Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread

[J. M. Pescado]

Meh, I wish he'd at least make an option for the awesomemode config to give them a damned handout. Yes, yes I know it's against every fiber in his being, but the EAian story mode system is stacking the deck against those sims with it's stupidity and craptacularness and it's making the sim dream of home ownership near impossible.

I've already modified the fundinit rules to initialize them with more funds to simulate their pre-moving-to-your-neighborhood existences, so that older sims and larger households receive a larger chunk of starting funds, making it more likely they can afford an appropriate home, but THERE WILL BE NO HANDOUTS. Additional tweaks when I rewrite storymode will make it so the spawned sims will have a composition that better fits the neighborhood they are being spawned into...but again, I will never, ever, ever, give anyone a handout, as this is against my religion. I am taking an opposite approach to how EA and IndieMod are implementing story mode, however. Instead of the "Story" being driven by a heavy-handed top-down autobalancer that attempts to force the story to conform to a prebuilt image, I am writing it as a "ground-up" motivator, where sims function as active actors that CAUSE events to happen, rather than passive victims upon whom events are inflicted. The EAxis Progressor, for instance, arbitrarily decides a number of random events, then picks similarly random victims upon which to inflict them. Of course, this provides no sense of direction because the sims themselves are not steering their fates in any way, they are simply passive victims of an uncaring random toad machine. IndieMod takes a somewhat more advanced approach, in that it attempts to pay somewhat more attention to their traits, but ultimately is still a top-down driven model in which a dictatorial machine forces the sims and neighborhood to conform to a preordained average composition. IndieMod leans heavily towards the "Story" part of Story Progression, so will very visibly create a sense of STORY, if by "story", you mean "something you can be notified about in a dialog box". It also does a much better job, apparently, in maintaining viable neighborhoods over the long term, presumably because it is essentially a top-down driven balancer, cramming characters into predefined "stock roles" like "town bully", "slut", etc. The prototype driver for AwesomeMod, however, will not incorporate any such driving mechanisms, nor will it include a colorful and verbose headline generator: We focus on the "Progression" aspect, where sims progress according to their goals as determined by their wants and personalities, aimed at "show, don't tell" style where possible (for obvious reasons, this is not always possible simply because giving sims micro-directions is massively computationally intensive), but superfluous "random toadings" are to be avoided. A side effect of this is that I need more test victims, because without a top-down driven balancing system, there is no guarantee the results will be "stable": Your neighborhood could explode into overcrowdedness, or it could die off as a ghost town...and this will all occur likely because of the conditions you build.

[Motoki]

I'll test. Anything is better than having half a town of homeless and having to jump through hoops with cheat codes to move their asses in somewhere.

[J. M. Pescado]

Testing builds will only be available in grah, due to the fact that the rigorous high-speed build process can't really be effectively followed with the time-lag a forum induces. Grah is not for the easily butthurt. If you are really interested, we will inform you when the initial story mode tests begin.

[pbox]

As far as the handouts go, I'm using a way to split up funds when moving sims out that I haven't seen posted anywhere -- helpful when you want to move out one sim with almost all of the funds in order to build a new house, for example, or just in general for splitting the funds in any way you wish:

1. from "Edit Town" view, do "Split Household" -- at this point, awesomemod will distribute the family funds equally to each YA-or-older sim (for example, the household has 10.000§; sims A, B, C stay and D moves out, so D receives 2.500§)

2. when Sim D is on the clipboard as a new household, use familyfunds to redistribute the funds (e.g. familyfunds ABC 2.000§, familyfunds D 8.000§) -- you'll notice that the funds for the old ABC household will "take" but the funds for D will not -- they'll still show 2.500§ on the clipboard and will be unable to move into their destined 8.000§ shack;

3. Now, and this is the important bit, do a "fake merge" of D with ABC (or with any other household): do "Merge With", but then only OK the dialogue as it is without actually moving any sim around on the panel. Household D will already show with 8.000§ on this dialogue, but you have to click "OK"  in order to get the game to actually register D's funds. It'll go "Processing" for a bit, and after that D will still be in the clipboard but this time they'll have their 8.000§ -- so now you can move them into their actual new house.

Sounds more complicated than it is, probably -- it's actually just one extra step: Merge, do nothing, OK. This leaves all inventories intact and doesn't stomp queues or anything on the old lot, and I find it less time consuming than the oldskool way of moving D into an empty lot and familyfundsing there.

[Motoki]

Testing builds will only be available in grah, due to the fact that the rigorous high-speed build process can't really be effectively followed with the time-lag a forum induces. Grah is not for the easily butthurt. If you are really interested, we will inform you when the initial story mode tests begin.

Yeah, let me know. I think I remember popping in there a bajillion years ago during my TS2 time. And I'm not easily butthurt.

As far as the handouts go, I'm using a way to split up funds when moving sims out that I haven't seen posted anywhere -- helpful when you want to move out one sim with almost all of the funds in order to build a new house, for example, or just in general for splitting the funds in any way you wish:

1. from "Edit Town" view, do "Split Household" -- at this point, awesomemod will distribute the family funds equally to each YA-or-older sim (for example, the household has 10.000§; sims A, B, C stay and D moves out, so D receives 2.500§)

2. when Sim D is on the clipboard as a new household, use familyfunds to redistribute the funds (e.g. familyfunds ABC 2.000§, familyfunds D 8.000§) -- you'll notice that the funds for the old ABC household will "take" but the funds for D will not -- they'll still show 2.500§ on the clipboard and will be unable to move into their destined 8.000§ shack;

3. Now, and this is the important bit, do a "fake merge" of D with ABC (or with any other household): do "Merge With", but then only OK the dialogue as it is without actually moving any sim around on the panel. Household D will already show with 8.000§ on this dialogue, but you have to click "OK"  in order to get the game to actually register D's funds. It'll go "Processing" for a bit, and after that D will still be in the clipboard but this time they'll have their 8.000§ -- so now you can move them into their actual new house.

Sounds more complicated than it is, probably -- it's actually just one extra step: Merge, do nothing, OK. This leaves all inventories intact and doesn't stomp queues or anything on the old lot, and I find it less time consuming than the oldskool way of moving D into an empty lot and familyfundsing there.

Wait, if you are splitting them off don't they have the same family name and thus if you do familyfunds Jones 10000 and they are both Jones then they both get set to 10000?

[pbox]

Wait, if you are splitting them off don't they have the same family name and thus if you do familyfunds Jones 10000 and they are both Jones then they both get set to 10000?

I haven't run into that situation yet (my sims don't often marry, so most of the time there'll be different lastnames in the same lot), but as far as I've seen the household name is independent of sim names -- you can always change it, even just temporarily, e.g. to Jones I and Jones II. If I'm not mistaken you can edit both names directly in the "Split Household" screen, and you can definitely change all household names from Edit Town view (just enter whatever you like in the lot description panel).

[pbox]

Instead of the "Story" being driven by a heavy-handed top-down autobalancer that attempts to force the story to conform to a prebuilt image, I am writing it as a "ground-up" motivator, where sims function as active actors that CAUSE events to happen

This is exactly the way I play (only that right now I do it all manually), and I'd like test this at some point in the future -- right now I'm 1. still not patched, and 2. have no use for any sort of auto-progression whatsoever.

I have a sort of "meta request" (or rather, suggestion) related to this: would it make sense to split the awesomemod discussion/requests into 1. story progression related stuff and 2. everything else? Maybe I'm mistaken, but to me it appears like these are two distinctly different areas, and the storymode part seems complex and vast enough to warrant its own thread/subsection/whatever. It would be easier to follow, I believe, both for those who are mainly interested in the story progression stuff and not so much in, say, missing books, and for those (like me, atm) who are only interested in everything BUT story progression.

?

If you can't be bothered to do this, ignore me (maybe it's a silly idea anyway, seeing as many of the "other stuff" *also* affects the way story mode works) -- I just wanted to mention that for someone who doesn't play with careers, townies, rabbitholes etc pp, it does look like there's two very different sections in one at the moment.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have a sort of "meta request" (or rather, suggestion) related to this: would it make sense to split the awesomemod discussion/requests into 1. story progression related stuff and 2. everything else? Maybe I'm mistaken, but to me it appears like these are two distinctly different areas, and the storymode part seems complex and vast enough to warrant its own thread/subsection/whatever. It would be easier to follow, I believe, both for those who are mainly interested in the story progression stuff and not so much in, say, missing books, and for those (like me, atm) who are only interested in everything BUT story progression.

You could, yes. Feel free to start doing so.

[wendylady]

Is there a way to slow down how long it takes "The hand of god" to delete the plates and drinks in the home? It cleans up to fast for my party & neat sims.

[endalora]

i remmber seeing an option to delete all clones somewhere in the game a while ago- anyone know where it was??

[pbox]

Is there a way to slow down how long it takes "The hand of god" to delete the plates and drinks in the home? It cleans up to fast for my party & neat sims.

Um, simply turn it off, if you don't want to deprive your sims of the fun of cleaning up their shit? You're aware you can config this, right? I've turned it off in my game, and my sims have to clean up on their own.

[wendylady]

Is there a way to slow down how long it takes "The hand of god" to delete the plates and drinks in the home? It cleans up to fast for my party & neat sims.

Um, simply turn it off, if you don't want to deprive your sims of the fun of cleaning up their shit? You're aware you can config this, right? I've turned it off in my game, and my sims have to clean up on their own.

Ya I know i can turn it off. But I want it on for most my sims , just the time it take to clear it slowed down. Maybe I should asked for that is request then.

[ingeli]

I would also be interested in testing the story functions. Let me know when and how.

[shelzj]

In my game I had a family with 8..the mom then got pregnant and had a baby. As soon as they arrived home from the hospital and the baby was added to the family the mother was no longer controllable. She was still in the house but I couldn't click on her or anything. Now I can't even make her take care of her kids! Is this something that has been discussed because I couldn't find anything about it anywhere. Is this fixable?

[tryguy]

Sorry, I've been away for a while, so I didn't see the introduction of this house-swapping code. It happens at 1 am, and it's shifting all the families around. I really don't like it. No matter what reason there is for the change, I don't like it! So, is there a way to turn this off? Personally, I don't care if a house is too small for a family. I don't care if half the people in it are sleeping on sofas. It's tough for them, but that's OK because the house suits them. So... that being the case, is there any way to turn it off?

Edit: Expanded a bit.

[StormchaserOne]

You can't it is EA Coding.  Even if you play the game with no mods you always swap houses.  Reason 18376445 why EA sucks.

[Simius]

In my game I had a family with 8..the mom then got pregnant and had a baby. As soon as they arrived home from the hospital and the baby was added to the family the mother was no longer controllable. She was still in the house but I couldn't click on her or anything. Now I can't even make her take care of her kids! Is this something that has been discussed because I couldn't find anything about it anywhere. Is this fixable?

I think pressing the spacebar selects another sim... So you should be able to select the mother who mom who is no longer visible on the side menu.  I'm not sure though as I've never had so many sims on a lot.  (or rather when I did I killed off some of them to bring it back to 8 as quickly as possible.)

[tryguy]

You can't it is EA Coding.  Even if you play the game with no mods you always swap houses.  Reason 18376445 why EA sucks.

Umm, I'm not sure about this. I've been playing with AwesomeMod from day-one, and I've never seen Sims change houses. I've had story progression on, but I've stopped them leaving. And, from just playing through, the Bachelors and Wan-Goddard and whoever else haven't ever moved. I know where they are, and that's where I expect to find them.

And, as an experiment, I took out AwesomeMod and played my game through 1 am, and I don't think there were any changes. I don't know where they all live, so there could have been a change to the lesser-known households.

But, in contrast, with AwesomeMod in, I play through 1 am, and guess what? 9-10 households decide that their house isn't good enough and change. The Frios don't like it at the beach, and so sell their $70,000 (2 be, 2 ba) beach-front property and buy the Americana, a $60,000 (2 be, 2 ba) house in the middle of town. What's the sense in that? And, like I said, about 10 households moved. The Bachelors moved from their original 3 be, 3 ba house (the one with the garden and play equipment) to a 4 be, 4 ba house. That may be logical, since the children aren't young anymore and now there is a bed for each of them. But... aren't the parents supposed to share a double bed? I mean... I don't understand. And, because it's complete nonsense, I'd rather the game not do this. And, I'm positive AwesomeMod (in it's current state) has made it worse, somehow - although maybe it's just a case of "improving" what's already happening, the end result is ghastly. Maybe the base game does this without me having noticed before... but, I've been playing T3 for a long time now, and I've never seen this before.

So, what's up with this? It's a change that has only been introduced lately, I think. I'm not saving my game with such radical movements taking place. Maybe I'll start a new game and see if this happens to new Sim households. I'd really like an option to turn this off. I like static households. I like that tradition houses stay with traditional families, regardless of that family's growth... Maybe I'm old fashioned?

[StormchaserOne]

I been playing since day 1.  And, I seen homeless sims move in.  Then they bounce around.  I was playing with the Keaton family and they totally disappeared and became homeless.  This is not new and I do not think Pescado even messed with something which is hard-coded in the core.  And, you need to play for much longer to see them actually start playing musical houses.  After 72 hours of straight game play prepare for non-stop musical houses and homeless sims to extra roommates and a huge baby boom.   Awesome mod is not even involved.   Try every neighbor with 3-5 kids and sometimes both parents do not even live with the baby.  It is the longer you play the more bouncing around you will encounter. 

[Nepheris]

I had musical houses from day one.

Don't forget though that you can make a house ancestral (just add the name of the household anywhere in the house name) and the household will stay put. If you want your famblies to stay in one place, that's the way to go.

I don't mind them moving at all, but making the moving a bit less ADD would be great. Some famblies in my hood hop around every single night :p

[tryguy]

I had musical houses from day one.

Don't forget though that you can make a house ancestral (just add the name of the household anywhere in the house name) and the household will stay put. If you want your famblies to stay in one place, that's the way to go.

I don't mind them moving at all, but making the moving a bit less ADD would be great. Some famblies in my hood hop around every single night :p

Oh God! Is that right? I'm going to add that right away. All's forgiven. But, honestly, I haven't noticed the moving around at all. And, my game's been going for a while. But, I think I'm going to start a fresh game and save things before 1 am, and then watch what the game randomly does. If I don't like it, I'll correct things. But, before anything, I'll go ahead and make all the important households ancestral. Thanks, to Stormchaser and Nepheris.

[shelzj]

Well, I tried to use the space bar to get my mom to pop up but to no avail. It only moves from one sim to the next that are already showing on the left. I wanted to make a very large family but as soon as the 9th person was added I lost control of the mother so how am I suppose to get her pregnant again! Also, she's not doing a very good job of taking care of herself or the kids and I can't make her do anything. Others in the household can still interact her but she's totally autonomous...urggg. I'm so hoping there's a solution to this that I'm just missing because if you can't play the family- it kinda defeats the purpose of having more than 8 and enabling pregnancy on a full lot!

[Zazazu]

It only moves from one sim to the next that are already showing on the left.

Keep hitting SPACE. SPACE just toggles down the line. Eventually you will get to her. Now, you aren't going to see her icon on the far left. You will see her below, with all her widget panels. The fastest way I've found is to click on the sim icon shown on the torp left and hit SPACE once.

[Daimon]

I'm really hoping that I won't be shot and mauled for stupidity, and that someone has a helpful tip. I have awesomemod (up to date), the framework, a number of cc, everything... And until as of now, everything has worked just fine. I deleted my cache files to install a new awesomemod, and bam! All hacks simply do not load, awesomemod included. I have no friggin ide what just went haywire, but whatever it is, it seems to cause my game to ignore package files altogether. I checked that resource files are as they should be, there are no other core mods, nothing new except this awesomeod install, and for some reason I can't really make myself believe that His Awesomeness would release something that nuked the entire game. Halp?

Edit: Voodoo. Taking all hacks out and reinstalling them again with Delphy's monkey fixed everything. I stand cluelessly baffled but happy.

[cassblonde]

It only moves from one sim to the next that are already showing on the left.

Keep hitting SPACE. SPACE just toggles down the line. Eventually you will get to her. Now, you aren't going to see her icon on the far left. You will see her below, with all her widget panels. The fastest way I've found is to click on the sim icon shown on the top left and hit SPACE once.

I concur I have a Sim family that has two people not shown in icons along the left hand side of the screen but I can control them just fine. I just select the top shown Sim and hit space - tell that hidden Sim what to do and hit space again to direct the second hidden Sim. It's a bit of a pain but not impossible.