Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread

[Becky]

rtfm says:
"11. Less Idle Goof Offs [Optional - Enabled]
     Sims will be less likely to stand therefore half an hour goofing off and
     staring into space while they have orders to be carrying out."

I've had less than two week's worth of experience with Sims 3, so I could be wrong, but the goofing off seems to be just as frequent with AM as without it.

I'm running only the base game with no CC and patched up to 1.14.

I wasn't sure which thread to post this in, so in keeping with the subject of this thread:
Has anyone else experienced this? If so, do you have any helpful tips?

[J. M. Pescado]

But it wasn't below store quality. I bought it at the store (for the purpose of planting it).

Will be fixed in next version.''

I've had less than two week's worth of experience with Sims 3, so I could be wrong, but the goofing off seems to be just as frequent with AM as without it.

Most of it turns out to be caused by caching lag. This feature has less of an impact than expected and will probably be discontinued after review. Mostly, it means the sim won't pause mid-queue to do wrench-throwing or whatever pointless idle it is they do when not actually idle.

[Kyna]

Has the Skill: Cooking macro been changed?

I know that couch potatoes will watch tv to skill cooking, but I'm finding other sims are also using the tv instead of heading to the library to read cooking skill books.  It's not because their fun is low, a sim with fun at 78.7 just sat down to watch the cooking channel.  If I send them to the library, they watch the cooking channel on the tv there instead of reading skill books.

It's a custom library, and yes, it does have all the skill books.

[J. M. Pescado]

All the macro priorities have been changed so that it calculates what is the ACTUAL fastest gain and picks it, instead of using the old guestimate heuristic. So I guess cooking on TV is faster? I will dump some numbers and see how that works out. Using algorithmic discovery had uncovered a lot of interesting information, which has altered the beliefs on what is best and most effective. I think I missed a multiplier, though, so I will put it and see how the results change.

[SJActress]

Speaking of skilling: I'm wondering how things like SC - Fishing works.

I'm not complaining. I tell my Sims to skill fishing, and they fish (or watch TV if there's babies and no one else home), which is Awesome. But what is the protocol for them going where they go to fish? I'm playing the Bayless family, and they're all Anglers, but they seem to fish at different spots...seemingly because they're on SC and go to the closest place after finishing necessities? But their house is right by a body of water with a fish spawner in it, so why do they go where they go instead? Are there better fish? Are they higher priced fish or better fertilizers? Is it simply the closest location or is it more complicated?

Why do they go where they go?

[pandora]

i want to install only the bug fixes of awesomemod- how to i do this? the configuration tool confuses me.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you want as close to "only bugfixes" as possible, set everything to False. That will disable everything optional, where non-optional things are mostly critical bugfixes.

[Solmyr]

Has anyone noticed a severe lack of marriages under the recent versions' AM story driver? I've played a new game in Sunset Valley for nearly a generation now and there have been NO marriages (sims do engage in romantic actions but it never goes any further).

[dilpill]

Yes, I haven't noticed any marriages lately either.

[J. M. Pescado]

Various factors can inhibit marriage progress:
1. Poor compatibility between sims. If none of the sims in your neighborhood are terribly compatible with each other, their romantic actions tend to make poor progress.
2. Overpopulation & Crowding: If sims are unable to form valid households because all houses are occupied or unaffordable, they can't merge to form a married household.
3. Dying Neighborhood: If, due to the demographics of your neighborhood, it is simply dying out, there may simply not BE anyone to marry.
4. Heartbreakers: Heartbreaker sims don't want to marry: Once they get to the Partner status, their next romantic action is to break up.

Nothing has been changed in the code for Romance Storyactions, so if you're not seeing any, it's simply due to terminal ballistics.

[Solmyr]

1. Poor compatibility between sims. If none of the sims in your neighborhood are terribly compatible with each other, their romantic actions tend to make poor progress.

How tight is this? I'm thinking compatibility restrictions could perhaps be loosened somewhat. In real life not all marriages by far are between fully compatible people. Sure, they might break up later, but at least they'd have time to procreate to keep the neighborhood alive.

Another thing might be to make romantic interactions more frequent. I do see messages about romantic interactions between sims, they just happen so rarely that they never have a chance to reach marriage before dying of old age. They could also use some concentration, so that once a sim acquires a romantic interest, their future interactions will be with that sim. Right now I'm seeing sims (who are not heartbreakers) having interactions with many different sims in succession, which spreads their effect and once again slows down progress to the point of marriage.

[J. M. Pescado]

How tight is this? I'm thinking compatibility restrictions could perhaps be loosened somewhat. In real life not all marriages by far are between fully compatible people. Sure, they might break up later, but at least they'd have time to procreate to keep the neighborhood alive.

Fairly loose, actually. Poor compatibility doesn't prevent anything, it just tends to make the relationship progress more yoyo-like, which in turn tends to cause relationships to implode.

Another thing might be to make romantic interactions more frequent. I do see messages about romantic interactions between sims, they just happen so rarely that they never have a chance to reach marriage before dying of old age.

Well, what actions are you seeing instead? The NORMAL clockrate of events is about one every 60 minutes during the day (0600-1900) with a Gaussian-random distribution of +/- 30 minutes. At night, the clockrate is one every 120 minutes, and many actions will become unavailable at late night because everyone will be asleep, although pollinations tend to be more likely as a result of many actions being locked out due to everyone else being asleep or unavailable. If this clockrate is insufficient, it is possible to increase it using an XML tuning (none is supplied by default, so the default values are used), or as a general update.

They could also use some concentration, so that once a sim acquires a romantic interest, their future interactions will be with that sim.

That is basically what happens. However, not all "romance actions" result in a successful establishment of a romantic relationship. It may even result in negative yield, causing them to hate each other.

Right now I'm seeing sims (who are not heartbreakers) having interactions with many different sims in succession, which spreads their effect and once again slows down progress to the point of marriage.

If you're seeing sims that are frequently playing the field, it means they are NOT finding good matches: Sims with GOOD matches will tend to settle on those matches fairly quickly, sims who aren't finding a good match will play the field.

Additionally, there are simply so many variables that it is hard to really determine whether it is working: If you're playing on a shorter lifespan, sims have much less time to work out what it is they're going to do before it's too late, compared to the longer lifespan settings, which give them more time to decide. If your sims only live for about 2 weeks, a huge town is probably going to end up dying out because the story engine can't cycle fast enough to get to all of them.

[Solmyr]

Nope, I'm playing at default lifespan, with your rule of 6 mod for age categories.

Anyway, I'll see how it goes, I just remember seeing more first-generation marriages in Sunset Valley before, but now it seems nobody can get to that point. The sims are all default SV ones.

[J. M. Pescado]

Nope, I'm playing at default lifespan, with your rule of 6 mod for age categories.

Default Lifespan can actually be fairly short, particularly if you play at high speeds, which reduces the rate at which background sims can normally cycle themselves, so they do less on their own to assist the Story Engine in coming up with stuff for them to do. You may just be getting really unlucky rolls: I'm seeing marriages occurring just fine in my Twinfalls game.

Calibration of this is tough, though: If the aggression level is increased too much, people start to moan that every single sim heads rapidly towards marriage, and shuts out their sims as everyone pairs off leaving nothing for them.

[Motoki]

@Solmyr: Have you tried Twallan's Story Mode?

I find Pescado's to be too strict where everything has to satisfy a set of mathematical formulas or else nothing happens, which in my case is exactly what happens. Nothing. Or very slow progress. I don't know, maybe my system is just not as awesome as Pescado's and doesn't have enough rams.

Anyway, Twallan's Story Mode is also highly configurable.

[vorpal]

4. Heartbreakers: Heartbreaker sims don't want to marry: Once they get to the Partner status, their next romantic action is to break up.

Has there been some change made to that in recent times? I'm asking because I have several pre-Ambitions saves on hold where all Heartbreakers in town are happily married and have never broken up. I reported this back then as this always happened both in Riverview and SV. Can't say anything about my current game, as there are no Heartbreakers in Twinbrook that I know of.

[J. M. Pescado]

Has there been some change made to that in recent times? I'm asking because I have several pre-Ambitions saves on hold where all Heartbreakers in town are happily married and have never broken up.

Not that I know of. I think I missed a check, though, which is why they can get that far and yet not implode at some point. Will be fixed in the next version.

I find Pescado's to be too strict where everything has to satisfy a set of mathematical formulas or else nothing happens, which in my case is exactly what happens. Nothing. Or very slow progress. I don't know, maybe my system is just not as awesome as Pescado's and doesn't have enough rams.

Whereas I find stuff that happens without any reason or purpose, especially when there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and it blatantly contradicts the observed on-screen behavior, to be infuriating.

[Motoki]

I find Pescado's to be too strict where everything has to satisfy a set of mathematical formulas or else nothing happens, which in my case is exactly what happens. Nothing. Or very slow progress. I don't know, maybe my system is just not as awesome as Pescado's and doesn't have enough rams.

Whereas I find stuff that happens without any reason or purpose, especially when there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and it blatantly contradicts the observed on-screen behavior, to be infuriating.

In my mind Twallanistani SM works on quantum mechanics whereby the act of attempting to observe something changes its state. 

Anyway, ultimately I don't care what hocus pocus goes on behind the scenes. Unlike yourself, I don't know the inner workings of the game (past xml values anyway) and I don't want to know. All I know is with Twallan SM shit happens and I like for shit to happen.

[Zazazu]

See, and oddly I'm in the fourth generation of a very small 'hood...32 liveable lots, one unbuilt, six more vacant...where I see at least 10 romantic liaisons a day, a marriage every couple/three/four days, and a baby every other day. So AwesomeStory is doing wonderfully for me. My only complaint is that my townie families are a bit too stable. No one ever seems to break up. And honestly, that's probably for the better...I'd have to start loosing the meteors as punishment.

Oh, and for some reason not all sim deaths will leave tombstones at the mausoleum. Not even in debug. Again, probably for the better since my graveyard is only 12x9 and half taken up by the mausoleum and a tiny pond, but there have been a couple graves I wanted but couldn't get.

[Simius]

See, and oddly I'm in the fourth generation of a very small 'hood...32 liveable lots, one unbuilt, six more vacant...where I see at least 10 romantic liaisons a day, a marriage every couple/three/four days, and a baby every other day. So AwesomeStory is doing wonderfully for me. My only complaint is that my townie families are a bit too stable. No one ever seems to break up. And honestly, that's probably for the better...I'd have to start loosing the meteors as punishment.

Oh, and for some reason not all sim deaths will leave tombstones at the mausoleum. Not even in debug. Again, probably for the better since my graveyard is only 12x9 and half taken up by the mausoleum and a tiny pond, but there have been a couple graves I wanted but couldn't get.

I've always wondered why some tombstones get saved and others seem to disappear.  Do you know if there is any rhyme or reason for that, or is it just completely random?

[Tubbo]

Ok, I've uninstalled AwesomeMod to see if it solves the crashing issue I'm having, after trying everything else.

Anyway, I understand that you can't play the same neighbourhood after uninstalling the mod without it causing your game to explode, correct?

Well... I did play it for about 20mins, before I decided I might as well start a new neighbourhood in Riverview for more space, and also not to risk the game blowing up.

However, I'm not keen on the idea of starting a completetely new neighbourhood. i.e. I'd like to be able to keep my families and houses how they were in my old neighbourhood.

So what I want to know is...

Can I transfer families from my old neighbourhood (which I used awesomemod in) to my new one (without awesomemod) without it causing problems? And also, can I transfer houses from the old neighbourhood to the new one without causing problems?

I'm guessing it might be a no to my first question and a yes to my second, but I just want to be entirely sure so I can begin playing my new neighbourhood without, A) Undermining the new hood right from the start, causing it to blow up in the future, or B) Give myself lots of unecessary work redecorating all the houses and getting my families to the stage I left them at.

Thanks in advance.

[J. M. Pescado]

The game won't explode if you uninstall properly: Otherwise, it's a risk you take, as the game seems to react poorly if you're using an interaction and the code for the interaction then vanishes into limbo: To avoid this, if you REALLY want to uninstall (why?), pause the game and type "uninstall", then save and exit.

[Anach]

The game won't explode if you uninstall properly: Otherwise, it's a risk you take, as the game seems to react poorly if you're using an interaction and the code for the interaction then vanishes into limbo: To avoid this, if you REALLY want to uninstall (why?), pause the game and type "uninstall", then save and exit.

Reminds me of something I was going to ask last patch. Would you recommend doing anything in particular before applying official game updates and major AM version changes, such as 'resetworld' or 'uninstall'? I'm wondering how AM handles major changes, and whether you run any specific upgrade scripts or whether everything is simply expected to transition smoothly. Also, when I last tried the 'uninstall' command to test something, it told me there was no such command.

[Tubbo]

The game won't explode if you uninstall properly: Otherwise, it's a risk you take, as the game seems to react poorly if you're using an interaction and the code for the interaction then vanishes into limbo: To avoid this, if you REALLY want to uninstall (why?), pause the game and type "uninstall", then save and exit.

Like I said, I want to see if it makes a difference in terms of the crashing problems I'm having since I've tried everything else and it only seems to be happening after the ambitions update.

I could have sworn I've read multiple posts saying the only thing you can do after uninstalling the mod is to start a new neighbourhood? I remember when I was waiting for AwesomeMod to be updated for Ambitions and I had to start a new neighbourhood until the update??? :S

So you're saying you don't need to start a new neighbourhood at all, but just continue with the old one, after uninstalling it properly? And that I will be able to transfer both my houses and families without any problems?

And if I feel like I can't enjoy the game as much without awesomemod, then I will end up putting it back in haha.

[J. M. Pescado]

Note: AwesomeMod contains critical bug fixes. Playing without for too long may cause irreversible neighborhood damage.