More Awesome Than You!

Just what it says... I just noticed tonight that my last three kids have suddenly developed LTWs. Two toddlers want to be criminal masterminds, quite enterprising of them really. I am aware that toddlers with LTWs is a bad sign, but I have no idea how this could have happened. The neighborhood isn't particularly overpopulated (600ish char files) and I have never moved occupied lots, used DAC, or any of the other things that supposedly cause neighborhood explosion.

I'm not having any other major glitches at the moment, so should I keep playing this hood with fingers crossed, give up now and re-install, or what? Is there anything I can do to fix this or is it too late? It's a legacy lot this is happening on, and scrapping it is not an option. If I reinstall I'd have to recreate all the important sims in the neighborhood, blah blah, which would be a huge undertaking.

Also, I play on a Mac, so any fixes with SimPE won't work for me. :P

If you are "that" Toast, then this is simply typical of the behaviour of your sims as a whole, please run with it :P

I, on the other hand, have a teen who still only has a "grow up" aspiration. I have sent him to college, hopefully his aspiration will be satisfied once he is there. However, he was a TSR Challenge sim, so more likely to be borked as they provide occupied lots.

Since you can't use Simpe, the only thing I can suggest is you use the Clean Installer (if that works for Macs) to read what character files you have in your Characters folder.  All "persons" are ok, but any duplicate of a "person" classed as an "object" is probably not necessary, and could be the source of LTWs which your babies and toddlers are spawning.  Simply removing those character files, however, is not the answer, and without access to SimPE to do a clean-up, I don't know what is.

As to the sim with the Grow-up aspiration, try using the Renuyu-Senso-Orb - even if the sim is not gold or platinum, it doesn't matter, you just want to unlock something that is locked, and once he has Grilled Cheese you can get him to platinum fairly quickly and then use the orb again.

Oh, mannnn, Toast, not another horror.  I know this is a VBT, but this happened to me a couple of generations ago--a child with the sudden LTW of Five Top Level Businesses.  I noticed (and this may or may not be connected) that it happened when it did right after I used Boolprop to age some neighborhood babies who weren't in the legacy house.  A simple reset to Grow Up and there were no further problems.  I know it's a VBT.  I lived in fear for months.  But that was April or May, and the child in question has a grandkid in college and it hasn't happened again.

Because I've had some of the same symptoms and problems--met self, children with LTWs--I asked some friends to please extract a few critical Sims for me, saved them in Body shop, and kept copious notes.  I'd hate to have to reset the hood, but if I did, I could.  If it were me, I'd correct the kids, cross my fingers, and hope for the best.

You could also try using the Lot Debugger to clear trash and gossip from memories.  It can't hurt to try.

(And if someone more awesome than me wants to correct me on this. . .?)

BTW, ZephyrZodiac, Clean Installer also does not work for Macs.  We are forced to live dangerously.

PB

Well, I wasn't sure if that was the case or not.  But it's a much smaller program than SimPE (also very useful) and it might be worth asking if there's a possibility of it being made Mac-friendly......
even so, the Renuyu-senso-orb should work, but obviously not with toddlers and kids.

Already did this only about 2 weeks ago... before I even realized there was a problem. :P

I guess my only option is to try resetting the kids to Grow Up (although that is already their aspiration) in debug mode and see if that clears the LTW... just so I don't have to look at it all the time... and hope for the best. Oh, I think I'll cry.


Sometimes I think "threatening mail-bombings" would be a more efficient way of getting anything sims-related done for macs, instead of "asking."  >:(

You really need to use the debugger every time you play a lot, without SimPE you probably don't realise just how fast these things accumulate!



Hey, we aren't talking Maxis here!  I'm not actually suggesting you ask the Clean Installer creator themselves to make a mac-version of the program - unless they are familiar with Macs, it would be out of their area of expertise.  What I am suggesting is that you propose  at a Mac forum, having got permission for adjustments to be made, that somebody who is familiar with both PCs and Macs should have a try at doing it - after all, it would be of benefit to all Mac-Users. 

Absent a working copy of SimPE, I checked my character files last night with the Clean Installer.  Pre-BV the number was 862.  Now at 1014 (thank you, EAxis).  Antiredundancy is in so hopefully that number won't continue to increase.  Your comment about "objects" struck my curiosity so I rechecked this morning and noticed I have 160 persons/pets classified as game objects.  The corresponding dates are February 2007 or earlier. 

I've no game problems.  Just wonder about the mechanics behind this classification.

Well, firstly, it definitely includes dead, unlinked sims (ie whose tombstones/urns have been smashed) as in one game of mine it includes Lilith (smashed up by Angela) and in another Angela (smashed up by Lilith!)

It also seems to include any other unlinked sims, such as pre-knowledge of the dangers of moving occupied houses to the bin you got clones of all the sims your sims met as well as themselves, also pre-clean installer occupied houses installed with the Maxis installer.

In Pleasantview, etc., a lot of these Object sims will be unlinked ghosts, and will include the unresurrectable versions of Skip, Michael etc.

However, occasionally in a borked lot, a playable, live sim can become unlinked, and they would also show as objects - useful info if you haven't played a lot in a while, as you can then link them again in SimPE before you play the lot again.

I think the pets shown as objects may also be ghosts - there are a few in the default family which don't seem to appear in the game - maybe the dead pets of dead sims?  I'm not sure about this one though.

All of my five toddlers born in game since installation of BV have had life-time wants also. The most recent now has fears of death of Tour Guide and "be rejected for a dance" by Tour Guide, etc.  I updated the anti redundancy mod to the BV version after my game had already spawned 26 tour guides. I have 582 char files which was about 400 pre_bv. I am hoping an updated version of Sim-PE might save my hood but I am starting to think I should just start over. I could try resetting their ltw via debug mode but am starting to think that won't fix it, what with my toddlers becoming somehow attached to the tour guides (!?) and all.

Reports of toddlers and children having strange wants/fears have been building since BV came out.  I had a new one last night -- a servo had the want to buy jewelry, which servos can't do (no action appears when you click on the jewelry seller thing), and the want to soak in a hot tub, which a servo most definitely should NOT do.

Maybe your servo was just feeling suicidal?

My servos rolled wants to soak in hot tubs pre-BV. In fact, this was when I had just Uni, NL and OFB. So I was not too surprised at them rolling inappropriate wants with BV, mine also want to buy jewellery now. Also, sims want to fire dance at home, as far as I can tell this is impossible, the only way they can ever fire dance is to learn it.

BTW, using the Grilled Cheesinator worked to give my teen a LTW.

You can fire dance at home - the option is under "Entertain...", and you can do it for a tip or just for fun ;). Your sim must have mastered it (i.e. must have the memory), of course.

Aha! So they don't need the mat, then. I thought it was an essential accessory  :-[
BAA!

Mine haven't been getting LTWs, but I've had two toddlers who wanted to invite over sims they didn't know...one my self-sim and one a cat. When I checked the SWAF records in SimPE for the girl who wanted to invite over the cat, all wants were the same except for the invite over want...which was showing in SimPE as "be tickled by $neighbor". I don't recall having a toddler with the want to be tickled (generally, not by a specific sim) since BV. Haven't had a toddler yet to be able to notice any oddities or check them. But I did delete out all my SWAF files at Pescado's suggestion.

Stella defied the Oversoul, which had decreed only four children for this generation, and has gotten pregnant again. I'll let it live through toddlerhood and see what it pops up. After that, someone has to die. They've also been cheating on their spouses right and left, so the Oversoul is not in an understanding mood.

Anyways, if you see any incredibly infeasible wants and have access to the QA SimPE, check what it's supposed to be. Maybe there's a pattern.