Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread

[Solmyr]

It is a good question, and a valid one.  Take the Bunch family for example:  can two working parents keep up with the weekly total tax for a family of 6, in a decent sized house?  Especially if their work performance is scaled to a longer game via config options.  I'm dubious, and think that kids (Teens down to babies) should have a slightly smaller affect on taxes, to offset the fact they generally don't work, and don't use quite as many resources as parents do.

Probably: The Bunches own their own house, so are not homeless and paying rent to a slumlord. Therefore, their bills are equal to what you would pay if you were playing them, and so they should be fine, as even the most menial jobs tend to manage basic upkeep.

I am using a bills mod that quadruples the bills as well as makes them payable only once per week on Friday, would this make things more difficult for non-player families in AM storymode or would I be better off removing that mod? I like the higher bills for more personal challenge but I don't want NPC families to fall into poverty as a result.

For the record it's this mod, I am using the quadruple bill once a week version.

[rhodaloo]

Good to get better details of how awesomemod's story progression works.  I'll reconfigure awesome mod to try it.  I'll see if the youngest notices a difference when he plays.   

[Nepheris]

Anyone else notice rampant romancing with storymod? My sims seem to be a very unfaithful bunch, hopping from relationship to relationship. In the one week I've played, Jamie Jolina has been married three times, and a certain Norbert Watson is romancing at least half of the town, grannies included.

I don't mind some drama, but I liked some of the couples that were thrown up and I really don't feel like trekking across the neighbourhood everytime some sims get frisky to punch them in the kidneys 

Just curious if this is just me or other people have this in their game, too.

[tizerist]

Derelict vehicles automatically cleaned up. Can also trigger manually with "towderelicts".
New "elegant" boss/coworker system: NPCs will no longer be generated unless you specifically attempt to interact with them, so if you try to interact with them, they will be generated, otherwise, they will be kept virtual and save you on neighborhood space.

Excellent additions.

I wasn't aware of these ghost cars until I heard about it on sunday, and was concerned about it, being one of these people who likes to tweak stuff to  get optimum performance, so I appreciate that particular aspect of the mod.

Is there a specific time of day AM does the car sweep? Or as it goes along?

[Arphenion]

Anyone else notice rampant romancing with storymod? My sims seem to be a very unfaithful bunch, hopping from relationship to relationship. In the one week I've played, Jamie Jolina has been married three times, and a certain Norbert Watson is romancing at least half of the town, grannies included.

I don't mind some drama, but I liked some of the couples that were thrown up and I really don't feel like trekking across the neighbourhood everytime some sims get frisky to punch them in the kidneys  

Just curious if this is just me or other people have this in their game, too.

I've been running storymode on a new save of Sunset Valley in third speed for about two sim weeks, and have observed the same thing. So far, none of the sims that are in a pre-existing relationship appear to have the infidelity problem, but the relationships Awesomemode makes never seem to stick. I wouldn't mind if they only hopped from one relationship to another, but they are actually holding onto their old ones. Take this guy, Gobias Koffi, who ended up with 2 wifes, a fiancee that he probably will end up marrying after deserting the newest wife, a girlfriend and another romantic interest. His other wife now lives alone in their old house, while he moved in with the new one.

So yeah, I'm having the same problem.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yeah, see, there are a few bugs in the engine still to shake out, apparently, which is why it is still not default enabled. Trying to track this bug.

[Solmyr]

What's ironic is that Gobias Koffi is supposed to be gay, as his intro text implies.

[J. M. Pescado]

Anyone else notice rampant romancing with storymod? My sims seem to be a very unfaithful bunch, hopping from relationship to relationship. In the one week I've played, Jamie Jolina has been married three times, and a certain Norbert Watson is romancing at least half of the town, grannies included.

I don't mind some drama, but I liked some of the couples that were thrown up and I really don't feel like trekking across the neighbourhood everytime some sims get frisky to punch them in the kidneys 

I think this is a fatal bug with attributes that aren't sticking properly. Try the new version.

Yeah, definitely hosed. This is why it is marked experimental and not enabled by default. Burn the corrupted neighborhood, try again with the new version.

[tizerist]

Hmm I encountered a problem.

Even though I have TrackAllMovingCars disabled, the purple car icons are still showing up on the neighbourhood map.

[Buzzler]

I'd like to know how (if at all) Awesome story mode allocates traits. I'm asking because until now it seems to me that traits aren't even assigned on a random basis. Some sim weeks ago I made a couple of families, made them try for baby directly after moving them in and then left them on their own (not blessed/sacred or anything). Now my hood is almost overflowing with anti-social freaks, not one of them turned out to be without a bad trait.

Oh and thanks BTW for the rear-end collision pathfinding thing even if it's experimental for now. Everytime I see that I feel the urge to slap the devs with a fish...

Take this guy, Gobias Koffi, who ended up with 2 wifes, a fiancee that he probably will end up marrying after deserting the newest wife, a girlfriend and another romantic interest.

Just out of curiosity: Is polygamy (with marriage and everything) even possible in the vanilla game?

[spambi]

Are there plans to add an option to turn immigration off in AM? That's the only feature I miss from ISM, which otherwise didn't work for me.

In the meantime, is there any harm in regularly deleting the townies that move into town?

[Motoki]

I like the logic of the bottom up approach, but are the sims actually capable of making good money and succeeding?  If the end result is that all sims end up going from houses to apartment to homeless to starvation, it may be a valid comment on welfare economics, but I'm not sure if that will end up being a very fun, interactive neighborhood.  Does anybody have any data points on what happens in a typical starting neighborhood with the new story mode?

Pretty much all sims will stay in their homes.  Since the bill isn't very much per bill cycle.... and they don't waste their money buying cars and crap like active family sims do.  So they won't all of a sudden not be able to afford their house... But once they become homeless they need to work to keep up with the rent.  I haven't seen any sims starve to death in my game... but I imagine as long as they are working they should be fine.  (unless they have tons of kids).  Also, when I was playing... the sims throughout the neighborhood did keep their performance up in their jobs and even seemed to improve their job related skills. I think they'd have to be really big fuckups to actually starve.  Even with a crappy job.

Yeah, that has been my experience too. I didn't have anyone in a house get kicked out of it, however as I mentioned in the chat I am having some trouble getting some new spawned famblies into homes in the first place. The last few famblies the game spawned had 3 or 4 kids and around 11k. I have very, very few 4 or 5 bedroom houses to begin with and even when going to look for custom content houses they are rare, but it's pretty much impossible to get one for that little money.

If the kids spawning was scaled back (did a spawned boss really need to come with 4 kids?) and they were given a more realistic sum of funds to start with (I know Pescado says he did this but the math just isn't always working out in my experience) then I think it would work a lot better. They'd get into homes and then from there can start having kids and building funds and working their way up to a nicer house through the story mode in the game.

I think the new famblies should spawn single sims or couples mostly, which will find housing easily since they only require 1 bed, or at most 1-2 kids. Any more than that and it just becomes impossible for them to find housing to fill their needs and budget and they end up homeless forever.

I've actually gotten them moved in without cheating by building a few EXTREMELY cheap crappy homes with 4 beds and a crib for 10k, but I really would rather not dot my neighborhood with cheap shitty houses.

Are there plans to add an option to turn immigration off in AM? That's the only feature I miss from ISM, which otherwise didn't work for me.

In the meantime, is there any harm in regularly deleting the townies that move into town?

I think you will find compared to Indie, AM Story Mode immigrates VERY few sims and when it does it is almost always with some reason. I started with an empty hood with Indie and it was filled with tons of immigrated sim famblies in no time. With AM Story Mode I still had a fairly empty hood after a few sim weeks and finally just made a bunch of my own sims and moved them in to populate the neighborhood.

You can delete the famblies it spawns but bear in mind that with AM Story Mode, unlike Indie, there is very likely some reason that a fambly spawned like it's someone's boss or coworkers and there wasn't an existing sim in town in that career/level to fit the need so it had to spawn one.

[neder]

I'd like to know how (if at all) Awesome story mode allocates traits. I'm asking because until now it seems to me that traits aren't even assigned on a random basis. Some sim weeks ago I made a couple of families, made them try for baby directly after moving them in and then left them on their own (not blessed/sacred or anything). Now my hood is almost overflowing with anti-social freaks, not one of them turned out to be without a bad trait.

That's an EA feature, not AM's fault.

[Enelen]

I'd like to know how (if at all) Awesome story mode allocates traits. I'm asking because until now it seems to me that traits aren't even assigned on a random basis. Some sim weeks ago I made a couple of families, made them try for baby directly after moving them in and then left them on their own (not blessed/sacred or anything). Now my hood is almost overflowing with anti-social freaks, not one of them turned out to be without a bad trait.

That's an EA feature, not AM's fault.

And here I was hoping Pescado actually managed to emulate the MATY forum   That would have been cool.

Still, I don't know about you, but from where I stand, it seems like RL... Who would like all nice sims? They still don't fight enough, though I still haven't tried the new mod.

[Buzzler]

That's an EA feature, not AM's fault.

I didn't want to imply it was AM's fault at all. I'm just curious if Awesome story mode is beating some sense into the trait allocation or is planned to do so in the future.

[J. M. Pescado]

Story Progression does not regulate the selection of traits in the game, that is determined by the Aging Engine.

[pbox]

For all I've seen, the trait allocation is completely random -- but what's not random is the age at which every trait becomes available, that's defined in an XML. And since babies get 2 traits to start with, and those 2 traits are taken from a relatively small subset, you're going to see the traits from that subset much more often than others. Half my neighbourhood was friendly virtuosos because of that  -- for me it helped greatly to tweak the whole thing, nuking the traits I have no use for, and enabling basically everything but the romance-type ones from baby onwards. I had a lot more variation after that.

I'm not exactly sure whether the current Awesomemod cooperates with external Traits XMLs (I use an old one), please doublecheck before you try this.

[Buzzler]

Story Progression does not regulate the selection of traits in the game, that is determined by the Aging Engine.

Yeah, ok, I know crap about the different engines.  Any (long term) plans on making the traits depend on the parents' traits and "family situation" by altering the Aging Engine? 

[coltraz]

Is there a breakdown anywhere of exactly what the AM story driver does, and how it differs from ISM? I can't decide which is better because I have no idea how the Awesome one actually behaves. I've looked around for an explanation... but can't find one. Perhaps I'm blind.

[Motoki]

Basically it just runs the damned town. Why do people need a dissertation about it? It's easy enough to turn off of to switch back and forth between it and Indie Stone. Just try it out or don't.

I didn't see EA exhaustively documenting every single minute feature that their story mode does.

[coltraz]

I didn't see EA exhaustively documenting every single minute feature that their story mode does.

Since when did anyone here use what EA does or does not do as a guide for what should or should not be done?

Though I'm assuming it's more better, I am still curious to know how the story progression now works with Awesomemod and how it is different from my other options, (EA or ISM). I really don't think that's an absurd or unreasonable question. No one needs to explain it if the explanation is not already available somewhere else - that's all I was asking! 

[Motoki]

There is no detailed documentation on it that I am aware of. I've talked with Pescado and some of the other testers about it and various features. There's a good explanation of the homeless thing that Simius wrote up earlier in this thread.

It does a lot of things but I can't exactly recall them all in specifics off the top of my head. It's pretty obvious what's going on if you turn the notifications on though.

The main thing is that things that happen have to make sense and have a reason. Even the romantic pairings are not totally random as there's a matching algorithm. Also many of the events you can actually go and watch them occurring.

It's kind of hard (at least for me) to explain all the differences other than to just generally explain the differences in approach to events but I feel like it's easier to just try it out and see the differences.

I'm sure someone at some point who is meticulous and detailed and better at explaining things than I will put a bunch of info up on the wiki, but as of yet I do not believe there is such documentation.

[Nepheris]

Rampant Romancing has been adequately squashed now, huzzah! Sims seem very picky now, and there's still some adultery going on, but that's allright for me.

Is the pop-up announcing a sim is going to work supposed to, erh, pop up everytime they do so? If this is the case, most of my neighbourhood just isn't going to work at all. No idea if storymod is supposed to finally fix this problem or not, though.

[Simius]

Rampant Romancing has been adequately squashed now, huzzah! Sims seem very picky now, and there's still some adultery going on, but that's allright for me.

Is the pop-up announcing a sim is going to work supposed to, erh, pop up everytime they do so? If this is the case, most of my neighbourhood just isn't going to work at all. No idea if storymod is supposed to finally fix this problem or not, though.

The pop up only happens when a sim was supposed to go to work... but doesn't for some reason.  It is basically telling you that the Awesomestory is re-telling them to go.  I've seen it happen 2 or 3 times in a row.  However... I don't think you'll see it everytime a sim goes to work unless there was something that prevented them from going on the first "go to work you little piece of shit" command.  To test it track a few families whom you know their work schedule.  If they go to work without the pop up... you pretty much know that other sims are doing so as well.  In my experience I didn't run into any sims with the super red work performance that existed prior to awesome story mode.

Honestly... that is the best thing to do.   test it out and observe the town.  Story mode does a lot of things semi-in-the-background  but it does show it happening if you pay attention.  So if you really want to know if it is working you need to go out of your way a tad and observe it actually happening.  Or if you really want to know if a feature is implemented watch the town and see if it is happening.

For example... if you set a sim to have no money and no job... you'll see him get a job almost right away since story mode says "Oh shit.  Jack is worried about being a broke mother fucker... how can I fix that"

Or if a YA sim is living with her parents... You might see her move out to house with a crib since the story mode says "this sim has enough money to buy a house and she wants to start a family.... but she can't... is there a solution?  Yes, she can go buy a house that she can start a family with!"

or if a sim hates his fucking husband... You might see a divorce.

Or if a sim loves her boytoy... You might see them get married.

As motoki says... it all makes sense... but so much shit happens it is hard to remember it all and since it does make sense it doesn't stick out as being weird when it happens. (besides maybe the sims cheating on their spouses... but that is kind of controlled by their personalities... a fear-of-commitment sim MIGHT get married... But he isn't going to be committed to the marriage.  Just like a flirty sim will probably get married... but that doesn't mean she can't still fool around on the side.  I mean, it isn't like the majority of married couples here in the US have never cheated on their SO.

[Nepheris]

That makes sense  There'd be a godawful spam if it popped up everytime a sim went to work, and sims not going to work was such a major annoyance I couldn't really believe Pescado hadn't fixed it at all. Cheers for explaining that to me.

As I said, I don't mind a bit of adultery, it's only Pauline Wan who's up to it atm anyway. I'll have to check her traits and see if she's flirty / has commitment issues.