How bad is it?

[katrisims]

So, umm... Last night, I was playing, and had one of my newly teened sims, David, call the matchmaker for a date. He got the paper girl as his date drop, and they got along pretty well, except wants-wise, they both sort of lost interest pretty soon. Well that's not the problem. The problem is what I saw in the paper girl's want panel after she lost interest:



I thought I took a good picture, but apparently I ingeniously managed to cover the alarming part with the cursor. Well done, Katri. Anyway, yes, the paper girl wants to be friends with one of my cats. Only, the want doesn't have the usual paw icon on it, but the smiley face icon, as if the cat was a human sim. Oops. Also, she seems to have the fear of becoming enemies with the cat, and I suspect that's not entirely right either.

My feeling is that this is probably Not Good, but I don't know How Bad excactly this would be. I haven't seen other signs of doom, such as LTWs on kiddies and toddlers or missing sims or such. I googled a bit, found Mootilda's Hood checker and used it to check Alphabetia. It seems to find sims with no character files, relationships between non-existent sims (probably those same sims), invalid relationships with self, and "Incorrect subject instances" in memories. Especially the relationships issues list is kind of long. Some of those things could probably be fixed with SimPE, but unfortunately I don't think I'm proficient enough with it to try. I suppose I could take a backup and let the hood checker try to remove the things that are not right, to possibly at least delay the doom.

Anyway, there was a question hidden in here somewhere... If you've experienced something like this, how bad would you say this is? Am I in immediate trouble, or only in trouble in the long run? Any insights or advice would be appreciated. :)

Seeing that this is an alphabetacy, it's only expected that I'll need a rebuild at one point or another, quite possibly several. Actually, I've been wondering when the original hood will start to display signs of doom, seeing that I've been playing it since 2007. And I've been tossing around the idea of rebuilding "just in case" when gen. D graduates from college, that is, roughly the first downgrade point. Now I'm wondering if I should do it sooner... I suppose unless I get advice to rebuild Right Now or start seeing clear signs of DOOM, the plan would be to keep playing, and backup early and often, and see how far I get.

Tl;dr: we're DOOMED. Possibly.

Comments

[leaths.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm no expert, but I wouldn't worry too much about the pet want glitch. I've seen it before in my game, and I remember a couple of people at MATY posting about it (although it was a long time ago). I don't think it's a sign of impending doom. As far as I know, the want doesn't fulfill if the sim befriends the pet, so it doesn't seem like the game is actually reading the pet as a sim. Which makes me think that it might just be a graphical glitch. As long as nothing else is going wrong, I would just shrug it off. But again, I'm not an expert.

As for the hood checker, have you tried deleting gossip, trash, and corrupted memories with the lot debugger? I would do that and then see what the hood checker says.

You have been playing that neighborhood for a long time and there are a lot of sims in it, so it's probably inevitable that it will get corrupted, but I don't think you need to drop everything and rebuild immediately. Of course, it's always good to backup everything just in case, and I could be wrong.

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reply, Lea! Much appreciated.

Hmm, well it seems odd that that single want alone would signal doom, as I haven't seen the usual signs. Then again, I looked back and it seems ndainye started seeing odd wants towards pets before she had to rebuild her hood. But it's possible that one alone means nothing.

That's a good suggestion, thanks! The lot debugger should at least get some obvious junk out of the way.

Yeah, I think it's pretty much inevitable that at one point or another I'll need to rebuild, but I suppose unless I start seeing more oddities, it's not urgent for the moment. I'm thinking it would be at least more convienient at a stage where my sims wouldn't be pregnant or with new babies in the house all the time. I think for now I'll just keep backing up the hood often and go on playing, see if that was a one time thing. In any case, the best is not to panic. :)

Anyway, thanks again! Expert or not, having a second opinion is good.

[esmeiolanthe.livejournal.com]

I'd probably rebuild when you have scheduled to rebuild, when Gen D graduates, and not put it off longer than that. Unless you see other signs of impending explosion earlier, of course. But you probably don't need to drop everything and rebuild as long as you backup regularly.

Do you have the Director's Cut fixes from MATY for when you rebuild? They can help prevent Issues of Doominess like Met Self memories. (I think you already have them, but just in case...)

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the enouragement, Esme! Yeah, I'm starting to think I may have to actually go through with that rebuilding plan, if nothing alarming starts happening, then probably around that time would be good. I'll keep an eye on things, back up often and go on. At least, yesterday when I played another family, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. *knocks on wood*

Thanks for the reminder, I think I do have just about all of them, but I'd better check. The thing with Director's Cut is, it also has stuff that I don't want, such as the zombie apocalypse mod. Anyway, best to check yet, better safe than sorry!

Thanks again! :)

[esmeiolanthe.livejournal.com]

The Director's Cut is pretty customizable, though. It all comes in one download as a folder with lots of hacks in it, and you can just remove the ones you don't want. (I've left out the zombie apocalypse and yellow pee mods, among others.) There's also a list of what each and every hack in the DC does here, so you can make informed decisions. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,14444.0.html

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

That list is very useful to have around, thanks! I think I just about have the critical ones, but I'll be going through them carefully, to make sure, plus I think I saw a few others I might like to have still. Thanks again. :)