Latest posts of: BobDob

Quote from: Kyna on 2009 August 20, 18:58:33

Quote from: KingBooker on 2009 August 20, 18:22:36

Anyone else ever notice that the house phone only rings when an elder dies from old age? At first I thought it was just that certain household, but as I started creating new families, it was still the same. Is it like that for you guys?

* Kyna tries to find the facts & strategy in your post. Fails to find any.

This section of the board is not for asking questions.

As for your question, I have no idea. I switch off the house phone so that none of the phones ring. Incoming phone calls distract my sims from whatever it is that I told them to do (and yes, they do still get opportunities with the phones turn off).

Ooh, I think you just added some strategery, ironically enough. I didn't know you can get opportunities when the phone is off. I guess it does make sense, since you get opportunities even if you don't explicitly answer the phone when the opportunity rings. I'm definitely turning the phone off now. Thanks for the tip.

Hmm. But how do you know that LTW is really based on skilling? Couldn't it just be that a sim with only 2 traits has way more LTW that the game could randomly select from?

btw, I asked Karl how he came up with the mapping on his page, and this is what he said. It looks like he did explore it methodically.

Quote

@BobDob to determine what wishes came up with what trait, I made a Sim and gave him only 1 trait at a time. The ones that were always present were considered tied to the trait.

If a trait has fewer than five wishes associated with it, the remaining slots are filled with random lifetime wishes. Thus, if you have green thumb you'd get the following always:

Creature robot cross breeder, celebrated five star chef and the perfect garden. The last two would be completely random.

Look to the traits page to see my direct results using this method.

I have two theories with multiple traits, I need to test:

Theory 1: When we create a Sim with multiple traits, each trait slot will be connected to one of the lifetime wish slots. So, one of the wishes associated with the trait will appear randomly in that connected wish slot.

Theory 2: There is a list of possibilities with multiple traits and any of those possible wishes can come up based on the ties to the traits.

With five traits, I think real random variation goes out the window. If more than five wishes are associated with your trait choices, you'll always get one of those traits on random roll, rather than a completely unconnected wish.

Some traits have no wishes associated with them and are entirely random. ex. neurotic, clumsy, heavy sleeper.

So with only green thumb, and four quirky traits like I listed, we'd get three slots tied to green thumb and two completely unrelated random rolls.

Quote from: HazelEyes on 2009 August 16, 06:46:59

I was thinking the apocalypse challenge, actually. I've been compiling a list of most useful traits for apocalypse sims. Inappropriate unlocks the sponge bath interaction with no hygiene limitation, but so far I haven't seen any autonomous sponge bathing.

When I played that Asylum challenge, I saw some autonomous sponge bathing. I didn't even know it was possible until the sims I wasn't allowed to control started shooing people out of the kitchen to do it.

Quote from: Snooty on 2009 August 16, 09:34:11

Carl's guide did a good job on the connection of LTW and traits: http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/lifetimewishes/

Ah, yeah, that's exactly what I was requesting. I wonder if he used game data or experiments to compile the info, since he put a caveat in there that it's just "a compass to guide you". Hopefully, he didn't just list the traits he happened to have when he got those LTWs.

Quote from: kuronue on 2009 August 16, 14:38:40

Quote from: BobDob on 2009 August 15, 23:22:17

It would be especially useful to folks who do legacy challenges in which you have to achieve every LTW.

Except that you can often trigger entirely un-trait-related LTWs just by starting to complete them - for example, "Become an Astronaut" by using the telescope for a while, or "Become a Creature-Robot Crossbreeder" by skilling gardening.

I'm not sure what you mean by triggering LTWs when skilling. When you get to be a young adult or create one in CAS, it forces you to choose one of five LTWs. Are you talking about the the everyday wishes that are triggered as an adolescent to take on a particular LTW? Or, are you saying that those skills affect the five LTW it forces you to choose from when you hit young adult?

I did experiment with them some in CAS. It seemed like certain combinations of traits always resulted in certain LTWs, while one or two of the five LTWs were randomly chosen from a small pool of ones that may or may not have been marginally related to the traits. Hmm.. I wonder if what appears to be one or two semi-random LTWs are actually skill-based LTWs, like you suggest, and it only seemed random because I was in CAS and all skills had equal probability since they were all at 0.

The resource.cfg in the C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin directory is the one EA installs and will be very different than the one in the C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 directory. If you have one in the mods directory also, it's unnecessary, though it probably won't hurt anything. Also, make sure that you have d3dx9_31.dll in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin. The installer monkey should have set that up. Then make sure that awesome.package (not awesome.zip) is somewhere in your mods directory. Anywhere will do.

Quote from: edalbformat on 2009 August 15, 09:51:14

This is the Base Game, folks - just the damn Base Game. Much will change in the course of the next 4 years that will make all of you changing the hell out of the Base Game to spend every interval between EPs, surfing around just to update the crap you fed the BASE GAME.

You picked an odd threat to make that point in, considering that none of the suggestions above require anything that's not in the base game. Huh

You may want to include in your OP that you can stack the logic books and pegbox to start at level 4.

I played an evil legacy for about five generations, and I grew pretty annoyed with the trait. Their desire to steal candy from babies is just over the top. The first few times are amusing, but it gets old when they're constantly waking up the babies to steal their candy.

One thing I haven't seen is how traits map to LTW. It would be especially useful to folks who do legacy challenges in which you have to achieve every LTW. It would probably be hard to do b/c some portion of mapping does appear to have a random element. Then again, you can experiment ad nauseum in CAS to figure it out.

Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 August 13, 05:13:35

Yeah, well, I'm a bit tired of their constant whining and want them to FOAD. I make AwesomeMod for ME. Anything I throw in for you is just something to shut you up. If you don't like it, you, too, can FOAD. Saves me a lot of bother.

Your words wound me! Well, actually no they don't. Look, you can develop the mod however you like obviously. You're the one putting in the time. I'm just pointing out that I do think it's a counter-intuitive feature that, to a small degree, negatively restricts gameplay. If you don't agree or don't care, that's fine. If you don't want to consider a change to spite people who whine or argue with you, that's your prerogative. I was simply making a suggestion based on a functional argument, in case that argument was not considered before. If it was useful to you, so be it. If not, no skin off my back.

I will now go and Feel Out A Dentist. She's kinda cute. Thanks for the suggestion.

Quote from: Marhis on 2009 August 12, 06:48:54

I wouldn't be a PITA, but this restriction from the game as-is it's really so necessary? I send my sims to work to make friends, I don't care for career itself; in this way it's nearly impossible to have them meet a coworker unless that specific level requires a coworker for advancement.

I agree. This seems like such a counterintuitive feature. Users aren't going to realize that the only way they're going to get a boss to spawn is to first kiss up to them at work. Normally, I never use that work tone. Hell, if I were a new user and didn't see a boss on my acquaintance list, I'd probably be even less likely to try the option.

IMO, Pescado, you should at least make this optional. It's only going to fuel the folks who say that the mod forces you to make fundamental changes to gameplay that you can't disable. I wouldn't normally suggest cowtowing to that sentiment, but, in this case, I think they're right. This feature is a bit counterintuitive and prevents one fairly common playing strategy (improving your boss relationship outside of work and working hard while at work).

If I had to guess, there are a few artifacts in there that make it seem a tad bit unnatural, like they were painted on. In the second picture of the little blonde boy, there's an uneven dark region or indentation near the inner part of the eyebrow that looks like a cut and paste or cloning tool gone awry. And, in the third picture, some of the top edge isn't even with a few small blobs sticking out that makes it look a bit unnatural. Those things seem pretty minor, but that's what I would guess they were looking at.

I've attached a picture with the areas that I was looking at circled. Hope that helps.

Quote from: Motoki on 2009 August 09, 19:52:41

If it means dingoes eat some of the damned babies so I don't have to be arsed with this crib nonsense then fine. Have it at dingoes. I support you. I just want the neighborhood to take care of itself while I play the one family and not have to run around playing Sim City mayor.

I agree. The crib thing is a perfect example of unintelligent sim behavior that isn't worth improving. It is very costly to fix manually or, if even possible, automatically, and, in most cases, simply not observable to the user. It's a change with low to no upside and high costs.

Even if you could have the sims place cribs automatically, odds are that the placement of the cribs would break believability more than having a proper number of cribs would increase it.

Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 June 06, 02:12:22

Quote from: Dureth on 2009 June 04, 13:53:43

It's convenient for making sims nap on couches, benches, ect. Example: 'homeless' sims sleeping on park benches. Husbands sleeping on couch.

Personal amusement falls short of a tangible benefit to actual gameplay, though.

That's true, but some of the challenges people release make good use of napping. For example, the homeless challenges has them sleeping on benches all the time. Or, the Asylum challenge has more crazy inmates then there are beds and you have to remove one bed for every inmate that dies. If napping didn't suck, it would make that aspect of the challenge far more trivial.

I like the logic of the bottom up approach, but are the sims actually capable of making good money and succeeding? If the end result is that all sims end up going from houses to apartment to homeless to starvation, it may be a valid comment on welfare economics, but I'm not sure if that will end up being a very fun, interactive neighborhood. Does anybody have any data points on what happens in a typical starting neighborhood with the new story mode?

Great post, Motoki. I hope it helps.

Sadly, most of the idiots that make you mad won't read it. Their logic comes down to "it takes me 20 seconds to post a repeat question. If somebody spoon-feeds me an answer, I save time. If nobody does, then no skin off my back. If I absolutely have to, maybe I'll read more or then again maybe I'll just make another repeat post." After running a similar forum for mods I did for another game, I learned just to ignore those posts and/or lock repeat question threads. It's so annoying because they create the noise that makes it hard to search for stuff in the first place.

yours must have somehow become corrupt. Roll Eyes

Try replacing the TS3.exe and TSLHost.dll in your "The Sims 3/Game/bin" directory with the following two files and do the patch again. These are the 1.2.7 version of those files that the 1.3.24 patch is looking for.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=55e7bd3c5171ea4a41446e35a78dc463e04e75f6e8ebb871

Please make sure that these are the actual files that the patch is crapping out on. Search for a file called "rtpatch.log" on your hard drive. You'll probably find multiple ones, so only look at the most recent file. If it says that the TSLHost.dll file is invalid, then use the two files that I linked above.

Quote from: donthurtme on 2009 July 31, 20:59:11

Quote from: Lisen on 2009 July 31, 20:50:47

donthurtme.....
well if you have a legal copy you can find those file in Game\Bin and try....

Yes, I see Ts3.exe and TSLost.dlll but what do you want me to do with them?

He wants you to replace the ones in your installed directory with the ones from your CD. The installer is crapping out because it notices a file that you have that does not look like what it expected, so it throws its hands up in the air and just quits. Lisen is suggesting that you replace your file with the file that it expected. Unfortunately, the one on the CD may not be the correct one. There's actually two versions of Ts3.exe and TSLHost.dll. You have the original ones on the CD, which is what the 1.2.7 patch expects when it runs. And, then you have the ones on your hard drive that the 1.27 patch creates based on your original ones. This is the version that the 1.3 patch is expecting.

If you are absolutely certain that those are the files it is crapping out on -- look at the latest version of rtpatch.log you can find on your hard drive to make sure -- you could either try to find a copy of those files somewhere or wipe everything, do a complete re-install from the DVD and then apply the two patches in succession.

Screw it. I'll just upload those two files to mediafire and post it in a new thread.

Quote from: Narya on 2009 August 01, 09:52:37

Wow. So I just reinstalled my game, installed the first patch to the vanilla game, and now wanted to update to the second patch, but it still says "Invalid file found". Did anyone else have that problem? Really running out of ideas here.

If you read the thread, you'll notice several people post about that. Anyway, search for the file "rtpatch.log". You'll probably find a few if your install failed more than once. Open the most recent one in a text editor and look at the bottom of the file. It should tell you exactly which file it had a problem with.

Thanks for the tip about looking for rtpatch.log in the temp directory. I was getting the invalid file error while patching, and it told me exactly which one was the problem.

For me, it was TSLHost.dll. I tried the original from the CD, but it didn't work. I'm guessing that means it needs the version that EA updated to in the 1.2.7 patch. If you're industrious you can find that version on one of the internets.

Oh, one other thing...I was playing at the normal 90-day life span when the ghost died at that age.

Yeah, it came as a surprise to me. I just checked the last save that I have before she ghost-perma-died, and it said she was 1114 days old. Hmm...that number actually seems high, but that's what the Simology panel says. She was helping raise her great-grandkids at the time. And, the message I got specifically said that she could not be restored again.

Quote from: Faizah on 2009 June 26, 20:55:48

Except they (apparently) can't die. It'd be nice if they stayed at the age they died at, but they age. If you bring back too many (and don't feed them ambrosia) you'd wind up with a hood full of undying see-through elders before too long.

Immortality through death.

They can indeed die, so to speak. Eventually, you'll get a message saying that their hold on the living world has dissolved and they cannot be restored again. I tried to keep my legacy founder around through all 10 generations and got this message around generation 3 I believe.

Here's some tips that I found that were very useful:

You can paint still life of your sims that are very far away, even on the other side of the map. Just queue the "Paint Still Life" option then right-click on the target sim's icon right before the painter is about to start painting. It will start the big zooming out to city and then back in animation and not reset back to the painter. The only caveat is that you cannot move the location of the camera via WASD or holding down the right mouse button without it resetting back to the painter. You can zoom in and out and change the angle of the camera, which still gives you a lot of adjustment power. It's not perfect, but it's faster than having your sim follow people around and memorizing scenes.

The painting opportunities that ask for 10 or 15 paintings can be EXTREMELY lucrative. With the opportunistic trait, you will get 800% of the value of each painting when you turn it in. For example, doing both opportunities with paintings worth an average of 5k each would earn you 1,000,000 simoleans. Moreover, you don't even have to paint the paintings yourself, so you can stockpile a bunch of masterpieces in your family inventory, let them appreciate for a few generations, and then make a ton of cash. The only challenge is making sure you get the opportunity. For some of my non-working painting sims, all opportunities seem to die after a while.

.
Personally, I find painting to be one of the best parts of the game. Trying to capture interesting scenes as they happen is like a minigame of its own, though it's more like photography than actual painting.

I think what Pescado is saying is that The Sims would lag with too many sims in the neighborhood both before and after the new patch. The only difference now is that the core game can't move all the people out that it used to be able to, so it's more likely to get overpopulated if you "lock" a lot of Sims by controlling them at least once.

All in all, it's a good change, though I think a command to "unlock" a Sim family would be useful. I know some people may switch to a non-played family for just a few seconds to see what's going on, but don't really care if that family later gets manipulated by the story engine if necessary.