The Sims 3 Immortal Dynasty Challenge

[Ricalynn]

Yeah I know about that trick but i'm not one to just throw away an animal even in Pets, too.  It was just something I was saying as a precaution to anyone attempting this.  We've had someone almost ruin their dynasty with a pair of twins.

[aenito]

Your warning was ok, but I think anyone interested in your warning would be also interested in the trick... even if they decide not to use it.

[EtnaFan666]

Thanks for all the rules about the IP expansion, Ricalynn! This will help me greatly when I start working on my unofficial Immortal Dynasty there. I think I'll have the founder supermax diving(now that I figured out why the game crashes when I dive - I have to wait a bit for the game to render the underwater spot) and have a mermaid who will supermax alchemy or something else. It seems like crud that the Grand Explorer LTW is exclusive to Isla Paradiso, EA is dumb for not allowing us to create hidden islands on other worlds, but it makes sense that some don't fit, like Moonlight Falls(which hasn't got an ocean per se).

One question: If we have mermaid immortals, would they be forced to refuse Diving opportunities and couldn't use them as their Black Ops? I know the reason you banned Diving Supermax for merfolk is because half of the challenge is struggling to master the skill and having a mastered skill off the bat is half broken, but would Diving opportunities also be banned for merfolk? If nobody else does diving opps, it would be a good way to fill out any missing holes in their Black Ops. I'm not complaining; such master divers who have automatic Steel Lungs make diving opps a non-issue.

[Ricalynn]

Remember if you have a mermaid immortal in the family - they make it so no other immortal can have supermaxed diving.  Because they reach level 10 which is a part of a supermax.  I know your game is unofficial but I thought you should know officially that is against the rules.  They can do the diving opportunities just they can't repeat any used for another immortal's blackops.

[enderkay]

So, this sculpting glitch has suddenly appeared in my Immortal Dynasty file and it's really bugging me, especially since my founder is my sculptor. It's the first time I've ever gotten this glitch, and I tend to play a lot of sculptors.

My founder got all three of hers done with no problem (courtesy of a spare), but now any time she or the spare try to get a sculpture of someone, it gets all buggy. Immortal #2 is still a few days from child and I'd like to get things fixed in time to get him a toddler statue.

I know it's not technically game-breaking, since sculptures aren't required, but is there something I can do within the limits of the rules? Or do I just have to give up on making ice Sims?


Edit: So I saved and exited so I could clear my cache, thinking maybe that would help, but now when I try to load that file it tells me there's an error and the file is corrupted and blah blah. Do I have permission to go back to a previous save?

[Ricalynn]

For the sculpting thing, the shadow clone is just how the game makes the ice sculpture so that's not an issue just so everyone knows.  That's normal. 

Try the save again - I get that error and reload the game just fine afterwards some days.  Got it a lot in the end of my dynasty.  I need more info on the sculpting thing too. What gets buggy exactly?  The exact happenings for you.

[Antalia]

I restarted my Immortal Dynasty and have reached a point where I'd like to start posting it on the Immortal Dynasty Stories board.

I have enhanced and edited all my images, including resizing them to 800x600. I decided to create a Flickr account specifically for this project. I was thinking this would be ideal for me, since with Flickr I can share some of my pictures with family members who enjoy Sims 3 photography, but who are not necessarily interested in reading the whole saga.

So I uploaded my images and created a "test" forum post, and tried linking to some, to ensure they'd show up in the right size. In post Preview mode, the images are coming up on screen at random-looking sizes that are much larger than the originals. This reduces their quality (and doesn't follow the story rules). I went back and checked the image files in Flickr itself, and the original sizes are printed correctly there, although the images also are displayed weirdly larger on my screen.

Does anybody have experience with posting Flickr images in a story, and know what's going wrong for me? (I searched the board and found other people seem to have managed Flickr stories, with properly sized images.) Is there a way to force the 800x600 images to actually display at 800x600, in the [img=]http://...[/img] code when posting? Thank you for your help.

Edit: Argh! I finally found the problem. The free image editor I am using always shows images scaled to 80% of their true size. The free HTML editor I used to mock up my story shows them scaled to 81%, by default. (Bizarre!) Flickr and this forum are showing my images at 100% of their true size, which looks pretty weird after spending a lot of time working with the scaled-down versions.

I also just realized the forum supports the BBCode for specifying displayed height and width, not that I need the feature now.

[aenito]

Is there a way to force the 800x600 images to actually display at 800x600, in the [img=]http://...[/img] code when posting? Thank you for your help.

[img width=800px]http://...[/img]

[enderkay]

For the sculpting thing, the shadow clone is just how the game makes the ice sculpture so that's not an issue just so everyone knows.  That's normal. 

Try the save again - I get that error and reload the game just fine afterwards some days.  Got it a lot in the end of my dynasty.  I need more info on the sculpting thing too. What gets buggy exactly?  The exact happenings for you.

I did know that about the shadow clone. I'd always wondered if it was glitched, but I guess not.

As for the glitch, my sculptor sim (either my founder or the other sculpting slave, it does the same for both) asks another sim to model for them, and the model wanders over and poses, just like they're supposed to. Then the shadow clone thing starts, except it never finishes its round (it's supposed to do a big circle around the model, but it stops about halfway, acting like it's finished--in the case of my toddler heir, the shadow sits down and sways back and forth, rather than being frozen mid-crawl like I'd expect), and instead of the ice block appearing like it should, both sculptor and model sit there forever, doing nothing. They move and sway and whatnot, but they're just...sitting there. After a while (like, thirty minutes to an hour in Sims time) I get frustrated and cancel the action, but it continues to stay x-ed out in the queue, and both parties are unresponsive. I can queue other actions, but they won't do anything but continue to sit there while needs bars drop and whatnot. Eventually I do ResetSim on them both (resetting the model snaps them both out of it, but resetting the sculptor only leaves the model still stranded) and they can do other things, but if I try sculpting an ice sim again I get the same glitch, no matter who I use as sculptor or model.

Sometimes, like when I was queuing up my founder for her sculptures, there would be two versions of the model selectable in the popup menu -- one would be my founder with the relationship bars where they are in the game, which I assume is the real one, and one would be my founder as a stranger, which I assume is the clone. One time my founder got a wish to sculpt the paparazzi, so I let her, and the paparazzi ran away (as they often do) with my founder still waiting at the sculpting station, so I canceled the action. Then I saw the paparazzi came back, so when I queued it up again and saw two of the paparazzi listed I selected the one marked "acquaintance" rather than "stranger", which worked fine until right before the paparazzi started modeling and her clone wandered up and started chatting with the original.

So, yeah. If there's a fix, I'd love to know it.

[Ricalynn]

It sounds like something is going on with your game if you can see the actual shadow.  In all of my games all I ever see is footprints at best and never for a toddler.  I'm assuming you've done the standard removal of all sculpting stations, then cleared caches and then bought new ones to try right? 

At the time that this started happening, what changed in your game?  Was it when you installed the patch or expansion?  Did you download new content?

[enderkay]

It sounds like something is going on with your game if you can see the actual shadow.  In all of my games all I ever see is footprints at best and never for a toddler.  I'm assuming you've done the standard removal of all sculpting stations, then cleared caches and then bought new ones to try right? 

At the time that this started happening, what changed in your game?  Was it when you installed the patch or expansion?  Did you download new content?

Yes, I cleared caches and replaced all the sculpting stations. And now that I think about it, I installed the patch right around when the heir was a baby, so it might have something to do with that. I have the new expansion but haven't installed it yet as I wanted to keep playing my dynasty and didn't feel like scoping out all the new content yet; do you think maybe it might fix things if I just went ahead and installed it?

If worse comes to worst I can always just restart. I like my founder but I'm not even that far in and she's been plagued with some serious bad luck (including a paparazzi spontaneously combusting on her birthday and a wedding brought to a screeching halt by the death of her poor fiance), so I've been thinking a restart might not be such a bad idea...

[Ricalynn]

Restarting is your choice and I'll tell you now that installing the expansion might help but it might not.  It's really hard to say. 

The best thing about restarting is avoiding some of the mistakes you made last time though.  It really depends on how attached you are to this attempt.

[EtnaFan666]

Sorry to hear about the sculpting bug. I never had that problem but I've had cases of the talk teaching forever bug before.

Ricalynn, I want to ask a question though it may seem redundant(I have decided that if I do breed a mermaid immortal, she can do science or alchemy, a loophole to allow her dive and catch fish underwater and then use them) - when I look for diving work at the bistro and stuff, I get opportunities. Do those count as Black Ops?

[Trip]

If they occupy any of the op slots (skill, career, or special), then it's an op.

[FireRaye93]

Greetings all!

I've been testing out some strategies for my first ever attempt at a Dynasty and I have a question. I'm not sure if it's been answered or not, I looked at the rules and didn't see anything specific about it so I figured I'd ask.

I've got a normal Sim supermaxing the Diving Skill and with the Diving skill your Sim can go to the Science center, Town Hall and Bistro to get opportunities to bring certain items back for money and other rewards. I was wondering if these count towards the BlackOps our immortals need? I'm pretty sure they don't, but I wanted to check here first.