sickness indicator?

[ElviraGoth]

Feel free to rip off my lips if this is stupid or impossible, but I was wondering if there is any way to put in an indicator of how sick a sim is.  I was thinking of something like a thermometer on their portrait (or something like that) that would have a level that went up or got redder as they got sicker and went down and changed color (green?) as they got better.

Just thought it would nice to be able to tell if your sim was close to dying or getting well.  I get tired of that notification every time I enter a lot that so-and-so is sick with the flu or a cold.

Glad you got your own site, Pescado!  I'm new to this stuff, but your hacks have saved my game from total ruination.  I was getting totally frustrated with some of the really buggy routines in the game, but your "hacks" (more like patches) have rescued more than one lot from the bulldozer.

[gali]

If you already use hacks, there are many that immunize your sims - I use the InSimenator Dest (Uni version), downloaded from MTS2 (search for insimenator).

As I enter a house the first time, I immunize all the sims there - no more sickness. Except babies - I have to wait until they become toddlers. The medical spawn of it is all the time in the yard, and I immunize all the passing NPCs and neighbours (Merola's Mind Control Mirror).

Without a hack - you MUST send your sim to bed (sleep or relax), and keep him there all the time, until you get a message that he is healthy again. Put a TV to entertain him, and even order the spouse to relax with him, to keep the social rate high.

[witch]

My first n'hood was riddled with sickness, before any hacks dealt with the issue. I never had a single sim die, I thought it was a really low chance but other posters seem to have had a lot of trouble with sick sims. The most irritating thing was every time I got a family well, visitors would re-infect them and I got really sick of the endless pop-up messages about who was ill with what.

What is the percentage chance of dying from illness? I never did anything special with sick sims, I usually just got a message in the morning saying they were well again.

[Darkstormyeve]

I think Elviragoth might just want the indicator. I think its a good idea. Sickness is annoying but its a real part of life and some people still want these aspects in their game. I still have my sims phone for groceries, shop for clothes and get ill. I do however use mods to fix bugs.

So JMP, is it possible to have a sickness indicator as such?

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm not sure what you mean by an "indicator". As far as I can tell, "sick" is a binary state. Either a sim is sick with something, or he is not. If he is sick with something, raising his motives will make him better, and lowering it may cause him to contract a new disease or die.

My first n'hood was riddled with sickness, before any hacks dealt with the issue. I never had a single sim die, I thought it was a really low chance but other posters seem to have had a lot of trouble with sick sims. The most irritating thing was every time I got a family well, visitors would re-infect them and I got really sick of the endless pop-up messages about who was ill with what.

This sounds like an epidemic problem. Do not interact with visitors that are sick. If the visitor that is sick is a townie, he will infect your entire neighborhood and cannot be cured. You must therefore kill him to prevent the spread of the plague.

What is the percentage chance of dying from illness? I never did anything special with sick sims, I usually just got a message in the morning saying they were well again.

Beats me. The code for this is jumbled and convoluted. Like in real life, ignore it, and it will go away.

[witch]

If the visitor that is sick is a townie, he will infect your entire neighborhood and cannot be cured. You must therefore kill him to prevent the spread of the plague.

I wasn't able to kill sims at that time. 
I'm now becoming used to killing sims, thanks to Pescado et al. Bad influence you lot! I won't have any townies in my new n'hood. 
Just as soon as I finish re-installing the sims2 uni yet again.

Sidenote, I am re-installing because last night, from a clean test n'hood, I uploaded a lot to the ea server. Before I installed the lot into my game the sims2pack was 2.67Mb. By the time the lot arrived on the sims site, via the sims2 game, it was 50Mb. After re-installing sims2 but NOT uni, I tried again. This time the lot on the ea server is about 2.7Mb. A poster (Jordi?) warned me that the object package could become corrupt, I wonder if that affected the lot in some way.

[schmoopee]

I've killed off the townies in my favorite hood - big ol' townie bonfire. Ahhh, the sweet stench of BBQ townie. Also had the no-regeneration thing, so no more townies.( I don't mind the dormies - they are useful for writing term papers and fulfilling woohoo wants - "Yeah baby, sure I'll call you after I graduate!" )

But I digress.  Since killing off my townies, I have the odd sick sim but not too many. I'm usually able to quarantine them so they don't spread it around.

I like the idea of an indicator - like a macro thingy where you can click on the sim and it will tell you "I'm sick!" or "I'm well" - because sometimes I miss the pop-up telling me they've gotten sick or are well again. I had one poor pregnant sim, she was puking into her third trimester - I thought it was a glitch, but it turns out I had missed seeing the popup that she was sick. Morning sickness and flu combined, she was in the can her whole first day. *lol*

I don't want to immunize my sims - I like the challenge and realism of having them get sick. If I had an epidemic that threatened to wipe out my hood I might, but it seems manageable since I am townie-free.

[ZephyrZodiac]

The most annoying thing I had was before the "don't eat bad food" hack (and before Uni) I had two cases of sims who liked visiting other lots, and would then never eat with the family, but wait until the food was turning green and go and eat it (and even if you immediately delete the food with move_objects) it's too late - they'd then get the pop-up there and then saying they were sick with food poisoning as they rushed to the nearest loo!  So in order to prevent my sim from dying, I had to immediately save and quit that lot and go to the sim's lot to make them go to bed and get better! 

(Could obviously have quit without saving, but if I've just spent an hour or so on some particular project at that lot, I don't like having to go through it all again!)

[nocomment]

(Off topic)  I had that happen with two sims.  They ate spoiled food when visiting and got sick. 

I left them like that for a while, and they would drop by to visit and alternate throwing up.  Then another sim went into aspiration failure, and would beg at the street.  For some reason these three sims showed up at other houses A LOT.  I thought it was really funny.  In my sim world it wasn't a party without lots of vomiting and begging.

(On topic)  Wasn't there a medicine cabinet hack somewhere that told you if a sim was sick?  Or did it only tell if the sim was pregnant?  It might do what some of you want.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think it was in Sims1, and had something to do with Vacation and the various Vacation diseases.

If you have a scientist in the family and they have the science reward, they can make medicine, but you have to watch the other option - make a virus - or you actually cause serious illness in the family.

[Ancient Sim]

I don't really understand the sickness thing in that it clearly states somewhere or other that a Sim has to be ill for 10 days before they will die (which always seemed rather long to me).  I had a Sim catch the 'flu from 4 or 5 of her wedding guests while she was circulating via the auto-socialiser macro.  Before the wedding party started, she was healthy, yet after only a few hours of being sick she died under the wedding arch immediately after taking her vows.  Her new husband was already on his way to the limo, so couldn't plead for her.  So much for 10 days, it wasn't even 10 hours! 

And yes, there is a medicine cabinet download, but I don't recall it mentioning whether a Sim was sick, I think it just offered the immunisation facility.  I prefer mine to get ill because it's more realistic.  I have permanent illness in Pleasantview now, probably because of townies.  I haven't noticed whether any of them ever recover, but if it's right that they don't I can see how the illnesses would keep starting-up again.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, if you keep your sims at home, get them to earn money by painting and then writing novels and harvesting money trees, never let them meet any townies, they probably won't get sick - and you can either use the fridge hack so they don't have to buy food, or use move_objects to grab the basket from the delivery man so there's no need to handshake!

It's quite understandable that townies never get better - how can you look after your health when you live on a park bench?

[veilchen]

(Off topic)  I had that happen with two sims.  They ate spoiled food when visiting and got sick. 

I left them like that for a while, and they would drop by to visit and alternate throwing up.  Then another sim went into aspiration failure, and would beg at the street.  For some reason these three sims showed up at other houses A LOT.  I thought it was really funny.  In my sim world it wasn't a party without lots of vomiting and begging.

(On topic)  Wasn't there a medicine cabinet hack somewhere that told you if a sim was sick?  Or did it only tell if the sim was pregnant?  It might do what some of you want.

The medicine cabinet is on the MTS2 download site. It tells you whether your sim is pregnant, how long it has been pregnant, and by whom (I guess for romance sims, if you miss the lullaby, etc). It can cure a sim and/or immunize a sim.

Carrigon has an item on VS that will prevent pixel people from getting sick by roach infestation, but you can still get sick any other old way. I like that one, because even though roaches are dirty, ugly pests, they don't spread plagues around quite as rapidly as featured in TS2. That would be up to the fleas and the mites on vermin, since those actually bite and thereby induce all kinds of goodies into the body. Like a neighbor-village that was all but wiped out by the black death in the middle ages. Only an old woman survived and she was subsequently burned at the stake as a witch. They figured, there was no way she could've survived that onslaught unless she was in league with the devil. It has since been repopulated, but is still lovingly referred to as the "witch-village".

G.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Completely off-topic, there was a village in Derbyshire which got the Great Plague in 1665 (they think from infected cloth) and the villagers put a cordon round the village, wouldn't allow anyone in, and they all agreed not to leave, and every single villager kept their word.  Food was allowed in, but those delivering it had to move away before it was collected.

Of course, in the end, everyone in the village died, but the disease didn't spread!

[J. M. Pescado]

Completely off-topic, there was a village in Derbyshire which got the Great Plague in 1665 (they think from infected cloth) and the villagers put a cordon round the village, wouldn't allow anyone in, and they all agreed not to leave, and every single villager kept their word.  Food was allowed in, but those delivering it had to move away before it was collected.

That was very forward-thinking of them, considering that this was a time when people often believed diseases were a curse from God, rather than something contagious that could be contained by quarantine.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I know, but it is documented history, so it did happen!  Maybe they did think it was a curse, but they must have thought they could contain the curse in the village, but if someone left, they would take the curse with them

[ElviraGoth]

I'm not sure what you mean by an "indicator". As far as I can tell, "sick" is a binary state. Either a sim is sick with something, or he is not. If he is sick with something, raising his motives will make him better, and lowering it may cause him to contract a new disease or die.

Ok, true/false bit flag on sickness.  I was really kind of hoping it was more like a byte with a value range that could be plotted on screen, like the progress indicator bubbles above their heads when they're learning a skill. 

I don't have any problem with making my sick sims better, rest or medicine both work.  And I don't have a problem with them getting sick, by roaches or catching it from someone else - it just adds to the realism of the game simulating life.  But if I wanted to have a sick sim die for some reason (without using a hack), I thought it might be nice to know how sick the sim was.  And if I really DON'T want a sim to die, it would be nice to know he/she was getting better or almost well.

And I know that they are supposed to either lie down or sit, as long as they are not standing up, they get well.  I had a sim that had caught a cold from another sim who had come home from work with one of the house members, and I needed the girl who had just caught the cold to work out for body skill points.  I had forgotten she was sick, let alone whether she had gotten well, and the next day had her work out on the exercise machine.  After she worked out for awhile I suddenly got the message "... is well again!" 

So I just thought it would be nice if there was something like a little thermometer that showed up somewhere, either above or on the sim or on his/her portrait at the side of the screen, that indicated that the sim was sick.  Since you couldn't show the degree of sickness, maybe just have it only show up when the sim is sick.

Like I said, probably stupid, but I would like something like that.  I may have to get the code and take a look at it myself, I just would rather start from scratch than try and dig through someone else's mess.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I suppose the ordinary exercise machines count as lying down!  Only the treadmill would count as standing up!

[ElviraGoth]

That's possible, zephyr!  I figured that exercise would be a real no-no!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, you would, wouldn't you!  After all, if you're sick, you don't exactly feel up to running marathons!  But the Maxis programmers have a wierd sense of humour!

[ElviraGoth]

"Probably" have a wierd sense of humor?  Hey, I just love to go around stealing gnomes and kicking flamingos!   

[DaveFlew]

Lying down and standing up is surely irrelevant? Surely exercise machines cause comfort to decrease?

I reckon that Fun is the only possible beneficial effect that an exercise machine can have on your Sim's needs, so maybe the increase in Fun made a difference. As for getting healthy or staying sick, I'd guess that the game checks at regular intervals, and there is a randomiser affecting your Sim's chances of getting well. Improving your motives probably increases your Sim's chances of becoming healthy again. But I'm just speculating here... and I'm wearing a set of fake lips just in case...  

[ZephyrZodiac]

In that case it's all more evidence of that twisted sense of humour, they probably think it's funny that simmers everywhere when they get the "x is sick with the flu" message, take special care of them, do their level best to keep them sitting of lying down, when it's all really just a matter of time and randomness.

[ElviraGoth]

I don't remember if she was an active enough sim or not to increase her fun level.  But hygiene certainly went down, as well as comfort and energy.  So what motives (or needs) have to be improved for a sim to get well?  Just fun?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I dunno, but it's definitely twisted people who keep your sim sick until it's time to go to work, so you have him phone in sick, and two sim minutes later you get the X is well again! message!