EA and builders Please READ THIS

Cyberqueen13

Just a note to anyone who didn't know this already:

I am no expert. I am simply a person who spends more time playing the game than anything else. I think I might play more than I sleep Anyway, after playing the game and many worlds I have learned a few things that can save a lot of stress for players. The main thing I wanted to bring to the attention of builders of worlds/lots is "Hidden Room Markers & Spawners".

I am in Bridgeport right now. Man do I love the look of the highrises. As I say it I cringe. :evil: EA introduced the "Hidden Room Markers" with this city and it has been the arrow in Achilles' heel. What do I mean you may ask. EA obviously never plays their own game. It only takes 5 minutes of gameplay in a new save file to get a warning that a sim is "stuck" in a room in one of the highrises. (I use NRaas Mods to get warnings)

See, the highrises all have "hidden room markers" and most of those rooms don't have doors. Even the rooms with "Hidden Room markers" that DO have doors, are not good because the markers themselves break the doors and sims will stand there stuck in the room with the Hidden Room Markers. (If you have ever wondered why a sim never shows up at a location they are suppose to be at, nine times out of ten its probably because they are stuck in a hidden room.)

There are 2 solutions.

#1 is to go into EVERY Hidden Room and demolish the door and replace it with a new one. You can't copy the existing do, you MUST go into Buy mode and get a new one to replace the one that is broken. OR #2 (which is the smarter solution) GET RID OF HIDDEN ROOM MARKERS. The markers were never needed. (I know they lower the cost of an apartment but they are more of a hassle than they are worth. Use the "freeRealestate" cheat, buy your apartment, and reset your sims bank to what you feel is fair with the "familyfunds" cheat instead. (google if you don't know cheat codes)

Back to solution.

#2: Hidden Room Markers should never have been created. They aren't needed. You can simply color the floors, walls and even the ceilings to a midnight black and now you have the same effect as a hidden room. Be sure to add a door to EVER ROOM. (Don't worry, sims don't go in rooms that don't have objects in them BUT when npc's spawn now they won't be stuck and you won't get lag.

[please note that the last door placed on a lot seems to be a door all sims want to go through when they arrive at a lot...that's just something I noticed, so think about that when placing the last door. Not sure if setting the front door as "set as front door" stops them from still being attracted to going to that last door placed on the lot. LOL]

One other thing I have noticed is that some worlds (including EA worlds) have lots where fencing is used and it is made to close in an area, BUT WITH NO EXIT GATE! Now you have sims spawning in a garden or exiting the back of a building, where the hedge goes all the way around the building with no way out and getting stuck. I have seen this many times where the hedge is used for fencing but it was placed all the way up to the house/building, not leaving a small space for a sim to exit the lot or a door to enter the property to exit through the front door. :? (Keep in mind that sims WILL NOT re-enter a rabbit hole to go out the front entrance)

Spawners are also a pain. EA has not fix it so that when you rotate a lot the spawner also rotates without leaving the original in its place, causing you to have multiple copies of the spawner all over the lot. :shock:


So in conclusion:

#1 Don't use the Hidden Room Markers (black out the floor,wall and ceiling instead)

#2 Don't fence in a lot without supplying an exit (be aware of rabbit holes with back entrances.

#3 Use arches instead of doors at entrances of Late Night highrises

#4 Careful with the use of spawners, as they only multiply as the lot is rotated when a player is trying to place the lot into their games.

Edit: #5 I just learned today, while viewing another player's world: Its a good idea to use the deco cars from University on ALL community lots. This prevents the bug the game has of leaving cars on community lots and it also gives the town a lived in feeling. That's 2 birds with one stone

I wish I was an awesome builder like some others, but I do hope that I am giving back to the community in some way. Let it be my knowledge of the game or inspiration from my pictures that I love to post. I really hope this information is helpful to someone out there

PHOEBESMOM601

#4 Careful with the use of spawners, as they only multiply as the lot is rotated when a player is trying to place the lot into their games.

That's a big one for any lot or world. I installed the greenhouse from the store, rotated it once and I had over 100 spawners to delete. My game was running perfectly except for the greenhouse lot. If I had a Sim go there their movements were so jerky it looked like watching a movie frame by frame.

TRachet

Thank you for this, Cyberqueen!

I have this bookmarked for future references. :-)

Callum9432

Aren't the hidden room markers what make NPC apartments function as apartments? I thought you needed them for NPCs to actually live in those apartments.

Cyberqueen13

Callum9432 wrote:

Aren't the hidden room markers what make NPC apartments function as apartments? I thought you needed them for NPCs to actually live in those apartments.

Yes you do.

That's a lot of stress just to have a neighbor. You could just build a lot and set it as an apartment now. If you are living in the building, just lock your door and those that rent the other rooms won't enter your apartment. The sims that move in as roommates are still NPC's.

Another idea is to make a lot that has the look of different apartments on it(like a townhouse) and add sims to it. Now you have neighbors next door or across the street, if you just wanted apartment neighbors.

I'll give up NPC neighbors over constantly getting msgs that NPC's (bartenders, bouncers, etc) are getting stuck.

Edit: Btw, a thought just came to me. If you place the "Public room" marker in the lobby, say, a gym or laundry room in your building, you will still get actions from other sims in the building I believe.

StellaToronto

I like having NPC neighbors, it's unfortunate the hidden room markers break their routing
Bridgeport has so many things against it; from elevators, fleets of spawned vehicles to vast numbers of service NPC. I'm surprised it runs at all.
That's probably why we've not seen another EA city world since.
I remember testing an apartment I built in a non EA world.
When I clicked on the call box there were dozens of NPCs supposedly living on this 4 unit lot.
I guess they'd walk in & get trapped there :shock:
I now have Over watch & Error trap installed.
Maybe I'll load up a few BP lots in a builders world to see what those hapless NPCs are getting up to.
Anyway thanks for your observations

Rflong7

Hi

Thanks for the information.

#1- I do like to use the Hidden room markers. a)because I like the apartments with the NPCs living there, b) I like to use them to give the noises for the cities

I could have sworn we found that the mods will or at least can place the NPC Sims in those rooms when they reset them. When the mods deemed them as idle Sims and it sent them home- that's when they would get stuck in the hidden room-iirc (it's been a while).
They didn't go home the way they were programed but were put in the rooms. And maybe when we use the resetSim code for all the Sims it will place them in the hidden rooms wrong... maybe. I'm only conjecturing. I really haven't done research on this like I should.
I cut down on hidden room markers but I still like using them. It's not an apartment but a house without them.
This doesn't mean EAs program won't spawn Sims in the hidden rooms, I've noticed it will spawn them in the worst locations.

I didn't know that about the last door- thanks.

A lot of builders do know about the evils of spawners or they'll learn quickly, usually the hard way.

Thanks so much again for the information. It does help.

Writin_Reg

Without the high rises to house all the NPC service people so they don't take all your sims houses - to me there is no point at all of having a high rise. As it is the minute I get a city world I go around and remove all the 1 bedroom high rises - I actually only like to keep 3 bedroom high rises - the rest get deleted as they are more trouble than they are worth - especially if one has all the eps - but I don't do apartments for my sims with the exception of testing a world to make sure they are working right. When testing is done and the world is one I decide to keep - neighborhood deconstruction gets rid of all but maybe 2 or 3 - especially if they look okay for the city part of the skyline and I don't have issues. If they get any issue - they are history - but with out a place for NPCs then I won't have them in my game period as that is their only good use as far as I am concerned.

HappySimmer3

I totally agree about the fences. including the hedge fences. I once tested a world where the creator circled some of the trees with the hedges and the sim that was spawned as the bookseller showed up inside one of those hedges and was trapped twice - in two totally different games in this world. Which I find interesting, since it seems like perhaps there are 'spawn points' for the sims in every world. Curious about how that works! I don't suppose we'll every really know, though. Anyway, I just went into build mode and took the sledge hammer and got rid of one side of the hedges around every tree. But in general I agree that they are a bad idea to use without an opening or a gate some where.

I like having at least one apartment in every world also, though, just to house those NPC's/service sims. Otherwise they go camp out on your empty lots and that's often why you have to bulldoze an empty lot with a house icon over it. They do get stuck in those apartments on occasion, but unless there is a problem with the elevator or door, IME it usually only happens after the game has run for awhile and that's when glitches start showing up in pretty much all aspects of this finicky game.

Also, I don't like the high rises. I mean they are cool and all, but they can cause a lot of issues because they are glitchy as all get-out. I usually use my favorite player-created apartment building (which is about four floors and not a high rise) when there is no apartment available in a world.

The other thing I've noticed is that NRASS Overwatch will sometimes identify a sim as stuck when they are just in 'low detail mode'. It's as if the mod can't distinguish between a sim that's not moving because they are stuck and a sim that's not moving because the game has put them in sort of a stasis to save on processing power. Maybe someone who has asked Twallan about this can weigh in on this issue? I've always meant to ask but haven't gotten around to it.

Anyway, I agree that high rise apartment buildings using the hidden markers can be problematic but I see why creators use them, and they don't always cause problems for me but then I admit that I don't tend to play the same world for extended periods of time most of the time. And if there aren't any high rise apartments I like to have at least a user made apartment using the markers in every world I play to house all those service sims. But that's just my two cents. :-)

DOLLDRMS1

I don't have anything against hidden room markers. I like the LN style apts. and usually have at least two of them in a large world. I'm eliminating addressing Bridgeport problems because that world is a mess from more than just a high rise issue.

It has honestly been my experience in user created worlds with user created apt. buildings that sims don't get stuck in hidden rooms IF the building is constructed properly. Every instance I've encountered where a sim was stuck in a hidden room was due to a misstep in the building and when corrected, getting stuck sims stopped. Of course, I haven't played every world ever built and can only speak to what I have run into in the worlds I've tested and played.

I would also urge world builders not to use the apartment designation on a building. While EA may have wanted that designation to attract roommates for the particular building, there is something wrong in the coding. It turns on roommates for the whole world when set in CAW. Have a sim in a small 1 bedroom home? Hope you like to send your sim to a class and have he/she suddenly saddled with 4 roomies that aren't easy to get rid of. In one testing version of a world, after dismissing the roomies they kept returning a few hours later. I didn't realize at the time there is supposed to be a way to disable that happening with the phone and was ready to tear my hair out, LOL.

The bad thing about setting the designation in CAW is that the player can't completely change it. When I figured out that apartment designation was probably the culprit, I went into edit town and changed the building to residential. It did stop roomies from appearing in every household in town but the apt. icon remained on the unit and I couldn't keep roomies from showing up in the apt., which I wanted to prevent at the time for a sim couple to settle down and raise a family.

I do agree that attention to fencing is necessary and I think we've all got spawner horror stories.

I also like seeing the deco cars from University used in a world and am glad to see more world builders using them.