More Awesome Than You!

I have been playing Free Time for about 3 weeks, and today played a family I haven't played for a long time. Something seemed funny with the lot back when I played them with BV. Their sleep needs seemed never to decay, so they never went to sleep. I got tired of waiting for the next day to come so I stopped playing them.

Today I played them for about an hour, and by the end of that time, four of them, including a child, had burned to death. The first death came when the father went of his own volition outside to play an electric guitar in the rain. I don't think there was any lightning. Suddenly the guitar amp caught fire and the Sim burned to death  before I could get someone out there to extinguish the fire.

Then while they (grandfather, grandmother, wife and son) were mourning him at the site where he died, the grandfather caught fire and died. I deleted the guitar, thinking that would be the end, but then the son, about 8 years old, caught fire and died. The fire just appeared, and consumed him. Then the same thing happened with the wife. Most likely the grandmother would have been next, but I quit the game so she didn't have a chance to catch fire.

I thought that no children would die in the game. Does anyone have any idea how this could happen? Also, why would fire just spontaneously appear, with no object catching fire? It was night, and no one was overheated when this all started.  I was wondering if it's possible this lot is corrupted.

I posted this on BBS but no one had any worthwhile suggestions. One person said there was a tree in BV that was catching fire, but the trees on this family's lawn were just the trees that had always been in the game, so I don't think the fires were caused by the BV tree.

If anyone has any thoughts about this, I'd appreciate hearing them.

There already is a thread about random fires right here.
Maybe some of the suggestions made there can help you.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11676.0.html (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11676.0.html)

(http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/200/firepn4.jpg)

The family seemed borked anyway-I'd let them go. ;) Mass-suicide by fire!

Thanks for the link. From what I read on that thread, it sounds like the lot is corrupted. I don't have any non-awesome hacks, so that can't be the explanation. I don't know how to use the lot debugger, so that's ruled out. I'll just have to let the lot go.

Agree. When I quit I saved the game because I was half glad they were gone. I had lost interest in the family anyway so now I am rid of them. I will spare grandma a horrible death and move her into my Home for Unwanted Sims, then bulldoze the lot.

I'm going  to assume that this is somehow connected with Free Time, because of what I read in the link above, and because I've never had this problem before. Maybe the combination of something in Free Time and a buggy lot causes random fires.

No comment about the child dying? If the lot is borked, would that override anything Maxis put in the game to keep children from dying?

AFAIK, the only thing a child can't die from is Hunger, as the SW would come and take it away before it got to that stage. I could be wrong though.

No, that's right. As far as I know, children can die from disease, fire and drowning.

They can also be squished by satellite.  I didn't know they could get catch disease.  o_O  I wonder if they could also be electrocuted, or consumed by flies?  Hmmm, excuse me, I think I have an experiment to conduct...  ::)

You are so mean! But then, of course this is MATY...  ;)

Snapdragon, I had a child spontaneously combust just from walking from the front of the house (after getting off the school bus) to the back of the house to play on the swingset -- it was a playable child, but from a different family.  That was before I added the Seasons patch and then added JM's warmthfix mod.  I was surprised as well because I had always thought that only teens on up could even die in the game.  But yes, children can die by fire.  Oh, and I don't have any games newer than Seasons, so mine was not a Free Time glitch.

I've intentionally murdered the townie children more than once. Especially Marsha Bruenig.

She annoyed me.

I've killed kids off by flies before, but that was using Rodney's Death Creator, and hence isn't necessarily an indication of what is actually possible in-game. I don't remember the exact circumstances. It was a few 'hoods ago, back when the Oversoul took vengence on the children for their parents' mistakes and bunny-breeding.

I didn't realize children could actually die.  I haven't managed to kill any the whole time I've had TS2...don't know if that is an accomplishment or not.

Oh yes.  I learned this around Nightlife when Samantha Goth caught fire by standing too close to the hearth.  The Goths were my largest family at the time being 12 in number.  The other 11 stood around and screamed their heads off while she burned to death, thus blocking the entrance of the Fireperson.  Great.    ::)

The lot debugger is very easy to use.  Why not download it and look at the options available?  Next time it might be a family you care about.

Here's a few of the self-explanatory options to whet your appetite
Nuke has options to fix an awol headmaster & lost fishing spots
memory has an option to delete the attraction markers that cause assorted bugginess - sims act frigid for example..
 

"Info...LTA milestones" can add LTA points for marry-ins, who somehow don't get points for becoming an adult or graduating or having their first woohoo even though half the 'hood has had a piece of them.

"Fix...Flashing blue" can be used for quick appearance changes on anyone, residents and townies alike, even if the lot doesn't have a mirror.

Yes, Marsha always used to be "storyline fodder" when I still played with default townies.  Aged up, she really did not have great genetics anyway.  I think I'll have to try default townies again sometime.  I miss killing off Goopy and the rest.

Rodney's Death Creator has been an invaluable tool for ridding myself of excess population in interesting photogenic ways.

Thank you for the information. I did have the Lot Debugger at one time but once I realized I had no clue how to use it, I uninstalled it. Now that you both have elucidated some of its features, I will give it a try.  I did think that it would have been a very different situation if I had actually wanted to keep the family in the game. 

Just as an epilogue, I went back to the house with the intention of moving out the one remaining family member, the grandmother. I clicked on the computer so she could find another place to live. While I was doing that, she caught fire and died. Then the Grim Reaper sat down to watch tv for a while, while the cat ran around the house. Eventually someone from Pet Adoption Services came over to take the cat away, since there were no sims left to care for it.

Hmmm... Guess it's a Seasons glitch. I never download the patches anymore, so my game isn't patched. My solution for this issue is to save my game often, so if I do get another family wiped out by fire, I can quit without saving and still have most of my recent game. I'm crossing my fingers it was just that one borked lot and not a game-wide glitch.

Why would you want to play with a buggy game?  Patches fix stuff that needs fixing. Just look at the fix lists on the BBS.  Don't think you're covered by adding new EPs - you're not.  Also modders make hacks and fixes for a patched game - the fixes for old bugs aren't around any more

I used to download the patches until the Pets one, which caused my game to crash. Since then I haven't done it. From what I've read on this board and BBS, it seems that sometimes patches cause problems that weren't there before. My games (so far) have not been buggy in general, so I figure, why ask for trouble?

The problem is that many of the bugs that the patches fix are hidden, and you only know they're there when your hood explodes into a BFBVFS. The first Pets patch did have problems, but the one that's up there now is fine.

On the whole, I don't think she looks too bad.
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/646/05142008234056ik7.jpg
Married her to a Sim who was an empty-queue adoption. One daughter, Diane.
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/3917/05142008234912na7.jpg
Diane married another empty-queue adoption. One son, Kevin.
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/2584/05142008235550pz3.jpg
Kevin married  a University Townie. One daughter, Samantha.
http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/8320/05142008235826ze9.jpg

Nyt that's merely the way the genes went in my neighborhood.  Your mileage may vary.

If she had turned out that nicely in my hood, I would have kept her.  I last had default townies in game before installing any face templates, so perhaps that had something to do with it.  She was never "Sandy Bruty" fugly, but anyway.  IIRC, in my game, Meadow Thayer herself was fine, but her kids all ended up with strange "chipmunk cheeks" - possibly something to do with the father.

Probably, because I my hood she married Dustin Broke, and all three of their kids (one boy, two girls) are great looking.

I thought Marsha would always be the same anyway since the 'regular' townies are copies of the townies in Pleasantview (i.e. just copies of the pre-existing sim files) and aren't affected by the face templates.

Huh.  That would make some sense - anyhow it was a while ago and at the time I was quite annoyed at most of the default townies.  It may have been a subjective reaction on my part, but I certainly don't recall her turning out as nicely as jsalemi's pic.

That seems to be the current understanding, but I think there's some face blending that happens at each age transition if you have custom templates, especially if your replacement is very different from the default.  It would be plausible that Marsha's looks could change more since she'd have an extra age transition, compared to say, Meadow.

Or... I might have hit the crack pipe a couple times too many when I thought I saw this effect in my game.  ;D

Notovny, did you have replacement face templates in your game when you grew up Marsha?

No. I've never used any replacement face templates.

Not if you turn faceblendlimits off. I do...I switch face templates every generation and generate new townies, so negating the blend makes kids stay resembling their parents.

Ah, that explains it then.  I have blending on due to my mish-mash of templates by different creators.  That, and random injections of CAS townies by many varied creators results in quite a few peculiar offspring.  They stay, umm... distinctive? even with blending on. :D

Nice to know I can hang on to that crack pipe a while longer. ;D

I had nearly the same thing happen to one house right after intalling FT.  The Grandmother went to the back yard to get on this object from NL that gives body skill and is like a big gyroscope.  She caught on fire and died.  I had never seen that object catch on fire.  After the crying and wailing, her grandson went to water flowers in the greenhouse and caught on fire and died in spite of pleaing by the parents.  I exited without saving at this point, but had saved the Grandmother's death. 

Upon return, I had the mom fix dinner and while she was eating at the table, inside the house, with normal temperature, she caught on fire and died.  I am like , screw this!  I just saved and moved the 2 remaining sims to a new house where I have no more problems.  I deleted the old house. 

I think this is a Seasons/ FT interaction bug.  I noticed it happening to others on the Sim2 bbs after installing FT.

Thanks for this cathybb. I do think it's related to FT, because I had a similar situation on another lot after I posted here. The father was outside and suddenly a fire started (I'm not even sure if there were trees where he was). I tried to make him come in the house, but he couldn't. I  made his wife call the fire department and they came and put out the fire. He walked back in the house and seemed okay. But then some odd things started happening with some of the objects on the lot - they started blinking or flickering. I'm just glad the entire famly didn't burn to death, like the other one did. I left the lot shortly after all that, so I don't know if these were just isolated issues or if something is wrong with the lot. I'm glad to hear that this seems to be related to FT so I don't have to worry that it's something specifically wrong with my game.