Breakup Music Effect for no Reason?

[DeathJohnson]

Only reason I even know what the music effect is is from the comments section on this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx4Yu7JMxr0
(Music effect plays at around 6:05)

None of the sims in my household have even been in a relationship at any point, so obviously they've never been in a breakup, yet I've heard the music effect about 10 times now. Before I was always looking around for some cause of it, but now that I know what the cause is supposed to be, I know it's playing for no reason.

Based on the comments section of the video, other people had the same issue of the music playing for no reason, but is there a solution to it?

[cruinne]

I've heard some people just get plagued with this little song, and it can be anything from a random animal in town dying to random sims in the neighborhood breaking up (no one's really sure what causes it).

I do know someone who said they fixed it by installing the NRaas StoryProgression mod ( https://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryProgression ), and turning off "Allow Breakup".

[DeathJohnson]

I may try that. It has to be a glitch though with how it occurs if anything in the town happens, I mean, it doesn't play ghost music when a ghost is wandering anywhere in town, only if it's relevant to where you are or where you're looking at.

I think aside from trying that, I wonder what would happen if I could find that music effect and get rid of it, if it would crash the game, or just not play the song. If it just removed the song, I could deal with it. Maybe it would be possible to replace it with a blank audio file or something. I mean, then the music wouldn't play even if it was relevant, but it would so rarely actually be applicable so it wouldn't be as big of a deal.

Of course, that assumes the music effect isn't encoded as a part of some other file making it impossible to alter, I guess I'll look into it right now to see.

Edit: Yeah, it's definitely encoded into something, and with the way these files are, even if I was able to figure out how to mod this game, I wouldn't even know where to look for the music effects.

[cruinne]

Well, TS3 is nothing if not absolutely chock full of bugs.

As for finding-and-removing the file, I doubt you can. It probably isn't somewhere helpfully labelled as "random-sad-music.mp3" or anything -- it's like deep inside the install, in a proprietary format that doesn't even look like an audio file. Probably intentionally so that you can't replace various game sound effects, because EA allows some modding, but certain things are just untouchable.

I've had similar things happen -- a strange tune I couldn't figure out that occasionally played. I always figured it was a missed opportunity or some other thing that was so badly done that you received no other info about it but a rather vague piece of music.

One thing: do you have Pets? I've heard that when the unicorn appears or disappears in town there's a bit of music that plays that some people mix up with the break-up music.

[DeathJohnson]

I have Pets, but if it's playing because of that, it's definitely the same song as the breakup music, not just similar. I've heard it enough to know every note of it now, and I've never heard any music signifying a Unicorn appearing, for sure. I've never seen one either, but never really looked yet.

It seems like it just happens once you get far into the town/household you play as. I know on one household I go my main sim from Young Adult to Elder without hearing it at all. On my current file, the first time I heard it was when my main sim got to Elder (from Young Adult), and was near enough to death that I thought that was what the music meant the first time or two. But since hearing it the first time, it happens every few nights now. And the music effect is powerfully emotional enough that it's really annoying.

I wanted to avoid getting too many mods for the game, but I guess one to disallow breakups is pretty much necessary to fix this if it does. I don't think I would notice other sims in town not breaking up, as long as they can still get together, marry, and have children. And as long as sims I control can still break up, if I ever want them to.

[DeathJohnson]

After getting the story progression mod, I haven't even made it a couple days so I don't know if it fixed the music issue, but now I get like 10 (well, more like 100 really) notifications a day about people I don't care about doing things I don't care about. And that's definitely more annoying than the music glitch, is there a way to disable all the notifications?

I turned something off that I thought based on the mod's guide would turn off notifications, then 5 minutes later (game-time), I got another 6 notifications. Then after posting this topic and going another 10 minutes of game time, 11 notifications popped up.

Edit: Disabled even more things that were apparently for reporting stories that show up, and within literally a minute of game time, another notification pops up. This is absolutely ridiculous, I want to get rid of an annoying music effect glitch, not overhaul the way the game works and get notifications any time someone in town sneezes.

Edit2: Yeah, this is way too intrusive to wait for a response on, I'm just going to get rid of it now, quit without saving, and try to continue without it. I mean, I didn't even get through 12 hours of game time, but despite several attempts to turn off notifications, I got over a hundred of them.

[cruinne]

Yeah, i do not actually use that mod myself (I use three others from the site) so I don't see the crazy messaging thing.

However there is a topic about it if you google it: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/936498-the-sims-3/59454576

And here: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/358205.page