Lot Sync Timer: All BlueSoups Suck Edition

[Ancient Sim]

I noticed this oddness today with the jump facility.  I was playing the woman who has the flower business (Delarosa or something) just to see how it all went and I noticed that all the main neighbourhood families were shown, which they didn't used to be on Downtown residential lots.  By mistake I clicked on the Dreamer lot and their loading screen came up, but when it arrived at the lot it was actually back on the flower woman's.  It did save what had occurred up to then, so at least that facility is still working.

[rhodaloo]

I noticed something similiar in my game today after I installed OFB.  I saw all the downtown people on my list.  I clicked to go to a downtown lot and that lot's family screen loaded but I went back to the main neighborhood lot I was on.,

[J. M. Pescado]

I noticed this oddness today with the jump facility.  I was playing the woman who has the flower business (Delarosa or something) just to see how it all went and I noticed that all the main neighbourhood families were shown, which they didn't used to be on Downtown residential lots.  By mistake I clicked on the Dreamer lot and their loading screen came up, but when it arrived at the lot it was actually back on the flower woman's.  It did save what had occurred up to then, so at least that facility is still working.

That seems to be an effect of how OFB has altered some low-level primitives in lot iteration.

The other issue is that lot jump exhibits some peculiar artifacts as a result and is presently disabled for OFB in the current version.

Lot-jump does not apparently entirely dissassociate from the originally loaded family anymore and issues may occur if you move anyone into the family after entering it via lot-jump. The exact extent of this is under evaluation, and until then, the jump feature has been OFB-disabled and is not recommended for use if you have an old version. Use at your own risk.

[RainbowTigress]

Does clicking on neighbors as introduced by NL still work?

[J. M. Pescado]

It better, that's a Maxian feature.

[witch]

I've always felt a bit wary of that particular Maxian feature, it it's so seamless, why did they not have that from the beginning? The only time I've ever lot jumped is with JM's sync timer, I trust his programming.

Won't have to worry about OFB just yet - it doesn't get released in New Zealand till 9th March. Went to buy it yesterday and had to pre-order.

[RainbowTigress]

I'm not sure why they didn't have it from the beginning, but I love it.  I guess they didn't have it because they didn't have clickable neighbors. 

[dusty]

More to the point, you couldn't actually see the neighbours.

[Vren Lyet]

Apart from some oddness a little bit like the above mentioned I noticed that I have to Re-"Install for family" from time to time.
I don't know why, but annoyingly often the lot sync timer "uninstalls" itself from normal residential lots though the number of past days is displayed correctly upon "re-installation".

The oddness that occured was this:
I played Lot A and used the lot sync timer to jump to Lot B where I invited the folks from Lot A over along with some other townies.
When I tried to send them home saying goodbye to them, there was no pie menu option to do so.
So I used a townie to send everyone home. All townies left, the two Sims of Lot A however didn't.
When I saved an reloaded the lot, they were gone.

This particular hack of yours is something I can't do without, so I can't wait until you have some time to look into these strange behaviours...which hopefully will be some time soon...

[J. M. Pescado]

If you're jumping with OFB installed, this is not recommended, there have been some latent underlying issues in the core code with jumping from lot to lot.

[Li'l Brudder]

I don't know if it is something in my game, but I have never had the option to jump from lot to lot before anyways.

[jsalemi]

I just got around to playing some of the Maxis sims in Bluewater Village today, and when I installed the lotsync timer on their home lots, I noticed that the list included ALL of my Pleasantview families too!  I was rather surprised, as I thought this didn't work across sub-neighborhoods.  It this a side-effect of the 'neighborhood jumping to your business' that OFB added to the game?

[J. M. Pescado]

It appears to be an OFB side effect, yes, since it won't occur under previous game versions.

[Vren Lyet]

I haven't had any problems with the built-in Maxian lot jump feature in OFB so far.
It doesn't appear to draw the same artifacts as the sync timer.

[Ancient Sim]

I haven't had any problems with the built-in Maxian lot jump feature in OFB so far.

What is the "built-in Maxian lot jump feature"?  Do you mean clickable lots, or the cheat that apparently takes you to ANY lot (whether you can see it to click on it or not)?  I tried the cheat, but it didn't work.  It loaded up what I thought was going to be a different lot (it had no name), but I ended-up back in the same lot, just as I did when I clicked on a lot on the Sync Timer by mistake.

[Ruann]

I haven't had any problems with the built-in Maxian lot jump feature in OFB so far.

What is the "built-in Maxian lot jump feature"?  Do you mean clickable lots, or the cheat that apparently takes you to ANY lot (whether you can see it to click on it or not)?  I tried the cheat, but it didn't work.  It loaded up what I thought was going to be a different lot (it had no name), but I ended-up back in the same lot, just as I did when I clicked on a lot on the Sync Timer by mistake.

The built in jump is the ability to click on a neighboring lot (with clickable neighbors turned on) and switch from your current famly to that family.

[DMDye]

I downloaded this when it was updated - but now it seems since it has been updated again for OFB (the lot-jump disabled)... I can't download using IE, I installed Firefox just to see if I could (and could not).... any ideas?

[BlueSoup]

It's because the links have been fubarred since the site implosion.  Try looking at www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/

[DMDye]

I can't seem to find the "Lot-sync timer" here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/ maybe I'm just too tired (or too blind).

For a while I've had a contrary opinion that I'm going to make public now: not *all* BlueSoups suck!

Thank you, BlueSoup for your reply.

[edited to fix typo]
[edited again to add]
Can't even find it in the Mar 22 edition of the MoreAwesomeThanYou zip!
...day 8 of 10 day stretch at work (plus overtime) - tired/brain-dead... be kind, please!

[BlueSoup]

Yep, it's there, 7th from the bottom. He calls it the Sync Timer.  (Not sure why the two different names, but whatever)

And also, thanks for your opinion. 

[DMDye]

Thank you so very, very much, BlueSooup!

My opinion has been increased now to: You are one of the BlueSoups that seriously *do not* suck! (don't have an opinion about the rest of them, though)

I found and downloaded it.

[RainbowTigress]

What does the shiny new Time Warp button on the synctimer do?  I figure the days of the week will set it to that day, but what does Initialize do?  And does setting days of the week really work?  I've tried doing this with other hacks, but it was a known issue that it doesn't stick.  At midnight, it will revert back to whatever day of the week it would have been had you not changed it.

[BlueSoup]

Shiny new time warp?  Ooooh....

I wonder what Pescado's done now.

[Klaatu]

Noticed a new version of this is out. Has it been fixed to work with OFB now? (I know it kinda worked with OFB already, but some features of it didn't.)

[BlueSoup]

It always did work with OFB, the only feature that didn't was the lot-jumping feature, which really had nothing to do with the original purpose anyway.  Apparently, there is a new shiny feature for it, but I am not sure what it's for.