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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 24th Dec 2016 at 2:59 AM
Default How do you incorporate technical limitations/errors into the story?
Rather specific topic; would like to hear your stories, if there are any.

Here's one example: When going through and doing my spreadsheets, I discovered one of the apartments in the main neighborhood was glitching up, throwing controller errors every time I loaded or saved it. Didn't want to move everyone out and back in again, so the Tenancy Board found structural deficiencies in the way the apartment was built and condemned it; they gave everyone an extra $5000 to find a new place. Two of my families decided to upgrade to a house, while another two moved to other apartment buildings. Then I deleted the glitchy apartment.

A few weeks ago, I suffered a power outage just after saving - nothing got corrupted, but for a while I decided that if I had to restore from backup somehow, I was going to add a bit to the storyline involving time travel and alternate universes and such. I was almost disappointed that my hood turned up okay after that.

I'm secretly a Bulbasaur. | Formerly known as ihatemandatoryregister

Looking for SimWardrobe's mods? | Or Dizzy's? | Faiuwle/rufio's too! | smorbie1's Chris Hatch archives
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Inventor
#2 Old 24th Dec 2016 at 12:20 PM
Fun topic!
Blast from the past:
I had a very corrupted neighborhood called Csonka Canon, but oh what fun I've had with it. (Still have a copy, but was tired of the crashing and finding out how to prolong the hood)
Anyway, sims were disappearing left and right and I ran with it by 'making' one of the sims a serial killer who so called was responsible for those disappearances. By that time he already was an elder and the boss of an old people's home. He killed six residents including his wife, but managed to pass it off as an accident. Of course at some point people got a bit suspicious. Especially when one sim found human bones under a window of the serial killer's quarters. Then he knew it was time to go on the run. He found refuge at his daughter's house and she hid him in the attic. One day her husband found out and wanted to alert the police. (I think his last name was Magee, but I forgot his first name.) So, Magee shot his son-in-law and went on the run again. Hid in the woods for awhile in a cabin, killed two foreign tourists who stumbled upon his cabin. One day another sim came along. Magee held him sort of captive, but the man managed to escape and reported him to the police. Magee went on the run again into the mountains where he finally run into a dead end. He was caught, thrown in prison (I build it especially for him) where he wrote a book about his serial killing life and then died. The end.

Currently:
Due to a temporary texture problem of one of my sims, who instead of coming home in his overalls from work seemed to come home in something that looked partly like a dress.
Of course I panicked but I'd had the game open for two days and with my pc, the strain got too much. It's back to normal.
But now I plan for Kai (the sim in question) to become a cross-dresser. Not sure if his fiancee will like that, but he, then we have a start again for a nice story.
Link Ninja
#3 Old 24th Dec 2016 at 5:33 PM
Back in the early days of my hood I did some VBT's that resulted in disappearing sims. I treat these as cold cases.

Cold Case 1- Mrs. Margaret Orbinson vanished without a trace and it affected her family deeply. Her middle daughter became shy and reserved, and her eldest started acting out a lot more - it may have been different if their mother had been around.

Cold Case 2 - Alexis Sanchez was only a teenager when she disappeared, the family moved to a new home, not bearing to stay in the house where there were so many memories ofher.

Sim Death by deletion - There was a baby, named Avery, who grew to toddler but still acted as an infant, and started getting stuck to adults' chests when he was picked up. I put him in the trash bin and called his demise an effect of 'glitchtoma'.

Accidental disappearance and resurrection - Ori Kapitha had a bright future ahead of him until I accidentally moved his dorm into the lot bin when I was trying to move him out instead. I couldn't get him back. A few sim years went by and I got the sim blender, found his name in the teleport menu and got him back. His memory was wiped, he didn't know his own family but they invited him back into their home to rehabilitate him. (sim blender restored family ties) He's doing fine now, but still can't remember what happened to him in those 'in-between' years.

Uh oh! My social bar is low - that's why I posted today.

Mad Poster
#4 Old 25th Dec 2016 at 12:26 AM
When I get small glitches, I put them into the game superficially-if a sim is prevented from getting out of the car (not arriving home, either) I say they're working late at the office or stayed over at some friend's house. Of course it means I have monitor that pixel, but eventually they come home when I remove a flower plot that blocked the car portal.
Which has happened a few times-it isn't corruption, just human error.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Top Secret Researcher
#5 Old 25th Dec 2016 at 3:33 AM
Back in Stonebridge (I miss it so!) the founders' daughter-in-law gave birth to her first child. I put the baby in a new, custom one-tile crib and...couldn't get her back out, no matter what I tried. Resetting her didn't work, moveobjects only made things worse...eventually I had to quit without saving. A new birth and a very different-looking baby later, I decided that the young woman had actually given birth to twins but one had died due to complications, because I already had pictures of the first and didn't want to just ignore that. It led to the founders donating money to build a hospital, because if she'd given birth in one things might have been different.

I've got one or two things on MTS, but most of my stuff is on my main site here:
http://simcessories.blogspot.com/
(Now recruiting budding creators.)
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#6 Old 25th Dec 2016 at 4:30 AM
Back when I had just moved onto Win 7 and had a new antivirus my game started doing weird things on grow up. One family in my legacy which I was telling a published story for had a baby boy and I had forgotten to turn my anti virus off before playing them. I only remembered after saving and knew when I went back they would have had$subject memories. When I reloaded their lot the baby was gone ( aged up toddlers would look like babies and children would look like floating toddlers) with just a blank blue square. So I wrote it into the story that the baby had died and showed the mother as being over protective to the next baby, a girl.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Theorist
#7 Old 25th Dec 2016 at 5:06 AM
When I didn't know about neighborhood Corruption yet I sometimes got Sims with blank Want/Fear slots (you know the thing ewhere there's just the blue background of the HUD). I was afrai it would spread and thought killing sims would stop it, so I treated it as a "terminal disease" and killed Sims affected by it.
Scholar
#8 Old 26th Dec 2016 at 12:04 PM
Warning! Long post alert!

Technical issues are a large part of my game. It dates back to Sims 1, when in the early days I kept having to reinstall for various reasons, but I didn't want to make a new set of characters. So I explained it away by saying SimHampton is in an area of unusually severe cyberstorm activity. Cyberstorms could be imagined as computer corruption turned into a weather effect. If a cyberstorm swept through your town, you'd almost certainly be fine, but if your computer, phone or traffic lights were on at the time...

Cyberstorms occur whenever something puts my game out of commission for a significant length of time - usually a reinstall, but it can be a particularly intensive session of hunt-the-dodgy-mod or upgrading/replacing a major computer component. My Sims don't know a huge amount about how their universe works, but what happens for them goes like this:

1) If they're reasonably lucky, a senior member of the League of Mystics will forewarn the townsfolk of the oncoming storm. In fact, the League of Mystics makes sensing the day's cybernetic conditions a pre-requisite for a member calling themselves a Pedaran Psychic, so important is this (the ability is known as Pedaran Precognition for no particularly good reason).

You'd think, as a weather effect, that the SimCity Meterological Centre would be closely monitoring it and aware long before any Sim with a mere telescope (however good at magic) would. However, cyberstorms cannot be reliably detected with weather equipment - though it is known that cyberstorms are often marked by a change in the weather (notably dry->wet or vice versa, or hot->cold or vice versa), which enables the SimCity Meterological Centre to at least expand upon ambiguities in the prediction. This lets Sims decide if there's time to pick up a few fun things on the way to the shelter. (In real life, pre-disaster preparation often includes panic buying of essentials like bread and milk. Sims in SimHampton are so assured of their food security that they tend to panic buy bubble blowers and toasting sets instead...)

2) All borders close to outsiders. No need for more people to be hit by the cyberstorm than necessary, and in the shelters, even things like illnesses do not progress. In fact, the main medical facility is based in the shelter underneath the Royal Palace because it's a lot easier to treat illnesses if one knows they aren't going to get worse (and may get better) if you do a few days of research into the correct cure.

3) Sensible Sims head for shelter at one of the municipal shelters. There is always one maintained at the Royal Palace, the school is required to have one in its basement facilities and there's one at the end of the SimHampton University campus furtherest away from town (from the near end, it's quicker to walk to the Royal Palace). They are required to have all the latest cyberstorm protections. A Sim who reaches one knows they won't have to suffer any ill-effects, and may even live longer than they would otherwise. This is because only the minimum work needed to maintain the shelters and its people occurs during the cyberstorm, everyone gets optimal rations and town laws require each shelter to be able to comfortably house twice the town's entire population (to account for tourists), with enough left over for things like education facilities and a big recreational area. Once the Sims are comfortable, they tend to turn into surprisingly convivial locations.

Rich Sims may attempt to build their own shelter. This is rarely as good as the public facilities, and never as convivial. Rumour has it that the BaneForce has its own shelter where it can perform evil unimpeded, but nobody has ever been able to prove it to the satisfaction of a law court.

Foolish Sims stay out in the cyberstorm, either by accident or on purpose.

Don't Try This At Home. Cyberstorms have been known to have the following harmful effects:
  • Age Sims up involuntarily
  • Remove all aspiration points and change aspiration
  • Change Sims' entire personality
  • Burn out of the ability to perform magic
  • Change supernatural status in general (werewolf/vampire states most likely to change, though any status can be removed and any except witchcraft and alienism added)
  • Transfigure Sims can turn into cats or dogs, and cats and dogs can turn into Sims (there are no recorded instances of cats turning into dogs or vice versa)
  • Cause Sims to forget all family, friendship, love and hate relationships (and when this happens, it is usually mutual)
  • Remove or add individual autonomy
  • Open breaches in cyberspace, letting in Gatecreatures and other monsters (note: SimHampton is an unofficial anarchy during cyberstorms for any Sim not in a shelter)
  • Destroy property of all types
  • Reshape the land
  • Affect fertility of the land
  • Cause cybersickness, which can be fatal if untreated
  • Kill Sims and pets by the following possible means: dessication (aging beyond elder), despair (aspiration sinking so far into the red that it wraps round and causes an explosion), allergic shock (Sim turning into a supernatural state or animal type to which they are allergic; this form of death is not possible outside a cyberstorm), mindwipe (during scrambling of mental states), satellite squish (from satellites being knocked out of orbit), splitting into electrons, electrocution, freezing, burning, hailstorm battering.
  • Remove all evidence of the Sim's demise, so it is impossible to know which means actually killed the Sim (the previous bullet point is constructed from secondary evidence and extrapolation from non-fatal bad occurrences).

Valgons claim to have a method of blending into the cyberstorm to avoid these effects. Nobody is thought to have seen it in action except fellow Valgons, but the Valgons have so many strange powers that people tend to believe such statements without proof.

4) Sims are alerted to the end of the cyberstorm by the League of Mystics or, occasionally, the weather reporters (if the weather changes again, the cyberstorm must have ended). Messages are exchanged between all known shelters to establish the well-being of each Sim known to be in the area when the border was closed. There is a day of mourning for who and what was lost, and then the Sims rebuild their lives in the new landscape. Big Cyberstorms get their own holidays, where people continue to remember the disasters, some taking the day off work to mourn.

Aside from that, the other technical issues are worked into the story. Sims stuck at work are doing overtime, Sims with dodgy pie menus picked up an illness, Sims with $26,000 bills managed to really upset someone in the Royal Palace, Sims who want to eat fire are simply having the world's worst-timed silly moment...
Top Secret Researcher
#9 Old 26th Dec 2016 at 3:23 PM
I once had a glitchy apartment lot where the mom would catch fire randomly. I used cheats to extinguish the fire but it was happening so much that I eventually just let it kill the mom.

I just pretend that she was in a really bad accident on her way home from a long night shift as a nurse. But now that I think about it, there was a time her motives got so low when she was pregnant that she had died. But I felt so bad since she and her fiance had just graduated and gotten married that I let him plea for her life. So I guess in a way, she was always meant to die sooner or later

R.I.P. Sarah Love-Davis
Mad Poster
#10 Old 26th Dec 2016 at 7:53 PM
I try to play around it.
Top Secret Researcher
#11 Old 27th Dec 2016 at 3:40 PM
Has anyone posted about technical limitations yet?

Well, one time before I installed Bon Voyage (or any of the later EPs) I had a Sim who lived right next to a bar that he frequented daily. It was walking distance, but back then you couldn't just walk off the lot; you either had to call a taxi or drive a car just to go to the lot right next door. I didn't like that, so I just wrote in the Sim's bio that he got into a really bad industrial accident one day and couldn't really walk. To make it seem more realistic, I used cheats to lower his Active points so he would slouch and be lazy. To be honest, the distance between his bed and the car was probably greater than the distance between his house and the bar, but oh well!
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#12 Old 27th Dec 2016 at 7:48 PM
Perhaps the sidewalks in the neighborhood were in poor state (potholes, etc) and he didn't want to risk tripping.

I'm secretly a Bulbasaur. | Formerly known as ihatemandatoryregister

Looking for SimWardrobe's mods? | Or Dizzy's? | Faiuwle/rufio's too! | smorbie1's Chris Hatch archives
Scholar
#13 Old 27th Dec 2016 at 8:08 PM
Then when BV came out, they finally fixed the roads.
Scholar
#14 Old 27th Dec 2016 at 10:37 PM
Yup, had a family with three alien babies. My intention was to add new blood to the 'hood. So I was aging them up with cheats after I taught the toddler skills. Well, two aged up right. The third did not. He remained an infant at every stage of his life. I tried everything. Nothing could fix it. I had saved like an idiot at some point so couldn't go back. Could not kill him either, even at an adult looking phase. His insides were infant and not even fire kills infants in TS2. So, I aged him back down to infant in appearance and let his needs drop. The others were teens so when the Social Worker came, she only took him. I had to adopt him out or some other family would get stuck with him. I tried that, hoping it would reset him, and nope. So some random Sim I just created in CAS got this...disabled kid, basically. There was no way to care for him. I suppose I could have put him in a room on the floor, and regenerate his needs but he didn't age and could not die, so that story woulda gotten old real quick. MAN, I wish I had the OMGWTFBBQ at that point...

But I'm an idiot so I put them in the Sim Bin and did a bad thing. It was before I knew deleting Sim Bin families was bad

Still have the 'hood though, and it's going 3 years strong!

"Oh look, my grandchild is now an elder. They grow up so fast. Gee, I wonder when I'll finally graduate college." Sims 2
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#15 Old 10th Jan 2017 at 10:57 PM
Two more:

- While doing a 50/50, I accidentally pulled twojeff's loan jar and wiped all the loans. I could've restored from backup but I was too lazy to, so I decided that some law went through and all the loans from the SimBank of SimNation were forgiven.
- Sometimes children Sim from public school and private schools will show up on each others' buses coming home from school. The two schools are actually just next to each other and share the same busing.

I'm secretly a Bulbasaur. | Formerly known as ihatemandatoryregister

Looking for SimWardrobe's mods? | Or Dizzy's? | Faiuwle/rufio's too! | smorbie1's Chris Hatch archives
Forum Resident
#16 Old 11th Jan 2017 at 3:14 PM
Oooh - I love this! I definitely have some workarounds...

I moved a bunch of teens into a 'group home' to sort out families for them in Harlow, and once I'd moved them all out I realised that a bunch of kids from 'the wrong' side of the tracks and a bunch from 'respectable' families now (seemingly implausibly) knew each other, as well as the couple who ran the group home. I decided that the group home also ran a faith programme (since it was part of a church) and the teens had all been in the programme together - hence their friendships.

I also found that since I was adopting out my teens to adults and elders that they didn't know (but looked like) they had almost no relationship with their parents. Some did become friends with their mums and dads, but others didn't and I just pretended that they had 'difficult' relationships at home.
Field Researcher
#17 Old 11th Jan 2017 at 3:38 PM
Some of my defaults were borked. As a result, Puck found himself wearing, well, a skin suit at his parents' wedding. The suit's mesh couldn't find its texture, basically. I thought it looked a bit funny, but only realised what was happening well into the event. Too bad, Puck. He gave a toast to his parents, looking mighty embarrassed, as one does when one has -1140 outgoing points.

So I basically put his weird suit down to him feeling quite naked, in front of that crowd!

(I since replaced the faulty default. Puck loves his new suit.)
Test Subject
#18 Old 12th Jan 2017 at 1:40 PM
I had a really weird bug the other day (caused by a mod) where I couldn't put things in my sims inventory, and sims couldn't buy things in businesses - they just grabbed them and then walked off without paying! One of my sims was running a business selling cars so it cost him quite a lot of money before I noticed. Once I noticed, I decided the problem must be with the lot, so I had him sell the business. But I later realise it had taken the business away, but hadn't given him any money for it!

I just decided he had run the business into the ground, so now what was one of my wealthy families is low on cash. His wife earns all the money and is how he was able to start the business so she won't be happy! Hopefully I've fixed the bug now too.
Field Researcher
#19 Old 28th Jan 2017 at 8:26 PM
Ever notice how Sims 2 doesn't have things like plumbing, electrical outlets, or actual phone lines? I just assume that residential lots are able to support a maximum of eight residents at any given time.

I also think their world doesn't have technological advancements and some of the social norms ours do, which as an example is why the same clothing is always available for purchase.
Theorist
#20 Old 28th Jan 2017 at 8:59 PM
I'd say they're very technically advanced in the clothing area. I mean seriously to wear the same outfit day after day after day and NEVER wash it. Oh, sure you can get stinky, but you just take a bath and put the same clothes back on and bam! No worries of stink. ...
Field Researcher
#21 Old 28th Jan 2017 at 10:27 PM
One of my dormies spawned with a zombie skin (I had the zombie skin unlocked in CAS). She told Tybalt Capp a bad skin rash. She got better, and in fact has since joined the household as a playable.

I'm really fond of her; she's a nice young lady, but I think the fact I had to "heal" her plays a part in that, too. She's become one of "my" sims. (Tybalt is fond of her, too).
Lab Assistant
#22 Old 2nd Apr 2017 at 2:06 PM
I hope I did not wake up an ancient beast while posting here, but I want to share my story.

The stay-things shrub does not work with apartment lots. I learned it the hard way when I moved out all of my tenants due to an ongoing renovation. ( I make all my apartments, I renovate them from time to time.) When they returned, they were shocked to find all their personal things were gone - only the base furnishings remain. So I just pretended that they were conned by their landlord, in partnership with the local Fire Department. My Sims are already planning on what to do next - any ideas?
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#23 Old 2nd Apr 2017 at 2:10 PM
You might want to post the question to the story dilemma thread, you should get lots of suggestions there.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Top Secret Researcher
#24 Old 2nd Apr 2017 at 10:38 PM
I can't remember the details but somehow I accidentally moved a whole family out of a house. I moved them back in again but they had no furniture, etc. I pretended that the house had been destroyed by fire and with the insurance money they re-purchased everything after the house had been "rebuilt".
Mad Poster
#25 Old 3rd Apr 2017 at 11:52 AM
I have moved families out on purpose because the house was not working - and back in again, going kaching, kaching - not even trying to pretend it is part of a story
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