Bridgeport...glitchy?

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JohnL83
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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by JohnL83 » April 16th, 2019, 9:47 am

It has been a long time since I have played a Bridgeport city and while I do remember it having some issues I do not remember have so very many routing problems! (they worked themselves out after a few games the last time I played Bridgeport, but I got bored and deleted that city a long time ago) This time I get 6-12 sims being reset due to routing issues and it's generally a couple times each during a sim day. It's not letting up either! For some reason they don't seem bad enough to be recorded by ET so I don't have a file to share. However, back when I first started the city a couple weeks ago there were 5-6 script error reports after my first couple of plays, but those did stop for now.

I have tried to see what I could do to fix the issue, I've reset the town. I've tried focusing on sims who keep getting reset. There was one set of sims, Mitch Situp and Ace Wilde who are in a one bedroom apartment who kept glitching every morning and every night. (according to Wiki they don't live together, but they do in my town) I think it was their building that was the issue because I did finally catch them trying to leave and/or go home and each time they'd reset while at their residence. So I just added them to be roommates with Barry Tenderlove who's living alone in a 3 bedroom apartment. Then I deleted their old apartment in favor of the "classy crib" house. It looked the most like a city apartment building or brownstone, so I thought it fit into the downtown area.

Anyway, what other tips does anyone have for me to figure out why so many sims are having routing issues in this town? I'm assuming it's just the stupid elevators, but I don't want to get rid of the buildings, the whole point of playing this town is because it's one of the only big cities in Sims 3. (BTW not that it matters, but I have removed all occult stuff from all sims, but none of those sims seem to be resetting, other than one or two and I doubt it has anything to d with this. And YES I have Go Here installed.

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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by igazor » April 16th, 2019, 10:31 am

Bridgeport has some serious breaks on the world lot that Ellacharmed's fixed up version addresses. Unfortunately I didn't learn this until already playing that world in my ongoing Traveler mod connected game and did not wish to start over in order to use her fixes so many years ago, and just put up with them. One of them is near where one of "my" households live, the Strikers up in the rich, celebrity part of town, one I think is near the Science Center or where I ended up placing one, but not many sims need to travel through the broken parts of the map so they are not contributing much stress to my game.

Resident sims living in highrise shells will tend to instantiate (come out of semi-hibernation) in the ground floor darkened-out NPC only units or even worse in some fake ground floor "room" that has no door, and then not be able to get out without being reset. These are unfortunate spots for them to choose to re-animate. The solution is pass through each of the highrise buildings, make the ground floor units public with Public Room Markers (instead of Private), and replace the door in/out of these units so that the game no longer sees them as NPC doors or just tear the wall down, and get rid of or "open up" any fake rooms that have no way in/out again making sure that each publicly accessed area has a Public Room Marker. Having NPC-only units on upper floors is fine. I've added laundry/rec rooms and gyms in some of these buildings where the ground floor NPC units were, including a couple that "my" households live in, but never bothered with many of them.

Elevators continue to be an ongoing problem and are where sims will continue to get stuck throughout the day. I react to the OW stuck announcements by resetting the sims once I confirm they are actually in an elevator and not some other place, but this is where I can see why OW defaults to auto-resetting (which I still would not recommend) because it gets tedious after a while to keep resetting those sims and then MC redirect them to work/school if MC > Status > Career indicates that is where they were trying to go. Some players go as far as to insist that all resident sims in the highrises live on the ground floor in the first place, but I never liked the sound of that solution.

For elevators on residential highrises, I therefore don't have a better solution because I don't want to remove those either nor make them all walk-up buildings (although those can be nice too). For the LN venues, I've bulldozed around four of those, and probably should a few more because there are far too many anyway, and replaced them with other highrises so as to keep the busy and nice looking skyline -- some extra LN apartments buildings (again no NPC units on the ground floor) and a second business building for the Jouranlism career because the stock combo one with the bistro off to the side always seems too crowded. Others may want to consider a second community theater or a street lined with day spas, salons, grocery, and consignment stores, it depends on where their sims tend to be centered and wish to work or hang out. I will note that you probably don't need the vampire/occult-specific lounges if you have no occults unless you are viewing these as fun tourist attractions and paying homage to the supposed history of the city.

This is not a daily occurrence, more like every few sim days, but it seems like I find a sim or two wandering way off the edge of the map in places they cannot route out of like up a mountain or possibly aiming for some obscure hidden fishing spot, and they need to be reset to get them out of there either when I see them by way of Tagger or when notified by GoHere/OW.

In this world more than almost any other, not counting Isla Paradiso, it seems that a MC Reset Everything run from City Hall is required more often to keep things moving smoothly. Perhaps every 3-4 sim weeks or so, rather than in my case the more usual 5-6.

Besides the frequently stuck elevators, and the occasional almost but not quite off the map sims being annoying, I find the world to be very playable once getting used to it and making the above adjustments. Don't know if this helps or makes no difference, but I've also long ago tuned the subway system and expanded it so that it goes almost everywhere, so most sims in town tend to take subways more than use roads to get around unless they just don't live near a subway station and it makes no sense for me to place one to service just one household.

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JohnL83
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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by JohnL83 » April 16th, 2019, 11:42 am

Thanks Igazor. As I stated before, I rarely had any issues at all that first time I played Bridgeport and after a few weeks of play it was a very playable game. When I first got LN it was around the same time I started using the mods and they apparently fixed what needed fixing. Frankly, I'm a bit shocked it's so glitchy this time. I guess it's hit and miss for people? Strange though that it isn't something that plagues every player every time. Like IP seems to. I never did anything before other than install the mods, but I also, over that time, had made a lot of personal changes to the city. Yet most of them had nothing to do with the hi-rise buildings so IDK why that worked so well for me back then.

Since I only have been playing for only a couple of weeks I may consider Ella's version and move my household, but I like your idea for fixes too. Would I need the tagger mod to do all of that? I'm not quite clear on how to make the ground floors of the buildings public.

One of my fav things about this town is the city view my old family had from the wealthy part of town. I had created a very nice mansion in the one big empty lot on a cliff and the view of the skyline from their balcony looked so cool. It reminded me a bit of my my ex's apartment in Kansas City, Mo. that had a really great view of the downtown skyline, also from the balcony.

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igazor
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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by igazor » April 16th, 2019, 12:17 pm

What Tagger does for us, by option and among other things, is display map tags for every sim in town. That way we can see when sims are wandering way out of the more typically played areas of the map and see, if it's being displayed, what they are trying to do. That is, if we retreat to Map View and notice them in time. The rest of the city can easily get away from me when I'm concentrating on what my actives are doing but that's the same as with any other world.

Think of LN apartment lots, they are usually highrises but don't have to be, as having three types of "zones." Just to confirm, these are always Residential-Regular lot types when viewed in Edit Town, the Apartment lot type is for Uni-style dormitory types of setups and not what is being discussed here.

Those that have no room marker are part of the one usable residential unit and the sims living there will pay property taxes on the sections with no marker and their contents. The usable unit is usually self-contained on one or two floors, with a private stairway connecting the floors if it's a duplex unit, but it doesn't have to be and some of these "units" might be disjointed. If you place a very expensive object within an area owned by the resident household, they will own it and pay taxes on it.

Those that have a Public Room Marker are part of the building's common area and can be accessed by any sim visiting, living, or in the case of otherwise homeless NPCs, pretending to live there. The lobby, elevators and laundry/rec rooms, hallways, community party rooms, vending machine areas, etc. should each have Public Room Markers. If you place a very expensive object in a common area, no one really owns it as it's part of the building for all who can be or have any business being inside the front door to use.

Those that have a Private (or Hidden) Room Marker and blackened out and are where otherwise homeless NPCs go to hibernate when their services are not required. They also must have a designated NPC Door. Other sims cannot enter these units, but their supposed occupants can be summoned by the call box that is usually in the lobby if they are available and not working or on duty someplace in town. Other sims cannot get out of these units if they find themselves stuck inside, which is part of where that particular problem comes from.

To see and change or rearrange the room markers, you need to be in Build/Buy with testingcheatsenabled true, buydebug on, and restrictbuildbuyinbuildings false (or else you can see but not change anything other than the one usable unit). It's a best practice to ensure that buydebug is set back to off before attempting to save or play forward, the other two cheat codes don't matter so much.

The Public and Hidden (Private) Room Markers look almost identical and are best described as big silver balls. Make sure the right one is being used and showing up in the correct rooms. There are also WA Tomb Markers and Seasonal ones, among a few others (something to do with mermaids, I think, and Student Unions) on the buydebug section, the one with the "?" tab that shows up in that area of Build/Buy when buydebug is on, so we do have to make sure we are using the ones intended each time. The eyedropper tool to examine and duplicate an existing marker can be really helpful here.

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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by Sara_Darkees » April 16th, 2019, 12:32 pm

I was building a house with an apartment and for some reason I did not find the problem of a stuck elevator. NPC and homeless successfully use it and ccome to the appointed places in time to fulfill their roles. The only real problem is the scattered books and pizza deliverys, who don't want to come to us. By the way, would it be better if you on the upper floors remove the doors for NPC? They, it turns out, also often use the elevator. This can be done by clicking on the door in the purchase mode (you need to hold down shift+ctrl).
igazor wrote:
April 16th, 2019, 12:17 pm
Those that have a Private (or Hidden) Room Marker and blackened out and are where otherwise homeless NPCs go to hibernate when their services are not required. They also must have a designated NPC Door. Other sims cannot enter these units, but their supposed occupants can be summoned by the call box that is usually in the lobby if they are available and not working or on duty someplace in town. Other sims cannot get out of these units if they find themselves stuck inside, which is part of where that particular problem comes from.
How do they get there? :-o

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igazor
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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by igazor » April 16th, 2019, 12:42 pm

Sara_Darkees -- Dunno, I never see homeless NPCs get stuck in elevators or upper floor NPC-only units. They always seem to materialize somewhere else for me and go about what they are being called upon to do without any fuss or route-breaking. Guess I could be missing something, but I have checked recently and I do have the expected number of NPCs in each service pool, quite a few (like 10-12) for babysitters but that's because I insist inactive households use babysitting when leaving babies and toddlers unattended. The game never calls for extras unless one has aged up, moved on, etc., and they always seem to show up to do what they are supposed to do...eventually.

Actual resident sims in inactive households routinely go into semi-hibernation mode when they aren't being played and the game is taking care of their basic needs for them. They will instantiate when it's time for them to go to work/school, be called upon for something else, have visitiors, or it's just their "turn" to be animated again. Unfortunately we cannot control the spot where they instantiate, and it's not the same as the spot to where they get reset. If the reanimation happens inside of a ground floor NPC-only unit instead of a more reasonable place, then they usually cannot get out and will route fail. Or they will stand around in the darkened out room watching videos on their cellphone or doing idle animations, I've watched them after using MC > Open when I was really supposed to be off playing elsewhere, and eventually their needs decline, they get frustrated in there, and the game declares them unroutable.

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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by sittingbear » April 16th, 2019, 1:13 pm

igazor wrote:
April 16th, 2019, 12:42 pm
Actual resident sims in inactive households routinely go into semi-hibernation mode when they aren't being played and the game is taking care of their basic needs for them. They will instantiate when it's time for them to go to work/school, be called upon for something else, have visitiors, or it's just their "turn" to be animated again. Unfortunately we cannot control the spot where they instantiate, and it's not the same as the spot to where they get reset. If the reanimation happens inside of a ground floor NPC-only unit instead of a more reasonable place
Residents should always re-animate in there living space they should never re-animate in an NPC only room. If they are re-animating in those rooms that is not normal and you got other things going causing that to happen and you need to track down the actual cause as that can be a symptom to an even bigger problem.

The only time I've seen homeless NPCS get animated in those rooms is when I let Register Auto-Assign which I no longer do if I play Bridgeport.

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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by igazor » April 16th, 2019, 1:20 pm

sittingbear wrote:
April 16th, 2019, 1:13 pm
Residents should always re-animate in there living space they should never re-animate in an NPC only room. If they are re-animating in those rooms that is not normal and you got other things going causing that to happen and you need to track down the actual cause as that can be a symptom to an even bigger problem.
Clearly then not all of us suffer from this problem, but based on conversations had here long ago and at MTS more recently about playing in Bridgeport and other cities that have LN style apartments, it's pretty common. I think I'll stay with my solution of moving those units off the ground floor for now as there aren't any other horrible symptoms of things going wrong that I am aware of.

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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by Sara_Darkees » April 16th, 2019, 2:22 pm

Well, in my game, many NPC start their way from apartment's door designed for their hibernation. I had a pretty funny case the other day. It was night, though the time was close to morning, everyone was asleep. Suddenly sounded ominous music - it was a warning that a burglar had snuck, but when I looked around the house, I saw no one. At first I thought it was a glitchy burglar or he changed his mind (because it was almost morning), but then, as it turned out, he was getting to us from that apartment building, so we found and beat him a little later... It's a weird, I guess. We play the same game, but for some reason your service-sims appear somewhere else and go to fulfill their purpose without any fuss. Why? Did you do something for that? As for the real residents, it seemed to me that they stand inside the house near the main door, and if reset happens, they will appear in the same place. But in my old game, I ran into a problem where the sim didn't get stuck, but at some point unexpectedly teleported somewhere... into the foundation of the public lot.

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Bridgeport...glitchy?

Post by deedee_828 » April 16th, 2019, 4:22 pm

Bridgeport played pretty well for me, except for the IF doll glitches. Thankfully, I didn't have any big issues with routing in the apartments. The occasional dating couple would go up and down in the elevators at opposite times so it wasn't much of a date. And one time a Sim kept merging into the walls at ground level. But it was when I was having my active sim turn into his toy form so I just took the odd morphing into the building photo and made it part of the story!
But I did have a routing issue in Moonlight Falls by the Van Gould home. Off the driveway there's a sharp decline down to the road and two trees are in that grassy area. Every day when the four YA sims living there tried to go to work or come home from work, they would get stuck in that hill. Their feet buried in the ground. I reset them several times before it got so annoying that I moved the trees and smoothed out the terrain a bit. Not sure smoothing out the terrain did anything, but now they don't run straight towards the trees and get stuck. Having auto reset set to false is one of the best tips I've received from this forum and I use it in every town now. Much easier to check why or what's causing the issue than getting auto reset notices that don't address the underlying issue. :yes:

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