Boddler infection treatment in The Sims 3

The following article is a technical discussion of how to treat Boddler infections in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. For more on this, see the main article: Sims Not Acting Age-Appropriately.

In-Game, Boddlers forged
There are three main ways to get rid of Boddlers inside of your Sims 2 game.

Pre-InSimenator

 * 1) If you don't have the InSimenator or some other way to manipulate aging, then you have approximately two Sim hours or so (normal real-time of two minutes) to solve the problem.
 * 2) You must immediately delete the Boddler.
 * 3) After this, save the game and exit to your neighborhood.  Do nothing else on that lot.
 * 4) After you have done this, find another lot or create one.
 * 5) Move in an unrelated group of Sims.
 * 6) Now, use the Tombstone of Life and Death to force-move everyone but the Boddler to live on your new lot.  The Boddler will exist in a bubble and will not bother any other files that way.
 * 7) Once your family is safe, you must decide the isolated Boddler's fate.
 * 8) To decide, close your game.  If you are willing to download the InSimenator and use the Temporal Adjustor, then skip to this article's InSimenator-is-installed section. Otherwise, try the following steps below:

Without the InSimenator
If you've decided you will not use the InSimenator, then you can only save your corrupted Sim by editing his/her data in SimPE. Otherwise, you'll have to delete him/her in-game.


 * 1) To do this, enter the neighborhood.  It is recommendable to move child and house to the lot bay and then delete everything.  If you wish to keep the house, move your Boddler out into the Sim holding bay.  If this doesn't work, then force-move non-corrupted Sims into a benefactor's house and leave all Boddlers in the family listing of your holding bay.
 * 2) Delete all Boddlers.
 * 3) Have the house name bearer of your original family move out of the benefactor's house.  You can then move him back into his rightful house, and use the Tombstone of Life and Death to move the rest of his family back in with him.  They will have memories of the missing Boddler, but will not think about them much in the future.

With the InSimenator
The easiest way to fix a forged Boddler without escapes, deletes, or SimPE is with the InSimenator Object Edition.


 * 1) After purchasing an InSimenator, make the Boddler selectable.
 * 2) Next, tell the Boddler to use the Temporal Adjustment settings, or use the Temporal Adjustor hourglass sectional.
 * 3) From there, use the Select Age menu appropriate to your version.  This will allow you to force-age your Boddler into an Adult.
 * 4) * Note: This has a chance of failing, as the game wants all Babies to be "helped" with a birthday. Sometimes, you can bypass that need; sometimes not.
 * 5) Once the game has made them an Adult, you can then revert-age them back into Toddlers.  Do this, and then save the game.  This step works just as well for correcting other age bugs.

With SimPE

 * 1) The way to fix them outside your game is to simply select them in SimPE and make sure that their age assignment data matches their in-game skeleton.
 * 2) When you are certain that it does, commit any change you make and save them.
 * 3) Close SimPE.  You more than likely will find the Sim restored to his senses.  You can then move him wherever you please.

How Sims 2 and Sims 3 design differences are relevant
It is important to note that when Sims 3 was first constructed, fundamental changes were made to the overall design philosophy of Sims themselves. Both 2 and 3 apply the Newtonian concept of pre-established harmony into Sim design, so that a Sim’s age-stage-specific artificial intelligence (AI) and age-stage-specific skeletal framework (geometry) work in synchronization with one another.

Note also: A “boddler” in basic gaming concept is any dummy object that behaves like something other than what its geometric design specifies it should work as. A “Boddler” in the Sims sense is any Sim with AI and geometry out-of-sync. A “Boddler” in the Boddler sub-classes list refers specifically to a Boddler Boddler, or a Baby with a Toddler skeleton.

Sims 2 design flaws
This is where the differences between Sims 2 and Sims 3 become important. In Sims 2, geometry was prioritized over intelligence. This means that objects interacted during the execution of animation scripts in accordance with where joints actually were in relation to one another, not with where they were “supposed to be” in likewise relation. Therefore, if a joint or bone were in an unexpected location, it would cause an animation script to fail proper execution, leading to an object reset if the game were being played in debug mode. It would, also in debug mode, lead to an error message stating that the animation had failed.

Due to this, Boddlers could not be easily treated in Sims 2. The most effective way to fix them was through SimPE, since Babies usually need to age up by the “Help With Birthday” script that could not be executed in-game on a Boddler due to having a Toddler skeleton. Their bones were in the wrong place, so the Boddler’s assigned parents didn’t know how to pick them up. Parents were then forced to ignore their child, which led to a visit from the Social Worker. Since she couldn’t find the right bones either; this lead to a lock-up condition called “BI-SWILS.”

Sims 3 design flaws
In Sims 3, AI was prioritized over geometry, a complete reversal of philosophy. This also influences the bizarre hiccups in animation and framerate evident in Sims 3, things that were not an issue in 2. It is also one reason that Sims in 3 take longer to perform simple actions than what it did for them to execute those same actions in Sims 2. More steps are involved in processing what it means to perform a task.

What this means, in theory, is that a Boddler in 3 will behave exactly like a Baby, and can be taken care of the same as if they were a Baby. They will, however, have a distorted skeleton the size of a Toddler skeleton. The Baby’s skeleton will magically shrink to proper size when they are being interacted with, but will revert to storked dimensions upon completion of said interaction. If the inverse were created, a Tooldaby, it would magically develop a Toddler size for its skeletal proportions during interaction; and the termination of interaction would revert it to gnomed dimensions.

Since gnoming and storking are the only animation problems that have been observed with Boddler sub-classes so far in 3, it means that, theoretically; there is no need to worry about an IK Animation error. No IK Animation errors means that Boddler-Induced Social Worker Infinite Loop Syndrome (BI-SWILS) is not possible (or highly unlikely) in The Sims 3. There is no need to worry about a visit from the Social Worker NPC, much less the need to worry about her glitching the game and locking it infinitely. However, gnoming and storking will still occur and will result in ugly, distorted Sims.

These distorted Sims will not break your game, corrupt lots, or anything else. They will simply look ugly until they are aged up properly. Once assigned a particular skeleton, they must be aged up to that specific skeleton and be given no other age. If given another (younger) age, then they will be a distorted skeleton of the oldest skeleton assigned to them until they interact, where they revert to their age-relevant skeleton and then back.

Sims 3 Gnome and Stork Boddler causes
One possible motive for a player wanting to tamper with age is to correct an oversight with leaving aging on. Let’s assume Player X wanted to have aging on so as to age-transition one particular character, but did not want aging to apply to anyone else.

In Sims 2, time only progressed for the active lot. In 3, time progresses for everyone, and everyone ages at the same rate at the same time. Suppose a Child grew up into a Teen, and Player X didn’t want that to happen. But Player X already saved progress while controlling a different family.

There is only one known way to revert that Teen to a Child; and it involves Twallan’s NRass Master Controller. One problem: the Master Controller only works properly when aging someone up, not down!

This may be fixed in the future; but is the way things work currently. A Sim’s age will be reverted; but not their skeletal assignment. Therefore, Teen X will have the same paint job for her mesh as her Child X form. But Child X will only look like a Child when interacting with objects. Once she stops doing it, Child X’s Child skeleton will be storked to the dimensions of Teen X. So far, there is no way to get Child X’s Child skeleton to not stork up to Teen X when dormant.

Solution #1: Send in the Clones
Thankfully, only the Sim’s appearance is broken. The Sim will still otherwise function properly. However, machinomics and machinima can get annoying to manage when storking gets out-of-hand. One advantage with the Master Controller is that Sims in Sims 3 have moodlets; but not permanent memories. It is fully possible to restore the Sim by doing the following:


 * 1)  Use Total Annihilation to remove all trace that they ever existed.
 * 2)  Place a copy of their original family somewhere inside the game.
 * 3)  Totally Annihilate every clone family member except the clone of the Sim that you had to annihilate initially.
 * 4)  Force-move the clone onto whatever lot contains the annihilated original’s family.
 * 5)  Use the Master Controller to set all relevant family relations so that the clone is recognized as the annihilated original family member.  Their new Sim family will be none-the-wiser about all the cloning that took place.  And with no memories, they won’t remember the original to know what you are currently calling their family member is a clone.
 * 6)  Restore their relationships with family members in debug mode to whatever standing they had with those family members initially.

Solution #2: Alternate Reality
If many of the homes and neighborhood and what-not have been packaged for mass-replication, then it is entirely possible to create a duplicate neighborhood and place in it all the lots from your original. Other than those homes being built, no other history should be saved that deviates from the neighborhood’s genesis status. You may now place a copy of a bin-preset family into the appropriate homes. Everyone will be restored to their bin preset family status, and can be age-transitioned immediately. All history from the original neighborhood will be irrelevant. Sims can even be copy-placed at different rates, so that the new neighborhood avoids repeating the old one’s mistakes.

This is more time-consuming, but it assures that there will always be only one copy of a particular Sim running loose in the neighborhood at any one given point in time. It also eliminates the need to make heavy use of the Master Controller; and it frees up players from having to use Total Annihilation on Sims regularly.

Most common in Sims 2

 * Abuse of the InSimenator Object Edition, available through InSimenator.org
 * Abuse of TwoJeffs’ Sim Blender, which was intended as a (supposedly) safer (albeit, less useful) replacement
 * Abuse of SimPE
 * Abuse of trash can debug cheats
 * Corrupt University and Nightlife NPCs

Most common in Sims 3

 * Abuse of Twallan’s NRass Industries Master Controller, available through The Simmers' Club Exchange. (Not to be confused with The Sims 3 Exchange, part of EA's official Sims 3 website.)