Apartment fixes

[Inge]

It sounds like you're approaching this from the other angle.  Since non-playable apartment neighbors cannot see or use their apartment contents, putting the knife and fork picture up is a signal to them that "you do not have eating facilities in your apartment".   So they will never be able to get their hunger satisfied while in their apartment.   It sounds like your approach is "There is a toilet in the communal area, so use it rather than your own".  With my system, without a toilet picture, the Sim won't prefer the communal toilet to the (theoretical) one in his own apartment.   Also you could put all the paintings up, but not supply the equipment, and let them suffer.  It's slightly more under the player's control what scenario s/he's simulating.

However, I wish you'd said, earlier on, that you had already begun developing this "before I did", as I then might have left it to you and I could have concentrated on some other project that you weren't already doing.

[J. M. Pescado]

It sounds like you're approaching this from the other angle.  Since non-playable apartment neighbors cannot see or use their apartment contents, putting the knife and fork picture up is a signal to them that "you do not have eating facilities in your apartment".   So they will never be able to get their hunger satisfied while in their apartment.   It sounds like your approach is "There is a toilet in the communal area, so use it rather than your own".  With my system, without a toilet picture, the Sim won't prefer the communal toilet to the (theoretical) one in his own apartment.   Also you could put all the paintings up, but not supply the equipment, and let them suffer.  It's slightly more under the player's control what scenario s/he's simulating.

Actually, it's even better: They *DO* see their apartment contents. While they do not have the ability to use them because the items are disabled, and no actual simulation occurs because it would be massively expensive, they *CAN* see that the items are there, and I use this to determine what motives should be refilled when they are blacked out. They will then, similar to yours, emerge from their rabbit holes to fill the motives they cannot get satisfaction for in their apartments...but also, they will bugger the hell off after they are done rather than loitering in the hallway with blank looks on their faces, slowing your game to a crawl as they scratch their heads in confusion with nothing to do.

However, I wish you'd said, earlier on, that you had already begun developing this "before I did", as I then might have left it to you and I could have concentrated on some other project that you weren't already doing.

I did mention this, but also, I didn't quite realize I was actually doing that until you described it for me. It started out as just a collection of bits and pieces to resolve assorted nuisances, and it wasn't until you MENTIONED this that it really became clear that, "Hey, that's what THIS does!". It *STARTED* as a set of totally unrelated items that I just cobbled together as a personal grab-bag of apartment-related functions, and it wasn't until you described what YOU had done that it really came together what I had actually made.

[Inge]

but also, they will bugger the hell off after they are done rather than loitering in the hallway with blank looks on their faces, slowing your game to a crawl as they scratch their heads in confusion with nothing to do.

Mine don't do that   And what if the player wants some of the lots sociable?  My system has an indicator that lets the player decide whether or not they want to be bothered socialising with neighbors.  Each lot can haz its own character, and you don't have to start rebuilding/refurnishing the apartments to quickly reconfigure it.

[J. M. Pescado]

Oh, the socializability factor has already been taken into account: If you don't hang out in the hallway, the NPCs won't either. The anti-loiter clear also acts faster when the player stops looking at them and/or engages the warp drive. Mashing "3" while looking on a entirely different floor is a pretty strong signal you don't care, so why waste time having them loiter in a hallway where you can't see them anyway?

As a result, each lot has its own character, much like your system does, but without the need for explicit configuration, and instead the game will respond based on your furnishing choices and personal behavior. The amusement sort of showcases itself in the next upcoming AWESOMELAND. Where, on the suggestion of the Whale, I put the Whale in a 24-unit apartment with only a single bathroom and then proceed to seriously stress-test Bathroom Uses You.

Like most things I've done lately, it basically starts out as an undirected edit for personal amusement that begins to snowball until someone, such as Fat Gwilly People, mentions a particular annoyance.

[Inge]

Well let's just say yours is more awesome and mine is more logical

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, more Ingelogical, anyway. I tried to avoid as many arbitrary fudge factors as possible. Like your "in apartment" motive drain is flat for all sims, whereas mine actually uses an emulation of their standard decay rates and takes into account their LTA perks, so that they lose power at about the rates that they would normally, other than some rounding truncation. Also, the "furnishings" are individualized, rather than lot-wide, and responsive to their individual circumstances: Each apartment is treated seperately, so that if your apartment is populated by different playable families with different furnishings, they will behave according to what they have: If ONE apartment has a Kick The Cheat installed, while other apartments have absolutely nothing fun, residents of THOSE apartments will come out looking for something to do (if something to do actually exists on the lot), but the family (probably playable) that DOES have those upgrades will simply use their own and not come out for that reason. Whereas with your "signs" method, they would come out regardless of what they have or what is present, and would not react adaptively if their apartment were upgraded by the player in the next playing session. Also, your method doesn't account for the Special Creatures and just drains everyone's motives the same, even if they don't actually "have" those motives.

[Inge]

None of my hacks take special creatures into account.  I have no time for all that nonsense!  I have hacks installed to prevent supernatural nuisances occurring anyway.  I am trying to play a life simulation not a la-la land.

Seriously though, it sounds like you have some very good ideas there, and I would use more of your hacks if they didn't so often seem to come with the extra baggage of the efficiency enforcements.   For me it seems to make the sims into little more than automatons.  Well of course they are automatons, but I like to be able to try and forget that while I am playing.   I made my apartment fixes to fix what seemed to be automaton-like behaviour in the non-playables, to make them behave more like playable sims with the difference that they can respond to lot overcrowding by going into or staying in their apartments and disabling themselves rather than remaining active and slowing the game down.

[J. M. Pescado]

None of my hacks take special creatures into account.  I have no time for all that nonsense!  I have hacks installed to prevent supernatural nuisances occurring anyway.  I am trying to play a life simulation not a la-la land.

Yes, but I prefer not to willfully bork features of the game that others may be enjoying. It is up to you whether to HAVE such creatures, but at least I'll handle them correctly.

Seriously though, it sounds like you have some very good ideas there, and I would use more of your hacks if they didn't so often seem to come with the extra baggage of the efficiency enforcements.

You must be thinking of Macrotastics. That basically *IS* an efficiency hack. Efficiency is good!

For me it seems to make the sims into little more than automatons.  Well of course they are automatons, but I like to be able to try and forget that while I am playing.

I find that the opposite effect is created by EAxis behavior: They STILL seem very much like automatons, but now they are very BADLY MADE automatons that repeatedly do stupid, obstructionary shit with absolutely no way to discourage or counter! (As opposed to in real life, where when people do stupid shit, you just smack them aside and go about your business)

I made my apartment fixes to fix what seemed to be automaton-like behaviour in the non-playables, to make them behave more like playable sims with the difference that they can respond to lot overcrowding by going into or staying in their apartments and disabling themselves rather than remaining active and slowing the game down.

My idea started out as an anti-loitering hack, because I had them just constantly pop out of their apartments and then stand there with dumb looks on their faces for no apparent purpose for hours at a time doing absolutely nothing until they finally decided to leave. So the first draft involved adding an advertisement to their doors to encourage them to see "Go Away" as an action, and then I began addressing issues like "So, why are they out here in the first place, anyway?", and it went from there.

This isn't one of those "automaton" hacks you rail at, though. Although it CAN be, if you arrange your apartments in a decidedly automaton-fashion like I often do, with the result that if your apartment block is inhabited by pod people, they will continue to behave that way. Otherwise, looking over your code, it seems like there is a lot of convergence in methods, except yours relies more on explicit and inflexible configuration which cannot be changed once the apartment has been inhabited without evicting anyone, and mine operates by environmental logic.

[Inge]

except yours relies more on explicit and inflexible configuration which cannot be changed once the apartment has been inhabited without evicting anyone

You're mistaken.  These "indicator" pictures can be placed in a playable Sim's apartment at any time, though of course they will then only be observed while playing that particular household.  I would have thought it was your hack that required forethought when building, more so than mine does, since your hack needs to detect actual provided items which are really only easy and reliable to place and detect before anyone moves in.

As my pictures can either be added to communal areas at build time, or to playable apartments at runtime, it means you can reconfigure if you wish to on the fly without using any complicated cheats to allow communal object placement.

[J. M. Pescado]

You're mistaken.  These "indicator" pictures can be placed in a playable Sim's apartment at any time, though of course they will then only be observed while playing that particular household.  I would have thought it was your hack that required forethought when building, more so than mine does, since your hack needs to detect actual provided items which are really only easy and reliable to place and detect before anyone moves in.

Yes, but the indicator pictures would result in inconsistent behavior if a different playable apartment is played and "opens" an apartment with a conflicting set of pictures, resulting in unpredictable behaviors, whereas my method works based on what is actually present, eliminating the possibility for error in indicator placement.

[Inge]

The behaviour would be configurable, but not unpredictable or unreliable.  It was in testing long enough!  Now if I can just get Madame Mim to describe this problem she has, we can get whatever the last glitch is cleaned up.

[J. M. Pescado]

What happens when a playable opens up another playable apartment that has a conflicting set of signs? The behavior immediately becomes chaotic and no longer conforms to the configuration, which was in itself inconsistent. It just has this kind of singular inelegance I try to avoid. And I finally managed to make the 8009 BHAVs USEFUL. I have no idea why EAxis is so fond of them, seeing as unless you're actually USING the memorization bit, it is simply useless, so it seems pointless that they went and deliberately converted some older 8007s to 8009s without changing anything.

[Inge]

Ok, change of topic lol.  What is this "memorisation bit"?  It sounds potentially useful information for me

[J. M. Pescado]

...wait, what? You're the one who told me in the first place!

[Inge]

Am I?  Maybe I have misunderstood what you're referring to then?  Or maybe I am just overly grey these days....  Remind me lol!

[J. M. Pescado]

The short version of it is that setting the "cache" bit to "0x01" in an 8009 will allegedly improve performance by "memorizing" the True/False return value in a function given a set of arguments, so that if the function is called again (live time unknown), the actual function will not be run and the results will simply be dumped back from the cache. This will improve performance with a computationally expensive function with low volatility where the value is used a lot. In theory. I have no idea if it actually works, I'm just going on what you said!

[Inge]

I'm sure that wasn't me.  Sounds like something Dizzy might have found out while involved in RE.  Still it will have its uses, I dare say

[J. M. Pescado]

What's is "RE"?

[Inge]

I am trying to be subtle about it, rather than risk getting him into trouble    Think of something we're not meant to do to commercial software.

[Inge]

Well what on though?  They can't use their own cookers or bookcases, and they can only use visitor-enabled stuff.

[Madame Mim]

Inge: The same one I was reporting on your site. I just didn't go into details here because it wouldn't be important to Pescado et al.

[tunaisafish]

The short version of it is that setting the "cache" bit to "0x01" in an 8009 will allegedly improve performance by "memorizing" the True/False return value in a function given a set of arguments

I remember that conversation/discovery.  I don't have my old notes so can't see how much was found out about it.
I'd grep for 'memoiz' if I had them.

[Inge]

Tuna:But I wasn't there was I?

MM: Thanks.

[tunaisafish]

Now you're asking...
I can just about remember *me* being there.