This is one of the reasons that the stuff added to TS2, not present in TS1, is generally not terribly reliable. The game engine really isn't designed to handle anything tied into the motive system. Everything else is sort of stuck on, so you have procedural scripts being written and executed in an environment designed for Object Oriented code.

Object orientation is a good way to handle motives; each sim keeps track of what it's mood is, and the objects tell it what to do. Not so good for wants, at least the way they're implemented, as on/off switches triggered by events.

*twitch*

That's a very specific number. What in the name of all that is binary could be the mechanism of that glitch?

I just noticed that. My guess is that since it's basically gossip but it's arranged by sim, not memories, it tries to grab a memory but doesn't come up with anything because it's not supposed to do that.

Yeah. I have this problem as well. Figured there was something amiss when my Pleasure sims started thinking about having babies . . . while this was one of their fears.

Sanmonroe . . . that is absolutely hilarious. I may have to try something like that.

I have about 20 neighborhoods, most of which have maybe 2 sims. So morality doesn't come up that often.

I do have a couple that I've actually played for an extended period of time. One, Ariya, is a semi-utopian "ah-hah! We never sleep! Ever! AH HAHAHAHAH!!! More caffeine!" pre-Nightlife neighborhood, because I nuked it when I started it, so it has no Townies and I want to keep it that way. The first game-born sims are starting to have kids themselves now. That one doesn't have any romance sims, and at least for now no messyness or infidelities. I really need to play a neighborhood that actually has romance sims and whatnot.

You should read Userfriendly.org. It's a webcomic about a Canadian ISP, and there are a bunch of comics that revolve around Greg, the tech support guy, and stupid users. Like people who think that "right click" means you should write "click" on your screen.

Extensions, perhaps?

This sort of behavoir is normal for any hair that includes a hat. It changes to another standard hairstyle when sim is dressed in a way that would be ludicrous to have a hat on.

Have you seen that farside cartoon "God at his computer," and on the screen there's a guy walking underneath a piano suspended by rope, and God has his finger on the "Smite" key?

That's what I think of when I picture Pescado at his computer.

Hmm. I personally like this furious state. But there seem to be a few problems, as I observed in my "stick 8 sims on a lot with no needs to worry about except social, and make them all bi" experiment.

Just as a way for me to keep it all straight, the problems are: (in no particular order)

1. Sims get mad at their SO, not the person flirting with the SO. Ideally, a sim should become furious only at the sim initiating the action. That way, a sim will get ticked at anyone who tries to muscle in on their SO, but only get mad at the SO if they start going astray.

2. "Furious" should replace the "knock X points off relationship" jealousy system, since that was really an abstraction of the same phenomena, and the "furious" setting models it better. That would also cut down on the Insta-Enemy incidents, since although being furious unlocks most of the negative social interactions, there would be further to fall.

3. Furious states tend to feed on themselves, because a sim can be furious at someone for beating them up. I'm not sure that this is a good thing, since once they're that ticked off at a sim, all the nasty socials are available anyway, so all you get is a sim who is more or less permanently in a state of newspaper stealage.

4. I like the "furious at someone because they're friends with my enemy" bit, but as Pescado pointed out, it's not exactly universal. Perhaps meaner sims should be less likely to get furious over this, and the threshold should be lowered for Knowledge sims, because unless they're really nice, they just don't care.

5. The family member (and perhaps friend, haven't checked) "furious for cheating on my homie" thing needs to check for engaged/married to another sim. If sim A and sim B are in love, but Sim B is engaged/married to Sim C, family members of sim B shouldn't care if Sim A is dating someone else.

6. Sims are way too possessive about crushes. Seems to me that sims shouldn't ever get furious at a crush for dating someone else, but they should get furious at the person that sim is dating.

*Cough* *Cough*

It's been pretty well established that custom files will not show up in Nightlife until you enable them, then restart the game. Changes to that setting are not applied until the game is started again.

Oh yeah. What annoys me the most is when people go "EA/Maxis" or "EA/DICE," because the developer and the publisher aren't the same entity.

An excellent example of this is KOTOR 2. The original game was very, very good. KOTOR 2 starts out very, very good. But the ending . . . sucks. There is no other word for it. Characters show up, disappear with no explanation, come back from the dead, etc. However, if you do a little digging, you can find a set of audio files that, if animated, would have made a coherent and very good ending, but would have taken much longer to implement than what's actually in the game. KOTOR 2 got rushed for the holidays, and in the process, basically got destroyed. There are so many other games where this happened, it's really kind of depressing.

The point?

Bleh!! Bleh!!!

That's why *I* play vampires.

That covers basically everything, doesn't it?

Mmm . . . guess I was assuming she was talking about here. Sims2 BBS I can understand. A class action lawsuit by consumers is more than slightly ridiculous in this case.

And I don't know much about the EA Spouse bit. That came out after the lawsuit, if I remember correctly.


Heh. That describes basically everyone I know who's involved with computers. Heck, I drive my parents crazy because I spend most of the weekend at my computer. The problem that I see is that companies like EA (not Maxis; the actually game develeping companies are much less annoying than the companies that own them) have a habit of exploiting this tendency. There's an obsession with getting games out in time for the holidays. But EA's definitely not "evil," just a corporation, which means that profit is their primary motivation, and this can be aggravating.

I don't seem to actually have a point here . . . 

They look better, too. The one piece stairs are, for the most part, rather ugly.

I agree with you on most of your points. This is a damn good EP, concept wise, and the execution isn't half bad either. A week of "Das Nightlife Test" has broken the game in enough that I've been able to deal with most of the major problems, which is an improvement over my first week of Uni. And the box is pretty awesome. Now accidentally stepping on it won't do as much damage to the CD.

But . . . "EA GAMES IS THE ANTI CHRIST"? Haven't seen that post. And the only people I know of threatening class action lawsuits against EA are the employees. (And alumni of my high school, no less. Heh heh heh.) The complaints I've seen haven't been nearly as extreme as you suggest, and some people do have valid complaints. But things have been getting better; I've gotten some very good information from MaxoidTom, and I'm very pleased that Maxis is working on a patch.

What Hook has reported has also been my experience. One further note is that the Grand Vampires seem to be able to ignore relationship requirements, a power which goes away if they become playable characters. Not *absolutely* sure on that front, but otherwise Mrs. CrumpleBottom would have been able to reject the hypnotism attempt, because technically she can't build relationship with anyone.

For once, this is a problem that Maxis warned us about. Remember in that chat? The choice word was "viral." Too true. Like diseases, vampirism spreads like a wildfire, especially (hypothetically, going to test) in a tight knit neighborhood where everyone's friends.

Have set objects.package as Read Only.

I had a sim and her children convinced that she was cheating on her dead husband. And this was pre Uni, so he was DEAD, foo'. But she was a family sim, so being unmarried was deeply disturbing to her.

Yep. Objects.package file has a little over 2000 more KB than it should. Am to be replacing now. And I'm going to look into how possible it is to get a vampire to bite Mrs. CrumpleBottom, and if there are any other game critical type NPCs vulnerable to this. If the Grim Reaper can be vampirified, that's a massively bad thing. Don't touch the Reaper. Too bad you can't train sims not to do things by giving them electric shocks . . .

Ahh. *That's* what was causing that bug. All my sim's memory icons have gone poof. I figured it was something with the objects.package, but wasn't sure what had caused it. Then posting this wasn't just random and pointless.

Will having a Vampire CrumpleBottom mess with the game, or is it just the biting event? Exactly why does this corrupt the objects.package file? Also, will the patch make CrumpleBottom off-limits for bitage? Would that even be possible?

Oooh. Game go SPLOOSH ker-SPLAT.

Those two sims ended up spending most of the evening (until my sims left) beating each other up, and then Pong Ng(?), the other guy, would go and cry for a bit, then come back and trade shoves with Benjamin Lee a bit more. Pong later became a vampire himself.

Has anyone else had this happen? The Contessa just sort of randomly bit Mrs. Crumplebottom. I didn't even know that was possible . . . but it seems to suit her. Can't you just see her saying "The light! I must flee!"

Attached are a few photos of the event. Just after being bitten, Mrs. Crumplebottom proceeded to thwack the offending vampire with her purse.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Vampires are enterataining. Especially if you're dating one: they come by to drop off the flowers, then screech and go "Aagh! The sun! I must flee!"

I've also found that having vampire postal workers and paper deliverers is entertaining. And I need to get around to making a "zombie alien vampire nanny."

Theoretically, at least. I haven't been able to get the original game music to shut off. Probably just need to restart the game before it sticks.