Townies keep changing appearance??

amc25

Okay this is going to sound weird, but my townies keep changing their name and appearance! My sim is currently dating a townie and they are engaged. I was playing earlier today and I noticed that his looks completely changed! He looks totally different and even his name changed. His clothes did not change or his traits and my sim was still engaged to him, but he looked completely different. I noticed this has been happening to some other townies too. Does anyone know why this is happening? I currently have these mods: Story Progression, Master Controller, Woohooer, Overwatch, Error Trap, AwesomeMod, Career, Saver and Consort Mod Hair Color (yea don't judge... I love mods)

Any help is appreciated!

igazor

This is something precisely which a few of the mods you have in place should be preventing from happening. Fortunately (for me, this does you no good whatsoever), I have never seen this happen in-game and am suspecting a corrupted game save.

You may want to open a thread at NRaas to get comments from our mod coders and other experienced players there.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Chatterbox (free registration required to post)

JoAnne65

In five years of intensive Sims playing I never had this happening. The sims in my town are who they are and never change. Could it be caused by a mod?

igazor

Not any of our that I am aware of. I'm sticking to my game save corruption theory until proven otherwise. But another possibility is a bit less tech oriented. Perhaps someone else has access to this computer and is messing around with @amc25's game?

TadOlson

I've had the changes happen on a smaller scale in a game once before I got in to check my settings to see if it was MC letting them change hair styles and outfits which were the things getting changed and makeup was getting applied to faces.Eli Jankowsky was wearing a long evening gown and heels and I checked and found she had make up on so I changed her back to her correct clothing,hairstyle and got rid of the makeup.I also changed the settings to stop the game from doing that again and it fixed it.

igazor

Ah, yes. I was assuming the reported changes in appearance ran much deeper than varying hair styles and makeup as clothing categories got switched. That's annoying when you don't expect it. But the part about their names changing all on their own was especially disturbing, though.

amc25

Well first I know that nobody has access to my game :) Second, my situation is kindof similar to what TadOlson described above. On this particular sim, these are what was changed: his name, his skin, his overall facial features and his clothes. His hair and traits did not change. Now I keep trying to replay the save and when I do, he looks different each time. It is the strangest thing. It is almost like the game is randomizing his features every time I restart the save.
Just before this, I did reset the whole town because my game was experiencing A LOT of lag. I do not know if that has anything to do with it. Also, this particular sim who is experiencing the appearance change was my sim's roommate but I dismissed him as a roommate because I want him to move in with my sim so I can have control over him. Shortly after that is when I noticed the change in appearance. On Overwatch I have "Clean up all homeless" set to True. So I am wondering if that has something to do with it? Maybe since he recently became homeless, the game is "resetting" him to say the least? I don't know how that setting specifically works, but I know that the appearance change occurred shortly after I dismissed him as a roommate.

igazor

MC resettting sims and the entire town is potentially disruptive to the flow of play at the time its done, but it's harmless unless the game save in question is already hopelessly damaged -- doesn't sound like the case here at all. Overwatch's cleanup the homeless function runs at 3am (and perhaps again at startup). But the homeless sims that it "cleans up" are removed from the game entirely, not given a new name and plastic surgery.

ErrorTrap will catch bits and pieces of data that such functions leave behind and cleans up/reports on that, but by the time that happens there really isn't an existing sim anymore. Just some leftover data otherwise left hanging.

I am still not aware of any game or mod related functions that change sims' names and facial/skin features without player involvement. So this behavior remains unexpected and I will renew the suggestion above to open up a thread at NRaas to get some input from our mod developers.

amc25

Okay thanks for all of the help, igazor. I have requested to join the forums on the NRaas homepage, so once that goes through I will post a new discussion about this issue!