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1  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: A serious error has occurred... on: 2011 February 20, 14:41:24
Before I go into passive (ie non-visiting) mode, I should mention that I too suffer from "A serious error", almost all the time, if I let it.

I don't get it at all if I use Windows XP, but if I try to play Sims 3 on Windows 7, I found I couldn't load my developed neighborhoods at all. It would try to load, get about a quarter of the way, and then give up. Highly irritating.

I found some reference to turning off DEP for all the game exe's and it worked. The only thing is, I have to do a reboot. If I quit off Sims 3 and try to load up a neighborhood again, it will fail. If I reboot, it will succeed 95% of the time. I also delete the cache files and the CurrentGame.sims3 (which seems to interfere with the loading process on occasion). I'm now able to play all my old neighborhoods, which at one point was looking to be highly doubtful. EA's "helpful advice" is to delete the neighborhood and start again.

I know what's causing it too. But, in your case, Alexina, I don't think it would be the same. In my case, it's the four-year-old CPU I have that needs replacing. During the loading process, the CPU maxes out, and it at that point when things crash. Before I did the DEP-thing, it would crash 100% at the point where it was maxing out the CPU. After, it must be able to handle the stress a bit better, somehow.

So... that's the source of my problems. I'll probably be upgrading pretty soon, so I don't imagine this to be a long-lasting problem for me. But... that was before I read your stats.

Well, I won't know until I try. Hope you find a solution, Alexina.
2  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Merging mods to increase Performance! on: 2011 February 20, 14:21:06
Thanks for the info, Rushad.

I tried out the program, went to the bother to file everything under categories within the program (which took time), and tried to run it. It didn't work for some reason. I could tell because I have a no-intro mod and the intro kept coming up. I checked things, but it wouldn't merge/load my mods. I uninstalled it.

But I have good news! I'm currently using the 64-bit version of s3pe and I was able to use it to merge together 856 MB into one package of 228 MB, without having to save-as-you-go. I just tried it and it worked. I've tried to do this the past (with the same packages), but with eariler versions of the program and only with the 32-bit version, and it always ended up crashing. But, it didn't this time.

I find my own file organizational skills + s3pe-x64 to be exactly what I need. So, Inge, please don't take the functionality out just because I made a fuss.

Oh, and another reason I'm not going to use that launcer (above it not working for me) is because I couldn't figure out how to make 3booter work with it.

I probably won't be around for a while, so cya guys.
3  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Merging mods to increase Performance! on: 2011 February 19, 11:01:57
Wow, such a quick response!

I feel a little sheepish. Umm, that's the first time I've heard of Granthe's Launcher. The reason I switched over to merging my packages in the first place was the massive performance increase at load-up. I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere, but merging them brings load times down to "acceptable."

Anyway, I'll go look into that launcer. If it does the same job, I'll switch over. If I see longer loading times, I'll just persevere with the file-monitoring. Like I said, I don't merge that large file very often at all, mostly I'm just merging Hacks packages that get updated on a daily basis.

If you could thank Peter fo the implementation for me, Inge, that would be super. Thanks.
4  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Merging mods to increase Performance! on: 2011 February 19, 10:33:11
OK, I was going to discuss this implementation issue over at http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforum/index.php?topic=220.0, but since I have to wait for log-in approval, I say I won't bother.

So, Anach, if you talk to those people in the near future, could you ask them to look into how they're generating the merged packages with the save-as-you-go approach?

What happens on my system is I've got a clothing directory that I merge together. I don't have to merge them together that often; only when I get something new. But right now, it merges to about 240 MB.

The "problem" I have is that to merge these together, I have to choose the save-as-you-go method (or else the program crashes when it runs out of memory), and that's OK because it does successfully make a merged package. But as a result, I get a horrendous amount of temp files created in my AppData/Local/Temp folder. With each file that's added, it puts a copy of the most recently merged file in there and adds to it. And then it moves on, copies that, adds. Copies that, adds. This goes on and on and on until you either run out of packages to merge, or you run out of diskspace.

I tried doing this with my other system, when I only had a 50 GB partition, which most of it spoken for and I was running into errors. That's when I noticed what this program was doing.

Now, since I know its behavior, I carefully watch those files and delete them as they build up. It's not a big issue at the beginning, but at the end, when you're adding packages in the order of kilobytes, and creating copies of 200+ MB on each addition, it soon consumes stupid amounts of diskspace for no reason.

And when the merge has completed, it doesn't even clean up after itself.

So... if you happen to talk to them, could you ask that they manage those files better? I mean, all they need is a copy of the most recent and a working file. But if they want a couple more than that, then fine. But they seriously don't need all of them, since they don't reference them at all, for anything.

OK, that's all I wanted to say. I really like merging all my packages together, and it's pretty easy to do. I'm just about to remerge the clothing package, and I'm going to be spending the next 30-60 minutes monitoring the process. That's why I thought I'd share my thoughts on that. Smiley

5  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Merging mods to increase Performance! on: 2010 October 18, 04:02:15
I'm finding s3pe running out of memory when trying to combine my clothing packages.

Right now I have three combined packages that I'd ideally like to turn into one big package. They are:

Adult.package - 98.3 MB
Teen.package - 42.7 MB
Clothes.package - 55.8 MB (and this file is the one that I want to fold the other two into.)

I they should come together to be under the EA's target size of 200 MB, so I thought things would be cool. But after a certain amount has been imported, the memory space of the application escalates ridiculously to the point where it eats it all up.

Is there any way to leverage EA's own tool to combine these packages? Their installer seems to be pretty efficient.

Oh, it might be just my system, I guess. I used to do this on Windows XP, under 2 GB of memory. I upgraded to Win 7 64, and 4 GB. After I've posted this, I might boot up XP again and try. Maybe it's OS dependent.

Edit: There wasn't much difference between them. So, I tried again on W7. I restarted and managed to combine Teen and Clothes, using the save-after-import option. That was without having firefox running in the background, so there was a little more memory available to it.

I now had two 98 MB packages that eat too much memory to combine further. But, it got me thinking: maybe it's better to incrementally merge the little packages together. I don't usually work that way, preferring to group and combine. But, I wanted to try it. So, I copied all the clothes out of their folders into just one "Clothes" folder and I'm in the process of combining them, saving-after-each-import. It seems to be going very well. s3pe is using a minimum of memory, and is slowly building up the Clothes.package.

I think this is the way to go. It's only slightly inconvenient, in that you have to collect them up into a single folder, and ensure no naming conflicts exist. But then it's cool.

I'll have to see how it goes when I try to add more (little packages) to this big one. When I tried that before, s3pe was running into memory troubles when trying to load the first package. It seems to me, that will happen again. But, that's about the size of it. Good enough to be getting on with.

Final size of clothes package: 199 MB.
6  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2010 September 11, 08:43:43
Yeah, you bring up some helpful thoughts, Jeromy.

I have given thought about assembling my own .dbc files before, but at this stage I'm shying away from it until I really have to, say in the event I start getting Error 12s and can't save. And you're right about EPs and SPs putting their stuff in their own archives. I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but I can see that would make things a little trickier.

Right now I've got 1.22 GB of dbc files, and only 208 MB of packages. I'm extremely conservative about what I manually add to my game in terms of packages, looking at pics beforehand and seeing how they turnout in-game, etc. But I tend to just let the craptastic EA files in wholesale, just because of the ease of that installer. I can see that I'm going to have to get brutal on this though, because I really can't stand half of that stuff.

To start, I guess I'll take note of what needs to go in the catalogs, and then maybe I can put some order to things. Thanks again. Smiley
7  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2010 September 10, 14:01:50
How hard would it be to make it so that one could delete category items in-game using AM?

I'm thinking, when using editsim on some poor Sim, I happen to see some hideous EAStore 50's throwback piece-of-shit clogging things up and the urge to kill it is fairly pronounced. I'd love to be able to just drag it to a trashcan or right-click it and have it permanently deleted -- thereby freeing up that much extra memory, and doing away with something offensive to the eyes.

Obviously, I'm aware that the game makes extended use of a lot of the more hideous items, and if they are mysteriously dragged away from it, it might have a series of tantrums unless it's properly pacified. So, maybe the system could go ahead and make substitutions throughout the neighborhoods for things taken out? That's probably a lot of fiddly work, though. And I'm not exactly sure what happens when the game just can't find something it used to have. I think it just substitutes something in itself, like the default hair in place of a Peggy hair. So, perhaps that not really a problem. Actually, I quite often use editsim to fix up Sims I see in-game, so I'm doing this kind of thing naturally.

The thing is, with more and more stuff packs coming out and adding less-than-desirable things to the catalogs, the more need I see for such a feature. I don't think there's currently an external program that offers 3D previews and catalog manipulation (editing the DCCache files directly), is there? The closest I've come across is to use  TSR Launcher to install Sims3packs and then use it to remove stuff I deem offensive. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm hoping it will be able to delete individual items from within the sims3pack, from the DCCache files (and DCBackup, but that's not important). I haven't tried it yet, but I hope it can do that. But that still leaves the package-based mods. They're a little more manageable to delete if you know which is which, or have kept jpgs of what each one is. I don't, so... Wink

Well, OK, I guess I've laid out the picture well enough. What I'd like is to be able to right-click on something and have the option to delete it's package file outright, or delete the entry out of the DCCache files. How possible is it? I can imagine it'll be tricky trying to link an instance of an object back to where it comes from, especially if it comes from the jumble of stuff that is a .dbc file. But... that kind of functionality would be /awesome/ to have.

Oh, and if there IS an external program I can use to preview/delete store stuff and the like, then don't hold back. At present, my collection of CC is relatively small. I don't like to bloat out my game with stuff I don't use. I do still have a lot of crap in my game though, so... at some stage I want to have a good clean out. And when that happens, I can see that I'll want to replace it with stuff I do actually like. Either that or I have to increase my computer's memory. Tongue

OK, just a thought (that might have been discussed before, I'm not sure).
8  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Patch 1.8/2.3 plus Create a World Released on: 2009 December 21, 01:45:18
So much performance is lost through having too many .package objects installed. Performance wise, it seems sims3packs are far better than using the framework and .package to install object mods, yet there isnt a reliable way to make sims3packs from package files, nor is there a nice clean (working) way to install sims3packs. What we really need, for the sake of game performance, is a way to add package and sims3pack to a custom dbc without having to load the game to do it like the current horrible launchers.
That's easy. A DBC is just a package file where all the contents have been catted together.

So, just to clarify, is it "literally" packages being catted together (ie cat package1.package package2.package package3.package > dcdb4.dbc) or is it just approximately the same? It'd be great if we could just dump a folder of packages on top of a tool to make these files. People have already said that ripping store packages out of their dbc's leads to massive loading times. So, since I have TOO MANY packages (and have a loading time of 10 minutes, and a saving time of too long, each time I save), I'd really like if I could toss in a structured set of folders -- see, I changed my mind. Now I'm thinking it should handle branching folders, since that's how I keep my packages in the mods directory -- to it and come out with a nice (big) custom dbc file.

Oh, and, are there any limits to what can go into these files? Like, could AwesomeMod get crunched in together like that as well, PES? Or would certain packages need to remain in the mods folder?
9  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Patch 1.8/2.3 plus Create a World Released on: 2009 December 19, 12:06:45
That's some good research, Lissy. Smiley

Umm, why don't you zip one of the store-bought files up (without compressorizing it at all, just winzipping it) and see if someone can download it and install it.

I, myself, haven't even updated my game to 1.8 yet, so I'm no use. But, that would be a valuable test, to see if content can still be shared around like before, or if there's DRM at work now.

Thanks. Smiley

Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, maybe have a purely raw (sims3pack) version, and a zipped version (of the same file). Just to be safe.
10  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Patch 1.8/2.3 plus Create a World Released on: 2009 December 18, 00:28:10
OK, I haven't patched yet, since I'm waiting on another core mod to be updated, and I don't mind playing an unbroken 1.79 in the meantime.

But, someone mentioned that there's a theory that only compressorized things don't show up. That might or might not be true, but could someone actually test that?

You can decompressorize packages with the -d flag. So, "s3rc -d <file>". What I'd do, is have things as normal (without the dcc files in the mods folder), and then see if any store things show. If they don't show in-game (which is probably what'll be the case), then uninstall them, uncompress the file, and then reinstall. Does that fix things or not? If it doesn't, then that theory is out.

Is the Riverview that people download through the launcher working for them purely because they're using the launcher to download it direct for EA, or is it that the file is slightly different than what we all once downloaded months ago?

It'll be a while before I'm going to "upgrade", looks like, but if someone could do some tests on why legit (free) items aren't working, that'd be great.
11  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Invisible Sims -- anyone know how to beat with a hammer? on: 2009 August 04, 01:39:38
I think I had this when I installed the last patch. Disappearing sims, and whats more, the unresponsive sims that I couldn't get to do anything. I don't know how I corrected it, other than what I've already said a couple of times: Delete cache files. Take your mods out. Run game in vanilla, create a new neighborhood, save it, and then exit. Delete cache files again. Put mods back in. Run the game with awesomeness.

Seriously, that's all I did. And, believe me, I did have this problem (I made a big deal about it in the bug thread). But, I did this, and the very next time I ran Sims 3, everything was perfect. So, in my mind, it's a fix. Now, I don't have any such troubles.

Edit: Oh, I guess I should also mention that I deleted all my previous neighborhoods, and I'm just playing with that new one I created. It was no loss to me, since I wanted to start afresh...
12  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: Downloaded Sims3 Skins With Links on: 2009 July 19, 03:06:26
I'm using TummyZa's male skins, Seraphita's female skins and Aikea's faces. I've tried others, but these are my favourites so far - I know about the painted-on abs problem, but a) I've yet to see it on bigger sims, and b ) I generally prefer them over Aikea's. Seraphita's has got to be the best female skin out there, IMO, and I anxiously await her male/kids add-on Smiley I don't, however, like the faces from either TZ's or Seraphita's skins, and I still think AG's are the best for those.

As for eyes, I found these beauties on MTS. They're the best I've seen so far Smiley

I'm sorry, where do I get Aikea's faces from? I checked MTS, but all that's on there are eyes. So, are they on some forum somewhere?

Edit: Oh, I see. Aikea = Club Crimson. Smiley I just visited it.
13  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Save Game Editor - Make things different. on: 2009 July 18, 06:54:30
Yeah, it's interesting. And, I'm not just going for the "flirt" option either. I'm trying to compliment her looks (which is the lowest value romantic option I have available), but that's just totally rejected every time. So, I'm pretty sure the romantic interactions are totally locked out (and that's why the prefs aren't moving) at all.

PJ, are you saying that this is possible? Do I need to get her in a amused state and then try to do something flirty? Admittedly, I was trying all this stuff late at night when I headed her off from returning home, so maybe I can try again. At least the relationship bar doesn't take a hit when these rejections happen. That's one thing.
14  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Save Game Editor - Make things different. on: 2009 July 18, 03:08:41
Yeah, I've been playing around with various stuff. Ages within the various life stages seems to be fairly simple. I haven't tried to reset someone to an eariler age, because there's probably a few flags I need to set properly, and I don't have a need for that right now. What I can say is that within the life stages, you can just type in a number within the range to give them whatever number of days (as a ratio, so if you have life-extending mods, like SLAM, then it will work as expected) you want them to have. 0 is always right at the start of the stage.

Anyway, just from casual exploration, here's the rough age ranges:

Toddler=0-1
Child=0-2.25?
Teen=0-2
Young Adult=0-3
Adult=0-3
Elder=0-3

I wouldn't recommend going over the range, and I'm not sure what happens when you get towards the pointy end of the life stage - certainly there are important flags being set, which would need to be reset. But, that's something to look up when the need arises.

What I would like to inquire about is sexual preference. I've been trying to win over Nancy Landgraab with my female Sim, and it's not successful. I've done it before with a male Sim, but with f-f, when I try to flirt with her, she just rejects it, even though the relationship bar is 100%. Anyway, I took a look at the same data, and it turns out that her preferences are: M=4, F=-2. And, this combo is pretty much hardwired into all the married female Sims. Maybe the game automatically sets this when someone gets married? Well, regardless, I thought I could try to sway her into at least being Bi, but it's no dice. Her preferences don't move regardless of how many attempts at flirting happen.

This other girl, started off at M=0, F=0, and now is about M=-35, F=57 (so, highly in favor of females). Given that, I'm wondering if it's even possible for a male to get a look in there. Funnily enough, I think think it is, since she's single. On the whole, I think sexual preference is malleable, except maybe when the Sim is in a traditional marriage. Or something. Can anyone confirm this?

I just play with this stuff as I play the game, so I'll come back when I have more stuff to share.
15  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Save Game Editor - Make things different. on: 2009 July 16, 10:58:56
Hey,

I found this: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=350770

It's a save game editor made by TigerM. And it's exceptional. Smiley

I've only really just begun to use it, but right now, I can go in to a save game and alter a Sim's fitness (body shape) no problem. I use Awesome's Editsim function to alter Townies all the time (mostly face and hair and clothes. And traits and almost everything, really), but as most people know, if you alter the body shape, the original shape just comes back again soon afterwards. We've had this for a long time with no real solution. Until now.

Umm, just from my casual explorations, what you need to permanently change body shapes is to alter these:

+mMembers
  +mSimDescriptions
    +[The Sim you're after]
      +mInitialShape
      +mCurrentShape
      +mDisplayedShape

I think you need to alter all three, or at least I did, just to be safe.

Anyway, in CAS, there are two sliders that alter the Sim's shape. The top slider is actually a composite of two, a "thin" and a "fat", side by side. The middle of the slider is is 0, and if you go right, you change internal values within the range of 0-1, and this relates to fatness. If you go left, same thing, 0-1, relating to thinness. The bottom slider is just a simple one, from 0-1, relating to muscle mass.

Now, within mInitialShape, mCurrentShape, and mDisplayedShape are corresponding labels for these slider bars: Fat, Thin, mFit (and Pregnant, but I haven't investigated this).

Well, the last thing to do is to give some examples:

Nancy Landgraab=0, 0, 0.5
Holly Alto=0, 0, 0.25 (and this seems to be the ideal shape EA thought a hot girl should have. They all have this.)
Bebe Hart=0, 0, 0.25
Bella Bachelor=0, 0, 0.25
Claire Ursine=0.5, 0, 0.5
Dorie Hart=0.5, 0, 0

Nick Alto=0.5, 0, 1

And, from that, I guess you get the picture of how things are stored. So, you just change them to whatever you want (within the range) and then next time you load it up, the Sims will have a permanent new shape. I've tried it. It works flawlessly.

So, that's body shape. I'd be interested in changing ages and things. And, probably a lot more. But, I haven't looked into it yet. I know you can change a Sim's sexual preference pretty easily. So, let's make this thread a place to put discoveries in. If someone comes across a method to alter something neat, just put it up, OK? Not as good as using a mod to do it in real time, but... good enough. And much better than not being able to do jack. Smiley

If someone could look into where the ages and life stages are kept, that'd be pretty handy...




16  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2009 July 16, 09:53:36
I had musical houses from day one.

Don't forget though that you can make a house ancestral (just add the name of the household anywhere in the house name) and the household will stay put. If you want your famblies to stay in one place, that's the way to go.

I don't mind them moving at all, but making the moving a bit less ADD would be great. Some famblies in my hood hop around every single night :p

Oh God! Is that right? I'm going to add that right away. Smiley All's forgiven. But, honestly, I haven't noticed the moving around at all. And, my game's been going for a while. But, I think I'm going to start a fresh game and save things before 1 am, and then watch what the game randomly does. If I don't like it, I'll correct things. But, before anything, I'll go ahead and make all the important households ancestral. Thanks, to Stormchaser and Nepheris. Smiley
17  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2009 July 16, 07:54:41
You can't it is EA Coding.  Even if you play the game with no mods you always swap houses.  Reason 18376445 why EA sucks.

Umm, I'm not sure about this. I've been playing with AwesomeMod from day-one, and I've never seen Sims change houses. I've had story progression on, but I've stopped them leaving. And, from just playing through, the Bachelors and Wan-Goddard and whoever else haven't ever moved. I know where they are, and that's where I expect to find them.

And, as an experiment, I took out AwesomeMod and played my game through 1 am, and I don't think there were any changes. I don't know where they all live, so there could have been a change to the lesser-known households.

But, in contrast, with AwesomeMod in, I play through 1 am, and guess what? 9-10 households decide that their house isn't good enough and change. The Frios don't like it at the beach, and so sell their $70,000 (2 be, 2 ba) beach-front property and buy the Americana, a $60,000 (2 be, 2 ba) house in the middle of town. What's the sense in that? And, like I said, about 10 households moved. The Bachelors moved from their original 3 be, 3 ba house (the one with the garden and play equipment) to a 4 be, 4 ba house. That may be logical, since the children aren't young anymore and now there is a bed for each of them. But... aren't the parents supposed to share a double bed? I mean... I don't understand. And, because it's complete nonsense, I'd rather the game not do this. And, I'm positive AwesomeMod (in it's current state) has made it worse, somehow - although maybe it's just a case of "improving" what's already happening, the end result is ghastly. Maybe the base game does this without me having noticed before... but, I've been playing T3 for a long time now, and I've never seen this before.

So, what's up with this? It's a change that has only been introduced lately, I think. I'm not saving my game with such radical movements taking place. Maybe I'll start a new game and see if this happens to new Sim households. I'd really like an option to turn this off. I like static households. I like that tradition houses stay with traditional families, regardless of that family's growth... Maybe I'm old fashioned?
18  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2009 July 16, 05:14:01
Sorry, I've been away for a while, so I didn't see the introduction of this house-swapping code. It happens at 1 am, and it's shifting all the families around. I really don't like it. No matter what reason there is for the change, I don't like it! So, is there a way to turn this off? Personally, I don't care if a house is too small for a family. I don't care if half the people in it are sleeping on sofas. It's tough for them, but that's OK because the house suits them. So... that being the case, is there any way to turn it off?

Edit: Expanded a bit.
19  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Any information on core mod compatability? on: 2009 July 13, 01:56:09
What about this latest development?

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=354748

The Core Mod Merger. Apparently, the core mods need to be written in a certain way to be usable in this way. But, like Wyre Bash for Oblivion, I really hope some kind of powersharing scheme can be worked out. Smiley I love awesome mod, and that's the one I go for at this stage, but there are other mods that I'd love to have too, but are butting heads with each other... Anyway, it just came out today, so maybe it could lead to something?
20  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Pudding Factory / Re: Custom Clothing - Two Tone Sheer Tie Bikini - NWS on: 2009 June 19, 17:18:35
Wow! I never expected these kinds of nice clothes to appear so soon!! I really like them, and I'm just about to go try (playing). I look forward to seeing your tute, but for now, I'll content myself...  Wink

Thanks! You've done really well. Proud of you!
21  Ye Olde Simmes 2 Archives: Dead Creators / Ye Olde Crammyboye Archives / Re: Community Time Project v0.4a/v0.5a Pets/Seasons/0.6 FT TEST ONLY on: 2008 March 16, 15:14:00
Yeah, the time scheme is a hack job, no question.  It's been cobbled together to make things fun, not to be entirely logical.  And I'm not really supporting it; I just got an insight into things and thought I'd share.

Blackcat's examples sound pretty fun, and useful.  So yeah, I'm gonna download it right after this, and have some of that fun too.

As for intentionally skilling Sims up at comm lots, well, that is lame.  There are plenty of easier ways to cheat in that manner.  I personally think community time goes too fast as it is, just by doing normal relationship stuff, than to use it to gain skill points.  I wouldn't waste my time doing that, because I don't generally care if my Sims max their stats out or not.  Just as long as they're doing what I want them to do, and I find what they're doing interesting.

I too just play it in real-time, days flowing into each other, mainly because there's no other way to play it.  I don't really think, "Oh, there goes another year!"  That would be lame in itself.  I think Maxis could have had a time shifting scheme like I'm suggesting where the user plays in real-time and fast-forwards time at their choosing -- this would have allowed the player to choose the rate of progression, rather than the current forced-march of time, as it is now.  But they didn't.  It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it plays well enough.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that.  I'll play around and see if it enhances the gameplay.  I have a feeling that it will, so, let's rock.

TG

Anyway,
22  Ye Olde Simmes 2 Archives: Dead Creators / Ye Olde Crammyboye Archives / Re: Community Time Project v0.4a/v0.5a Pets/Seasons/0.6 FT TEST ONLY on: 2008 March 16, 07:41:36
Out of curiosity, what could happen? Would it fuck up the aging process? I know if they have a birthday while off lot that'd probably be bad but what else?
If birthdays don't occur on the same day that they're queued, event sequences get slightly messed up. As vacations can last an ENTIRE WEEK, you can imagine how this gets extremely ugly. Fires would be rather unlikely, though, seeing as without sims, there's not much that can be set on fire. Basically, extended-absence vacation is a bad plan for the same reason running Uni-time to the same scale as the regular hood is a bad plan: The time scales aren't compatible, they have vastly different compression factors. "Neighborhood Time" functions as a highly compressed version of real-time where with a large number of inconsistencies, a day is similar in scale to about a year. "Uni Time" has a compression scale of about 3 days to 4-6 months, and Vacation Time is largely real-time, at 1:1. I would argue that one reason community lot time doesn't move "home time" is because community lot visitation largely shares a similar 1:1 scale and thus the amount of scaled time elapsed is basically infinitesimal, but equating vacation time to neighborhood time would simply be a bad plan without rescaling the entire game's time scale. Which is certainly DOABLE. I *COULD* create a single, unified, real-time scale for everything in the Sims, but it'd be an extensive modification and the game would run SLOOOOOOW.

Yeah, I totally agree with this line of thinking.

I always thought it quite odd (let alone unrealistic) that you could go out partying for most of the night, and then come back to the same time that you left (and relive that time), and hence the need for the Community Time Project.  It seemed to be a good balancing mod.

But having read this time scaling idea, I can see how the Maxis system is logical in itself.  If we go ahead and say Neighborhood time is 1:365 (or something like that, since the average age of a Sim is about 71 game days, and Human beings live for close to that amount, but in YEARS), then popping out for a night's entertainment really is a non-event.  So, yeah, I can live with the built-in time behavior, now that I understand what's happening.  The problem is, the different time scales aren't properly indicated when they're in effect, so everyone just assumed (like I did) that time was constant, and that Maxis was cheating by giving back the hours we spent on the community lots.

Having 1 game day represent 1 Sim year (but not using "days" instead of "years", and pretending everything was playing out in real-time) ends up making things very odd.  Bolting on truly real-time modes (Community Time) onto things (while making no indications that the time scale had altered) adds to the confusion.

But, a neat way of thinking about the Sims' time scheme might be to think of the days passing as not being of a contiguous, day-to-day, week-to-week nature, but each day as an instance of one within an entire year's breadth.  So, day 1 is just an ordinary (or perhaps a *noteworthy*) 24-hour day in the life of a Sim.  Day 2 is another noteworthy day, but it's an entire year later (so it's not contiguous).  In my mind, this kind of thing would make the game a little more logical (everything (community time, vacations, everything) would be occurring in real-time within the scope of a year, so the Sim could leave for a week-long vacation, and when they head home, we lose track of them, and then simply catch up on the next "noteworthy" day the following year.

For this to work properly, days would need to reflect the fact that an entire year has passed.  It'd be cool if the Sims were wearing different clothes, and had slightly different skill levels, and slightly different relationship scores.  Which sounds like an awful lot of work.

Anyway, I just had this idea after reading J. M. Pescado's response.  I can perhaps think of things happening in this way when I'm playing, rather than try to actually rework things to play out like this...  Thinking about things doesn't really require much effect, I find. Smiley

In regards to the mod, well I appreciate the work that's gone into it.  Before the idea of the different time scales came up, I thought this was a very good improvement to the game.  Now, I can see it's not strictly necessary, or at least not for me (and my game conceptions).

TG

PS I hope I haven't put a downer on you crammyboy.  I still think this was an impressive mod, and I love all your other mods. Smiley

edit: Actually, I've just had another idea.  What if there was a button that the user could press to move time along?  You could play Sims in real-time (like how it is now, playing through from day-to-day, week-to-week (but you really ARE just moving one day at a time), and then when you think you've had enough, you hit the button and it fast-forwards things a year.  And you can then go back to playing in real-time, and after a while just fast-forward again to move things along.

With this method, we could conceivably keep most of the current real-time gameplay (which has the time scaling of 1 game day = 365 Sim days), but just arrange things so that instead of:
   day1=365 (baby is born)
   day2=730
   day3=1095 (baby grows into a toddler)

It could be:
   year=year1 (baby is born)
      day=day1
      day=day2
      day=day3
      ...
      day=day99 (time-shift)
   year=year2
      day=day1
      day=day2
      ...
      day=day23 (time-shift)
   year=year3
      day=day1
      day=day2
      ...
      day=day43 (baby grows into a toddler)
      day=day44 (time=shift)
   year=year4
      day=day1
      ...

There's a lot more to work out (like what triggers the baby's birthday?), but I think this idea could work.  Birthday's wouldn't need to happen every year, we just keep the current structure of 3, 4, 7, 15, etc.  And since the user has the power to fast-forward through the years, it needn't be a bore -- since they could just keep moving forward.

Anyway, I just thought of this, which I think rounds out what I proposed.

TG
23  TS2: Burnination / Peasantry / Re: Face Templates - Updated 2007-12-09 - #17 Added (Thanks Gwill) on: 2008 March 14, 03:44:23
Hi,

The first face (02) seems to have been taken down.  I get an error when I try to download it.  I got all the others just fine.

TG
24  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: RomanceMod & NOT being appropriately distressed... on: 2007 June 26, 03:28:19
Oh wow!

I didn't realize it was as complicated as that.  And no, she doesn't really like them a lot just yet... just 25/100.  So, I'll go back to playing and hopefully do some justice to the mod before writing back.

Sorry for the false alarm.
TG
25  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / RomanceMod & NOT being appropriately distressed... on: 2007 June 26, 03:17:12
Hey,

I'm generally happy with what the RomanceMod brings to the party, but I've noticed some changed behavior that I'd rather not have.  Here's the case:

Without RomanceMod, and with & without Mary-Sue home: Daniel kisses Katlynn in front of Angela.  Angela goes into "watched distressed" state, and her relationships with Daniel and Katlynn plummet to -20 as a result of it all.

With RomanceMod, and without Mary-Sue Home: Daniel kisses Katlynn in front of Angela.  No reaction from Angela, and no change to relationships.

With RomanceMod, and with Mary-Sue Home: Daniel kisses Katlynn in front of Angela.  Angela DOESN'T go into "watched distressed" state, but her relationships do change for the worse like before - it's just not really announced.

Well, I think being caught by the teens adds something to the game.  I like how Katlynn doesn't spaz out when Daniel kisses his own wife home from work, but I miss the seeing the "watched distressed" reaction from when a family member witnesses some cheating.

Would it be hard to add this special case back into the mod?  I'd like: children/teens distressing when witnessing their committed parents cheating.  I'd like: parents (grandparents) of sims who in committed relationships (engaged or married) to spaz if cheating is witnessed.  But I wouldn't like: parents spazing out at teens who are going steady with someone having some fun with another Sim for the night.

Well, that's about it.  It's not super critical for me to get this added, but it would be nice.

TG
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