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1  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Patch is out for FFS on: 2006 May 08, 17:34:28
Are you still upset about that?  I made a simple comment about piracy and it got a little blown out of proportion.  Whether or not the shopping packs are worth the money is up to you all to decide (and it seems your decision has been made).  I apologize for contributing to the flame war and will try not to get pulled into such things again.  It's just very tough seeing people bash the thing you spent many many late nights working to create.  Again, my apologies.

Upset over arguing with you?? Oh hell no. Upset over suffering consequences at MTS2 and S2C I shouldn't be made to suffer? A bit, yes. And our 'argument' was a bit more than as you state here "a simple comment that got out of hand". But whatever. I don't want to argue again. BTW, I never considered it a 'flame' Did you?? Were you flaming me in any way? if so I missed it. And I didn't flame you either--Maxis as a whole  maybe....yes, ok. I have formed the opinion that as a goup, a whole, Maxis lacks big time. I hate to see it because I loved the sims. And I would again, but Maxis, as a whole, is screwing them up. JM, Numenor, Inge, SimPE crew, hundreds of names to type out continue to fix the Sims and make them still fun. Having to deal with bugs, glitches, and screwups that require hard work and start overs and patience while the great modders in this community 'fix' what Maxis broke with every EP is way way old.

Gotta love JM and his standing right up and voicing what he did above. Hats off, big bow.

If Maxis would... what get more funding to hire more talented coders? take their time? beta test? all the above? fill in the blank? And put out a GOOD EP they'd have us all over again. Don't see it happening.... Another big step in the right direction: Make it ADULT rated as it should be to rake in the bucks

I, for one, am glad to see you coming out of hiding. Hopefully, you can take the heat and hang in here. Threads DO get heated as they tend to do for a good give and take on any subject. Makes for good reading and educated choice making.

I'll just say it is easy to criticize things and much harder to actually do those things.  I come to these boards because I am interested in what the community thinks, even though I'm not officially on the Sims 2 projects any longer.  Most of the time it's fine, but it gets very tiring when people complain that:

a.) We/I suck and are horribly incompetent
b.) We obviously didn't test the game because there are bugs, we didn't include this feature that you believe is necessary, etc.
c.) We charge too much
d.) We didn't include enough "stuff"

Just telling you how I feel, whether you believe it is whining or not.  As to hiding, well, you can call it what you want.  I call it doing something else, like working on my new project.

However, I do feel that you have every right to complain or rant about the game, Maxis, EA, etc. because you are the consumer.  If you bought it, complain all you want.  It's when the attacks get personal that, well, you know.
2  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Patch is out for FFS on: 2006 May 05, 19:41:24
Are you still upset about that?  I made a simple comment about piracy and it got a little blown out of proportion.  Whether or not the shopping packs are worth the money is up to you all to decide (and it seems your decision has been made).  I apologize for contributing to the flame war and will try not to get pulled into such things again.  It's just very tough seeing people bash the thing you spent many many late nights working to create.  Again, my apologies.
Isn't that a bit of a stretch there? "Many late nights"? By my information, shopping packs contain little more than a few skin recolors and objects, all of which are essentially remeshes of existing code. A scan of the objects file reveals there isn't actually all that much new, less than a dozen actual codes, the rest simply objects. Maybe a *FEW* late nights. I'd say "many" is an exaggeration, unless MAYBE you work for the art team. But then again, what the hell else would you do on a late night, anyway? You say this like it's a cost, as opposed to something you'd do simply from being bored out of your skulls on a late night. And if it's tough seeing people bash the thing you've worked on, I'd say you definitely need to start thinking of a new career: The only commentary of any value is the bashing. That's why "Thanks This Is Great" is officially discouraged here.

I meant many late nights, in general, for all the EPs/SPs, because of the quick schedule and what not.  You may or may not understand, or choose to understand, but that is your prerogative.  I didn't actually work on FFP, as I've moved onto another project (feel free to bash me here as well).  I also didn't work on the object code that you all play with and modify, but on the game engine itself.
3  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Patch is out for FFS on: 2006 May 05, 19:04:01
I don't think it was fair to take it out on him. It's not like he makes the decision.

Hello?? I didn't start it! HE did!

A group of us were discussing what a rip off the pack was and how Maxis used to GIVE away items and packs for Sims1. HE stepped in, rudely, and IMO basically tried to hush us up from putting ppl off buying the damn thing. Maybe you just had to be there..

So if you wanna go get all snuggly with a Maxiod, you go for it. But DON'T go putting blame where it doesn't belong, even if you did so inadvertantly... or on purpose.

Are you still upset about that?  I made a simple comment about piracy and it got a little blown out of proportion.  Whether or not the shopping packs are worth the money is up to you all to decide (and it seems your decision has been made).  I apologize for contributing to the flame war and will try not to get pulled into such things again.  It's just very tough seeing people bash the thing you spent many many late nights working to create.  Again, my apologies.
4  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 18, 00:04:39
Those "errors" are innocuous.  They should be just warnings (and they also shouldn't be shown in shipping versions of the game).

Innocuous or not, they are still nevertheless showing when I don't have NL installed.  They shouldn't even be checking for NL stuff since I don't have NL...it clogs up LOTs of space that should be showing errors in my version only.  They don't just appear once, they appear 50+times when it happens...makes for a LOT of scrolling thru stuff to see what is REALLY an error...

I'll see what I can find out about why this data got put into the University patch.  However, there's probably nothing I can do at this point to make it better for you.
5  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Car missing after NL Patch on: 2005 October 17, 14:41:09
I got the message today about a car wanting to return to the lot, but all 3 cars belonging to the family were on the driveway.  I deleted one and another appeared, which apparently belonged to one of the residents.  Then on another lot there is an identical car to the one owned by the teenager living there parked in the road.  It can't be clicked on or deleted, even with moveobjects on.  Luckily she went to college tonight and I'll be bulldozing the lot.  Both these things have happened since I installed the NL patch.

When objects get versioned (like they did in the patch), they get "reset."  To be safe, when a car is reset, it falls back on creating a new one of itself.  These anomalies should only happen the first time you load a house with a car after a patch or new EP installation.  After that, the cars should work the same as before.
6  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Nightlife bugs on: 2005 October 17, 14:38:39
NPCs and portals
does anyone know if the patch cleared up existing NPC portal problems properly? 
I gather it fixes the glitch Crammyboy found where cancelling a "read to ...." interraction sometimes deleted a portal, but I have seen a couple of Simmers whose gardener went home without doing anything and one of them seems to have lots of glitchy NPCs still around post patch.  Logically, if the portal is fixed, they should all have gone home, but have they really?   
Can you safely use Merola's mirror or the teleporter shrub to check for invisible stuck NPCs?

I've also had mad scientists missing work when they weren't supposed to go - FYI this is in the base game as I don't have Uni or NL.

Yes, the patch fixed the portal getting deleted bug.
7  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 17, 14:37:18
Well now this is interesting...note: I do NOT have Nightlife.

Error messages galore in game now pertaining to the PleasureSeeker and Grilled Cheese Aspirations since installing the patch.

I only have base + Uni.

i.e. "ERROR Production: Want node in tree 0xce11bd96 has an illegal attribute key = PleasureSeeker.
.\source\TSWantTreeManager.cpp(582)
ERROR Production: Want node in tree 0xce11bd96 has an illegal attribute key = GrilledCheese.
.\source\TSWantTreeManager.cpp(582)"

And it keeps repeating, over and over and over...

Something definitely is wrong with the patch.  Of course I don't have PleasureSeeker or Grilled Cheese wants...I don't own NL!





Those "errors" are innocuous.  They should be just warnings (and they also shouldn't be shown in shipping versions of the game).
8  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 16, 00:29:43
I finally got my game to patch with no chaos ensuing. My custom hood is fine.word of advice  to those who are thinking about moving stuff out of the EA games sims2 folder- ie neighborhoods,Downloads  etc prior to installing the patch  DONT!!!!! leave the game in its present state the way it was when you saved and exited . the patch will install without problems as long as you havent messed with the objects file setting.start up game several times to be sure.  play a bit if it seems fine  then chaos shouldnt ensue from the patch

I'm relieved that the patch finally worked for you!  It sounds like it was very frustrating and finicky for some reason.  Hopefully now you can enjoy the game without too many annoyances.
9  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Nightlife bugs on: 2005 October 15, 20:56:06
Tom I even called EA Tech support when the issue first arose after installing the patch and they werent able to help. they just said move the sim out and destroy the lot Undecided I did that it corrected the first house but after that the problem escalated .so I went to Pleasant view played for a bit in the Lothario Household. saved, exited. and went to veronaville played the monty house for a bit saved  exited and went to strange town played the curious brothers for a bit.saved exited came back later opened up Pleasantview it loaded and went to Dons house again it showed him on the loading screen with the 6 toddlers I had him adopt. get into the house . there was no one there and all were there when I saved prior to that.I think okay here we go again but I went to each neighborhood and My sims were MIA. so I check sim pe thinking maybe I accidently deleted  sims when I was linking a large family together . SimPe showed everyone in the neighborhood who was supposed to be there and linked indeed were still linked with character data intact. in all neighborhoods.I  delted the nieghbor hood fille and put in the back up files which was a exact coppy of all custom nieghborhoods and characters prior to the patch and  clean neighborhoods of pleasantview,veronaville,and strangetown as they hadnt been played prior to the patch at all. I open the game all neighborhoods are there .I went to noe house it seemed ok  other than the stuck nanny and a Spd occuring that My sim hubby averted by pleading with the grim  reaper.then up comes a message about Grandpa who is long dead not being friends anymore.I think oh great the same bugs are occuring but as they are minor I can deal with it,.I exited the lot after saving and went to a house where my sim hubby is at the top of his career in politics and the loading screen shows everyone there.Im thinkinking great problem resolved Angry Not!!! the house opens walls down not  a single sim is there so I do the move out destroy lot trick family shows up in the bin I move them into a brand new house  I just built. lot loads with family on the screen get in the lot No family ,just buy and build mode available. and no family panel. at that point I gave up exited the game and unisnstalled and reinstalled the game this time with out the patch and my game is fine :)I had also disabled all CC and Hacks in the game when I first noticed that there was a problem thinking that something was conflicting with the patch.

Perhaps you could turn on testingCheatsEnabled and see what object errors pop up and either post them here or post them on the official board.
10  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 15, 18:14:52
Sorry Tom, but A I find it a confusing place to find what I want and B I don't understand most of the gobbledegook of the posters!

That may be the case, but criticism on this forum will probably not be as visible to the designers, who visit the official bbs.  That's all I'm saying.  You could post once and then never come back--that way you never have to "find" anything or try to understand what all the others are saying.
11  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Decreased fire & burglary since Nightlife? on: 2005 October 15, 18:03:51
So, since vampires don't appeal to everyone, mightn't they have been better in a separate pack, so the gamer had the choice of whether or not to include that element in their game.  I mean, we already have ghosts and zombies, not everyone is really interested in the supernatural side of things.

At this time we are not doing packs targeted at specific types of users.  As I mentioned previously, we are trying to put something for everyone in the game.  Your point is well taken, however.  I would suggest you post on the official website with your concerns, as the designers read the forums there.
12  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Objects from Sims' inventory unable to cast shadows on: 2005 October 15, 17:52:08
Well, I don't seem to have a problem with shadows showing up for the objects that can't be placed against a wall, but after moving 15 sim families to new houses, this is what I noticed consistenly:

Single beds place fine.
Double beds: can't be placed against the wall.
Dressers/armoires: Most of the time, can't be placed against the wall.
Couches (sofas):  Can place with one arm against a wall, but not the other.  (So I could only place them facing one direction, but not facing the opposite direction, with an arm next to a wall.)
Pianos: place fine.
Any other musical instrument has to be away from the wall by a tile, even though I've placed them next to a wall before.

Now - I used moveobjects to postition them next to the wall.  For every double bed I did this with, my sims were unable to woohoo.  It would come up in the pie menu for only one of the two involved, but not for the other.  When I clicked on "woohoo" for the sim it showed up for, it would go up to the bed queue like it should, then disappear right away.  I had to sell the bed and buy a new one, and then they could woohoo without problem.  Other activities like sleeping and relaxing worked like they should on the bed that had been moved, though.

I've only had one painting that I moved, and I didn't have any trouble placing it on a wall.  Also have a couple of photos that one artistic sim took, and they moved from one house to the other just fine as well.

I didn't try to force error on the beds, but I have a couple of previously moved sims whose beds I haven't replaced yet, and if I think of it I'll try to force an error on a bed and see it if works.

Things I don't move any more are curtains/drapes.  These always show up from the outside of the house when the wall is cutaway, and I find it very annoying, so I leave the drapes in the old house and buy them new ones in the new house.  Also, purchased paintings that are moved from one house to another do the same thing.

Those are the only things I've noticed so far.

Edit:  I tried force error/reset on one of the beds and it didn't work.  I had to delete it and buy another one.

It sounds like you are pretty knowledgeable about these problems.  Could you post some information using the official bug form for NL on the Sims 2 BBS?  I asked the engineer who worked on inventory to take a look, but he was unable to reproduce these issues.  Any 3rd party modifications that may have conflicted?
13  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Nightlife bugs on: 2005 October 15, 17:49:45
Not a bug, but a bummer nonetheless: anybody else notice that the toddler potty-training trick doesn't work post-patch?
I uninstalled and reinstalled my game to get rid of the patch! Embarrassed It caused more problems and fixed nothing i my game. ie the nanny still got stuck . a sim almost died of sudden pregnancy death syndrome.I still got the message that so and so was no longer best friends or friends with a deceased sim.the final straw for me was losing sims in all neighborhoods.even after putting in my back up file and disabling all hacks and cc the sims went MIA.so I will deal with the occasional glitch instead of the massively buggy patch!my game is running like a champ now.the only errors in the log is the occasional audio error and then the log only shows that 3 errors were picked up. I never even noticed the issue .

It seems unusual that you are having so many problems.  Many people have thanked me that the patch fixed so many problems that they had before.  If you don't trust me, perhaps you can ask some of the modders you do trust to look into the things that have changed in the patch.
14  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Can't visit community lot (Uni+NL) on: 2005 October 15, 17:46:19
Perhaps one of the scripters had to disable lot transitions while the student was away or else some bad edge case could've occurred if you sent someone away.  This is all guessing, though.  If you really feel strongly about this being an issue, please submit a bug at the official website.
15  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 15, 17:44:06
Interesting that it took over twelve months to make a patch for Uni, but only a month to make one for Nightlife!

You are right to be upset about this.  Constructive criticism on the official bbis best for this, however, since most of the Maxoids read the posts there.  However, I think we've heard this particular complaint a lot now, so hopefully it won't happen again.
16  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Decreased fire & burglary since Nightlife? on: 2005 October 15, 17:39:03
Maybe the trouble is you're all being pushed to include too much in each EP.  Setting your sights lower would mean that what you do include would be more thoroughly tested.  For example, why not have made a separate EP for the Vampire stuff?  I'm sure there is enough material for both NightLife and VampireLife!

I'm sure there would be.  However, if you haven't seen the many threads out there before NL shipped, there are many people that hated the ideas of vampires.

In any case, we try to put something in expansion that appeals to the many different types of players, from builders to the hardcore gamers to the storytellers.  That's the inherent problem though--we have so many different types of users we cannot possibly please them all.
17  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 15, 09:03:55
The bug is when a playable sim gets eaten by the cow plant no one in the hood remembers the death if the persons wife/husband is there she/he morns. When u enter the house of the person that has been eaten the other person has no memory of the death of spouse the spouse is often on the lot invisible. the spouce can not call the grim reaper to get their loved one back as the game seems to think they are still on the lot. the only way to get them back is to go to another lot raise them from death get the spouse to invite that person over and fall in love all over again.

If you would be so kind, would you write this up and submit it in the bug form on the official website?  It's 2am where I am right now and I am liable to forget.
18  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Decreased fire & burglary since Nightlife? on: 2005 October 15, 08:43:51
here's a thought...

stop pushing them out so frequently, and make sure they are done right!

Ness


That's not exactly my decision to make.  Doing it "right" is also a matter of opinion.  If I had my way, we would have had car racing, curved driveways, etc., but we simply did not have the manpower or the time to do it.  It still amazes me how long it takes to make a model or a new animation.  Given the size of our team, we simply cannot do everything that you or the community wants.  Even with a much larger team, I doubt we could make you happy.
19  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 15, 08:42:02
MaxoidTom  Did the patch fix the problem that if someone got eaten by the cow plant and there was no memory of the deathtrought the hood.

To answer your question, I don't know, though I'm not sure I understand what the bug is, exactly.  Is it that the sim gets eaten and you expect that everyone has a memory of the death?  Or that everyone does have a memory of the death, but they shouldn't?

Unfortunately, I do not know all the bugs that were fixed by the patch(es).  The list we posted on the official BBS is rather large and there may be problems users have seen that have a common cause that we have fixed.
20  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: The patch will be out tomorrow... on: 2005 October 15, 08:02:56
From what I've gathered, the vast majority of the people are not having any problems with the patches.  However, the ones that are heard the most are those with problems.  Unfortunately others hear these concerns and assume that everyone else is having problems as well.

Whether you believe me or not, it's not for lack of trying.  We tested as thoroughly as we could in the amount of time we had, but it is impossible to catch everything.  It is also nearly impossible to verify that the patches are causing problems or incompatible third party modifications.  I'm not trying to place any blame here, but some of the mods may just not be compatible with the newer code in NL and in the patches.

I'm sorry to hear that some of you are having problems.  Please use the official bug form on the BBS to submit the bugs you have found.  If you could verify that they do indeed occur without 3rd party modifications, that would be great.  If you are having "jump" or "reset" bugs, you can turn on testingCheatsEnabled and get the error dump that results from that in your My Docs\The Sims 2\Logs directory.  That will be very helpful to us in tracking down any problems you may have.
21  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Decreased fire & burglary since Nightlife? on: 2005 October 15, 07:53:16
Yes it would have been a good idea to make a special animation for the car that get stolen.  Maybe in a future ep they will change that.

But it would hardly even need a special animation. The existing animations would have sufficed if the had programmed them in. That's just EA being lazy again.

We didn't have time; I wish we did, because that would've been cool.  Sorry to disappoint you.
22  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Something odd in NL, not sure what to make of it. on: 2005 October 15, 03:48:49

Do you have Quaxi's censor removing hack?

Doesn't everybody?  Huh  Wink Grin

Just kidding - thanks Maxoid Tom for helping us out.

I'm not familiar with what Quaxi did to modify the censor--you may need to ask him about it.  He may be forcing an error with the material so that it does not appear, but that's just conjecture.
23  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Can't visit community lot (Uni+NL) on: 2005 October 15, 03:45:07
I just noticed something else.  I can't click on neighbors to switch to their houses.  It shows the little starburst and the name of the lot next to the cursor, but nothing happens when I click on it.  Very frustrating.

Yeah, the inventory helps, other than the bug with placing certain items out of inventory.  But it still takes a lot of time.  Angry

That's awful about the custom paintings because that's one of the first things I thought about when hearing about the inventory.  I thought of career rewards, but that's less of a problem than it was in the beginning now we have collections and cheats.  There's no way to get back paintings though.  Looks like Maxis didn't plan this inventory thing too well.  Cry

Do you have any hacks that override stuff in the phones?
24  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Something odd in NL, not sure what to make of it. on: 2005 October 14, 16:09:22
I've never seen this happen before so I dont know if it's part of the game or some strange glitch, but while I was playing a custom sim in his house in Strangetown there was this large dark blue flare on the screen and I have no clue what it was or what caused it.

Also, I noticed when I have the cheat window expanded I get all kinds of repeating audio errors with duplicate resource instances, failed initializations and failed getsounddefinitions.

While I was looking at those (I noticed at the end of the list there was a different error that I'm not sure if it has to do with that blue flare or not since the flare occured shortly before I checked the error list and exited the game, I wrote the error down though.

And that bug with the Sims freezing when cuddling in the hot tub still exists.

Here's the error:

ERROR Material Parser: Error whilst parsing material definition 'censormaterial'
packed:/sims.matShad(70):Missing vertext program
        in command 'end'
        in definition 'CensorCompositingMaterial', line 28
        in command 'create CensorCompositingMaterial()'
.\sourceGZSceneGraphMaterialParser.cpp (5926)

There were 5 or 6 of those errors one after another.

Do you have Quaxi's censor removing hack?
25  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Nightlife bugs on: 2005 October 13, 17:56:44
Yep, and there still isn't any way to change their appearance and give them some of those nice new NL toddler hats without using a hack.  Angry

Yes, I know, unfortunately.  I'll continue pushing for this to be fixed.
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