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So I'm wondering--if events are scripted to go a certain way, should I follow that line of play? Like--boy is rejected, so he does NOT try to win Kaeleen over. Maybe he should be mean to her, and then she can have aspiration failure. Then he could pursue another girl. Will this open up more hints to solve anything?

It has occurred to me that perhaps it may be helpful if we each share which version of Sims 2 we are play testing with and which operating system.

I am using the Sims 2 Ultimate version, 64 bit Windows 10, Alien gaming PC

No issues with any Sims or Townies being renamed.
All script prompts appear as they should.

How you play the teens you mention, I believe, should have no effect on the solution.

ARKHELIOS - BUG FIX UPDATE FOR ALL

Heya everyone!. Fi. na. lly. It's here! After multiple stages of feedback, I was able to fix most of the biggest problems in the neighborhood, so far.

- ALL SIMS FINALLY STAY WITH THEIR SAME NAMES. This one was a struggle to do, but @simsllama on Tumblr was graciously able to default all of the sims names so that the names stay in English. This should also apply to the scripted notifications as well. Thank you guys!
- FREE WILL IS NOW ON! Now, sims actually do what they're supposed to do. Scripted events should still work, thankfully.
- Some people had problems trying to solve the puzzle, so I hopefully made it easier AND I added visual cues so the secret gets their attention more. Don't wanna spoil too much! Haha
- Everything should be fixed generally, hopefully the game doesn't try to crash when you load in things :b

This should be a much more stable and working version of the neighborhood than the first release. We wanted to keep the project mostly secret, and that's why we didn't have that many playtesters, so hopefully this should fix it once and for all.

Apologies for taking an entire week, Nappe and I had real life problems and I can't always focus on simming

The main file has been updated on SFS, so just DOWNLOAD HERE and enjoy!

https://simfileshare.net/download/2401748/

I downloaded the new version and finally found the clues and solved it!

A couple of notes:
- Kaeileen’s name is misspelled as Kaielynn in the prompt.
The scripted events aren’t working for me on the new version, sorry. They were fine on the old version but in this version, for example when I load into the Hydes lot Melvin and Sheldon aren’t on the bed when it loads in.

I'm sorry to hear that! It could be the game acting weird, again this could be related to the sad problem about lot resets. Generating a new downloads folder could work, but otherwise the flow of the neighborhood won't be too changed much when the lots are reset, for example with Free Will the scripted fighting will still happen. They just hate each other so much!

What are your thoughts on the plot twist? Did you like it? (Don't spoil! Haha)

Kaeileen's name will be promptly renamed in the final release. Kaielynn was her original name in the development haha.

Definitely liked it! Thanks so much for all the work that went into creating the hood!

Random names have been fixed, thank you!

I was able to get the scripted events to work (sort of, see below for details) by loading the neighborhood in a completely fresh environment. Some of the mods I normally use cause soft resets, breaking most of them otherwise.

In the previous version of this hood, I got a popup for the Fontana family telling me to use the buffet table. This did not happen this time around. Was that removed, or should it have happened?

As for the scripted events:
Fontana - Cain and Giovanni are supposed to fight, related to the murder
Happened. Both proceeded to get into more fights with others though, since the entire hood hate each other, so it looks more like this is a regular occurrence.

Rivales - All three of the kids are scripted to go down into aspiration failure. Kaeilynn doesn't get her first kiss, Jolanda gets sick and passes out, and Fabio is scripted to go to social failure and meet the social bunny
Did not happen. Kaeilynn got rejected but did not go into aspiration failure. Jolanda is sick and passed out, but didn't go into aspiration failure. Fabio did not go into social failure.
Jolanda and Fabio both were completely in the red with their respective needs, but I was able to get Jolanda to the bathroom (where she proceeded to yell about all her other need failures before peeing herself and passing out, but that's just how sims roll) and Fabio just went to sleep and got his social back up the next day.

Hydes - Scripted woohoo when first loaded in
Happened.

Chun - Birthday party, but Elaine has to go to work, therefore negative relationship
Kind of happened, but the cake can't be reached because of the chairs, giving me enough time to have Eliane tickle the kid and make him grow up well. This would work better if the father was already taking his son to the cake when you load the household.
(If it was supposed to be an actual party scenario, this did not happen, but since there were no guests I assumed it was a small birthday celebration.)
The daughter and the younger boy are the same age after he grows up, since she is at the beginning of her life stage. This doesn't fit with her memories. Maybe make her halfway through childhood?

Helios / Munoz - Scripted giving birth
Happened, but the birth interactions dropped the queued up "argue" from the alien's list. Maybe make it so those only happen after the birth, since there isn't a reason for them to be there before?
Additionally, but this is just a personal issue, I tend to not save while a birth animation is in progress, because that messed up a birth for me once. One of the more commonly used mods, No Sim Loaded, is also known to delete pregnancy controllers a bit too early, which could cause problems with this household. If possible, I'd recommend moving the birth back one or two hours, and scripting it so the women start arguing after the birth.

Soileh - Scripted job firing
Didn't happen, although her mood and job performance were low enough that it should have. Also, her neighbors keep interrupting my attempts to clean the apartment by calling to complain about the dirty apartment. That's probably just regular gameplay.

Armstrong - Scripted falling in love
Wasn't able to find that household. I read it's somewhere on the edge, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Can you give me a hint? I have a camera mod installed.


In general, your scripted events seem to mostly rely on actions that are queued up when you load the game. Since a lot of mods cause soft resets, this will break the events for people with heavily modded games. Is there another way to make them happen, as well as making it more obvious that they are scripted? Because honestly, most of them don't register as scripted for me. They're normal gameplay elements. If I sent a sim with bad job performance and bad mood to work, they will get demoted or fired. That's not scripting, that's how the game works. Two sims are on a bed and about to woohoo. The woohoo happens. That's a queued action, not scripting. When you describe it as scripting, people will expect something like the Pleasant household scenario where Mary Sue fails her chance card automatically, or Don leaving Cassandra at the altar.

Previously, I played up to Munoz/Helios. All scripted events happened (though there were no prompt texts for some families), except Darcy Mishra got fired, chance card's wrong choice.

Each family was played for 2-3 days. Oriana's got played bit longer, until the ghost showed up , I advise to wait for it .

No captions in family stories, only pictures, and in reverse order (for all families I played): Rivales, Chun, Mishra, Munoz/Helios.


Now started up the fixed version. Confirm no name randomization, there was a prompt text for scripted event. Fights all over the place. I think Ian Chun cheated on Wanda with someone, it happened during the very first seconds after I loaded the household, didn't caught it, there was suddenly that specific sound and "No Best friends anymore" thingy above their heads, with Wanda slapping Ian. There was a lot of face slapping, Wanda with Fabio, Elaine with Jolanda, could be more, I couldn't keep up

Arkhelios is fun

Concerning the mods: I usually play with many mods, but for this game I left only the absolute minimum, to avoid annoyance with certain autonomous actions, like to make babies and elders sleep till 6am, antibabylecture, nobabyharassment, faster homework etc. None conflicted with the scripted events. Once the mystery is solved, I'll move all my mods in.

I do think that queued actions that are purposefully led to drama can qualify as scripted events, as they do the intended purpose, which is to create drama when the lot is first loaded in! Regarding feedback, There is scripting of the traditional kind, particularly when Darcy gets promoted. (According to Nappe, they had manipulated it so Darcy gets promoted using the chance card method.) To be fair, I didn't invent this idea of custom scripted events, I had been inspired from another MTS creator, cutupuss's Asheville, who used the same method of queueing up actions for drama :b I really liked how he did it and wanted to employ something similar in Arkhelios, but on a bigger scale!

Regaring all the bugs so far:

Rivales not standing or doing anything - fixed this bug, final release won't have it, ty for helping! <3

Scripted notification not popping up - Tested this, this usually deals to a bug on your end, you may have to regenerate your TS2 UC documents folder as this is hardcoded within the game when it comes to identifying new neighborhoods, at least in my testing. However, you can still play the hood and because the scripted notifications are not really technically "connected" (meaning one won't work w/o the other) with the scripted queued actions, you can still solve the puzzle without them, they are simply there as story supplement.

Armstrong lot - Check all four corners of the neighborhood, Diana's house should be there! The other reason for her map being on the edge of the lot is for the hood decoration (skies, clouds, etc)

Darcy getting fired - This is a weird bug, as stated earlier Nappe had made it so that Darcy has a positive outcome and gets promoted. (The boolprop method) We'll look into it!

Played Fontana, Rivales and Hydes (so far) for the recommended time.
Fontana: Freewill is turned off
Hyde: no fire alarm in kitchen

No other problems. Just Sims doing what Sims do or don't do.

Neighborhood story: where it says will Cain be able to inherit, should that not be Alex?

Love all of the 'Easter eggs'!

(Oh and I at last have had time to download and play your updated version of Strangetown!! Absolutely LOVE it!!)

Finished playing all households last night. Discovered many family secrets. Found no Easter eggs (what are those, I have no idea even what to look at). Also found no definite clue concerning the murder. I know how Abraham was killed, found two possible places where it could have happened, though according to some post by creator one of these places was designed that particular way, and there are a bunch of Sims with grudges against Abraham.
It was fun, but I'm not close to solving the murder.

I think Easter eggs are things like the names of the cat family with the missing mother. Small details that reference something, but aren’t related to solving the mystery.

HELIOS: Swim pool is still a mess! A Sim can drop down into it using the roof edge ladder. However, Sim can not exit using ladder and swims through entire first floor as if it were a pool. And will do things such as lounge on sofa, shower (etc.) while yet appearing as if in a pool water. Is this intentional? (Exited without saving and started over. Removed walls around pool. Removed ladder, roof trim, fencing. Enlarged pool and added a ladder. It is now an out door pool and can be properly used.)

HELIOS: Missing exterior siding on large side and back portion of home.

Hello! First and foremost I'd like to say I have had an incredible amount of fun playing this neighbourhood, looking into all the drama, finding out all the secrets and connecting to the characters, so thank you so much and congrats on creating such an exciting 'hood! I am now done playing 2 days at each household and just found out who the murderer was. I do plan on playing more with them too. That being said, I have taken quite a lot of notes on what I think could be improved, and I'm going to share them here now. I have the ultimate collection and I played the first version that went out on tumblr, however, I also now downloaded the newest version and went and checked out the state of things, and it looks like all of my notes still apply. The scripted events don't seem to work for me but I see now that must be because of my mods (although I thought I had taken out the dangerous ones before putting in the neighbourhood, but I shall try again with no mods at all). So, here are said notes, lore related things that I found a bit immersion breaking and more surface level things too (I'll try to leave out things others have already pointed out):

*spoiler alert?*

- In Emilia's memories, Kaeileen was born long after Pia, but in the game they are just about the same age.
- Kaeileen and more importantly Jolanda don't seem to know Osbert, Kaeileen also doesn't know Narcissa who is supposed to be a best friend of hers (and by this I mean it doesn't show up on their relationship panel).
- The storytelling mode captions are inconsistent. At some families they're executed really well (like Fontana and Soileh), some others don't have any at all, which is a bummer.
- The bios are a bit inconsistent at points too. For example Narcissa's bio starts out in third person but ends in first. I know Narcissa is meant to be chaotic but it bugs me still.
- Nathan. First of all, he's called Ridley in his bio. Was that meant to be his original name? Second, his family's memories raise questions about when he was born. If he was born after Abraham died, like his parents remember, that would mean 1) the murder actually happened many years ago 2) he's somehow aged twice as fast as Abraham's youngest son, Nicholas, who is still barely a toddler, while Nathan turns a child when you enter the lot. I think he should have been born before Abraham's death, like his siblings' memories suggest. Also, I don't think Diana should remember "meeting Nathan", since she's not met any of her family since she was brought back.
- You left the Sim Manipulator on the kitchen floor at the Chuns. Lol.
- Mishra household has no lighting in their apartment whatsoever, that plant beside the bed is also causing accessibility problems.
- Poor Adam seems a bit forgotten. His bio is empty and his mother Malika seems to not remember anything about him at all, not even that she's had him. Also, another aging thing that bugs me: according to Salem's memories, Hunter and Adam are supposed to be around the same age, which I would be really happy to see canon because I want Adam to not be much older than Darcy. At the same time though, if both Adam and Omar had a thing with Tabitha in the past, I understand Adam has to be a bit older, but then Salem's memories need fixing.
- Yvette and her grandchildren don't recognise each other as family.
- So who was older, Launce or Benvolio? Not that it's important, but Launce's memories and the family's memories conflict on this.

Ok, here are some more questions I have regarding the lore, I guess I can live if these are unanswered, but I do wonder if there are supposed to be logical answers for these:
- Why is Elaine related to Jobeth and Tennyson? Or is this something I just haven't quite uncovered yet? :o First, when looking at Elaine's memories, I thought Jobeth might be hers and Launce's secret child, but I was wrong. So?
- When and how did Ian and Ginevra become best friends? He has no memories of it. (But he gladly cheated on Elaine with her in my game autonomously, lol).
- Who is Takanuva Helios and if he's a Helios, why does he not appear in anyone's memories apart from Wanda's?
- It is not entirely clear to me if Giovanni was in on the murder or not. After he fought Abraham the day before the murder, it wasn't him who proposed the idea of meeting up the next evening at the park, it was Abraham. It's like Abraham was setting himself up for disaster. Or not? Did I interpret it wrong?
- And the last thing: I don't know if it's intentional but Ulyssa is going out with her mother's cousin and that just bothers me. Tabitha's bio says she doesn't like Ulyssa's boyfriend, but ma'am that's your own cousin, not just any random teenage boy! And this is the side of the family that is actually aware of their relations thanks to Maggie and Peggie. Zane and Kaeileen, on the other hand, may not know that they're half siblings (like Zane's lack of father on his family tree indicates) so that might be why Kaeileen gets a crush on him and wants to kiss him initially. But Ulyssa and Zane should know they're related! Anyways, if this was intentional and/or you guys just simply don't think this is that messy, I can accept that, each to their own I guess. But I simply can't tell if this was an oversight.

Ok I think I'm done. I hope some of this is useful feedback. And keep creating cool stuff

@Pixuou: Takanuva was a robot, it was shown in family's story in pictures.

ARMSTRONG: No fire alarm in kitchen. No kitty litter box. (When I find minor bits like this in any neighborhood our shared lot I simply fix it. Easy peasy as the kids say.)

Hello! Thank you for giving feedback to Arkhelios!

Thank you for reporting these! We will fix them in the next update. A few are intentional however, such as:

"The storytelling mode captions are inconsistent. At some families they're executed really well (like Fontana and Soileh), some others don't have any at all, which is a bummer."

Oriana loves books, so her is written as a book, and Narcissa has problems with delusions and thus imagines hers as a musical. The other families having no bios are intended.

"The bios are a bit inconsistent at points too. For example Narcissa's bio starts out in third person but ends in first. I know Narcissa is meant to be chaotic but it bugs me still."

Intentional to show she wrote the bio herself.

Thank you for writing such a comprehensive list!

Unfortunately, most of your other questions are about things that my collaborator was in charge of, not me. Nappe is very talented at building these kinds of things, but sometimes in development, things may be missed and or skipped over by accident, so they'll promptly be fixed. I am not skilled at making memories or building relationships I will hand the neighborhood to them to do all the fixes. In the meantime, thank you for playing the game!

By the way @Pixouo, do the notifications work for you? The game may have difficulty letting the scripted events run due to lot resets, however, the notifications should be agnostic and work with every game, modded or not. The only thing that could stop it is if you've had an older version of the hood in your documents. If you generate a new TS2 documents folder, I am 99% positive that the neighborhood will allow notifications again. This is due to a bug in the actual game, not my hood where the game thinks that because you've already played this hood before, you can't get the notifications anymore. I've experienced this bug a few times while creating the hood, this is something that can't be fixed, sadly

I did it! Finally noticed the first clue, and then the rest clues all string together, revealing the key. Admittedly, I didn't suspect the actual murderer at all. Nice twist. Now that I finally have the puzzle off my mind, I can just play the neighborhood and try to solve the conflicts.

Congrats!...I gave up.

I was able to solve it in the first version once I figured out where to look for the clues. I think I saw a lot of the clues and suspected the culprit, but I had another I was suspecting as well. I took out all of my mods to make it work. When I tried to pick and choose some mods to leave in (that I assumed wouldn't interfere), I had to start over because the events did not happen. After that, it worked as it was intended. I had a lot of fun playing the hood and am planning to continue playing to restore peace. Are you going to post all of the clues and easter eggs? I would love to see what I missed, because I'm still finding things now even after solving it.

I'm playing the new updated version, have noticed that the Rivales house still has Freewill off.

ETA: Salem Bellamy still has broken memories- reached top of $Subject career and promotion missing subject.

ADIDAS, Hyde lot and Ark Graveyard still have flooring which uses this floortile:

This is the Foundation floorboard and it has a high crap score, so it will tank sims' environment scores. The placement of these tiles does not appear to be deliberate.

Also Helios lot still has the wall covering from the back of the lot where the pool has been added, again this looks more like a mistake then deliberate placement.

Hood has been updated! I will be busy for the next 2 weeks and my collaborator is ill, but please let us know if there are any bugs so we can look into it when we have the time.

Changelog: hopefully fixing everything in this thread, also added memories to Salem

Main file updated on SFS again


https://simfileshare.net/download/2401748/

Look carefully at both memories and the family household photo albums. Also the individual visual clues need to be recorded according to the specified play order. (I don't wish to give a spolier!) Don't give up. If my old foggy brain can discover the clues in thier proper order anyone can! ((LOL))