More Awesome Than You!

1. What's the current status of alien pregnancy and family trees? Will the Pollination Technechian appear in the family tree or not? This changes like every EP...

2. What's the quickest and easiest way to horribly mess up your game?

3. My one sim has had this appear over her head a few times, usually while sleeping. What does it mean? (please ignore the suit of armor on the sim and sucky couch)

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/amethystjewel/snapshot_73f5ae06_f3f9e5c6.jpg)

Alright...bye  ???

1.  Dunno *Punts question to more awesome modders*

2.  Quickest and easiest?  Probably moving a whole bunch of occupied lots to the lot bin in one neighborhood and plunking them down in another.  Not sure if that's the most immediately and obviously destructive way, but it'll bugger your game up real good with next to no effort.  :p

3.  That's a bug dating back at least to Uni and a possible sign of impending FBVFOS, if I remember right.  Something about the objects.package being borked because the game tried to write to it, which is a Very Bad Idea.  The remote control car could cause it.  The solution was to replace objects.package with a clean copy, write-protect it so that the game could not commit such asshattery, and avoid the remote control car.

Later I seem to recall people having problems with other stuff in the game messing with objects.package (Mrs. Crumplebottom becoming a vampire was a big one, I believe) but I'm not sure whether the symptoms were the same and I think it was fixed in some patch or other.

What EP's do you have installed?  It'd suck if that bug was resurrected by some new Maxis stupidity in BV...

I'm sorry, I can't.

/me giggles

I agree with Amberdiceless - downloading and installing occupied lots and putting into your hood, or transferring sims from one hood to another is an excellent way to almost effortlessly explode a neighbourhood.

As for the thought bubble with the ziggy lines, that implies that the above VBT may have already been done, or at the very least, that your armoured sleeper is remembering unknown or unlinked sims.  This can be a sign of impending DOOOOM!.  However, it may simply be garbage memories.  Try using the Lot Debugger to nuke anything that's broken and clear gossip and garbage from your sims.  This may help.

I have never used the remote control car (ALWAYS delete it) and Crumblebottom is fine.

I have every EP and every stuff pack installed and a minimum of hacks. (Like 2... :P)

 >:( :'(

I'm gonna download your sim (somehow...I'm not even sure if you have a sim)  and kill it now!  :( :-X

*V stubbornly believes that she can so move occupied lots from one hood to another using the package feature as long as the moved sims have no memories (brand new CAS sims plopped into a house and saved before playing) or have had their memories "modified" in SimPE prior to playing the used lot.

*V does, reluctantly, acknowledge that she rarely plays a hood for more than a generation or so before getting a brilliant new idea and creating a whole new hood to test the idea out in.

If you're going to do that though, why not just make the Sims in the neighborhood you want them in to begin with, and move the house there before putting them in it?

/me has on rare occasions moved an occupied house, but does always go in to muck out the character files before playing.

I believe Clean Installer may actually let you move in a packaged family in a house but leave out the "dummy Sim" data that comes with it...not sure what else might get stuck in there that you don't want, though.

The only accepted use of the Emma-sim is to use it to create Goopy spawn. Have you learned nothing?
*Zazazu has never moved an occupied house, because that would remove the need to build a new house, and not being able to build new lots for silly reasons makes her cry. Oh, and new 'hoods are lovely. New record for the lifetime of a Zaza 'hood = 5 months, Urban Paradise, now rotting in a corner.*

Here's what I found on this topic using search. RainbowTigress says in  this post (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2671.msg76040.html#msg76040),
 

And the  Hack Descriptions (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2086.25.html) thread,

Using testingcheats to add certain, normally unattainable, npcs to the family is a pretty quick way to screw something over. NPCs of this type include the social bunnies, Mrs. Crumplebottom, Grim, the repo man and many others.

I've been seeing this corrupted thing pop up in chat bubbles since before BV now.  It's not just corrupted memories that cause it in my opinion since I have seen it when sims cannot get past certain things too.  I've also seen it in brand spanking new neighbourhoods less than an hour old.  It's puzzling to say the least.

Heh heh! Do your worst, just don't put me in a suit of armour! ;D



/me moons Zazazu

Hmm, I've narrowed down what caused that swiggly to one of these two things:

1. Six of her roomates had died within the past 25 days or so, leaving just her and that other gay guy
2. She has like 100 "ROACHES" memories cause there was a bad roach infestation upstairs that somehow resulted in 5 sims dying (including the knight*, she died twice) cause ghosts were scaring them to death as they stomped the roaches. :(

*interestingly, the knight is actually very pretty under the suit, she's removed it now and she's very nice looking and is gonna marry one of those Monty sims  :-*

In my extremely old neighborhood (I've had it since the base game but haven't played it consistently) I was seeing those random squiggly lines on a lot of my sims. Since no sims had died yet (they all had an unfortunate addiction to the elixir of life) it can't have been corrupted death memories. I cleared all gossip tokens using the lot debugger and also all memories and relationships to non-existent sims using SimPE (I had moved sims from another neighbouhood back before this was known to be a VBT) and I haven't seen the squiggly lines since. I think it was the gossip tokens that were causing the problem (although obviously not death gossip tokens in this case), you could try deleting them all with the lot debugger to see if this helps.

yeah, I had the borked memories on a Legacy lot where too many kids with too many feats of accomplishment (max skills, A+, new friends etc.) had left Great-Grandpa with 9 bazillion memories.

I cleared the gossip, A+, meh, all the stupid ones and all was good.

Thread hijacking in progress: Any idea what causes blank thought bubbles? I noticed one on a townie as she was leaving a home business lot. This is a fairly new custom neighbourhood with which I've been very, VERY careful to avoid BFBVFS. I'm a bit concerned that impending disaster is nigh.

Well it's a townie - perhaps she's just naturally vacuous.  Most of mine are.


I think if it happens once, it's probably just a glitch.  If it happens a lot, then there may be a problem.  If it's a new neighbourhood and the townie has few memories, skills, etc. chances are there's just not that much for her to think about.

I've only found one other thread mentioning this and that was due to a problem with a NL patch.  Part of the solution seemed to be to delete groups.cache and let it respawn.  Lot debugger might also help - I tend to nuke and fix everything and clear memories any time something weird happens in my game, as a first step.

I've seen that happen after clearing out all the gossip memories, especially on ghosts.  They'll go away as the gossip (and other memories, as jolrei said) build up again.

Ah, that explains it, then. I tend to delete all gossip with the lot debugger as soon as I notice sims gossiping, most notably after using 'Macro../Socialize../Friendly'.

I also saw blank thought bubbles when I had a very neat sim become furious with the NPC-Penguin after mopping its piss puddle (even though I have nopuddlerage installed).
She would do the furious animation with a blank thought bubble surounded by flames above her head. In the same time she wanted to see NPC-Penguin ghost (that's how i found out who she was furious with) and the want displayed the star thing in the background ("power want") but no face only the small ghost.

more things to do to mess up your hood:
1. delete some sim descroption files in SimPE and don't clean up after them
2. go back and do a bad clean up in SimPE - delete their genetics file only (all recessive genetics should then be borked)
3. invite a sim over and move them in with the tombstone of L&D using the first option - ages will reset and not move
4. marry a llama mascot
5. download lots from the exchange with old versions of hacks in
6. download tons of cc, so the game grinds to a halt
7. install BV and let it phone home regularly so your game grinds to a halt or crashes
8. pick the sim who knows everyone, move his/her lot into the lot bin while occupied and put it back.
9. make a habit of saving lots while you have loads of visitors on site and your sims are in the middles of things
10. save while ghosts are out and about, then do something that causes a reset. - the tombstone for those ghosts should disappear
well I could go on.....

Interesting list of "do nots" - #3 is relatively easy to fix though by jump starting aging again with the InSim temporal adjuster (add a day or subtract a day from the affected sim's life and they start aging normally again).  Is there another way that this messes up the hood that is more invisible and serious?  I "found" this problem the normal way (trial and error, stress "error"), but after the fix it never caused problems that I could see.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think this was a VBT. The llama mascot just has that habit of reverting to old behavior like the cheerleader, cheering and, in his case, showing up on community lots in his mascot outfit.

Can we confirm?  Cos if this is true and it's not a VBT, I'm gonna get one of my simgirls to marry it.  I can always kill or re-townify the mascot when he gets too damn annoying.  Might be good for moar fight too.

I did it once in my very old 'hood and that cured me of the urge to do it ever again.  I don't think it was a VBT since that 'hood had 5 more generations after I moved him in.  It's groaning at around 40 households and closing in on 2000 character files alive and dead.

I made the mistake of zombifying the mascot when I couldn't stand his intrusions into his neighbours' houses to cheer.  He has 10 outgoing points, y'see, so he walks into houses without being greeted...  Anyway, after that he led a peaceful existence for a while tutoring the family children, and slowly gaining skill points when he had the time.  Because of the zombie moan-n-shuffle, the neighbours had an easier time locking him out when he loped by.

Sometime after that, zombie apocalypse was released.  Mayhem ensued, whenever he showed up on a comm lot.  He also continued to make appearances in the uni 'hood, even though he was an adult.  At max body points + all the combat experience he'd had as a mascot, he was unstoppable for any townie, and any inexperienced playables I had, no matter their skill level.  After he converted about 15 more disciples, I had to put him down.

Even though I'd had him wear zombie-appropriate, ragged clothing when he was undead, he always showed up in his mascot costume away from home.  As a ghost, I kinda like the way it adds colour to the local cemetery.  :D

Marrying the mascots or cheerleaders will not harm your game, but they will continue to behave in the same annoying way even when no longer in the NPC pool. This behavior is either amusing or irritating, depending on your opinion, but it is mostly harmless. If you run out, a replacement may similarly spawn.

Ah, this would explain why the tombstone of one of my dead sims has disappeared. When I installed BV the sims on that lot would all have been asleep (I almost always save the game in the middle of the night) so the ghost sim must have been out and about. Any advice on how to get his tombstone back? Is there anything I should be doing to fix my game or is it just as if I deleted the tombstone manually? (I'm assuming deleting manually doesn't cause a problem, is that right?)

Is it still a VBT to save a lot while a sim is talking on a cellphone?

Marrying a mascot is just as annoying as the effects of some of the VBT things.  Sims not aging because you did something to them with a boolprop cheat that doesn't work is only easily fixed if you know what you're doing.  Took me a couple of weeks to sort out as a newbie.

Here's another couple of things I remembered.....

11.  Add 3 uni's to one 'hood
12.  Cancel "read to kid" in base game if you don't have the portal monitor - fix for portal bug didn't come til Uni patch/NL
13.  let sims juggle if you don't have the fix - causes random item deletion inc. portals - fixed in NL patch
14.  Save with the remote control car in place if you don't have the fix. Uni patch/NL
15.  Downloading lots made in a higher EP than your top EP - will usually crash the game...usually easy to fix, but v annoying. 

People using Numenor's base game starter to make things in base game only might want to remember 12 in particular.  It would be embarrassing to make somethig for upload where a portal had got deleted during testing......

I have no reason to believe this has changed. You're welcome to try it a few times until it corrupts your lot. It's not consistent, never has been....do you feel lucky?

The method I use to respawn an urnstone is to place a summoner and the lot debugger on the lot. I use the teleportation shrub but any summoner should work. Enter the lot with testing cheats enabled. Pause the game and summon the ghost, ghosts are usually in the "default" family. As soon as the ghost appears, it will appear even with the game paused, click on the ghost and make it selectable. Select the ghost and click the lot debugger then select respawn urnstone. The urnstone should appear, then click the ghost again and make it unselectable, unpause, and the ghost should disappear leaving the urnstone. I don't have the game up right now and I can't remember if this option appears on the lot debugger with a regular click or shift click.

Thanks seapup. I don't have the teleportation shrub so I guess I either get that or leave the family without his tombstone. I know there's some summoner options just by going into debug mode in the game like 'add neighbour to family' and others, but I'm not sure they include ghosts. Maybe I'll have a look round next time I play.

I've saved my game whilst sims have been on the cellphones before. Probably not very often because I usually save when the sims are asleep but I'm sure I've done it. I didn't know it was a VBT, I'll have to add it to my list of things not to do with my game.

Insim has summoner options as well, if you have that.

Is this a character files thing? I only ever have one custom linked. Oh, and guess what? Vacation spots aren't the only ones where you have the game option to click one button and add all on. You can now do this with the three Uni's. If this is truly a VBT, add this to the list of game supported ones, along with deleteallcharacters and moving occupied lots between 'hoods.

Aren't these two rather contradictory?  I mean, the only time when households are uniformly idle, don't have visitors, or callers on the phone are when everyone is asleep, but if you have even a couple of tombstones, you also have ghosts.  I have seen them haunt until almost 7am, and of course by then, half the household is awake and possibly even a carpool has arrived.

Unless I simply don't have any tombstones on the lot, I'm not sure how to achieve your description of an optimal state in which to save for a reset.  ???

I thought the only issue with having more then one uni attached, was that the sim you send to college would sometimes be sent to one of the others, instead of the one you actually sent it to. It happened to me once or twice, I know of at least one other person that experienced it, and read about it somewhere else. No idea what it is that seems to trigger it, hasn't happened all that often for there to be any kind of pattern.
As far as I know, all the attached campuses use the same professors.

Yes it's a character files thing - especially if you don't have cleaned file templates.  It was pretty disastrous when uni was the highest EP and the character file limit was a lot lower.Catch 22 - situation normal!  ;D Main point is to know the potential problems and avoid them where possible.

I was thinking I should add "buying a new shiny NVidia graphics card to improve performance!" ...... but I'll stick to..

16. Resurrecting the Pleasantview Bella or any other sim with incomplete data (Jsalemi reminded me of that on another thread)

No I don't have that either. Never wanted any of its features that I don't already have hacks for. Until now that is! I think I'll go with downloading the teleporter shrub though since it will be a lot easier to uninstall afterwards.

As far as uninstalling goes, the InSim Obj (object) is only one file, clearly marked, and all you have to do is take it out. The object is the science station, and even though all the spawnables show up separate in 'electronics - all' section of the buy catalog, it is only one file in your download folder.

Not trying to plug InSim, but fair is fair :D

I have the InSim Obj, and I use it when the game throws up and makes a mess. InSim is very handy to clean it up. Such as vacation days not subtracting properly, aging is not working properly, etc. It doesn't happen often, but happen it does. When you make the family pet controllable, it also works for/with the pet(s), just as the lot-debugger. I was very pleasantly surprised when the lot-debugger let me clean up the family pet's trash memory after I made the pet controllable.

Thanks for the info, I don't really know much about InSim since I've never bothered to use it. I think I might have been thinking of InTeen instead of InSim when I said that, or possibly just something of an entirely different name altogether! Also I didn't know the lotdugger worked with controllable pets! I'm all excited now about clearing my pets memories. Since I discovered the joys of clearing out trash memories I'm completely OCD about it.

Is adding 3 BV vacation subhoods a VBT? I play with clean templates and noregen/antiredundancy, and after installing BV last night I stupidly added all three vacation subhoods to one neighborhood (a clean, custom 'hood that's the only one I play). I only did this because EAxis gave me the "add all" button, and because I stupidly assumed they wouldn't have the "add all" option if it *would* screw up my game.

I haven't yet played the game since installing BV. Should I restore from backup (i.e. pre-BV install) and add only one instead? (If so, are there any recommendations as to which subhood I ought to install?) This neighborhood does have several hundred character files (I'd have to check with SimPE, but my guess is between 300-500 pre-BV install, and while I know you can theoretically have thousands of files without borking the game, I also don't want to mess up this 'hood, since I do have a lot of time invested in it.)

I think you have misunderstood something somewhere.  As noted in previous posts in this thread, the "add 3 uni's" was a bad thing since the Uni's add a lot of dormies, NPCs and other character files.  This used to lead to overpopulation, which was a big issue back in the Base and Uni days.  This was a character files issue.  By itself, it did not *glitch* the game per se.

It is not a problem to attach all 3 BV vacation subhoods.  If you use the clean templates you can control the number of locals and tourists that "reside" in these subhoods.  In my game, I did not bother to use the clean templates, so I have the fugly EAxis tourists and locals (blonde haired asians, etc.).  You probably want to make sure that you have the latest "antiredundancy" hack installed (search for the thread on this), or you will get incessant spawning of tour guides and charlatans.

But most of us with BV, I think, likely have all 3 vacation sub-hoods (and possibly a custom one or two) installed already without problems (well, without problems associated with that specifically anyway).

Thanks for clarifying. Part of my confusion was because of some confusion from reading the clean templates thread (confusion has since been rectified, but at the time of the above post I wasn't sure exactly how many character files the game was going to spawn if I installed only a clean V001 and not the other 3 clean BV templates, since I did want EAxis locals), but part of it was because I wasn't sure if actually linking that many subhoods was in any way bad. As previously noted, I do have antiredundancy installed.

*wanders off to hit "thanks" button*