Traveller and NHD files

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Senorita_Ugly
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Traveller and NHD files

Post by Senorita_Ugly » November 9th, 2017, 8:46 pm

I recently installed Traveller and have been mucking around with a test family to gauge how the mod handles things, before i start playing with Traveller properly.

The test family consists of two engaged adults with a newborn baby. They started off in a save file of Bridgeport that was customised to my liking. I then sent the mother on vacation to Starlight Shores by herself.

While there, I made Starlight Shores her hometown. This was done from a 'rent' lot as opposed to a vacation lot.

(I know that Traveller FAQ advises to change your homeworld from an owned vacation lot, and that the entire family should be in the same world when changing hometowns - i just wanted to see what would happen).

As expected, her fiance and baby remained in Bridgeport. So I made her fiance visit her in Starlight Shores. The 'visit' option wasn't available for the newborn - and come to think on it, 'Allowable Travellers' might have been set to EA standard at that point (am not sure if that makes any difference in this situation though). The fiance arrived the next morning.

While in Starlight Shores, I made them travel back to Bridgeport together. Once everything had loaded, it turned out the Bridgeport save file wasn't my original customised Bridgeport, but rather a fresh EA Standard Bridgeport file. The fiance's status had also changed to a tourist from France. And of course, the baby remained stranded back in the original Bridgeport.

I'm not fussed about the fiance's tourist status or the stranded baby, as I know I did things in a haphazard way. I'm more curious about how the customised Bridgeport save file got completely overwritten by a fresh uncustomised Bridgeport. I thought an NHD file would've been generated despite the change in homeworld from Bridgeport to Starlight Shores.

Hope all that makes sense. I just get kicks from learning how things work by deliberately screwing things up :p

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igazor
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Post by igazor » November 9th, 2017, 11:36 pm

Stop. Please remove all mods from your game file and ask for your money back. All such refund requests will take up to 12-16 weeks for processing so watch your mailbox carefully. There may be restocking and administrative fees deducted, local laws and tax ordinances may vary. :D

Okay sorry, couldn't resist and am just kidding. But yes, you have effectively broken your test game by doing these things. First of all, the purchase of and move into a vacation home before invoking Traveler's Change Hometown command is not optional. That is why it is stressed, in bold, etc. where it appears on the mod's FAQ page. We really don't post these things and make them all bold so they can be ignored, honestly there's reasons for this stuff. Your sim was not properly made an incoming full resident of SS and an outgoing resident of Bridgeport by having skipped this step.

There is no need for the entire family to have been present in SS for this to work. Can you point me to where it says that splitting up a household is a really bad idea? I do this all the time, although usually it's when friends and grown siblings, etc. had been living together, not so much Mom, Dad, and child.

When you call for what should be a sim to come visit, you are ordering up a Mini-Sim extracted from a limited set of information in the TravelDB file, not the "real" sim who is back in Bridgeport. Hence the tourist designation. There are limited numbers of things you can do with Mini-Sims, and grabbing them to reconstruct your original family as it once was then making them travel back to where they came from are not included. What you could have done instead was invite the Dad over using MC > (Sim) > Basic > Invite Over > Homeworld > (filter to Bridgeport) but that wouldn't have brought the baby over for a visit and the Dad would still be somewhat less than his full sim self this way. This isn't a Traveler restriction, this happens because visiting sims are instantiated (materialize) somewhere else in town before making their way over to your active sims's house. Babies and toddlers cannot get around like children and older can, so they would end up getting stuck somewhere in town that you cannot reach.

This all could have been much closer to the recommended way. But because a baby was involved, really MC > Add Sim > Homeworld > (filter to Bridgeport) would have been the way to bring Dad and Child into SS permanently. They would, however, stand to lose any possessions and wealth if forced into SS that way so it's not exactly a perfect method either. The other way would have been to travel or transition active play back to Bridgeport and have the remaining two family members move to SS properly, the long way. Or, of course, bring all three of them over to SS together in the first place for a path of even less resistance.

Final recommendation: although the two worlds you are working with were not affected by a recently fixed bug, it would be highly recommended to have the most recent version of Traveler in place (v87) when working with transitioning worlds this way so that nothing gets lost even when the proper steps are being followed. Overwatch, ErrorTrap, and RelationshipPanel, again the current versions of each, would also be highly recommended to clean up any residual leftover data from the sims having switched homeworlds.

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Post by Senorita_Ugly » November 10th, 2017, 2:35 am

Hello igazor and thanks (again) for your generous response!

Yep, i know ignoring the instructions listed on the FAQ is pure evil. Guilty as charged: i am a game-wrecker! :p 

With regards to the entire household needing to be present:

"Note : You should ensure that your entire family is traveling with you before using this option, as anyone you left behind in the old hometown will remain there." (See section: 'Is it possible to switch homeworlds permanently?')

So, in short, i broke the original save file (BP with customisations) when i directed my Sim to Change Hometown from an unowned vacation lot? I effectively compromised her residency status in both locations, and forced the game into generating a new BP save file when she travelled there with her fiance later in the game?

With regards to your recommendations, I'm up to date with all my mods, though i don't have ErrorTrap and RelationshipPanel. But are you suggesting there's still a possibility of bringing the newborn over to SS via MC, but that the baby will just be stuck in unroutable territory somewhere? Can i retrieve the baby by resetting it to a safe location in the game?

Oh the humour in all this. Not only is my Sim a homewrecker, she's a townwrecker too! And her future husband is a Mini-Sim! And her baby is stuck in the wilderness somewhere - maybe!

(I haven't laughed this much since that time i managed to get a teen Sim pregnant without mods, and then she went about her business with just a floating head).

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Post by igazor » November 10th, 2017, 3:09 am

So, in short, i broke the original save file (BP with customisations) when i directed my Sim to Change Hometown from an unowned vacation lot? I effectively compromised her residency status in both locations, and forced the game into generating a new BP save file when she travelled there with her fiance later in the game?
Pretty much. The keeping the family together recommendation is more for players who are expecting their family to stay together in the end. If the player wants portions of the family to remain in each homeworld at least for a while, then I would have to say that the warning is not necessary to heed as long as the other instructions are followed properly.

With regards to your recommendations, I'm up to date with all my mods, though i don't have ErrorTrap and RelationshipPanel. But are you suggesting there's still a possibility of bringing the newborn over to SS via MC, but that the baby will just be stuck in unroutable territory somewhere? Can i retrieve the baby by resetting it to a safe location in the game?
I would strongly suggest considering ErrorTrap. It does a fair amount of cleanup behind the scenes always, but especially when working with multiple worlds in a save file. RelationshipPanel is not entirely required especially if the panel is behaving itself as it is, but it certainly shouldn't be doing anyone any harm by having it and many of us like its added features.

Having a foreign sim come for a visit, whether that be by phone or MC's Invite Over is what instantiates them on an unknown portion of the map at first. Resetting them probably won't help because foreign sims don't have a "home" in this world to be reset onto. They will likely get pushed off the map again. Using MC's Add Sim adds the target sim permanently to the household you have clicked upon, either your own or someone else's, no visiting Mini-Sims involved. That should work for a baby because they would appear directly on the residential lot they are being added to and not be expected to hail a cab or take the subway (or whatever) to get there.

Still trying to be gentle here, on and off, but it's not the sim in this case who is the town wrecker. It's the one using the keyboard and mouse to shuffle these things around. :)

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Post by Senorita_Ugly » November 10th, 2017, 4:14 am

I'm in my game right now. MC's Invite Over and Add Sim, when filtered by Homeworld, bring up France, Starlight Shores, and curiously enough, 'New Downtown World' (which is essentially BP). On scrolling through the list of residents in each town, the fiancé is now from France (not surprising - we already know why that is). Meanwhile, BP now has each resident listed twice... and the baby is nowhere to be found.

Once I close my game down, i'll install ErrorTrap and see how things go from there. I wonder if it'll clean up the double listing of Bridgeport residents. But at this point, i'm assuming the baby is running wild and free in a parallel universe somewhere, never to be seen again.

Funny news: my Sim has literally just found out she is pregnant by her Fiance. Mini-Sim might not be a 'real' Sim, but he sure as hell wreaks real-Sim consequences! I have Automonous Risky Woohoo enabled, so the pregnancy must've happened while the camera wasn't even focused on the home lot in SS. See? Proof that my Sims don't need MY help wrecking their lives :p

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Post by igazor » November 10th, 2017, 4:23 am

"New Downtown World" would I believe be EllaCharmed's fixed version of the Bridgeport .world file. Mine says that also, so I've assumed that's where the odd name comes from. I wouldn't try to play that game save forward though. I mean, glad you're having fun with it but It's pretty much broken and the original version of Bridgeport you had probably can never be traveled back to.

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Post by Senorita_Ugly » November 10th, 2017, 5:05 am

Will definitely start a new game and do things properly from there, taking on board all your advice. Thanks again for taking the time to respond!

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Post by Chain_Reaction » November 10th, 2017, 5:16 pm

New downtown world is EA's internal name for bridgeport.

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