Ambitions: What's borked

[Claeric]

I think, perhaps, the mods folder in the documents is more efficient, at the cost of a longer neighborhood load time.

My game has felt WORLDS faster (not to mention worlds prettier, but that's just because the patch violently enhanced the lighting), and I am thinking it has to do with the documents mods folder and the longer neighborhood loading time. I think the game is loading the neighborhood for the most part, instead of just your house.

Although I should note that sometimes it loads relatively fast and sometimes it takes minutes at a time.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I did not have to wait for CC icons to load at all. Like, on a brand new install, there was no need to wait for my CC thumbnails OR game content icons to load. They were all there immediately, and the objects popped up as soon as I clicked on them. THis tells me there's some loading/efficiency changes going on. There was no need to rebuilt an object cache in-game, it was already there.

[amarynth]

After a few hours of playing (no mods, no cc, in a completely virgin hood), I've run into a pretty bad bug -- the game seems to think my sim is his roommate's firetruck.  I first noticed because the game was slowing to a crawl and eventually not responding at all and I had to ctrl-alt-del to get out of it.  I have a save from just before it would slow down, so I was looking around to see if I could find what caused it, and low and behold the firetruck was halfway in the doorway of the stadium, where my sim was watching a game.  I sent him home, and suddenly he was out in the middle of a field disappearing and reappearing into a hillside, and the truck ended up in the living room.  I tried resetting the sim and putting the firetruck into the fireman's inventory, but the sim remains in the middle of the living room, although he performs actions, such as cleaning the toilet, on invisible objects in front of him (and meanwhile in the bathroom, the toilet did get clean).  I'm going to try to start it again and delete the firetruck and see if that helps (and grab some screenshots this time!) -- I guess my fireman sim just won't be able to work from home!

[LilRubyQueen]

Claeric- I have noticed that too. The amount of time it takes for my CC to actualy show up in the game is VERY LITTLE to none and  gameplay is fast and wonderful. Its very quick and looks beautiful in game- but shoud I be waiting 7 minutes to play my neighborhood? I think that is just a ridiculous amount of time.

[witch]

... and low and behold

Lo and behold FFS.

Meaning
An exclamation, on drawing others attention to something. Used especially to to announce things that are considered startling or important. The phrase is often written with an exclamation mark.

Origin
The word 'lo' as used in this phrase is a shortening of 'look'. So, lo and behold! has the meaning of look! - behold!. Lo in this and its other meaning, which is more akin to O!, has been in use since the first Millennium and appears in the epic poem Beowulf.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lo-and-behold.html

[snowbawl]

Claeric- I have noticed that too. The amount of time it takes for my CC to actualy show up in the game is VERY LITTLE to none and  gameplay is fast and wonderful. Its very quick and looks beautiful in game- but shoud I be waiting 7 minutes to play my neighborhood? I think that is just a ridiculous amount of time.

What is this horseshit?  Back in my day we had the "well hell, might as well make myself a sandwich...eternal damnation!  Out of mayonnaise.  Best run to the store and- MARY SUE!  Is that you?  Haven't seen you in ages!  Sure, I'd love to get a cocktail and catch up.  Who is that scrumptious boy at the end of the bar?  I should probably chat him up and what's that?  Bar close?  After hours party at my place where- hey look, the game is rereREticulating its splines, we're halfway there!" load times of TS2.  AND WE LIKED IT!

Get off mah lawn, damn kids.

[Claeric]

Yeah, having to wait 7 minutes to have no loading unless going out of town is not a big deal. Better than 7 minutes to have to load CAS, load a house, load a community lot, load the house again, load the neighborhood, load a lot to edit it, load the neighborhood, load the house, load the lot to test it, load the house again, and save and quit.

[MistyBlue]

LOL...my TS2 start time was around an hour and a half at one point. I used to start up the game before we sat down for dinner, clear the table, select my hood, put my daughter to bed, and after all that wait just a few more minutes for it to load. Ha! I can deal with 2 minutes.

[sewinglady]

long load times and long save times are why I keep a knitting or crochet project handy... or get up, do a chore or two, then come back and play...

I'm actually really surprised at how fast this new load on W7 is running. Of course, I have almost no CC...

[bloodredtoe]

LOL...my TS2 start time was around an hour and a half at one point. I used to start up the game before we sat down for dinner, clear the table, select my hood, put my daughter to bed, and after all that wait just a few more minutes for it to load. Ha! I can deal with 2 minutes.

My gosh, what kind of setting did you build in there?

I never had slow downs in Sims 2, but I remember sims 1 loading for 7 minutes on a very old computer. Now it takes well over 10 minutes to load a WA location with vanilla + awesomemod on a computer I bought in 2006:S Other loads are only a bit shorter. I'm scared to think what Ambitions might make it.

(on the upside my apartment is a lot cleaner since I installed the game and I've read a couple of books while waiting for it to load or save)

[WatersMoon]

I don't know if this is a bug or a "feature" but there isn't a way to become a Tattoo Artist. All other "Professions" are available, but not that one. Though I suspect they just didn't bother to make it work, I thought I'd mention it in case it could be fixed.

I meant that after the original music in CAS when it loads/runs, there is no music. No loop, or shuffle, or play. Just stops.

It has done this for me from the Base game on, so forever.

[Claeric]

Tattoo artist is not a profession and as far as I know nobody can actually link to anything that ever claimed it was. It is not a skill, either (though the xml lists information for "failure" and what levels can lead to it, I think)

[Sigmund]

Choices made while playing the new careers and activities such as stylist, architecture designer and tattoo artist directly impact the look and feel of the town and other Sims.

EA.com

Make your Sim save the day as a brave firefighter, change the town as a leading architect, or live on the edge as a tattoo artist.

Insidemacgames.com

There's plenty of misinformation out there, if that's the case. Many of the reviewers I checked out seemed to think it was a career as well.

[jezzer]

Yeah, "tattoo artist" isn't one of the new professions.  You can just get tattoos now by visiting a salon.

So far, I'm really impressed with "Ambitions".  They addressed the borked lighting and pathing, the new jobs can be either micromanaged or free-willed, and Twinbrook is just fookin' gorgeous.

[witch]

Players will want to turn up the volume and sing along with the new Simlish songs.

Doubt it.

[Roobs]

Yeah, having to wait 7 minutes to have no loading unless going out of town is not a big deal. Better than 7 minutes to have to load CAS, load a house, load a community lot, load the house again, load the neighborhood, load a lot to edit it, load the neighborhood, load the house, load the lot to test it, load the house again, and save and quit.

Hur, I remember The Sims 1 taking aeons to load back in the day. Then the game would crash.

You kids have it so easy.
Granted, this was on a DOS-era clunker, so it's a miracle it worked at all I suppose.

[uknortherner]

Hur, I remember The Sims 1 taking aeons to load back in the day. Then the game would crash.

I remember that the hard drive would carry on grinding long after the lot had loaded, causing anything that wasn't static to stutter like mad. Vacation was the worst with this, because the coding actually clashed with Windoze 98's keyboard drivers so I had a combination of constant HDD grinding, on-screen stuttering and random commands from the keyboard all at the same time.

[jezzer]

I've been contemplating using the new Mods folder, but I hate to mess with a system that still works for me.  Do you have to do anything special with the existing framework and resource file, or can you just move them into the new mod folder and not worry about it?  Can you still have subfolders?

[Sparkles]

Yes, I can confirm that subfolders still work just fine.
At MTS they put up a guide to doing the EA Mods folder shenanigans, and it's very simple to follow.
You can find it here, if you didn't know about it already.

[Claeric]

The resource file is a bit different. All you do is put a mods folder in, put resource.cfg in that, and put a "Packages" folder in with it.

Bam.

[jezzer]

Thanks.  I hadn't been looking at the MTS forums lately; just the downloads to see if the slider hack had been updated yet.  I'll give it a whirl.

[Claeric]

Ambitions: What's fixed.

Doors on walls bisecting an exterior wall? You bet your ass there's no longer a giant hole leading to the outside. They stay up now. Huzzah.

[jezzer]

I'm so happy with the lighting and pathing fixes that I could give the game a wet, sloppy kiss.  I had my Sim on auto-follow while he was driving home late at night, and the lighting effects looked awesome.  It looked like driving through a small town after dark IRL.

[Claeric]

I've seen people say the lighting fixes with lots dont work for them, but I see them working pretty well. You can see the seam of the lot edge, which is lame, but lots spread onto the road and world just fine, and it's awesome. Plus the shadows, daytime outdoor shadows, are no longer pixelated horrific messes and instead are smooth and beautiful. <3 I may be mistaken but I think there's also periods of the day where the lighting indoors changes direction (from windows) instead of staying in the same place all day.

[wizard_merlin]

It takes longer to load the game. It used to take y whole game 20 seconds to start, now it takes around 2 minutes with my cc in the EA sanctioned mods folder.

I actually have not put my CC in the EA sanctioned Mods folder, but moved it and the other necessary files to the corresponding places in the Ambitions folder.  So far everything seems to work.  Game loading is longer, especially if I've cleared my caches, but I was expecting that to a degree.  I also expect that the time will come with a future EP or patch when we will be forced to move our CC to the EA sanctioned location.

I originally left my mods in the base game, and stretched the framework into AM, everything was fine, I eventually moved it all into the EA sanctioned folder, after working out how to get it working, and I haven't seen any noticeable change in loading time.  At this time I only have CC and a couple of mods, like no censor blur and replacement skins, but will be adding the other game mods slowly to see what works and what doesn't, as at least one kills the social interactions.

[IAmTheRad]

I don't have the framework in my folder, and am just using the new mods folder. All my mods work that I have in now. It's replacement skins, some fixes, all the store content, the awesome fixes for them, ruleof6, and new names.