Bon Voyage: child talks to plants jump bug

[szielins]

Three and a half related questions:

(A) Is anyone else with Bon Voyage seeing a jump bug when a child with a gold gardening badge talks to garden plants (but not trees), as the result of a "Animation name is empty string." error in Inter - Talk To - Anim & Logic (group 0x7F383346 instance 0x00002021) at node 23? (Partial stack trace with relevant bits attached.)

(B) I built a fix that works on my own system-- also attached, the file fix_ChildTalkPlants_BV_7F383346_2021.package . If you're seeing the problem in (A), does installing this fix it for you as well?

(C) If so, what is the usual protocol for getting such a fix out into general distribution?

(C and a half): Is there any point in trying to bring things like this to EA Games' attention-- or when people try, do they just get a form letter and no followup?

[J. M. Pescado]

I believe I have run into this before and had a fix wrapped into something or other on MATY, ages ago. For the most part, the usual method of bringing this to the attention of EAxis is to shout, as loudly as you can, at the nearest wall you can find. While no response from EAxis will be forthcoming, at least the wall provides slightly more feedback.

[szielins]

Oho-- from

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/samples/ffs/index.php?dir=bv%2Fhacks%2F

the file bvchildanimfix.package -- a far better approach than mine, since it replaces the newly-wonky STR# resources with good ones, and handles more cases than just the one. Thanks!

[szielins]

Found another one: children doing the "Interaction - Anti Burgle" thing with a stack object of "Accessory - Burglar Sack" to drop off an object after a successful outing. Eyeballing bvchildanimfix.package but not understanding how it actually works, I took a wild-haired guess, pulled an Anims - Adult STR# out of Nightlife's object.package -- specifically the one from group 0x7F75BE33 , instance 0x81 -- renamed it "Anims - Child" and changed its instance to 0x82 , and stuck it in a .package file to yield the attachment below.

Now, I had exactly one test case I could try this with (having lost it to an ill-timed "Ooh, hey, that worked, better save the game" reflex)-- not knowing how to force a deliver-gift situation (is there a way?)-- but the child Sim was in a goofy state because of course I hit "Reset" a dozen times while trying to see if there was any way to get the operation to complete regardless of the missing animation. Ergo, installing the attachment below and continuing the game resulted in an animation and avoids the jump bug-- but it's not a particularly correct animation. (I caught it on video. The child levitates, extends the left arm, and does something or another; I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. It then goes on to do something that looks sorta consistent with the adult steal animation, but of course by now the sack is long since out of sync with the other things happening, and the gift appears quite a ways away.) I can't tell if that's always going to be the case, or if it's an artifact of the situation.

But I know which way I'd bet; I'm going to assume I'm Doing It Wrong, since I'm just cargo-culting here without any real knowledge. Somehow, I should be associating the animation a2o-object-steal with an integer corresponding to an apropos animation children will have... but how do I determine what integer? Is there a document on how these things scope somewhere?