Tracking sims outside of your current household?

[Zemecon]

There have been a few occasions where a new sim will show up - or even a sim I know about through another sim's Relationships Panel - who will not appear in any of the house preview pop-ups when in the Map screen or Edit Town screen upon first glance. Or, rather, their last names will not show up in any of the household names (and multiple last names per household does happen), and I would like to know where that sim lives so that I can arrange and manage the relationship between the two sims more easily. But I would rather not constantly have to jump from household to household merely so that I can locate an ever elusive sim. Is there a better way to do this?

I should say here that I am currently having issues with the Master Controller mod so that is a no-go at the moment but if there is some other mod that will help me then that would be helpful to know.

Any advice and/or assistance would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.

PS: Is there some reason why I can't visit the Wainright household (Mr. Wainright is the employer for the Science career) in Town Edit mode? I can visit the Goth household but I can't visit the Wainright household for some reason.

[Kirby Coded]

No. I don't think you can track sims outside your household. Sorry. And VERY sorry if I'm wrong.

[Zemecon]

What about finding out where a sim lives? BTW, I am referring to Dina Benner in Sunset Valley(?) if that helps any. She came pre-loaded with the town in my game but I don't know where she lives.

[marstinson]

You can only track sims that are part of the active household, although Master Controller will allow you to focus on any Sim in town. If MC is giving you problems, there is a help forum for each of the NRaas mods at nraas.wikispaces.com. It might take a day or so to get an answer as it is user-supported (like this forum), but they are a helpful bunch. Registration is free and they do not email you other than to verify your email address when you create an account.

If the Sim you are trying to find is a service or role sim, they do not have a residence on the map (they are part of the "Homeless" household). Basically they appear long enough to do their job and then leave the map until the next workday. If you're planning on starting a relationship with them, it's easier to make them a resident and stick them in a house somewhere as relationships with service and role Sims can get very buggy very fast. If the Sim is a resident and is showing on your relationship panel as anything other than "Stranger", their house will be marked on your town map, but it can take some searching to find it.

[Zemecon]

Ah OK. Thanks for that. I am still experimenting with Master Controller to see which component is causing the issues but one of them (I downloaded all five - barring Cmar's tatto mod) is preventing my game from launching beyond the first loading screen so there must be a conflict somewhere.

Have you seen a sim called Dina Benner in your game before? She shows up in Sunset Valley for me and her status says she is unemployed so she can't possibly have an in-game role. I suppose I will just have to keep looking.

[Zemecon]

UPDATE: Dina Benner lives in the Heller household. I guess I just didn't look hard enough at first. And the core Master Controller module works but it causes a drastic delay in loading time. One of the other modules must be causing the game launcher cancellation. Will investigate further. The core Master Controller module did solve my issue, though.

[marstinson]

There are four add-ons to MC. The only one that will cause your game to crash and burn is Progression since it requires another mod (Story Progression) to be installed and functioning in order for it to work. The simplest way to check would be to pull the mastercontrollerprogression.package file off to your desktop and try to launch the game. If it does, then that's your culprit. If it still won't launch, then there is something else going on.

[Zemecon]

Ahh OK. I don't have the Story Progression mod yet so that is probably it. I am still going to test this with the other modules, anyway, but in the case that it is the Progression module then I may hold off on it until I decide whether I want it yet or not. Thanks for the info :-)

[marstinson]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but I've been on the road for a couple of days. Story Progression basically replaces the game's built-in story progression features (which doesn't have much of a story and doesn't progress). It's setting are very granular, so it might take some tinkering in the mod's setting to get things set the way you want them, but it causes the NPCs in town to do things like get married, have kids, change jobs, move to larger houses and that kind of thing. It doesn't do anything to the active family (you progress your own story - it's kind of the point of the game). It does give you lots of notifications about NPCs relationships, careers, and that kind of thing. I found them amusing the first couple of times I used the mod, but the sheer volume of them became annoying after a while ("tell me about all stories" is the default setting), and just limited it to Romantic Interests, close friends, and family members (like parents who aren't part of the active household). The only other issue I've seen with SP is that it doesn't cause NPCs to emigrate (leave town) very well once there is no more available housing, but it's an excellent tool for populating player-made worlds.

[Zemecon]

Wow. Very interesting. I had been wondering how to re-populate my current town without having to create that many more sims on my own and that might do the trick.

I've been having some conflict issues with one or two other mods lately so I will want to be careful with this but I am interested in trying out Story Progression now. If I get any slowdown in game performance (not assuming I will) then I will just remove it. Thanks again for the info!

[marstinson]

It shouldn't impact performance at all, but having more than 100 Sims or so can put a hurt on low-end machines while more than 150 or so can slow high-end machines. Your mileage may vary.

The instructions for how to use it to generate some fast immigration are here:
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryProgression+FAQ

Click the shortcut for the Immigration section.

[Zemecon]

OK. Thanks.

[marstinson]

No problem and happy Simming. I was going to suggest replacing the downtown statue with one of Twallan by Cloudwalker Sims, but the mod's site appears to have been closed down. Bummer. Twallan's mods have saved many players' sanity.