Squiggly Lines of Doom!!

[myskaal]

Impending FBVFOS. 
I recall vague references to this little thought bubble and what it means for the future of my 'hood. Anyone able to give a full explanation and ..ahem.. HELP!

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think you need to check in SimPE for (a) unlinked duplicate sims, and (b) for memories of "unknown" sims apart from the great Unknown that the unwed CAS sims all did woohoo with! and (c) A+ spam that got into the game before you added the noA+spam hack and (d) invisible memories that don't have the required icon.

In fact, you need to clean up your neighbourhood, pronto!

[myskaal]

I'll start searching.

It's a new hood - about 4 sim weeks old - that wasn't played a day without MATY fixes (critical and otherwise) so to see this shocked me.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I'll bet!  Maybe it's just one or two memories that are corrupted.  But whoever he is with the thought bubble would be the first one whose memories I'd check!

[myskaal]

I appreciate the help there, ZZ. I wouldn't have known what to look for otherwise as I thought the lines had only to do with deaths.

 I found 1 owned by unknown memory and 1 invisible with nothing attached to it on that particular sim and am weeding through to clean out the rest of the neighborhood.

FBVFOS may have been deflected.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I hope so!  After only 4 weeks it would certainly be a shame!

[radiophonic]

I've started getting those as well and my hood is only 1 week old. Very odd considering I have JM's fixes.

[ZephyrZodiac]

So far I haven't noticed them, even in this old hood I've resurreected and was very nearly fubared until I cleaned it up, but I'd be inclined to check the memories of any sims who get the squiggly lines!

[Pegasys]

So when you see those squiggly lines, it means your neighborhood is heading toward a BFBVFS? I've had those squiggly lines now and then for months; not often, but I've had them now and then....

The things I learn. Squiggly terrain paint...

[ZephyrZodiac]

I don't know if just occasional squiggly lines would be a sign of impending disaster, and if you clear it up straight away by finding the corrupt memory (hard if it's a food one, though) it shouldn't present a mammoth task!

[Sandilou]

I think that the squiggly lines are linked to a corrupt death.  I remember JM and Twojeff brought out critical fixes for this: the NoCorruptDeath is part of the MoreAwesomeThanYou package and is alsol available seperately in the Hack Directory. 

[RainbowTigress]

The squiggly lines mean that the subject of the memory couldn't be found.  The corrupt death memory showed these symptoms because sims would get a duplicate invisible memory of the death that had no subject, so the game would display the squiggly lines.  In other situations, the squiggly lines can usually be linked to corrupted memories, which for mysterious reasons do not have a proper subject.  The solution is to track down the memory and either replace it with a valid subject or just delete the offending memory.  The problem creeps in when your sim starts spreading the corrupted memory via gossip and chatting with friends, and they then get a copy of the corrupted memory.  I think that this doesn't mean a BFBVS is imminent, but it could be a sign of a problem in your neighborhood.  It could mean there are invalid sims as ZZ pointed out above, which will definitely lead to a BFBVS sooner or later.

[Lythdan]

I remember before I got NoCorruptDeath, every time someone died, they used to get a second memory after the first one. This second one was the corrupted one with no subject.

[ZephyrZodiac]

And some ghosts think they've died twice!

As to corrupt memories, why do some sims display a "Pregnancy modifier" token?  Should these also be removed?  I mean, it's often townies, and NPCs who have it, often too they're male, so it seems illogical that they should have it!
And why do some townies etc. have a complete pre-load list of memores, while others are simply initialised?  And why have some "been to college"?  I can understand it with NPCs once they have worked there, but the Strangetown Bella Goth also has this wierd "Been to College" memory!  And some have this memory even if you haven't actually loaded a college campus!

[RainbowTigress]

Pescado explains the pregnancy modifier token in the "Myths, Urban Legends, And Apocrypha Of TS2 Explored And Exploded" thread here.  It affects sims' chances of having twins.

There is a pregnancy modifier token that does affect twin chances, but it is not a factor that you can influence: Food does NOT affect the pregnancy modifier token, it simply appears on your sim for unknown reasons, possibly randomly, or in connection with being a twin. In any case, it is not an effect that you can influence through any specific known action.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I see, so a male sim can actually cause the mother of his child to have twins?  Now that's something extremely odd, don't you think?  I mean, how does the father influence either the splitting of the embryo (which since twins in the game aren't identical, doesn't happen) or the mother producing two ova in one month?

It's about time Maxis programmers learnt a little basic biology!

[Ancient Sim]

I see, so a male sim can actually cause the mother of his child to have twins?  Now that's something extremely odd, don't you think?  I mean, how does the father influence either the splitting of the embryo (which since twins in the game aren't identical, doesn't happen) or the mother producing two ova in one month?

When I was first pregnant, way back in 1977, my ex and I applied for twin insurance due to the fact that he was a twin and twins also ran in my family (my great-grandmother had 5 sets out of 13 births, my grandmother being one half of a set - she had twins herself, one of whom was my father).  We had to get a certificate from the doctor and we were described as moderate-high risk (or something like that, hard to remember that far back, but I know the premium was high).  When we discussed it with the doctor, we were told that the latest research indicated that the father could influence this if he had a history of twins in his family.  Whether that has been refuted since I don't know, but certainly at the time it was valid.  I always thought that the only way the father could influence it was if he passed the gene on to his daughters, but according to what we were told, there is more to it than that.

[J. M. Pescado]

"Twin Insurance"? That sounds ridiculous. Were you trying to get them, or not get them, and why would you buy this "insurance"? It seems like there are better ways of not-getting-twins than to buy some kind of hokey insurance, which is undoubtedly a waste of money.

Also, did you know that your kneecaps are particularly susceptible to breakage, and that for the low, low price of $99.95 a month, we can sell you kneecap insurance?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Ancient, I suppose there is a chance with identical twins of the father being able to influence whethr or not the embryo splits, but the sims don't have identical twins, (at least, not without help from us!) and I just can't see how a father can influence the number of ova which the mother has that month!

And JM, you take out twin insurance to cover the extra costs involved in having twins, so I imagine you are actually making a bet with the insurers that you will have them, while they are betting that you won't, then, if you win your bet, you get paid out - and that's all any kind of insurance is, really, isn't it - a bet!

[cwieberdink]

Also, did you know that your kneecaps are particularly susceptible to breakage, and that for the low, low price of $99.95 a month, we can sell you kneecap insurance?

   
C

[Lythdan]

Also, did you know that your kneecaps are particularly susceptible to breakage, and that for the low, low price of $99.95 a month, we can sell you kneecap insurance?

Y'know, my kneecaps have been sounding rather creaky lately...

[myskaal]

In the case of my squiggly lines, I believe it was a memory that was owned by an "unknown". Where this memory came from is a mystery to me. The sim pictured above is the only one in the whole hood that had this memory. I could not find any dupes in the hood. There has been only 1 death ( that of the founder). I have nocorruptdeath installed and have had it since before the creation of this hood.

Random wonk ala Maxis I suppose.

I'm sure I was being overly paranoid about it blowing up my game but I know those particular lines have been related to implosions in the past and wanted to get rid of it before it spread.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Maybe it was one of those insidious bus and car pool drivers!

[simposiast]

Can squiggly lines disappear?  I did have them at one stage, and had corrupt deaths, but I waited for Nightlife and since then they've all gone away and deaths are back to normal. 

I've got 624 character files, but only three from CAS, the rest came by themselves.  I don't want them all to blow up!

I can think of one way the father could influence chance of twins. I read somewhere twin conceptions may be relatively high, but one of the pair terminates in the first week or so, so nobody notices.  Maybe twin-gene fathers help produce extra-sturdy or twin-friendly embryos, so more pairs of twins survive to be counted.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, NL does seem to correct some missing memories - for example, I've noticed a lot of long-term couples are suddenly "having very first woohoo with.."  (Special Event camera etc) and they gain a second woohoo memory which relates to the one (often with CAS sims) which they came into the game with , but maybe twenty sim days later!