crossover_chick | Not The World's Greatest Saturday

Woke up to Mom complaining about spam e-mails she was getting in her inbox, found a notice of a bill payment getting returned in MY inbox (not for lack of funds, but probably a typo in the routing number -- Mom sent a complaint e-mail when we couldn't log in to fix it and we wrote up a check), the weather was nowhere near as nice as they said it was going to be (supposed to be sunnier and warmer, neither panned out), I had to do the full room clean (it's necessary but that doesn't mean I have to like it), and it turns out I should have worn one of my new pairs of pajamas for longer, as trying them on tonight has revealed they're just a little too small on me (tight under the armpits and such). Which is a shame, as I thought they were comfy when I initially tried them on and was hoping to keep them as a spare pair. :( And I had to take out some of my new Sims mods because they haven't yet been updated to the new patch that came out (though, weirdly enough, MC Command Center was okay!). I made some notes of which ones I need to redownload, but -- darn it, I liked keeping Sims from making meals in the bathroom! (The "no washing dishes in there" mod HAS been updated, happily.) And I saw some new mods I'd like to download, but all I can think of is how much updating I'll have to do for the next patch that breaks stuff. . .

Fortunately, today wasn't all about the grumpiness:

-->I got the last chapter of "The Technicolor Phase" edited! *toots horn* So now it's just a matter of getting it all uploaded onto AO3, and I'm done! Which was a New Year's resolution for me, so I'm happy. :) Hooray for actually finishing fics.

-->I also put up the next bit for "Scenes From Secundus" -- Carnival Cups! And it was a fic I didn't feel the need to edit to death either, yay~

-->I didn't actually start playing Geeker, Chell and Wheatley in Sims 4 today -- between having to lose some of my mods and installing the patch update, I wasn't quite in the mood. I did, however, install these new bathroom stall items I downloaded into my Optimist's Bowl-N-Skate lot (I checked on SimsVIP, and so far custom content in the form of objects isn't messing everything up forever). Had to turn Move Objects On to set everything up correctly, but so far it all looks good. Now I just have to make sure Sims can use them. . .I guess we know where one of the McTest/Redacted/Notamoron family is going next update! I also spent a little time hunting down some cool lots I saw on Deli's last "looking at my subscribers' cool builds" video -- came up with some really nice stuff. I gotta find room for some of it in my game. Either that or start a new save file and plonk it all down. :p

-->Speaking of cool lots, The Sim Supply did a "looking at cool builds on the Gallery" video himself! He picked some really nice stuff too, including a cute little A-frame house, a crisp modern home, a giant stadium build, and a family compound that was so super detailed it was unbelievable. Too bad that last one also lagged like hell -- looks amazing, wouldn't download it if you had a gun to my head. I know from sad experience you can never get anything DONE on a lot like that. It's really only good for sitting there and looking pretty.

-->Also watched a video about the new upcoming game pack, StrangerVille -- I am still unsure how much I like it, but I will give it a fair shot. (Especially if I end up winning it for free -- SimsVIP is holding another giveaway, and I went ahead and commented an entry, because why not?) I appreciate that we're getting laptops -- and that fan response to the trailer has gotten the Sims team thinking about how they could put photos on desks and tables and such, instead of limiting us to sticking them on walls. (Like, seriously? This honestly never occurred to you before?)

-->And one from Deli as she made over Bella Goth. Wasn't fond of this one stripey pantsuit she gave her, but the party outfit was pretty darn awesome. :) Sim makeovers are fun -- oooh, which reminds me, I get to give my final three hot and cold-weather outfits finally, get them out of whatever disasters the game put them in. . .

-->Did my VictorLuvsAlice queue through Tuesday so far, and I'm going through variations on the "corpse bride" and "alice madness returns" tags to restock my supply of drafts (aka "posts to queue up later).

Okay, and I have a LOT to clear out of my inbox, so I'd better get on that too. Can't stay up all night, after all -- we've got another bowling day tomorrow! That should be fun. :) Night all!

Current Mood: tired

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

whitedove01s

Sims will try to cook in the bathroom? And I thought Hermione brewing potions in a toilet stall was weird...

Do I want to know what they're cooking on?

From:

crossover_chick

They'll try to prep meals in there, anyway -- they can't actually cook in there unless you've shoved a microwave or stove into the bathroom. (Which, trust me, I bet some Sim player has done just for shits and giggles.) I don't know what's going on in the underlying algorithm, but Sims will sometimes take food out of the fridge, then ignore the empty kitchen counters nearby in favor of going to another counter -- usually the bathroom counters. The Sim Supply had one of his Sims going down to the BASEMENT to a place he'd set up as a woodworking room to prep food, then coming aaaall the way back to actually cook it. The mod to fix this is called "Don't Prep Food Where You Angry Poop." XD (The one that stops them washing dishes in random sinks is "Don't Wash Dishes Where You Angry Poop.")

From:

whitedove01s

Weird. I guess the game's programmed so that a 'counter' is a food prep surface and there's no line of code that makes a 'kitchem counter' different from a counter, well, anywhere else. As for the downstairs one, maybe it's calculating straight line distance and the code therefore thought the basement was actually 'closer' (see update note). Could happen if it was right under the room the sim was in at the time.

It's still weird.

And if I ever get any of the Sims games (Which is holding on a gaming computer I want to build from parts, which is holding on so many other things...) I'll probably want to look into how to make mods. I know I've been reading up a lot on the ones for Skyrim and I don't have that yet either. Mostly because how the games are made/coded really interests me. The AI in the Sims games and the automated interactions with objects is something I'd love to pick apart and study.

update note: Ah, except you said in some cases they walk right past the kitchen counters to do this. So it's not based on shortest distance. I have no clue. XD

Edited Date: 2019-02-27 02:35 pm (UTC)

From:

crossover_chick

I guess so -- there's only one "counter" category when you sort through build/buy mode, and you can use any in any room, so. . . *shrug* I WANT to say it might depend on the relative "quality" of the counters (with "more expensive" translating to "better" and thus pulling the Sim toward it), but I don't have enough evidence to be sure. (And yes, the typical sim kitchen is set up so the counters are, if not right next to the fridge, are at least closer than the bathroom or basement. XD)

Oh, these games are just weird and weirdly buggy in general. You should see the "pet interaction spam" glitch sometimes -- a pet will try to ask for something, and it'll queue up the interaction so many times the line might go off the screen. A lot of the modding community is built around tweaking EA mistakes.

Heh, I see -- yeah, I imagine it would be pretty interesting to dive into the code and see how the whole mess actually works. I've never been as interested in that myself -- I just like using the mods after the fact to stop my game from exploding. Or to add fun new features (like new clothes, or accessories, or bathroom stalls -- yes, we don't have a good public toilet in Sims 4 yet *sigh*).

From:

whitedove01s

Weird. Of course, if there's a fix for it at least it means someone found out how it worked (or rather, didn't) in order to fix it. Definitely going to be interesting to get to that someday. It could be based on the price of the item/surface and thus the perceived quality.

I almost feel sorry for the first batch of sims I make when I get my hands on that game. They're likely to be run through all sorts of weird maze-like 'houses' and psychological tests to figure out how they work. (On the upside, I see no need to put them in a pool and remove the ladder. So many people have done that, the result is obvious!)

*looks up the glitch* Little doggy faces all up the left of the screen. ... I'm surprised they haven't tried to pass that off as a feature instead of a bug. I've only had a dog for about a year now, and they are kind of like that when they want attention! XD Or at least the crazy one I have is.

I'm not surprised. It's EA. I used to be pretty big into Ultima Online before the EO moved in. (I even made a private offline server for it a couple times afterwards, mostly to pick the code apart and look at all the places I never got to.) There were some 'fun' bugs in that, too.

No public toilets? And, if I recall, the poor Sims pee themselves if they can't get to one in time. How/why would they ever leave their homes under those conditions! Good thing there's a mod to fix it.

From:

crossover_chick

Well, sort of -- the fix involves disabling all counters for food prep, and then you go through and enable the ones you actually WANT them to make food on. (There's also a version that's flipped -- default enabled, and you disable the ones you don't want them to use.) The "use the kitchen sink for dishes, darn it" fix works the same way. And yeah, it seems logical, as I believe Sims in the past liked to always use the best quality stuff, but I can't say for sure.

*snork* Given how my favorite LPers love doing ridiculous things like making giant hedge mazes to run Sims through (to the point where the game freezes) or doing cowplant lovelympics (putting Sims through various challenges and having the losers eaten by cowplant; winner marries the LPer's self-sim), it wouldn't be the worst thing that ever happened to them. (Oh yeah -- they just haul themselves out of the pool and head inside. ...yeah, they made it so Sims don't need a pool ladder back in Sims 3, I think. You need to box the pool in entirely to ensure a drowning death these days.)

*snork* It may be true to life, and it generally fixes itself once the original interaction fires, but still. They've said they've fixed it twice, and no dice.

*nods* Fair enough -- we all know what EA is like. You don't get voted "worst company ever" twice without doing something to deserve it. (And huh, neat -- I think you may have mentioned that before.)

Well, okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration -- public lots HAVE toilets, but they're generally large private rooms with one toilet each. If you want anything like the stalls you usually see on public lots, you either get this thing (which has custom-tuned toilets so Sims don't get antsy about using them in "public"), or put every toilet into its own tiny room. (This is not to say that all lots have toilets -- the Sims team was rightly mocked for some stupid houses in Get Famous's "The Pinnacles" neighborhood that had tons of empty space and bathrooms without toilets.)

From:

whitedove01s

Well, at least that works. I can see where it'd be difficult to have a very free-form building design system and then try to specify that certain rooms are for certain purposes, and then have THAT bit of code affect every item in the room to disable purposes that don't fit the room designation. They'd probably have to redo the whole sim/item interaction code from scratch as well as adding an extra step or a kind of in-building zoning requirement to building design. Lots of work. But interesting to think of for me, as I haven't even started coding such a thing so... it's always easier to learn from the mistakes of others.

Oh, that's good news. I always found that kind of thing a bit bullying/cruel to the sims. (I could probably only do it if I was trying to do/recreate a specific story or something and a certain chara's death was part of plot. Otherwise, I'm not good with chara deaths and would probably avoid sim ones too.) Good to know they've finally learned how to get out of a pool without a ladder.

Yeah, I tried using it to do the new mosaic timeline stuff before, but the 2d graphics and the map limitations meant it didn't really work for me for that.

The only Sims game I've actually played is SimCity for Nintendo, WAY back in the day. And often with a cheat to give me lots of money so I could create town maps without having to worry about the initial costs. Which reminds me that someday I want to recreate the Gotham City map I have on that, if the map space is big enough, so I can look at the stats for traffic congestion, pollution, etc... XD

From:

crossover_chick

Yeah, the whole thing with Sims is that you're supposed to have a lot of freedom to build whatever you want, and furnish it however you want. They probably would have to do some major redesign to make specific room designations and stop Sims from doing certain activities in certain places. . . I mean, they have themed rooms that you can place if you're not great at houses, but I would say the theme is based solely on the furnishings -- there's nothing in the code to specifically say "this is a bathroom, no washing dishes or prepping food." *shrug* But hey, if it gives you something interesting to ponder, great. :p

I try to actively avoid Sim death myself, although that's usually because I'm playing with my favorite characters recreated in Sims. (Like my Victor and Alice couple -- who are now both vampires, with one biological kid and one alien kid from Victor getting abducted. XD) And yeah, I'm sure some Simmers who enjoy killing Sims bemoaned that update, but the rest of us like not needing a ladder to use a pool. ;P

Awww, too bad. But you can only work with what you're given.

*whistles* That is back in the day. I never played SimCity -- though I did have SimTown, the more "kiddie" version. I remember my towns always had five million newspaper stands to balance residential and business lots. XD And LOL, that would be pretty cool! I wonder if anyone -- what am I saying, DEFINITELY somebody else has tried that on some version of SimCity.

From:

whitedove01s

Yeah, original SimCity was pretty much my 'go-to map-making program' back in the day when I wanted to get a better visual than a hand drawn map and look at things like population stats. (I have a weird fondness for all kinds of little trivial data when it comes to something that interests me.)

I even remember there was a map you could get with no water, so you could build edge-to-edge, but I don't recall how to unlock it. Or how to do the money thing, tho I'm pretty sure it was a "Spend all starting funds and set all taxes to zero, and it causes the code to 'wrap around'" kind of thing.

From:

crossover_chick

Heh, so I've noticed. And hey, SimCity would be an awesome program for such things! So long as disasters weren't wrecking the place. XD (Though I imagine you had those turned off.)

Huh -- didn't even know that was a thing. Like I said, I only ever played SimTown, like I said. I'm sure the information's still around somewhere on Google. Though I guess the issue there would be making sure you were getting tips on the old SimCity, and not any of the newer ones (especially the most recent version, which is also just SimCity).

From:

whitedove01s

Pretty sure I did, though I think for one scenario I was trying to write a story that started with a disaster and used the controls to trigger one and made notes. It was a long time ago.

IDing the one with 16-bt graphics shouldn't be too hard. XD