Strangetown Extras: Ripp's LOL-worthy formalwear and a scary glitch

[strangetomato]

Okay, at the risk of scattering spoilers all over place, I decided to show you these pics. It's the sort of thing you just HAVE to share. The first thing made me pee in my pants a little from laughing (not really, but just about), and the second is a really scary looking glitch that I hope is not the first signs of Very Bad Things happening in Strangetown (well, Bluewater Village, actually, but it's essentially the same thing).

The thing about young adults is that you never see their formalwear, so imagine my surprise when I finally saw Ripp's formal attire and it looked like this...

All I can say is... LOL

That's right... he's actually Santa Claus. When he goes missing for the whole night, Johnny and Ophelia assume he's out on a serious bender, but really he's delivering toys to children all over the world.

The only reason I even saw this formalwear at all is the fact that sims who get in "the zone" switch to formalwear to perform. Ripp was visiting Florence Delarosa (ummm, don't ask me why... *wink*), and decided to play for tips... as usual. He did pretty well for himself too.




Santa takes his music very seriously.

Flo doesn't get excited easily. She has Santa playing world-class piano for her and there's a yappy little dog destroying the couch that she's taking a nap on.

Florence: In my country, this sort of thing happens every day.

(Florence has such awesome nickname potential. Flo. Floss. Flossy. Fluff. I've actually heard all of these used for Florences before.)




And now for something a lot less LOL-inducing...




These glitches are ten times scarier because the T-pose of the model has that "Christ on the cross" element to the it, and it's glowing red. Also, the head it not connected to the body. O_o Does anyone know what could be causing this? Is my game about to explode?

I was playing a home business, at level 8, so there were lots of customers, and it was snowing, so maybe there was just a graphical overload? A couple of sims showed up like that, with the red crucified body. Scary, scary stuff. Oh, and then my game actually crashed, which it has done two or three times since I installed Free Time. It only crashed maybe a handful of times before that, but it's not the first time it's happened, so I'm hoping this isn't an FT problem. *crosses fingers* (I hope I don't scare madame_ugly out of installing FT now. Like me, she's prone to worry. It's okay, Madame... really it is.)

Note to self: Play Mr. Doe and pop out that kid already. *snicker* Poor guy is perpetually pregnant.

Please avert your eyes from the spoilers. Thanks. :P

Comments

[music-simbol.livejournal.com]

If Ripp was Santa, something tells me he wouldn't be bringing just presents to people's homes. ^_~

Uhm.....who is this Flo person? Even thou I have OFB, I've never looked into Bluewater village, so yeah, don't know who she is.

I've only had FT for a few days, but it hasn't crashed at all or had that red christ thingie. Course, I tend to stay on lots no bigger than 3x3, so it could be an overload of graphics type thing. The only other thing I can say is to delete the .cache files in the "The Sims 2" folder before playing. I had an issue last week with the game crashing randomly, and that seemed to do the trick. :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

This is the sort of present Ripp gives out. ;) My favourite kind.

Florence is a woman who lives alone in Bluewater Village and has a flower shop home business. I quite like her. She was the first business I ever ran when I installed OFB, and one of the only. I just got her to level 8, which was very cool (I hope I saved not too long before that crash... I think I did).

I usually play much smaller lots too, and hardly ever have winter (I might even change BW Village to have two falls instead).

Hmmm. I actually did delete those before playing this time. I'll try it again, though.

[music-simbol.livejournal.com]

HA! Dick in a box, haven't seen that in awhile.

Winter does slow things down. Damn snow. So pretty, yet so laggy. So, she going to get into the story? Or were you just playing her for fun and Ripp just happened to come by?

I don't think it's an FT thing. If something like that was happening, we would have heard about it already. So, let's just hope it was a graphic overload thing. :) Did you also delete the cigen one too? Just checking.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That pretty much made my whole year when it first came out. Heheh. Dick in a box. :D

Yeah, Florence will come into the story. One of the characters has a reason for wanting to get in touch with her, which leads to her becoming a sort of mentor figure.

Yeah, I doubt it's FT. I did delete the cigen thing too. I'll do it again, just to be safe.

[zepheera.livejournal.com]

Gee, I wonder which character has a reason to get in touch with her.... :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the spoiler is sort of obvious, so I might as well just give it away... and I just did, in another post.

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

When I read the title of this, I was expecting his formalwear to be the santa suit! :P

Actually, when I was playing Pheeschsecks in their college days I was planning everyday clothes for one of the members, and I found out that SOMEBODY had the santa suit as their formal wear. I was really hoping it was Ripp because that IS hilarious, but turns out it was Abhijeet. *snicker*

Hmm... You checking out formal wear, Ripp in a flower shop?
Is somebody getting married? That's all I can think of what the spoiler can be! :D

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah... anyone who has that Holiday SP or the special edition (I got it for cheaper than the base game, on special after Xmas), would expect to see this awesome formalwear. Why it is considered formal I'll never know. It's Santa's WORK uniform, people. :P

Nah. No weddings, at least not in the immediate future. I didn't intentionally check out the formalwear. Ripp did that all on his own. The flower shop thing will make sense if you think about it for a minute, probably.

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

Okay okay... Now I'm thinking it has something to do with Ophelia and her flowers.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

You got it. ;) I don't mind blurting out the spoiler. I'm about to just post some more pics anyway, spoiler or not. They're too good. (And who really cares if I give away the fact that Ophelia is going to sell her flowers. That seems pretty obvious, anyway.)

[simgarooop.livejournal.com]

Whoa, I had no idea that sims changed into their formal wear while playing in the "zone". Then again, I haven't been able to get a sim to that level yet (just Marsha when I tried to get her abducted, but I cheated because I wanted her to have max science enthusiasm so she could look for UFOs).

That's an awesome formal attire, Ripp. For a moment I thought it'd be that pink suit with the bow tie :P. That one is also priceless.

About your issue, it seems like a graphical glitch. As you said, with a lot with several sims and snows, your computer might suffer and crash if you it's not "strong enough". My graphic card can't handle that strain, but it tends to reboot my PC before any odd glitch shows up. I've had a few crashes since I installed FT, but most of them were due to having way too many sims on a slightly larger lot than what I'm used to.

Therefore, snow is banned in my game until I get more RAM or a better graphics card (besides, snow in Strangetown is silly :P).

Oh, and I couldn't help it but notice that itsy-bitsy spoiler in the second pic :D. But I won't say anything of course! (though now I'm wondering what will happen next in your story) ^^

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I actually find that "zone" costume change really annoying, since my rock bands aren't going to want to wear suits and dresses while performing. I don't like the white glow from "the zone" either. Now Ripp glows every time he decides to do the slap dance (which, as you might guess, is ALL of the time).

I have a pretty good graphics card, so maybe it is a RAM thing. I thought I was doing well for both, but I guess I was pushing the limits. I have all of the EPs and SPs installed now, so that has to be taking a toll. I could always try that RAM ReadyBoost thing, since I have Vista and a spare jumpdrive somewhere. That's supposed to give you more RAM to work with temporarily.

I agree. Unless I have some crazy plot-based reason for it (and you never know...), there will be no snow in Strangetown.

I think that you, of all people, would recognize what that spoiler is referring to. You'll remember how I said that you had read my mind and beat me to the punch on my future plans... well, it has something to do with that. ;)

[simgarooop.livejournal.com]

There is a fix to get rid of that "in the zone glow". I had the link bookmarked in case I get sick of that glow (or at least the annoying sound):

http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=1&subcat=2

I now see why it'd be annoying to have that costume change. It's a neat idea if your sim is part of an orchestra, but not if he's part of a rock band.

I read that Vista tends to eat tons of RAM, right? My PC has Windows XP and I'm not precisely looking forward to Vista if I decide to get a new PC next year. I did follow a tutorial to improve the game performance a couple weeks ago, but I didn't notice much difference (perhaps because I'm currently dealing with 12 sims in the same huge lot).

Yup, I actually recognized your spoiler as soon as I noticed the location. Fear my psychic powers! ;) Seriously... I'm looking forward to see how you'll develop it in your story.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I thought I saw that fix somewhere. That's very helpful.

Vista does eat up a lot of RAM, so I had more added to my system a while back, and I also shut down all the fancy graphic settings so it looks like classic Windows instead. Vista is all bells and whistles, but most of it is unnecessary.

Yeah, I knew you'd pick up on that, since I did mention it that time.

I do fear your psychic powers. You might just beat me to all of my good ideas. :P I have to hurry up and use them. Madame Ugly and I have the same things happening at times too, and she says she has to race me for the good ideas, just to be the first to do them. *snicker* I think it's pretty unavoidable at times, with the limits in the game, that we'll end up doing the same things sometimes. It's not like any of us would write it the same, anyway...

[zepheera.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I think I see the spoiler!

*dances!*

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's there to see, in the pic. I'm sure you've figured it out. ;)

[simkind.livejournal.com]

Who wants to sit on Santa's lap? *snerk*

Oh hi there, Mr. Doe!

[hathakleen.livejournal.com]

I tried to brace myself for Ripp's formalwear by trying to think of the most ridiculous possible formal outfit in the game. However, I don't have the Santa suit, so it never even crossed my mind. Genuinely shocking, as well as the most hilarious thing I have seen all day. :D

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Ugh. That glitch is scary. My first thought is that it's a cc issue. If it's not a cc issue, then it probably is a graphic overload thingy.

I know I had a cheerleader who's outfit whent kersplodey when she got fat. She's placeholder for my Greek house and she's actually quite lazy, so when she moved in, she quickly bulked out. The cheerleader outfit didn't like that and it went really wonky. I changed her outfit, slimmed her down, and then put her back in it and everything was fine. But it's still scary...

Oh.. if I were a pixel person, Ripp could deliver some late night presents to my house any time he wants. ;)

[cindyanne1.livejournal.com]

OMG... the formalwear always makes me giggle. At first I thought he'd be wearing one of those Jedi-type robes. :D (Okay I know they're not Jedi robes, but I always think of them that way because I came across a d/l of a Jedi robe that used that mesh, lol)

That red crucified body is a glitch I've never seen before. O_o. It does make me wonder if something's not going on with Bodyshop? Would that transfer to the game? Could it be a Recolor Gone Bad? I know those can do crazy things. (shrugs) Wierd. Well hopefully it's an isolated thing and not something major wrong with your game (crosses fingers)).

[smjoshsims.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, *insert pervy Santa joke here*. Ugh, now I'm thinking of Lauren Graham and her being fresh...

That glitch is terrifying! I have no idea what it could be, since I'm not very technical, but wow. I would be screaming. :O

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

The Santa formalwear is hilarious. (But why are the gloves white, Maxis?)

That's a horrifying glitch, and I wish I could help but I just don't know. Any chance it's CC related? I don't know what she's supposed to be wearing. Or maybe you need to update your graphics card driver.

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

The reason I wonder if it's CC related is because I've had stuff show up sort of like that, but blue. Often it's floating away from the body. I have always been able to track those down to custom content.

[simsbarbie.livejournal.com]

I threw a wedding party for my sims and the groom's twin brother showed up in Santa's suit, with a camoflauge bandana on. I was furious but laughed too.

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

AHHHHHH!!! Don't upset me. *panics* I'm just about to do my install and I see THIS!

*goes fetal*

Kidding. I'm going to blame your glitche on BV. *snort* I think a little fantastical thinking will help me get through my FT install.

(not joke, though, I'm in worry over drive. I might have a heart attack--really, my palms are sweaty and I'm very nervous.)

[nessa-seragon.livejournal.com]

I know it's a month after you posted this, but I just had to comment.

The formal Santa suit is the #1 reason I'm glad I don't have the holiday pack. What was EAxis thinking? The changing in formal wear for being "in the zone" must only happen if the sim's hobby is music/dance because I've never seen that before.

The red headless body is a grapical error, I think. I've heard about it somewhere else, but it's been awhile & I can't remember where. I want to say it's a driver issue. I do know that using the wrong driver can cause crashes.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I only have the holiday pack because I bought the base game as a holiday edition, on a whim. It was about $10.00 cheaper than the original base game, so I took them up on the deal. I wouldn't own it otherwise, I'm sure, but it's fun to use it for holiday specials.

They only switch to the formal wear if they're performing an instrument... I think (I'm not 100% sure, and I added a hack to remove the zone effects anyway, so now I never even see the glow effect).

The odd thing about that glitch/error is that it only happened that one time, playing the level ten business on a lot that was snowing. After I switched out winter for fall, it didn't happen anymore. I assume it was some sort of graphical overload. Maybe I should see if my driver needs updating.