Free Time Fresh Install Questions

[Zirconia Wolf]

Long story short, I did a dumb thing (pretty sure I know what it was, too) & have managed to cause all the Tombstones/Urns & many of the outside Trash Cans to go AWOL in Pleasantview, Strangetown & Veronaville.

I have a terrible feeling that this may need to be rectified by a reinstall.

Now for the "short story, long" part:

Traditionally, a reinstall for me means a painstakingly long process involving loading the game EP by EP, SP by SP Patch by Patch, with a boot-up, load, play session with every EP. My reasons are that I have a very clear "how I want things to start" vision in my head when it comes to the various pre-scripted Maxian stories & experience has taught me that some of these things were pretty "borked" on a fresh Seasons (or any EP) installation.

For instance, Nervous Subject's fear of vermin (which he "needs" to cause his breakdown) is gone in my game as soon as I have added NL. The bills that Darren Dreamer is supposed to have to pay are not present after adding NL. Pets seems to mess up Dustin Broke's sneak-out with Angela Pleasant...well, you get the picture!

Being faced with yet another reinstall however has got me wondering just how the game "plays out" on a fresh everything-up-to FT installation. As I have all the SPs/EPs currently out (& a SecuROM free exe file for the ones that need them) I thought I would ask if anyone out there who has done a fresh install up to FT could tell me what they noticed about the pre-scripted stuff. I can live without Nervous Subject's fear of vermin, but it would be nice to know if Darren Dreamer still starts out wanting to increase his Creativity skill & get closer to Cassandra, etc..

Thanks,

-ZW

[Kaylyn]

All the pre-scripted stuff is still the same, i.e. the messages that pop up. "Don's looking for a little loving! Maybe now would be a good time to invite Nina over." Their wants will still roll up as they usually do upon a fresh install. But certain events may not trigger properly. I do know that Vidcund Curious will now not automatically get abducted the first time he uses the telescope. Of course, the Knowledge bonus now lets you summon aliens if you max out that path, so though it's not 100% successful, it has much higher odds than before.

Interesting addon: I downloaded a hack that allows for more variety in abductions. They now have a 20% chance of making the sim pregnant or turning them into a vampire, werewolf, zombie, or plantsim respectively. Because aliens can be boring.

PS: Why don't you just delete (or temporarily move) the Neighborhoods folder and allow the game to recreate them? That would be a lot easier than reinstalling...unless you think something got borked in Program Files...

[Zirconia Wolf]

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like what isn't "triggered" certainly could be rather easily, if I wanted it to be.

That abduction hack sounds cool! It would be nice to have some variety & you're right that it gets boring with the "all Aliens, all the time" thing. (Who says that Aliens are always impregnating people all the time anyway? If I were an Alien, I would get tired of that fast!)

As to the (possible) reinstall, I was thinking along the lines of what would be easier when it came to preventing the "wrong" extra characters in my Hoods. For instance, after letting the Base Game load/boot up, I do away with the pre-made Townies so they aren't duplicated in every other Hood I create. After adding University, I create 3 new (Townie free) Hoods- one for each pre made College- then do away with those files...etc, etc.

I wasn't sure if I could control this as well on a strait FT install (that's a lot of EP files to zip/unzip at the right time) so I thought that a FT install with "zip breaks" between each EP would be "easier" in that sense.

I am also growing weary of (& increasingly confused by) keeping track of which version of which hack is for which EP, so I thought I would say "to heck with this set-up crap" & jump strait to FT...before AL comes along & messes everything up!

Still in limbo right now though.

Thanks again!

-ZW

[Hokieman]

ZW, if you aren't attached to the premade sims that come with the game, then you can just wipe all of the out in one shot with the delete all characters cheat. The last time I reloaded, that's what I did. I loaded all EPs & SPS in order, patching as I went, without starting the game until I was done, then I deleted all characters and created my own. I did save the ones I wanted from the previous game by retrieving them with SimPE

[Kaylyn]

deleteallcharacters has a nasty habit of creating errors in the neighborhood. It's kind of hit or miss, so you may use it with no problems, but it may mess up someone else's game. If I need to delete all characters I use Theo's Deleter plugin for SimPE. Open the neighborhood and go to Sim Description, select all and click Delete Sim. It does a fairly thorough job of cleaning up the leftovers that deleteallcharacters won't get.

[Zirconia Wolf]

Yeah, I had herd about the (potential) nasty side effects of the deleteallcharacters thing & have never had the nerve to try it.

Never knew there was a safer alternative in SimPE; may need to check it out.

Think I may have (finally) settled on a semi-solution for now. (I'll be crying for help again if it doesn't work out! )

-ZW

[Greg]

I don't know beans about Free Time but I can at least express my sympathies about having to reinstall the whole thing. That's nowhere on my list of fun things to do!

[Zirconia Wolf]

Thank you for the sympathy!

I'm growing real weary of fooling around with reinstalling, but I have (finally) decided I need to let go of my bizarre control obsession & get on with things before Apartment Life comes along & mucks up all my hacks!

I have settled on a "roll back" to OFB, were I let everything regenerate & rather than play through the pre scripted stuff (like I always have before) & simply loaded each lot & "locked in" what I consider to be the want/fear I was most interested in for the given "story".

All Adults & Elders have been upgraded to "Graduated" status (thanks to ChristianLov's very cool Counterfeit Diploma mod) & the appropriate files were zipped to prevent duplicate Townie/NPC spawning.

Next step will be to make a backup & slam in the rest of the EPs/SPs & just deal with it!

(I figure by the time I get things sorted out, Apartment Life will have been run through the wringer by the modders & I can finish of my EP collection at last!)

Better get back to it...

-ZW

[Greg]

I keep wondering if maybe some day I'll be brave enough to install more expansion packs. That just might wait until I can afford a wholes separate machine to run it on!

[Miros1]

Originally Posted by Hokieman

ZW, if you aren't attached to the premade sims that come with the game, then you can just wipe all of the out in one shot with the delete all characters cheat. The last time I reloaded, that's what I did. I loaded all EPs & SPS in order, patching as I went, without starting the game until I was done, then I deleted all characters and created my own. I did save the ones I wanted from the previous game by retrieving them with SimPE

Or you can read my handy tutorial on how to prevent them from being created in the first place...

[Zirconia Wolf]

I love that tutorial!

I use it to prevent the same ugly, dumb-named Sims from cropping up in all my Hoods. Being strange however, I have adopted an "Everybody Gets To Live Once" rule that I stubbornly cling to, which means I don't zip the latest EP files until the Townies/NPCs/etc within have been generated once (in a fresh Base Hood just for them) after which I zip away!

Yippie! I finally have a day off work (hand counting write-in ballots sucks big time) & intend to spend the entire day getting my game up to Free Time!

Better get cracking...

-ZW

[Greg]

Nowadays when I create a new neighborhood, I just do a complete rework on any of the stock townies as they walk by. They stay the same sex and have the same eye color, but everything else is up for grabs!

Golly, I haven't counted ballots in decades! I did that in my silly youth, but only as a volunteer poll-watcher. I had no idea that people actually got paid to do it!

[Zirconia Wolf]

Yes, we do & if you ever find someone who thinks it's funny to write in stuff like "Mickey Mouse" or "Suck My Big Fat *male body part*", please take a 2x4 to the side of their head for me.

You would not believe the time & money wasted tallying all that crap.

My personal favorite was what I am sure some genius meant to be a vote for The Democratic Party, but was so poorly written it was officially counted as a vote for The Democratic Panty. (This struck me as amusing on many different levels!)

On the subject of my game, as of September 1st I am officially running on all SPs (including Ikea) & all EPs up to the patched FT!

Yippie!

Well, it made me happy, anyway!

-ZW

[Greg]

That is cool! I would install all the SP's and EP's if I weren't afraid that it would mess up my game. I'm happy with the way it's running now, and lately my play time has been so short that I'm afraid to get into an adventure of having to update all the fan-created hacks and sort out incompatibility problems.