Ambitions: What's borked

[PirateFaafy]

I've had serious trouble with the world editor. Removing lots causes them to no longer be plaçable, even in the exact spot upon which they used to be placed; Rarely can other lots be put there, either. This was near the beach, so the ground was not entirely flat, but it was not exactly steep, either. The error was always "can't be placed on other lots", although if it was too large it did object to being in the water.

This was in the Fuzzy Pumpkin's neighbourhood (Dragon Cay), so it may be something to do with the way it's structured. (I guess technically this is a problem with the patch and not Ambitions, though, since I'm running basegame until this torrent finishes.)

[The_Goddess]

I've had serious trouble with the world editor. Removing lots causes them to no longer be plaçable, even in the exact spot upon which they used to be placed; Rarely can other lots be put there, either. This was near the beach, so the ground was not entirely flat, but it was not exactly steep, either. The error was always "can't be placed on other lots", although if it was too large it did object to being in the water.

This was in the Fuzzy Pumpkin's neighbourhood (Dragon Cay), so it may be something to do with the way it's structured. (I guess technically this is a problem with the patch and not Ambitions, though, since I'm running basegame until this torrent finishes.)

I had similar problems in Twinbrook.  The tool is very touchy.  If there are any trees or other world objects within 2 squares of the lot being placed, it freaks out.  I have learned not to remove a lot unless I'm darn sure I want it gone, because there might not be any turning back.  CAW allows you to place lots with only 1 square as a buffer.  This tool seems to require more. 

[Claeric]

Edit World is kinda a simpler version of the tool. CAW is editing the world before the game even has access to it- you can place lots in water, over roads, etc. THey won't work properly, but you can do it. The game knows these won't work properly, so you can't place stuff as "creatively" as in CAW- so lots are much touchier with being placed near roads (though they do snap to the road if they are a proper size/the road is straight enough), and cannot always consider surrounding area "placeable" even when it would be in CAW.  Not so much a bug as it's just a simpler tool with limitations.

[Roobs]

I just wish it wouldn't erase the address when simply moving a particular lot. The tool is pretty much useless to me, if it's going to start auto-destructing the lots when used. God knows what other crap it's doing.

[wizard_merlin]

I am assuming this is an ambitions problem, but basements are fucked and building them is complete bullshit. I am getting constant "Ground level too high to build stairs on basement" errors or "cannot level ground" errors or "Cannot place stairs inside foundation" errors, even when ther ground is completely flat and surrounded by emptiness, or the ground is already completely level, or the stairs are NOT being built inside a freaking foundation.

I had this issue, and when I checked the upper level, there were some squares missing from inside the walls, at the top of the walls, once I placed some tiles and covered the area and removed the tiles, the stairs could be placed.  I also got the same error when trying to place stairs below a frieze.  I removed the frieze, placed the stairs and replaced the frieze.

[ariffrazalin]

I've never heard this issue reported before, but all sims in my game who have sculpting skill sucks light from sculptures that they made..







I'm not sure what cause this, and I only have Store items and the latest Awesomemod

[ciane]

Here's something I find strange. Look at the value of the furnishings with the bookcase in family inventory:


Now note the value when the bookcase comes out of the inventory:


Notice if I remove all the books, that the value of the furnishings now includes the cost of the bookcase. The total furnishings cost is slightly more than that shown in the first picture for the same items.


That's some weird bookkeeping!

(This is with AM date stamp 6:46 a.m. on the 20th.)

[jonas]

While I thought that moving the CC into the documents folder fixed the "choose household" bork, it did not.  The family continues to gray out and I have to restart the game.  I've tried going into CAS, back to main menu and switching towns.

Also, my fireman continues to be borked as before, I was crashing while running a 2nd fireman char whom I had quit his profession.  Now, my main fireman simply cannot complete his emergencies and nothing checks as complete while I'm trying to do so.  

I've had a lot of time to play this weekend as my internet went out and I didn't experience much more than that, EXCEPT for a sim who vanished - possibly dead from one of the failed fires - and now no one in the family can access their family tree or have any remembrance of him.

I have to say, I have no idea how people enjoy this game without a mod like AwesomeMod anymore as I spent most of my time switching households just to keep my sims trim, not to mention the laundry - the fucking laundry!!!  Does Robotic Hand of God take care of laundry?  I'm sorry if I'm missing info - I'm three days behind in everything.  The fact that the Awesome is officially out now made my day!

[Scientist]

With and without AM, I just had Sim accept a job in the Architectural Design career.  This caused the price of all items in the Buy Mode to decrease 30-50%.  None of the other new careers did this. Any ideas?

[Trubble]

That's not a bug. In the architect career you use buy mode to decorate people's houses thus the prices of the items drop to "wholesale" price.

[jim]

Nobody's mentioned the phenomenon I'm seeing, so I'm thinking it may be a case of 'that's a personal problem, soldier'.

Any sim I'm not actively playing is drawn inexorably to join a 24/7 gathering outside city hall. They're collapsing with exhaustion, peeing all over the place, and the odd one or two are dying. Every now and then sims pick themselves up and head off home, but they always come back. I've a small amount of cc but the only mod I use is awesomemod.

[The_Goddess]

Nobody's mentioned the phenomenon I'm seeing, so I'm thinking it may be a case of 'that's a personal problem, soldier'.

Any sim I'm not actively playing is drawn inexorably to join a 24/7 gathering outside city hall. They're collapsing with exhaustion, peeing all over the place, and the odd one or two are dying. Every now and then sims pick themselves up and head off home, but they always come back. I've a small amount of cc but the only mod I use is awesomemod.

This has been mentioned extensively in this thread.   They are gathering for a ceremony in which a hero is awarded the key to the city.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,18646.msg539785.html#msg539785

[GnatGoSplat]

Unless I'm experiencing search fail, I think I found a new one.  I had a sim build a simbot.  I then moved the simbot out into his own house and made him the active household.  Now my game freezes at exactly 1:59PM on Saturday and Sunday (sim date/time).  Birds still fly, trees still sway, bugs, butterflies, and moths still move, his plumbob still bobs up and down, I can still hear background sounds, but the clock doesn't advance, I can't move around, and sims are all frozen.  I've let it sit 15-minutes like that, it doesn't fix itself.  I end up having to End Task.  To get around this, I have to switch to another house to let the clock advance past 2:00PM, then I can switch back.  This doesn't happen Monday-Friday.  I can reproduce it pretty consistently and it seems to happen every sim weekend.  Anyone else have a similarly borked simbot?

I wasn't playing with AM, so I know that's not it.  No CC other than decrapified store stuff, breast sliders, a few custom sliders, and Nraas NoCD.

[LlamaFace]

I had a freeze like that which occurred at 5:59am.  Taking out my packaged store content allowed the game to progress, I put it back in afterwards and I've not had a freeze like it since.  The household has a simbot but I can't remember if he joined before or after.

[The_Goddess]

Here is a strange one.  I never noticed this before Ambitions.  Maybe someone else has, but this is a first for me.  The ghosts in my graveyard are driving around in NPC Motor Pool cars at night.  They are hopping out of their graves, walking to the road, snapping their fingers for a car, getting in and going for joy rides while the town sleeps.  I guess I should send my ghost buster after them.

[Kyna]

Here is a strange one.  I never noticed this before Ambitions.  Maybe someone else has, but this is a first for me.  The ghosts in my graveyard are driving around in NPC Motor Pool cars at night.  They are hopping out of their graves, walking to the road, snapping their fingers for a car, getting in and going for joy rides while the town sleeps.  I guess I should send my ghost buster after them.

That one has been around since base game.  Someone once posted pics of it here.

A borkage I've noticed is that meteor strikes break the mailbox.  I had a meteor land in my sim's front yard and the mailbox on that lot can no longer be checked manually.  It can be checked by AM's sell/refine macro, so if one of the sims in the household hits level 10 in a skill, I send a sim out to collect some gems & rocks until they have something worth cutting or smelting.  Then I run the sell/refine macro to collect the mail from the borked mailbox.

[The_Goddess]

A borkage I've noticed is that meteor strikes break the mailbox.  I had a meteor land in my sim's front yard and the mailbox on that lot can no longer be checked manually.  It can be checked by AM's sell/refine macro, so if one of the sims in the household hits level 10 in a skill, I send a sim out to collect some gems & rocks until they have something worth cutting or smelting.  Then I run the sell/refine macro to collect the mail from the borked mailbox.

I would just move my Sims to a new house.  Then I'd bulldoze the house and set it back down again.  If it is a house that came with the town rather than downloaded one, you can package up a fresh one by opening a new town.  I save all of the houses I make to the bin before moving any Sims in.  If you are worried about paintings and stuff the family has accumulated, it can all be put in the family inventory.  After the new house is set, you can move right back in.  This does not take in account the depreciation of the old house but it is an option.

[J. M. Pescado]

Any sim I'm not actively playing is drawn inexorably to join a 24/7 gathering outside city hall. They're collapsing with exhaustion, peeing all over the place, and the odd one or two are dying. Every now and then sims pick themselves up and head off home, but they always come back. I've a small amount of cc but the only mod I use is awesomemod.

This is EAxian, but I will look into killing it with fire so that inappropriate unhealthy sims don't show up and die there.

[Kyna]

A borkage I've noticed is that meteor strikes break the mailbox.  I had a meteor land in my sim's front yard and the mailbox on that lot can no longer be checked manually.  It can be checked by AM's sell/refine macro, so if one of the sims in the household hits level 10 in a skill, I send a sim out to collect some gems & rocks until they have something worth cutting or smelting.  Then I run the sell/refine macro to collect the mail from the borked mailbox.

I would just move my Sims to a new house.  Then I'd bulldoze the house and set it back down again.  If it is a house that came with the town rather than downloaded one, you can package up a fresh one by opening a new town.  I save all of the houses I make to the bin before moving any Sims in.  If you are worried about paintings and stuff the family has accumulated, it can all be put in the family inventory.  After the new house is set, you can move right back in.  This does not take in account the depreciation of the old house but it is an option.

By the time the meteor strike happened the garden had every plant in perfect condition, a pond stocked with deathfish, and the house had been extensively refurbished/redecorated/recoloured.  I'm not in the habit of moving a family out, lotbinning the lot, and then moving the family back in after improvements, so I didn't have a copy of the house after the modifications.  Rather than lose all that and then having to redo it just because the mailbox lost its menu from the meteor strike, it is easier to spend a few minutes using AM's collect rock macro and then use AM's sell/refine macro to get the mail.

It's not a major problem for me.  Thanks to AM's billpaying feature, my sims don't check the mailbox very often.  I usually only send them to collect the mail when they hit level 10 in a skill, or in the case of this particular household (my robot-making household), when a pink diamond has been sent for cutting.

Fortunately I save every sim night.  Now that I know that meteors kill mailboxes, the next time it happens I can just go back to the last save and lose less than a simday of play.  It's just this one lot that is borken.

[wizard_merlin]

A borkage I've noticed is that meteor strikes break the mailbox.  I had a meteor land in my sim's front yard and the mailbox on that lot can no longer be checked manually.  It can be checked by AM's sell/refine macro, so if one of the sims in the household hits level 10 in a skill, I send a sim out to collect some gems & rocks until they have something worth cutting or smelting.  Then I run the sell/refine macro to collect the mail from the borked mailbox.

A while ago I recall someone (can't remember who) posting a mod that unlocked the WA mailboxes for use in regular games, and they could be used to replace the current ones, without affecting the game.  If you can find it, you might be able to just replace the mailbox with a new one.

Have you checked to see if it is possible to get a new mailbox from the buydebug catalogue?

[The_Goddess]

There isn't a mailbox in buydebug, but yes you can get one from, TSR.
http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims3-objects-furnishing-decor-miscellaneous/title/buyable-mailbox/id/983362/

[myskaal]

AhhitBURNs! Better, unTSR mailboxes by Claeric. WA and Base: http://fuzzylogicdishwasher.blogspot.com/2010/04/unlocked-wa-mailbox-and-regular-mailbox.html

[Jackathyn]

Here are a couple of my current Ambitions clusterfuck experiences, for what they're worth. Don't know how widespread they are, but I know I'm not the only one with CTDs.

1. Aforementioned CTDs. There are a couple of things I've singled out to trigger it, namely getting married during a party at a venue, and someone in the neighbourhood ageing up. It seems to choose the Adult age stage most often. I've found one workaround- Go through every house to find who has 0 days until their next age-up, use 'editsim', and if the game CTDs when I select the next stage up for them, it seems to be that sim with the problem- reload, age them to teen instead, save, editsim, choose correct age. It's a giant pain in the nuts but it's stopped my CTDs for the most part.

EDIT 3: CTD on age-up seems to occur only on the ones that have tattooes. Yes, I feel like an idiot for not noticing this link before, of course baby-teen can't have those...

2. Firefighter jobs are borked. My level 10 firefighter can put out all the fire on a lot and free everyone and it still gives him an F. Ditto all his following jobs thereafter. I had to have him quit and restart at the bottom of the ladder.

3. Occasionally something goes profoundly wacky with cars. My teenage daughter got fused to her fathers' fire engine, creating the delightful effect of a wiggling truck crammed into the front of her house.


EDIT: New error; get a tattoo = CTD. A late discovery for me. Pleh, tattooes are trashy anyway.

EDIT 2: Fresh bork- 32 thousand dollar Fireman retirement pension. Wow. I gotta get me some of that IRL...

[Moryrie]

By the time the meteor strike happened the garden had every plant in perfect condition, a pond stocked with deathfish, and the house had been extensively refurbished/redecorated/recoloured.  I'm not in the habit of moving a family out, lotbinning the lot, and then moving the family back in after improvements, so I didn't have a copy of the house after the modifications.  Rather than lose all that and then having to redo it just because the mailbox lost its menu from the meteor strike, it is easier to spend a few minutes using AM's collect rock macro and then use AM's sell/refine macro to get the mail.

It's not a major problem for me.  Thanks to AM's billpaying feature, my sims don't check the mailbox very often.  I usually only send them to collect the mail when they hit level 10 in a skill, or in the case of this particular household (my robot-making household), when a pink diamond has been sent for cutting.

Fortunately I save every sim night.  Now that I know that meteors kill mailboxes, the next time it happens I can just go back to the last save and lose less than a simday of play.  It's just this one lot that is borken.

I have a weird solution for you. I have not tried this with a mailbox, but I have done it with a trashcan, and the results should be the same. Use debugging cheats to make your mailbox an ice sculpture. It will eventually melt, (that is, if none of your sims have that ice sculptor challenge completed, not sure what happens otherwise), and then you can clean up the ice glob, and level the area where the mailbox was. Eventually (as happened with my trash can) another mailbox will appear. This might fix your problem. At least try it, (backing up saves of course) to see if it helps.

[friendlyquark]

Well, I have a weird issue with Fly Bayless. He's the Bayless ghost. I resurrected him and every time I tried to edit his appearance, mirror, dresser, Twaalan's computer, big fiery CTD. I think he's just plain borked, because even resetsim and fixall did nothing for him. So warning all, until that gets fixed, don't try fixing him!

Edit - I have discovered that Juan Darer is also borked in the same way. Just sending him to the mirror is enough to CTD. This is reminding me very much of the Plant Sims in Sims2 and how messed up they were before the patch for Seasons came out.

Edit 2 - I am not sure what the problem is. Several times today I have CTD when I have tried to edit a Sim, this has been in several Twinbrook families and in new games. Plus, a previously fine Ghostbuster in Sunset Valley now suddenly has no jobs every night when before he had two to three a night. The only thing I changed there was getting the new AM, so I don't know if its a cumulative error or if something has just gone horribly wrong, but it is very frustrating. I had him quite and restart the career and that doesn't seem to have fixed it.

Once more into the breach dear friends, once more...