I am not a 100% expert but what I understand is:
If you have bought all of your content directly from the store and installed it through the launcher, the file "ccmerged.package" will be installed where you need it to be (the DCBackup folder). If that ever gets corrupted, what you will see mainly is that the accessories from sets will be missing, your sim won't get the moodlet that goes with the object, your sim will reset when using the object, or something like that. Not to worry- there are places online you can get a copy of that file if it does get corrupted.

Anyone know if there's a way to set daytime/nighttime lights? Like, certain lights that turn on at night, and turn off during the day, and others that do the opposite (turn off at night, and turn on during the day)?


Edit: Partially solved this by changing the script of the "daytime lights" to the buydebug daylight 2x2 light, but still can't figure out how to have lights that only turn on at night.

NRAAS Dresser mod will do this, but you have to enable its "affect active" setting.

Is there any way to write songs in the game? Even if it's with a mod?

Can I delete the custom recipe mods I downloaded from here if I don't want them anymore, or will it break my save if my sim learned some of them/has some books in his inventory/has some ingredients in his fridge? I would rather not start a new save

Say your game is a mess without saying your game is a mess.




How often do you go through your Library folder? Do you bother with your Library folder?

I started this because I wanted to figure out where my exported NRAAS mods settings went. I knew they went to the Library folder, but for whatever stupid reason, I didn't think they would be in gibberish.

It is going to be a really long weekend. I have more crap to go through than I thought...

The NRAAS settings are very small files, like 13 kb or so. Most other library files are at least over a 100kb.

Not too up on how EA does things, huh? As for making sense of library files, may I suggest a quiet weekend and a couple of bottles of vodka???

But, Nraas saved files are also in the edit town "Sims households" section. So, you can delete unwanted Nraas files from there as well. Fact is, I am going to be doing that myself, soon.

As for other things in library, it stores households (families and Sims), and lots you may have made and saved. Again, you may find it easier to delete those from edit town as you can see which family or house it is without opening the packages. Still, your 59 oddly named packages does seem preferable to the 218 I need to go thru!

I may need more than 2 bottles of vodka!!!

The settings that you export from Nraas are saved as "script error" files in the main Documents/Sims 3 folder. Just look at those, and change their names to something you'll recognize later.

Thanks for all the tips.

Not going to lie, yesterday was long and tiring, but I got the worst of it done. Most of what was in my current game were sims that I thought I'd use then never bothered with. I have lots that also need to go for the same reason. I don't use much cc these days so that wasn't a issue.

The bulk of the problem was how I keep things stored on my external drives. When I know I'm not going to be playing for awhile, I store the the current whole EA folder which is fine, but I don't label them so I don't have a clue what I was doing or when. It was just a pile of folders that needed to be gone through, including the Library folders plus any stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. There were many gigs worth of the later.

Note to self: Don't be frickin' lazy; it's not worth it.

I am trying to find the hairstyle that a sim has after getting blown up by chemistry set or hit by lightning. My crazy inventor needs it. I still have an old sim that uses it as everyday hair dyed neon green But for some reason I can't find it in CAS. Is there some trick to make it appear in CAS? I doubt that it was CC anyway. Or maybe it is an NRAAS filter setting? Am I just blind?

yes, it's an NRaas MC filter setting ('show hidden parts' under CAS). Or by entering the cheat 'unlockoutfits on' ('testingcheatsenabled true' needed to activate first)..

also found this one, the hair in question unlocked in game..
https://modthesims.info/d/361693/si...-and-tf-ef.html

This hairstyle may also be called 'the consequences of going to bed with wet hair'.

I noticed that some objects can't be moved up and down the wall. Some wall lights for example, or service awards. Is there a way to do that using moveobjects or so? Or maybe a mod that lets you do this?

I believe there is a setting that has to be turned on in either TSRW or perhaps s3pe to allow that.

I noticed that the lights that I can't move up/down are converted store objects. So, I am not even sure if they originally can when installed through launcher. The launcher is not working on linux either. So I am dependant on .package format atm. I have no luck running .NET apps yet. I am going to focus on getting s3pe to work then. It starts, but crashes when loading something.
Sims 3 is the only game I have difficulties with so far on linux. But it is mostly because of the launcher with its weird dependencies and 3rd party apps.

Well, I have no experience with store items or linux OS.

Is there a way to disable townies to pick up the ghost hunter profession? Or maybe it needs to be disabled entirely for this, not sure. But I noticed that if you save when the Town Hall is haunted, reloading that save gives Mastercontroller or Overwatch a hissy fit of errors regarding the town hall. You also can't interact with the town hall if it is haunted. And I am also kind of tired hearing that music from miles away

Or is this a result of one of my sims being an ex-ghost hunter. And because he quit, some random townie filled the role?

With Story Progression from Nraas. I don't know if you need the careers module but I know you can disable careers by type. For me I use a combo of disabling careers and also with Returner by XML tuning by objects I do not allow urnstones in my world which then will not allow ghosts to generate.

I noticed some oddity in Hidden springs. Ryan Anderson, has his surname spelled like Anderzon. Why is that? Is it because I have my game installed in swedish, or something else, somehing to be worried about....?

For some tweaks, it is really safe to change some things in the graphics rules? For example the Sim texture sizes beyond 2048 and texture memory from 32 to 2048. What are the short/long-term effects? Does anyone actually use those methods and it has gone well?

So here's how I killed my RTX 2070. My curiosity:
-Initially raised Sim textures sizes to 4096; no lag, stutter or freezing but this...which usually happens if I've been playing a long time but in the case below if I as much as move the camera enough.




-The tutorial said if that happens to set the texture memory from 32 to 2048. That did nothing and for some odd reason I think why not try 4096 and that did nothing except make my gpu go haywire sounding like a jet taking off, and then automatic restart of the whole system because I guess the gpu went into overheating and "shut down" and/or the motherboard's feature detected an anomaly in surge of power and "shut down". Then that just kept happening whenever I tried again. Bad move and even further damage but I'm sure I already broke something the first time anyway.

It's so funny because I was fine the way the graphics looked so why would I think to go beyond NVidia Control Panel to do more when that was working for me. I got greedy and greed has consequences or maybe it's just sometimes annoyance of getting fixated on something and why oh why did I have to hyperfocus on that instead of grabbing a book to read...you know about computers and settings and stuff. I'm so disappointed in myself.



But whatever I live and I learn. All happy still and dancing this morning like I didn't just break my gpu and no longer can play any games. 🤣
Time to revisit my other hobbies.

So I tried to disable the Ghost Hunter Career and thought I managed to do this, but haunted lots still pop up. And Master Controller shows 2 sims as Ghost Hunter.

This is what I did before to disable Ghost Hunter :
NRAAS>SP>Town Options>Career>Disallow>Ghost Hunter
Which I thought should be sufficient, but to be sure I also added :
NRAAS>SP>Caste>Adults>Career>Disallow>Ghost Hunter
Did last one also for Teens, Young Adults, Elders and Homeless.

But the game still assigns sims to the career so I can't get rid of that incredibly annoying looping music that carries over way too far :p

So my question is, should these options do the trick and is my game simply bugged? Or are there other options left where I need to disable Ghost Hunter? Also, is it possible that it is a glitch because I had an active retired Ghost Hunter?

Is there a way to improve lighting in the game?
Things like rugs look bad when placed. They all look darker than on the preview. Also, curtains when placed, don't just block light from outside the window, but also somehow lights in the room. The walls to each side of the curtains become darker.

This one deals with the actual lights but in its thread some people also mention different mods for lighting.

https://modthesims.info/d/653514/re...-ea-lights.html

Have you tried using the invisible lights in the Buydebug section?

Yeah, I used them before, but they don't really fix those weird shades next to curtains. Unless I place them next to each curtain ofc. But I rather use a global lighting mod that might fix those kind of issues. Thanks though

Stupid question (obviously, since I'm posting in the thread) - is there a way to rename poses once they've been made into a list? I have some from another creator that are poselisted, but there are no descriptions in the description panel other than "Simmerposemaker-01" (as an example). Can I just open the list in S3Pe and add in a description there? Otherwise, I'm just taking pics of the poses, putting them onto a spreadsheet and referring to that when I am simming.

ETA: Yes, I can. What I did is edit the XML and it worked fine. Putting a description between the "Description" dialogs.

Answered my own stupid question lol. Just putting this up here to possibly help others.

Here ya go!

https://modthesims.info/d/361693/si...-and-tf-ef.html

If it's not crazy enough for your crazy inventor, then there's another crazy scientist hair from crazy vanilla game

https://modthesims.info/d/365134/ma...r-unlocked.html

It turned out to be a filter setting in NRAAS Mastercontroller to make the singed hairstyle show up. Someone in this thread pointed that out. But your second link is good too. Reminds me a bit of doc Brown from Back to the Future. Thanks!

Is there a way to reset wishes? I noticed that when you click certain wishes away because you are bombarded with them, you don't get them again. Like mastering a skill wish, which you usually get between lvl8 and lvl9 in a skill.

Anyone's playing/played Riverview? Since I'm playing and create a story about it (It's my most fav town), but recently there's a thing that I wonder why. The Bagley family, a family that consist of Ma the crime-queen of Riverview, and her two kids Rhoda and Sherman. Rhoda follows her mother's footstep while Sherman's not. I never played this family before. In Wiki it says Ma has a good relationship with her son, Sherman, who doesn't want to be like her parents, but she dislike Rhoda, her criminal daughter. I wonder why she despises her daughter and get along very well with her son, even Rhoda follows the family's tradition? Did Ma believe in patriarchy? (I don't know if it's common in western rural town because I live in Asia and it's pretty common here. It's like parents like their sons more than daugthers. I don't think Ma's might be like that tho), or because his son's so nice so she has a soft spot for him? Or she just be nice to him so she can probably lures or tricks him into family tradition? She dislikes her daughter because she may just bossy with her daughter, like in a comical way? Or they argue with each other all the time and developed such a bad relationship? Or there's something back then that made Ma dislikes her so much?

Their dad/hubby was died too, and there's a theory about a wrecked car near the river that might be his car. It's interesting to create a story about it. Did Rhoda failed the 'operation' that costs her father's live? I don't know...

I had a big purge of my CC when my computer died so I need to remake Riverview before I play again- I tend to modify towns and families heavily to bring in more expansions (the people in Riverview end up with a lot of pets). The Bagley family home is one that I always give a makeover to. They have very low quality (starter) furniture in the house but a garage packed with higher end "stolen goods". People end up spending more time in the crowded garage than the house, so I empty the garage and just put the stuff in the house.

The patriarchy part of their family is still around for some families (I live in the rural part of America that's actually a lot like Riverview) but most have stopped. Looking at the traits, both Ma and Rhoda have hot-headed. That makes them prone to fighting and arguing, especially with each other. It may just be that they are both stubborn and won't back down in an argument. Sherman might be favored just because he hasn't argued with him mom as much as his sister has.

As for the Dad, he has/had heavy sleeper. Maybe he fell asleep while driving late at night and drove into the river. Or if you have pets, people hitting deer with their cars is a huge problem here, especially early in the morning or during the evening when people aren't paying attention. Running into a deer at full speed can easily wreck a normal car, possibly killing the person inside, so that's also a potential.

I don't think you can. Clicking wishes away, especially if they are not related to traits or Lifetime wishes makes them less likely to reappear. It appears to serve as a signal that they aren't important to this sim, so the game looks for other ones. For example, for a sim that ha the genius trait, learning more logic will always come up again but for one that isn't, it might not. Or it might take longer to come back. There might be other factors.

I don't actually know this for sure but that's been my impression over the years.

They never come back when you want them to!!


I have got to the point after all these years where I "reserve" two wish boxes for big scoring items, like maxing out a skill or writing X number of books. This way I can guarantee up to 10,000 wish points while I burn through the lower scoring wishes. Kiss someone, or give them a friendly hug, meet someone, those will always come up again. So zap them and use the slot for one or two of those big items that might not come up again.

Nrass dreamer mod helps with dreams/wishes, it allows the unsaved ones to stick around longer so you have 3 extra aside from the saved 4 there is also a tuning so they never time out but will conitnue to build up but you can only see the 3 most recent ones, have to fulfill them to see others. Here is the mod page https://www.nraas.net/community/Dreamer and the FAQ https://www.nraas.net/community/Dreamer-FAQ

Help! I need to build a single stair/single step staircase to connect a port to the land and it won't place.

I noticed with the wishes that when you move sims around in Edit Town, their early wishes come back after you start playing them again. It resets them all. You even get the join university, etc wishes all back. So the game has a way to reset this. Just wish there was a way to reset them without forcing a sim to move. Especially the ones that build up, like playing in front of x sims or make a painting worth of x money. They never seem to appear when it is convenient, so I click them away.

Is there a way to have more control over which way a sim is going to face when performing for tips? It doesn't seem to matter which way my sim was facing when directing her to perform. It seems random which way they turn.
I am trying to make a sim perform for tips in front of the theatre in Sunset Valley, but she keeps turning into an awkward direction. It is not so much that it looks odd, but that the tip jar then gets put in the most traffic congestion way :p

It may be possible to use testing cheats, moveobjects on, go into lot edit and position your sim and tip jar, but to have it done by EA's program... doubt it.

That is an option yes Thanks.
I just wondered why they face a random way when playing for tips with guitar. While Acrobat stays facing the same way when performing for tips as far as I can tell. Maybe this is because Acrobat takes up more space? But with the guitar player I kept creating a traffic jam in between theatre and bookstore in Sunset Valley. Best spot though, it becomes packed in no time there and with high level guitar it earns quite fast.

I was looking around recently, and saw a mod that reduces the area around guitar, bass, etc. It was somewhere, here on MTS. May help you?

Thanks! I think they made it for jamming with instruments, but lets see if it also reduces space when playing for tips. This is a useful mod regardless, if only to maybe prevent a sim from going outside to play the guitar during a party due to lack of space.

I wonder what language versions of the game are sold in countries which don't have their own language version of the game. For example
Ukraine: Russian or English?
Romania?
Slovakia? Probably Czech.
Former Yugoslavian countries?
Albania?
Bulgaria?
and others?

I imagine that all former SU countries would be in Russian, as most still speak it. Even young would learn, as their grandparents might only speak Russian. Also, some languages do have modded translations to download.

Yup, I've seen the Ukrainian translation, but I didn't want to spam this thread. Just wondering what the reasons are for not translating the language into the national/official/vastly spoken languages of many countries. Is is because of low population, low number of simmers, financial difficulties, politics etc.?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Face it, EA went as cheap as they could in making TS3. 32 bit would be the first tell. Despite 64 bit being out, EA went for mass sales, so made it for older computers. Waiting around for the folks at Nraas to fix most of the broken stuff is another cheap way out. Why pay an EA guy, when they'll fix it? But to languages, the ones EA did, are probably larger markets, and the cost of adding more languages was just extra work. At this point, the game is old, so why bother. Only reason they made the Mac 64 bit was because Mac completely did away with 32 bit, and EA didn't want to lose Mac users. Bonus being it's a download and you have to go thru whatever mess they have on that site. Still, people from whatever country, who speak whatever language make their own translations, and sometimes share.

Yup, it's a shame they didn't make it 64-bit. The game itself is great, but almost unplayable without all the fixes created by gamers. I've run into many performance issues like crashing, saving errors, freezes, stuttering etc. and it was all because of the game's poor coding.

Well, ignoring the EA exec who is trolling MTS, much of what I wrote was told to me by an EA programmer who did some work on TS3. 64 bit would fix all of the issues, but would help. Besides, this discussion has been had, elsewhere, many times.

Out of all The Sims games on PC, The Sims 3 seems to be the most expensive to have been produced. Base game alone tells the story but if that was not enough evidence; TS3 had 2 different expansion pack teams, 2 different stuff pack teams and a whole team dedicated just for store content.

Yes it is true that a 64-bit version would have been best however remember TS3 was targeted at 16-24 year olds; therefore some still in high school and some likely in college where buying a new computer that was 64-bit wouldn't be so easily accessible to most. Not to mention some, if not most, of the demographic were not gamers so 64-bit would have been overkill when the goal is to get as many people to play the game as possible. They knew their demographic rather well in my opinion. -https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-sims-3-john-buchanan

If the consensus was TS3 is the cheapest and most broken game to ever exist in The Sims franchise then I highly doubt word of mouth wouldn't have been effective as there were 1.4 million sales in the first 7 days of its release which broke TS2 record of having sold over 1 million in 10 days.

TS3 is not a difficult game to run or play flawlessly as is. If you "need" mods then the first thing I would suspect is incompatible hardware/bottlenecking. The only thing about TS3 that needs help is the frame rate and to limit it to the monitors max refresh rate. So if it's 60 then cap it at 60. I usually have that frame rate issue even with new games if the limiter already isn't enabled so it's not just a TS3 thing. However TS3 doesn't have a built-in fps limiter.

I have played TS3 on and off mostly without mods/cc during its lifespan. And although now I mostly play my modded Sims folder, I also have one I play that's base game only with NRass NoCD, Pose Player and Poses. The other Sims folder is all EP/SP/Store Content with NRass NoCD, NRass MC (Cheats/Integration), Pose Player and Poses. And the other Sims folder is for the test of my computer and only has NRass NoCD, all EP/SP/Store Content. And all those except my heavily modded folder are all maxed settings and plays flawlessly.

I always have issues with my modded game, always. I really need to narrow down the most game enhancing and lose everything else, lol. Because I already I have 99 problems but my computer isn't one.

I feel dumb asking this, but I've never done it before and I don't want to mess up my game.

You know how when you go into edit town and there are the sims that show up at the bottom? If I delete those, are those sims removed from my game? When I click delete it asks if I want to delete the sims from my library. The sims that are there are not causing any problems, I just don't like looking at the 'clutter'.

When a Young Adult is in college What happens to the family in the main Neighborhood?

Those are your library households, also known as those in the household bin. They have no bearing or impact on your ongoing game nor the sims already in it; some will just be copies of households already in play. However, there are mods that call upon the genetics of households in the bin and might use two such sims as donor "parents" when creating new sims to immigrate in or become newly created homeless NPCs. NRaas SP does this, but by mod option and individual saved households can be exempted from being used this way, or the option to use binned sims at all can be switched off by setting the bin's percent chance of being used to 0.

EA puts some starter households in the library (bin) in each world for you. Then whenever you save a household, newly created or a copy of one already in play, this is where it goes.

They party like there's no tomorrow, so glad to be rid of those annoying know-it-all uni students for a while.

Nah, just kidding. Absolutely nothing happens as time is frozen in worlds that are not being simulated and the game can only simulate one world at a time. The sims and the day/time will be exactly the same as when you left them upon your sims' return home. In fact, if you move the game camera around quickly enough,, you might still see the sims left at home waving goodbye to the uni student(s) upon their re-entry into the world, provided they were around and not too busy to wave goodbye in the first place.

If they were engaged in some other activity at the time, like sleeping or even woohooing, they will still be doing exactly that upon the homeworld becoming the actively simulated one again. To us, they have been at it (whatever "it" is) for one or two sim weeks and should win an award for stamina or something, but to them no time has passed at all.

Thank you.

I didn't know about that SP setting either. I'm going to make use of that.

@igazor Thanks I was curious about that.

I feel silly for having to ask this, but this is really bugging me, so here we go: Does anyone recognize where this sim's (the male) hair is from?



I reinstalled the game to a new computer a while ago, and I've been getting the 'Missing Content' warning for every save file. Usually, it's been small items that I don't even notice are gone, but this time I can clearly tell this item is missing because this sim is now bald! What bothers me is that I have no clue why this content is still missing since I've tried to reinstall everything I had from the Store, and I certainly have the same expansion packs installed as before. I double-checked all my store hairs and I don't see anything perfectly matches this hair. I see some items that are close, but not this specific hair. Does anyone know which pack or store item this is from? Alternatively, is there a mod that can help me track down which items are replaced when the game detects that content is missing? That would also help a lot!

It's from the 'More Halloween Treats' free set.

https://store.thesims3.com/setsProd...ategoryId=12082

Thank you! I figured it had to be from the store, but since the items in that collection don't show up individually I couldn't track it down. Much appreciated .

So what's up with Barnacle Bay? I've had it installed for some time, though I've not played it much - I'd been planning to set a story there. But it looks to me like something is missing - unless it's just my game. The landscape seems to be criss-crossed with what look like paths, but I don't think they are. It reminds me of when they were ripping up English hedgerows during the 60s and 70s (because you can't stand in thie way of PROGRESS don't y'know!). Has Barnacle Bay also decided to embrace modern farming methods. Or were there supposed to be hedges, fences, or some order of field boundaries, but then EA decided not to bother with them? That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

I don't remember noticing Barnacle Bay having missing hedges, but every house I went into had wall sections missing or other problems, so I didn't explore it much.

Is there a a list somewhere that breaks down how many items / what those items are for a residential lot to auto-populate? i.e- How many beds? Do I need to put down a crib? Ya know, that kind of stuff.

Yes, here is the list.

1. At least one refrigerator. Sims will never move onto a lot on their own that lacks one.

That's it. But are we maybe talking about with NRaas StoryProgression in play, or perhaps AwesomeMod? That changes things. EA unmodded and left unchecked will move a crowded family into a tiny trailer (no offense to those who actually live in a reasonably sized for the household trailer, there's nothing wrong with that) and somehow expect six sims to share a single bed or something like that while meanwhile across town Crazy Cat Person living alone with her six cats will move into an 8 bedroom, 12 bathroom mansion that she cannot possibly afford. You may even find a family that includes horses trying to live in a highrise apartment building (Hint: despite what one might think, horses and elevators are not the best of friends).

Having said all of that, probably too much already, I have seen lots apparently deemed as undesirable even though they have access and technically meet the minimum SP requirements for a household to live there. Sims will just avoid them like the plague no matter what I do unless it involves bulldozing and rebuilding, possibly even replacing the lot itself.

Just a fridge? I can handle that. I'd be using NRAAS for this.

I'm fan of when you get into details. You can never say too much. I always learn something and appreciate the time and effort.

I should have mentioned this in my other post, but the sims for this "project" I won't be playing, nor will they be staying. The sims that move in are for set dressing and to make the world look lived in. Once I'm done with said project, everything related to said project will go away unless I decide to make it a seasonal-type thing.

As always, thanks for the help.

That is interesting as I thought they needed some beds or at least one and I usually put some cribs in the houses also. I use the EA story progression. And I always put in the stove and fridge and sink. And usually some bath fixtures. I pretty much do houses as real rental unfurnished ones are done.

NRaas SP imposes more restrictions by way of its Lot Inspection options. There will need to be a single or double bed slot for each YA or older, single beds will attract families with children and teens, one crib will be required for each baby, toddler, or pre-existing pregnancy, plus one pet bed for each pet even if they prefer to sleep on the floor or on other pieces of furniture. If the sims/households in question do not exist (as opposed to them already being residents somewhere else in town and moving as a household or splitting off from one), then the nature of the households immigrating in will depend in part on the furnishings of the lots available to house them. and in part on Immigration options.

At its most strict settings (I don't choose to play this way myself), career objects will also be required for sims in certain careers. Check NRaas > SP > General Options > Options:Lots > Options:Inspection to examine the criteria and make adjustments.

Can anybody think of a way I can have two sims, living on the same lot, shake hands as though greeting each other for the first time, without my having to reset their relationship to stranger first. It would make things a lot simpler for story telling. I know there used to be a mod here on MTS that let you do this, but it was broken by a patch and has long since been deleted.

I own all the Sims 3 EPs and a couple of stuff packs on discs. I registered all my Sims 3 discs at The Sims 3 official site. I believe most of them were showing in Origin. At least the base game. I'm planning to purchase a new laptop and would like to install Sims 3 on it. Newer laptops do not have DVD drives anymore. I understood I could download my games from Origin or the dreaded EA app. Origin does not appear to be working anymore so I downloaded the EA app. None of my games are showing in the app -- even the other games I registered in Origin. I can't find a way to email anyone at EA -- just the help forum. How can I fix this? Uninstall the EA App? Reinstall Origin, if possible, and register my games there? Or, would I be better off to copy the game files as ISO files and put them on the laptop that way? (Obviously, I have a DVD drive in my desktop.) I'd appreciate any assistance. Thanks!

IF you have disks, and the base game disk does NOT say "Origin" anywhere on it (original EA), buy an external dvd drive and install the game. Then use the super patch, and never look at Origin or EA app ever again!

I bought an external dvd from Best Buy to install my disks. The EA app doesn't recognize the limited edition Showtime I had registered or Sweet Treats that I got because I have mild I need everything issues.

I just got lucky. Somewhere along the way, I ended up with a base game disk that is pre-Origin. That is the key, as you do not need anything online to install the game. All other disks can be Origin, but install to that base game disk. Perhaps why EA made TS4 EPs as download keys only???

Yes very happy I have a pre-Origin base game disk. Otherwise I am pretty sure it forces the app. I did register my stuff back in the day and could DL it if I want but I really wouldn't want to.

Update: Well, I feel a bit silly. I appears that the EA app has connectivity issues. It took several tries before I was “online”. My games are listed but no way to download which makes sense because I did not purchase them as downloads. If I open the game from the app it takes me to the launcher. I play directly from the .exe file and bypass the launcher unless I need it to download something into the game. However, it looks like I can play the game from the app. My base game disc is pre-Origin and I currently use the 67 super patch. My ITF disc is in my pc. Does this mean, if I install the discs from an external DVD, I’ll have to keep the external drive connected and the ITF disc in it all the time or not? Thank you for your replies!

No, you won't need the external drive, once everything is in your computer. Just continue to launch from the .exe. I made a short cut and placed it on desktop.

Thanks! I made a shortcut too. Does that mean I don’t have to have the ITF disc in my PCP DVD drive either? I just assumed I had to. I appreciate your assistance!

You either will have to have the disc in a connected drive, be it internal or external. Or you use NRAAS No CD mod which makes the game skip the disc check. I used it for years as it is very annoying to have that drive requirement, especially on laptops.

You can find it here: https://www.nraas.net/community/NoCD

EUREKA! @SimmyRN sorry, another of those things I have had for so long that I totally forgot. Yes, you need "No CD"!

I thought so. Thank you Norn and LadySmoks!

Can I changed the relationship between two sims in a household without starting a new game or creating a new household?

Depends on the ages of the Sims, but Nraas Master Controller has relations in the (I think) intermediate section.

It's either intermediate or advanced (and you might need to have the cheats add-on for Master Controller). Having said that, you can pick parent/child relationships and siblings. Anything more extended than that (aunt/uncle, grandparent, cousin, etc) will need you to build the relationships out from there. Like if you want to set a grandparent relationship, you have to pick the grandkid's parent. That parent doesn't need to be in the family- if you play Bridgeport the Adkins has that set up with the father being in the homeless NPC pool- or even alive. Unfortunately that seems to be hard coded in by EA.

I have had my game loaded with Nraas mods, almost from the day I started playing. Yes, there may be other parts needed.

There are 2 basic options that I can think of... Basic relationships, from 0 to 100. It may be cheats module that also allows to click and slide that in the relationships panel? The other that I know of is relations type. Some types will change with the 0 to 100, and the 0 to 100 will change with type, but is at the minimal amount for the type. Only t thru e can be assigned as romantic, spouse, etc. That was what I meant about depending on the age of the Sims.

The one for assigning family tree is in advanced section, family, and assigns child, parent or sibling. Making aunts and uncles is a bit more, but I believe is doable.

I am really not a fan of the baby stage. I wonder if it can do any damage if I changed the stage length to just 1 day? Because the setting in game wont allow that, I would have to edit the settings file directly, but I wonder if it might damage my save in any way?

I never tried this, but maybe set stage to 3 days, and use birthday cake to age up? I know that you can take a baby into CAS and age up that way. Probably need to reset the Sim afterward.

I know I've seen it but I can't find the mod/manager that lets you pick which expansion packs you want to load when you start the game using 1.67 patch (not EA manager). I'm hoping someone can help me find it. Also, does anyone know if it lets you select/de-select store content? I have a lot of Store items to re-download on my new laptop but I don't necessarily want to use them when I'm creating items for upload. Same thing for expansion / stuff packs. Thanks for your help!

There is Any Game Starter 3: https://modthesims.info/d/406814/an...ated-v-2-6.html which allows to have different configurations.

A simpler solution for chosing which EP/SP to load is SIm Game Selector 3.0: https://modthesims.info/d/499140/si...stuff-quot.html

For managing additional content (store/mods/cc) I find it easiest to work with different User folders. I have one "Vanilla" folder for testing or building, and several for different worlds I'm playing with different sets of store/mods/cc. When I want to switch, I just rename them and it's done. This method doesn't allow you to pick EP/SPs though but could be used in combination with Sim Game Selector.

Mind that even if you release something for Base game, a certain patch level might still be required as some things came with EP but were patched into the base game.

Thanks Norn! I imagine you’re talking about different folders with different content to switch in and out of your user documents folder? I like to make one with just my base, expansion, and stuff packs. (Don’t always have stuff packs installed. Didn’t think of copying it before I put in the stuff packs, darn it.). Then, I make one with Store content, with mods/cc, and so forth. Is that the method you’re talking about? Unless there is something simpler? I do a lot of content creation and want to be sure my uploads are free of CC, etc. I’m excited to try a game selector as I’ve never used one. I’ve just tried to be scrupulous when selecting items in buy or build mode. I do include the patch level I’m using in case it makes a difference. I appreciate your assistance!

Yes, I am talking about your User folder in My Documents. It has a specific path, something like C:\Users\Norn\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 (might slightly differ due to different Operating systems). It is independent of which EP/SP you have installed, it always has the same structure and content.

If you rename the folder "The Sims 3", to something like e.g. "The Sims 3 Test", the game will create a new folder "The Sims 3" upon loading.

For example, I have several folders, they are called
"The Sims 3 Test": a few NRAAS mods only
"The Sims 3 Play": contains lots of mods and store content
"The Sims 3 Medieval": contains mods for medieval gameplay, a lot of default replacements, medieval clothing etc.

Before starting the game, I decide which configuration I want, rename that respective folder to "The Sims 3" and that's it. This has no impact on what EP/SP are loaded!


This refers to your installation folder. I never tried to move those folders around, I used the mods I mentioned in my previous posts to take care of that.

I have multiple games also by renaming the main one and creating new ones. And I have darn near all my way too much CC as packages and pull in and out of my game as wanted. And I have divided much of it into which worlds it will be used in or in folders such as modern, contemporary and many others. Right now I have just the CC I want in a world I am working on in my active game.

Oh I see. I never thought about leaving having all the folders in my documents file and just renaming one to be "The Sims 3". That's probably easier than renaming them and moving them back and forth. I'm sure they would be ignored by the program. I guess I was just worried about having them all in the same folder causing some problem. I realize this is a different topic that selectively loading EPs/SPs. Thanks so much!!

Thanks for your reply, daisylee! I use very little or no CC but do use some mods for building. I plan to use the No CD and Pack selector, though, so I'll need to add at least the no CD mod to all the games. I'll probably make another game/file that is set up with other mods/CC.

Sorry for one more question. Does anyone know how to get rid of the annoying "Cannot connect to Origin" message when the launcher opens? Thank you!

I'd like to know that too. Although it's only a minor irritant, I've wondered if it might be related to a bigger one. I usually try to be offline when I use the Launcher, but sometimes I forget, and then I get that 'Cannot connect to Origin' message. But what is more annoying is that, if I install or uninstall anything, there is always a long delay before I am able to shut the Launcher down. The items install or uninstall without any problem, but the window doesn't close when I click on the tick and I get that little 'no entry' sign when I mouse over the little x in the top corner. So why the long wait? When I'm offline I can close it as soon as I'm done.

What does HUD in the sims mean?

I typed "What does HUD mean in gaming?" into Google, and



I hope that helps! 🥰

Thanks!! so UI = HUD

I saw Sims 3 showtime limited edition in a thrift store. Question is, do I still get the limited edition stuff? My guess is no, but I am still hoping.

If you're asking will the code for the LE content will still work, I think it should. People are still using them even today with success afaik.

Are Sims made unselectable able to keep themselves alive if autonomy is set to high? I'm feeling a bit lonely on my year-old one-sim save but opposite to TS2 I'm really not feeling up to looking after several sims and I feel like it fits with the lore of my Sim being pretty detached from everything, so I'm thinking of making her start a family and making them unselectable once it's reasonable. Basically live with them like with a butler, there but non-playable, as cold as this sounds lol.
Also, are unselectable sims affected by story progression in regards to relationships? Like, will they end up in relationships, pregnant etc without my telling so?

@Matryoshkah

In my experience sims left to take care of themselves aren't terribly good at it. If they are anything like the Sorority/Fraternity members or room-mates on the University campus you will see them in the red for much of the time. They always seem to be out of the house, way after the day's classes are over, on the verge of keeling over from utter exhaustion. And I'm pretty sure that some of them would die of starvation if my sim didn't cook group meals and call them to eat. I often cheat and give them all at least level two cooking skill, so that when they do cook for themselves it doesn't always turn out as an inedible, carbonised mass,

So far as personal hygiene goes: most of them walk about trailing noxious green vapours for days on end, even when there are ample wash facilities. And if there are washing machines in the place, I'd advise you to delete them if you don't want to be tripping over piles of festering clothing all the time, because they won't use the things.

So much for 'higher education'. I'm not sure if making your family sims un-selectable would produce the same kind of morons, I've never tried it. But I very much suspect it would.

I just used the Age Freeze Potion Liftetime reward for the first time on my elder since I want her to finish one of the horse riding challenges. It says to age/kill her again, I need her to blow out the candles of the birthday cake. Will she die at her birthday party? Just curious.