AM version 9-8-09 11:09am. I sent a sim to collect seeds with Supreme Commander and he raced off to the library, ran up the stairs, and pulled the book "The Point of Pointilism" off the shelves and sat down to read it.

At which point (no pun intended) I clicked on the home button instead.   

Well, it's not just the number of homes that factors into the population growth. If you are using AM Story Mode, then sims get created through jobs. I started a new 'hood with 4 couples and left all the houses in place, and have been playing it for several sim weeks. None of my 4 couples have jobs, and no sims have been created in my nieghborhood (but I am up to 40 NPC's, for some inexplicable reason).

To be clearer, I believe there are two types of freezes that people are talking about. One freeze is a complete freeze of the game, where the plumbob spins but the controls are no longer responsive. The other kind of freeze is more like a stop-motion freeze where movements jerkily stop and go (except their heads still move) and actions take FOREVER to complete. I've had just one hard game freeze that I recall, but have had 3 saved games which all became unplayable due to the extreme lag and stop motion movements, as well as autonomy and motive failures. They were large families in large neighborhoods (around 100 residents). I just started a very small hood -completely empty with just a handful of couples, and do not (yet) have the problem, allthough sometimes their movements don't seem very smooth to me. A little on the  jerky side, but no major lag or motion freezes at all. Yet.

You're not the first I've heard blame it on the latest patch, and you might be right, who knows. Maybe someday someone will figure out a way to improve the situation; in the meantime I'm saving up cash to replace my sub-par computer, which if not the cause, is sure not helping the situation. Although some people with very adequate hardware have also complained about the problem. Oh, and when I took out AwesomeMod, it made no difference, I still had the problem. <shrugs>

No, the nude sim does not have either of those traits. I played a bit today again and so far I have not seen a repeat of the flagrant nudity. In front of the toddler, no less. 

Just reporting some experiences with sims 3 the past few days: I started a brand new neighborhood with twoftmamma's empty, cribbed 'hood. Then I created 4 separate couples and gave them all non-job-related lifetime goals and cheated them up some cash (I'm purposely keeping the 'hood as small as possible). Just to be sure I registered them all as unemployed using Twallan's part-time employment hack, because none of them are "blessed" since I want awesome story to do its thang when I'm not playing them.

The game generated lots of NPCs right off the bat (like 34 of them if I recall), but these must just be cab drivers, newspaper deliverers, etc., as none of my families employ a maid service. They also don't have any kids yet so there's no school issues yet. There is some jerkiness in their movements after I've been playing for a few hours but no major lag yet.

After starting them out in modest housing, I manually moved 3 of the couples to new housing - to two very nice houses that I had downloaded and a third house that I'd made but hadn't yet had a chance to play. This required cheating them up even more money. While I was moving the second couple, the first couple quit their "jobs" in "unemployment". One of my couples later gossiped that one of them got a new job, which I haven't checked out yet, but since I was trying to keep them unemployed so that no new sims would be generated that news didn't thrill me. Then while playing/moving the 3rd couple, I got a notice that the second couple quit their jobs in unemployment. I think that was probably due to them having plenty of money since there was some left over cash after moving, but when I went back to the 4th couple, I got a message saying that the 3rd couple, who I just moved to this fabulous new house, had moved to a smaller house. They have no children but I placed a crib in the house I'd moved them to so I see no reason for it other than I guess they thought the house was too large! Maybe it was the fact that the bedrooms all had double beds instead of single beds in them. Hmmm, I'll have to test that. But I had just had my sim start a garden at that house, too. Now I either have to make them move back or make him plant a new garden all over again.

Odd things start to happen after playing a few hours, too (nonawesome things). I sent sim A to the shower one morning then commanded her to eat cereal. While I was focused on sim B who was eating his cereal at the table, sim A walked over with her bowl of cereal and ... she was completely naked. WTF?? It was a riot! I clicked on her and commanded her to change clothes and as soon as she finished her cereal, she did it. I wasn't sure there for a minute if I'd have a sim walking around naked permanently or not. I have a sim in my Sims 2 game who NEVER gets dressed after bathing unless I send him to the dresser. This behavior is consistently reliable, even after just starting the game. Very wierd! Hopefully this sim isn't going to start doing the same thing all the time, although in sims 3 at least you don't have to have a dresser to get them to change into clothes.

Anyway, just reporting that my sims are also moving. If the ancestral home feature is working and we use that, that doesn't affect story mode, correct? Because sometimes I would like nonplayed sims to stay where I put them but I'd also still like them to be subject to story actions. Also, if things like double beds versus single beds affect moving, it would be nice to have a more complete understanding of the logic involved in how that works.

I was going to wait awhile since you said you weren't in any hurry but it looks like you might be cutting this off early so....Donation complete.

As mentioned, I am shallow enough to purchase a title if they are for sale (feminine form please). If not, consider it a thank you. Baa baa...


Edited to correct spelling fail.

Only recently have I been hearing the random "creepy music" but I've had no clue why it was occuring. Now I'm wondering if it was because a ghost was driving by the house! I'm going to hurry and put the game on pause when I hear it the next time so I have time to check out the area.

Well gee, for someone who says he wasn't intentionally trying to offend someone, a surefire way to prove that are those last two sentences of yours. But you are mistaken. In the first place I wasn't aware that your statements were specifically directed to me, especially since I had forgotten that you had even made a suggestion. Going back to read it now, the reason I forgot was that yes, it was very short, and more important, I had already tried that. And really, I didn't spend any more time than I had to on the whole matter because I knew how to install the file manually and so that's what I did.

You were also mistaken because I was not so much offended by your response as amused by it, and thought to give you some practical advice on the matter. You, of course, are free to take it or leave it, and continue dispensing as many cupcakes as you'd like.

@veezee: As a noob yourself, I suppose that denigrating other's computer skills is your way of attempting to establish your perceived 'superior' computer abilities on this site. But in my opinion a better strategy on your part, which would better serve to establish your credibilty in that regard, would be if you actually provided some useful technical information on occasion.

@Jordi: thank you for responding to my question, and for the useful technical information.

Any chance the access denied messages due to this? Aside from error mesages, creating a new Games folder would certainly make it simpler to find the game files. I doubt if I'll change things on my PC at this point, but I'll do it this way when I buy a new one. Thanks for the advice.

@Alatien: In the first place, I believe that the Install Monkey includes the Install Framework so you do not need both. I believe the instructions on the AM download page say to use the Framework OR use Delphy's installer. And what do you mean when you say you "added awesomemod"? Did you just double click on the file? Did you get a message saying it installed successfully?

If it didn't, and you want to know how to install AM manually, see the Access Denied thread that I just responded to, since it explains where to put the AM file on computers using Vista if you can't get the Install Monkey to do it's thing. I have 32 bit not 64 but I don't think this will affect the file structure; someone more awesome than me might be able to help if it does.

OK we will probably both get yelled at, you for creating a brand new thread just for an issue that is not really Awesome Mod related, and me for answering you. But I will respond anyway because I received this message the first time I tried to reinstall AwesomeMod using Dephy's Install Monkey (or whatever it's called) too. I have no idea why it only worked the first time and not after that, but it didn't for me, either.

I'm sure there's probably another way to resolve the issue, and you might be able to find the answer on Mod the Sims, since that's where you'll find support for the Install Monkey thingy (as I seem to recall other people reporting this issue there). The way I resoved it, though, was to just drag AM to the Hacks folder (which the Install Monkey created) manually. The Install Monkey makes installing packages easy, but you really don't need it to do it for you if you understand where the files go in the first place.

If you have Windows Vista, go to Computer>C Drive (or whatever drive you install your programs on)> Program Files>Electronic Arts>The Sims 3>Mods>Packages>Hacks. Drag the file inside the Hacks folder, or cut and paste it, or use whatever method you choose to get it there. If you don't want to do it manually, you could try reinstalling Install Monkey to see if it installs AwesomeMod for you again.

I ran into some odd but seemingly benign behavior yesterday; I have no idea if it means anything or not, but thought I'd report it just in case. The sim I was controlling went to the library and two other (created by me) sims were there. Neither of the two were from the same household. One sim was a romantic interest of my controllable sim so I directed him to greet her and she suddenly ran to the toilet and threw up. My first thought was to wonder if she had been pollinated but she is single and I hadn't received any story mode announcements about it. About the time she came out to speak to my controllable, the other sim, a male, ran to the toilet to puke also. Like I said, they were not part of the same household so it doesn't seem likely that they both ate the same rotten food. I suppose they could have both eaten spoiled hotdogs at the park or something, but for this to happen at the same time to two unrelated sims seemed strange. Is there any chance that you doing any tweaks to the game involving throwing up that might have somehow generated this? I did not see this behavior repeated again by these sims or any other sims during the remainder of the play session, so it's not a big deal or anything, just thought I'd mention it.

As previously reported, I had two families who were moving 3 times per day and the common theme was one particular house they were taking turns moving into. Both families had a toddler already and the Romance story actions were alternately sending them to the house that had two cribs. The Romance actions causing this for one family would generate Move In actions for the other family and so they would move into another house. When I investigated what was going on, I deleted the second crib and the musical houses stopped.

I do not know the mechanics involved in Awesome story mode, but if the Romance or Move In actions send a familiy to a house that's already occupied (because it has some feature that it requires, such as the example in my 'hood of two cribs instead of one), what happens when the family that is displaced has no other suitable, affordable house to move to? It seems like it would be occasionally possible for all the available homes to be too small, or not have enough beds, or to cost more than the family can afford, etc., so what would happen to the displaced family then?

I cannot make anyone who I have active control over sacred by clicking on them, either. I have to do it through neighborhood view or with the console command. I can click on other people and make them sacred, though, so if I'm controlling a family there's a work-around.

Does droptrait <Sacred> work to remove the sacred trait? I haven't tried to remove it from anyone so I haven't seen the problem where the trait remains, I was just curious if that would work.

So that could have reset itself even if I had not selected other families to play? I've never noticed it, but at least that would mean that EA didn't purposely make all the nonplayed sims complete puddings. Er, wait, I guess they already did that.  Apparently some of them fail at being puddings.

Still, why, from a programming standpoint, would they implement things in such a way that all the nonplayed sims would fail at work or school? If they didn't intend for them to actually materialize and take up processing space, why didn't they make sure that they wouldn't pay consequences for it? Do you think that was intentional or just very poor implementation?

I posted in the Awesome Story Driver thread about how I had 2 families who were house-switching 2 times a day. I normally pretty much stick with one main family but this was getting tedious so I finally selected each family in turn and took a look around and hopefully ID the problem. I don't intend to repeat the whole story here again, I just noticed that the children in both families were all in Red status from not doing homework, which didn't surprise me, since I've heard so many people here complain about this. After checking out these families I selected another sim couple that I planted in the 'hood and got them working on some skills; the next afternoon, I switched back to my main family. This all occurred over Saturday-Sunday Sim time.

Much to my surprise, my Sim who is Chairman of the Board in the Business career had very poor marks in his 'hold meetings' metric. He was perfectly fine in that metric when I left this family on Saturday AM; I come back on Sunday afternoon and he is suddenly doing poorly? WTF? He wasn't even AT work or supposed to BE AT work on the weekends. How did his stats tank like this? Does anyone understand what's going on here? Is this supposed to be some kind of EA "feature", where all the NPCs are purposely filled with failing adults and children? I suppose even better if they've got horrible traits so they can torture your playable Sim family. Yes, EA, how fun would that be. NOT. This is completely nuts! I'm beginning to see why so many of you are using Supreme Commander! If anyone can make any logical sense of why this is such a fail and could explain it to me I would really appreciate it. I do realize that it may just be complete laziness but there are such negative consequences to the nonplayables that your sims interact with in the game (unless EA assumed we would ONLY play with created sims?) that this is just difficult for me to wrap my head around.

This is a brand new neighborhood and for the first time ever I used the destroyallhumans command. After that I went around to most of the houses in town and nosed around (this provided an interesting opportunity to see the homes up close but I don't think I would want to do it every time I started a neigborhood!) and put cribs in at least a dozen houses. I never actually counted them but there's definitely more than one house with a crib. It might be one of the largest homes with a crib, though. Maybe I should REMOVE the crib in that house!

The Romance actions seem to be making each family move into Peep's Peak. The Move In actions are alternately sending one of these two families into the "Large Family Home". The Large Family Home is actually one of the "apartment" style homes near town that I remodeled/renamed to be more family friendly since most of the homes are way too small, but maybe there's a good game design reason for that.

I tend to just play one family at a time so I don't switch around a whole lot but when I start up the game again I'll try to take a look to see if I can get any more in-game information if you think that would help. As of yesterday evening the two families were still moving about 3 times per day, alternating between Romance and Find Home story actions.

ETA: The Tinley's were a family of 7: parents, 2 teens, 2 kids, 1 toddler. The Ly's were a family of 5; parents, 1 teen, 2 kids, 1 toddler. The Find Home actions were putting both families into a 4 BR 2 Bath home with 2 twin beds, 3 full beds, and 1 crib. The Romance actions were putting them in Peek's Peak which had 1 double bed, 3 twin beds, and get this: TWO CRIBS. I deleted one of the cribs and thereafter recieved no additional story action messages with the two families swapping houses 3 times a day. I'll try to play some more tomorrow to makes sure they've really stopped, but at this point it appears that both wanted to be in Peek's Peak for Romance actions so they could spawn again and needed the two cribs so that their toddlers also had a bed.

AM 8-14-09 version, 1:50am. Two neighborhood families have been playing musical houses. It goes like this:

Wednesday 2PM
    Romance: Ly family moves to Peep's Peek for spawning
    Find Home: Tinsley family moved to Large Family Home

Wed. 11PM
    Romance: Tinsley moves to Peep's Peak
    Find Home: Ly moves to <blank>

Thurs. 2:53AM
    Romance: Ly moves to Peep's Peak
    Find Home: Tinsley moves to Large Family Home

Thurs. 11:01AM
    Romance: Tinsley moves to Peep's Peak
    Find Home: Ly moves to Modernhaus

Thurs. 3:26pm
    Romance: Ly moves to Peep's Peakl
    Find Home: Tinsley moves to Large Family Home

Thurs. 11:20PM
    Romance: Tinsley moves to Peep's Peak
    Find Home: Ly moves to Stalwart Mission

Friday 5:05AM
    Romance: Ly moves to Peep's Peak
    Find Home: Tinsley moves to Large Family Home

I stopped keeping track after that since it was getting exhausting. Except for the Ly family trying a few new houses, they're mostly battling it out between Peep's Peak and Large Family Home. It's like Romance actions and Find Home actions are sort of cancelling each other out.

After a few Sim days I also noticed that my Sims were not aging. I clicked on the cell phone and got a message that 'Indie Stone data now loaded' or something to that effect. So then I checked the IS options and Stasis was enabled. I disabled it and exited the game and when I checked my aweconfig file, here's what I had enabled:

  <Current_Tuning>
    <UseIndieStoneDriver value="False">
       <!--ISM: Check for IndieStoneMod Driver. The next section will be ignored if enabled and ISM is installed.-->
    </UseIndieStoneDriver>
    <UseAwesomeStoryDriver value="True">
       <!--EXPERIMENTAL: Uses AwesomeMod's own storydriver: The next section will be ignored if enabled.-->
    </UseAwesomeStoryDriver>


ETA: Downloaded and installed 8-15 7:31 version of AM, took out the IndieStoneMod, and restarted the game; no more Indie messages or functionality occurred. Ly and Tinsley families were still fighting over Peep's Peak, though. I know you said to give it time and they would work this stuff out, but does this just keep going on day after day until one of them finally cries "uncle!"?   

I agree with Mootilda, I don't think you have installed it correctly. First of all, if you use Delphy's Monkey installer, you do NOT need the Framework file. It's my understanding that they do the same things. Secondly, when I installed the Monky Installer, it installed xml files just fine by double clicking on them, but it would not install Awesome Mod by double-clicking. So I had to manually drag and drop it into the correct folder.

After I did that, I still couldn't get it to work either. But then I finally figured out I was installing it to the My Documents/Electronic Arts folder. Custom content doesn't get installed there in Sims 3. What platform are you using? Mac, Windows XP, Vista? Depending on which you are using, you mayl find the correct file in differently. I think for most people it goes into your Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 folder, but NOT the My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 folder. So make sure you check that, too.

And Chaos, you are not chrazy. The Enablescripterror package file WAS listed for download in the Am download thread on MATY for awhile. That's where I downloaded it. I haven't used it since the latest patch borked it (although I know it's since been updated).

I'm not convinced that it's AM related, since I swear I tried playing my 'hood again after taking AM out and I still experienced the excessive lag and freezing sims. It's possible I didn't clear caches, however, since I only do that on rare occasions, and it could have still been under AM influences. I'm going to delete caches and try again without AM to see what happens.

@Doc: I agree, it's not synchronized between sims. Sim A will be running for the front door with Sim B right behind them; Sim A suddenly freezes mid-stride, so Sim B, who does not become frozen in place and is proceeding normally (relatively speaking) toward the door, stops behind the frozen Sim A, who is blocking their path. This is causing even longer delays, of course, because we all know how long they stand around after route failures.

ETA: OK, I take it back. I took AM out and played one sim morning. Things were a little slow and choppy, but it didn't seem quite as bad as it was previously. Put AM back in and confirmed; there was a noticable increase in the lag/freeze problem. I was also getting a lot of AM story mode notices, if that's relevant.

BTW, after putting newest version of AM back in, I experienced 3 CTD's, which I really haven't experienced more than a few times before. Voodoo du jour was to close out the launcher, which was running in the system tray due to installing new store content. And now I have to stop typing because my 11 week old kitten is trying to eat my arm.

A lot of us reported this same issue under the "Work/school zergswarms and game performance" thread, listed further down from this one. In one family I have, 2 teens, 2 kids, and an adult all leave for work/school at the same time and it takes them hours to get out to the street. Usually it's between at least 9:30 to 10:30 before they all get out there, and by that time the bus has left and they then take the car or a bike to school. Over the weekend, one day my adult Sim, a level 10 scientist, didn't manage to leave for work until 11:30 (in spite of the fact that he started toward the door at the usual 7am time). He got paid about half his normal salary for the day. The screaming toddlers and babies are almost worse. They'll be in red status before the Sim, who stands holding the screaming infant for an hour or more, finally gets around to feeding it. It's very frustrating because something with game performance prevents your Sims from accomplishing what you tell them to in a timely manner, but the game is still punishing you for not doing it. Effin' stoopid game. 

I started a new 'hood and nuked everyone to start off; there are only about half a dozen households at this point but so far I am not experiencing the awful game-nuking lag. I'm hoping that the same thing won't happen with this one, or else someone will find a way to fix it if it does.

Thanks for all the feedback. I did try towderelects but I got an unknown command. AM had been running awhile before I DL the stand-alone toilet, so maybe the car/limos had already been purged by that time?

I have never actually looked at the school to see if they're getting stuck. If you don't actually look, you don't have problems. The game was not designed to have an entire neigborhood of kids get in the school building in a short time frame. It will all happen "off camera" as long as you don't peek! (This reminds me of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indy saying "Don't look, Marian!" when the Germans opened the Ark). If I did look, I have no doubt it would be just as excruciating as the way they are (NOT) moving around the house.
 
Just to update the speed thing further, last night I DL the newest AM but didn't install. Took the old out (without replacing, played w/o AM at all) and opened the same game and played for awhile after work today, and it was slightly better speed-wise but still very slow. So I got out of that game and started playing the McDermotts' (the "farmer" family) in Riverview to see how a new game would play. It still was a little slow. I sent Maximus (the teen) to pee at 7:30am on game day two and by the time he was actually out in front of the house running to the bus it was 9:30am. Two hours just to pee, OMG. Then at exactly 3PM game time, I had a hard freeze (nothing responded AT ALL) and had to close down via task manager. This was without AM at all, mind you. Then I added the newest AM back in but I'll have to wait until after work tomorow to play around some more to see what happens with it in, and how that compares. I also haven't tried reducing the size of my original 'hood yet to see how that affects game play. I'll post more after I try some additional stuff, including going back to the original game and trying the towderelects command again with the newest AM installed.

In my first game-play session using AM Story Mode, Ruby Broke married Don Lothario, then over the next week all I heard about were all the other sims the two were "romancing".  Apparently it wasn't much of a honeymoon.