Testers Wanted: Secret Society Lot Lottery and Finals Fix - (Updated 3/15/2008)

[syberspunk]

Secret Society Lot Lottery Fix for TS2OFB v1.0p1 or older
Made by: syberspunk



Secret Society Finals Fix v1.05 for TS2TF v1.0p2
Made by: syberspunk

Note: This fix is preventative and will not work retroactively. In other words, it prevents current and future or further buggering of ss lot funds. If you already experienced this problem in OFB, this hack cannot go back and reset the values of your original ss lot funds or the resident/dorm/frat funds that were affected as well. Basically those values were overwritten, and as far as I know, they wouldn't be stored anywhere else. This fix can prevent further buggering via the exponential loopiness. It stores the value of the previous lot that you just left in a separate token, reads the value of the ss lot funds and uses that. When you leave the ss lot, it will save the ss lot funds to it's own token, and then read and set the funds to the value of the lot that you are returning to. You can probably finagle a fix in manually using this fix in place along with the familyfunds cheat. Read this post for further details.

This fix addresses the problem discussed here. Basically, sims are experiencing insane 'lottery' gains in the household funds. To summarize, when a sim gets abducted or visits the Secret Society lot, the funds of the ss lot are added to the funds of the sim that is currently being played. When a sim returns home, the funds are supposed to revert back to 'normal' so that you only have the same amount you had before you visited the ss lot. It has been reported that since OFB, this has changed, and now a bug occurs whereupon returning to your household lot, you keep the ss lot funds that you gained. If you repeatedly go back to the ss lot, your funds will appear to double, quadruple, and essentially exponentially increase.

While some of you may consider this a fortuitous bug that can be exploited for 'cheaty' purposes, I personally despise these kind of bugs. The game is pretty easy as it is to make millions of simoleons, and if I really wanted to cheat, I could just use the 'familyfunds' command, but I digress. This mod should fix this problem. You will see that, upon arrival at the ss lot, the funds displayed will Only be that of the ss lot itself. While you are on the ss lot, any changes in the funds due to purchases in buy mode or any other expenses accrued should ONLY affect the ss lot funds. Upon return to your normal residence, the household funds should revert to the intial amount you had before visiting the sslot.

:!!: Note: For OFBp1 and older, you MUST use the sslotlotteryfix.package file.

For OFBp2, the bug has been fixed by the 2nd patch. However, the issue with the finals has not been. As a result, I decided to make it a seprate hack. If you still want the grant from finals to go to the visiting household instead of the sslot, you should use the sslotfinalsfix.package. This fix can be used for OFBp1, but you MUST use the sslotlotteryfix as well.


Edit: 9/13/2006
If you are using my Grow Up Townies mod, you MUST use the growuptownies compatible version to fix the "bug" where grants from non-playable dormies finals "magically" go to the dorm lot funds.


Edit: 9/21/2006
Original version deprecated, changes in grow up townies will now be consolidated into single version. Note: These changes basically prevent unselectable dormies who are returning from finals to add their funds to the dorm lot. Thus, this will not affect normal gameplay. This can only happen if you are cheating anyway i.e. using a hack to enable dormies to go to finals, such as my growuptownies hack. Duh. As a result, this hack will still appear to conflict with growuptownies, but this is harlmess and intentional. Otherwise, this change should not have any adverse affects.

INSTALLATION:
This MUST be in your Downloads folder, typically found under:

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Downloads


Compatibility:
This is for OFB. It probably will work for FFS. I am not sure if it is still needed in FFS. I currently have no plans to install FFS.

This hack is compatible with most, if not all mods by MATY crew (Pescado, TJ, and CBoy), dizzy, and probably more. Again, up to you to help me determine any possible conflicts.

REMINDER and fine print (to cover my ass ) :
Remember to ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE INSTALLING NEW HACKS. By using this hack, you agree to absolve me of any responsibility or liability for any potential loss of or damage to your data. You have been warned.

HOW TO REPORT: Conflicts, problems, or errors
I would appreciate any constructive criticism and feedback that is actually helpful. With that in mind, it would be helpful, when reporting any conflicts or issues, that you include the following:

1) thorough but reasonably brief description of what you were doing
2) clear, comprehendible explanation of your problem
3) list of hacks that may be related the self sim pie menu or the Vamprocillin-D potion
4) archived (.rar or .zip) of log produced by error

Posts which do not include a clear description of what your problem is will be pretty much ignored. (i.e. posts such as "This does not work! I am taking it out! You suck! Nice try! etc.") I can't and won't help you if you don't explain what's wrong.

Please be nice when trying to explain your problem and I might be nice and help you.

Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

J.M. Pescado, twojeffs, dizzy2, and jase439 for being excellent tutors and providing excellent models in their mods. As always, thanks to those creators who've put out some excellent modding tutorials, Quaxi and co for SimPE, and dizzy2 for disaSim2, and the finally letters T and S, and the number 2, all of whom, without which this mod would not be possible.

Thanks to Mizz Rose Bud and Ancient Sim for bringing the issue to light in the first place and providing details about the problem.

Special thanks to pinhead for pointing me in the right direction and doing the initial legwork to find the BHAVs that I needed to mod.

Thanks to meyersyoung for pointing out the bug regarding the visiting the sslot with different households.

If I left anyone out, I apologize in advance. You know who you are and you deserve my thanks.

Version History:
sslotlotteryfix
v1.01 - Fix for bug where visiting sslot with sims from other households would reset to first visiting household value
sslotfinalsfix
v1.01 - Fixed 'Bad gosub tree number' bug
v1.02 - Made Grow Up Townies compatible version
v1.03 - Fixed bug with funds not properly being calculated, original version deprecated
v1.04 - Fixed bug with improper index causing undefined transition
v1.05 - Updated for Free Time

Here we are on a dorm lot, calling up for a ride to the ss lot. You can see the initial household funds is $1052. Here's a couple of screenshots of going to the ss lot and the ss lot loading.




Upon arrival at the lot, we see that the household funds for the ss lot is $40873.


Just to prove that any purchases only affect the ss lot, I bought a chair. The ss lot funds are now $40793.


Heading back to the dorm lot, we see that we are back to the original household funds of $1052. So we didn't spend our own money. I even went back to the ss lot a few more times to make sure that the funds wouldn't switch or get mixed up or exponentially increase. When I went back to the ss lot, it was still $39073 (not pictured).



PS. Forget about the disparity in time. I was screwing around with the time for various reasons. I kept forgetting to go back to the game while I was waiting for the lots to load and set up my shot to take pics. I also took several trips back and forth to make sure the funds switched properly (between lots) and remained the same (on the same lot). And plus, Jimmy kept wanting to go to Class. I really should turn off free will while I'm testing.

[DrBeast]

This hack is compatible with most, if not all mods by MATY crew (Pescado, TJ, and CBoy), dizzy, and probably more. Again, up to you to help me determine any possible conflicts. This is definitely compatible with twojeffs' Increased odds of abduction mod, which is essentially the purpose since you are more likely to experience this "rare" bug with increased odds.

Ehrm...someone's been copy-pasting from another hack he made 

I don't intend to go throught the University menagerie anytime soon (I have enough of that in RL, albeit post-graduate stuff), but it's definitely good to know that another maxian weirdness has been taken care of (or, at least, is in the process of).
Cheers!

[syberspunk]

Ehrm...someone's been copy-pasting from another hack he made 

Heh... guilty as charged. Hey, can you blame me for laziness? I don't want to have to type those things out from scratch. Pfffttt.

Doh. I submitted before finishing. Not that I really had much else to say. Lol. Anyways, I hope peeps test this out and let me know if it does work for them as well. I'd like actual feedback, even if it is just to say that it works. Not just, thanks this is great, unless it's followed by some indication that you actually tried it and it appeared to work for you. 

Ste

PS. I fixed the first post and the rtfm. No changes to the actual code.

[DrBeast]

Wow...no replies in almost a week? Nobody loves you poor Steven! 

Seems like I'll have to bite the bullet and get some twin teens through college after all...I'll definitely fast-forward them through the process, but I'll also make sure to take this hack for a test-drive. I'll report back tomorrow (probably) with the preliminary results.

[Ness]

I'm busily playing a heap of sims to get them to teen to send them to college - being in the midst of the most ridiculously short yet insanely busy term ever doesn't help!

[jsalemi]

I've got a bunch in college, but haven't rotated to them yet.   I'll probably do it later today or tomorrow, and I'll see how this works.

[MissDoh]

Syber you can count on me to test this one too.

I have about 7 MATY sims that are waiting to go to college so it should be enough Sims to test this out.

Though I did not experience this (simply because I did not send any Sim to college since installation of OFB), I have no problem that all those sims join the SS, most of my Sims did in the past.

I will report as soon as... well... as soon as I actually have a report to make lol. 

[DrBeast]

I'll report back tomorrow (probably) with the preliminary results.

Uuuuhm...

I will report as soon as... well... as soon as I actually have a report to make lol. 

Heh, wise words MissDoh. I spent half my playing hours yesterday on trying to apply textures from one dress mesh to another (and failed miserably!), and the remaining half on building the new college students' house! So yes, I'll report in when I have something to report in too!

[jrd]

This mod seems to work for me. No more income increase for my college Sims, no more bankrupt SS lots.

[jsalemi]

This mod seems to work for me. No more income increase for my college Sims, no more bankrupt SS lots.

Ditto here -- it worked as it should.  SS money stayed on the SS lot.

[DrBeast]

So far, so good. Money stays put, and whenever someone cooks, for example, the money is deducted from the SS money pool. Good work Steven!

[Meska]

I hesitate to even say anything because I don't have an error log file or know how to go about getting that. I haven't done any further testing either. So basically I'm just blabbering on uselessly about what happened to me. Many things could have effected the outcome though this seemed like perhaps the most likely. Anyway everything appeared to be working as normal. The limo showed up. The SS Member got out and did the chicken dance and handcuffed my sim. My sim dutifully went and got into the limo. The load screen for the SS Lot showed up.... and then I was back at the dorm and my sim was getting out of the limo. I wrinkled my nose and thought 'Well darn maybe that's how its supposed to work and I'll just have to send my sim manually by calling transportation to go to the SS Lot'. However when I tried to phone there was no option to do so. I used testingCheats to "add to Secret Society" and only then was able to then get the option to call for transportation.

I have another student in the same lot that is friends with two of the SS Members. As soon as she is friends with the third I can do some sort of testing or get an error file or something if someone wants to be kind enough to tell me how to go about that. Or I could just take this particular hack out and see what happens. Anyway sorry for being unawesome about the way I report a potential problem.

[syberspunk]

Hrm... erk. That could be a problem. Unfortunately... it might be 'too late' to detect it. Can you tell me, was this the first abduction you had in this particular hood? In other words, was this the first sim to ever join the secret society?

I will have to go back and check the code. What happens is, the first time you ever join an sslot, it has to create an sslot token on that lot, which stores the value of the sslot funds. If it is the first time visiting that lot, it should create a new one with a default amount of money (I think I mention that value above somewhere, I haven't memorized it). However, in my testing, I didn't try it out on a completely new sslot. There maybe certain issues that i didn't consider when it comes to a completely new sslot. I also did not test what happens when sims get abducted to the sslot. If that gets handled any differently than when you call up the limo to take you there.

The best way to test this, is to probably start a new test 'hood and have sims get abducted. This means, don't add the token using the debugcheat, but you can use the cheat to make your test sim friends with other SS lot members. Keep debug mode on, and wait to see what happens when your sim gets abducted. I will try and test this sometime soon.

And don't be sorry. Any info is helpful rather than no info at all. Maybe in your 'hood, you can turn on debug mode and see what happens when your sim gets abducted. Btw, the reason why you didn't get the phone option was probably because your sim didn't get the sslot token yet. The token is probably given to them upon arrival at the sslot. But since you got mysteriously booted back to your dorm lot, the sslot ceremony stuff didn't happen properly, and your sim did not get the sslot token.

Ste

[Meska]

It was definitely a brand new 'hood and the first abduction. I told you there could be other factors involved. Including the fact that its the 3-in-1 'hood which could be the problem in itself since I didn't know the SS Lot has to be created at the first abduction instead of just pre-existing. I'll try starting from scratch in a regular 'hood and see if that might be the problem.

[syberspunk]

Again, sorry if I'm confusing you. It's not the lot itself that is being 'created' it is a token. If it is the first visit to the sslot, there are two things that happen for the first time:

1) The lot itself gets a token which stores the amount of funds that the sslot has.

2) If it is your sim's first time visiting the lot, they get a token, which identifies them as part of the secret society.

If it's not clear, a token is basically an object that holds info. This can be a skill (like the dance skill), a memory, or an identifier - basically flagging a sim for some purpose such as the death token (for death), pregnancy token (for pregnancy), or in this case to identify a sim as a member of the secret society.

I would not think that having 3 unis attached would a signficant affect on this. I mean you never know *shrugs* But I don't see why. Each Uni is essentially a separate 'hood and would have it's own ss lot.

In anycase, definitely try testing it in a new scratch 'hood. Maybe one that you don't care about and can delete later. Play with debug mode on and maybe you can actually catch an error and post a log. If it works with no errors. Try adding a 2nd Uni and then testing it in that one, just to see if having multiple unis attached would cause a problem (although I don't see how or why it would). Finally, if you don't get any errors, you should scan your hacks to see if there are any possible conflicts (just to be safe, but I doubt there is anything out there that would conflict). You can also try testing with only this mod installed to see if you get any errors when this is in there by itself. If not, then it may be a) caused by some other problem or b) one of those 'rare' flukes.

Ste

[Meska]

Well see. I should have followed my initial instinct and not said anything. After creating a clean fresh neighborhood and starting from scratch I finally managed to get the SS Abuduction scenerio to trigger again and the same thing occurred. Only... I had forgotten to put your hack back in. *blush* So whatever problem I have it is not related to your hack. So sorry for the trouble!

[J. M. Pescado]

* J. M. Pescado points and laughs.

[Meska]

*bows with flourish*

[syberspunk]

So whatever problem I have it is not related to your hack. So sorry for the trouble!

Heh. That's alright. And I'm glad you have a sense of humour and can take things in stride. *ahem*  And I'd rather you report possible errors than remain silent, especially if it could be an error due to something I made. I may not be awesome but I try my best, and I certainly don't want anything I make to cause errors in other people's games.

Plus, if you are having a problem, it seems fairly reasonable that other people could be having the same problem. Even if it isn't specifically related to this hack, you may have discovered a different problem, that might be 'rare' but still requires a fix. Did you play with debug mode on? And if so, did you get any kind of error message? If you do have one, try posting the log in the 'Oops! I Broke It Again!' forum. If it's an actual error that is fixable, maybe something can be done. Oh, you should probably try the standard stuff, like scanning your downloads for conflicts and testing the game to see if you get errors with your custom content removed/disabled.

If you find no conflicts, and the error still happens even if you remove/disable your custom content, then try to get an error log with debug mode on and post your log. I'd be interested in reading it, hopefully before it gets removed. Unless it has been confirmed that it is related to some 'unawesomeness' in which case, it will probably be difficult to get help from here. But not for lack of trying, at least on my part.

Ste

[Kochanski]

Oddly enough the exact same thing happened to me yesterday. I also have more than one campus attatched the the main hood. What I did notice that although I was playing Sim State the game was trying to load the Volauvent lot which is the Acadamie le Tour secret society. I pulled out my hacks earlier and it still does the same thing. I also play with debug mode on and received no error messages.

Thought I'd mention this just in case it was helpful and I apologise for the thread hi-jacking

[syberspunk]

Oddly enough the exact same thing happened to me yesterday. I also have more than one campus attatched the the main hood. What I did notice that although I was playing Sim State the game was trying to load the Volauvent lot which is the Acadamie le Tour secret society. I pulled out my hacks earlier and it still does the same thing. I also play with debug mode on and received no error messages.

Thought I'd mention this just in case it was helpful and I apologise for the thread hi-jacking

This is definitely helpful information and I appreciate you dropping by and sharing. At least now, if other people experience the same problem, they might have an idea of why it is happening. I hadn't thought about the potential effects of having different/multiple Unis attached. Since the townies can pass between the different Unis, I can see why this would happen. Your sim from Sim State just happened to have made friends with the ss lot members from the ss lot in Academie Le Tour.

As for why the sslot doesn't load properly... that could be due to the multiple Unis. It would be difficult to troubleshoot since no error logs/messages are being reported. I'm afraid this might be due to the fact that it takes time to load. When I was working on this fix, I tried to stick in some debug messages, just to report that it was working properly, but I think since these BHAVs are called while the lot is loading or switching between lots, you can't see any messages on screen. I tried to stick some break points, and the game ended up hanging/freezing while the lot was trying to load.

I guess the only way to be certain that this problem is related to the number of Unis is to have different 'clean' set ups, with at least one that only has one Uni attached, and another with two or more attached Unis. Then you'd have to see if the error only occurs whenever you have multiple unis. Hearing about this just makes me glad now that I nuked my old 'hood, which I had all 3 default Unis attached to.

Ste

[jsalemi]

I've had two uni's attached to my p-view since the beginning (and originally had all three), and I've never seen a problem like this.  And I've had many sims join the SS, both the traditional way and with the College Adjuster.

[Meska]

just to let you know... with only one uni attached your fix works perfectly for me. Thank you, its much appreciated. Oh and as for that not being awesome comment you made... you're awesome enough to have your own subfolder in my game. Just thought you might like to know. Thanks for patiently bearing with me before!

[Meska]

Oh?! I've not been back to the SS Lot a second time. I'll have to check mine as well to see if that happens to me.

[syberspunk]

Thanks for reporting that meyersyoung. There definitely was a problem. Please redownload, overwrite and test again. Let me know if you still have the problem or run into anything new.

For those interested, what happened is that the code creates a token as a placeholder for the funds of household that is currently visiting the lot when the lot loads. When the sim leaves and exits the lot, the code should read the money from that token and restore the funds that is displayed to be whatever had been stored before.

The next time you visit the lot, the was supposed to look if that token still exists, remove it, and add a completely new one. The problem was, I made a typo, which shifted the GUID it was searching for, off by one. So... it would never find it, and thus it would never remove it. As a result, whoever visited the sslot first, that household's funds would forever be stored on the sslot. Consequently, whenever you exited, it was finding that original token and using that instead of the new one.

Now... I think I fixed it, but it still needs testing. I currently do not have a set up to test this right now as I am not at my normal machine. Anyways, hopefully this fix works correctly. I set it so that it should search for all of those tokens and remove them all, so it should properly clean up the lot.

Ste