Weekly simming 5/2015

[katrisims]

Well. I haven't really played or written this week, but I have done something: finished my downloads project! And that's something. I've mostly spent my simming time this week going through my hacks, downloading yet a few odds and ends, alphabetizing my content list, bulk-renaming my files so as to reduce load time and such.



My original intention with this project (which I started about a year ago, btw) was to get rid of stuff I didn't like or didn't use. Well, I did, but I also about doubled the size of my Downloads folder. :D Not that anyone is surprised when that happens. I'm happy to see that even though I added quite a lot of stuff, it didn't really seem to affect loading time, at least not noticeably. The thing I'm not so happy about is that apparently I have a hack conflict.

If I go into a household and press play, all that happens is that the sims start "jumping" on the spot and their portraits flash endlessly. It's eliminated if I take out all my hacks, so at least I know it's a hack problem. So currently I'm shuffling folders in and out and booting the game over and over to try and find the culprit(s). Not exactly how I meant to spend my Sunday evening, but well, it happens.

I can easily see how it happens, too. I spent a couple of evenings in my hacks folder already, reading the descriptions to see what everything I'd downloaded. And I caught several cases where I'd downloaded something like "oh yeah, that's a must have!", and then on inspection, found out the same fix/feature is already included in some other hack I also downloaded. With the number of hacks on offer and the number of hacks currently in my game, it's just not possible, for me at least, to keep track of everything I have. Now at least I have some idea. Until I forget.

There are two things I'm pretty happy I found - unless one of them turns out to be the culprit of the current conflict of course. :P One, you may remember how I realized some time ago that Pescado's noeatcrap isn't a great idea in an apocalypse if you wish to eat. Well, it turns out that Cyjon has a version that only deals with the overeating, since he's separated the spoiled food part into a separate hack for his own purposes. So, I should be able to prevent most sims from overeating all the time, and still force my apocalypse sims to eat spoiled food so they don't starve. Yay!

Two, it's bugged me for a while that visitor kids automatically leave at 6 pm. If they come home from school at about three, and possibly the playable kids have to take care of some needs too, that leaves very little time to actually interact before the guests just go home. And most of all, it bugged me that due to the way I throw birthday parties - asap after the "X will grow up in just one day" popup - kids could not attend their friends' birthdays, but would say bye the second I'd be able to pick up the phone to throw the party. I knew Twojeffs' Visitor Controller had a feature allowing kids and teens to stay later. But that would have been the only feature I would have really needed from that hack, and from what I've heard, it might have cost my sims their working outfits, so I was hesitant. But then I found that Squinge has a hack for just having kids and teens stay longer! So that problem should be solved too.


Edit: The hack problem turned out to be Argon's Townie brick. I don't know if it was conflicting with something or otherwise broken, but when in downloads, it made my game misbehave, so it got tossed. It seems I'm looking at a few other problems, but more on the level "missing clothes mesh", or so it seems. Some tidying up remains to be done, but overall I'm very happy. So much choice!

So it'll probably be a while yet before I'm confident enough to open Alphabetia with the new Downloads folder. And then I'll probably have to give my sims back their clothes and stuff that the game can't find because it's organized differently. But, one step at a time, plus if I get this done now, I won't have to when I do the rebuild! We'll see how far I've gotten next week.

Comments

[esmeiolanthe.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you ave all your hacks worked out and your Downloads folder pretty well taken care of. That's a big undertaking -- well done! *\o/*

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Esme! I'm happy to be (almost) done with this finally! Only some minor details to work out and then I can just enjoy all the pretty. :)

[anne-sands.livejournal.com]

I just found your blog and I just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying your weekly simming notes! I actually like reading about people's games and behind the scenes stuff more than stories about the sims, so these are really great. And it's inspired me to be more active on my own simblr and write my own notes like these.

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Hello, and welcome. :) I mostly post these entries as a motivator for myself, as I feel more connected and more productive when I do regular progress reports. Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying them, too, and even being inspired. :) (I was, in turn, originally inspired by esmeiolanthe, who posts similar notes on Tumblr.)

Thanks for reading and commenting!