Unofficial AL Patch - Assorted Fixes

[J. M. Pescado]

Unofficial AL patch for things not patched by other existing hacks.


alfixes.zip

See also for additional fixes:
sshack.zip
comm-skilling.zip
creaturefixes.zip

Apartment Life Fixes for TS2ALp0+
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado)

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

Special Thanks To:
Hobbsee the Scrawny Pencil Neck
Jelenedra, The New "Gay"
Fat, Hairy-Bellied Ness
Rohina the Ugly Butted
Fat Gwilly People

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.

FIXES:
1.  Cellphones can now be answered without being eated.
2.  Receiving NL-mail at an apartment now works, no longer renders mailbox
    unusable and dooming your sim to eventual eviction.
3.  Cooking skill is FUBAR'ed by moving into an apartment.
4.  Inactive apartment residents no longer slowly drained of hobby enthusiasm.
5.  Pianos no longer ADHD due to function arguments being garbage.
6.  Teens able to work on restorable car again.
7.  Apartment resident kids not in the active family no longer lose grades
    every day and automatically fail school and get taken by the SS.
8.  No longer required to greet Gypsy(impossible) or employees<->customers.
9.  Should be able to retrieve date rewards dropped outside apartment now.
10. Love Potion no longer restocks as Nice Potion instead.
11. Chance cards at work/school no longer error if you walked.
12. NPC rentpayer hour moved to 1900 so vampire tenants don't suicide at noon.
13. Social Group townies no longer all generate as the same sex.

COMPATIBILITY:
This hack is fully compatible with all FFS hacks. For TS2ALp0+.

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

WARNING:
Do not open, crush, dispose of in fire, put in backwards, short-circuit, or mix
with non-awesome hacks - may explode, leak, or catch fire, resulting in injury
and/or death.

[wetninja]

Are these the same updates that are in the directory list?  Or have you added new fixes in there, like the mail box in apartments issue?

[kazebird]

Thanks for the Awesomeware Pes. I appreciate that someone is working on fixing AL!

[wetninja]

Never mind.  My bad.

[Lum]

Speaking of critical fixes, the townies are spawning at a fast rate every time you open a neighborhood. Any news on that front? I take it that too many random townies are a VBT.

[Zazazu]

I've been tracking this. I removed all character files under the C:/...Apartment Life folder. Until lot load, there was no change. On lot load, one character was added. After 24 hours of play (just on the lot) I had five more characters (total of six). No new sims have walked by. I'll try a community lot and see if more spawn. I would expect six due to EAxis's stupid obsession with three of each NPC and the added witches.

EDIT: Ok, after going to a community lot I had three more character files (total of nine). No witches have shown yet. I have seen two of these new characters and they appear to be of the new useless social groups. I have one elder (grr, there are to be no elder townies!) smartly-dressed guy and one adult geeky guy. One other spawn is a garden club sim. I'd never accessed the garden club and had no garden club sims before. she's using a new AL hair.

I do have the current notownieregen in.

[Zazazu]

Yep, I'm up to 140 files now after moving a couple to an apartment complex with three other units. To me, it should have been an increase of four, not twelve. Still not in the alarming increase range...if I go over 200 I'll quit playing the 'hood until Pescado can give a verdict.

[Lum]

I have 393 files in the Characters folder for Belladonna. No Downtown/Uni/whatevers added. From my part, I created two CAS sims that got married and had twin daughters. The other CAS sim is currently single and living in another apartment.

Am I hosed yet? Should I just stop playing while this is sorted out?

(Thank god I haven't played my main hood yet...)

Edit: What's the character limit, anyway? And what's the best way to engage in a murder spree to get rid of unwanted townies?

[J. M. Pescado]

Hardlimit is 32767. 393 is within acceptable parameters for a basic hood with a full townie complement.

[DigiGekko]

Goody, no more microwave ramen fires from experienced cooks in apartments.

As for the townie explosion, I don't think there's a practical way of dealing with it right now. SimPE probably won't be updated for a while, and murdering would be slow and painful. Without notownieregen for AL, they'll just come right back anyway. It sounds like about 6 townies are being generated every 24 lot hours.

[kutto]

Did the cooking skill fix bump this up to "Very Critical" or did something more sinister?

[Kyna]

Did the cooking skill fix bump this up to "Very Critical" or did something more sinister?

Very critical is usually reserved for fixes for game-breaking glitches that either make the game unplayable or are dangerous to your saved-game files.  Cooking skill hardly qualifies as a game breaker.  I suspect it's either NL mail breaking mailboxes (since mailboxes are critical to the lot) or something Pes hasn't mentioned.

[witch]

Hardlimit is 32767. 393 is within acceptable parameters for a basic hood with a full townie complement.

Is 527 within acceptable parameters? This is a vanilla E001 hood with 2 CAS sims added. No subhoods whatsoever.

[J. M. Pescado]

Very critical is usually reserved for fixes for game-breaking glitches that either make the game unplayable or are dangerous to your saved-game files.  Cooking skill hardly qualifies as a game breaker.  I suspect it's either NL mail breaking mailboxes (since mailboxes are critical to the lot) or something Pes hasn't mentioned.

The combination of multiple orange-level issues combine together to form a red-level issue, as the resulting mess *IS* dangerous to your save files and renders the game unplayable, as we're talking about an issue which irreversibly destroys data. The fact that this data loss is occurring at a level which makes it impractical to manually reconstruct the lost information boosts the issue to red: While fixing one or two lost cooking values on a sim is a repairable issue, losing this information on dozens of sims exceeds the level of typical players to reconstruct the lost data.

[MaximilianPS]

they can't call for firepolice anymore !
if you order "call for emergency" they didn't run but just walk, so the "react to fire" will override your order and they didn't call emergency and your room will be ashed :p

[Chain_Reaction]

they can't call for firepolice anymore !
if you order "call for emergency" they didn't run but just walk, so the "react to fire" will override your order and they didn't call emergency and your room will be ashed :p

Yeah the changes in fire reaction in apartments makes them go out to the mailbox and freak out (lovely feature  ) and you can't call the fire department. My advice is to put a smoke detector in the kitchen so it auto calls the fire department.

And hey I guess that BBS report of losing the 'cocking skill' was valid! 

[MaximilianPS]

also, looks like the sims ignore the weather, it was winter and they jump on the swimming pool ... i wonder why they dind't get frozen too 

[J. M. Pescado]

The pool is allegedly heated and does not freeze, so resets everyone to null temperature.

[Soulstripper]

Hi guys, let me first say how very much I appreciate all you do for our Sims.

I downloaded these files and I put them in like this: Downloads/Hacks/ and everything seemed to be fine until it came time to use the cell phone, they never got to use it, they would kind of jerk a little and the cell would vanish. Am I doing something wrong? Please forgive my ignorance, I don't use too many hacks, I am extremely selective about them....... so forgive me. lol

[SJActress]

Hi guys, let me first say how very much I appreciate all you do for our Sims.

I downloaded these files and I put them in like this: Downloads/Hacks/ and everything seemed to be fine until it came time to use the cell phone, they never got to use it, they would kind of jerk a little and the cell would vanish. Am I doing something wrong? Please forgive my ignorance, I don't use too many hacks, I am extremely selective about them....... so forgive me. lol

This might sound like a stupid question, but I'm going to ask.  Are you putting it in Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads/Hacks (this is where is SHOULD go)?  I'm asking because Vista has a folder in Documents called Downloads, and that's not where it goes.  Sometimes I accidentally click on that and freak out because there's nothing Sims related in it.

Let us know.

Also, do you have CC enabled?  To enable, you have to start the game, enable CC, then close the game and restart for the change to take effect.

Let us know about this too.

[Soulstripper]

Yes I am using Vista and yes I have it in the correct folder. And yes I have CC enabled on my game. I use a LOT of CC but not a lot of hacks. The only ones I use are the Espresso machine, and up to now the phone hack, which isn't working.. and then I downloaded this one here.... and I put it in a folder called Hacks. I keep my folders in an insane order form. So I k now where I got what and where I got it.

Not a stupid question at all, a pratical one in fact.

[SJActress]

Well, shoot.  I'm not sure what the problem is here then...I'm wondering if the phonehack is required to make the cell phone fix work.  I doubt it, as Pes didn't say so.  Sorry, I can't help you any further.  Maybe someone else will have an idea. 

[Soulstripper]

It's cool, maybe someone will come along that can tell me what stupid thing I have done to make it not work for me. lol

I had the phone hack but had to remove it when I got AL because it would hang my sims up when trying to use the phone, so I had to delete it until it is updated.

I am horrible about making friends, so I depend on that to let my sims stay on the phone for hours on end, am I pathetic or what? lol

[coralleane]

At the risk of asking the *really* dense question - you did remember to unzip it?

[Soulstripper]

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I was supposed to unzip it? 

lmao
Seriously, yes I unzipped it.... and not stupid, I guess some people wouldn't know to do that if it isn't specifically said. lol