Topic: Too Many Pregnancy Controllers (Read 2747 times)

magicmoon · « **on:** March 29, 2009, 12:36:24 PM »

I and at least one other person on this forum are having this problem. As I suspect there will be much difficulty in tracking down the cause, I wanted to start a thread where this issue could be discussed by itself. Originating threads are http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,14666.0.html and http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=3999 .

Synopsis: No in-game symptoms, but error logs relating to other problems show an abnormally high number of pregnancy controllers. ETA:Can cause lot slowdown and increase lot load times.

Setup: Hood started from clean, empty templates. There are only 2 playable lots, one that I play and one that my daughter plays. Hood is on generation 4. I have an average of 2 spawn per generation. My daughter has a lot of spawn. There are usually one or more Sims pregnant on her lot at any given time. She also had a pregnancy via alien abduction.

Her lot contains one pregnancy controller, which is correct since she has one pregnant Sim. My lot contains over 100 pregnancy controllers but no current pregnancies. My lot was the first lot played, and the first lot to have a pregnancy.

Tunaisafish was kind enough to point out that the problem existed in my game and suspects a mod conflict. Although this would also be my first suspect, I cannot find any such conflicts. HCDU does not show a problem. I am extremely organized, so there are no unknowns in my Download folder.

Listed below are all mods that *might* touch the pregnancy controllers. I'm interested whether or not anyone else that has the problem has any of these mods.

Animal_Incest_Mod_v1.1 -Monique
ACR
alienpregnancyforfemales -Rufio
nopregannoy -JMP
Triplets&Quads-RandomOnly
lotfullofsims with global tuning -Ancienthighway
MultiPT -Simgaroop (Fwiffo's mod that chooses between 4 alien fathers, available father's changed by Simagroop)

Fwiffo's mod concerned me in the past when I had a pregnancy problem which I discussed with Jase. It appeared that it my be passing NID for another type ID or vice versa. AFAIK, the thread no longer exists. Fwiffo had already left the community, so there was no one to look into the problem. Therefore, this mod is my first suspect.

The biggest problem here is that a simple binary search is not going to point out the problem. I have been thinking of a way to do this. So far this is my best idea:

Start a new, clean hood from empty templates. Create a Sim and move her in. Create an error log and check for pregnancy controllers.
If some are found, begin binary search by deleting this hood and recreating a new hood for every reload.

If no pregnancy controllers exist, impregnate via blender. Check number of controllers. If incorrect, go to step 2. If correct, keep playing and checking to find out at which point the extra controllers are created.

This sounds like an extreme pita. I would appreciate any suggestions that would make it easier.

Since the extra controllers are not symptomatic, you may want to check your error logs to be sure that you don't have too many pregnancy controllers in your own game.

Here is a sample error log. The actual error has already been fixed by tunaisafish, but you will see the number of pregnancy controllers if you scroll down the log.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #1 on:** March 29, 2009, 03:52:13 PM »

Over 100 pregnancy controllers, you say? My dear, you ain't seen nothing yet!

My latest log is over 900kb and contains exactly 13,664 pregnancy controllers... Now THAT packs a punch, doesn't it?

magicmoon · « **Reply #2 on:** March 30, 2009, 12:19:11 PM »

Quote from: BoilingOil on March 29, 2009, 03:52:13 PM

Over 100 pregnancy controllers, you say? My dear, you ain't seen nothing yet!
My latest log is over 900kb and contains exactly 13,664 pregnancy controllers... Now THAT packs a punch, doesn't it?

I only have 2 lots. One has the correct number of controllers and the other has over 100. Do you have any lots that have the correct number? Are the excess controllers on one lot only? (Only check residential lots; comm and vacation lots don't have them). I'm trying to decide how to go about doing these tests.

Fwiffo's original mod is my prime suspect. If it has errors then it will be passed on to all who modified it. I don't know much about modding and haven't found anyone interested in looking into his mod to see if it causes these problems.

For anyone who understands pregnancy controllers, what would the game do if it could not find a particular one, for example, because the wrong type of ID was passed? When I had that past pregnancy problem, I was told that my IDs were showing that other random Sims were the mother and/or father (by looking for the corresponding ID in SimPe). No one knew how to fix it and all pregnant mothers delivered just fine so I never did anything more about it.

But I'm jumping ahead of my testing. Pita as it is, I'm going to have to buckle down and do it.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #3 on:** March 30, 2009, 12:38:18 PM »

Well, those controllers were on one lot only! There were other playable lots in that hood, but I haven't touched those at all!

Actually, unlike you, I guess Fwiffo's is the most secure mod. Its routine is so simple, its hardly possible to do anything wrong there. It basically just flips a few coins to decide which of the PTs to use for a parent, and that's really all it does. I've doubled its scope, making it possible for that simple BHAV to handle twice the number of PTs it originally did, and getting that right was not hard at all, just because everything was so logical.

Also, I checked the IDs in this mod against the IDs of the PTs he included, and they're perfect matches!

I wouldn't know what the game would do if the wrong type of ID was passed, although I guess it would just use that wrong ID and consider its main object to really be a parent. If that ID isn't linked to a Sim (alien or otherwise) but to a desk, for example, God only knows what would happen... error, perhaps?

zephyrzodiac · « **Reply #4 on:** March 30, 2009, 12:43:36 PM »

Maybe this links to the person who discovered that the other parent of Samantha Ottomas' twins was Danny Crittur!

BoilingOil · « **Reply #5 on:** March 30, 2009, 12:52:30 PM »

Ha, that would be fun!! That kid would really be a son-of-a-bee-atch!

Actually, there are more versions of the multi-PT. I guess any one of them could be faulty, especially if they're more complex than Fwiffo's.

zephyrzodiac · « **Reply #6 on:** March 30, 2009, 12:56:42 PM »

Yes, it was a bit shocking, though... imagine if it happened in your 12-year-old's game..... Luckily, in my game, it just latched on to Patricia Wan! Only time I ever used Insim, because the Seasons version of SimPE hadn't come out, and I really had to do something fast!

magicmoon · « **Reply #7 on:** March 30, 2009, 01:46:30 PM »

I wish I could find the original thread where Jase and I were talking about it. It was back when he ran Inteen. Do any of those threads still exist somewhere?

MadCat256 · « **Reply #8 on:** March 30, 2009, 03:30:34 PM »

Don't think so, unless there's available in some sort of internet archive.

The files all got moved, but the threads just went away.

And yes, InTeen is a cobbled together mess, but it works, and if EA isn't going to be putting out any more EPs for Sims 2 it shouldn't need a massive update ever again.
Now the fun will be finding a way to make the Sims 3 play how we want it

tunaisafish · « **Reply #9 on:** March 31, 2009, 03:29:46 AM »

I'd never heard of the Fwiffo mod, but seeing as it was common in both of these games I took a look.
As Boiling said, there's not much to the logic part. The places where it interacts to with the unmodded game look fine to me too, but that was to be expected.
It does add new unique NPC's to the game though. So once you install a mod like this, you cannot just remove them. The NID's would then point to missing characters in relationships and any live preg-controllers. That might have been what Jase was talking about.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #10 on:** March 31, 2009, 04:04:59 AM »

True, removing the NIDs that this mod refers to would be quite a mistake... as could be expected... If you remove the characters, you'd first have to make sure they don't have children yet, and then you'd also have to remove the mod that uses them

twojeffs · « **Reply #11 on:** March 31, 2009, 08:59:56 PM »

Magicmoon, from the log it appears you do but I want to confirm. Do you have pets on the lot? Has one or more gotten pregnant?

I definitely see a possible issue with the code that could cause it to repeatedly create pregnancy controllers.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #12 on:** April 01, 2009, 01:31:29 AM »

Oh my! And would multiple pregnant animals increase the rate at which these controllers propagate?

twojeffs · « **Reply #13 on:** April 01, 2009, 05:43:13 PM »

magicmoon · « **Reply #14 on:** April 01, 2009, 06:10:55 PM »

Quote from: twojeffs on March 31, 2009, 08:59:56 PM

Magicmoon, from the log it appears you do but I want to confirm. Do you have pets on the lot? Has one or more gotten pregnant?

I adopted 2 wolves. One mated with a stray wolf and gave birth to a single puppy. Later, I made the 2 original wolves into strays, and gave the grown puppy to another playable. I *think* the only animal still on the lot at the time of the error was a specral cat.

The lot with the correct number of pregnancy controllers also had one pet pregnancy which resulted in the birth of 3 kittens.

So what should we be looking at now for the culprit?

BoilingOil · « **Reply #15 on:** April 01, 2009, 07:12:32 PM »

So, it looks like I single-handedly killed my hood...

I, too, hope to hear what I can do about it, TJ, many thanks for looking into it

twojeffs · « **Reply #16 on:** April 01, 2009, 08:45:46 PM »

Ok. I've uploaded a fix for the problem that will stop the game from creating extra controllers. I've also added a debug option (shift-click with debug mode on) on the Blender that should allow you to delete the extra controllers that already exist and I trapped the too many iterations error so you should actually get the menu now on Blender to terminate a bogus pregnancy if one exists.

I haven't added the new fix to the description thread yet but it is in the download directory for pets or higher EPs. Obviously I can't test the Blender option so let me know if it works or not.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #17 on:** April 02, 2009, 08:28:03 AM »

I'll get those right away!

It's far too late for my Strangetown family, of course, since I completely destroyed that neighborhood a few days ago... but now at least it won't ever happen again!

Thanks TJ

You'll always be the best in my book!

zephyrzodiac · « **Reply #18 on:** April 02, 2009, 09:21:52 AM »

Too hasty there, Boiling Oil! I never delete a hood unless it's borked beyond repair...... and that only ever happened once.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #19 on:** April 02, 2009, 10:32:14 AM »

Well, at the time it WAS borked beyond repair... Thanks to TJ, technology has advanced immensely since then

magicmoon · « **Reply #20 on:** April 02, 2009, 11:36:45 AM »

You are so sweet to stop what you were doing to provide this fix and blender addition. Thank you!

So I take it that we have been suffering this bad code since Pets?

I also want to thank Tunaisafish again. I'm sure we have been submitting error logs filled with excess pregnany controllers for quite awhile, but since they were unrelated to the error at hand, were overlooked by others. Good eye for detail.

zephyrzodiac · « **Reply #21 on:** April 02, 2009, 11:54:53 AM »

Quote from: BoilingOil on April 02, 2009, 10:32:14 AM

Well, at the time it WAS borked beyond repair... Thanks to TJ, technology has advanced immensely since then

Well, the hood I borked beyond repair was so borked that SimPE couldn't open it. If I tried to load the hood, the game crashed - almost unheard of on my laptop, btw! - and the picture of the hood on the menu was of the underlying mesh.... sadly, according to Clean Installer, the living sims were all still living and still Persons.....but it was only yet another PV!

magicmoon · « **Reply #22 on:** April 02, 2009, 01:21:00 PM »

I can't get the new option to show up on the blender.

Testingcheats is enabled in userstartupcheat. I shift-clicked on the blender and the only item available was 'force error'. I sold and re-bought the blender, tried looking to see if it showed up on a different menu, paused and unpaused the game, but it never showed up.

I checked to make sure that I did indeed download the correct blender version and it is the new one, complete with updated documentation. Then I forced an error on a Sim to make sure that the excess controllers were still there. They are.

As a side note, I downloaded the fix, updated the blender, and updated macrotastics and AL fixes at the same time. One of them caused a reset. Since the 2 updates from MATY usually don't cause resets, I thought I would give a warning.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #23 on:** April 02, 2009, 02:01:58 PM »

EDIT: I must have been totally too tired to read and understand... I'm sorry for having asked dumb questions when I should have been sleeping!

magicmoon · « **Reply #24 on:** April 02, 2009, 03:29:55 PM »

Quote from: BoilingOil on April 02, 2009, 02:01:58 PM

I'm not sure if you really need to SHIFT-click the Blender... Have you tried a normal click? Maybe the option is found under the "Pregnancy" menu? Seems logical to me, at least!

Quote from: magicmoon on April 02, 2009, 01:21:00 PM

I sold and re-bought the blender, tried looking to see if it showed up on a different menu, paused and unpaused the game, but it never showed up.

And from the RTFM: "Nuke Extra Pregnancy Controllers – Only appears on the debug menu. Must shift-click plant with debug mode active (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true). Will only appear if extra controllers exist."

Quote from: BoilingOil on April 02, 2009, 02:01:58 PM

And if you *did* try, then I'm wondering: are the pregnancy controllers still on that lot?

Quote from: magicmoon on April 02, 2009, 01:21:00 PM

Then I forced an error on a Sim to make sure that the excess controllers were still there. They are.

twojeffs · « **Reply #25 on:** April 02, 2009, 08:04:26 PM »

Argh, let me take a look. I might have borked the menu. I hate when I can't test something...

Ok, before I get ahead of myself, try this version.

ETA again: If this doesn't work I'm going to quit trying to be fancy and salvage legit controllers and brute force nuke them all. Something must be odd about the attributes on all the extras.

magicmoon · « **Reply #26 on:** April 03, 2009, 12:11:45 PM »

Sorry, same results.

I have no active pregnancies at the moment, so it certainly woudn't hurt me if all the controllers were nuked. Boilingoil deleted her affected hood. So at the moment, I guess I'm the only one who can test it.

The blender doesn't show any pregnancies, but then it never did show pet pregnanies anyway. Could the "odd thing" about the extra controllers have to do with them belonging to pets instead of Sims?

twojeffs · « **Reply #27 on:** April 05, 2009, 07:07:04 AM »

Ok. Here's the brute force version. Will delete all pregnancy controllers from the lot.

magicmoon · « **Reply #28 on:** April 05, 2009, 01:53:16 PM »

It worked beautifully!

I forced an error on a Sim to make sure that it really deleted them. I really didn't have to though, because a few seconds after I clicked "delete pregnancy controllers", my lagging lot became playable once again. I could already tell that it had worked. Thanks so much for helping to diagnosis and fix this problem.

I didn't have to worry about walk-bys because there are no pregnancies in this hood at the moment, but what would have happened if a pregnant Sim had been walking past the house at the time the option was used?

BoilingOil · « **Reply #29 on:** April 05, 2009, 02:02:29 PM »

I think walk-by pregnancies aren't in danger... their controllers are stored on the lot where they belong. On the lot that you're playing, all pregnancy controllers are supposed to relate to residents of that one lot.

magicmoon · « **Reply #30 on:** April 05, 2009, 02:17:56 PM »

That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure.

TwoJeffs, do you need me to breed a pet to test PetPregnancyFix, or are you already sure that is working correctly?

zephyrzodiac · « **Reply #31 on:** April 05, 2009, 02:20:10 PM »

If you're worried about pregnant walkbys, you could ban pregnant with the VC first.

magicmoon · « **Reply #32 on:** April 05, 2009, 02:41:24 PM »

I'm not worried about me. I worry about the sheep who have never heard of things like precautions.
"Waaaahh! my sim aint' preggers no more!!!1!111!!11!!"

"Did you click "delete pregnancy controllers"?
"yeah, but wat's dat got to do wit it?"

I'm just collecting the info now so we know how to answer them when they arrive. Plus, I'm a knowledge Sim, I want to know how things work.

BoilingOil · « **Reply #33 on:** April 05, 2009, 02:50:52 PM »

twojeffs · « **Reply #34 on:** April 05, 2009, 02:58:13 PM »

Glad it worked.

I'm fairly certain the pet preg fix works but it wouldn't hurt to test if you're in the mood for some youngun critturs.

As far as using the nuke all option when pregnant sims (or pets) are around would be nothing serious. It would get recreated after a sim hour or two. Only sims who live on that lot would have a controller so it wouldn't affect walkbys at all.

Simmerqueen · « **Reply #35 on:** April 08, 2009, 04:11:35 PM »

Just for clarification - it seems that the only time this would happen is if a pet got pregnant on the lot? I am having trouble packaging up/installing an occupied lot from my PV into a test hood but there has never been a pet on the lot, much less a pregnant pet.

twojeffs · « **Reply #36 on:** April 08, 2009, 04:53:59 PM »

Yes, this particular issue seems to be limited to having pets around.

Simmerqueen · « **Reply #37 on:** April 08, 2009, 05:00:23 PM »

Thanks TJ - I'll have to look elsewhere for my problem!

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Author Topic: Too Many Pregnancy Controllers (Read 2747 times)