I installed the new patch and newest AM on Monday, and the update went fine (all that worrying for nothing!). However, I am also experiencing the terrible lag now. I first played my newest saved game with just one male sim and I noticed some slowness and choppiness, but it really got ridiculous when I played another older saved game with a bigger family. I, too, have found the lag to get worse the longer the game is played; it is so bad that it makes the game nearly unplayable. It takes hours and hours for a sim to feed and change a toddler although the motives are not subject to the slowness, so the kids continue to cry and starve while the idiotic sim parent just stands there holding the crying kid until s/he decides to do something about it. Like others have said, the clock will also skip many minutes at a time. My sims and kids keep missing work/school because it takes about 4 sim hours for them to pee, shower, eat cereal, and walk/run-FREEZE-walk/run-FREEZE-walk/run-FREEZE to the bus/carpool in the mornings. Gah!

Needless to say, this is not enjoyable.

I wasn't sure when/if AM was cleaning out car/limos since I wasn't noticing any improvement in performance while playing, so I downloaded the standalone but it listed no derelict cars so I assume AM did it's job, it just didn't improve performance much for me. I play on what is basically a low-end laptop and this was a fambly of 6, two adults, two kids, two toddlers. I realize these are two big issues and are part of the problem, but the bottom line is that the slowness wasn't much of an issue until I updated to the newest patch and AM, soooo...Coincidence? If anyone has any other ideas to share on what I can try to fix the gawdawful time warp I would appreciate it. I guess I could try nuking half my town and see if that makes any improvements, but I am wondering if all the pushing to get all the sims in the neighborhood to actually DO things is what's making my system slow to a crawl? Or is this just a common problem with older 'hoods?

You didn't say anything about the patch, so I don't know if this is relevant, but I'll add it in case it's helpful at all. I haven't updated to the newest patch yet, but after the first patch I could no longer install files, including AwesomeMod, using Delpy's Monkey Installer (double clicking the file no longer worked). I suppose I could have just re-downloaded the Installer, but instead I just drag and dropped AM into my Mods/Hacks folder manually, and it worked fine. I've also read that some people had issues getting newer versions of AM to rewrite older ones. I've never experienced this personally since I always remove old versions before dropping new ones in my Mods/Hacks directory.

@Wolfeyes: I actually remember reading your post (although I didn't know it was YOU at the time  ) But I'm not surprised you were admonished about it; they clearly don't like criticism, independant thinkers, or anyone who questions their authority in any way. Basically, they're ^%holes!

I read a post from someone on this board just a few minutes ago (sorry, I already forgot who!), that said they called EA and were told to not download the patch, that they knew it was flawed and that they would be creating a new patch. If that's true, I thought that was a pretty interesting admission, but that is obviously not a public acknowledgement.

I was over at EA today reading some of the posts about the borkiness people have been experiencing with the patch, and it was funny in a sicko kind of way. The first couple of pages, people were reporting problems and pasting their tech data, and everyone was basically being told to update their drivers. Yeah, right. But what was rather amusing was that by page 14, 15, and 16 (I skipped ahead!), people were saying things like 'I know my PC is up to date and %$#& you, EA". LOL.

BTW, people were posting the same kind of stuff that I've seen here (I haven't experienced any issues myself since I haven't patched yet and don't plan to at this time!), and apparently they have to take mods out before they post issues or their posts seem to get deleted. So yeah, it looks to me like most of these are EA issues, not AM issues, but unless they've admitted fault after I visited, no, I don't think EA has acknowledged anything.

Thanks for this. I knew I could click the triangle and drag all the items wherever I wanted, but I wasn't aware of that window thingy.

Have you (or anyone else) found seeds this valuable? Is this a reflection of having a level 10 gardener with green thumb trait + perk, is this pretty common, or is is common once a certain level of gardening is reached? I guess I had never paid much attention before this to the value of the seeds, so I have no idea if this is unusal or not. But I about fell outta my chair when I came across that first seed worth 12k!

I didn't see this mentioned in this thread, and I did a search and didn't find anything specifically addressing this elsewhere, so hopefully this isn't a repeat of something similar that's already been already posted.

The other day I was sorting through the seeds in a Sim's inventory, and when I grabbed one I noticed that the money symbol next to the pics of her inventory said §37. I took that one out and put it on the ground, since you can't see how much a seed is worth until you grab it and look at the money symbol. The next one I grabbed from the stack in her inventory was worth §27. So then I began to wonder if the price of the seed affected the type and/or quality of the produce grown and I started taking all the seeds out of her inventory (and she had a lot of them) and laying them out on the ground so I could see what they were all worth (yeah, rly - don't ask me why I started doing this tedious task; I think my Sim was painting, I was bored, and I decided to have her plant something after she finished). I started working on the Special seeds and after pulling out a few more seeds priced at §27 dollars, the next one I grabbed was worth …choke… §12,000!!! Holy Schmoly! Another one after that was worth §9,000. The next day I sent her seed hunting again with the Collection Finder and she ended up with 2 more Special seeds worth §15,000 each and 3 seeds priced at §20,000!!! By golly the Sim girl is rich! She's a level 10 gardener with the green thumb trait and the green thumb perk and is doing a hell of a lot better financially than her Rock Star husband, who only brings in a measly few thousand simoleans a week (for a Rock Star! - how lame is that?!). Altogether, not even counting the seeds worth less than 6,600k, she could have sold them and had around §129,000. Amazing! Yet another way to get rich, it seems. Oh, and I think most of them came from the area around the Science Building. I'll have to experiment with where the higher priced seeds are found, too, to see if there is any relationship there.

I didn't sell any of them right away, though, I just left them lying on the ground near their garden. One strange thing I noticed is that when I grabbed them again to move them a few hours later, all three 20k seeds were suddenly only worth 18k and the two 15k seeds were now worth 13,500. The other higher priced seeds didn't change (two at 9k and one at 6,600.) Tonight when I checked them again, the seeds are now worth 16k and 12k. Is this a feature or a bug? Too early to tell, really. <shrugs>

But back to my original thought: does seed price = quality and/or type of plant? Since she's got so many gardening perks and quality can be affected by fertilizer etc., I figured it wasn't likely that I could see any connections between quality and seed price, but there are several types of plants possible for each classification (Uncommon, Rare, and Special), so I wondered, is each type represented by a certain priced seed? So far I have planted 5 uncommon seeds, all worth §27 and they are all lime trees except for two watermelon plants (unless those were errors on my part and different seeds slipped in there, but I don't think so). (Just FYI, four limes are great quality and two are very nice; I don't know yet about the watermelons.) Tonight I planted one of the most expensive seeds and finally decided to sell one of them before risking that they go down further in price. My family has been sinking all their cash into building their beautiful legacy home overlooking the ocean (and there's still work to do on it!) and they didn't even have a car yet - thanks to that no good Rocker hubby who can't seem to get any lucrative record deals at all. 

Anyone else found anything from experimenting with something similar to this? I'll keep experimenting with the seeds that I have and update my post with results, for anyone who might be interested.

Thanks, Motoki. And I agree that it is really an IS issue, but there has been a bit of a learning curve for substituting IS settings for AwesomeMod's story progression toadyness blockers. I miss the ability to fine tune these. For example with Indie Stone, jobs are either on or off, there's no way to turn job progression on but prevent random firings on a bus.

I can't wait to see what Pescado will come up with for Story Progression. As long as it doesn't involve a bunch of "features" like No Soup for You, random snipers, and Count Down to Armegeddon, I will likely switch! 

OK, let's see if I can mess up this quoting thing again. 

Re. the so-called AI, somebody on here called it "Artificial Stupidity" lately.
[/quote]


That's pretty darn acurate. In the beginning when created sims were losing jobs or being moved into oblivion, I started calling it 'story aggression'. Lately I've personally been fond of the term 'Artifical Inanity'.

I downloaded Indie Stone for the first time yesterday and played it last evening, in Riverview. I set the story progession to the fast setting. Some of the announcements I got were the Newbies and the Jones' were expecting their second baby and the McDermott's were expecting their third; Rainer Kowling moved in with (?) Spenser and a day or two later there was an announcement that the two were married; and the Cowan family moved into a bigger house. When I checked, Kowling was actually living in the Spenser household and the Cowan's really did move. Too early to tell if there are any babies. No promotions or demotions at all, although only about 2 or 3 sim days passed while I played it. While one of my sim's was in the library the Broke's were flirting with each other so I wouldn't be surprised to see they are soon expecting another baby also. I do think I will turn the speed of progression down to slow, though, or things will get crowded pretty quickly! 

Overall I have to say that I liked it. I haven't played with it long enough to tell if it's blatently ignoring traits. Supposedly there have been checks added for that but I doubt if they're very stringent ones. I was focusing on one of my sim's downtown and I got a popup that my sim at home got a call and another sim wanted to chat with her on the telephone. The sim in question was standing a few feet away from my sim who just got off work, so, no, her evil twin is who actually called my other sim, haha. I imagine this would be normal EA programming actually, since sims who are "at work" can often be seen standing around the park, but yes, it would be nice if there was a check to see if the random sims chosen for these actions were not actually in view. 

For now I will probably trade off using AM and Indie whenever the mood strikes (I don't use Supreme Commander so I can do that), but I'll also be interested to see what you can come up with for your story mode. I wouldn't mind having the ability to influence events, but I'd prefer to not have to micromanage everything in the 'hood, either.

That would be against my religion, and I will make no such vile, blasphemous thing. For is it not written, "Energy cannot be created or destroyed."?
[/quote]


Well, I can't say I'm surprised at your answer, and I know there are lots of other priorities anyway. I guess I will just keep having my sims practice the 'law of attraction' (and keep transforming no money into money with the various work-arounds; I sure wish it were this easy IRL.)  

What about sims losing all of their net worth when they move in with other sims? Is this intentional or an unintended consequence? (FYI, I'm currently using an older version of AwesomeMod so I realize it's possible this no longer occurs, but just thought I'd ask since I've haven't seen anyone mention this lately.)

These issues are probably why EA decided to give everyone 16k to start off with. I don't know of any better way to handle it, I'm afraid, but I just wanted to add that a similar problem occurs when a sim asks a townie to move in. The screen pops up showing how much that sim is worth but the amount is grayed out and the townie moves in penniless. I 'motherloded' my couple when it happened, which added about 20k more than they should have been worth, but I wasn't about to let my sims get cheated out of the cash they should have had. Besides, my sim is a CEO and the townie was a doctor, and they needed to build a better house than the dump they were living in. Keeping up appearances, and all that.

Mr. Pescado, I know this is your mod and you have the right to do whatever you choose with it, but since we can no longer pick and choose what features we want in order to cutomize our game like we were able to do in TS2, it sure would be nice if the no 16k handout feature could eventually be made optional. And it's only "cheating" if I want to play the game that EA made, which I don't - and apparently no one else does, either, or else there would be no AwesomeMod in the first place! I'm just sayin'...

edited to correct spelling error

No, that answer is not ideal, but it may be the best solution we can get for now, considering what we're working with here. What you are describing is the game that a lot of us wanted, but it's not the game that EA made. It may be that we'll just have to wait until we have even more powerful PC's before we'll completely get what we want. In the meantime I'm sure that Pescado will fix whatever he/they can.

I know that many people started to report that their sims were getting demoted and kids flunking school about the time that the NPC work performance gain was added to AwsomeMod. I could have sworn that Pescado said he fixed the problem but it seems to me that there are still lots of people reporting this as an issue. Do you use Supreme Commander? Maybe it's some combination of things that are causing it. I might try to experiment on some test sims to see if it's being caused by certain features. I don't use SC as of yet so I can see what happens with certain features enabled/disabled without it.

Thank you very much for the clarification!  I will now take the Sacred tag off a few of mine because I'd like them to randomly marry and breed just to see what weird combinations they come up with.

So there is no option for job security?  A pity...
[/quote]

Random toadyings refer to the ridiculous things that story agression - er, progression - can do to your Sims. Mr. Pescado described the various possible actions in this thread: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15408.0.html

Making your sims sacred is supposed to stop all these actions, but for whatever reason it is not protecting everyone's sacred sims from all the random toadyings that can happen, especially in regards to jobs and school. Since the game was designed to be one family's very large neighborhood lot, and all sims that aren't in your active family are not only treated just like all other townies, they aren't even rendered (they are essentially put in a form of suspended animation until looked at again; I sometimes call them doughboys since a lot of things in the game looks like white bread dough when you aren't looking at it), I think that what JMP has accomplished with AwesomeMod so far is pretty amazing, even if it's still a work in progress! (And I am not trying to suck up by saying that, it's flat out true! )

All that said, the odds that anyone who IS subjected to story agression - which are all sims not in your active family and that are not tagged as sacred - would actually marry and have children appears to be extremely small, also according to a previous JMP post. So if I were you, I would not take off the sacred status unless you really don't care what happens to them anymore, but that's just my opinion.

I totally agree with this! I miss my custom eyes and make-up, and custom hair. And it's not just the cartoonish puddings, I'm afraid. One of the things that bothers me about TS3 is the very limited/lack of animations, which has been discussed before, but I think this is why the puddings seem to lack personality. And this, to me, in addition to their looks, is why they are so boring; the same half-assed animations are repeated over and over. The lack of social interactions of all kinds (I have found that sims can't even initiate conversation with another sim that is sitting down, but maybe that's just me), and I'm tired of listening to them fret at the stove over food that isn't even burned, or cough every frigging time they eat (and yes, I know if I would have them make the same meal x number of times they would probably stop that but I LIKE variety even if they don't care), and my toddlers are constantly facinated by boogers (and isn't it amazing how that one simlish word is the same as the English one) and repeat that animation about every 20 sim minutes. And the half-assed animations like the dish clearing and the "tornado" baby changing have been discussed many times, but UGH! There are dozens of examples that you all are well aware of so I'll stop now.

And story agression! Don't get me started on that. They essentially made the neigborhood one family's giant (comparatively speaking) lot, and saved computing power by not rendering things when unviewed, and then threw in random stupid events to supposedly make it look like it was an actual neigborhood. Like THAT was ever going to satisfy anyone! AwsomeMod proves that it COULD have been executed in a much better way if EA only had a clue.

I do realize that additional animations will be added with expansions (at least I sure hope so), but right now this game is quickly becoming boring and lifeless to me, and I wonder about some animations, like cars for instance. In TS2, driveways took up an out-of-proportion space due to the animations. Now driveways are sleeker and take up less space, and you can even build garages at right angles to the road. Good for creative building, maybe, but the reason this works now is precisely because they took out the car animations. Vehicles just magically appear and disappear, so no need to "drive into" your garage. I am afraid they won't be coming back, either. Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but it seems as if they have made transportation completely irrelevant in this game, and I miss the cars. This feels like a step back in many respects.

OK, enough; end of rant. I realize that people play differently and like different things, but I just had to say I agree with some of the observations made about the hollowness of this game.


Oh, goodie! Tons of boring elderly, single, childless Pudding Sims on phantom bikes or in pass-through cars, searching for rocks and seeds, all wearing a virtual rainbow of socks. 

So far I haven't switched households much so haven't experienced this personally, but quite a few people have been reporting this problem. I don't think it's related to "story aggression" (my favorite name for it!). If I had to take a wild-assed guess, I would think that the Game-Play Features - Jobs functions could be culprits. Those are the options that allow inactive skill gain, valid bosses, etc. I could certainly be wrong about that, though. In any case I have not seen any solutions posted as of yet.

As for turning off aging, there is currently no such function available but in the AM Requests thread JMP posted that it could be possible in the future. Check out the most recent posts in the AwsomeMod Requests thread for additional discussion on aging.

I am definitely not awsome, but I think the point might be that you are not on topic. You are posting your questions in the wrong thread.

On the main page, look under THE HORROR, THE HORROR. There is a thread under that heading named something like 'Technical difficulties with THE HORROR'. You might want to check there to see if someone has already answered your question(s). If not, it seems to me that posting your questions in that thread might increase the chances of you getting some help with your install problems. This thread is not for install problems. This kind of thing matters here, 'k? 

CRTL-Rtclick did not work for me (or CTRL-leftclick, or alt-rt/left click, and any number of other combinations I tried), but I forgot about entering "bless <household> in the console. Thanks, I'll try that.

I also have the debug commands disabled and can drag the motive bars. I actually like this feature (IMO, it's only cheating if you want to play the game EAxis made!), although I did accidently kill my sim once when his hunger was really low and I dragged his bar the wrong way. LOL! (I just quit without saving and was more careful the second time around!) When I shift-click I only have two options, though. I thought there were more with the debug commands enabled. But no, it's not just your game that this is affecting.

I seem to have another problem, though, that I don't think anyone has mentioned. I updated with the patch yesterday (I have the retail version, so sorry I can't comment on other versions) and reinstalled the latest version of AwesomeMod. My previous version of Awesome used the string to protect chosen families from the misnamed Story Progression. When I control-click on a house or Sim, which is supposed to add the protection in the current version, nothing happens; no option to protect the sim or household appears. So I have been unable to use this most awesome feature. Anyone else experience this? Am I doing it wrong?

I am going to try redownloading and reistalling AwesomeMod and the config tool, although I noticed that the Chosen People feature is no longer even mentioned in the config tool....Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean, and if so, just ignore this, but Sims can have up to 3 outfits per type of clothing. Send them to the dresser and click on Plan Outfit, which takes them to CAS. Click on the desired clothing type. To the immediate right (to the left of the clothing pics) you will see a small icon representing the clothing type, and directly under that is a + (plus) sign. Click on the plus to select the second clothing outfit of the type, etc.

I also had a pregnant sim who owned the sundress as an everyday outfiit. She wore this outfit for her entire pregnancy rather than reverting to standard maternity wear. So at least they can have at least one other option for maternity clothing.

All that aside, I agree with you than there is a lot more wrong here than what the official patch addresses. I sincerely doubt I would still be playing it at all without AwesomeMod.

I haven't had any cup problems yet, but I had a sim who had a plate stuck to her hand. Shortly after she washed it in the sink I got a script error and reset her, which took care of the problem since the plate disappeared. The next sim morning she had a negative moodlet from something disgusting in her inventory, which is where the plate (in an unwashed state, apparently) ended up!

So whatever is causing this in the game, plates and bowls as well as cups have all been reported as stuck on sims' hands by various players.

Theo, I'll see your cup and raise you a plate.

http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/af107/TangieCat/WearYourPlates.gif