Faizah, That's interesting.  It's worked in your case because you were able to save and move the stone between the deaths.  For the Goodie couple, however, they both died immediately after returning home from work -- the instant they arrived on the sidewalk -- so there was no option to move the first stone.  Actually, I'm wondering now if I'd gone into the neighbour's place after the first death (Herb), if they may have had the option to put the stone in inventory.     Whatever.  I don't see why it would have been such a huge effort on the part of EA to simply designate one lot as a cemetary by default.   


Alex, you know for sure this is true?  Has it always been this way? 

And as for the Riley/Cho borkedness, it makes no difference in resetting those apartments as different sublots if I try this either:  
 
 
Both apartments remain active simultaneously and fully visible no matter how many times I've saved after playing each family.     

[ETA]  Added the post at the BBS http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=b62e04e166f38b0788058a39091f4b88&directoryID=226&startRow=1&openItemID=item.226,root.1,item.43,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23, in case any of you want to add your frustration to it.  No, I'm not assuming that the 'maxoids' have cleaned the 7-y-old shit out of their ears.  And Yes, I do need a shower now... 

That friggin' smustle has caused my stairs to get blocked many times.  Down with smustling!    Some kind of hack that would prevent any activity within a a couple of squares of a stairway would be terrific!

getting back to the tombstone problem:


The Goodie's tombstones are not visible from hood view; they've simply disappeared -- no doubt causing some kind of mess with character files which will eventually blow Belladonna Cove to smithereens.  Or am I exaggerating?    Not that I much care at this point because this is just an explore-n-test-throwaway-hood anyway.  As for Olivia Riley's, it did appear when I had John Riley visit the Art Museum for the first time, so it's now in his inventory.  But this was after I'd first loaded the lot directly from the hood, noted said stone, and moved it to the side of the museum, just to get it out of the way.

I wonder what the game is using to find destinations for the tombstones?  This is really bugging me, especially since they're not even staying in the same hood they get generated from but are ending up all over the place.  I can't see how this would allow a hood to even be playable down the road unless it's fixed.  

karen, were you using Pes's tombstonemovefix at the time, or no?  Did you have other surviving members of the family at the time? And other playable families in other apartments?

Why would even come up, when I had another family of 4 (and close friends of the departed) living in that apt complex at the time? 

Maybe the message should've read:

Having everyone die on an apartment lot is really not a good idea!  Why?  Because we at EA were too stupid to figure out how to deal with it! This game was programmed by EA morons after all and EA morons don't care what happens to the tombstones.

Has anybody had a Sim die on an apartment lot yet?  Bizarre to say the least. 

To start, I'll mention that I did have Pescado's tombstonemovefix in my game at the time.  Whether this affected the outcome, I can't say. 

But here's the scenario:  I moved the elder couple, Herbert and Faith (Goode or Goodie?) into the apartment bldg where the Patel family resides.  They became close friends of the Patels and the little girl they had.  I've played all families, by now, through to almost end of winter -- a lot of playing! -- with the exception of the large family of orphans in the bin, which I deleted immediately.

So, at age 65, both Herb and Faith die on the same day after returning from work.  Faith, thanks to noagediscrimination, was working longer hours and didn't get home 'til 11PM, so Herb went first:
 

and, very strangely, got a special stone (no, he wasn't plat):



Then Faith, who'd just made it up the career ladder to robber:



When Faith's stone appears on the sidewalk, Herb's magically disappeared:



And this message pops up, saying the stones have been moved to P.U.R.E, a downtown nightclub, no less:  



Then after Grimmy finds some relief in their vacant apartment...



...I noticed that both stones were gone from the lot.  The game warned me the stones would only appear on the community lot as indicated if I saved, so I did.  After Grimmy left, I went into the Patel's apartment to see what the Goodie's apartment looked like at this point, and their door said "Vacant":



Then I went to P.U.R.E and there were no stones anywhere on the lot. I've also checked out several other lots, both in Downtown and in Belladonna, but no sign of the missing stones.  I can't figure why P.U.R.E was picked by the game as a destination for the tombstones in the first place -- has this now just become a random thing?      Herb & Faith had never visited there;  the only DT lot they'd been to was the SugarCube Bowling Alley. None of my Belladonna residents had ever been to P.U.R.E   Besides the DT hood, I had attached no other districts or subhoods to this hood. 

I have the feeling their stones have just vanished altogether - a bug we had before (which EP? I can't remember), which I'm not certain was ever properly fixed.  I'd be interested in comparing stories about this issue because this is pretty messy.  I'll post at BBS once I know for certain it's not Pescado's tombstonemovefix that has caused this.  I highly doubt it did, actually, because this kind of randomness would perhaps explain why some players are seeing Olivia Riley's tombstone at the Art Gallery and others are not. 

If you don't remember the NL P.U.R.E lot, it looks like this:


Some place for a gravestone, hey?

Nope.  H&M used SecuRom, and did install it -- especially for those who 1) downloaded it from EA, and/or 2) have limited Windows accounts (non-admin).

Max

I don't know if this will help some of you whose families go MIA while on vacation or not, but this is what worked for me last night. I had become really bored playing a family at Three lakes, and shut down the game, only to discover when I reloaded that vacation destination last night, there were no lots showing as occupied (i.e, no spinning green bed! Arghghghgh!). 

This is what worked for me:

--Returned to regular hood, house showed with a semi-green plumbob above it (the baby had been left behind), but could not enter.

--In that same regular hood, I had another family call the 'missing', using option "invite family". They arrived, and worked on building friendships.

--Then, upon returning to TL vacation area, there was a green spinning bed (!), I entered the vacation lot and played normally until family ended vacation and safely returned home.

It's almost as if the game needed those character files regenerated on a lot, if that makes any sense at all (no, probably not!  ) But it worked!

As for the van that sends Sims back on vacation, that just happened to me for the first time, too.  And I got really worried about it, because I tried (unsuccessfully) to cancel everybody in the family from re-entering it, resulting in 2 out of 3 heading back to vacation.    Once those 2 were on a vacation lot, I had to use the option "cancel vacation and return home" TWICE before it worked, but they did get back home without any further issues. (and for once, the hugging interaction didn't bother me!  ) I was so relieved!

Max

  Huh?  Tell me more, Jordi.  Which cabinets? 

Max

  Yes, I would say so!  Now, there's just one more thing I'd like to clear up Re NPC's.  The game will generally generate 3 maids -- 3 workers of each type in N001?  With "antiredundancy", will only 1 of each get generated?  If more were wanted (for variety), can they also be generated via the tree or mailbox? 

Max

Okay, Ness, good to know! Thanks!

Max

Thx, invisigoth.   Would it be possible to use a combination of both?  Use the tree or mailbox to generate some, then create the rest myself?  That way, I could be a little bit lazy 

Max

Just did a clean install, and I'll be trying out a new custom hood this time around.  If I want to use N001 template only, then am I safe to delete the other hoods?  Would they need to be deleted both from My Documents folder and from C:\Program files? 

Max

Okay, I'm ready to give this a go -- thanks, Jordi and Sara for making this a whole lot easier.  I've just read through this in its entirety and there's just one question I have before starting.  I'll be making my Sims in CAS and using Inge's teleporter to create townies.  Should I be doing this with or without Pescado's "notownieregen" hack in my game at first?     I'm figuring I'll probably create a smaller townie pool than what gets generated by the default N001. (And I don't have Pets, if that matters.)

Thanks for your help, guys

Max

I would definitely love to have some little houses with the stealth stairs nicely hidden behind a wall or whatever.     I've never tried building them myself.

Max

 

JFade at djssims has a great fix here and on next page:  http://www.djssims.com/index.php?skip=30&category=10 

Max

Having just read through all these 6 pages, I'm still looking for the answers to some questions:

Re warmthfixes:  Do I still need these with Seasons patch installed?  Are they basically the same, or different in any way?

Re patching:  I just reinstalled all my games from scratch after being Sim-free for 6 months (try Sim-Anon), and I patched Seasons before installing H&M.  I read above that H&M includes the Seasons patch, so should I expect problems?  Should I have omitted the patch altogether?

Re pianofixes:  Has EA finally fixed this?

Re Ottomas genetics fix:  Did this also fix Patricia Wan's memories?

Thanks for any help!

Max

Huh?  I've never noticed anything flashing red.  Sims used to automatically eject themselves from this contraption after it had done its thing, but now they stay stuck -- unless you cancel out the action -- which is a nuisance.  And while on topic, it would be soooo sweet to have a noiseless version of this.  The sound of Sims on it is the most annoying sound in the entire game.  I could use alternatives for maxing motives, but I really try to stay away from cheats that make the game too easy.   

Max

I've looked everywhere for this. Can someone point me to it? Thx.

Max

OOOPS! I forgot this one:

Beauty Cocktail: 2 oranges+ 1cucumber (Love potion)

Here are some recipes I got from other sites: (Not from the guide, so correct me if I'm wrong)

Eggplant juice: 1 eggplant =randon skill pt.
Lemonade: 4 lemons = Cools sims down
Tomato juice: 3 tomatoes= warms sims up
Orange juice: 4 oranges = Cures colds
OrangeAde: 3 oranges + 1 lemon = random Badge points
Pepper Punch: 1 pepper+ 4 pole beans+ 2 apples= energy boost
Strawberry juice: 6 strawberries = clears furious bits
Strawberry lemonade: 3 lemons+ 2 strawberries = Platinum mood
Veggie Cocktail: 2 tomatoes+ 1 cucumber+ 1 pepper+ 3 polebeans = faster skill-building
Pureed boot = sims freak out

Max

Well, what's the story on Patricia Wan and Samantha?  Did Pat have a sex change? This disturbs me.  I was totally shocked to find Pat's memories of having had those twins of Samantha's! What was EA thinking?  Is that why the Ottomas family was sneakily residing in the bin? 

  What's a VBT?

I'm glad I read through this thread after actually surviving a whole week of playing Seasons without any hacks or CC. The thing that has most annoyed me is the 'falling-out-of-queue' thing.  It happens all the time, making it very difficult to play a large family. Then the obsession with bathing of clean toddlers, the constant looking out the window, jumping Sims (a minor annoyance), Family Sims not wanting marriage or kids -- I've noticed all that, too. My babies seem okay, though. 

Nannies are starting to show up in pairs again, like they did back in the old, old pre-patch days. Arghghgghhh!  As if one isn't bad enough without having two dumb arses tripping all over each other! 

And have you noticed the Energizer machine (that clunkily attractive Reward Object) is messed up now?  Sims still get recharged by it, but they won't get off the damn thing anymore!   Thanks to that, I had a Sim die of heat exhaustion. 

So now I'm here desperately scooping up all the hacks I can find.   

Max

I'm getting a dead link for the zip in your top post. Just to make this clearer for my zombie brain, is there any advantage to having this version over the older OFB version if 1) one doesn't have Pets 2) one doesn't have/want/like dumb zombies

Max

Gwill, you were right -- this was a portal problem, albeit a weird one. After removing the invisible driveway, along with the flooring covering it --problem solved!    This was a small lot, and it appears as though the portal was not in the usual place. 

Max

I should've included that info: I have all EP's up to and incl OFB except Family Fun.  No pets or Glamour.  And here's another bit of info I should've included:  In debug mode, I was getting errors on characters Ramin, Dorian, and Demi -- all cops, right?  Here is a bit of one of the error files, which I completely don't understand:

Build: 1.3.0.351
at May 25 2006,05:38:31

Object id: 142
name: N001_User00086 - Demi
Stack size: 5
Error: Reference to tree table entry that does not exist.
Iterations: 114
  Frame 4:
    Stack Object id: 782
    Stack Object name: N001_User00194 - Jacques
    Node: 8
    Tree: id 4105 name 'Party Break-Up - Try Push Turn Off Stereos' version -32759
    from Template_Police
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 782    Locals: 641
  Frame 3:
    Stack Object id: 782
    Stack Object name: N001_User00194 - Jacques
    Node: 29
    Tree: id 4104 name 'Party Break-Up - Make People Leave' version -32757
    from Template_Police
    Prim state: 0
    Params:    Locals: 212
  Frame 2:
    Stack Object id: 182
    Stack Object name: Car - Police Car - 0,5
    Node: 26
    Tree: id 4099 name 'Function - Along Route' version -32753
    from Template_Police
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 142 1008 3 142 -1 804    Locals: 182
  Frame 1:
    Stack Object id: 142
    Stack Object name: N001_User00086 - Demi
    Node: 3
    Tree: id 8632 name 'NPC - Wander and Accept Social' version -32755
    from PersonGlobals
    Prim state: 1
    Params: 1 0    Locals: 0
  Frame 0:
    Stack Object id: 142
    Stack Object name: N001_User00086 - Demi
    Node: 5
    Tree: id 4096 name 'Function - Main' version 23
    from Template_Police
    Prim state: 0
    Params:    Locals: 0

I hope this helps!

This was broken in my game before, but I can't remember what I did to fix it.  Anyway, this could be entirely unrelated to that.  I used the option on the FFSDebugger to 'clear stuck party', and it said it fixed the problem, but it didn't -- the guests continued to stay, the limo never arrived to carry away my newly married couple. The last few hacks I added or updated are these:
-ffsdebugger
-stuckobjremover
-dramafix
-phonehack
-twoJeff's Perfect Plants

I'm starting to wonder if it's not due to these hacks at all, but maybe an object?  Is this possible? Could it be because of new plants I've added?  Or is that totally ridiculous?

I'd appreciate any feedback/help! This is driving me nuts.

Max

Thanks for the suggestion, Jordi!  I'll give Dizzy's mod a try, too.   

Max