What would cause a teen to not go to school?

[myskaal]

I posted this over at the InTeen forum because that mod is the one that made this idea possible to begin with. I thought, though, that with the variety of people that come here I may have a better chance at finding a solution:

I'm attempting to complete an experiment (of sorts) that I had started a few Xpacks ago and never finished. The goal was to populate an entire hood playing Legacy style with the added twist of starting the founding sim out as a teen. InTeenimater and the ability for teens to live on their own is what made this possible to begin with. Having long ago given up that hood (along with the entire game) I no longer have any reference point and created a spanking new hood and fresh off the CASboat sim for such purposes.

Ok so, with the sim modder the sim is aged from adult to teen. Their grade, naturally, is set as an F. The teen starts at the full 14 days but just in case I've also intalled the No Adult Teens flavor pak. The problem I'm running into is that the sim just will not get on the bus to go to school. I've made sure his mood is entirely green and have even tried adjusting his grade up to C with no change. The action just disappears from his queue - no matter where on the lot he is standing. I've had him run right up to the bus doors and then clicked for him to go to school. The action disappears and he wanders off to attempt to read a book...

Now I don't think this is an InTeen issue (unles something has changed since the last time I tried this). When I did the experiment before I had InTeen and the teen had absolutely no trouble going to school starting from day 2 (Tuesday) when the bus showed up. He followed to auto-queue just fine.

So I'm hoping maybe some tossing about will pull out a clue as to what's making this particular teen *not* go to school. Any ideas or little/well known facts on what would make a sim teen ignore the bus queue?

[morriganrant]

 I haven't played with this all that much mearly wanting in my game because if i actualy want my teens to be whores i can ..seems i mearly just want the option but don't actualy use it.

So its probably the fact that he's an indipendant teen and that the code for this had to be tweaked so the game saw them as "adult" try temporarily moving in an adult and see if it changes or if that doesn't work, setting the adult as a parent using the insim tree, and see if it changes anything. This is mearly testing my theory however.

[jrd]

Do you have syberspunk's harder grades? If so, make sure it is the inteenimated version you'll find in my forum section. The normal version can cause conflicts with the inteen.
Also, the college admissions flavourpack cannot be used together with no adult teens.

[myskaal]

Problem solved.

I have the InTeenimated Syberspunk's harder grades in and that, indeed, was what was causing this. I think it has to do with the grade level and his inability to afford any logic building toys, though, rather than an actual conflict. I think it's coded that way on purpose - which is fine, just makes it impossible to start a teen off going to school in this fashion.

Anyway, temporarily removed to get this kid rolling. Thanks for the replies!

[syberspunk]

Hrm... I don't have InTeen and I haven't looked at the InTeenimated version of my harder grades hack... but... as far as I know, the hack shouldn't prevent sims from going to school.  It might prevent their grades from improving if they lack the required skills... but it shouldn't make the interaction of going to school drop out of their queue.

I would definitely make sure you have the appropriate, most updated version for your EPs then.

One of these days... I plan on starting a separate account on my machine for an InTeenimated game.  I just never got around to it, but perhaps I will now that I have a new puter.  I think I might just reboot my Legacy Game with InTeen.

Ste

[myskaal]

After going back in to play for a bit, now that he's off to school and everything is functioning normally, it occurred to me that it couldn't have been the grade level that was affecting it because I did try to send him off after adjusting his grade up to a C and he still wouldn't go.

Nevertheless, removing the InTeenimated Harder Grades did indeed solve the problem, so there's some wierd conflict going on somewhere. I'll pop it back in and see if I can get an error log.


ETA: Error Logs attached. The first one I forced the 2nd one occured on it's own when I tried to manually force him to go to school.

[syberspunk]

Hrm... forcing an error doesnt seem to really help.  Those both just look like they are the cause of an error being forced...

It doesn't really show the interaction (of going to school) is broken.  The problem is... since the interaction is falling off the queue... instead of causing your sim to "jump" out of the interaction, it would be kind of difficult to trouble shoot the problem.  It could also be an issue of the portal to the bus being blocked?

But if the problem doesn't happen when you remove the hack, then it obviously must be hack related.  Maybe jordi can help?  I've played some households with teens recently and I didn't have any problems sending them to school on the bus. *shrugs*

Another thing you might want to try... is buying a car and seeing if you can send the teens to school in the car.  See if that throws up any errors.  Either way tho, it would appear that something in the hack isn't quite right... *shrugs*  Perhaps you are using conflicting flavor packs?

Ste

[myskaal]

Ahh well. Sorry about that.

Newp, portal wasn't blocked and I started off with 0 flavor packs. Thought maybe the "adult perks" was interfering being that it's a teen living parentless, so I threw in No Adult Teens to try, which didn't work.

End of the week and he's got an A now, I'll put the hack back in and see if it happens again.


To note: I was using this (the InTeenimated version) with InTeen in Pets, before Seasons was released and had no problems with normal teens going to school. I haven't tried with any normal teens in Seasons yet. I started this project right after installing the new InTeen.  So I'll play around with it a bit more the rest of the week and post whatever I find over at Jordi's Chop Shop.

[syberspunk]

Don't be sorry.  I'm sorry that I can't be of any help.  I wish there was some other way to help troubleshoot this, short of actually diggin thru the code myself. heh.

Ste

[jrd]

I have yet to check my hacks (and my frankenversions like harder grades) for Seasons compatbility, so it is well possible there is an issue. A full check and possible rewrite is on the to-do list.

[myskaal]

So an update here, since I don't want to spoil Jordi's pretty as yet untarnished thread with useless info.

I put the hack back in, the teen now having an A+ and a few skills (including logic) built up, and off to school he went with no problems at all. All other sim kids are going to school just fine, including those in private school.

So the guessing game is: Was it because he had an F grade and 0 skills? Or was the game still reading him as an adult and a few sim days had to pass? Or was it just some really weird random out of the blue will only happen when the moon is full on a Sunday on the 3rd day of the 7 year hoolabalah when Saturns rings align with Jupiter...


I'm sure I'll load up some test families and do some random experimenting with skills and grades and a couple more de-agings but being that it's now my weekend and I've had one hell of a hellacious week at work I think I'll just do some playing for now. 

[rosenshyne]

I also had this problem. Running a Pets game, all pertinent expansions. I never could figure out why my teens wouldn't go to school, but when I removed InTeen entirely, the problem was fixed and I just decided to live without it. Another problem that popped up at the same time: not only couldn't my teens go to school, they couldn't go to work. But they could ride in taxis. Also, a car on the lot wouldn't carry the option for them to go to school or work. I never realized it might have to do with the harder grades hack, but I had that one in at the same time.

[J. M. Pescado]

[notveryawesome]

In the past, when I had this problem, the culprit turned out to be a 'homework is fun' hack by XPTL297 at InSim. Once I removed the hack, the teens were once again able to take the bus or car to school.