More Awesome Than You!
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
2024 March 29, 08:33:06

Login with username, password and session length
Search:     Advanced search
540270 Posts in 18066 Topics by 6511 Members
Latest Member: zheng
* Home Help Search Login Register
  Show Posts
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 23
1  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Restoring lost downloads-can I save this neighborhood or is it borked? on: 2009 November 12, 23:16:30
ETA: When I load up my Pleasantview it says Creating Pets/Magic/Whatever. Is this normal, when I replace the default folder with my own backup? I've never had to reload before so I don't remember if this is what is supposed to happen. Thanks.

No, this is not normal.  It could mean that your backup was corrupted or incomplete.  Where did you put the backup, and did you make sure you didn't merge the folders?  If you still have a good, fresh copy of your played Pleasantview, you should empty the Neighborhoods folder (somewhere under Documents) and copy the backup there.  Delete groups.cache and launch the game.  If the game insists on creating pets/magic/etc. then your backup isn't healthy.
2  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Is this possible: "Portable" Guitar for Sims 2? Edible Fruit? on: 2009 October 29, 20:34:11
I'm pretty sure JMP only maintains one version of macrotastics suitable for all EPs after OFB at least.  FYI, there is another poster who's having trouble with getting macro-eat to appear for children over in the Armory, if that makes you feel better.

I don't know what I might be doing differently, but I have no problem getting it to work on comm lots, owned or not.  My sims regularly pack their own food for all their excursions up to 5-day family vacations to the Far East.  Have you had success getting them to macro-eat from their inventories at home or at owned comm lots?
3  Awesomeware / The Armory / Re: Macro Control: Macrotastics on: 2009 October 25, 19:00:36
How do I check for subtly broken foods?

Take out a plate from inventory and have the child eat it?

Pro tip: Stop making such fattening food.  If a single serving is more than what will safely fit in a child's stomach, macro-eat will prevent child abuse.
4  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Is this possible: "Portable" Guitar for Sims 2? Edible Fruit? on: 2009 October 22, 17:39:15
You're correct -- harvested fruits and vegetables haven't been hacked by anyone in TS2 to be edible, I don't think.  I'd rather have pick-your-own orchards instead of the takeout business, if I knew of a hack to make it possible.  The option is Macro... Eat.  It's available to children too, and will properly use and stow serving platters as well as single plates.
5  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Is this possible: "Portable" Guitar for Sims 2? Edible Fruit? on: 2009 October 21, 20:54:54
As for the food: there's really nothing that calls for it. In TS3, your sim can wander quite far from any/all lots - it makes sense to have edible fruits and vegetables.

In the Sims 2, you're locked into a lot that you can't wander from. A BBQ or small restaurant or buffet table is enough to suffice.

If you use macrotastics, it already has the option for sims to eat out of their inventory.  Even on comm lots, where you don't normally have access to it.  One of my sims runs a takeout business, where visiting playables can buy food and go off to picnic with it.  The only inconvenience is that you can't choose among multiple items in the inventory.  Macrotastics will choose an appropriate food from all the inventories available to your group.
6  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Disappearing sims + aspiration failure + resets = *headdesk* on: 2009 October 17, 23:12:20
I have automatic incremental backups my whole hard drive that happen hourly for work.  They get overwritten after a while, but the daily backups persist in the archive for a couple of months.  When I had to initiate them myself, I used to do backups after each play session but kept them only for a week or two before overwriting them.  Even though I could correct sadorandom borkage in SimPE, I find that a lot of the time it's just faster to restore from a backup than try to figure out everything that might have gone wrong.
7  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Can this be done? on: 2009 October 10, 02:41:15
I can't fathom playing the megahoods; I have one hood with five households that I struggle to keep together and in sync with each other. With all the sims that come in the Megahood you downloaded you probably wouldn't get to playing your original sims anyway and if you did then you'd probably be neglecting the others defeating the purpose of downloading a Megahood in the first place.

In my current 'hood I play 22 households.  The neighbourhood as a whole is over 200 sim days old, and in sync with no struggle because of the fantastic tools provided on this very site.  My 'hood isn't even particularly large or old compared to the ones other members have posted about in the past.  You really should resist telling another TS2 player how to play their game, because unlike TS3, you probably have not imagined all of the possible ways it can be played.
8  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: I'm just full of questions these days: number of mesh files in downloads folder on: 2009 October 09, 20:51:33
As far as tolerating fewer downloads, look at Mac users--they don't have any EPs past BV, and are missing quite a few of the SPs as well, and I don't know of any Mac users who have limits on the amount of CC they can have.

You must not know many TS2 players on OS X.  I've had this problem, so I probably pay closer attention when I hear about some other forsaken player who encounters it.  Both MTS2 and TSR have had threads about how to get around the problem.  It's a known issue that the maximum number of files allowed to be open by any application in OS X is set at a system level, and is dependent on your specs.  TS2 likes to open every damned file in your DL folder no matter whether it's being used or not.

As for the OP's question, it seems like a simple matter to test.  Exceed the maximum by one (or 100, it doesn't matter) file.  Remove one (or 100) recolour file(s).  Attempt to load the game again.  Note your results.  Put the recolour file(s) back.  Remove one (or 100) mesh file(s).  Attempt to load the game again.

In OS X, it does not matter whether you remove a recolour or mesh.  The game plays nice as long as you're under the limit.  If you exceed the maximum number of files allowed (either in the DL folder or EPs/SPs), you'll have corruption of your neighbourhood and/or character files.  If you continue to play, you'll soon have game crashes from the corruption.

I can't say whether this would apply in Windows since I have never exceeded the limit in that installation of my game, however I strongly suspect that it's the total number of files that matter, not type.  In fact, I'd go even farther out on a limb and suggest that the total number of files is more important than total size. Shocked
9  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Cleaning a hood or starting from scratch? on: 2009 October 02, 21:26:05
No, you can let your daughter play (or play together) in the old 'hood, as well.  Any new ones that you make after installing the clean templates will stay pristine, assuming you install them properly, and collect all the relevant noregen hacks.  You can prevent the spawning of social townies in a new 'hood by making your own (5 for each group), before building or placing any apartments.  However, if you build huge high-rises with 15 units each, you'll inevitably spawn more.  Just don't do that.

You may be able to coax your daughter by simply starting a second 'hood with new sims, maybe she'll develop a new attachment. Wink
10  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Value of apartment and social townies on: 2009 October 02, 21:16:04
I don't think I've seen the cut-offs published anywhere, although there was a discussion about it on MTS2 once upon a time.  You can use the 'printlotclass' cheat to figure out what the classification is for any particular lot, but it's also influenced by the value and type (res vs. com) of neighbouring lots up to 6 grid spaces away.  I don't believe that the general algorithm is known.
11  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Cleaning a hood or starting from scratch? on: 2009 October 02, 20:39:00
You can use SimSurgery to prettify the townies, but you would need to mix and match skin/eye/hair/facial structure from donor sims that are already in your 'hood.  Otherwise, you have to put in a new donor sim, and then you'd be stuck with having to delete/kill the donor sim after surgery.  It can be done but it's time consuming, and you're no better off than if you killed/deleted the townie in the first place.

If you're still seeing new maxis fug, first make sure they're really new and not just new to you.  Basically, keep an eye on character files and their creation dates.  If you've collected all the noregen hacks, then the only new character files should be your own sims, or essential NPCs.  Keep in mind that AL social townies will spawn to fill all the empty apartments in every building occupied by your playables.  If you play uni, remember you need a couple of additional hacks to prevent YAs from spawning.  Lastly, unless you've installed clean templates, you'll get a fresh set of townies with every new sub-'hood you attach.
12  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Fed up w/the fuglies. To 'hide' or 'replace' - that is the question... on: 2009 August 27, 22:12:05
Hmmm, I don't think so.
I have about the same amount of crap, same herd of RAMz, same OS, and less shiny specs, but only 11,000-ish individual files.  All EPs/SPs load for me in 3-4 min, somewhat less if I load a new 'hood.

As an experiment, I'd suggest arbitrarily bundling as much of the walls/floors, Bodyshop crap as possible (but keep backups!) and see if the game will load faster.  If it does, then you have your answer.  You can then bundle in a more intelligent way, so you'll remember what's contained in them.
13  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Vacation NPC? on: 2009 July 24, 01:23:06
It looks to me like you didn't install the empty templates properly for BV, and FT at least.

If you want to keep playing that 'hood, fixing the templates now won't help.  You can either use the method in "Deleted 2" to wipe out the extra NPCs, or you can fix your empty templates and start a fresh 'hood.  The Charlatan visiting your res lots is a bit problematic, but you could keep playing if that's the only sign of corruption that you can find.

Should I re-do the cleaned up hood, or replace with the emply hoods to fix?

I don't think I quite understand your question, because I don't know what kind of 'hood you wanted to build.  Do you want to eliminate just the extra NPCs?  Do you want all or some of Pleasantview townies, or none at all?
14  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Altering "NPC - Put outfit on me"... Where would I find it? on: 2009 July 24, 00:54:38
Oooo, interesting...  By any chance is your new 'hood made with AL, and your old one first made pre-AL?

I ask because I think I remember that the routines for NPCs in AL are different.  They're held semi-globally, or maybe globally -- I can't recall exactly but I do remember Inge being interested in it because she was interested in custom NPCs.  I now think that maybe the right way to go about it is to hack that Init Person semi-global.  That would prevent all your NPCs from reverting.

Unfortunately, I'm mostly talking out my ass because I've never done it.  In fact, my memory could be way off the mark.  I'd suggest asking Inge on the simlogical forum, though.
15  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Vacation NPC? on: 2009 July 21, 21:04:30
My god, update the redundancy!
And its normal  to have 3 Ninjas, I think. I think each one has a different eye color or skin tone.

Wut?
Feb 25, 2008 is the latest anti-redundancy.  FFS, if you can't be bothered to check your own advice, don't give it.

To the OP, I don't know whether something could be wrong with your templates or the hack, but I only have 1 ninja.  I've sent several generations of sims on vacation to Takemizu, and maybe half a dozen have actually learned to teleport from my lone ninja there.  I'd check the creation dates on those character files to see whether they were spawned all at once, or over a period of time.  That will give you a clue as to whether it's a dirty template, or some sort of hack conflict.

I also get the Charlatan showing up on non-local comm lots, so that part of his behaviour is probably not borkenness.  He's never showed up on any of my res lots, though.  Check what his relationship level is to your sim, maybe that accounts for the difference?  Huh
16  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Altering "NPC - Put outfit on me"... Where would I find it? on: 2009 July 21, 20:41:51
It looks to me like you're comparing apples and oranges.

In the first screencap, you're looking at the wrong BHAV.  You need to find the "Function - Init" BHAV.  Scroll down. 
I don't think I've ever found any object in the game that didn't have that BHAV; I just don't know what it looks like for the gypsy because I've never modded her.

In the second screencap, that doesn't look like an NPC at all.  If your proposed gypsy is still in CAS or just a regular sim that you haven't converted to an NPC yet, none of this is going to work.
17  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Altering "NPC - Put outfit on me"... Where would I find it? on: 2009 July 20, 18:33:44
I dunno what you're doing wrong either, it works for me.  Undecided
Unfortunately, I can't see your SimPE screen.  You'll have to explain which NPC you're trying to edit, and either post a pic, or describe what it is that you do see.
18  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: is there a list of debug messages? on: 2009 July 18, 19:45:28
(one I can recall getting rather often is "too many iterations" when a sim is queued up to do stuff, and a reset makes the queue go away and the sim may or may not have a little tantrum about some damn thing or another and everythng goes on as usual from there)

Trying to choose a more intelligent response requires actually _being_ more intelligent.  I'm not trying to be glib, it's just that the 'right' answer depends rather critically on the error message, what your sim was doing at the time, and whatever CC you have.  It would be a waste of time learning about all the possible combinations, when choosing 'Reset' doesn't typically harm anything anyway.  On top of that, the little bit of text that you're given in the dialogue is usually insufficient to get to the bottom of the issue.

One thing I can help with though, is the "too many iterations" error.  Assuming that it's a random thing that you cannot reproduce, it's harmless.  The FOJ himself informed me that it's EA stupidity, the few times I troubled him about it.

Other errors usually stem from bad CC of some kind, or corruption.  The intelligent way to deal with them is to do a binary search of your CC whenever you get them, before adding any more CC.  The reason for dealing with it right away is because binary search loses its efficiency if you have multiple sets of bad CC.
19  Awesomeware / AwesomeMod! / Re: Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread on: 2009 July 18, 19:14:21
Oh, and did Awesomemod change the way the sim hairdye affects the gametes? I haven't tried dyeing anyones hair yet, because I don't want to lose the "form of genetics" we DO have. If not, is there any way it COULD be changed?

No and no.
Awesomemod did change skin blending to be better, but nothing else to do with eyes or hair.  In the past, JMP has said it is impractical to implement Mendelian (TS2-style) genetics due to the number of possible colours.
20  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Are community lot ghosts broken? on: 2009 July 11, 19:24:13
If you're going there looking for just one particular ghost, then yes.  I think you're just unlucky.
For a while, I think there was some issue with BRY and ghosts, but a few come out to haunt every time I send a sim to visit one of the cemeteries.  Maybe try summoning the ghost for Claire with the teleporter cat?
21  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Hours of load time. (Specs & Time updated) on: 2009 July 11, 19:18:38
Are you quitting all other apps when you load?  If not, try it.  Especially virus scanners soak up RAM and cycles.
See if things improve if you turn off your internet.

If none of that helps, then I think it's time to look through your startup items for suspicious processes.
22  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Hours of load time. (Specs & Time updated) on: 2009 July 10, 23:56:41
I would have thought it should be ok with what you've got.  I ran the game with all EPs to FT on the old computer (XP) with 1GB of RAM, a video card with 128MB of its own memory and a small processor.  It loaded in under 10 minutes with 2GB of downloads and ran the game fine except on big lots with lots of sims present (I fiddled the number of visitors allowed).  If you're getting an hour loading time, I'd say something else is wrong.  Are you on XP oir Vista?  If it is Vista, you may need more RAMz, XP not so much.

She says that she's running XP, but I disagree that even Vista needs that much more RAM.  I have only 1.3GB more RAM under Vista, and I can load all EPs/SPs and 4GB of CC in 6 min.  My CPU is dual-core but a little slower, 2.6 GHz, which typically means slightly worse performance than a faster single-core. 

Something definitely feels wrong with 30 min. loading times on that computer.  How many individual files of CC do you have?  I noticed a big cliff in loading times when I exceeded 10,000 files.

Back to the OP, do you have a lot of old neighbourhoods with lots of character files/lots?  Free disk space could be a problem since you're probably overflowing your RAM.  How much room do you have on your hard drive now, after cleaning?
23  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Apocalypse! How many are left? on: 2009 July 09, 21:22:17
Only if EA ditches the set neighborhood system.  Sorry.  If all neighborhoods have to look alike then the game will always be fail as far as I'm concerned.  I love being able to make the neighborhood look exactly as I want it and as far as I can tell this is impossible in S3.
Yeah, that's a major downside to the game.

Which is exactly why it makes me question whether TS3 is the better game at its core.

It certainly could have been and maybe it still can be, but after all the hype, it's deflating to find that it's still just theory. 
For all its seamlessness, the world is much, much smaller in TS3.
24  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Apartment life problems on: 2009 July 04, 20:57:54
Well since you only have the 15 pets you can't account for, I'd try starting a new 'hood and checking to see if you get more pet spam.

I have nostrayrespawn and clean templates, and I don't get any pet spam.  I've converted dozens of 'hoods to AL and have not had any new pets.  To be honest, I don't get bartenders or social group townies either, until I build the relevant lots.
If you don't have the whole director's cut, I suppose you can try testing with that set of hacks to see if you get different results.  I looked over my own selection of MATY hacks and didn't see anything besides wolfwatchers and creaturefixes, that has anything remotely to do with pets.

Do you have anything special at the cemeteries?  The 'hood I'm currently developing has 4 small ones with nothing but headstones, landscaping, and public washrooms.  I have only 4 pets of my own creation in the adoption pool, 3 kittens and a puppy, so they aren't even eligible to wander around comm lots.  One wolf makes the rounds, but that's it.  I've played this 'hood for about 80 sim days, so I doubt very much there is anything inherent about AL that produces strays.  You should check conflicting hacks, your templates, and maybe the health of your installation at this point, I reckon.
25  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Apartment life problems on: 2009 July 01, 00:18:18
You're aware that attaching new sub-hoods (hidden in the case of AL) will flood your 'hood with new townies, aren't you?  The 3 hacks you name don't prevent townies which come with each sub-hood template.  Those hacks were meant to be used with clean templates, if you want the absolute minimum of townies/NPCs.

The service NPCs (bartender) can be spawned if you place a bar on a comm lot.  Even an OFB lot that you never visited but immediately purchased to be operated by a playable will spawn a bartender, if you saved it with a bar.  Similar rules apply to objects like the espresso bar, possibly cash registers.

I've had the Unsavory Charlatan visit downtown comm lots, and Witches on Uni comm lots.  I don't know if it's normal for them to spawn without the sub-hood attached, but empirical evidence suggests that as of AL, these NPCs are not properly sequestered to their respective locales.
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 23
Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Page created in 0.087 seconds with 18 queries.