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1  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances on: 2011 February 10, 10:09:51
Nice to see you solved your problem.

Can anyone tell me how a suburb or city "world" is determined? Also how about the cars that randomly drive about, for some reason I don't have any, and on top of that my sims...walk everywhere (the random sims that is).
Simsample sarted a thread on this topic at MTS: link here. The whole thing is still in testing, so no easy way to easily flag your world a city yet, but full of promises.
2  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances on: 2011 February 08, 07:58:01
Welcome to the happy CAW-users fellowship!

There might be several reasons to such huge lags. My usual bet is routing, although in your case, the slowness seems to be more general.
A few ideas to check:
  • Your computer specs. Is it 'beefy' enough to handle your world, depending on how large and how crowded (= how many objects/lots)  this one is?
  • Any potentially borked piece of CC?
  • Potentially conflicting mods?

Besides this, I come back to my little personal obsession, routing. Be sure you ask CAW to regenerate routing before you save and export your world. Well, sorry to point to the obvious, but I know that I can be a bit absent-minded sometimes and forget to do it :-)

What do you mean by 'using lots in EIG'?
Is it adding new lots in game, with the feature that came with Ambitions? If it is, then yes, I believe too that this can cause lagginess. I haven't made any extensive test, so it's just a mere belief so far. But I don't think the routing is properly updated in game, at least not in the same way that what the 'regenerate routing' command does in CAW. So, it's better to place all the lots in CAW, not in game.
If it relates to the use of the EIG feature in CAW, then it depends what you did. Just plopping buildings on lots or building there *shouldn't* cause any trouble. Again, when you come back in CAW, regenerate routing before saving & exporting. Did you try to pre-populate? I think you have to reset your sims before exiting EIG, to send them all home. Otherwise they can generate some mess. Pre-populating is not something I have tried myself, so it's just based on my readings.
3  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances on: 2011 January 27, 15:10:19
I tried to dl the 1.6 patch for CAW, and had all sorts of problems. So I uninstalled CAW and down loaded it again, and the patch doesn't come up in the launcher. Before I invest a lot of time in building a world, would someone please clarify for me: did I down a version that is somehow already patched? And if not, what do I do now?
Tell me if I'm wrong but, if I understand you correctly, you first downloaded a '1.6 patch' for CAW? There was once a patch for CAW, released ~ between WA and Ambition. But this patch was intended for a previous release of CAW, so there is no need to use it anymore. With Ambition EP/game patches, CAW was unusable for several weeks. EA released a new version of CAW (a complete new CAW, not just a patch) to make it usable again. We had to uninstall the previous one and install the new one.

I think that's the method they have used ever since: release of new software vs patch.
So, to be able to use CAW today, you should just: 1/ check you are up to date with all the latest patches of the game+ the EP/SP you own, 2/ download the last available release of CAW and install it. CAW should work just fine then.

As a tip, world building being so long indeed, keep back up's of your saves/files in CAW, frequent saves and back up's. There is always a chance that a new patch makes CAW unusable again for a while. Moreover, there is also a chance that a new version of CAW is not compatible anymore with previous saves.
4  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: a new world, Coconut Island on: 2011 January 12, 19:59:24
Quote from: Kiirkas
You are officially included in the "squealy BBS bobble-head" category I mentioned.
If Your Highness says so, I guess I just have to bow before such an enlightened opinion!

Concerning my comment at SnootySims, I didn't 'slag' Maty as in 'to say cruel or critical things about sb' (I had to look this up in dictionary). My choice of words was maybe not the best one, but I can assure you there was not a hint of critic in my mind. Quite the opposite, it was an affectionate comment for me. Well, obviously I failed!

For the rest, I don't see what was so offensive in my post there. Soupage there was, noticed here it was too. You are the one who revived this thread if I don't mistake. I don't see how copy-pasting here the explanations he gave at SnootySims, and telling him I had, is 'squealy'. Speculations were going on here, and I just added a new piece of information. I told him as a polite gesture. But that's probably what eludes you.

*bobble-head fucks off*
5  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: Testing the waters: What do you want in a 'hood? on: 2011 January 12, 11:07:33
Quote from: Crazetext
I've thrown out the first two worlds I made in CAW. I'm worried about distant terrain - it's pretty, but the suggestions here had caused me to experiment with small worlds. This doesn't leave a huge amount of space for rolling hills miles around while still having decent non-camera routing! What are people's thoughts on having limited distant terrain with a consolidated area like the 'hood posted by Zazazu above? (Or am I missing something?)
I have no problem with large world and distant terrain. When it comes to the level of performance of a world, I think that the amount of 'things' you put in it, and how packed they are, are factors that matter as much as the size of the world. As far as I understand it, it's a matter of balance between the overall/complete amount of said 'things' you put in world, how much of those things are in the zone of focus of your camera at one time, therefore rendered in high detail by the game, how many sims live in the world, especially if you use Awesome Story, and of course how beefy or not the computer is.
When I speak of 'things', this can be:
  • The amount of ground paintings used/chunk (with a limit of 8/chunk) for instance. So, large decorative zones (yellow non camera paint) on the outskirt of the world, with only a few layers of ground painting, shouldn't impact too heavily on the performance. And a distant terrain is just one large but low detail object, weighting almost peanuts I think. (BTW, you might be interested by this thread@mts, a list of extracted height maps for all the distant terrains released so far). Be aware too that the .dds come in 2 flavors, high quality ones (1024x1024 pixels), heavier but better rendered in distant view and thus suited for the larger zones (main grass texture for instance), and low quality ones (512x512 pix), looking a bit shitty in distant view, but lighter to render and better suited for highlights and detailed small zones of painting.
  • Obviously, the objects themselves. Animated ones (spawners/effects/street lights) are -much- worst than static ones (rocks/trees/fences...). Moreover, trees get clustered (by type, by layer, by chunk) so a large crowd of the same type of vegetation in the same chunk is still one meta object in the end. (there might be a limit on how many items can be clustered, but I have no clue about this value. Does someone know?) 
  • One of the heaviest 'thingy' you can put in a world is a lot, especially the large residential mansion with an over-decorated garden, and its cousin, the very large buildable community lot. So you may want to pay attention on how you group your lots. Denser areas are very nice and have the real-looking feeling, I love them too, but they should be well thought out, balanced and tested.

Quote from: Crazetext
EDIT: I've been doing a lot of reading, and it looks like in order to create the kind of lived-in, pre-made soap opera world I'm planning on I should share this as a save file as opposed to a world file. While the mods that allow Edit-in-World to manipulate Sims are fairly powerful, I'm interested in something even deeper - possibly even letting the game play out for a while. Is this an absolutely horrible idea? Are there any technical issues I should worry about/that mean I should avoid sharing as a save completely? Does this cause you to scoff at me?
I have a preference for save file myself. I've had troubles with pre-population included in sims3pack, frozen needs and non aging sims (only the pre-made ones, not the CAS I would put in). I'm not sure what causes this, it could very well be something stupid on my computer or game installation, and thus this little experience of mine is probably irrelevant. Additionally, within a save file, you can include mummies and playable ghosts.
6  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: a new world, Coconut Island on: 2011 January 12, 10:01:10
You must be unaware of this then.
Nope, I had seen the big soupage and drama too. But good news is coming from Snooty Sims:
Quote from: Iggyjd03@snootysims aka ProfPlumbob
Ah! I see you've been to the official forums.   I'm not discontinuing it, I just left that community. I probably should go back there and clear up that I meant the thread and my involvement at that community is *dead* not Coconut Island.   

There were several individuals that were starting to spread around that I like to stir up drama and trouble and I just didn't feel like being apart of that atmosphere anymore. It started when months ago I got into a heated discussion and called someone arrogant and stubborn because they were being stuck in their ways. I didn't really care about that incident and didn't take it personally, until I noticed individual(s) were going around questioning my age, the friends I have, my maturity, my "literary circle", I hold grudges, saying I should be avoided and that I love stirring up drama and targeting people. It turned into character assaults against me and it started influencing how people viewed me there. No point in wasting time having to explain that I wasn't trying to start drama over and over again to people that were influenced by what others were saying. I really liked mingling/helping people there, but it will get to the point of exhaustion if I have to keep explaining that I'm not doing what they're saying. They have a good community, the good far outweighing the bad, but since I seem to be in the "bad" category, it was best that I just left. There are dozens of communities and places to go to, so it's no real biggie. People will find Coconut Island elsewhere, like here!

Anyway!   

It's still alive and kicking, don't worry!
After all, Coconut 1.0 was released a year ago, and the guy has been updating it ever since. So the chance that he would completely discard his work was pretty low.
But this is indeed one of the nicest and biggest dramatic soupage on the EA asylum's forum for a long time, a complete success in fact. And I must confess that somehow, he has all my support and respect on the matter. That got me laughing hard.

Quote from: jeebuschrist
The offending thread is right here.  Basically, he made an offhand joke about EA and someone else told him to stop "starting drama."  The BBSers were decidedly immature, but it was a great overreaction to soup from the community and take down his neighborhood.
Actually, I think it's only the very last chapter of a longer history of heated discussions with some of the 'resident posters' of the CAW forums. From what I've witnessed from time to time during the last months, ProfPlumbob bravely tried to fight the huge mass of irrationnal beliefs, lies & propaganda, rumors that always float all over the official forum. That was a bit naive and utterly pointless, yet brave. And Kiirkas put it better that I could ever express it:
Quote from: Kiirkas
The overlords don't like their Stepford charges behaving in any manner other than permanent circle-jerk group affirmations and "creator" worship, and take action as required to elicit the desired behaviors.  Can't have anyone being "direct" or "honest" over there, it makes the EA teat-suckers cry.
7  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: a new world, Coconut Island on: 2011 January 11, 15:28:17
Prof Plumbob is active at Snooty sims too, and he has a thread for Coconut there (link here).

He said there that the final version should be ready within the next 2 weeks. Just a little bit of patience from now on!

Anyhow, the last updates on the official forums were very nice, and I'm much looking forward this world too.

 
8  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: Testing the waters: What do you want in a 'hood? on: 2011 January 11, 14:45:07
Quote from: Crazetex
I guess the most important question is this: would you actually download and play in a world that isn't necessarily inventive, but instead thought-out and hopefully charming/intriguing?
Yep, definitively. I often download worlds, but I only keep the ones I consider 'high quality'. I find there are 3 major parameters regarding world design. They are:

    1. Technical quality, and I guess this is mostly about a practical and sound routing design for the world grounds, and good accessibility on the lots themselves.

    2. Aesthetic/visual quality: fine ground painting, good trees and objects placement, custom road and sidewalk textures... A good level of details and finish, like addresses for lots for instance.

    3. A good theme, or at least consistency in the theme. It doesn't have to be over original indeed (sci-fi, fantasy...), but rather coherent. No obelisk, arc de triomphe or huge space shuttle in small villages usually, even if those objects are available in the meta data list, and SO tempting.

Of those 3 points, the technical aspect is the most decisive for me. A world can be as original, extraordinary, great looking as one wants, if my sims stay stuck all over the place because routing sucks or because they are in a bottleneck, I hate it. Like many here, I'm use Awesomemod and its story progression. This means my inactive sims DO something, go to places. And bad/wonky routing + 'active' inactive sims = lags, freezes and a huge amount of irritation for me. Sooner or later, I will discard the world, as lovely as it is.

Besides this, most of what I like as already been posted above. More small to medium lots, loads of starter and average homes, sub-hoods with their own identity and their own set of proximity community lots if the world is large enough to house them, tested lots and tested world.

For the population, do it if you want to. But if you chose to include sims, the bios and household descriptions are kind of a must for me.

Quote from: Crazetex
How easy/possible is it to have designated playable sims be pianists/mixologists/etc.? Are they only NPCs? Obviously I still have research to do before starting this project; I haven't had Late Night for very long
As far as I know, pianists, mixologists and the likes are homeless sims, so unselectable and unplayable. I have absolutely no clue if it's possible to mod those roles to be selected among the playable pool. Anyhow, it doesn't even mean that the role would stick to the playable sims. Register clerks and the stylist are roles tended by playable but inactive sims for instance. As soon as you select a household with one of those sims as your active lot, this sim will 'lose his job' and another unemployed inactive in the right life stage will be selected to manage the register (or the stylist station). You can find a great tutorial here about pre-populating: http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:Populating_CAW_Worlds

Simbots, mummies, ghosts, red-green-blue sims, celebrities and vampires are all welcome. I can always nuke what I don't like, so feel free to create what you like.


So, good luck with this project, and loads of patience and perseverance with CAW!
9  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2010 December 07, 11:27:29
You cannot force any specific action under AwesomeStory. But yes, as one of the responses to population pressure in AwesomeStory, marriage rates decline as sims no longer have a need to pursue romances all the way to the conclusion. AwesomeStory's goal is basically just to help sims accomplish things they would otherwise be too brainless to do on their own, but if that thing doesn't need doing, then why help them do it?Also a LARGE part of the problem IS your use of Buzzler's mirror, which introduces a very strong distortion into AwesomeStory's progression rules by derailing the sequence.

Hum, could you explain this, please?
Do you refer only to the automated use of Buzzler's mirror (Sustain-O-Mat, or something like that), or is it also a potential problem, or distortion, if we use the more manual action (use the mirror as a filter to select female candidate(s) to pollinate)?
Does the 'distortion' get worst the more massively we pollinate?

When you mention sequence, do you mean that there can't be any pollination in unmarried couples with AwesomeStory? I can't remember any in my worlds indeed. So if I use Buzzler's mirror or Twallan's Master Controller to give illegitimate children to my flirty sims, that's messing things up for Awesome SP?

10  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: AWESOMEMOD 1.2.7/2.7.7/3.3.11 TEST THREAD on: 2010 June 13, 06:38:39
I had 2 CTD's yesterday.

With AM Build 11/06 19:31, Base+WA+AMB, played in a new save with Riverview and a new sim in the fire fighter career.

The error log seems to indicate missing dll.
It first happends during a fire, then straight after unpausing a freshly loaded game.

Then, at 3rd attempt to play that sim, it went perfectly fine and smooth, not even a FSE.
11  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: AWESOMEMOD 1.2.7/2.7.7/3.3.11 TEST THREAD on: 2010 June 11, 18:55:52
[Bracing for rotten tomatoes and potential yelling]

I've just installed AM for testing since the "more troubled phase" seems to be over, and I'm afraid I've found some weird behavior in my game. Here it is :

Awesomemod version 09 june 22:35, no special config added, and I have WA+AMB. (I put the mod in the user/Doc proper folder if it changes anything)
The game loaded find and I've seen no FSE, CTD and the likes.

I decided to start a new game in Twinbrook, and the sims of the several houselholds I picked had absolutely nobody in their relationship panel. Example, the Curious: they were not a family anymore, but just acquaintances, and none of them knew anyone in town.

(side note : I discarded my previous Sims3 folder under user/doc and let the game regenerate a brand new one, there is no other mod, and I've just put back a few free items from the store)

I removed the mod, cleared cache and started the Curious from TB again, and they are back to normal (family + friends). I made a save of them.
Put back the mod and checked again. They remain "normal" in that save, and so do the other households I've selected after. But if a start a new game, the same bug happens again.
I checked some families in Sun Valley and Riverview w/ AM installed and everything is just as usual there.

I haven't seen this reported in this thread, although ShortyBoo and some others have the same problem. See the Ambitions/ what's borked thread around post 270

I'm not sure this is related to AM because there is nothing in the other 2 EA world, but w/o the mod it doesn't happen either, at least in my game.


12  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Ambitions: What's borked on: 2010 June 11, 18:20:00
I finally got Ambitions to load, so I picked a household at random to play in the new town. It was the Bayless family. Anyway, the first thing I did was check out their traits, relationships, etc. and I noticed some odd things. None of them know anyone, not even each other. And none of them have anyone attached to their family trees. I figure this was supposed to be a family with a mom, dad, teen daughter and child son. Is this broken for anyone else? I switched to another family, and their family tree was ok, so I'm not sure what happened.

A similar issue just happened in my game too. I've been playing Ambitions and Twinbrooks for some days  (w/o mods) and all the relationships from the premade families were normal (family ties, friendships, enemies....). There were bugs and strange things but not that!
Here I just put the last version of Awesomemod in proper place for test sake, and the sims of the households I loaded knew absolutely nobody. For instance, the Curious family is not a family anymore, they are just acquaintances to each other and their relationship panel is completely empty. Weird.

I removed AM, cleared caches, loaded game and everything seemed to be fine again in Twinbrook. So I made a save of the Curious, exited, put back AM and tried again. My finds :
1. In that save (made w/o AM) the relationships stay normal for the Curious and various other households I checked.
2. If I create a new game, again the relationships are borked (inexistant).
3. I checked in Sun Valley and Riverview and everything seems to be normal there.

Although I'm not 100% sure it's AM related, I'll post in the test thread if it can be of any use. For me, the bug seems to appear only with the mod. But since this happens only in Twinbrook too, that might very well be EAxian weirdness.

For the ones who encounter this bug, do you have Awesomemod installed (and/or other mods )?
Can you eproduce it in other towns?

Sh*** I was so happy to have AM back after a few days of pure EAxianity  Roll Eyes
Anyway, to fix it, the Super Computer of Twallan is pretty good for the job and AFAIK is already updated.
13  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Variable Crashes on: 2009 December 05, 11:59:53
World Adventure must have changed "something somewhere somehow".

I've never had any CTD prior WA, but since I installed it on a clean install of the base game (no cc, no store content, just AM now), my game is often lagging (especially in foreign hoods) and I have frequent CTD. Mostly with CAST indeed, to the point that I don't dare recolor anymore!

It's quite strange and more than annoying, because those CTD occur even with a "simple and basic" use of CAST, in freshly started game and computer (I'm not sure if that's correct English, but you understand what I mean : I haven't been playing for hours before I have CTD).

Well, the good point is that, prior WA, my crashes were the "game freezes" type ones, so probably memory leak or bad CC. Now, the game auto shuts down long before that point :-)
14  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: can't drag plate to inventory on vacation on: 2009 December 05, 11:31:58
I concur with you Papercut on that issue. I've had exactly the same one in egypt and in France.
My guess is that the "drag food plate to inventory" feature is disabled in foreign neighborhoods. So it's probably an EA bug/wonky feature.

I fulfilled the adventure in Egypt ("bring a shawarma plate to sim X") by :
1. sending my Sim back home (main hood) (Tip : don't accept such an adventure on your first day of vacation if you don't already have the required dish in your inventory :-)
2. just before leaving again for a new trip to Egypt, he took a shawarma plate with him (so the feature DOES work, but only in main hood)
3. he could deliver it properly in Egypt.

what I've not tested is :
Is it possible to drag a plate of food to inventory if a Sim owns a home in the foreign hood?
Is it possible to fulfill this kind of quest by buying the food at the local food store (in my "Egypt game", the food store is borked and perma closed, and in the French quest, the dishes had to satisfy some quality standard and store food is normal).
15  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: AwesomeMod Beta Testing 1.7.9/WA 2.2.8 Problems/Questions/Discussion on: 2009 November 25, 15:22:39
Ok I have the game + WA patched 1.7.9/2.2.8, no cc nor store content so far.
BetaAM from yesterday (I will download latest version for next play session) + my old config (awesome story driver enabled).
And the game loads without crash.

But so far :

1. I had frequent FSE, about every 2 sims hours, in the base neighbourhood (fresh Sun Valley with Agnes Crumplebottm). The same message than Sewinglady in post #162. Just in my case the numbers/references between brackets are different. (The five first ones are attached in a .rar)

2. I sent Agnes to visit China, and she couldn't finish it (give 3 gems to sims X). She would perform the action "deliver" just like usual (without AM), but the adventure would not register it.

3. During the same trip, I nuked a "purple" bike and after my sim couldn't select the "go here" action. Whenever I clicked on the ground, nothing was available. So I sent her back home.

4. A few days later, I sent her back in China, found a new adventure (again collect x items) but whatever I tried, the quest would never fulfill. Then I had a CTD.

So far, those are my only bugs.
16  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: droptrait registeredsexoffender on: 2009 September 12, 14:23:40
You can use Twallan's NRaas Super Comp in the pudding factory.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,16355.0.html

One of his filters to search / select a sim is a trait related one. So you can check if you have any other Pedophile / sex offender in your hood, and who their Pedobaits are.

By the way, this is how I discovered that the children of a former pedobait inherited her hidden trait... (or they might have gotten it from their pedophile father, which would make more sense in my humble opinion, but that would also require incest. brrr)
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