Story Progression Toggle: Is it borked?

[inthecorner]

mine works fine. when i first started to play it i turned off story progression. nobody aged or got married or etc.
when i turned it back on, i got my sim to read the newspaper and there was an article about the hospital in town claiming that they had their lowest death count in years (or something like that) obviously pointing out the fact that story progression had been turned off and nobody in town had died.

now new and old sims have moved in and out of town, and people are getting married and having babies, even twins.

my sims was married to an older guy and he had an affier with the maid. i made him move out to any default house (kick out i think the option was).
for a while he wasn't in my phone list, but then he randomly showed up in the neighbourhood in his own house. he had progressed in his career.
since he had a son with my sim, i saw on his family tree he now had a half brothewr and sister from his dad side (but they have no mother). i even made him vists his dad's house to see them which was pretty cool. =)

i love that they've added step-son/half-sister/niece to the game. =)

[jriggs]

Where and when did you get the game version you are running?  I understand thee are now different version out there and there has been some speculation that right now there is a "more complete" version out there.  Maybe yours is the newer version and this could help prove whether the original truly was a bad beta copy.

[jharrower]

Is it possible to have Story Progression ON but prevent the random Sims from breeding? (I was under the impression that setting Free Will to "Medium" would let them go to work, go out, etc. but not let them breed.)

Also, is there any way to prevent the other families from moving out? It seems random, but is there any way to prevent it all together? (It seems like I can't make my mind up as to whaether I want Story progression on or off, but the random moving and spawning is a big DNW.)

You seem unable to decide whether you want it on or off. This is why the game currently lets you have it both ways: You can turn it off and it will still be on.

True. I guess I'll just keep it off, unless there's a way to prevent the Sims from moving away- I can -maybe- deal with the spawning, but the moving is too much.

[JonaBullets]

True. I guess I'll just keep it off, unless there's a way to prevent the Sims from moving away- I can -maybe- deal with the spawning, but the moving is too much.

It would be good to see some hacks/mods that come out, to allow certian Story Progression things to be turned off, such as a: Sims_NoMoveAway, and other options, that we could put into Mods folder, and take in and out and all that jazz, I got no idea how hard/easy this is, but just putting the suggestion out there. No doubt after a few weeks this kidna thing will happen?

[Sigmund]

Don't forget, modding for TS2 got to be where it is today after what, six years? Pescado is Awesome, but the kind of mods we're used to in TS2 will most likely take time.

[inthecorner]

Where and when did you get the game version you are running?  I understand thee are now different version out there and there has been some speculation that right now there is a "more complete" version out there.  Maybe yours is the newer version and this could help prove whether the original truly was a bad beta copy.

i got it from an underground site last Wednesday.

idk what version it is..but the file was modified on the 17th of may if that helps. =/

[JonaBullets]

Don't forget, modding for TS2 got to be where it is today after what, six years? Pescado is Awesome, but the kind of mods we're used to in TS2 will most likely take time.

Yeah Defo, and in time im sure it will happen for TS3. It was like when a new EXP came out for TS2, we had to wait around for updates, and things wouldn't work, but apart from a couple of issues with TS3, they seem to have built it a little better than orginal TS2. and its nice to see that babies actully look like their parents, and we don't need to run the Awesome Batman Box thing that I have forgotten the name of. (mybad Pes)

[J. M. Pescado]

Babies look LESS like their parents than they do in TS2, due to extremely poor male-female feature analogue mapping. For instance, both parents can have angry eyebrows, and in TS2, ths meant that the kids would have angry eyebrows. Due to TS3's weird analogue-feature mapping, this is no longer the case.

[JonaBullets]

Babies look LESS like their parents than they do in TS2, due to extremely poor male-female feature analogue mapping. For instance, both parents can have angry eyebrows, and in TS2, ths meant that the kids would have angry eyebrows. Due to TS3's weird analogue-feature mapping, this is no longer the case.

Eyes and face structure looks alot better in TS3 though, then TS2, before running your wonderful Box, I had a kid,, and then flicked between the Mother and Father and kid, as it was a Teen, and looks better.. mind you I didnt get fully into the details of it.. but you make a good point. we can always rely on EAxis to bork shit up, other wise you wouldn't have a 'hobbie'?

[J. M. Pescado]

Eyes and face structure looks alot better in TS3 though, then TS2, before running your wonderful Box, I had a kid,, and then flicked between the Mother and Father and kid, as it was a Teen, and looks better.. mind you I didnt get fully into the details of it.. but you make a good point. we can always rely on EAxis to bork shit up, other wise you wouldn't have a 'hobbie'?

That is because eye and face structure is heavily restricted in TS3, meaning the possibilities for changing them are very limited and you can't really produce combinations that jar clashingly on accident anymore.

[JonaBullets]

Eyes and face structure looks alot better in TS3 though, then TS2, before running your wonderful Box, I had a kid,, and then flicked between the Mother and Father and kid, as it was a Teen, and looks better.. mind you I didnt get fully into the details of it.. but you make a good point. we can always rely on EAxis to bork shit up, other wise you wouldn't have a 'hobbie'?

That is because eye and face structure is heavily restricted in TS3, meaning the possibilities for changing them are very limited and you can't really produce combinations that jar clashingly on accident anymore.

Ok, now thinking about it.. I retract my statement, and say that with both your Batman Box, and mods for TS2, its alot better then that of TS3, and hope that something becomes avail to allow more awesomeness with in TS3.
I hope new CAS templates come out to make new created sims in TS3 look more real... and the eyes.. what the hell is the go with them.. there is only like 1 or 2 real looking eyes! Mothergoose went horribly wrong in this one.

[Blazey]

I've had story progression and no one seems to be progressing! no babies or anything, also i cant play any of the pre made families or the game just closes 

[Crazetex]

That is how story progression works. If you try to make a story, it crashes on you. If you check error_log.txt in the Game/Bin folder, it'll say "Please do not the defaults. No matter what you do, we are going to get Mortimer and Bella hitched."

[inthecorner]

That is how story progression works. If you try to make a story, it crashes on you. If you check error_log.txt in the Game/Bin folder, it'll say "Please do not the defaults. No matter what you do, we are going to get Mortimer and Bella hitched."

that's weird cause in my game, Mortimer is dating Kaylynn at the moment.
but in the game i had before this one, Bella and Mortimer were dating. =/

[SciBirg]

That is how story progression works. If you try to make a story, it crashes on you. If you check error_log.txt in the Game/Bin folder, it'll say "Please do not the defaults. No matter what you do, we are going to get Mortimer and Bella hitched."

that's weird cause in my game, Mortimer is dating Kaylynn at the moment.
but in the game i had before this one, Bella and Mortimer were dating. =/

Are you by any chance related to one of the TS2 nannies?

[jonas]

I was willing to experiment with the Story Progression Mode until I heard about the "moving out feature"...

WTF!  How did this ever get past anyone in EA without someone saying "oh that's a bad idea" or "maybe we should ask the fans"

Like I want to spend hours creating a sim, their home, etc only for them to be deleted by the game when I switch families???  I'm absolutely furious about this aspect. 

That in mind, I pray to the gods that are More Awesome Than Me to make a story progression mode that completely eliminates this feature - a "No one Leaves this Town Alive" mod. (except townies.  Fuck townies.)

[J. M. Pescado]

There is no longer a clear distinction between "townies" and "playable sims" in TS3. All sims now take up a house and live somewhere, unlike TS2's townies.

[jonas]

You're right, of course.  They..are all townies now...   

I just don't get how they can take a game that makes many millions of dollars and decide "We'll just change the most intrinsic feature of the game and take control away from the players! Yeah, That's it!" "That will go over great!"

Everything should have been made optional in steps.  There should be checkboxes for:  Can your sims marry autonomously? Can they reproduce? Can they have relationships? (Move out should not have even been an option - that's the most ridiculous thing I've heard of)  And of course, it all should have worked correctly. 

I'm to the point where I wish they had just made another Sims2 expansion that allowed traits and CAST.  CAST is badass. 

[rufio]

There is no longer a clear distinction between "townies" and "playable sims" in TS3. All sims now take up a house and live somewhere, unlike TS2's townies.

Except for the ones that apparently live on empty unplayable lots.

[Zazazu]

For those who are playing the Razor version, does Story Progression seem to be working now? In the first week and a half in a new neighborhood, I had two births and one marriage. There have been several deaths, all but two from old age (the two were lightning and fire). After the first week and a half, though, no births. No moving out or in. This has been the case for two weeks.

[seanachai]

Rod Humble gets in on the L&P for this "feature":

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1748767&postcount=231

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kid Socrates View Post
I hope that's easily toggled, then, because both my wife and I play by creating multiple families and hopping back and forth between them. If they're going to head off and muck everything up the second I'm away, yeesh.
I think we're waiting for some word of mouth here before we pull the trigger on buying it.
--

Disreptutable sources aside, there is a toggle called "story progression" in the full game that turns on/off Sims families ability to do major life changing stuff while you are not controlling them. It was put in there based on player feedback like yours that you wanted total control of multiple families.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1748818&postcount=233

Quote:
Originally Posted by roBurky View Post
Thanks for that, Rod.
Is that settable per family? So I can have my main households that I want to play as set to avoid life-changing events, but then default Maxis families or ones I add with no intention to play as can be free to do as they want?
--

All families are controllable so its global. There is a seperate toggle for aging as well , that turned out to be a popular request during testing.

If this stuff needs to be added to we will. After launch we will get a pulse on the communtiy requests.

I am not trying to sell you here but FWIW I would note that for a lot of Sims 2 beta players there were major concerns about family control settings >before< playing Sims 3 and very little >after< playing. It was like a mental shift occured where ownership of the whole town kind of kicked into people meta mental model where individual familes were there in Sims 2.

But anyways post launch you will doubtless see a lot of threads on community sites talking about thier experiences one way or another. My hunch is they will trend the way the beta testers did, but if not we will adjust.

Why don't you come visit MATY, Rod?

[BastDawn]

Why don't you come visit MATY, Rod?

Because we would EAT HIM ALIVE?

[rohina]

Only with chili sauce.

[MaryH]

Do you think we could test the Babby BBQ on him? Pretty please?

Talk about humble pie!

[J. M. Pescado]

There is no longer a clear distinction between "townies" and "playable sims" in TS3. All sims now take up a house and live somewhere, unlike TS2's townies.

Except for the ones that apparently live on empty unplayable lots.

Yeah, belated update on this statement. Turns out homeless townies still exist, as discovered after incinerating all the houses and finding that they were still sims moving about, and trying to find out where they came from.