Mariesalias wrote:
Game Stability: Overwatch and Error Trap
Mod to Remove ALL Sims from a World: Master Controller
Supernatural Hybrid Mod (I really want to have my vampires be able to ensorcel people like the Genie can!): Hybrid
A Mod for "cheating" to set Skills: Master Controller
Any other Mods I should have?
If you want your town to come alive: Story Progression
To never forget to save again: Saver
Register, Traffic, Relativity, and Relationship Panel from the same site are also useful.
ETA: Two things to know about AwesomeMod is that it is next to impossible to get help with the mod at their site and that once you play a save with AwesomeMod in, you will not be able to play that save properly without it (found this out the hard way). This is why I usually recommend Twallan's mods even though AwesomeMod does many/most of the same things. The people on NRAAS are always friendly and helpful and you can play your saves without his mods without issue (though there are a couple that require you to 'deactivate' the mod before you remove it). Hmm, thinking about it, I might have heard that AwesomeMod now has a away to safely be removed, but I don't remember.
The following is my PERSONAL OPINION, and is written from my perspective and from my personal experience. I do not ask for anyone's agreement, nor am I trying to change anyone's mind. I don't want to argue about it, and I won't answer any replies about it. Just take it for what it is -- personal opinion. Please.The method to remove the awesome mod from a save was discussed ages and ages ago. I don't trust that it still works, because the one time I tried, that method seemed to fail. So assume the mod cannot be removed.
You won't get help from Pescado's site. You'll get yelled at for asking, and probably flamed to a crisp. Don't post there. Not even while wearing a flame suit.
However, that being said, if you actually bother to read the entire READ ME that comes with the mod (which people rarely do, even after being told to do it), most questions will be answered. And the separate configuration page is easy as pie to use. Typing
help in the in-game menu (the same one you use for testingcheatsenabled) shows all the stuff you need to use for in-game configuring. So most things are self-explanatory. In the end, if you apply yourself diligently, you most likely won't need any help, anyway, so it won't matter if the site is helpful.
Awesome mod just works. It is comprehensive and cohesive. It is fully tweaked, and guaranteed working with the latest patch. Pescado uses his own mod, and still plays the game, until he finalizes the mod. He can be trusted to deliver a fully functioning, fully compatible, internally reliable mod. He is, without question, the most knowledgeable modder to ever mod the TS3 core.
No one knows the core of the game better than Pescado, not even EA. His awesome mod rewrites the game so that it functions the way it should have been written by EA, because they never went back and made sure their individual EPs all played nicely with each other -- since in many cases, the right hand never knew what the left hand was doing, at EA. It took someone like Pescado to tackle the whole big mess and make sense of it. No one else did that, which is why I use awesome mod. (Regardless of Pescado's lack of people skills, and his less than stellar moderation of his own site.)
I have played this game without any mods at all, and gotten it to play well (but it was full of annoyances and I had to constantly babysit it to make sure it wasn't misbehaving).
I have played the game with awesome mod, and it ran as smooth as silk without annoyances and without any need of babysitting. I could just enjoy my game.
I have tried NRAAS mods on more than one occasion, and played most of them, both when it was only Twallen and also post-Twallen. From my personal experience, NRAAS is glitchy. It is fussy, and I have personally found that it causes as many problems as it solves. I wanted it to work, because I desperately wanted to use Traveler. I really did try to make it work. I did.
But I finally had to give up on NRAAS. I just couldn't get the game to play as smoothly and be as problem free as it was when I used the awesome mod.
And I couldn't get the NRAAS mod suite to uninstall/be removed properly. I had to completely uninstall my entire game, manually, including manually uninstalling the registry. That was the only way I could get the game back to the smooth function I was used to, prior to trying the NRAAS suite. So, I know for a fact that once you use the NRAAS suite, you will not get it removed from your game. Not entirely. (And I'm not talking just a single save, like is true with awesome mod.) I'm talking the actual game found in Programs. Which is why I had to do a manual uninstall of the game.
Twallen, himself, gave up on his own mod. And from my experience with it, I can see why. The game just got to be too unwieldy and hard to wrangle using his approach. It wasn't his fault, because he was a genius of a modder, but his approach did not lend itself to correcting problems found in the core of the game. The only way he could have corrected the numerous problems would have been to rewrite the core, the way Pescado did. And since that was the opposite of what Twallen wanted to do, well, he just didn't.
So, now, other talented modders are trying to tame the beast. I simply do not have confidence it can be tamed, unless tackled at the core of the game, where the problems actually exist. And they won't be doing that, because they are staying true to Twallen's original vision.
I know people swear by the NRAAS mod suite.
I know it helps save old-in-the-tooth games, so they don't explode quite as soon as they would normally explode. And for that, the NRAAS suite is amazingly effective. And that is why it is so popular. It definitely will keep an old game running longer. But it is a bandage approach, like using duct tape on pipes. It works for a while -- even works well in a "git-her-done" way -- but it won't solve the actual problem.
NRAAS also offers many fun options, like Traveler, found nowhere else. And some people will choose a moderately glitchy game, just so they get those functions. That is a personal choice. And I don't blame them for wanting all the shiny.
But I cannot play a glitchy game. It is like torture to me. So I will stay with the awesome mod. It does what I need it to do, it works in the background, it keeps my game healthy and gives it long life from the day of its birth to long past when a mod-free game would explode. For that kind of smooth-as-silk functionality, I will brave wading through a very long READ ME, and learning in game configurations through the menu.
And as far as not being able to remove the mod -- why would I ever want to remove it? I use it for a reason.
I just wish Pescado, himself, and his site by extension, was nicer and more user friendly. Sigh.
