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26  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Sims constantly resetting due to error with "Attraction Score" on: 2009 June 29, 21:24:26
Still tight pants.
Just because it's a decorative object doesn't mean it's harmless.  Yank it out and try again.
Make sure whatever you're playing is patched.
27  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: How to identify custom content used? on: 2009 June 23, 20:43:12
Try moaning to Mootilda, if she hasn't given up modding TS2.  She knows everything worth knowing about lot packages.  She may even be able to speculate on how to identify CC used in a lot properly.
28  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: A new spin on an old question on: 2009 June 23, 20:38:16
In effort to reduce the population, I then went to the Characters folder and deleted all files for sims from 275 to 353, and the Downtown lots from #13 on, then changed the Downtown template using Mootilda's Hood Replacement Program (MTS2) to have a prettier Downtown.

I am guessing that all the new (now deleted) Downtownies were never initialized, thus had no memories or connection to other sims since none of them were added to my Sim Bin.

You're guessing wrong.  Congratulations, you have a BFBVFS without having played at all.
All those character files were linked in the Neighborhood.package which is now pointing to garbage.

Take jolrei's advice.  Start over.
29  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Tipping question on: 2009 June 20, 22:01:56
The only *townies* in my game are the Bosses/Taxi Driver/Newspaper kid/A few co-workers. It has messed up a few opportunities because the sim it asked to continue a event with did not exist, but for the most part the Job latter works okay without many townies. I think because the bin families can not be deleted they're roaming somewhere in my hood, but I have not come into contact with them. I used the empty sunset valley by crazetex and destroyallhumans before making 10 families.

Did you bulldoze all the houses as well?  The one time I experimented with destroyallhumans, the game filled my empty houses over time.  After a few sessions I had a flood of townies, so I killed that 'hood.  I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of a completely undecorated 'hood, so I put that experiment back on the shelf.
30  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Facts & Strategery / Re: Story Mode: A Random @Toading: Congratulations to Draklixa! on: 2009 June 19, 22:24:08
Well, in TS3, without attractances, a "compatible mating pair" amounts to "randomly chosen male with age >= 18" and "randomly chosen female with age >= 18 and < elder".

I agree this is what happens in the game, in fact this is the compromise you have to settle for in order to have something playable.  Many people may find it unrealistic to have an entire town populated by one-night stands, however. Tongue

However, even if you stomp the numbers problem into submission, genetic diversity can't be preserved in the scenario above without ass-pull, immigration, or nuclear plants.  That goes back to the absence of recessive alleles in the genotype.
Recessives are essentially "faked", through the existence of the ability to grab genetic attributes from the "grandparents". Ignoring the mutational asspull, there is a 40% chance that the genetics of the parents are simply completely ignored, and the trait is grabbed from the grandparents. Assuming we model the grandparents as homozygous dominant and homozygous recessive, and imagine that the parents in question are treated as heterozygous dominant, the odds of the "recessive" trait appearing is about 20%, roughly comparable to the 25% chance of this happening under the Mendelian model used in TS2. It falls to 16% in the presence of the mutation asspull. The presence of the mutational asspull creates an interesting effect on its own, though: Each generation, there is a 10% chance that the genetic information is destroyed and replaced with EA default information. In the next generation, there is a 10% of more twaddle, a 36% of grandparent information (clean this time), and a 54% of parent information (of which 10% is twaddle), for a total of 15.4% rubbish. It continues.

A small addendum to your argument above: Mendelian genetics saves recessive gene information even if it isn't expressed.  In your example, the odds of the recessive gene being saved in the grandchildren is 75%, including the 25% chance of expression.  So there's only a 25% chance of it being obliterated in TS2, compared to the 80% odds of it being destroyed in TS3.

Getting back to the main thrust of your argument though, I agree that the most irritating effect is that all genetic characteristics are subject to equal odds of destruction.  Stomping the twaddle improves the odds of saving 'real' information, but then the burden shifts back to the player to constantly inject varied genes into the family line if diversity is desired, since the loss of any chosen characteristic over 2 generations will wipe it completely.
31  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Facts & Strategery / Re: Story Mode: A Random @Toading: Congratulations to Draklixa! on: 2009 June 18, 23:49:11
I find it astounding that EA decided to give sims a brand new gene for fatness but decided to wipe out those for hair, skin and eyes that they had before.
Well, not really. The skin genes pretty much exist as they did in TS2, only instead of SX, you can choose an entire continuum. Hair/eyes no longer have genetics because with the ability to arbitrarily pick any shade or combination, there's no way to determine which is the "recessive". Making the customized colors behave differently would bring back Custom Genetics Are Evil where they would superdominate everything and generally be BAD to put in your game...and if everyone used it, the system would be the same as what we have now!

I should have been more specific, but I was already TL;DR.  I was referring to the abolition of an attribute for hair-/skin-/eye- colour genotype.  In TS2, even skin had a distinct genotype with 2 alleles, so recessives could be passed on.  In later expansions this was changed with respect to skin, so sims could only pass the phenotype, but in principle I could use SimPE to enforce proper inheritance because the attribute was available to set.  In TS3, there is no separate genotype for anything except fatness.  The elimination of a genotype for hair is fundamentally why hair inheritance is fubar -- it's not an issue of being unable to determine what colours should be recessive.

A stupidly simple solution to the hair colour problem could have been to set an arbitrary number of bases, similar to the default palette in CAS.  Let those represent genotype and set recessives/dominants accordingly.  Adjustments to those shades would simply represent the phenotype (not available for inheritance with respect to hair).

I'm not crazy about parthenogenesis but in nature, a population isn't stable with 50-100 individuals even if they mate like animals do (without regard to compatibility, marriage, age group).
Strictly speaking, animals can be quite picky. Random mating is one of those simplified assumptions akin to spherical cows.

We don't need to bother refining our assumptions, because additional conditions to mating push the self-sustaining population number higher, not lower.  Similarly, I thought it safe to ignore my uncertainty about a theoretical limit on the number of sims, because I can already see in gameplay that simulating 200 sims is a load on the equipment.  Even in TS2, it was possible to have far more sims than we wanted.

Strictly speaking, the population dynamics in real life wouldn't likely be self-sustaining, either. In suburban middle-class America, presumably the setting the game attempts to simulate as its baseline, the reproduction rate is actually below replacement replacement in real life. It's those stupid stinky poor people who are overbreeding.

You are right about this (immigration also pads numbers) but that's mainly because American and Western European couples have smaller families.  Marriage is still the default by a huge margin.  In the game, we could tune compatible couples to produce up to 2-6 spawn, and it wouldn't seem like a glaring departure from reality.  I think the larger problem is getting enough compatible mating pairs without having to generate a base of a thousand sims.

However, even if you stomp the numbers problem into submission, genetic diversity can't be preserved in the scenario above without ass-pull, immigration, or nuclear plants.  That goes back to the absence of recessive alleles in the genotype.  There's a reason why evolution has favoured the preservation of recessive gene information for species which do not reproduce at high rates.  Even a population of thousands will lose genetic diversity through selective breeding, and dominant characteristics, if you allow those factors to operate.
32  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / Facts & Strategery / Re: Story Mode: A Random @Toading: Congratulations to Draklixa! on: 2009 June 17, 22:05:14
I find it astounding that EA decided to give sims a brand new gene for fatness but decided to wipe out those for hair, skin and eyes that they had before.

I'm not crazy about parthenogenesis but in nature, a population isn't stable with 50-100 individuals even if they mate like animals do (without regard to compatibility, marriage, age group).  If you put conditions on mating like sims must not be commitment-phobic, in the same life-stage, have romance (compatible traits), you need a much larger population before it will become self-sustaining.  Depending on how many incompatible trait pairs there are, you might need thousands of sims to randomly generate enough compatible couples in the same age group.

As a compromise, I suppose I'd increase the rate of random one-night stands resulting in pregnancy.  It's a little better than parthenogenesis and less taxing on resources than proper story-telling.

In a related vein, I think the relatively small population numbers is part of why a high rate of genetic mutation makes sense.  Since there's no genotype for hair, skin or eyes, the total gene pool is limited to exactly what you see.  If some colours were more dominant, the recessives would be completely wiped out from the pool in a generation or two.  In nature, recessive genes can persist in the pool indefinitely even when they aren't expressed, as long as the species has two alleles.

Ass-pull preserves some genetic diversity in the absence of recessive genetics when the neighbourhood is close to its full capacity at a couple hundred sims.
33  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: No chess match on: 2009 June 14, 22:24:28
For someone who has so many posts vilia, I'm surprised that your skin isn't thick enough to resist McCrea's mild irritation.  You should know by now that it's not all about you.  I'm sure you regret your mistake, but it's frankly hypocritical of you to suspect someone else's account of what happens in his game, while you excuse your own oversight.  It's not as though MATY would have ground to a halt if you didn't post right at that moment, instead of waiting until you were sure.

If McCrea had followed your advice to PM you instead of posting, he might never have gotten the attention of Zucabr.*  Did you forget where you were posting?  His post was almost courtly by MATY standards.  You were out of line suggesting that he should go to PM.  At MATY poking is done out in the open.

Zucabr's work on this matter continues to pass my tests.

Can anyone confirm whether wishes are also fulfilled?

*Thank you for this fix.  And McCrea, thank you for pursuing this to a productive end.
34  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: Career Profitability and Perks on: 2009 June 01, 00:25:55
Has anyone considered that some genres might be tied to traits, like historical is to age group?  Anyway, it pleases me that certain sims can only write certain kinds of books, I'd already been playing that way in TS2, with sims choosing their genre based on interests, personality and asp.
35  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: OK, so why would I want this mess? on: 2009 May 29, 20:28:30
I mean what is there to do in the base Sims2 game? Build a house, get a job, socialize with other sims, have a family and skill, basically what you do in the Sims3 with collections added for those who like those.  After reading most of the comments in this section, I think that just fixing the SP (either with an EA patch or with an awesome fix) is the key, right? Or am I missing something.  Also a lot of people seem to be forgetting or ignoring that a lot of the improvements to the Sims2 either came with third party modding or EPs.  

I'm sorry, that's bullshit.  When I look at purchasing Photoshop CS4, I don't ask myself how similar it is to CS3.  I don't have to play the TS2 basegame.  I can play TS2 with all EPs/SPs +CC right now.  TS3 has to compete for my time with the current state of TS2, just as it has to compete with other games, movies, music, etc.  It logically follows that how much you like TS3 is influenced by how bored you are of TS2.

I keep launching TS3 after reading about this or that cool thing, to find I'm not as enthralled as I thought I would be.  It's really not a bad game concept, but I simply have not become attached to any of the sims I've made.  Their traits do not make them any deeper, or more complex than their TS2 counterparts.  The game still requires the engagement of my imagination to make them live, but the wall of text spam repeatedly slams me out of immersion.  When I've gone back to TS2 in the interim, I haven't missed TS3 at all, even though I've played that family into 3 generations.  To be honest, I shouldn't have to keep hammering away in order to let the game grow on me.  That's work, not play.

I like TS3 a little better than I liked Spore, but it's the less-favoured child and will probably get uninstalled.  Like marhis, I leave myself open to the possibility of looking at it again in a few months if/when hacks, and CC can expand the gameplay.
36  TS3/TSM: The Pudding / The World Of Pudding / Re: THE HORROR on Mac OS X - no need to download any other crack on: 2009 May 25, 21:25:53
You are really, truly, not missing much. I am very disappointed with the graphics quality of TS3. I bought myself a video card for Xmas but it can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I'm hoping (in vain, no doubt) that the final will be better.

In TS2, I was willing to take a performance hit for the ability to play on the mac side, because there were other activities I did in support of playing that are much easier in OS X. Ironically, the performance hit is much smaller in TS3, but I don't see much in the way of stories or neighbourhoods that I'll be able to make my own, so that debate is moot.  I don't feel invested, so if this turns out to be substantially what ships in the final, I'll leave it in bootcamp and wipe it in a month, the way I did with Spore.
37  TS2: Burnination / Peasantry / Re: Miscellaneous hacks by rufio [New: AntiGoodWitchIdleAnims] on: 2009 May 09, 22:44:30
Parrot, there is an intrinsic conflict between your desire for real-world aesthetics and your CC phobia. 

When restocked, the books end up on their spines anyway.  Whether you put them on tables, OMSPs or shelves, it looks dumb.  You can get over it, and instead marvel at the efficiency of having every novel written in your 'hood easily available for any sim, or you can clutter up your tables with rows of fake books on OMSPs.*

*Don't mark the fakes for sale; too many saleable objects on a tile tend to cause restocking glitches, for me anyway.

38  TS2: Burnination / Peasantry / Re: Miscellaneous hacks by rufio [New: AntiGoodWitchIdleAnims] on: 2009 May 09, 18:57:54
I take it you don't sell much CC in your shops?  In general, no CC objects are placeable on OFB shelves.  Though the novels aren't strictly CC, they were never meant to be sold.  Put them out on tables, instead.  The hack will work as advertised.
39  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Draging a custom fence creates crash on: 2009 May 07, 23:17:05
I'm sorry for not responding sooner.  I do agree that having more CC than RAM isn't good, but I don't think it's the root cause of the crashing.  1.8 GB CC vs. 1 GB RAM doesn't seem egregious, even if it's spread out over 10 000+ individual files.  The sun lot problem is probably related to your shortage of RAM, but objects at the edge of a mini-lot crashing the game -- that doesn't sound right.  I don't play as many mini-lots as you do, but I rarely have crashes with them, just the two random ones that I mentioned.  Then again, I don't usually play on the PPC mac with 10.4.11

Are the mini-lots mostly from one creator, or did you build them yourself?
40  TS2: Burnination / Peasantry / Re: Sims Store Add On's on: 2009 May 07, 22:26:05
In Lord Darcy's thread for better energy maxis beds, there are instructions for manually replacing the relevant BCONs.  Though I like marhis' work, I never allow sims to have high energy beds until they can afford them, so I need some cheap, inferior options in the catalogue.
41  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Draging a custom fence creates crash on: 2009 May 03, 22:54:55
Hold it--you're getting a "the application has terminated" message?  Macs don't normally send those; usually you get a straight out crash or a freeze which means you have to crash it yourself.

This is not true.  I just got one the other night, and TS2 has never hung up my system even when I had more files than the CC limit.  If TS2 crashes on me, I always get that dialogue with a polite query as to whether I'd like to relaunch now?

Getting back to the OP, since you've raised the limit exactly how much CC vs. RAM are you working with?  Maybe you've simply crossed the threshold for what your hardware can handle?  It's probably best to remove your CC and test the tedious way.

Alternatively, you may be experiencing a bug with the mini-lots.  I've had a couple of random crashes with fences that run along the shrunken edge.  My crashes aren't reproducible like yours, but they did both involve running a perimeter fence along the shrunken edge of a mini-lot.  I don't remember now whether they were custom fences though.
42  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: CC in use. What can be removed without exploding stuff? on: 2009 May 03, 22:33:36
It would work if the in-game packager was less Fail.  Sometimes it will not package recolours of Maxis objects, sometimes it will package all of them.  Roll Eyes  Same with CC objects.  Sometimes all the recolours get packed, even if the lot only uses one.  Then of course, there's the knotty problem of master-slaved objects which bork in their own special way.

In short, it won't work even if you're desperate.
43  TS2: Burnination / Peasantry / Re: Reducing the Size of Your Sims 2 Installation on: 2009 May 03, 22:06:30
Possibly irrelevant response and maybe a false observation:

The number of CC files seems to have a noticeable effect on loading times, more so than size.  I started to bundle CC for my mac game where the total number of files is limited at ~10K.  In the process, I discovered that it also speeds loading time in my PC installation. 

I reduced the number of files by half (from ~16K down to ~9K)
Concurrently, I doubled the size (from 2GB to 5GB by adding more CC).

Contrary to my expectations, my loading times have fallen by a factor of 2 (from 6min. to 3min.)

I don't expect this trend is indefinitely extensible, but interesting nonetheless.
44  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: hotel maid stuck in bathroom on: 2009 April 26, 00:26:16
Do you have stuff in your Teleport folder?  Sometimes lots or CC, which you may have used the TS2 installer on, get stuck in there.  They later try to install themselves into your Downloads folder.
45  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Can't place modular stairs on: 2009 April 18, 02:46:37
I've noticed it has become almost impossible to place windows when there is a roof on the floor below, such as on a fake bay window. I used to be able to place them easily! This game infuriates me! Angry

Oh good, it's not just me!  Is there any workaround for this?  It doesn't seem to matter if the roof below is shallow or steep.  The second storey walls refuse to take windows of any size.  I've resorted to building all my shells in another game installation, but it's damn annoying if I need to edit some part of the building later.  Is there a better way?
46  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Enabling CC objects for the Quarter Tile Placement Cheat on: 2009 April 09, 19:03:51
Oh well, it's all good then.  I think there are some bits for placement flags in OBJD, so maybe the difference was in one of them.  The BHAV for height adjustment sets an AL-specific flag, so perhaps there's an analogous mechanism for quarter tile placement, too.  Post back if you find it. Smiley

I guess I've just had a bad run of luck with dining chairs.  I haven't tried every single one, but all of the ones I use most often don't work off-grid.  My luck has been no better with desks; I was just hoping you might know of some special cases.
47  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Enabling CC objects for the Quarter Tile Placement Cheat on: 2009 April 07, 21:28:58
I have read only *some* objects may not be usable.  I think this cheat is much more useful for the decorator than the player.

Do you mean that some desk+chair or table+chair are usable off-grid?  Or, did you mean that some objects in general such as sofas, beds, end tables are usable off-grid?  I'd dearly love to put some desk+chair combos off the grid, but haven't found any so far that work.

As for your packages, post the one that didn't work and the fixed one.  You are sure that you only replaced the OBJD resource in the fixed one?  I would have guessed quarter tile movement would be governed by a BHAV like height adjustment.
48  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Enabling CC objects for the Quarter Tile Placement Cheat on: 2009 April 05, 18:22:13
I can't help with your package, but are you sure you want to do this?  None of the base game tables+chairs nor desks+chairs are usable if you place them off-grid with the cheat.
49  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Critique of a future possible Sleekness? (looking at a new computer) on: 2009 March 28, 19:47:54
If you're wondering why your 32-bit system sees slightly under 4 GB it's because some of those reserved addresses are used to identify devices on the computer (keyboard, bios, sound card, etc.)
Heh, I remember taking up my Google cudgel and thrashing that truth out of teh interwebs after I doubled up my 2GB and wondered where some of the extra had gone.
Can anyone explain why my x64 does this?

32-bit is 2^32 which is why they can't access anything past 4 GB, because there are no more reserved addresses left

2^32 = 4,294,967,296 = ~4GB

Calculator, anyone? Roll Eyes
50  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Did I break the AL wall hanging feature? on: 2009 March 23, 19:18:36
I've noticed this with all manner of objects Maxis or custom, ceilings, no ceilings, moving windows -- I've pretty much tried everything mentioned in this thread.  I've also been looking for a fix but haven't come across any. Undecided  As far as I can determine, you can arbitrarily raise an object without affecting its lighting, so one possibility would be to make an override for the Lack shelf that's low.  You would then shift it up when you need to.
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