Looks like the "Vaccinate/Play Audition" bug. resetsim etc are all only temporary fixes for that, iirc. EA bug where even after an opportunity scenario has finished the game keeps pulling Sims to whichever community lot.

awesome and NRaas both fix it, I think. Aren't you running one or other?

Had a look in CAW, the routing paint is solid. The routing looks solid. That's unique among EA worlds. There's a road not connected in the middle of town, but I don't imagine that could be the cause. Figure it's probably a lot, but can't locate anything. No trouble in other hoods.

Does the debug package contain the proprietor placement object, or should I be installing Roobs' override in the thread further down Pudding as well?

They *appear* to make photography work again, at least.

Also. The modern spiral stair is borked. Try putting a rail on it. Try at all angles - even the stupid ones. You'll see what I mean.

What is the bug?

Isn't this already possible using the same principal as with these: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=427515

(Edit: He says replying to a post from July as if it's current... :/)

I've been looking at the XMLs that specify the Sims to initially move in to France, China and Egypt. I noticed that the Barnacle Bay one carried celebrity data, and realised that I could potentially fix the Sims in locations up quite a bit. The data for the Sims is somewhat lacking in places - especially for the dead sims which have no Traits or Lifetime Wishes attached, let alone more recent additions like Star Signs and Celebrity.

Could a few people import this into your France world file using s3pe (remember to back up the world file first) and see if it all works for you?

XML for French Sims

You'll find the world file at Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 World Adventures/GameData/Shared/NonPackaged/Worlds

You'll need to swap the original file back whenever patching if you use this, so the back up is essential.

Here are the changes:

- All Sims in France should have description texts. Not elaborate ones, just ones that match their traits/home situations.

- All households in France should have description texts.

- You should see one or two Sims with preset celebrity status *if* you have Late Night installed. This so far works nicely with bars and clubs installed in Champs Les Sims.

- All dead Sims have traits, lifetime wishes, and description texts.

This is the sort of change I'm making, from this:


To this:


If there are no issues with this then I'll do the other two worlds as well. Because every time I go on vacation/adventuring I get pissed off thinking about the blank Sims data in the location.

The crazy floating tiles is a risk with painting ceilings. It *just happens* sometimes, pretty randomly, and it's a fucking pain. You can find the floatiness only as certain angles, and it's amazing where it can show up. I suspect this is exactly why EA aren't in the habit of painting ceilings on their lots. It's a nice feature, but it's glitchy as heck.

Jessnova, I'll look into this. I haven't had it happen to me while using Niua Simoa on my main computer - will test it on my hubby's - and I haven't had other reports of this happening due with Niua Simoa. Were you using the Base Game or pre-populated WA version?

Also, while it's not awesome, twallan's SP fixes the bug that stops consignment sales from counting towards the career.

Excellent! Thanks Goggalor. Exactly what I was after for the cinematics.

Edit: Control over the world top color, as you pointed out! Bonus! Yes, thanks again.

Could this potentially ever be carried over into non-vacation worlds? Or is data kept quite separate from the .world file? I actually had a number of requests from players who wanted to investigate restricting the Sims that could generate in Niua Simoa.

There's definitely not an option *within* CAW. I was wondering if users like Claeric remembered seeing anything when poking around in the world data, it probably needs adding using tricks and magic, but it seems to draw off of the basic EA camera mode by the looks of it, so there's a chance it's not too hard to understand and edit in. It's just the .world files remain ruddy great mysteries in a lot of ways.

Claeric, what was the info you found about facial data and clothing restricts for the WA worlds (but have never been able to find it again, despite searching for it)? I remember you mentioning it back on MTS.

Has anybody investigated the world files for info on the cinematics that launch with EA worlds the first time they load? It would be quite nice to add them to custom worlds.

I can say with reasonable certainty that Twinbrook hasn't been tested thoroughly enough.

Unless it's the result of a mod I was using before I uninstalled Ambitions, all of the Twinbrook Sims begin the game with 'new friend' moodlets, which is a sign that the creators didn't have time to nuke the moodlets. It betrays how new all the characters are, and if they were doing a good job I'm sure they'd have removed them. That moodlet appears the moment you set up friendships (including in CAW), and is easily deleted using 'testingcheats'. On top of that, I would have expected the family trees to extend a little outside of households, which they don't. No ancestors at all, but lots of ancestoral Sims that are islands by themselves: Steward Curious, Lacey Darer, etc. Unless they did this deliberately, to make the world mysterious, but I'm reckoning it's more that it was a rush job and that was a convenient excuse. Edit: Pile on top of that the lack of grammar, sane syntax, and consequently grace in all the Sims' texts. There are lots of typos, and some of the sentences are just... ...wtf.


Due to the sheer volume of players demanding worlds on the official forums, that's where the best tested worlds seem to come from. Nowhere else can creators rack up the necessary volume of testers, MTS's less accessible feedback forums ensure it. A player named ehaught-something-or-other has made an extensively tested (and somewhat nice) world called Fort Sim. It's not polished enough for my liking personally, but it probably runs well.

Hmmm. This is definitely a signifier that it might be pathing as well. The pathing errors from my worlds that are easy to find are always the ones where Sims most often gather. There are always more obscure ones that only rarely trap Sims, and I imagine there are potentially ones altogether more obscure than the obscure ones I've picked up on and fixed personally. It can be as simple as a Sim approaching the trouble spot from a rare direction and getting stuck.

I guess my point is that most of the pathing errors in my custom worlds don't hit consistently, and don't hit on every play-through.

In custom worlds pathing errors are possibly the most common cause. The tiniest things, if unspotted, can destroy a world's ability to function without pauses. Possible errors include:

- almost invisible dips in terrain. Most recently for me, a one-click ditch near the edge of a lot I didn't notice and that was surrounded by perfectly routable terrain anyway. In any game with decent pathing the Sims would just walk around it. But we know this isn't one of those games.
- the odd 'base is uneven' glitch that hits builders sometimes.
- routing paint overlapping or blocking any place sims might try to route to.

Needle in a haystack sort of stuff. But of course, it's hitting in non-custom worlds too. Don't rule out building errors as the cause though, more than likely EA's worlds have a few dodgy areas of their own.

This tutorial is old. Go here:

http://pasimficandbeyond.wikia.com/wiki/CAW_Population:_Populating_Worlds_in_Create-a-World

Or here:

http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:Populating_CAW_Worlds

</end>

I put this together recently, and think the basic research I've done so far would benefit from more technical users who are interested poking around with it. At any rate, the tut is up on the wiki, and reproduced below as well. It's written for a non-MATY audience, so please don't feel condescended to that it assumes you might not know some basic stuff. Do let me know of any errors, major or slight:

It is possible, using a combination of mods and EA debug commands, to add Sims to custom worlds using Edit-In-Game in the Create-A-World tool (CAW). Testing to date demonstrates that these Sims will be installed with the world file, and will act just as the premade Sims in Sunset Valley or Twinbrook. '''However''', creators should bear in mind the pool of testers has been small and largely non-technical. These testers have now maintained working worlds across four or five generations without any corruption that is apparent to end users. Suffice to say, worlds populated with this method should carry warnings, but appear to be safe if certain rules are followed. Even so, it is a sensible precaution to back up the world before attempting this.

This tutorial assumes readers understand how to install and manage custom content.



Requirements

Required Mods

• awesomemod
• NRaas DebugEnabler

Strongly Recommended Mods

• NRaas Porter
• NRaas SuperComputer

Players can find the latest version of awesomemod ... here. Obviously.

Players can find the latest version of all the NRaas mods at http://ts3.tscexchange.com/index.php?board=105.0

(If you are reading this during the Great CAW Famine of 2010 and have rolled back the patches, you'll want the 1.11 version of twallan's mods in his Obsolete Mods thread).



Drawbacks

This method has some drawbacks in terms of which Sims creators can and cannot add to their worlds. For example, Ghosts and Mummies added in Edit-In-Game lose some of their essential data during saving, specifically the data from when they were normal Sims. Hence Ghosts and Mummies always become hopelessly corrupted. Likewise, urns containing dead Sims are stripped of their Ghosts, and will present simply as "Remains" objects. Players seeking to incorporate Ghosts and occult Sims into their worlds must offer these Sims in a shared save file - there is no other way. This corruption more than likely also affects SimBots because unfortunately they also carry the data that would allow them to turn into normal Sims, even though there is no way for them to do so in the vanilla game.

Aside from this, Sims should not have complex relationships with objects, nor pre-existing skill data if they are imported with the Porter mod. Do not important Sims that have written books, painted paintings, or made nectar bottles, etc. There is a good chance these objects, if also imported, will corrupt. There is also a chance the Sim's skill data will not save in its entirety. Creators should keep the Sims they import clean and simple - preferably fresh from Create-A-Sim or Create-A-Family. Set all skill levels with the SuperComputer mod once the Sims are in Edit-In-Game mode. Bear in mind at all times that not all processes run in Edit-In-Game mode, and there is the risk that any but the most basic data won't transfer into this environment, or be preserved in CAW more generally.

Do not ever let a Sim die in CAW. It never turns out well, and often crashes the entire programme. The NPC household doesn't exist in Edit-In-Game, so there's no Grim Reaper, and this mode doesn't run death scenarios properly. You'll just corrupt Sims. ''Force Kill'' with SuperComputer is not a way around this. It just results in Urns with heavily corrupted Sims attached.



Basic Method

Not all the advice that follows is essential to getting Sims into a world, but it is all worth knowing to do a good job of it.



Step One: Using the Make Sim command in Edit-In-Game

Lots are an essential requirement. They are the vessels that carry all a creator's Sims and their data. First, the creator should '''finish''' their world, excepting only small details like the odd bush or street lamp. This is a precaution to ensure the Sims' data is preserved perfectly, without any risks that might arise from building upon or shifting lots with Sims in them. Creators can risk it if they want, but it is not recommended. Before adding Sims it might pay to switch the Story Progression toggle off, as while the Sims only seem to do basic processes and have static motives, awesomemod's story progression could possibly interfere with the world's compatibility in unmodded games.

All the action takes place in Edit-In-Game mode, so once the world is ready, enter it. The player must type ''setconfig EnableDebugInteractions true'' into the cheat console once the world has loaded. This unlocks a limited selection of EA debugging interactions when Shift-Ctrl-clicking on the terrain.

The same interactions are unlocked with NRaas DebugEnabler, simply type Make Sim into the cheat console and you will have an active homeless Sim. (This is the best method for making homeless Sims for your world).

setconfig EnableDebugInteractions true > Ctrl + Shift + click terrain > Make Sim


The ''Make Sim'' interaction spawns a random EAxis pudding-faced Sim attached to a nearby residential lot. It is best to spawn them on a specific lot, which simply means running ''Make Sim'' on that lot's terrain. This Sim automatically becomes the player's active household and active Sim, just like when playing the game. Sims in Edit-In-Game have no free will, and their motives are static (don't worry, they don't remain static in the actual game). They can run around town, and interact with most objects, but bear in mind they will ''always'' be standing up when the player first opens the game, so sitting them in a chair or on a bed will result in upright Sims clipping weirdly through the objects. The random Sim I've been saddled with is Gregg Edward. For a random Sim he's surprisingly unfugly, but this process is totally as random as the EAxis townie spawning in the game, so most of the time these Sims will look ridiculous. At any rate, players should now have a Sim standing about on a lot in Edit-In-Game, and under their control.

This Sim is a powerful tool, unlocking many more commands that, without an active Sim, are not available. However, creators should use the additional debugging commands with extreme caution, if at all, and if you do not know what a command does DO NOT TOUCH IT.



Step Two: De-fuglying and clean up

This step is where NRaas SuperComputer comes in handy, although not essential. If creators want only to make Sims and then de-pudding them, dress them properly, change their traits and wishes, and add description text then awesomemod is sufficient. Just use the ''editsim'' cheat that awesomemod provides (eg. ''editsim Gregg Edward''). Spawn each new Sim on the lot you wish them to inhabit using ''Make Sim''. However, if creators want a population of inter-related Sims with varying careers and skill levels, it pays to also have SuperComputer installed. Do not try to use the EA debugging commands to set skills and careers: SuperComputer is safer and more reliable. Players who have used SuperComputer previously will have no trouble with this, and for players unfamiliar with the mod it is very intuitive. It should not pose any steep learning curve, and twallan provides further instructions on his forums.

Creators can edit family descriptions from Edit Town mode, but should not try switching or moving active families here. This will deselect the current household. Instead use SuperComputer's ''Add Sim'' command to move Sims from on household to another. Without an active Sim, creators cannot select other Sims, so it is necessary to use ''Make Sim'' at the beginning of every session in Edit-In-Game. For this reason, it is best to try and add all the Sims to a world in one session (step three will be helpful in this regard). Any excess Sims can be destroyed cleanly using SuperComputer's ''Total Annihilation'' interaction, or awesomemod's ''Nuke'' interaction.

Pregnancies set with SuperComputer's ''Pollinate'' command will carry over successfully into the world you create.



Step Three: How to add premade Sims

When the creator discovers that CAW blocks access to Create-A-Family in Edit-In-Game, and that all the accessible manifestations of Create-A-Sim don't allow access to premade Sims, they can start to see a horrifying one-by-one effort of sculpting and resculpting every single Sim in the entire world individually. Forever.

There is, after all, not even access to the genetic mixing tool for making children. The outlook is bleak until the creator discovers that twallan's Porter mod also works in Edit-In-Game so long as they have an active Sim in the world. Porter allows creators to add families from the family bin into lots simply by clicking on the lot, selecting ''Porter'' and choosing the name of the family in the bin. For this reason, it helps to keep the family names distinct from one another - creators can always change them using Edit Town mode once they're in Edit-In-Game. So it's simply, really: Build all the families in the game itself, save them to the bin, and then introduce them into Edit-In-Game using ''Make Sim'' > ''Porter'' > ''[Family name]''.

Creators can make the families related in interesting ways using SuperComputer's ''Advanced'' > ''Family'' > ''Add [relative]'' feature.


Step Four: Reset motives before saving

Before saving there is one essential step that the creator must take using NRaas DebugEnabler. Sims' motives are calculated in accordance with the time in the world. More than likely the creator has let the clock run in Edit-In-Game, and this can cause an intial lag on when the motives begin to calculate for players who have just loaded up the world. Thank twallan of NRaas for providing a specific solution to this issue. Using DebugEnabler, and making sure the game is paused, type in the '''restartmotives''' command. Now save the game, without letting the clock run again. This ensures that all Sims' motives will start calculating as soon as the world is loaded. If you adjust the world in any way that lets the clock run, remember to redo this step before saving.


Step Five: Narrative tricks

But what is this all in aid of? If a player is adding Sims to their world it is because they want the place to have a sense of history, and greater sense of ''lived-in-ness''. So it is worth taking time to discuss different narrative tricks that are available. But first, let's look at the constraints with this method.

Constraints

- No deceased Sims, so all relatives must my living.

- No active Mummies, Ghosts, or SimBots

- No sims sitting or lying on objects when the world first loads

- No skilling history that isn't added with SuperComputer

Pregnancies

- Adding pregnancies is a great way to ensure a few more non-pudding faced Sims will start out in the world, adds a bit of randomness to families (pregancies are always concealed at the world's launch, except for morning sickness). It adds to the ever important sense of history, and can leave players speculating about patternity as in Claire Ursine's case.

Adding Moodlets

- This is a fantastic, if fiddly, feature of EA's debug commands. Once you have this unlocked, simply select a Sim you've added to the world, and use the ''Add Buff'' command. This will give you a list of all the possible moodlets. You can have a grieving Sims (but because no Sim has actually died the moodlet will be neutral, although the Sims will still cry), Sims that have just eaten Ambrosia (back from the dead?), Sims that have just time-travelled! In my version of Riverblossom Hills I placed a broken, rusty TV beside my mad professor, and have her starting the game Singed. Remember that moodlets like Singed actually cause the Singed state! The possibilities for how your Sims begin their lives with players is very broad here.

- It's possible to make Sims that are about to die. Give a Sim the 'On Fire' or 'Mummy's Curse' moodlet, and the player will have to choose whether they save them or not. Time can pass in Edit-In-Game, so you can even run the moodlet down if you're patient. Just don't ever let the Sim die in Edit-In-Game this will either crash the whole programme, or it will result in a corrupted Sim that will NEVER die (this isn't a good thing, the Sim is corrupted, not enhanced, and will mess up player's games. Don't make the mistake of using glitches as part of your narrative!) You can also set Elder's ages very high using SuperComputer, guaranteeing they will die soon after the world first launches. This can help if you want families to have dead Sims in their family trees relatively swiftly - a sense of generations passed.

Positioning

- Sims can leave their lots. Remember that if a Sims starts somewhere far from their lot it could leave players quite confused as to where their home is, but this can be useful for placing one or two Sims from a large family somewhere interesting. For example, the world might launch with a teen Sim meeting his girlfriend in the park while his family are at home. Appropriate moodlets on the two teen sims in the park helps deepen and clarify the player's experience.

If you read this far and didn't just click the links above: *slow clap*

Good

I like the expansion. Or will like it, when they unbreak my Create-a-Crap and I can play with the new features. Twinbrook is well done, and raises the benchmark for worlds substantially.

Bad and ugly

I maintain the careers were designed by toddlers with no friggin experience of the world outside their door, let alone in game design.

Wouldn't you expect success in a career to provide some rewards in terms of gameplay? Cos right now players get a decoration or two, and more money to add to the piles and piles of numerals stacking up in that damned money box at the bottom of the screen to the point where they're practically worthless. There's a sense of progress through the careers, but nothing at the top of any of them. Well... ...stylists get a perma-moodlet. These professions feel all stick and no carrot.

It seems fundamentally borked that the two new skills provide a more rewarding and compelling feature than any of the careers themselves.

But I may be alone in my opinions.

I thought that this only happened with twallan's story progression? I haven't seen it in my game when I've run it vanilla.

Ah. That's just the thing. The register doesn't produce the store interface at all. I can click it and select buy, but the consignments aren't ever listed. Tired reseting the lot, the sim, replacing it with a whole store, etc.

Edit Bug only seems to affect the family in play, the store still functions if I switch families. Sounds like others are encountering similar things: http://www.carls-sims-3-forum.com/index.php/topic,1165.0.html

Hmmm. Thanks for the tip. Noobish question, but where's the option for that?

Playing in Riverview, the dialogue for the Consignment Store (the Buy/Consign menu) no longer appears at the store. Tried replacing the menu, switching families, and replacing the whole lot, but it seems absolutely borked.

The typos are the least of the problems. Two 'a's seems pretty minor compared with the winding, phrasal-verb-heavy sentences. Every fricking Sim seems 'to wish to continue the discovery of knowledge'. This game had no editor.