strangetomato | The Great ReBuild 2010: Paring things down?

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The Great ReBuild 2010: Paring things down?

I'm struggling with this rebuild. At first I was going to package up all the sims that have been born in the those neighborhoods and share them and then do the same for my edited lots, but every time I load the game to do so, I lose steam fast. I've now settled on only packaging up characters and lots that I absolutely can't do without. So that means any story characters that have already been featured (and one that hasn't — Phi's mystery baby), and maybe some lots (the Summerdream place comes to mind), but everything else will be played through and made over again. That'll take some time, but it'll be far less tedious than piecing it together bit by bit.

I think I'm going to start by playing the fresh megahood to give myself a chance to see what I truly miss from my other game. I'm going to keep my cc (though I'm paring that down quite liberally), but I want to try to use the bare minimum of hacks and things like that. That brings me to my question of the day (and it's a classic one):

If you were going to start over with only a handful of hacks, which ones would you consider essential?

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As someone who is also trying to keep the amount of hacks at minimum with her new hood, let me suggest you one that is in my opinion essential when playing apartments: No talk through stuffed animals autonomously.

I was pissed when I began to play an apartment at Pleobit Island and my Isaiah Gavigan went to the Monty-Capp apartment, took their daughter's teddy bear and went back outside to play with his wife and later dropped it on the ground. Of course, Buy Mode did not allow me to pick it back up to return it to the Monty apartment and when I tried to ask Isaiah to pick it up, it was not possible because it was an object from outside the apartment. When I loaded the Montys, the bear was in the girl's room so I deleted it, but it showed up when I loaded the Gavigans and, well, I hope I did not screw up the lot. GRRRR!

That and the Uni student's walk fix :)

I would keep any and all essential fixes that should have been included in patches and lot debugger. I can't think of ay actual hacks that I would consider essential.

Other than the ones in Pescado Director's Cut, are there any essential fixes I should know about?

The Lot Debugger is so necessary. I'd never dream of playing without it.

Thank for the input! ^_^

I'm not really that into apartments these days. They're just so buggy, they drive me crazy.

I'll keep an eye out for that one, though. That's a Simbology hack, right? I'm trying to be very careful of having conflicting hacks this time around, so I'm going to try to keep non-MATY hacks to a bare minimum.

Do you use InSIM these days? I went back to see if there was any newer info on it, and the post was recommending using the Sim Blender instead.

I don't know, never having gotten the DC. Let me peek...

...I would say DC pretty much covers it (except there's too much in there for me)!

I always grab the DC, then edit to suit my needs. There's too much in there for me, too. For starters, I don't want the hack to completely eliminate Humble from the game and the traditional marriage hack makes me gag, so they must go.

Are there any non-MATY hacks that are essential fixes? I've come across some that claim to be, but I figure it'd have been included in Pescado's arsenal if it was need to avoid game breakage.

*mandatory "almost-everything-by-Pescado-except-the-sexist-women always-take-husband's-last-name-one" comment goes here*

Other than that, a whole lot of assorted fixes by other MATY members, most notably everything by Lord Darcy (which fixes a whole bunch of objects and menu strings, adds slots, etc), Argon's face template fixes... oh, and the random beard/glasses on townies hack, because it's awesome.

ACR2. Not essential, perhaps, but fun. And the sim blender (or insim, if that's your preference) for those annoying little argh-my-character-won't-do-what-I-want moments.

Probably more. I have so many hacks it's barely the same game anymore. Vanilla game would drive me insane. :P

Oh yeah, various "don't do that!" hacks from Simbology are very useful. 'Talk through bear' drove me insane long before I had any apartments (and apartments do kind of suck in general, really).

Some of them prevent more than what they advertise, though. No autonmous jump on bed made the 'jump on bed' interaction not work at all, and the one that's supposed to prevent excessive amounts of pet wants killed ALL the pets wants. No one ever wanted a kitten anymore. And that's sad. :(

That's very similar to what I'm going with right now. Great minds think alike?

Do you know if the Sim Blender generally considered better/safer/more efficient than InSIM these days? A note on the InSIM download page seemed to suggest that.

I had a lot of hacks in previously, and I'm sure I'm going to want some of them back, but I'm feeling very wary of hack conflicts these days, and most creators seem to leave that info out. I'll add the ones I really miss back in, I suppose, but I'm going to try to live with less for now, just to see how it goes.

I'll be using your megahood! I finally get to test it out. ^_^ To ask a newbish question, will I need any cleaned templates to keep the townie count down or does that come with the edited hood? I'm guessing I just need the notownieregen and those sorts of hacks. Would that be correct?

I got a few from Theo, but the only ones of his that I would say are essential would be caged pet fixes, no autonomous teleprompter play (irritates me to no end), ghost hack, pet pregnancy fix.

I'm also 99% sure that if I were to play my game with only the hacks I'm saying are essential, I would probably wish I had ALL my hacks :D

Oh, and I see you're asking about simblender. I have simblender and teleporter shrub on EVERY LOT (along with ACR, but that's nonessential for me) and there are no issues. I've never used full-blown InSim.

Edited 2010-09-06 15:15 (UTC)

Goodness, I hope the apartment system is not as buggy as I fear, because I've just finished decorating the first seven apartments of my new hood :P (I am using apartments to promote interaction between my families)

I use the object version of INSIM because for some reason (before I deleted my massive DOwnloads folder), the SIM version was not working anymore. I don't know if it was M&G or a hack what was making it conflict.

I think I will try it out again before I begin playing with Pleobit Island because the select and teleport options were very useful when I had to take pics in Community Lots.

I had a lot of hacks in previously, and I'm sure I'm going to want some of them back, but I'm feeling very wary of hack conflicts these days, and most creators seem to leave that info out.

Have you used the Hack Conflict Detector program? Even when I had a ton of hacks, that program kept the bugs at minimum. Nowadays, I have more issues with conflicting mislabeled default replacements than hacks thanks to it.

I'd also take the zombie apocalypse out. It is included with the DC and I've just realized I had it installed! (Was checking if I remembered to take out the traditional marriage hack). Good thing I went with vampires as supernatural creatures instead of zombies this time!

No, I haven't been using that. Thanks for the advice! I may have had that at some point in the past, but not since my last hard drive fail. That should be very helpful!

Yeah, I take that one out, too. I'm a little unsure of the creature fixes in general, because I think it messes with vampire autonomy. Maybe I'll check into it again to be sure.

Vampire, huh? I'm interested in seeing what you're planning with them. ^_^

MATY hacks are a must have for me too. As well as hacks from TwoJeffs.
I recommend also hacks from Marhis and Cyjon. Oh and tunaisafish made also really great hacks/fixes e.g. the "Attraction Traits Fix".
And many more, but I think they're not essential...
Baah, when I'm think about it, I'm a total whore when it comes to hacks/fixes/mods... ^^.

Not a fan of the teleprompter burping? :P Now why would you ever find THAT annoying?

I'm thinking I'll put a lot of them back, too, but I'm going to try this simplifying kick and see how it goes. I'm sure I'd have stopped playing the game ages ago if hacks didn't exist at all.

I've been using InSIM and the Sim Blender in my game, but that's probably overkill. If I can get by with just the Sim Blender, I'm going to stick with that, I think.

I knew about the pet wants hack, but not the jump on bed one. That's good to know.

No pets wants is very sad. :(

They do seem like a good way to have interactions between different families. I hope you don't face anything too buggy. I've always just found them a little irritating that way.

The selector and teleporter options were very useful. I don't know if the Sim Blender provides anything like that. I should look into it.

As I understood it, InSim is more or less unsupported now, and from experience I didn't really like it very much... one of the options made my sims get memories of meeting themselves once, and as we know, that is a VBT indeed. I like sim blender better, what it doesn't do I get from the FFS debugger or ACR.

Hee, hope you'll find it to your liking. :) You do need notownieregen/anti-redundancy (and nodormierespawn/nostrays if you want) to avoid new townies/NPCs regenerating, especially if you start making any of the existing ones playable. By default, it only comes with Pleasantview townies & NPCs, the Garden Club, and some Bluewater townies and ST townies that had existing relationships. Oh, and the strays. You'll need to add in Kendal Lawson and any other Strangetown townies yourself, if you need them.

Be careful with apartments if you do use them, even with the hacks in they'll spawn a whole lot of social group townies with stupid clothes. D:

Are all the AL social group townies included? I started a custom hood with what I thought was empty templates installed and they showed up, anyway. Is there no way to stop them? D:

They're not. :) And you don't need to worry about empty templates, because the uberhood has already been loaded in my game (to do the merging) and thus all stealth hoods have already been added, which means no sneaky social group townies. With Pescado's hacks in, at least, social group townies should ONLY spawn to live in empty apartments or as roommates.

That's awesome. Thank you for removing them! ^_^ I'm so so sick of those AL townies.

Aren't we all. :) The template I used for the stealth hood is in my list of downloads, it has the Newsons, Gavigans and Goodies, but no AL townies. Not quite "clean", though...

Oh yeah, teleporter shrub/cat! Abosolutely essential for me.

And the seasons changing vase from Paladin's Place.

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