Help, one of my sims isn't aging

[AnnaM]

One of my sims is stuck on the first day of Adult age ("Becomes an Elder in 29 days). Everybody else in the same house ages normally. This really became quite obvious when her 2 sons came back from college and they immediately showed as older than she was (higher up in the tree on the left).

I know that this is a Maxis sim that became playable (married one of my sims); she was almost certainly a college student and I <i>might</i> have aged her by using the cheat Ctrl-click menu, but since she has a diploma hanging on her wall I think I just made her playable and played her through Uni. (Sorry, this was all a long time ago and my memory is crap.) I really don't think she was a cheerleader though, I had made that mistake in a previous game and regretted it, I'm pretty sure she was simply a dormie.

Basically I'm asking if anybody else has had the same problem and/or knows how to get her aging normally... (I could advance her to Elder by the same Ctrl-click method, but I'd rather have her aging instead.)

[phyllis_p]

They only time I had a problem similar to that was when I tried to use a house built in the University subneighborhood as a main neighborhood house.  The Sim who originally moved in stopped aging, but her husband, who married in a few days later, aged fine.  When she switched places with him on the tree was when I noticed she wasn't aging.  Moving them into another house (built in the main neighborhood) solved the problem.

[syberspunk]

Have you tried:

1) Forcing an error on her and resetting?

2) Forcing an error on her and deleting? (She should come back to the household eventually.  If not right away, then save, quit, and re-enter).

3) Having her Move Out on her own into the sim bin, and then recombining her back into the household?

4) Moving the entire family out of the house into the simbin and then moving them back (or onto a new lot altogether)?

Sometimes sim data just gets borked.  Reseting or deleting them out can fix things (but not always).  Invisible objects like the various controllers that get spawned on lots can also get borked.  So moving sims out and back or to a new household can reset/respawn or spawn new non-borked controllers.

Ste

[AnnaM]

Tried forcing error and resetting. Will try the other ways if this doesn't work, thanks. Of course this will take a while, since I can only know if it's worked next time the day changes....

[J. M. Pescado]

That'd be funny if it happened, a sim that mysteriously doesn't age and lives forever.

[syberspunk]

Yeah, that would actually be kind of a neat storyline... to have a singular kind of almost immortal sim...

Well... technically, you could already do that anyways.  Just stock up on Elixir and have one sim out live the rest of em.


Ste

[witch]

I often have a particular vampire throughout the entire timeline of a hood. My self sim has already started taking elixir, she's going to stick around for a while.

[AnnaM]

Yes, I do have a few "immortals" -- either vampires or through the Elixir method. This sim isn't <i>meant</i> to be one though :-)

(BTW, the force error/reset method didn't work. Now I've tried force error/delete, we'll see what happens...)

[Zazazu]

Well... technically, you could already do that anyways.  Just stock up on Elixir and have one sim out live the rest of em.

Or use your cowplant to drink them all, then find that the fridge is empty and cake sounds awfully good. 

[Zeljka]

If you haven't already, check her in SimPE.
I had a born-in-game Sim, married with a family and suddenly noticed that his wife (12 days younger) was 2 days from elder while he was still at 29 days from...

I tried everything, from negative asp elixer and moving him to a separate lot to deleting and error forcing.  Finally it occurred to me to check him in PE.  Not sure how it happened, but his days left was sitting around the 65,535 mark, (the number that appears for ghosts)

He'd never been anywhere close to death and I don't recall anything odd happening in his home, but that was the only place I could fix him.

[Spicey]

i noticed than when one of my playable sims "married" an npc (the maid from strangetown).  he aged, she didn't. 
i didn't want to mess with it so i just killed her off.  her hubby eventually got over it.

 

[Hook]

What's the deal here?  Now we're not allowed to marry NPC's?  Considering how many people played the ORIGINAL Legacy Challenge, and married NPC's into the families, and no such problems were reported, I have to wonder what the hell is going on.

Hook

[jrd]

Never had any problems with maids aging. There are some NPCs which should be avoided, but AFAIK maids, gardeners, delivery guys, mailmen, and most others are safe.

[Gwill]

I made the mistake of marrying the headmaster back in the days of the basegame.  Very bad move.

[Kyna]

When I first got NL, the gypsy summoned a car pool driver as a date for one of my sims.  I believe they're one of the "do not marry" NPCs. 

Now whenever I start a new hood, I go into SimPE and give certain NPCs (such as drivers, social workers, repo men) negative preferences to both genders.  I also do the same for nannies - I believe they're safe to marry in but they annoy the hell out of me, so like the Drama professors, they're not getting any action in my game

[jrd]

Not safe because these are not real Sims, but are pulled from objects.package:
Shrink, Grim Reaper, Hula Zombie, Pollination Technician, Remote Control Car, Mrs. Crumplebottom, OFB driving robots, OFB flying robots, Birds, Perfect Plant Sim, Santa Claus, Father Time, Toddler New Year

Definitely not safe because of incomplete Sim files:
Drivers, repomen, social workers, social bunnies, call-in-sick-guys (but get the phonehack to prevent these from ever being made)

Irritating hardcoded behaviour, but otherwise probably safe:
Drama profs (flirt), nannies (insane), gypsies (spit-polish), diva/mr.big (primp), slob (belch/fart)
Irritating hardcoded outfits, but otherwise probably safe:
cheerleaders, llamas, cows, streakers

Think that's them.
If you don't mind the behaviour or outfits, marry the latter groups if you must.

[Invisigoth]

Definitely not safe:
Drivers, repomen, social workers, call-in-sick-guys (if these even exist -- get the phonehack)

Irritating (because of stupid hardcoded behaviour), but otherwise probably safe:
Drama profs, cheerleaders, llamas, cows, nannies, gypsies

Think that's them.

How do you know if a sim is a driver?  Do they wear something special?  I'm pretty sure that I've never actually seen that NPC.

[jrd]

Drivers wear the ugly brown jumpsuits, and cannot be interacted with. Occasionally they walk by downtown, or get gypsy- or well-summoned apparently.
They're the Sims driving the taxis and carpools.

[Kyna]

Definitely not safe:
Drivers, repomen, social workers, call-in-sick-guys (if these even exist -- get the phonehack)

Irritating (because of stupid hardcoded behaviour), but otherwise probably safe:
Drama profs, cheerleaders, llamas, cows, nannies, gypsies

Think that's them.

That pretty much matches my list of sims who get negative gender preferences in SimPE.  Some I don't have in my neighbourhoods, unless I forgot to set up the Visitor Controller to prevent their creation.  Good to know I wasn't missing any.

[Gwill]

Did anything change in OFB concerning do-not-touch-type-NPCs?
With the "head for numbers" business reward bonus thing, you can suddenly call and befriend sims that could previously not be contacted in any way, like the drivers and social workers (but luckily not Mrs Crumplebottom).  Is that something that should be avoided?  What exactly is it that makes these NPCs untouchable.  I was under the impression that it had to do with lacking character file data, but I'm sort of imagining that the act of befriending them will give them a character file, but I'm not willing to experiment with it.

[AnnaM]

If you haven't already, check her in SimPE.

Thanks Zeljka, that worked a treat! It turned out that she had 70 days left. I changed this to 28, and once back in the game she was aging normally again (turned to "27 days left" at 6pm). (Well, she was probably aging before that too, but it wouldn't have shown for another 40 days or so...)

Oh, and Gwill? The headmaster is creepy. Marrying him is definitely a mistake.

[jrd]

Gwill: they already have a character file (all Sims except the unique objects.package NPCs have one), but e.g. the drivers and social workers are not real Sims. You might be able to call them and even invite them over, but they cannot be interacted with, they do not behave like normal visitors, so essentually you are clogging up a relationship slot with a useless Sim.
Your Sim can get unfulfillable wants such as winning a game against the driver, falling in love with, etc..

[syberspunk]

Definitely not safe:
Drivers, repomen, social workers, call-in-sick-guys (if these even exist -- get the phonehack)

Irritating (because of stupid hardcoded behaviour), but otherwise probably safe:
Drama profs, cheerleaders, llamas, cows, nannies, gypsies

Think that's them.

This should be added to the FAQ for things not to do in order to avoid a BFBVFS or just annoying crap.

Also... I thought that Pescado recommended avoiding marrying/moving in Uni NPCs (which I assume covered all profs, cheerleaders, mascots, cafeteria workers/cooks, coaches and streaks - are there any other Uni specific NPCs?).

Maybe a warning should be included for those that are "harmless" per se, but just really annoying.

Also... I like Kyna's idea of setting those "bad" sims as having negative gender pref towards both.  Perhaps this should be done with a patch automatically... or maybe something that twojeffs' ACR hack can include when running the randomizer.  Maybe all NPCs that are considered "bad" should be set to negative pref?

Also... is there anyway to hack that phonecall thing from OFB to exclude all "bad" sims from showing up?  I think it would be a good idea if there was a hack/fix/patch for this, since a lot of people won't know any better and don't realize they should avoid interacting with these sims.


Ste

[jrd]

Oh yeah, forgot streakers. And the diva/slob... Off to edit.

[Zazazu]

How about "always move sims out and remove hacks before packaging a lot"? I just neglected that (stupid) and then realized that my lot contained files for the family's 25 friends, other randoms they've met, and don't forget family members to the nth generation plus all the custom content these members had...and the phone hack. Then, I went into the original lot and found that I couldn't go into live mode without the game crashing (no errors came up). Yeah. Bad.