How do you know a neighbourhood becomes a BFBVFS?

[LFox]

I've heard lots of people say their neighbourhood blew up but i've never personally experienced this.  So i was wondering what are the signs to tell when a neighbourhood is starting or has blown up?

[witch]

Often when your sims start behaving oddly, you can't make them do things, they disappear, they look funny, they lose bits, any consistent patterns of weirdness, consistent and spreading - that's the sort of thing I've experienced, anyway.

Also when your lots look odd from the hood view, you can't load lots, sims can't age on lots, all sorts. Probably also many other symptoms I haven't seen.

[LFox]

Ah thanks for the reply, i figured it would be various oddities and such that would signify the apocalyse.

Now that i think of it the other day one of my sims was impossible to interact with everything another sim had queued to do to her dropped immediately out of queue but the bugged sim could interact with others with no problems.  I managed to fix it by deleting her but today i had another that did it but it only lasted a while.  I wouldn't be surprised if my hood is slowly on the way out i got 649 character files and i originally had copied an original maxis hood cause i was too lazy to decorate it which in itself was probably a REALLY bad idea.  Still the hood has lasted for years.

Bit offtopic but anyone know of where i can find some instructions on how to create a new hood devoided of townies and then use the game to spawn a bunch?  I know of the delete all characters cheat but how do you spawn more townies?  Make them then boot em to the townie pool or just use the mailbox to spawn some?

[SaraMK]

Other examples of odd things that are a clear and loud signal of a fast approaching BFBVFS:

Toddlers have LTWs
Toddlers/children get inappropriate wants, like to Woohoo
Newborn babies vanish and their package files are nowhere to be found
Vanishing graves can be a symptom of corruption but is usually a common game glitch (Pescado has fix)
The game changes the sex of your sims (trust me, the 'hood explodes soon afterward)
Corrupt memories about $Subject

Bit offtopic but anyone know of where i can find some instructions on how to create a new hood devoided of townies and then use the game to spawn a bunch?  I know of the delete all characters cheat but how do you spawn more townies?  Make them then boot em to the townie pool or just use the mailbox to spawn some?

Peasantry. It's a post right up at the top, by Jordi.

[maxon]

Bit offtopic but anyone know of where i can find some instructions on how to create a new hood devoided of townies and then use the game to spawn a bunch?  I know of the delete all characters cheat but how do you spawn more townies?  Make them then boot em to the townie pool or just use the mailbox to spawn some?

Jordi has a thread on here under Peasantry - try a search with his user name.

[LFox]

Thanks i'll check out Jordi's post.

I didn't realize so many problems occur when a neighbourhood goes out no wonder everyone bins it and starts over there isn't really much choice.

[SaraMK]

Some neighborhoods can be saved, really, but it takes a lot of time, effort, and boring SimPE work. It's best to prevent problems in the first place by not doing things that are known to cause a BFBVFS.

[miros]

Here's SaraMK's directions on how to prevent the ugly premade Townies from showing up in every hood:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg205331

[notveryawesome]

It's best to prevent problems in the first place by not doing things that are known to cause a BFBVFS.

Unfortunately, that includes not stocking crafted items if you happen to have both OFB and Pets. A lot of problems were fixed with the OFB patches, but the new Pets code borked what was previously fixed, and now the crafted items cause all sorts of havoc. For example, I created a brand new 'hood, deleted all characters, created a downtown (so I'd have at least some customers for my businesses), made about a dozen sims in CAS, moved them into their houses, and all went well until one of my families opened a home robotics business. As soon as the crafted items were placed on the shelves, all sorts of shit hit the fan. Not only would the restock signs get misplaced (an early OFB bug), but one of the visiting sims would get stuck to the signs, and appeared to be spinning in place. Only Pescado's stuck objects remover could fix the problem, and only until the next time something needed restocking. Soon after that, a sim in one of my other families became unresponsive. She would do things autonomously, but I couldn't control her, nor could other sims interact with her. Then the welcome wagon stopped showing up at any of my lots even though, in some cases, there were neighbours living right next door. I had to delete the entire 'hood less than four sim-weeks after creating it, and all because of those damned OFB bugs that were de-fixed after installing Pets. Stupid EA.

That reminds me, does anyone know if the Pets patch fixed the broken OFB code? I don't remember reading anything about that in the list of fixed bugs, and Numenor's restocking fix doesn't seem to work with Pets. If it's not been fixed, then I'm not doing the crafted items thing until it *is* fixed.

Edited for clarity.

[kuronue]

Say.. .what if we re-installed the OFB patch once we had pets? Would it...


or does it fix stuff in the OFB folder and run from the Pets folder, ignoring the patch?

How hard would it be to crack into the OFB patch to make it edit the Pets code instead so we at least don't have pre-patch coding anymore?

[jrd]

Neither. It fixes OFB so you still benefit from some fixes, but the Pets patch is still broken in the exe.

Regardless of the Pets patch brokenness, all expansions run their own unique objects.package. And if Pets lacks fixes which are present in OFB, you won't have them. However AFAIK Pets contains most — if not all — of the GLS (aka OFB fully updated) code. And you can still patch Pets and grab the original exe back from CD (aka the unholy hybrid) to get all the objects.package fixes, and none of the new exe bugs.

[Sagana]

Not only would the restock signs get misplaced (an early OFB bug)

Is this fixed in Glamour Life or something? Because I have OFB and all OFB patches but no glamour or pets and it's never been completely squashed on my lots. The patches helped, Numenor's fix helped, but nothing has ever made it go away completely. I use the testing cheats to get rid of them on a regular basis (I play lots of OFB shops - mostly, but not exclusively, home lots.) It's a hassle to click on each sign, delete it, and restock manually, but doesn't seem to cause any other problems. That I know of.

[jrd]

It's never been fixed. Numenor's fix (FFS code) makes it occur less, but it still happens. There are numerous bugs which never /were/ fixed, or JMP could retire half his mods.

[LFox]

I always try to avoid doing anything that i know causes a BFBVFS because if you do that, it more or less should be enough to keep your neighbourhood alive a long time.

As for crafted items I never knew they got broken with pets although somehow it DOESN'T surprise me with how EA/Maxis do things.  In all honesty though i never really sell crafted items i more or less stopped because it's easier to sell a tv and make a cool 4k than to spend like 12 sim hours building a robot which you only sell for a profit of 1k or less.  I had a flower shop going too at one stage and to be honest it was almost a waste of time to run, the money it costs to have the employees almost outweighed the income i got.  Crafted items are good for normal use but a complete and utter waste to sell.

[witch]

Oh bollocks, I didn't even know there was an OFB bug about restocking crafted items, I've just spent the last few game sessions getting various families up to scratch to start opening bloody snapdragon and robotics shops and all the rest. *sigh*

[Sleepycat]

I got around some of the bugs by having a sim open a community lot store with craftable flowers & toys (and other toys/kids stuff), got it all set up and then never took my sim there again, instead I put her in the business career.

This way my other sims can visit the store and buy the craftables but I never have to worry about hiring help or restocking or anything. I don't care that the owner dosen't actually make any money from the store, she goes to work and earns money so I just pretend she is working at her store.

[witch]

Thanks, excellent workaround. I've been wanting snapdragons for ages but don't like to cheat these things.

[notveryawesome]

There are a few different 'buyable snapdragon' mods floating around, and I'm sure at least one of them is from MTS2. I'm pretty sure the one that I use is from Lucas at Aussie Top Enders, but don't hold me to that . It's soooo much easier to buy the thing from the catalogue than it is to have a sim make it!

[SaraMK]

Monique is the one who made a buyable snapdragon on MTS2.

[LFox]

Setting up a store isn't a bad idea, what i did was get one sim to have the necessary badges for the items.  Then just use a collection to buy them for the family or you can simply call the sim over, mind control them and take it out of the inventory.  Although for evil toys you REALLY need a collection, i made dozens of items and never once got an evil toy.

[witch]

I have a cheaty snapdragon, I just wanted my sims to get them the hard way. 

[Sagana]

I didn't even know there was an OFB bug about restocking crafted items

The OFB bug (if you mean not with pets) isn't really a crafted items one. It happens when restocking anything, but more often if it's custom content. It just causes the restock signs to go off to some lonely corner of the lot and pile all up on top of each other and not restock properly. Crafted items work as well as anything else (which is to say, not as well as they oughta but ok sorta) if you're not in it to make money from the store. If you're in it to make money, sell property to townies.

If you mean adding pets causing something else, I dunno about that.

[notveryawesome]

Yes, that's true about it being a restocking problem, not necessarily a crafted items problem. Personally, I have problems restocking all content, not just CC, but mine didn't get really bad until stocking the toy robots, so that's why I figured the restocking glitch might effect the crafted objects more than regular catalogue objects. In my shops that only sell items from the catalogue, I don't seem to have as many problems, CC or not. At any rate, it's very frustrating.