Do the sims are frozen even *without* either of Dizzy's mod or mine?
Gunmod's Radiance 2.1 shouldn't be capable of creating such problem.

Does this mean that smarter lights fixes the problem with the pool lights crashing community lots so you don't need the poollightfix hack if you're using this?

Thanks for the great mod, by the way!

Well, so far so good on a Community Lot, Numenor. As always your work is top notch, and I thank you for it.



Ah, well, no big worries if you can't. If it's any help at all, there are just FOUR Street-type lights, and they're ALL found in Lighting>Misc on Residential Lots.

IF they can't be given independent functions when using the same Auto system, then the only alternatives would be:

A) 4 Hacked Clones that had their own On/Off times... but I confess I have no idea how this could be done, and wouldn't be remotely disappointed if no brave soul volunteers to make them, because option B is simpler...

B) We, the users, turn our street lights on and off manually. Lol. Hardly slave labour, since these are the lights of which we have fewest on our Lots, and as players we don't tend to view the sidewalk much between 2am and 7am unless there's a sim there(in which case the lights should already come on anyway)...

...So, it's no great problem if this can't be done.



Heavens! This is one of those rare moments where I could almost be convinced that someone working for Maxis actually play-tested this game before it was released!! Something I've found most INevident since OFB came out.




I've found this to be a wonderful solution to the little matter. Many thanks again.

BTW, do NPCs count as "awake sims" for the purposes of Autolight switching after sunset? I hope so, because I(and no doubt many other people) use quite a few of those Residential Bartender/Barista/Dormcook hacks that Christianlov made, and I'd pity them if they had to stand around in the dark all night until one of the family wants a midnight snack. Ha.

Anyway, thanks again, Numenor.

Dizzy2 - I've re-read our last posts, and I've looked better at Pescado's "poolLightFix" hack, and I realized there was a misunderstanding...

I thought that:
1) your SmartLights already contained the fix by Pescado, and therefore the SmarterLight contained it, too; while it's not true, because your hack contains the line "Me == My lead tile object ID (0x13); true: D, false: true" and NOT the GUID test suggested by Pescado
2) and I thought that you were only stating something obvious (that Pescado's fix was important), while you actually were suggesting me to include it in this hack (and I sounded quite arrogant in my reply, but it was not my intention, of course).
In any case, I take no credits for the "Me == My lead tile object ID" fix: you wrote it, I only cloned it .

I do think that Pescado's solution is more effective (I don't like direct GUID calls, but they are the most effective solutions when you have problems with one specific objects; therefore, I'm going to include Pescado's PoolLightFix in this SmarterLights.

well....i redownloaded it and moved it into a seperate folder. i never removed he original downlaod of this cuz i cant find it among all my other downlaods so i hope it dosnt screw up. its kinda late here so i have to check tomorow. ill update then

You mean you have *two* copies/versions of the Smart(er) Lights installed at the same time? Don't! They obviously conflict with each other.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

IMPORTANT!
This mod includes (and therefore is NOT compatible) with the following hacks, that MUST BE REMOVED from the Downloads:

• smart-lights.package (by Dizzy2)
• poollightsfix.package (by JM Pescado)
• commlightson.package (by JM Pescado)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

17 SEPT 2006: UPDATE_1 - Included Pescado's fix for pool lights ("poollightfix").
17 SEPT 2006: UPDATE_2 - Tweaked the residential oudoor lights: now the street lights will stay always on from 6PM to 7AM (always off during the day); the garden lamps will stay always on from 6PM to 2AM; for the rest of the night (until 7AM) will auto-turn on only when there is an awake sim outdoor.
Note: "Awake sims" include NPCs and visitors; "Street Lights" are the lamps located in catalog in the section "Lamps / Misc" (therefore, the "City Dweller Dims" is included, as well as any existing and future clone of the "Misc" lamps).

Wow. Thanks Numenor. I totally forgot about that fix I did. :P

Play testing and Maxis in the same sentence? I think the motivation for them to keep the outdoor community lights on all the time was getting the overall frame rate up (and it does do that).

But anyway, Maxis crew has all my sympathy: it must be hard to work with an EA manager snapping a whip behind you...!

Hello Numenor. I was playing this hack on dorms and it's kinda weird to see the rooms other than their bed to turn off the lights (hallways, study hall, kitchen etc) when the sims in their room. Maybe you can add a feature that will open the lights in any room in without beds in dorms until maybe 12 am?

Emino, you mean that the lights go off (in non-bedrooms) even when there is an NPC student in?
Once, I've lived in a dorm, a big one: the lights in the corridor stayed on all night long, but all the common rooms (bathroom, reading room, cafeteria) had no light. I agree that the common rooms should be always lit at least until midnight, at least...

I'll try to take a look, but I foresee two problems to solve:
1) I have to instruct the hack to check if the house is a dorm while keeping the hack itself base-game compliant (I don't want multiple versions of the hacks, if possible); I hope there is a global function in the base game to check the game version or the EP installed.
2) the game can't distinguish between a corridor and a room; most (all?) dorms in the game have no corridors at all, anyway; sometimes there is a lobby connected to several corridors that lead to the various bedrooms. In any case the hack will treat the corridors as rooms.

Numenor, I just think of an idea that might help the situation. Why not add an option to the lamp so that we can set it to stay on from a certain time? Like 'Schedule Room... Always On, Night (6pm-12am)' and another optional option 'Schedule Room... Always On, All Night (6pm-6am)'.

That way user can choose which hallways are always on and which rooms are always on during the night. This way you dont have to check whether this lot is a dorm and stay on in only a version (no multiple version for expansions). Hope it helps (and makes any sense :P).

The method that immediately springs to my mind (remember I am the inventor of the little "CD" controller object ) is to have a controller for each room that controls all the lights in that room. Then you can set the lights in that room to always off and let the controller switch them on and off. It might save doing it globally - or the small global part could be for the lights to detect whether there is a main "switch" for the room, and if so not to do their own processing.

Again, a small custom object can help with the distinction between a room and a corridor. You can make an object that when present in a room says "this is a corridor" and the lights could pick up on that. A master controller can make these small objects toggle between hidden and visible, so you don't have to find space for them. Obviously they would be created to always allow intersection, so they could go anywhere.

This has happened to me a few times in the past and it has always come down to a custom career file, reomove any custom careers and that should fix it I think!

I haven't downloaded any new careers as of late. It also seems this all began when I installed Numenor and MaryLou's Counter-Culture set. Looked great, but since I only have Uni, it was limited options. Could that set conflict w/ Christianlov's All-In-One stove, etc.? I've had those in there for who knows how long w/ two NPC's in the lot.

I have removed all Counter-Cultures from the lot and the download folder. Now, my sims are floating in air w/ one standing up. Augh!! Any takers on this one?? Much thanks in advance.

The "frozen time & sims" means that there is in the lot an object that cause an endless error.

You should do this:

• Go to your documents folder, EA Games\The Sims 2\Logs and delete all the files that you have there.
• Load the game, go to your Neighborhood, open the cheat box and type exactly:
  boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true
• Enter the lot where the sims freeze
• During the loading, or after the loading is finished, you will see one or more error messages. Read the messages (they should give you a hint about the object (s) that is causing the error) and then hit "delete".
• When the lot finally starts working, close the game without saving.
• Go back to the Logs folder and you'll find some error logs: put them all in a zip and reply to this thread, attaching the zip.

Numenor, your help and knowledge are invaluable. Everything unfroze after the error messages were deleted per your instructions. You will notice one log describing one NPC only because I updated those files in an attempt to solve the problem. I don't think this will affect anything since I've done this same thing in the past w/o probs. The other points to an object which I hadn't used until recently: Simlogical's alarm clock. I feel rather silly inferring your creations were the cause of the freeze because I don't think they were the source. Again, thanks for your help and thank you for providing the community w/ your efforts.

Brilliant - I have been waiting for an update of this mod.

Sorry for the delay, I missed your post... -

I've examined both objects you mentioned, and I'm puzzled about the All-in-one NPC by Christianlov: I've downloaded it right now from HERE, and the code inside seems not compatible with the error log you have provided...

Are you sure you have the latest version of Christianlov's mod? And if so, please double check your Downloads: you seem to have an older version of it, that now conflicts with the newer one.

As for Inge's clock, I couldn't find anything wrong (no surprise ). Perhaps the error is caused by the conflict that you probably have on the All-in-one NPCs.

I suggest you to perform a GUID scan of your downloads folder, either with the Clean Installer, or SimPE.

This is great, thank you very much!

Numenor, again thanks for your help. Everything is working just as it should. While nothing is probably wrong w/ Inge's alarm clock, I decided to remove it since after doing so, things started working once more. Hats off to you for this well needed addition to the game.

So it should also work with the upcoming EP, Pets?

Can you upload the old version of this, without the new commlights always on feature? I have certain community lots which are essentially vacation houses for my sims, and it doesn't make sense to have lights on at all times.

Lizinator - Eh, who knows? Every EP that comes out forces us creators to a hard job, in order to check the functionalities of our stuff with the new game. I think it should work fine, anyway: the simpler the hack, the more chances that it will "survive" to the new EPs.

Idtaminger - Find the old version attached to this post. But please take it "as is": I consider it a discontinued product, and no assistance can be offered for it.

FYI, it appears this works with the Pets expansion. However, I've not been able to test yet the pool lights. This was the first hack I enabled to test with Pets and it didn't cause my game to crash and the lights appear to be working as they did before I installed pets. I'll post again if I find any issues but, so far so good