List of VBTs

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List of VBTs

PostPosted by Pony » Sat Dec 10, 2011 9:28 pm

This is directly copy and paste from Riolana's post on the old forums. This has helped me avoid many a bad situation. Thanks to all the people who put this list together. :D

List of VBTs

Well I thought I'd make this list of stuff you really shouldn't do in the Sims 2. Feel free to tell me ones I dont know, and if this has been done then feel free to lock this, mods.

What Is A VBT - A VBT (Very Bad Thing) is a thing that, if you do, can corrupt your game and you may have to re-install.

VBTs

Do not move sims into a house, play them, then move them back to the sim-bin and delete them. It's okay to delete sims you have never played, but the ones you have played must not be deleted. They can, however, be killed.

Do not use the deleteallcharacters cheat, it may leave some parts of character files behind and damage your game.

Do not put an occupied house into the House Bin and then put it back in the neighborhood that it was in. This will corrupt your sims relationships and therefore your sim. And therefore your game.

Do not put an occupied lot into the sim bin and then move to another neighborhood either.

Don't put an occupied lot into the sim bin period.

And don't download an occupied lot either.

Don't add Grim to your family. Or Crumplebutt. Or the therapist.

Don't bartend on owned community lots. It's fixable, but it's annoying dragging out the lot debugger ever five minutes >.< (Met self glitch)

Don't allow Crumplebottom to be bitten and turned by the vampire. Glad I hadn't saved there.

If you're using the Townie Maker and you get a Sim you don't like, don't click "Kill". This is the same thing as deleting a Sim. Just quit without saving instead.

Don't turn off the game or your computer while it's saving!

Do not breed the manequin skintone (unlocked in CAS using boolprop). After the 'baby has been born' notice, your game will crash because the skin-tone isn't availible for babies.


These Very Bad Things may not take effect immediatly, but if you find yourself doing one be sure to back up your game


Yeah, I cant be bothered crediting, but thanks people.

EDit: (Darby)Do not mess with these NPCs at all, except to make babies with them, because that can be done without altering them.
Here's a list of all the "univeral" NPCs:
Toddler New Year
Father Time
Santa Klaus
Hula Zombie
Pollination Technian
Grim Reaper
Therapist
Mrs Crumplebottom
Stinky Skunk
Witchdoctor
Bigfoot Bigfoot
Ideal Plantsim
Rod Humble
Genie
Spectral Assistant
Good Witch Cat
Last edited by Pony on Thu Dec 22, 2011 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by esmeiolanthe » Sun Dec 11, 2011 8:43 pm

Don't put urns on any of the shelves that came with OFB, either.

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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by DrSupremeNerd » Sat Dec 17, 2011 7:13 pm

1. Don't delete a Sim from the Sim Bin EVER, even if you haven't played them. If they've been created, they have a character file, and if you delete them, it will corrupt your neighborhood.

2. Pescado has fixes for the bartending-on-an-owned-community-lot Met Self glitch and the Inappropriate Vampiring. You need the dramafix and creaturefixes hacks.

3. There is a fix for the breeding the mannequin skintone on Mod the Sims.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by Pony » Sat Dec 17, 2011 7:59 pm

Does anyone know if deleting the character files out of the neighborhood effect anything. The neighborhood wasn't fully made so there was no CAS sims to cause sims to have relationships or anything.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by esmeiolanthe » Sat Dec 17, 2011 9:42 pm

My understanding is that basically, deleting character files at any point, via any method = inevitable fiery ball of doom. Better to make a clean 'hood using the method found here.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by Pony » Sat Dec 17, 2011 10:06 pm

I tried, my game said no loudly enough I had to a system restore. For some reason I don't have a N001 file and borks the whole process.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by esmeiolanthe » Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:01 pm

Didn't you say in another thread that something had happened to your Pleasantview? That's N001, so it would make sense that your system didn't like you trying to work with it. I believe there are a couple of ways to restore the original 'hoods -- the only two I can provide any information about are this one (which keeps cc intact) and this one (which resets everything to factory specs), but I don't know if either method will work for you. There are lots of experienced folk out there who can probably point you in the right direction, though.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by Pony » Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:13 pm

I have Double Deluxe so I don't know if that's affecting anything.

But there's no N001 template in the hard drive folders, everything else was there, just not that neighborhood. Pleasant View still works in my game, until I got squirrel and laid waste to it. But that only effected the my documents folder. I might try a factory reset or reinstall.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by RepoManVsTheWorld » Sun Dec 18, 2011 9:36 am

Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER delete Crumplebottom/let her get turned into a vampire/whatever. Your game will explode into a fiery ball of doom (I think it might actually even corrupt the full game itself and not just the neighborhood, slightly unsure on this point)

But seriously. Don't hurt her. In fact, it's probably best to totally leave her alone. I also know that binning a sim family in a house and then moving them to another neighborhood=Nuclear Bomb destroying the neighborhood. It gets FLOODED with corrupt character files. Anyone they know NOT in the house will instantly have a corrupt character file carried over. (You'd think EA would bother fixing this)
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by Darby » Thu Dec 22, 2011 5:13 pm

RepoManVsTheWorld wrote:Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER delete Crumplebottom/let her get turned into a vampire/whatever. Your game will explode into a fiery ball of doom (I think it might actually even corrupt the full game itself and not just the neighborhood, slightly unsure on this point)


I just found out the painful and shocking way that this is indeed correct! Until then, I'd always thought you could do pretty much anything you wanted in a test 'hood, delete or reset it when done, and it would be all good. Not so!

Turns out some of the special NPCs (Mrs. C being only one of several) are "universal", meaning there's only one for your entire game. So Mrs. C in one 'hood is that SAME Mrs. C in all your other 'hoods.

So making her playable or letting her get vamped messes the game up all the way down to the level of the installation files themselves. Meaning reinstallation, not merely resetting, is required to fix things.

:!: IMPORTANT :!:
Here's a list of all the "univeral" NPCs:
Toddler New Year
Father Time
Santa Klaus
Hula Zombie
Pollination Technian
Grim Reaper
Therapist
Mrs Crumplebottom
Stinky Skunk
Witchdoctor
Bigfoot Bigfoot
Ideal Plantsim
Rod Humble
Genie
Spectral Assistant
Good Witch Cat

Credit for the list goes to Maxon at MTS. I'm grateful to her and Mootilda for apprising me of the problems I'd created for myself with some experimenting I'd just done with a few of these characters. And just to reinforce, I repeat, I did the experiments in a test 'hood, thinking that made it okay. It doesn't. Just.do.not.mess.with.these.NPCs.AT.ALL. (Exception: I'm pretty sure making sims pregnant with Grim via the Tombstone of L&D or the SimBlender when he happens to be on the lot anyway is okay, as long as he's not "touched" in any way during the process.)
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by DrSupremeNerd » Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:08 pm

Darby wrote: (Exception: I'm pretty sure making sims pregnant with Grim via the Tombstone of L&D or the SimBlender when he happens to be on the lot anyway is okay, as long as he's not "touched" in any way during the process.)


Yeah, that's a safe thing to do, as long as you don't try to make him playable. You can also summon the PolliTech or the Ideal PlantSim to the lot to fix family trees after a rebuild with the InSimenator or the SimBlender, with the same restriction that you don't make them playable. But if you're going to do that, do it the very last thing with the game paused, and then save and exit, so that no one meets them. I imagine that wouldn't be a good thing, and they'll be gone the next time you open the lot.

I will say that a global-mod-specific DON'T is Don't use the Quick Relations Adjuster portion of InSimenator to Make Mutual Friends. That will lead to Met Self memories. They're not as catastrophic as the Met Self memories you get from tending bar on an owned community lot without Pescado's dramafix hack, but they are extremely annoying. Even deleting the memory chains with SimPE doesn't totally get rid of the memories, and Sims will still roll Wants to talk to themselves, or Fears of their own death (which isn't so crazy, when you think about it, but shouldn't normally happen).
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by Darby » Sun Jan 01, 2012 1:10 am

Something I recently heard: Grim, and other special NPCs that don't have full character files, also don't have genetics. The way I heard it, when players make playables pregnant with these NPCs, the game pulls the genetics from a random CAS sim.

I suspect that's a little off the mark and that the game simply uses the first available genetics in CAS. Specifically, face one. Evidence being that Grim at least (I don't know about others) always makes "pretty babies" (face one).

Point being, safe or not, impregnating playables with babies from special NPCs is basically pointless, since the don't really have genes of their own to contribute to the resulting offspring.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by DrSupremeNerd » Sun Jan 01, 2012 3:46 pm

It may depend on the neighborhood. The Reaper Children that I can think of at the moment (Spider Jerusalem Vetinari, Zane Devereaux, Pierce Prettacy, Eustace and Evangeline Whedonberry) are all Face 2, with black hair. Eye color seems to be variable. But Face 2 is considered the "base" template, based on the name, where Face 1 is "heart."

I'm pretty sure I've seen the results of someone's offspring with the Sim Shrink before, and he most definitely has genetics. But then, he also has a face, where Grimmy doesn't.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by Darby » Sun Jan 01, 2012 7:18 pm

DrSupremeNerd wrote:I'm pretty sure I've seen the results of someone's offspring with the Sim Shrink before, and he most definitely has genetics. But then, he also has a face, where Grimmy doesn't.


Yeah, I've seen Therapist genetics too, on a sim in someone's story. (Can't remember whose.) I made too broad a generalization, I'm afraid.

Thanks for the face one/face two correction. Face two is also considered to be "pretty" by most, and I forgot about that possibility.

I think the theory generally holds water, and that while making sims pregnant via most of the special NPCs may make for a good storyline, that's probably all doing so is good for. For me, anyway. Image
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by esmeiolanthe » Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:30 am

Unless your game is fully patched or you've downloaded a fix from somewhere, do not allow Samantha Ottomas to have her babies. (If you have a Mac, the officially available patches do not solve this problem. I learned this the hard way.)
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by joandsarah77 » Sat Apr 14, 2012 6:49 am

Not sure if this is on there, but don't give graves/urns as gifts via the 'give gift' method. Inventory is safe so long as a sim doesn't die while they are in there.
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Re: List of VBTs

PostPosted by RepoManVsTheWorld » Tue Jan 01, 2013 2:32 pm

joandsarah77 wrote:Not sure if this is on there, but don't give graves/urns as gifts via the 'give gift' method. Inventory is safe so long as a sim doesn't die while they are in there.

I never heard this one. what's it do?
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