John Burb is Telepathic?

[Dopp]

Was playing the Burb family in Pleasantview when I came across this bizarre problem. The husband, John Burb, kept rolling romantic wants for Brandi Broke, who he has never even met. He wants to do nothing but flirt, kiss, hug and backrub her, just as if she was his wife. His own wife, Jennifer, doesn't exist as far as wants and fears are concerned. Brandi also started rolling fears about John dying and being rejected for woohoo by John, despite the fact that she has never met him either. Is this a case of predestinated love? Are the two of them telepathic? Is John Burb actually the reincarnation of Skip Broke, or does all this merely signal an impending BFBVFS for Pleasantview? Most importantly, is there a solution to the problem other than 'nuke everything and start again'?

[J. M. Pescado]

Sounds like SWAF corruption of some kind. That, or the two are somehow preprogrammed to be together: All the Maxian premades have unique want trees.

[Dopp]

Is SWAF corruption fixable? If it will help, I never played the Burbs before this incident, nor did I alter anything in SimPE. I use virtually all the awesome mods plus one or two unawesome ones, the Insimenator mainly, and never experienced any problems until now.

[dizzy]

The whole "Wants" system is deeply corrupted with bugs as is, and is totally unfixable (even for Maxis).

[Jelenedra]

I would've thought that if Maxis was trying to "fix Brandi up" with someone it'd be that Dreamer dude. (I never play Maxis households)

[Avalikia]

I think that they're specifically trying to get you to fix up the Dreamer guy with Cassandra.

[jsalemi]

I think that they're specifically trying to get you to fix up the Dreamer guy with Cassandra.

Yea, and John and Brandi have 3 bolts (if you have NL or later) when they finally meet, so they're kinda destined for each other, too.  They pretty much always end up together whenever I restart a Pleasantview on my laptop -- in my main game, they had 3 kids together (he's now dead, and she has maybe 1 day left).

[Jelenedra]

I think that they're specifically trying to get you to fix up the Dreamer guy with Cassandra.

Oh yeah. *Boinks forehead* I forgotted. All those not so subtle hints in the neighborhood photo album.

[Meska]

I've never seen John having the hots or any wants for Brandi or vice versa at all. *shrugs* Then again I always hook up Brandi with Gordon King. I forget how many bolts they have, since I don't really pay much attention to those, but its at least a couple I believe. Gordon is a knowledge sim which is Maxis-compatible with family sims. I always figured that's who she was supposed to end up with since they went to the trouble of having Dustin know the guy and all.

[Dopp]

I think Gordon King is Pleasantview's resident burglar. Poor Brandi always seems to pick the wrong guy then. The President suggested that it might be SWAF corruption, so I deleted their SWAFs in SimPE and let the game regenerate them. This seems to have fixed the problem. John is now properly interested in his wife, Brandi in her children. Thanks all the help and suggestions.

[Katze]

In my Plaesantview Brandi always ends up with the resurrected Skip.

[Ancient Sim]

In my first Pleasantview she ended-up with the headmaster, Vince Walter, but that was before lightning bolts.  She was never interested in anyone else, all she wanted to do was veg-out and watch TV.  In my second, she married Hegelian, although she did have 3 bolts for John Burb and also for Darren Dreamer, as I recall.  I did very briefly play Pleasantview with all the pre-mades as teens and brought Skip back, but he and Brandi had no bolts at all, although they were platonic best friends.  She was more interested in Don Lothario than she was in Skip.

[cabelle]

In my current incarnation of Pleasantview Brandi recently married former repairman Waylon Fairchild. They just had twin daughters who are very pretty.

And with the SWAF problem I've noticed that Pleasantview seems to have the problem with hanging SWAF's even in an untouched version. So whenever I rest Pleasantview now one of the first things I do is to go in with SimPE and delete all the SWAF's with no sim associated to them. Seems to help the problem.

[BlueSoup]

And with the SWAF problem I've noticed that Pleasantview seems to have the problem with hanging SWAF's even in an untouched version. So whenever I rest Pleasantview now one of the first things I do is to go in with SimPE and delete all the SWAF's with no sim associated to them. Seems to help the problem.

How do you see them/know they are dangling?

[Avalikia]

In my experience Waylon Fairchild always makes adorable kids - assuming that the mother isn't hideous, of course.

[Dopp]

I tried to keep my Pleasantview as 'clean' as possible as the stereotypical Sims town. I never deleted a Sim or made any major edits. Yet when I opened it up in SimPE to fix the John Burb problem, I found about 150 'blank' or 'hanging' SWAF entries with no owner. There were two 'Unknowns' but they are most likely the remote control car. I removed them all. It also seemed as if double the number of townies had been created. Great, another 30-40 lowlife genetic freaks for the game to harass my Sims with. What a mess.

[jsalemi]

It also seemed as if double the number of townies had been created. Great, another 30-40 lowlife genetic freaks for the game to harass my Sims with. What a mess.

Have you installed Nightlife? That adds another 30 or so 'downtownies' to the mix. And they're actually much better looking than the original townies.

(Oh, and Uni adds at least 49 more too.)

[Dopp]

Yes, even accounting for all the downtownies and dormies I have about 40 additional townies.

[jrd]

Downtownies are only ‘better looking’ because they're based on predefined templates complete with makeup, rather than being randomly generated like townies.
If for whatever reason the game generates downtownies more than once you end up with near-duplicates.

Dormies (students) are all townies.

And installing the default Bluewater (OFB) adds another group of townies.

[Dopp]

I see in the townie section (downtownies separate) about 169 entries. Assuming 40 basic townies, 49 dormies and 40 bluewater townies I get 40 extra... Nobody has died in this version of Pleasantview (yet).

[jrd]

You most likely have more than 49 dormies: each dorm is filled with dormies, and they are not freed if your playables leave the dorm. The next time you enter another dorm, new dormies will be generated for it.
Additionally, unless you had Pescado's SS hack in place before first playing uni, there will be over 20 SS members generated as well.

The visitor controller may have also ran into a bug, and began creating another set of townies (I've had this happen before). It will sometimes do a full run of 30~40 townies before stopping.

A new neighbourhood with Uni, Downtown, and Bluewater added easily leads to over 160 characters: 30~40 townies (predefined from N001), 30~40 dormies (predefined), 30~40 downtownies (predefined based on templates, including the Tricou dead), 30~40 townies from Bluewater (predefined templates with skill badges), two male grand vampires, two female grand vampires, two slobs (male+female), Mr. Big, the Diva, and three of every service NPC (including the useless ones such as the social worker and repoman which can never appear more than once).

[J. M. Pescado]

Gvamps normally append themselves into the NPC pool, which is where mine landed, although they respawn themselves into the downtownie pool. Big/Diva spawn in the downtownie pool. Normally you get about 30 townies, 30 downtownies, and 50 dormies, so you've got an additional 50-60 extra. Not sure what the "townie" section is supposed to mean, though. Are you counting the number of members of the townie family?

[jrd]

Yeah the second half of the post is more a total account, not just townies.

[Dopp]

I spawned a summoner from Insim and counted the entries in the "townie" family manually. 15 clock faces of 11 names each (12 minus the "more" option) plus one face of four names. 169 names total. The "downtownies" are a separate family composed of around 6 clock faces of 11 plus one of four. 70 names total. In SimPE the data is 470 Sim description files, 590 SWAFs, 592 DNA files. I read somewhere that around 4 teens and 2 children townies are spawned per neighborhood. I have 16 teens and 8 children in mine.

I guess it's time to use "notownieregen" and break out the cow plant.

[jrd]

You shouldn't need notownieregen, you're way over the limit.