I would not assume not understanding what I wrote as the person being dumb. I would assume I am just not explaining it in a way that they could comprehend, based on their prior knowledge and how they process things. Everyone has different ways of understanding information, and language, and if I'm not speaking their mind-language, it's no wonder they don't get it. I am of the belief that anyone can understand anything, given enough time and a good teacher. Whether it is worth taking that time is another matter. Everyone does not have to understand everything, and everyone does not want to understand everything. I have always disliked physics. I don't get it, and I don't want to get it. Doesn't make me stupid, or incapable, just means I'd rather do something that doesn't make me want to pull my brain out through my eye sockets.

If anyone wants to try and understand it, I am willing to try and explain it. But in the end all you really need to know is that HCDU is a useful tool, but it can't tell the whole truth. If something is not working, whether reported by HCDU or not, you should consult the modder that made the mods, and hope they are decent enough to try to help you. If not, ask the community.

What I don't get is why is it the mod that loads last is the one that gets acted on first and not the mod that loads first. That seems backwards. I keep thinking it's the other way.

@Simonut Mods load in order from A to Z. You can change how they load by changing the letters on the folder. I use to change the letter on the mods name itself but BO told me not to do that.

Because the last one will take over the previous one. The game will apply the last setting it *sees* the last mod will kind of put itself in front.

Think of it this way jo. You have a puzzle, and a box with pieces. You must empty the box, and each piece can only be in one place. If when going through the box there are two pieces that fit the same slot, whichever one you pick up last is the one you see, because it will be on top of the other piece.

The game reads everything, but it only remembers one item for each slot. It has to read the second mod too, and since that one contains the same thing, it will replace what was in the slot with that code.

Probably because of an unusual number of real-life distractions today, it took me a while to really distill this down and compare it to what I had said. Before I edit my earlier post, then, I'd like to test my new understanding with either of you, @gummilutt and @BoilingOil (or anyone else comfortable with the game's workings who has a bit of time!).

I think what it comes down to is that BHAVs are not broad, as I claimed. They do not have room within them to allow different mods that all touch them to work. Instead, if multiple mods in a Downloads folder all touch the same BHAV, then only the last of those mods to work will determine how that BHAV is handled by the game.

So then, although swapping around load order will not fix all mod conflicts, when it does appear to "fix" one, that is because both mods are sufficiently "happy" with the way that the last-loaded mod handles that BHAV. This "happiness" would typically be because the last-loaded mod's modder wrote their mod so that it can handle the BHAV in a way that allows the other mod to work too.

When swapping around load order does not work for a conflict that *is* reported by the HCDU, it's because the two mods need to handle that BHAV in such different ways that neither is "happy" with the way that the other handles the shared BHAV, and so they make each other nonfunctional no matter which mod is currently "in charge" of the BHAV (which would be the mod that loads last).

OK, so that's what I've got so far. And if I'm correct, then I've three questions.
1) Why would two mods that touch the same BHAV work together only when load order is fiddled with...even if *neither* modder seems to have tried to make adaptations for the other mod in theirs? That's just a happy accident?

2) I know that I have at least two pairs of mods that work fine together, not only despite their showing as a potential conflict in HCDU but also despite one of the modders in each case telling a player that the two mods were not compatible at all and would not work together. It's been a matter of load order in both cases, as far as I can tell. I believe one of the pairs is TwoJeffs' Schoolbus bring friend (not the homework part, just the other) with Phaenoh's Summer Vacation Winter's Day mod for school vacations (non-BV version). I cannot offhand recall which is the other pair. So are modders just claiming that their mods are incompatible out of an abundance of caution? Or are they incompatible, but at some code level that the average player nevertheless will not notice? (Yes, I know that this last question calls for speculation, since TwoJeffs is inactive now, and I believe it was he who said his mod would not work with Phaenoh's---I'm having trouble finding a link but looking.)

(Third question needs me to quote gummilutt first)


3) In the above HCDU-undetectable cases, would load order make any difference at all, specifically in causing such a previously *functional* but conflicting paring to work? Or is the whole point there that load order is immaterial anyway to BHAV-chain--based conflicts, because load order is only important when the conflict is a matter of both mods trying to affect the *same* BHAV? (Or BCON or other resource?) In other words, is "fighting" for the exact same resource the only time when load order changes may fix a problematic conflict?



Thank you for mentioning that as well. It got me thinking about this other old thread I had seen on another site, and I went off to find it. It's here. Right in post 32 (hey, neat, it's tunaisafish!), he mentions all those items you specify as indeed things that the HCDU can detect. But they also talk (that same post of Tuna's mentions it, although it is MadCat in post 14 who seems to mention it first) about how it's STR# thingies that HCDU doesn't detect. But apparently would be better if the HCDU did.

Reading threads like that one only serves to remind me how little I grasp of the inner workings of the game. But I mention it because I'd be interested if anyone can remark on what STR#'s do and why the fact that HCDU doesn't check them is such an oversight. Because understanding the limitations of your tools is always a valuable thing.

In any case, since it's quite straightforwardly obvious already how I've got that bit wrong, I have already edited my original post to make that correction.



These are very kind words, indeed, gummilutt, considering I just rather misexplained something! But I thank you, though I don't know if I ever really want to be a modder. But you are right that I love information and learning about things and how they work, and so this has been highly educational.

I appreciate the time both of you are taking, BO and gummi, to educate me (and the forum in general!).

@Simonut Apologies for having derailed your thread for the moment! I hope that you've gotten the gist of what you might have wanted to know about anything being discussed, though.

Thanks guys, that makes sense.

Have you ever sat for a long period of time on a piano bench? Trust me, it is anything but comfortable. There's no back support, and if it's not padded your sit bones eventually become very unhappy with the hard slab of wood you're sitting on even if your butt has some padding of its own. (I used to be a concert pianist, so I've spent a LOT of time sitting on piano benches since I was three years old, much to my back's detriment. I've always sworn that the whole concept of piano benches was dreamed up by a sadist and/or one of those people who's obsessive about good posture.) So, I'm toying with the notion of making piano-playing drain comfort. If nothing else, perhaps it would stop Sims from playing the piano all. day. long. Well, that and tuning down its fun advertising, of course.

Gosh, thanks for that, iCad! Hard not to take the word of a concert pianist for whether those benches are comfortable! I'm going to take that mod out now, because you said this. Appreciated!

I've always wondered---anyone know about the equivalent for drum kits? I've never seen a mod to make playing those comfortable; I'm just curious!

(Editing to reflect that iCad moved part of her post to the Random Questions thread; I'm answering her there.)

Good to know about the dishes thing! Still makes no sense to me, but...whatever. In any case, when I made that post I thought I was in the stupid questions thread, not this one, so I've moved that part over to the right thread. Sorry to anyone who read natboopsie's post and went, "What?"

And yeah, sitting down doesn't necessarily mean comfortable. Piano benches certainly aren't made for it. And as to your question: Yes, Sims with more cleaning "credit" will clean faster and Sims with more Mechanical "credit" will repair things faster even if they haven't gained a full point yet. That's why the NPC maids and repair people have maxed cleaning and mechanical, respectively, so they don't take eons to clean a Sim's house or fix their TV. THAT logic Maxis got right. You're not likely to see an increase in speed as a Sim cleans, though, especially with a harder skilling mod in place, since they'll be gaining so slowly.

EDIT: And now you edited your reply so...HAH! :D

LOL, iCad. Now I want to follow up on what you said to my post that I moved because I thought you moved your post...and I have not the foggiest idea where I should do that. Woe.

Edit: Yay, you swept some stuff over there. So over there it shall be!

It's not so much that they are broad or not, or if they have room within them. A mod does not just contain a section of a BHAV, the code you altered. It contains the entire thing. BHAVs are defined, separate sections of a bigger picture. If you want to make changes to it, you must take out the entire thing, fix the part you want fixed, and then put it back. Think of it like a battery. If you want the battery to be stronger, or have longer lifetime, you don't take out the bit of the battery that does that. You take out the entire battery, and replace it with one that has the characteristics you want. That's why the game can't have two mods changing different pieces of the BHAV, because BHAVs only come in separate full pieces.



Yes. If neither modder intentionally designed it to work with the other mod, and they still work, it's a happy accident. Either that, or it's not so much a matter of working together as it is replacing a part of the first mod. Lots of mods do many separate things, like Pescado's alfixes. You might like 9 out of 10 things it does, but want the 10th to work differently. You could have a mod that conflicts with that 10th part. Doesn't affect the other 9, so there's no need for the code in the second mod to be compatible with alfixes. It's not trying to interact, it's just making the game ignore that 10th section of alfixes.



In order to answer this question, I need more information, or to look at the mods in question and see what's going on. Without knowing what's in their mind and how they conflict, I can't judge if it's caution or not. I will get back to you when I have a better answer, if nobody else answers it before then.



Yes, that is correct. Load order only matters if both mods contain the same resource. If the conflict is of a different nature, it won't make any difference.

There's also one situation where load order won't help, despite it being a case of two mods with the same resource. If both mods only contain one resource and it's the same in both mods, there's no point changing the load order. Both only do one thing, and only one of them can work. So if you have a conflict, you could pop it open in SimPE and see if they contain the exact same resource. If they do, don't bother trying to work out a load order. Instead, decide which mod is most likable to you, and use that one. You can technically have both in your game without it having any negative effects, but there's no reason to have both since one is being completely ignored.



STR#s are text lists, the data they contain has a wide range of functionalities. I am not super familiar with them, I've only dealt with them a couple of times. Based on my very limited knowledge of them, yes, having two of the same would cause conflicts that are problematic. I'd say it is almost guaranteed to be a problematic conflict. I'd explain why, but it'll get very technical and hard to explain when you haven't seen them. Short version is that you would not edit a text list unless you really need it, and it's very unlikely that two different mods would need the same edit and therefore happy accidents probably won't happen.

However, your typical mod very rarely contains STR#s. I don't think we can call it an oversight that Paladin did not include every single thing that could be a problem. BHAVs, BCONs or TTABs are much more common, and therefore more likely to end up with conflicts. He made a tool that does a good job detecting the common things, can't fault him for not including every possible problem.



If you are interested, I was (and will at some point continue) working on a massive overhaul of autonomy that allows individual settings for a bunch of things. I like Sims doing things autonomously, but I don't like all Sims doing all things autonomously. Some of my Sims play an instrument, and therefore have one in their home. It bothers me that all Sims beeline for them, despite not being musical or creative. I like there to be more individuality in who does what. Just because my sister had a violin and a flute doesn't mean I'd play them when bored. I played my piano, or played with my dolls. This particular mod allows your Sims to pledge their allegiance to the organization FULMTT. It stands for "Forever unmusical leave instruments to talented", and they believe that tone deaf people should keep their grubby hands off instruments. Basically, your Sim carries their membership card in their inventory, and leaves the instruments to Sims who actually play. Now little Susie can play the piano at her whim, and mum and dad won't get in her way. You can of course direct them to play/perform if you want to, they just won't do it autonomously.

The current version also stops anyone with less than 5 creativity skill from autonomously playing instruments on community lots. Probably not everyones cup of tea, but in my mind, you don't get up on a stage and play an instrument in front of your neighbours unless you actually kind of know how to play. When I upload it I'll include a version that does not have that part, but I haven't made it yet. If the community lot skill threshold does not bother you, I could send you the mod. It's working for all instruments but the guitar, which has one of Maxis lovely logic fails and therefore ignores my code. I know how to fix it, I just need to find the right part of the code, and I haven't gotten around to that yet.

If both mods make roughly the same changes to this BHAV in which they 'conflict', then it's possible that both will work properly. One of them might be less picky about the result. So if the other loads last, they will both accept the outcome.




You must realize that even modders can not know about ALL mods that their own work conflicts with, because it is impossible to know all released mods, period. So, the precise wording may be of consequence here. Modders don't want to be caught claiming that their work is compatible with everything, while in fact it isn't. It's always smart to say something like "to *my* knowledge, there are no *known* conflicts. Please let me know if you run into one that I need to be aware of, and I will see what I can do about it", or something like "this is going to conflict with other mods that edit the <whatever> system". Note that latter statement doesn't specifically *say* that any possible conflict is a problem, because that is not yet known. It *might* be a problem, but it might just as well not be. User's discretion is advised!
It's also possible in this case that Pheanoh made changes to her mod after TJ had left the scene, causing improved compatibility between the two that TJ could not know about, last time he was active.
It could also be that there is still a problem, but you haven't run into the aftermath of it yet.
Usually, it is wise to take care with mods of which both authors say they can't work together. But not everyone knows everything. Not even great modders like TJ and Pheanoh both are.





If a single BHAV calls two other BHAVs in succession, and both the other BHAVs have been changed by different mods, then there is no way to detect the conflict, nor is there a way for load order to influence the result. The only way for load order to make a difference, is if both mods contain different versions of the SAME BHAV.




Maybe it would be better if STR# conflicts were also supported. But maybe it isn't. You must realize that when the HCDU was created, machines weren't as fast as they are now. What HCDU can on modern machines process in 20 seconds, would then easily take 5 minutes or longer on the majority or systems. And since conflicts in STR#'s were (and still are) less likely to crash the game, I think James (Paladin) Sausville made the right decision for that period.




Don't make too many changes in previous posts... People who jump in, reading the thread later, will start to wonder why people are discussing stuff that you already got right. When they continue into later posts, they will *see* that you were educated and changed your opinion accordingly.
I don't know how that's here, but it is usually against forum policy, too. If moderators catch up to those changes, they may dislike it. I wouldn't want to see you chastised for something you did with the best of intentions.

MTS moderators hardly ever chastise someone, so I would not worry about it. You need to be pretty extreme to get in trouble around here. I disagree about editing being bad. People are not necessarily going to keep reading the thread, so if you know something you said was wrong, there's nothing wrong with going back and editing to reflect that. Sure, it could get confusing, so it may be better to add an edit saying "I know X is wrong, so don't listen to that", but that's usually what nat does.

I hope you don't mind me calling you nat, by the way. If it does bother you, let me know what you prefer and I'll use that.

Again, wow, thanks to both of you. I am bowled over by your willingness to take time to answer my questions. OK, I will digest your answers some more and post again, though probably not for almost a day; I've got a busy day tomorrow.

I did want to address this for now:





I appreciate your concern, both of you! Yes, I would never want to edit just to make myself look as if I always know what I am talking about, lol. I also dislike that it would make it difficult to keep track of what I have said. So as gummi says, unless I have only edited for grammar or conciseness (the latter being something I maybe should do more of, lol), I put a note in square brackets or use a strikethrough when I make these types of edits, and/or use "ETA". I don't mind being shown to be wrong (and for the record to reflect that permanently), and I don't want people to wonder if they imagined my having written something wrong!

(ETA: Um, I hope folks will speak up, though, if they also have strong feelings about whether I ought to edit to reflect that I've been informed my perspective/understanding is iffy. You could PM me even, to avoid further hijacking this poor thread!)



No, I don't mind. I'm very relaxed about nicknames, as long as they are not overtly offensive or obscene. But thanks for asking!

OK, finishing up this big research post elsewhere, then I shall read your posts once more and then go AFK for the night to digest it all. Night, everyone, and thank you again for your time. And, er, @Simonut, I hope you feel that all this has been in service of understanding game issues better and so aren't too put out by the severe hijacking. I plan to use my thinking time tomorrow to come up with a concise response and then hopefully have done with running away with your thread!

I don't know. My teacher's always told me to show my workings out. Many a time I've managed to get marks for a wrong answer, because I'd put down my thinking about how to get there.

I've found the conversation fascinating and am now thinking about things i did not know and never cared about. Is it really wrong to use visitor controller with Hatch's hospital when I don't think that anything is broke. Explaining where there needs to be correction is much more usefully than the answer being right from the start. Now off to think about what a STR thingy is for.

ETA: Typed too slow, thanks for bringing up questions that I didn't know I should ask.

@gummilutt
I would be very interested in a "membership card" sort of thing for the instruments. I was going to look at (Inge's?) reservable easel mod to see if I could make heads or tails about how it works and then see about making reservable versions of the instruments, so that they could be "owned" by a particular Sim to keep them from being hogged by others. But your system sounds a bit more flexible than that, which would be a good thing. Such a thing would also keep "unauthorized" Sims from gaining inappropriate Music & Dance enthusiasm as well.

The community lot restriction doesn't bother me at all, since that sort of restriction makes sense to me as well. If all you can play on a piano is a bad rendition of "Camptown Races," you're not likely to get up on a stage to perform it (unless you're really, really drunk), are you?

Yes, I am aware that I'm talking to myself here. Maybe I'm senile.

When a single BHAV calls two other BHAVs in succession, it is possible for the second BHAV to depend on a specific result from the first. If they are both altered by different mods, it is therefor possible, that the new result of the first BHAV is no longer compatible with what the new version of the second BHAV is trying to accomplish.
In such cases, you have an undetectable non-conflict incompatibility; a problem that is impossible to detect, except by playing the game and recognizing in what was happening when things went horribly wrong.

Therefor, I think it's advisable NEVER to simultaneously add two mods from different modders that both alter parts of the same gameplay feature. First add one (after backing up your hoods), then play a good while, and then - once you're reasonably well used to whatever changed with the mod, add the other one (again after making a backup, but not overwriting the previous one), and see what happens. If then suddenly stuff goes wrong, you may have a reasonable idea where and when it happened, and what may have caused it.

If there is a problem, then you can at least guess which two mods are the most likely to be involved, and you can take either one out and see if that saves your game. Then it is possible to make the authors of those mods aware of what you were trying to do, and what happened as a result, allowing them to investigate it.

Ok,,

Oh not to worry about that, just you all carry on, make no different to me, I don't understand any of the modders talk in the first place.
Maybe one day a modder will come with a mod to control FT hobby wants panel, that work well with Pescado No hobby Spam mod. ( but I won't hold my breath. )

Thanks, Simonut, for being so gracious! And Diovanlestat, I'm really pleased to hear that others have found this thread useful and interesting even since it got (what I had been thinking of as) derailed. Now I can feel less self-conscious about having sorta caused that!

After much thinking, I have settled on how I believe that one paragraph in my original post should have been worded. The new wording seems to me to accurately reflect how BHAVs work, based on this discussion that @BoilingOil and @gummilutt have been having with me. You can see it in the current version of the original post (which of course also includes a clear note and strikethrough so you can see what I now understand is incorrect, plus credit to both BO and gummi for educating me so that I could rewrite it correctly!).

I'm also including the new version here for ease of reference:

"The limitation, you see, of HCDU's mechanism is that many of Maxis' BHAVs are broader than modders often need when they are only trying to fix some very specific behavior. So it's quite possible that you can have multiple mods that all touch the same BHAV but that do not actually cause any problems in practice together.

True, only the mod that loads last will determine how that BHAV is read by the game. But perhaps one of the modders specifically ensured that their mod incorporates everything that the other mods need. Thus, when you load it last among the conflicting mods, the BHAV still works fine for all the mods---even though the HCDU continues to show a potential conflict.

Or perhaps (though less likely) all the mods involved use that BHAV but also impact other BHAVs, and those other BHAVs are what control the functions you downloaded those mods for. So in that case, although still only one of them gets to override the mutual BHAV with its code, the other mods involved nevertheless work fine *for your game*---because their changes to the mutual BHAV were not what you cared about anyway, and you just want that one particular mod's effects on that BHAV anyway. So you load that one last, and it all works out because none of the BHAVs happen to interact in a way that now causes problems for the game. Presto! There again, you can ignore the fact that the HCDU still shows a potential conflict, because you have established for yourself that for what you want them to do, those mods work together just fine."

Hopefully I now have the right understanding, though I hope folks will jump in to correct me if I still am missing nuances.

By the way, I also especially appreciated the clarification on how common or dangerous STR# conflicts might (or might not) be, plus the points that HCDU was written in a time of less powerful home computers and that it still does check the most likely and game-endangering conflicts. These are all good to keep in mind...just as it's still good to keep in mind that it remains a tool and as with any tool, gives information that must be considered and given context by the user.

About the instrument membership card thing: I agree that something needs to be done about musical instruments being too attractive to all sims, despite only some supposedly having the Music & Dance hobby. Until something like gummilutt's proposed mod comes out, I'd like to again recommend Pescado's autonomycontrol mod. It's probably one of his worst-documented mods (he seems to have provided only a parody of "Lord of the Rings" instead of bothering to write useful documentation), but I find it solves many problems, because you can select, sim by sim (it creates a pie menu option on each sim) which objects they cannot use.

So everyone in my Tinkering, Film, and Music dorm (my Quadington University has 3 dorms, all of which are hobby oriented) who doesn't have Music as their OTH is banned from using the musical instruments, yet if I want to throw a party and am happy to have anyone in the dorm perform, I can just temporarily remove that restriction from my playables for the time being. I suppose you could also ban sims from musical instruments until they reach a certain level of Creativity---except that you'd have to remember to change it when they got more skillpoints in Creativity. It's a cumbersome workaround, but on residential lots where it matters to me, I have not minded putting it in place.

I suspect my music autonomy mod will be released sometime in June. It's more or less finished, the stuff that's left to do I already know how to do, just need to get around to it. So it shouldn't be that long now

Too tired to really grasp what you said, but it sounds fine to me.

Ok after all the fingers talking it comes down to if by chance anyone want to use Pescado's No Hobby Spam Mod and Tunaisafish Enthusiasm Mods ( with perhaps removing Tunai file 5, because Pescado mods cover that part. )
Than one have to be sure to load Tunia files "last" than both Pescado and tunia package will work fine, together each serving it's purpose for what you need it for even if HCDU still show a conflict, it's ok and fine. ( I Think )

I think Free Time is a nice EP but I hate this Big Brother mentality. Sim X sits down and read a book. Phone rings: Hi, it seems like you have some interest in literature. What now, who is spying on me? And it takes time to answer this phonecalls as well. However, I do not have any problems whit visits from Hobby Instructors.