But that usually means one is carrying a mortgage, which is the equivalent of being in debt as far as TS3 and SP Money are concerned since the game doesn't have mortgages or other forms of loan collateral. There is the concept of property taxes, the twice weekly bills, so I guess a sim could be Rich temporarily if they own their expensive home and are carrying no debt, but simply cannot afford their astronomically high bill payments because they don't have tons of expendable cash or a positive enough cash flow to cover it all.

It's the value of their house. They have to be "house-rich". Cash doesn't factor in. Some Sims live on the very edge of wealth: they are rich as long as their car is parked outside and suddenly poor again when it's somewhere else.

Well, that does explain why I have a household that has a negative Net Worth due to loans and usually no cash but a §350,000 home but is picking up the Rich designation. I thought it was a glitch only affecting this one household because I've had them in play through so many patches and mod updates over the years, but guess this is what is supposed to happen after all -- I have the Rich threshold set to I think §200,000 in that world.

I goofed. I don't have much experience moving families around yet, and assumed it was like Sims 2. I evicted them from Edit Town, and all was good.

You pay them on time with a smile and the Repo Sim stays away. Oh...that's not what you meant?

The exact calculation remains a mystery (to me, anyway), but it's supposed to be a percentage of the current value, after depreciation, of your residential lot and its furnishings plus a different, lower percentage of other real estate holdings like second home lots and vacation homes. One can get a preview of the bill to expect by doing NRaas > MC > Status on the home lot or NRaas > MC > Household > Status on a sim. It's more than a bit flaky, as Don already noted if a car is in its parking space or in the garage when the amount is calculated, it may be different than if the car is in use or in a sim's personal inventory. SP Money's Unified Billing option subjects inactive resident households to the same tax rates that actives pay.

If you use SP Money to designate lots as rentals with resident sims being landlords, the calculations are even trickier because a portion of the rent goes to the landlord sim by way of automatic transfers and a portion to the town for property taxes on the lot's furnishings.

Also using SP Money, we can impact the rates used even if the exact calculation used is not clear, under Town (Household, Caste, Sim) Options. Many of us this leverage this feature to set up different levels of Property Tax rates for different ranges of Net Worth. The default value is "1," so we at least know that "2" and "4" for example will trigger much higher tax bills and can act as an equalizer for otherwise runaway town wealth.

There is also an Income Tax option, which is "0" by default so that means there is none, and can similarly be set on the different Town, Household, and Caste levels to again help equalize wealth. Income Tax is collected at the time a sim is paid for work done though, not through the mailbox billing system or later automatic debits. The formula used for Income Tax is even more unclear, but again we know that 1 will trigger some Income Tax due with each paycheck, 10 will trigger a lot, and 30+ will likely generate negative pay amounts, thus making sims pay for the honor of having worked (not usually what the player wants).

I always set up Net Worth based castes for the two tax rates in the worlds that I play, even vacation worlds. The ranges for the Net Worths and rates I use differ from world to world as they each have different economies and costs of living. Usually three segments with Property Tax rates of 1, 2, and 4 and Income Tax rates of 0, 5, and 10 or something around there. It takes some experimentation and watching over some inactives' household's finances as well as my own over time to get things to feel right. Households I play in rotation who do not generate much or any income while they are not being played by me, that would be those where no one in the household works in standard rabbit hole type careers, are Tax Exempt and don't have to pay any taxes while they are inactive, otherwise they will tend to go bankrupt on me when I'm not watching. For those households I use 0 and 0 for the two tax rates, by caste settings, except again when they are actively being played.

Can I turn a suburban world into a city world with S3PE or is this only possible in CAW?

You can do it with just S3Pe, just import UNKN 0x296A6258 from a city world to your world file.
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=424374

Excellent! Thanks a lot.

Do babies show the occult state in relationship panel (the colored ring around the portrait)?

Yes. Occult babies will have the respective colored rings around their picture in the relationship panel (red for vampire etc.)

The best part is when a dog (or cat? not sure if they do it too) walks past a very young occult and get the thought bubble of a vampire bat, fairy, etc. Even if the baby or toddler really doesn't look like an occult yet or have any powers, somehow the animals just know.

EA standard will pack the furniture but will also leave exact copies of every packed piece of furniture behind. So, if you moved back into that house you will find there everything the same as it was when you moved out. There are only a few objects that will not be left behind when you move out, career rewards like the reward fridge, for example.

The move out with the packing furniture option even duplicates most of the content of WA treasure chests. Quite handy if you used them to store things at home and place the chest outside. So you can open this while already living somewhere else and have access to things you may have used up in your current home (e.g. alchemy ingredients.)

Are environmental sound effects, like crickets or birds chirping, tied to objects?
I played in a custom world recently where a dive lot was styled like a sunken park, i.e. there were trees, benches and outside decorations, and I could swear that I heard birds singing while scuba diving there.

Some trees have bird sounds, and other objects such as effects and building shells can too.

And the environment sound effect (bar noise) of the Late Night bars? when you can hear glasses clinking and patrons chatting/murmuring/laughing in the background. It certainly is triggered by the lot assignment, but by what object? the professional bar furniture piece?

It might be tied to the lot assignment AND the bar, not just the bar alone. I have lots with that bar on it, and there's no ambient sounds. Would be a bit odd, too, because you might want to have one of them at home.

Ok, I have a really silly question.
This is a picture of Monte Vista festival lot from the exchange.

You see those potted palm like plants on the back by the horseshoes? Are those supposed to be there, or am I missing some CC and it got replaced with those potted plants?
I got a notification after reinstalling some CC that some objects could not be loaded, so I'm checking some lots to see how big the damage is.
This lot is set to spring right now and I have no idea if those potted plants are supposed to be there or if I'm missing CC. Could somebody with the lot please take a look at their own lot to help out?

Darn it, so my Ghost & Fairy really did have a plain non-occult baby

Ok so, i asked a sim from Oasis Landing to move in with me and now i'm stuck at "Processing"... Should i wait it out (it's been almost an hour) or restart the game?

Yeah, restarted the game, realized i could simply save the household to bin from Edit Town.

I'm playing multiple sims... I can't watch my fairy, Jennifer, all the time. She's a fairy. She keeps going out and trying the "bloom" spell on her garden. She's killed half the garden. How do I put a stop to Jennifer's reign of terror on all plant life?

Are you registered at Sims Asylum? (the site requires free registration to see the mods) Bluegenjutsu at Sims Asylum has a less Autonomous bloom mod to stop fairies from trying to "bloom" the plants all the time.

Stupid question of my own: Do NPCs "live" in the blacked out apartments in Bridgeport? My Sim lives in an apartment in Bridgeport (now I remember why I hate apartments in Sims 2 and now Sims 3) and I just saw a NPC fireman living one of the blacked out apartment next to my Sim's. A little bit later I saw a notice of a Pyromanic burn story from Nraas SP so I'm trying to figure out if the fireman lived in the apartment next to my Sim's and was going to put out the fire the Pyromanic set, or if he was putting out a fire in the apartment next to my Sim's. (Poor Morrigan Hemlock, all the Pyromaniacs in Bridgeport like to burn her stuff.)

NPC's live there in the sense that they are assigned to the space and can be called down to the lobby when they are "home" by using the call box. But they are really going into hibernation in those spaces, as a substitute for going off the map to hibernate when their services are not needed or they aren't called upon to do anything else.

How do I do the sim-fu tournament in Shang Sim-la?
I understand that what you do is go to your home or base camp, then use the phone to call the next available challenger. I do that, and he never shows up. I know my sim is utterly awesome, but I don't think I'm doing it right.

As far as I'm aware (I may be wrong), your Sim has to go to them. Every time I've done the World Adventure Opportunity that requires I win the tournament I've always had to go to the Sim I'm supposed spar after I call them. If they aren't assigned to a register I always end up having to go to their house, get the relationship up enough to spar, then ask them to a ranked sparing match.

My own question: I have only had Late Night for maybe a week, so I'm not sure how the whole celebrity thing works. My Sim is a celebrity, but since she works in the criminal career she recently went to jail. I got a message that there is bad talk going around that she has gone to jail and she has the publicly disgraced moodlet. I think I saw something about false rumors, but this isn't false (she is in the criminal career, and did get arrested while going to work.) Is there a way to get rid of the celebrity rumor and disgrace crap?

Yes, there is. You may sue for slander at the the city hall. This may clear your reputation, but you may also lose. Either way will cost you money. It will probably also affect negatively your relation with those initiating the slander. I think there also is an option for diverting the slander towards someone else. What goes around, comes around. The truth has no bearing on this, just pure chance.

I believe you can also go to the (business office?) and choose to "Pay Off Paparazzi" or "Deflect Scandal". It's been a while since I've played any celebrities in my game.

I didn't see the option to divert the slander to someone else, but she did win her slander suit. It cost her 2,000 to sue for slander at the city hall. What I meant though is disable the celebrity rumor crap. She is in the criminal career field, and in the past, my Sims in the criminal career field have gotten arrested more than once just for working in the field. I really don't want to have to pay 2,000 to sue for slander every time she gets arrested, I rather just disable the crap.

All my sims are celebrities. Even my toddlers are 2-3 star celebs before they can potty. The reason this is not annoying, but slightly amusing, is that I have disabled paparazzi using NRAAS Register. It' s hilarious when a neglecting mother has to successfully impress her daughter before she will bother to chat with her.

So, are you saying you still want the celebrity system to be active, just without all of the public disgrace scenarios? You can disable the system for the active household, or even completely, in the options menu, but you mentioned just the celebrity rumor stuff so I'm just curious.

I suppose it depends on what is required to get into the more "upscale" type bars in Bridgeport. I want her to be able to get in those if she wants to, so if she has to be a celebrity so be it. I just don't want the public disgrace scenarios. So if there is a way to stop the disgrace scenarios without disabling her celebrity I'm fine with that, if not then I'm still curious about getting rid of the celebrity stuff altogether.

If that's the main reason, you don't really even need to be a celebrity to get into them, it just makes it somewhat easier. You can just bribe the bouncers to get in, I think you can even sneak or hack your way in, and if your relationship with them is high enough they may just let you in anyway.

Can someone please tell me how to get the publically disgraced moodlet (except from public woohoo because my horny sims do that all the time). Can a criminal get that just for doing her job? For dumpster diving? Getting arrested for tagging a wall? Giving birth out of wedlock (none of my sims are married)? Peeing in public? Being repo'ed?

A couple of flirtatious interactions and a woohoo in the elevator is generally enough for the bouncer to let you in.

I'm not sure if its related to the fact that I have the Nraas SP, but there seems to be a random chance that the police will arrest a Sim in the criminal career while they are going to work. That is what happened to my 5 star celebrity Sim. The Bridgeport police arrested my Sim on her way to work and she spent the time she was supposed to be at work in jail and lost job performance, and also got the publicly disgraced moodlet because someone started talking around town that she had been arrested.

I'm not sure what else causes it.

This should help. Scroll down to public disgrace, it gives a list of everything that can give you the moodlet when caught.

Never mind, I ended giving up because apparently banning tourists doesn't work. They show up anyway.

Not sure what the original question was here, but NRaas Register is required to control or switch off the tourist system. When mine is off, after any tourists already present in town have a chance to return home, no new ones ever arrive unless I have invited them over myself.

Or is this not what the issue was?

The original question was how to have a Sim register as a self employed painter if there are no rabbitholes. I thought I had used register to ban tourists, but they kept showing up anyway every single day. I got tired of tourists showing up and route failing even though I had banned them and deleted the save and uninstalled the world associated with the Midnight Sun Challenge.

I'm playing an overstuffed household with 9 sims which works well enough but when I try to move them to another house it says there are too many sims for one household. Is there a way around this?

Mods are required to create/play overstuffed households. I believe that AwesomeMod has its own way of handling these things, but if you are using NRaas mods then NRaas Mover is required for sims to move into or out of a household of Greater Than Eight or to move the entire household.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Which%2...FAQ#Overstuffed

I've seen at least one person talk about playing Simsville, this recreation of the Sims 1 neighborhood for Sims 3. Does anyone else have trouble with it crashing randomly? No other town of mine crashes this badly.

At first it kept crashing when I moved my first family into their house. So I deleted it and tried again. This time it worked and I was able to move in my family, but I keep getting random crashes still. I've deleted my cache files and my thumbnails. I'd contact the creator, but it doesn't look like she's been active in the Sims community for a long time (the world is only updated to WA). Any help would be appreciated!

Am going to have to check on that, but I'm pretty sure that texting within the same household is not allowed for in the game's programming in much the same way that members of the same household cannot call each other to chat or send mail amongst themselves (love letters).

So there was more to this than wanting to text the sim sitting across from you at the dinner table to pass the salt shaker? (that would be a typical scene from my sister's house when her three kids were all teens, on some days verbal communications were at a premium...)

My stupid question:
Say I made a house on a lot that's bigger than it needs to be... say it's a 30x30 lot but the house fits well within 20x20. Is there any way of taking just the house and saving it to the library for a 20x20 lot?
Asking for a friend.

That's a really smart question. If somebody were to make a mod that could achieve this I am sure it would be a huge success. It used to be possible to crop lots in The Sims 2.

No, because the lot would still be 30x30. What the mod does is allow us to create custom sized lot footprints for placement that don't appear by default on Edit Town, it doesn't allow us to put what are now larger lots on smaller ones.

You might try using velocitygrass's Blueprint Maker to recreate the house on the desired sized lot. That's what I had to do with one of my favourite houses, The Apricot by Lemonjelly. A fantastic house, perfectly suited to my style of play but the lot size was, to me, unnecessarily large. I used velocitygrass's Blueprint Maker to recreate it on a 30x30 which suited me down to the ground.

So I just started a brandnew save and my sims learn all their skills ridiculously fast, the woman got her street art skill to almost level 4 with her very first ground mural (she does have Artistic and Avant Garde traits but still...) No cheats, no moodlets that mess with skill gain, no supernatural states, just mere human beings.
The only thing I can think of that could affect skill gain is nraas Relativity but that was still on default settings (brandnew game as I said).
What's going on and more importantly how can I fix that?
edit: Neeeevermind, a simple restart fixed the problem (and luckily it was only the first day so not much lost). Now she only reached the first level of street art with her first ground mural

I'm sorry, I couldn't remember who I was thinking of. I guess I'll have to give up on that world. Thanks for the feedback, though.

(Edited to avoid double-posting)

Another question: if I were to attach a vacation town and move new sims there with Traveler, would that increase my risk for Error 12s? I like the town I'm playing now, but I'm running out of houses!

Not really. The game can only simulate one world at a time, the actively being played one, while others remain in suspended animation. Foreign connected worlds only get loaded up and use RAM and other resources when traveled to. During the travel transition, the first world is released before the second one loads up.

That's great news! Thanks for getting back to me.

Could anyone point me to a mod that randomises voices for in-game born sims? Always having voice 1 is driving me mad!

(Sorry if this is wrong thread)

Do you mean the NRASS feature "inherit voices"?

How do I add NPCs to a new community lot? Specifically a stylist and a tattoo artist to my new salon. I never built community lots myself before and just assumed they spawn automatically when you have the objects/lot assignment but so far there's no one to be seen.

Your assumption is actually correct, the game should either assign an existing Sim from your neighbourhood or create a new one for these roles if none are available. They don't spawn next to the object, though, like in previous Sims games. They are full Sims and will either be residents or homeless Sims that will have to commute to the objects every day.

There are several possibilities why you haven't seen any stylist and tattooist yet:
(1) The lot has to be designated as a Salon in Edit Town; just placing the objects on some random community lot won't work.
(2) The Sims are already assigned but are stuck somewhere (in an apartment building, for example)
(3) The lot is built such that the assigned Sims cannot reach the lot and wander around aimlessly in the world instead
(4) Your world doesn't have enough Sims and the game is too busy to do other things that it hasn't found the time yet to create a stylist and tattooist.

If you use MasterController you can check whether the world has a stylist and tattoo artist already. Click on City Hall or a computer and choose NRaas/MasterController/Sim/Status/Personal/Type of Role.
If you use NRaas Register you can also select a Sim manually and/or determine what type of Sim can be assigned.

Have you tried removing their degree and dropping their social group level (the ones that came with uni) below 8? I'm guessing if anything the game is seeing 'this sim has a degree so they have a trait slot to fill, and they're over 8 in this social group so there's another slot to fill'.

If you are also using NRaas StoryProgression, you could direct it to stop automatically filling in traits that it sees as "missing." The downside is that you might end up with other sims in the world who have less than a full set.

NRaas > SP > General Options > Options:Sims > Options:Traits/Lifetime Want > Add Missing Traits > False

Hi, where do I find these images on my pc?

They're better than many of pics I try to take of my sims and so I'd like to add them to my chronicles of my legacy ;D

You can find them if you open the save file (the one ending in *.nhd) with S3PE. The resource type that contains these images is called SNAP.

You star! Exactly what i was after, thank you.


ETA quick follow-up question: any idea why some of my families don't show up in the SNAP 'files'?

Maybe they want to keep their privacy?

Seriously, no idea. But as you are using Kuree's Save Cleaner, from my experience, in .nhd files that see a lot of Save Cleaner use you will only find those SNAPs of Sims and families that you actually played or modified. So, if for example, you moved a family from one house to another via Edit Town chances are high that their family SNAP will then get stored. So, my guess is that the game stores only those SNAP resources that needed updating or of families that are in constant use (i.e. that get updated regularly, too). You can also notice that if there is a pre-made family in your world and you edit their appearance but leave them untouched otherwise that their family SNAP will still show their old look.

I also don't know why these family SNAP pictures tend to appear in Kuree's program initially but after a while will disappear from SaveCleaner's UI the longer you play a family.

Other places that might contain household SNAPs are the Export files if you travel a lot and the world caches when playing custom or Store worlds.

How do I add names to shows in the theater, like adding movie titles, so that there is more variety to the shows my sim attends?

Does somebody know how to prevent my sims to burn by heat?
I don't have awesomemod .

Like a cheat?
Click on Sim->NRAAS->Master Controller->Advanced->Traits->Change.
Scroll down to "fireproof". It's a hidden trait you get from being a fireman.
Give it to your Sim.
edit: Of course, everyone as NRAAS Master Controller and Master Controller cheats!

Well, everyone *should*.

The family I'm talking about are Criminals, so yeah, maybe they are being 'discreet' lol

Ah, that makes sense.

Thanks again.

1. How does vanilla Story Progression work and differ from default NRASS SP?
2. How to do "Rapid Immigration"?
3. How do you suppress or turn off the spam of SP newsfeed thingy?

1 - Badly. That's why Twallan, and Pescado before him with his AwesomeMod's StoryMode, were so hot to make their own versions. Actually, if EA's story progression really worked the way it was meant to for more than a generation or so for most of us instead of breaking down and doing nothing or freezing births and emptying out the entire town of residents that it incorrectly thinks is in need of emergency depopulation, it wouldn't be such a bad choice for at least some players depending upon where their focus is. But it would still be totally not customizable and the prospects for playing different active households in rotations would be far more limited.

2 - Second FAQ from the top.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryPr...FAQ+Immigration

3 - On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > SP > General Options > All Stories > (select some subset of sims to report on by category or choose None as desired). Story reports aleady in the queue will need to run out before any changes made here are implemented, so that could take a sim day or so.

That would be a job for NRaas Retuner or a standalone tuning mod.

The Retuner way: NRaas > Retuner > Settings > General > By Tunable XML > Sims3.Gameplay.Opportunities > Opportunity Manager > kMaxNumOpportunityCallsPerDay > (and set all three types to 0). Save (as) and reload game.

Have no idea how effective this will be, but seems pretty harmless if it doesn't do what logic suggests it might. It's all or nothing though, Retuner and other tuning changes like that are on all sims at once.

If I want to travel to a world that starts out with no lots, can I copy files from an entirely unrelated save where that empty world has been filled already? If so, which files would I need? Using Traveller, of course. I've tried some things and must be missing something really obvious, or maybe this just doesn't work... thanks

The only file to copy over from the other save would be the .nhd file of the world in question. Note though that doing this will bring everything about that world as it was over to the new game, that includes sims and their progression, not only lots. If that's not what you had in mind, you might want to start up a new game in this world off to the side and throw (or gently place) some lots down on it, then save and use that nhd file instead.

Also note that some custom worlds, due to the way they were ID'ed in the CAW stage, are very resistant to be worked with this way and in fact some will not work with Traveler at all. In these cases every time the player travels or permanently moves sims back and forth, new instances of either or both worlds keep getting spawned instead of the expected ones and sims can get stranded unable to get home that way. The most recent version of Traveler helps some of these worlds, others just cannot be fixed, so it's best to test these things out with the world in question before devoting too much time to the project.

Thanks. Manage to figure out the second two, but needless to say appreciate the help nontheless.

Thanks for your input. It's okay.

I don't have AwesomeMod and am considering getting it, since I've been having trouble with kids accessing their school. Can someone please tell me what is in it that makes Pescado say "This content is not suitable for those under 18"? I've read the manual, and it seems like the only thing that it would apply to would be disabling the censor blur.

I guess that warning is just obligatory for mods that unlock things that would raise the rating from T to M. AwesomeMod was, after all, for a long time one of the few mods that enabled same-sex pregnancy, teen romance and other things before the advent of Nraas Woohooer (and I think that until today you must not mention Woohooer at the official forums because of that). It is just that you needed additional tuning mods to see this happen in your game, but without AM, these didn't work. It also had a noCD check, which is considered a violation of the ToS.

But with regard to your issue, I'm not sure whether you really need AM for just that. There are tuning mods at the Simsasylum that help with kids accessing the school rabbithole, IIRC they are by blugenjutsu. I'm not even sure what AM does there.
If your problem is that there are too many children who get into each other's way, my solution has always been to simply not watch the school at 9am. Having the camera elsewhere at that time means that the whole process is not done in high detail, which seems to ease the whole thing massively.

Okay, that makes sense. I think I found the mod you were referring to. Is this it? Yeah, I had only heard that AwesomeMod improved school routing but IIRC I couldn't find it in the manual. Thanks so much!

Awesome has an option to make school enrollments totally optional. It apparently takes a Core Mod to pull that off, even NRaas mods make kids and teens register for school somewhere pretty much right away, or at least be home schooled officially.

But I'm not sure that failing to even try to educate the next generation is always the right answer. For years many of us preferred to provide more schools as populations increased and baby booms happened and we can use NRaas mods (SP and GoHere) to segregate the schools by age (Elementary vs. High School), gender, public vs. private, or whatever else comes to mind. In addition to bluegen's mods though, more recently this one has increased the capacity of my schools tremendously.
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=568897

Here is the one school in Dragon Valley in the middle of the day. It has a lot of doors as per its original design and most to all of them get used with the mod, so there are no routing issues leading up to or at 9am whatsoever whether I focus the game camera on the school or not. Well, there were stampedes and failures the first day I returned to this world and found all those kids in it all of a sudden, but resetting the school fixed that right away as I hadn't had the mod in prior. I suppose if the school enrollment were ever to double in size from there, then I would want to add a second school or make use of the NRaas Careers mod's specialty schools taking place in rabbit holes already present in town.


For the record, same gender (and male) pregnancy are not adult topics according to EA. Teen-teen romance isn't either, up to a somewhat arbitrary innocent point. But teen woohoo of any kind, teen pregnancy, and teen-older romance are, which is why Woohooer is taboo on the official forums even when discussing its other, entirely unrelated features.

I have been on a break from all the sims game since mid last year (Junne or so}, and was wondering is it still a wise decision to go with the Steam game of Sims 3 to avoid the last patch ? and has there been any new updates to the mods to keep the game running smooth ? the NRAAS mods mainly I am speaking of?and I did see that site is going to be going away as well ? Thanks for any help on this .. I have searched the threads, but did not come up with much of anything new so just being sure I did not miss anything.

I've not seen an official poll or anything, but the prevailing notion seems to be that if one has a way to carry off or stay on a Patch 1.67 install (no required Origin tie-in), then it's best to do so. The game files between the two patches are identical except for their build numbers and 1.69 doesn't really add anything to the mix that is helpful or not aggravating for many of us. I'm on a Steam install myself now and plan on staying with it.

NRaas mod updates released in reverse chronological order:
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Update%20History

Updates currently in beta testing, not yet ready for full release:
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Update%20History%20Testing

We also have a brand new mod in the works, NRaas Chemistry, that is in too early a stage to be considered beta yet. But current efforts are concentrated on getting our new site done up so that we will be ready to move/transition by the time Wikispaces shuts us down at the end of September. Here is a preview: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/share/view/83643301

In the meantime, it is business as usual at NRaas where we are now and you can safely ignore/dismiss any warning banners about Wikispaces shutting down.

Thank you for the information. I would like to go with the Steam install, but I remember when I did my purchase back when, the download was going so slow, I just got frustrated waiting when I saw it say it would take 13 days. I did not have that wait on Origin, but now I will have to uninstall and reinstall, and not sure the download time would be any different on Steam.

[QUOTE=igazor]I've not seen an official poll or anything, but the prevailing notion seems to be that if one has a way to carry off or stay on a Patch 1.67 install (no required Origin tie-in), then it's best to do so. The game files between the two patches are identical except for their build numbers and 1.69 doesn't really add anything to the mix that is helpful or not aggravating for many of us. I'm on a Steam install myself now and plan on staying with it.

You could try it again on Steam, and see if the install time is still that long? (Sometimes I get a ridiculous estimate at first, and then it reassesses to something more reasonable.)

Friday afternoons /late afternoons, check both the movie theater and the sports stadium.
If I recall well, maybe there's a second chance for a concert at Saturdays late afternoons, too.

This is a 'stupid question' because I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but let me try my luck anyway;
Is there way for a sim to use their personal vehicle when travelling with a baby/toddler rather than a taxi?

Yeah, thought not. And if I remember correctly, even with the buggies they'll take a taxi if the distance is far enough. Urgh, so aggravating. Four-wheeled vehicles are so under-utilised in this game. I really love the idea of an adult ferrying the Teens and Kids around and lugging along the Toddlers and Babies to do the weekly shop.

My sim returned from the future and lost his 20,000 point plumbotics dream. I tried three times all failed; each time all his dreams and wishes were gone. . Then I thought "NRAAS traveler will fix it!" and installed traveler, restarted the sims... epic fail! The returned to the present without the entire sim.
I have too many mods that need regression testing.

A prom was announced a few days ago. For some reason, I never get the option for my sims to ask their girlfriends to go with them. Is it because I'm using a RH rug?

You can help remind yourself when a concert is on (I always forget and then the wish remains locked for weeks) by placing the search lights from Build Mode/Community Objects (not the ones in Buy Mode) on the stadium and theatre lot. Whenever something special is on they will light up as soon as it starts. Of course with the stadium it means that Wednesday and Sunday these will also announce sports games.

It is currently Friday in my game in Twinbrook and there's a play at the theatre and a concert at the stadium, both began at 5pm.

Here's a stupid question: what file controls the game's camera parameters? All I've been able to find is the freecam settings, but I want to modify the regular one.

Is it possible that I can't find celebrities because the custom world doesn't include residents with such status?

Quite possible yes. The game won't automatically bestow celebrity status on pre-made Sims, unless its one of EA's own worlds. But there the status is pre-defined in an extra file in the game data.

NRaas Saver is not meant to launch the actual Save (As) command, it's really an alarm clock with the optional suggestions for naming the next save and rotating through numbered names.

Where we do know this happens is if the names of the saves it is using are a single digit. In other words 1.sims3, 2.sims3, etc. Not having a real save name to append to like DumpyTown1.sims3, DumpyTown2.sims3, etc., is not an intended naming scheme so unexpected things can trigger.

A while ago I read that you shouldn't use the free real estate cheat to move a bunch of sims into an unpopulated world because of the effect on town debt. Is this true?

This is the first time that I ever hear of such a thing as town debt. What is this supposed to be and how does it affect a game?

Any way to move out a butler that was added as a family member through testing cheats? (Preferably a method that doesn't dehire/dismiss him, because my sim is low on budget).

Where you say you made him a family member, do you mean he is now part of the household and controllable or you made him blood related to the others in the household? Butlers are Service Sims, if you made them a member of the household, then he wouldn't (shouldn't) be a Butler anymore, just a regular resident sim now.

Like igazor said, if you added him to the household he should already be dismissed and have lost his butler status. So, no idea what you did there.

But you can make him a butler again with MasterController/Advanced/SetService. He will move out and go back to the service pool where you can hire him again (or rather hire a butler and with some luck it will be the same Sim).

My stupid question: how does alien pregnancy work and how can I end it?
I fear that for the first time this abduction is different than the others.
And to think that my Sim was really friendly to that old hag a few nights before...

Friendly introduction and then sending her off my property before she could start littering it with meteors or whatever they do when intruding without invitation.
(Does it show that I'm not too fond of them?)

Pregnancy averted, btw, the probing failed spectacularly and my Sim is still childless. Phew!
(Which, of course, means that my question remains still open somewhat. Do these pregnancies show as pregnant in MasterController? Can they be ended like regular pregnancies there? Do they start immediately after the "Feeling probed" moodlet expires?)

So on to my next question then: Do plumbots count towards the Monster Maker LTW?

Town debt was described as the amount of income vs. wealth. Property and possessions are wealth and income is cash on hand. The idea was that if your town has much greater wealth than it should as a ratio with cash, this will somehow corrupt your town. It isn't a game mechanic that a player interacts with, more like a weird glitch exposed by overuse of the freerealestate cheat. Perhaps it is an urban legend.

Another question, was terrain paint patched in? If I use terrain paint from an EA store world in a lot I create (a paint that is available in build mode), and someone without the world downloads the lot, will they see the correct terrain paint?