M&G Breaks Everything (well, almost)

[vecki]

ACK!  I broke down and bought M&G today (I had a gift card and it was half price ) and already have three problems.  (I installed a no-cd crack too, none of that SecuROM nastiness for me!)

First, I had a sim start doing yoga.  She had 3 body points and did yoga for all of five minutes and gained 5 extra body points by the time I stopped her.  I've seen this mentioned somewhere before but I'm buggered if I can remember where I saw it or how to stop it - if it can be stopped.

Second and probably more importantly, I can't place doors or windows.  I can select them in build mode but they won't come out into the world for me to place them.  I have no idea what could be causing this.  It was a brand new lot I had just placed so I'm completely stumped.  I was going to check out existing lots but I accidentally hit 'Exit' instead of going back to the neighbourhood and couldn't be bothered waiting for it to load again.

Thirdly, when I did exit from the game something had gone haywire with my keyboard (typing 'o' brought up a save dialog, hitting 'esc' brought up the start menu, weirdness like that).  Rebooting the computer fixed that problem - otherwise I'd be having a hell of a time trying to type this!!

Grrr.

[SaraMK]

Sorry, I don't have M&G yet, but here is the thread you were thinking of: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,13932.0.html

[vecki]

Ah HA!  I knew I'd seen it somewhere before.  Will get a fresh copy of alfixes.

[Argon]

Doors and windows are working just fine for me, maybe you have an old hack related to doors that's causing them to not show up?

[Gwill]

Sorry, I don't have M&G yet, but here is the thread you were thinking of: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,13932.0.html

As I would have pointed out, if someone hadn't locked the thread; I had alfixes installed at all points during my troubles.

[Milhouse Trixibelle Saltfucker III]

I bet I know what caused the keyboard thing: The computer thought you ctrl key was pushed. Try hitting ctrl-esc and ctrl-o and the start menu and "open file" dialogue should come up.

[vecki]

Well I'm going to take back what I said about M&G breaking my build mode.  I went back in and built a lovely apartment lot called Inola Flats as a test today.  Everything worked as per normal.  I'm going to put this one down to general computer weirdness somehow connected to the keyboard problem I had on closing the game yesterday.

I haven't retested body skilling yet though, we'll see eventually.

[Simsample]

If you did have a stuck Control key as Tsenatserix  suggested, that would also have caused the doors to disappear rather rapidly.

[Argon]

Ah I wonder if it was that sticky keys feature in windows, there's some setting to keep certain keys pressed (shift, ctrl, etc.) to make it easier for people with disabilities. I kept turning it on by accident a while back, look for it in accessibility or ease of access center (vista) in the control panel.

[SaraMK]

Sticky Keys is the work of the devil. Does it actually help people with disabilities, and if so, what disability is helped by constant annoying popups bugging you about whether you want "help" to be on or off?

[dragoness]

Sticky keys is helpful when, for whatever reason, you find you cannot hold one key and press another reliably. I've used it in the past. One does what one must when the alternative is staying off the computer entirely. 

[SaraMK]

But then you have to do extra mouse maneuvers to get the popup off your screen.  That was my experience with it, until I figured out where to turn it off. I didn't know it existed until I got a computer with Vista. It was on by default. And it screamed at me about permissions when I tried to make it stop with the unwanted popups. 

[dragoness]

Strange, I have no idea what popups you speak of. Ultimately I had to switch from attempting one-handed keyboard-only usage to using the mouse and the on-screen keyboard, so maybe I didn't have it on long enough to provoke these popups?

[Faizah]

Sticky keys always sounded, to me, like the equivalent of jamming up the keyboard's inner workings so that one key was held consistently down, only some programmer managed to find a way to make it even more annoying than that.

I come across it most (in XP) when playing games, particularly if the shift key is connected to something (like, say, fire) that I may want to just hold down, to compensate for my own gamer failings. I get a pop-up saying I have held the shift key for X seconds, do I want sticky keys turned on, etc.

[SaraMK]

Exactly.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sticky Keys can be killed in the control panel "Accessbility" settings. I have no idea who came up with the idea that this was a GOOD plan.

[dragoness]

Oh, the popup asking if you want to turn it on. Yes, it's killable, and it was considered a good plan because those with very limited access may not be able to get into the options to turn it on without assistance - pressing and holding a key is comparatively easy. (Though I do think the popup in question should have given you a "Do not ask this again" option.)

[J. M. Pescado]

I am certain that people with limited access either don't, or shouldn't, be using computers like that at all, and frankly, would probably be more freaked out when the computer starts doing something bizarre and incomprehensible to them and refuses to behave like it should because they have accidentally triggered some unusual feature and now none of the normal people can figure out why the computer seems to be stuck.