any problems with it... until now   :o

Well... now most of the sims i created this way and even the playable sims i created like this are losing their memories of going to university, but they still have all 6 want slots, and their mystery sim memories are returning...    I first noticed this about a week ago and just assumed i missed a few when i was creating the townies... but it seems to be happening to most of my hood now...

I created another set of 8 townies a couple of days ago, made damn sure i followed the method properly, double checked every one of them before i sent them into the townie pool... when one of the new townies did a walkby later on i made them selectable for the moment and checked them on the lot debugger. The mystery sims memory came back and there was the option to fix want slots and locks, so i fixed that sim and sent them on their way again... waited for another new townie to walkby and checked him and he didn't have any mystery sim memories but had the option to upgrade pre-uni sim...  WTF??

The problem is, I don't know when this started and of course it's not throwing any errors. Last night I opened the character file for one of my first playable sims, that I haven't played for a couple of weeks, in SimPe and looked through his memories and his uni memories are gone and he has mystery sim memories.

I noticed this was brought up in the Lot Debugger thread about the time i think my problem was starting...
  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,72.msg246682.html#msg246682 
but i didn't realize at that time i had a problem yet....

I have all eps and sps except seasons and holiday crap.... I also use mostly awesome hacks and formerly awesome hacks with a few non-awesome in there.... and i'm a download junkie

Any awesome help or insights would be greatly appreciated... and thanks

It's seems very strange that nobody from this most Awesome site don't even try to answer on your not a very difficult question. ;)

Alexx, if YOU'RE having problems, it's not going to help by trying to goad us into answering.  The fact that nobody has replied yet would tell you that WE DON'T KNOW.  M'kay?  Y'little smart ass.

Townies seem to periodically rewipe themselves. We're not entirely sure when this happens or what triggers it.

It happened to my playables as well as the townies and it seemed to happen to the whole hood about the same time.... and it also happened when i created new townies...

but i was just wondering if this is the beginning of the end??

Scratch,if you still need something that maybe can help to solve "memory loss"problem I've posted it right before here:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=245542

Thanks Alexxx...

I'll take a look at it..

Scatch.  Curious... how old is your hood?  It seems like your hood isn't that old... at least from what I can gather.  I have a relatively "new" hood myself.  I didn't create any townies tho, I let the game do that.  I haven't kept track of townies, but thus far, I have not had any memory wiping issues with my playables.

I'm not very familiar with the creating your own townies process, since I'm too lazy to ever bother doing that myself. :P  But, by default, if you ever move townies into a household (assuming you are not using move in related hacks, like pinhead's moveinall hack), the game wipes townie memories and replaces them with generic mystery sim memories.


Ste

I did not know that.  I've moved townies in (marriage, etc.), but was not aware that anything had changed.  I'll have to check some memories.  Does this happen in all cases?  I only ask because I moved a dormie in with her playable lover and she kept her memories of first kiss and first woohoo with him and all.  Or does it selectively wipe memories, leaving others intact?  My CAS created townies often (not sure if it's always) have a generic "met mystery sim" or "was given birth to by mystery sim" or some such.

Regarding the age of the hood, it sounded like the OP's hood was not particularly old, and yet there are over 200 townies.  Just curious as to why.  I generally create only about 15 to 20 in a new hood, and then add more as needed (i.e. to fill a dorm, ensure marriageable/woohooable sims exist for the gene pool, etc.).

If people move in by marriage, instead of mystery sim memories, they'll have the playable sim they married. But their other memories will disappear if you don't use any hacks.

Ah.  I didn't know that, about the marriage thing.  I just know that the CAS Wants/Memories BHAV or whatever it's named, is called, by default, whenever you move a sim in.  I guess it does slightly different stuff if you choose marriage vs. just plain old move in.  This BHAV essentially wipes out memories and kinda just resets them to like the bare minimal memories that a CAS born sim has (typically met mystery sim, fell in love with mystery sim, kissed mystery sim, etc.).  Those place holder default mystery sim memories are basically there to 'initialize' adults so they are capable of 'adult' interactions such as make out and woohoo.

Theoretically, if you are not using any memory related hacks (I think Pescado had an old hack - nonpcamnesia or something?, Squinge made his own hack, and pinhead had his built in as part of his moveinall hack), then those memories should be reset.  The only additional memories that townies get are, if they were YAs, then they are supposed to get the same level of education that the asker has.  In other words, if the asker is a magna cum laude graduate, then the askee townie should also be a magna cum laude graduate.  I believe this should add all 4 year completion and graduate memories.  If the asker is a drop out, then the askee should be one too, etc.  I'm pretty sure that's how the default game works.  I forget the details, between modding things and having used hacks for so long, I often don't remember how the original game was broken. :P


Incidentally, I was also kinda   :o about creating 200 townies.  Like damn.  That musta been a lot of work.  And why do you need so many?  I was kinda annoyed that the game kept creating stupid YAs, even when I had graduated sims from dorm lot.  Stupid Maxis EA.  I hadn't realized the game was doing that all the time, and so I now have like excessive amounts of YAs.  At least now I can curb that somewhat.  I think my character files are now in the 800 range. :P


Ste

Thanks for the feedback...

The hood was created last november so i guess it's about 10 months old now... I play it for a few hours everyday or 2...  I don't like starting new hoods... makes me feel like i failed or something... I'm stubborn sometimes, and I'm determined to realize my grand plan...

I started the hood of with 3 playable couples and about 50 townies that i created... the grand plan was to let the couples procreate and populate the hood with the spawn and let the spawn figure out who/what they wanted.... that's why i created so many townies at first, and if i let the game create townies, then i get some real fuglies and the game won't use the custom skintones i want to try out....

I use the Squinge hacks to allow YA's in the regular hood, so no subhoods, but the YA's still go to Uni.... When a YA graduates i move them out of their "dorm" and into their permanent homes... Then i open the character file in SimPe and change the days in previous age from 56 (?) to 30 days, so going to Uni takes 3 or 4 days from their lives...

So... back in November when i started the hood i created my 3 couples and 50 townies... the couples i just moved onto their lots and let them start the process of populating the hood...

The townies went through my standard process
1 ) create 8 new sims in CAS
2 ) use inge's teleporter bush to bring new cas sim to lot
3 ) use bush to move in cas sim for moment
4 ) select moved-in cas sim
5 ) use debugger to upgrade pre-uni sim and wipe mystery sim memories
6 ) use DMA teleporter to give cas sim a cell phone
7 ) use acr to set gender preferences
8 ) use the bush to make cas sim into townie and then choose "clear off non-residents" to send new townie into townie pool

I've been using this method from the beginning of the hood and it never seemed to cause any problems... I actually made a bit of a mistake at the beginning, I wasn't giving the new townie sims names when i was creating them in cas, the first groups last name was "one" and the sims were named "one", "two", "three", etc... i figured it would be easy enough to change the names later in Simpe, which i did... so "One One" became "Emory Stratford"... but apparently because of some language thingy in the game the names weren't entirely picked up by the game (yes, there is a reason i'm telling you all of this)

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.msg192446.html#msg192446

So when i would get an error message it wouldn't say "N003_User00237 - Fraser" it would say "N003_User00237 - Three" so i couldn't tell who or what was causing an error...

Sooooo...my point is....  i've been using the lot debugger from the time i discovered my mistake, and i'm still doing it, to fix the townie names from "Three" or whatever to a proper name... so i know i would have noticed the mass amnesia long before now, i would have picked up on it... because "upgrade Pre-Uni sim" is on the first level of the debugger ... i'm sure i would have noticed it long ago if the problem started because of the way i created the townies....

I actually browsed through my sims the other day with SimPe and looked at the memories and made a list of who i thought would need to be fixed again based on what i saw in SimPe... most of the broken sims have the memory of finishing college but no memory of completing any semesters... the cell phone i gave them had disappeared, the mystery sim memories had returned, some of them had the correct UNI memories but the debugger gave me the option to fix thier "want slots and locks" but 90% of the townies i created still have all 6 want slots and 2 locks... a few went down to 4 want slots....

I think this stared around the end of June... i just didn't notice it until the end of July because i didn't play it for about a month....

I do use some memory hacks like, TownieNoMemoryLoss (Squinge?), i don't have "moveinall" hack and i have one called "MemoryMod.package" that i need to find out about... it's been in my DL dir for a long time and i don't remember what it's for now...

I've created so many Townies just to give my playables some variety and my community businesses need customers with money to spend.....

Thanks for reading my long winded reply and thanks for the insight... i'm going to carefully go through my DL dir today and see if something slipped in i didn't know about.....

It was a lot of work, but it was over about 5 or 6 months they were created and there are so many sites on the web where you can pick up pre-made sims... that all you need to do is outfit them, give them a zodiac sign and turn -ons/offs.... and you're off.... I've only got about 400 characters files now....

i need townies for customers... employees... victims... potential mates... cemetery denizens.... etc...

if anyone is interested I extracted (and then cloned) over 50 of my born-in-game sims and put them up for downloading. just follow the link in my sig, they are in pinned threads. they breed well  ;)


I hardly ever look at my sims memories...which is a good thing because most of their memories are all screwed up  :D

Any chance of posting them elsewhere? It won't let me download without a logon. I somehow doubt one would be approved for me anyway.

I'll try to post them over at laverwinklesims after I get some much needed sleep  :)  *writes herself a note so she won't forget*  ;D


edit - they are up --> http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php?topic=701.new#new

This probably is the cause of an amusing episode I had in my last hood.  I misunderstood a thread about "mystery sim" memories, and went on a rampage through SimPE, deleting them manually from everyone.  When I went back in game, my sim couples were still married, still had memories of having their kids, etc.  But started rolling wants to have a "first kiss", and then a "first woohoo" with their spouse.  Very sweet really, I thought, but odd.

The "first kiss" wants showed up in the memory sequence at that point as well, that is, long after the marriage.

You should not purge Mystery Sim memories in SimPE. You should use the Lot Debugger, which will detect when it is safe to purge them without damaging continuity, as leaving the Mystery Sim can be the lesser of evils in an established sim.

...which is likely one (and I emphasize the number) of the reasons that the neighbourhood in question is no longer with us.

My problem is that the Mystery Sim memories came back after the playable and townie sims had been around for 8 months.... and i had used the debugger to wipe the Mystery Sim memories when they were first created...

I never wiped them in Simpe    ???

Scratch, have you checked all your hacks for compatibility.  If you have a couple of hack conflicts, then wierd things can happen.  Just in case you haven't, there is a very simple tool over at Paladin's Place which does it in seconds.

I've recently been playing a hood which was created similarly to yours, although with a far smaller group of townies, and I did notice that in two cases the "parents" kept their memories of being married and having the kids, and the family trees were intact, but in one case they disappeared and I had to go into Simpe and replace them as I'm gradually moving them into the game.  Once I've moved a few in I shall probably create some more, and do the same sort of thing, but when I first started the hood I had so few sims for my sims to meet I did really just for quickness, rather than creating a lot of new playable families.

However, the lost memories and relationships that I replaced seem to still be there, so I think there must be something interfering with the proper saving of relationships in your game.

That was my first thought.... maybe a hack snuck in.... but i use HCDU almost everyday to check when i put new stuff in....

I thought it might be a conflict but if it was it should be a continuing problem.... My problem just happened once.... Mass Amnesia affecting the whole hood, playables and townies...

The thing is too.... it didn't affect the relationships they already had... it only deleted memories of completing class at college, created new mystery sim memories and deleted their cellphone....

just too wierd....    ???

I don't know if this makes sense to you, but a short while ago this pc was in for an upgrade, and while it was waiting to go, and until it came back, I used my old pc, which only has 500mb RAM and a basic video card etc., but I thought, what the heck, I can play OMGPetz on the laptop, so I should be able to play base game and Seasons on this, if I use Jordi's empty G002 template.  Well, it worked for a while, but I could only play for a short time before closing the game.  Then one day I got careless and left it too long to save and exit, and when I next tried to play the game, all my sims were in aspiration failure.  So I got out quick and investigated with SimPE.  Now, all my sims in that game are still as playable as they were before, apart from the fact they no longer have any relationships, skills, personalities or astrological signs etc., and almost all of the adults are Grilled Cheese.  I unfortunately never backed this particular copy of the hood up, but I have other versions so I can recreate all this stuff - but it takes sooo much time!

But it was fairly obvious to me (although maybe I'm wrong) that the PC just couldn't quite manage to save everything.  Now, is it at all possible that you did what I did, and turned off your pc before it had managed to recover and tuck everything neatly away?

I'm beginning to suspect that's what happened.... it was a bad save

I played an elderly couple yesterday that i haven't played since the "incident" and they both have the want to go steady... so i think only part of their relationship is borked.... i can't load simpe at the moment to see what normal married CAS couple's memories would look like... would they also have the memory of getting enegaged and such? I've also noticed that some of the borken sims have high relationship points with some sims but not be friends or best friends....

..and you mentioned that all of your sims were in aspiration failure and the ones i've been fixing so far, thier asp bars are at 0... all of them....

an option on the debugger to fix relationships would be handy dandy...   ::)

thanks for the help ZephyrZodiac... you got me thinking outside the game and i think that's where the problem started...

I'm sure i didn't turn off the computer too soon... i watch the flailing light until it stops and then i turn it off.... but it could of been one of the many times it spontaneously rebooted or the game crashed for some reason.... guess i'm going to have to make a habit of backing up more....  :P

"I must back up!  I must back up!"  The saddest words in the Simmers' language, apart from "I wish I had backed up!"

If they still have all their best friend memories, it should be fairly easy just to max those relationships in SimPE. 

Married couples in CAS all have the memories of met x, made best friends with x, kissed x for the first time, fell in love with x, got engaged to x, got married to x, and if they have CAS kids they'll also have did woohoo with x, had y, etc.

Any couples you've had who had kids in CAS but aren't married, the father will have none of those memories, so you could use the opportunity to give him the parenting memories and then go into Family Ties and sort out the whole family - not too hard as the make consistent option means you only have to do it once.

Same sex couples with CAS kids have the adopted x memories, so again, if you want (and particularly if you use TJs pregnancy for all mod) you can now give them the genetically correct memories. 

Other than that, adults and teens should have the aspiration memory, although sometimes the game misses it out, and then sim initialised, which I think is quite important for you to put back in.  They then all get the moved in memory (not the invisible token) although if you use the debugger option to clear trash, then there's no point as it will be removed.

Only bother with the best friend memories, not the met x ones, the debugger removes those too.  If they've lost their cooking skills, then it's probably easiest not to bother with all those learned to cook memories, just let them start again, and that way there's no chance of a mistake - although they may not get the memories again if they are already stored elsewhere.

As for townies, leave them without any skill points, the game will soon generate some more for them!  For your own playables, if they've lost skill points, or job points etc., then if you can remember what they were, put them back, otherwise just start them from scratch again, it won't hurt, and it'll give them the chance to generate aspiration points again.  But I would set their ages back to the beginning of the life-stage if that hasn't already happened.


But be prepared for a lot of simpe time.  When I've cloned a hood, I've just taken it one family at a time, otherwise it becomes too much of a chore.

Thanks for the info ZephyrZodiac....

I got a chance to look at some of the sims in Simpe last night and i don't think the playables are corrupted to badly... the couples with the want to go steady are elderly anyway and won't last much longer so i'm not worried about their memories and they look OK in Simpe anyways...  I'll let the townies and playables just regain the friendships... they have enough points so it would just be a matter of talking to that sim again to be friends/best friends again...

It was just a wierd error... All of their skills and aspirations are intact.... only some of their memories were effected and the loss of the cellphone... but i think like you said, it was a computer issue not a game or hack issue and that's what i really wanted to find out.... what caused the problem?

Thanks again everybody   ;D

Well, if it's a one-off, then I think it must have been a bad save, but if you get the problem after you play again, then it means checking your hacks, I think.  And if it isn't a hack - all your downloads!!

I think it was a one-off ting...

I've played a few times since i first noticed the problem and it hasn't got worse....

stoooooopid pooter.....   >:(

Well, I'd be grateful for small mercies - if it was a bad download, it would have been a long and tedious job sorting it!

I did wonder if it was caused by something like Windows Update or your AV update just happening to be in the middle of doing its stuff when you closed your game.  I'd rather turn the things off, but then I keep getting Security Center messages every darn time I start my computer up, so now I just let them do their thing, but it can be very annoying when I'm playing and suddenly my mouse gets the jitters and then I get the pop-up and the voice saying "Avast has been updated"!  And I always wonder what would happen if I was just closing my game when it does that.

I disable my internet and antivirus when playing any game. Unless you use the EA Link, there's no need to be connected to the internet or to have your AV enabled. In fact, the instructions in the brochures that come with CD and DVD versions of the games specifically state that leaving your AV running whilst installing or playing can potentially be a VBT.

Yes, I know, but I am using the Link, dammit!  So I have to stay connected, and there's no way I'm doing that without AV and Firewall in place!

When playing earlier versions of the game, with cd, I've played both with and without AV, and I've never noticed much difference, except in RAM usage.  But it's also nearly impossible to disable some AVs without all the bother of going into msconfig, McAfee for one just won't let you which is one reason why (apart from the fact that it overloaded my CPU and caused my fan to break - at least, I think it was that which caused it - and my hard disks both got fried) I got rid of it and now use the free version of Avast and save myself 50 quid per annum!  And apart from the annoyance when Avast updates, it sits very quietly in the background and causes no problems, and uses about half the RAM that McAfee uses, doesn't insidiously invade a lot of Windows stuff and is very easy to uninstall if necessary - McAfee is almost impossible to eradicate completely without hours and hours of searching.

Yep. Both McAfee and Norton are Teh Evilz. You have my condolences.

I won't use them any more - Avast! is to my mind a far superior product - and it's free for home use.  Luckily McAfee refunded the money they'd just taken from my account when I phoned them up to complain about the program.

Running Norton myself, which would be OK, but it uses a lot of system resources and is apparently hell to get rid of, once you have it installed.  I always play with the computer offline and with as much of norton disabled as possible.  I think I'll check out Avast.

If anyone wishes to rid themselves of Norton in favour of AVast (or whatever), I have a NortWare zorcher at 4shared. See sig.

Geek Squad decided (without asking first) that I had to have Norton on my laptop. I was displeased. This removed it.

Excellent.  Will try out, as soon as I have replacement "virus prophylactics" ready.  Like switching from Trojan to non-latex - kind of the same, but hopefully sorta new as well, with a satisfying ultimate result.

You wan't difficult to get rid of, I think McAfee takes first prize!  I rarely bother now to turn my AV off, Avast only activates itself if you're online, switch off the modem and it just sits quietly waiting until you switch on again. 

Is there a McAfee zorcher around anywhere?

Dunno, I only got rid of all the bits when I had to reinstall - it caused my PC to overheat so much it blew a fan and killed my sims!

Won't be going there then.  My CPU fans go overtime in game - no real overheat problem so far, but I'm not interested in adding something else that overstresses the processor.

Just got Avast! - will try it out.

Hope you like it as much as I do!  (I love companies who see their role as improving internet security by encouraging ever home user to have AV and antispy for nothing - it's good news for everyone!)

I found Kaspersky about a month ago and i like it so far.... of course, it found virus's hanging around a few places that Norton missed for months...   glad i didn't use those things   :)

It just has some annoying popups that i haven't figured out how to get rid of....

Try Major Geeks forums. They tend to have useful tools.

Also, some people have expressed love for Panda AV, but that program stuck around like a bad rash when I tried it on my Win98 lappy. I can only assume they made it less tenacious.

It also costs money!  And if you don't buy, you get spammed!

Personally, I use the AVG free edition, and have been very happy with it.

Yes there is:
http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=408294
Norton one here, as well as from Lorelei's link:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039