Stupid Things I've Done «12...Next Go

MadDoctor61

I need to rant, so I'm creating a place to do so. I'm hoping others will add their rants so I won't feel so bad about mine. You might want to bookmark this thread, so you can come back to it when you have something to add.

For the past few months or so, I've been building my own custom world. I don't have the patience to do so however. What seems to be working for me, is to export the pathetic early version, and play it. While doing so, I add and/or update the public lots, save them to the bin, add them in CAW. I play a couple of games with each version of the world. Recently my sims were invited to a party. They arrived with a full bladder, but couldn't go to the bathroom. I figured it out later after starting a game using that house. The tree at the side, bled into the house, blocking the stairs. Because of this, I have now started to move my sim family through the available houses. I've found glitches galore. This is not the stupid thing I've done.

In the most recent, as the family grew and personal collections accumulate, I bought a second lot and placed bookcases (separate shelves for skill books, recipes, fishing, general reading, sim written books), WA chests for personal belongings (graduation diplomas, school trophies, reward certificates etc.) relics, collected rocks, bugs etc., a garden (because you can't really move all the plants every time they move). I don't know if having two lots caused the quirks that entered the game, but that may have been the cause. I couldn't access the chests or bookcases. Even after moving the family to that lot, things were still screwed up. I gave up and started a new game.

Oops. I keep a list of lots with changes, both current and upcoming ideas. When I end a game, I go in one last time, save all the lots to the bin so they can be added in CAW. I don't save after each edit, because I may update them half a dozen times during any game. Because of all the bugs, I was so fed up that I forgot to save the lots. I probably lost about 20 hours worth of lot editing. At least I have a list of what I did. Now I have to edit the list, moving the edits to the needs editing column. What a waste of time.

TreyNutz

MadDoctor61 wrote: »

I don't know if having two lots caused the quirks that entered the game, but that may have been the cause. I couldn't access the chests or bookcases. Even after moving the family to that lot, things were still screwed up.

I haven't been able to access bookcases on additional owned residential lots either. That is consistent with my experiences with additional owned lots. Haven't tried chests though. However when I finally moved my family to that additional lot making it the primary home the bookcases started working normally.

Bettyboop55

I hope you feel better after your rant. CAW is very frustrating for me so I read through your post with great interest. It sounds to me like you have found a good way to deal with building glitches even if your poor sims had their legs crossed Shame about the lost editing though

Good idea for a thread, which is now bookmarked.

ElanoreAlexandria

I had a frustrating experience with CAW once too. I can't build from scratch very well, but I love to decorate! I was editing an empty custom world made by another person to suit my own purposes. I just added more available empty lots and of different sizes. Then I added completely decorated lots and filled up the whole town, but when I tried to play it, there were too many routing problems. No sim in the town could pass through any doorway and I spent a real life week, every day after work, going to different lots, trying to figure the problem out.

Once I did, I realized that I no longer had functional versions of those lots saved anywhere. I had to scour the internet to find the lots I'd downloaded and edit them to my tastes all over again. Then I had to redownload that custom world and edit it all over again. Lastly, I exported the edited world with all empty lots and then added each decorated lot manually in edit town mode in game.

It took my months to do this. I was livid!

But... the new version of the edited world was actually so much better. There are no more town-wide routing failures and I had a ton of new ideas to improve upon my original town design. Even though I hated it at the time, it was worth it!

jaletu2005

I would just like to say, ElanoreAlexandria, that you have the prettiest sim avatar! Was that a posed picture - it's just so cute! I'm "stealing" that color-pattern idea - very fetching.

As for CAW, I'm afraid to even try! I just know I'll get something cobbled together and I'll lose it all to a crash. I just recently redid an entire town to my liking (Roaring Heights - was really good) and then moved in my sim to play and BOOM! got a hard freeze. Wouldn't come out of it and I had to close the game. Lost everything (my progress not the world) - including some cute patterns. I don't know why it's so hard to remember to save. I just get caught up in the fun, I guess. I redid all my work on the town and it is so fun to play. Yes, I'm trying to remember to save more often.

But the absolute worst thing that ever happened to me was when I lost an entire world (not just a save) and couldn't get it back. It was in the same Roaring Heights world and my sim had made so much progress, and her house was so beautiful! I went to save the game and it stuck - then it just winked out! It was gone. That was on my old computer - Vista- yuck! Now I keep at least one old save ( I used to delete them). This game can break you.

ElanoreAlexandria

Thank you, jaletu2005! As it happens, this was not posed. I'm playing a pseudo-legacy with this sim in the town I semi-built. I'm also taking pictures and writing about it, diary-style. (I've always wanted to keep a diary ) Fern is a shy and hopeless romantic sim and last night she'd had an amazing date. In this picture, she was supposed to be doing her class activity for university, but she's distracted, very likely daydreaming about it. I just got lucky with pause button, and I really like the picture I manged to take because it's totally natural.

I totally understand your frustrations! I looooove Moonlight Falls so much and always want to play in it. I also want all the features from all the expansion packs to be available to me while I play. I like having all those options to keep my game interesting, and since I like to try playing through multiple generations, I find this especially important. So many time, I've tried to edit Moonlight Falls only for it to blow up in my face.

That's why I found an empty custom world similar to Moonlight Falls and edited it until I was happy. It can be very discouraging when it doesn't work out. That's why I have no future town construction plans. I'm going to play my town for a very long time, and probably panic down the road when I get bored of it because building is so stressful and scary.

jaletu2005

That is so cool that the picture is natural and not posed! You really were lucky to catch her just right. Good luck with the new and improved Moonlight Falls. I am working on Twinbrook right now.

MadDoctor61

It's not nearly as stupid as the original bungle above. The replacement family recently upgraded to a new home. They now have two kids, the youngest just went to the school for the first time on a Friday and a girl came home with him after school. He has been building his friendship and asked her to stay the night. The house originally had a master bedroom with a double bed, a second bedroom with a single bed and a nursery. That was fine when they moved in with the toddler. I redesigned a bit and added a second bed to the second bedroom. That takes care of the two kids. But there is no place for the guest to sleep.


This home will eventually be use by other sims and Story Progression seems to like kids. I knew more space was going to be needed. I added a basement (what a pain that was) with a billiards room, and walls for another bathroom and two bedrooms (with double beds for teens). That put a big dent in the family budget (already dented by the move). The budget was obliterated when I had them empty their personal inventories of all those rocks and gems they collected. After selling off the cheap ones, they were able to send the rest for smelting or cutting (including two pink diamonds-heart shaped cut). The have 17 simoleons to their name. Everything that would be sold was. I can't afford a bed (or even a sleeping bag). I feel sorry for the poor kid with no place to sleep. Oh well, when the older kid had a sleepover, the guest was up till 5 in the morning. I wish there was a way to encourage them to go to bed.

Edit: The girl guest found a place to sleep. In the boys bed while he was in the shower, she asked for a bedtime story. I don't feel so bad for her now. The poor boy gets to serial nap on the couch.

Second Edit: After the boy settled down on the couch, the girl guest moved to the love seat in the parlour.

TadOlson

I though my first ever CAW project would only serve as practice for using the tool until I tried to run a game in it and ended up finding my self having started an ongoing legacy in that world.I've almost never had any crashes or routing issues there except one shopping center which is going to get rebuilt one day and I'll be using the rabbit hole rugs instead of the shells next time.

MadDoctor61

I pulled another 🐸🐸🐸🐸. I decided to put a front stoop on my library. Nope can't do that. No foundation. That idea kept nagging at me though and I couldn't let it go. I also wanted to move it further back on the lot, partly to make room for the stoop and partly because the back was too large. Then I came up with an idea. Use Blueprint Maker to copy my library. Then I can put up temporary wall corners to outline where my library is, demolish the library, move the temporary wall corners back to where I want them, build the foundation inside the wall corners, place the blueprints on the foundation and finally delete the wall corners that were only there as an outline.

First, Blueprint Maker didn't seem to like my library and wouldn't make the blueprint. I thought maybe it had something to do with the Sim reading inside, so I waited till the middle of the night to try again. Still no luck with the blueprint. I tried again the next night. Nope. I couldn't wait any longer. I decided to do it manually.

I moved everything at the back of the library forward as far as possible, demolished the back corners, built a foundation block on each corner so I knew where to build. Then I demolished the rest of the back three rows, joined the foundation corners, put in flooring and the wall pattern samples and returned the windows where they belonged. I moved the furnishings that were originally lining the back wall into their new location. I worked my way forwards a couple rows at a time, shifting out of the way, demolishing, building anew, relocating. It took forever. I had to dig out the basement to put in columns so I could build the floor over an incomplete foundation. It took ages to do but I finally finished. It looks identical to the original and in the identical location, but up a bit on a foundation. I considered it a success. Till I tried to work on the front stoop.

How many of you have realized my 🐸🐸🐸🐸 yet. IDENTICAL LOCATION!!!!! I wanted to move it 4 squares back, which would have made the reconstruction much easier because I wouldn't have had to shift everything away from the demolition zone. I don't have room to build a front stoop, or much of one anyway. I built the smallest one possible and put the stairs on the side so sims will be able to enter and exit, till I have enough gumption saved up to do it all again.

MadDoctor61

Interesting. I used a shortened form of 'bonehead move' in the above post. It's been changed to 'plum'.

jillbg

Same here! I started fiddling with CAW because I wanted a worlds with "everything" in it. The fiddling continued for over a year, but the result was worth it - Twin Towns! I have to add that I'm fidding again - with a smaller world this time, but I expect it to take just as long...

MadDoctor61

My game has been collecting bugs, not the interesting kind. I can't even edit a community lot without the game locking up on me. I decided to try a clean re-install. I backed up my downloads etc. uninstalled all expansions and the game itself, cleaned the registry and started the long process of reinstalling everything.

Ooops, I backed up the shortcut to my downloads folder then deleted the downloads folder with everything else. Now my backed up shortcut points to nothing. I get to start from scratch. At least I still have my CAW files and can recreate the world I was building.

IreneSwift

MadDoctor61 wrote: »

Interesting. I used a shortened form of 'bonehead move' in the above post. It's been changed to 'plum'.

That's because that word has another meaning nowadays that isn't exactly appropriate for young readers.

Rflong7

I've lost so many builds from crashing a freezing of CAW/EIG/Game that I've gotten used to saving to the library after a few stages of a build. If I like what I've done after a few areas, I save it to the library and keep going.
I actually find I like my remakes better than the originals (I tell myself to make me feel better).

TadOlson

I used to play Modless and that wasn't too bright when I kept getting children being taken away by the social workers and the saves were always getting corrupted to the point that thwy became unplayable or they glitched out after too many sims were made pregnant by the game including sometime getting wrong ages being made pregnant.That was the end of my Mod-free play after the teens got made pregant by glitchy saves and got messed up so badly they were unplayable from that nightmare.I got Mods to end that mess and make the game stay playable as it had too many other issues when played without Mods.

MadDoctor61

I grew onions in my garden, replanting the best till I planted a perfect one. I got rid of all non-perfect onions. Because there are still plants missing, I planted Unknown Uncommon seeds. One of them was a Putrid Onion plant. With the Gardener Service taking after my garden, I got a little lazy. I didn't notice that they had stored some of those putrid onions in the fridge before I cleaned out the garden. Onions are used in many recipes. I'm sure you know where this is going by now. Anyway, I my angler sim needed bait for Tuna (aka onions) and I noticed I only had 2 left. My perfect onions had all been used up and only 2 putrid ones remained. I planted one of those putrid onions and am starting the perfection process all over again. To make matters worse, the latest planing of Unknown Uncommon seeds included an outstanding onion plant that I deleted before it would have been harvested. It may have given me a perfect onion to restock from. Moral of the story, keep a close eye on you fridge's contents, and replant before you run too low.

Ona_Simmer

This story is from about 3-4 years ago, It was the first time I ever played sims 3 and I had it on the Wii. I didn't give my sims some of the basic necessities they needed, also I didn't know how to create rooms so their bathtub and toilet was in the same room as their beds. Anyways my sim was starving and I didn't have a stove, so I made her go to the park to cook on a grill, the grill was glitching and nothing was working. So I had her run to her friend's house, basically what happened was she knocked on the door and then die, me and my family was cracking up. My lesson... buy a furnished house.


Their was another time, this time I had it for pc, I was playing with mods and I saw that the father could kiss the toddler so I click on the option (idk why). Anyway the toddler stretches up and kisses the dad, a notification pops up saying the dad has a "naughty reputation" I was weirded out and in tears.

igazor

MadDoctor61 wrote: »

I grew onions in my garden, replanting the best till I planted a perfect one. I got rid of all non-perfect onions. Because there are still plants missing, I planted Unknown Uncommon seeds. One of them was a Putrid Onion plant. With the Gardener Service taking after my garden, I got a little lazy. I didn't notice that they had stored some of those putrid onions in the fridge before I cleaned out the garden. Onions are used in many recipes. I'm sure you know where this is going by now. Anyway, I my angler sim needed bait for Tuna (aka onions) and I noticed I only had 2 left. My perfect onions had all been used up and only 2 putrid ones remained. I planted one of those putrid onions and am starting the perfection process all over again. To make matters worse, the latest planing of Unknown Uncommon seeds included an outstanding onion plant that I deleted before it would have been harvested. It may have given me a perfect onion to restock from. Moral of the story, keep a close eye on you fridge's contents, and replant before you run too low.

Or keep at least one perfect (or the best you can manage) specimen of each harvestable in a storage chest someplace else, they won't spoil, so that the last one you have doesn't get used to make dinner -- for your sims or the fish they are trying to catch.

Rflong7

So many times I just Knew I learned my lesson and cleaned out my CAW files to keep only the latest and what I was working on... and ended up never finding the latest versions a of a few older worlds and a few I wanted to finish. I now have every version I work on lately, with a few doubles I'm too afraid to toss- jic.

TadOlson

@Ona_Simmer -That toddler and adult doing a romantic kiss was like what happened to me once between a toddler and his mum once in an old corrupted save of mine where I'd had a family I was playing who's baby got taken away by the social worker long before that happened and the next loading was when my UI failed.I learned to not play Mod-free after that and I've also learned to remove all chess tables from all lots when starting a new game after getting a script error triggered from a chess table.
It sounds like that save where the dad kissed the toddler was already corrupted before you added Mods.It's most likely a social worker taking a child away from an inactive family that caused the corruption like it's done for me a few times.

MadDoctor61

My dog just learned how to hunt and dug up 4, count them, FOUR, Tiberium in a row. I couldn't believe it. For a rare gem to show up that many times in a row was . . . Did I need the money at the time? YES! But, Tiberium is needed for at least one opportunity, so I should save it. Wait, I've got 4 of them. I'll cut one and get tonnes of cash. The stupid thing I did, I didn't save. The game crashed. I have no idea if it had to do with the major Windows Update that took forever to install and multiple restarts to finish. Over an hour later, I'm back in the game. No Tiberium

Karritz

I came across my sim painting a scene I'd not seen a sim paint before - or at least I don't remember seeing it. Fortunately, I got it on video and it is in my latest Caroline and Friends video - Episode 22.

It was late. I was tired. I shut down the game and turned off the computer and realised she'd started that painting after my last save and I didn't get a screenshot either.

But I was able to get a screenshot when I played back the video.



I hope she does it again sometime. Maybe I'll be disappointed as the final pictures may not be nearly as nice as it looks while it's a work in progress.

MadDoctor61

Apparently the dog is having a Pink Diamond day. Three so far. SAVE! SAVE!! SAVE!!! SAVE!!!! SAVE!!!!! SAVE!!!!!!!

Update:
Shortly afterwards, the father of the family picked up a Tiberium in the Catacombs and then the dog found a Soulpeace. SAVE! SAVE!! SAVE!!! SAVE!!!! SAVE!!!!! SAVE!!!!!!!

Nindigo

MadDoctor61 wrote: »

My dog just learned how to hunt and dug up 4, count them, FOUR, Tiberium in a row. I couldn't believe it. For a rare gem to show up that many times in a row was . . . Did I need the money at the time? YES! But, Tiberium is needed for at least one opportunity, so I should save it. Wait, I've got 4 of them. I'll cut one and get tonnes of cash. The stupid thing I did, I didn't save. The game crashed. I have no idea if it had to do with the major Windows Update that took forever to install and multiple restarts to finish. Over an hour later, I'm back in the game. No Tiberium

The agony of losing significant progress...I know it so well. And from other games as well. Now, I'm a compulsive "saver" - better to be safe than sorry

MadDoctor61

Nindigo wrote: »

The agony of losing significant progress...I know it so well. And from other games as well. Now, I'm a compulsive "saver" - better to be safe than sorry

I generally save once per sim day, while everybody is sleeping at night as well as just before and after travelling (World Adventures).

I really needed the money when those Tiberium showed up. I started with a large empty lot and cheated to get rid of all my cash. Get a job early and they are really unhappy going to work the first day starving, stinky, tired. It's interesting starting one sim (or a pair) that way, but the family is growing now and the kids needed bedrooms. After those pink diamonds, cash wasn't a priority.