Werewolves are virtually indestructible at night. I wanted to see whether 74-day-old Candice's ghost would be normal or werewolf, so the night before her likely death I decided to, um, move her along. After she changed she ate 2 bowls of spoiled clam chowder. Not so much as a burp. As her aspiration meter was low green, I sent her to drink some Elixir of Life. Her life bar moved back 3 days anyway. I made her "3 days older" with the SimBlender. Nothing, even after I got her up to 86 days old. At that point I probably should have used the Tombstone to dispatch Candice, but her stubborn determination to live another day bought her at least one more rotation. Then I may drop a satellite on Candice, just to see if it bounces off of her.

She had the fear of losing her lover which was locked. As soon as he died, I got the pop up.

So perhaps my sims had some tiny fear happen, because nothing large like that happened.

1. I was playing Meadow Creek and had a family at the community center lot. After a few sim-hours, the wicked witch arrived. She summoned up her thunderstorm and then when she tried to summon her cat, I saw the following message. I've never seen this one before. I was playing the unusually large (for my game) Military Friends family, which has 10 sims in it, and there were several non-playables on the lot at the time too. Maybe that had something to do with it.

2. The toddlers at the Blair house were so obsessed with the dollhouse that they ignored fresh milk bottles dropped right in front of them to play with it even though their hunger bars were turning red. The dollhouse went into Daddy's inventory until after they age up.

3. You may wonder how the Blair tots got to starvation level in the first place. Why didn't I feed them? There was a headmaster on the lot and there was NO option to get baby bottles out of the fridge until after the headmaster scenario had ended (I tried with all three available family members). I haven't tested to see whether this might be the result of a mod, but I will try to remember to feed all babies/toddlers before the headmaster arrives on my lot next time.

Watching a few old videos and checking the dates of them, I discovered that my family actually wasn't funded in 2009 as I thought, but in 2008. I can't believe I was only thirteen when I created its funder, that's like a lifetime ago. x3

As long as they begin within 10 squares of the painted corner crossing they will use it to cross, no matter where on the other side you send them to. 11+ and they will just Jaywalk straight across the road.

I wonder if it is affected by the flooring (i.e. the crossing) rather than the location, if so then a straight roaded lot with the crossing would have the crossing being used. I doubt that though in that it appears to be corner road behavior. Time for some more investigations

Tonight i found out that some Sim children will leave the shower running when they're done.

I was playing the Curious family in Uber-Megahood. Lazlo went on a date with Crystal Vu, but she always rejected his smooch and make out. Crystal had the want to become Lazlo's lover, but even after Lazlo's relationship to her is 100/100, she still wasn't his lover. I was wondering if their relationship doesn't reciprocate, so I moved her in. Her relationship is 100/100, but she didn't even have a crush on him, even after flirting and kissing. She also didn't have to propose interaction while Lazlo did. It was so strange, so I used SimPE to tick the lover flag between them. It turned out that somehow the family flag was also ticked between them. Was it why she never fell in love with him in the first place? So weird.


It's the flooring. Sims won't even try to cross the "parking lot" area in a community lot if it uses the road flooring. They will try to walk around it.

Not today, but some time ago, I noticed that when a sim changes a toddler into pajamas, you can hear the sound of a diaper hitting the floor. Apparently toddler changing is all one sound.
Also, today, I found that a cashier sim doesn't gain social from cashiering, which I find odd and somewhat annoying.

That adults can make and sell lemonade. I thought only kids could do that

I can see that, I worked retail once and not every customer is pleasant to deal with. But I'm really introverted so too much socializing is really draining for me :D

I was thinking since it's a small neighborhood, he might know people and end up chatting with them while he rings up their items.

tested the deleteallcharacters cheat within AnyGameStarter then opened those neighborhoods in SimPE. the cheat affects just neighborhood-specific characters; their character files and their Sim Descriptions. universal characters, Sim DNA, Sim Wants & Fears; those remain.

While visiting the cemetary, Jémina Granville-Carver's ghost was cleaning puddles.

Neat Sim dead

The want to use a counterfeit machine rolled by Felipe London while at uni. He still had it when he came back to the main hood.
And now I'm wondering about adding this mod in my game: http://hideki.modthesims.info/download.php?t=179370
I wanted him to be a criminal, then decided against it and now I'm lost.

A student will roll all college related wants without rolling for a major.

A student may roll a fear for a specific major, but never roll *any* college related wants at all, too. It can depend on skills, on personality, on aspiration, or even on mood.
Sometimes they're very specific and tell you *exactly* what they expect during their time in college. Other times you have to guess, make stuff up, and make choice *for* them.

That is one of the reasons I like Uni so much - students do not roll the same wants all the time

Olive Petchy invited Harry Love, and Influenced him to garden. He watered all her money trees, so it was great.

I'm trying to figure out what she wants to do.


I won't say I like Uni but some sims find their SO there. Using a 48-hours per semester mod make it more bearable.

ETA: it seems that when playables are not controllable, they can fill their uni bar like the dormies.

Well, good luck, Essa. I hope she'll help you do that. Sims can be darned stubborn

48-hours per semester will not be nearly enough time for everything my students have to do while there And after each semester, there will be a break for them - some will go on vacation with the family, some will throw huge parties and some will go on a group outing.

How do you play that break? Do you pause the school/semester timer?

All you have to do is take them off campus for it.

George McCarthy has always been a staple sim in my hoods, if there was a cash register, there was George. This time around, I hadn't seen him cashiering anywhere. Yesterday, while on a community lot, there he was passing by on his way to work. Now I'll have to check all the community lots with a register and see if he's there. I keep thinking I should send him to College, but then someone else would take over his job and it wouldn't be the same.

George grows up well! And, when you send him to college, you will find that he is almost fully skilled - he needs like 4 creativity or mechanical points (Hell, I will miss townies in my new hood).

I discovered that you can put several sims in front of the same mirror. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Weird, but, seems like you never need more than 2 mirrors in the same household. ^^

With eight sims talking to themselves, that must be quite a noisy place, over there.

What happens if they all start to practice romance?

Indeed it is! At this point they're not practicing speech, they're practicing shouting. o.O


It seemed to be more problematic; took a few more tries before they could stand at the same mirror. But I succeeded to put two sims there at least. :P

Btw, for some reason I've never used this action... or maybe like, once or twice. It just skips my mind. But it's quieter so it may be a good idea now so I don't lose my mind over the shouting.

It seems George McCarthy may be a prodigy. He got his college stuff done and wanted a skill in something or other, so he sat down with the books. After about 3 or 4 points, I wasn't paying much attention, there were 3 pop ups at once, he got a skill point, something else and his LTW. I forgot to see what his was, but he had almost all skill points except a few and I have a mod for any aspiration for all. It seemed like 2 days had passed and suddenly it was almost time for his exam. It's hard to tell with no days listed. He goes to the exam, a bit late since the message didn't show for him to leave, lucky for him I happened to check the time. He came back with high everything and shortly after I noticed he was now a sophmore. No idea how he pulled that off after just one final exam. Awhile later he's talking to one of the other guys and I heard the LTW sound and hadn't checked what his reroll was, it wasn't him though, it was the guy he talked to and had the BF LTW. He also got into the Secret Society. George has me all confused now. (:

Forgot to mention, he no sooner rolled up in a taxi, with a cow in the back seat, gets his big moment in a movie, and when it ended the school bus pulls up.

I think Pidel's mirror has a lot of space around it, some standing at the back too

I played George several times over the years, and have always enjoyed playing him Eventually I just may put all the townies back!

I discovered why the population of vacationers appeared to be decreasing in my main hood. I had been playing them as household families not knowing which pool of townies they originated from. And I discover that one particular "family" is missing a member. Brother father and grandmother all gone leaving them all alone on vacation, I wonder what the child has been doing since.

48 hours is fine for me. They have time for writing term papers, research and some outings if they want to.
Unfortunately my sims don't socialize much due to them being rather shy. Fortunately they often succeed in finding a mate.
One day I'll try Ya in my main hood.


Well she's sporty and I see her following her dad's steps in sports or a custom basketball career but she's also outdoorsy and I'd like her to take her mother's flowers shop over. I think she can do both. Career first and running the business later.

Enough time for me as well since they mostly have the needed skills, if they didn't they wouldn't be there. I only play to wants so some only socialize for those 48 hours and go to class.

Mine often have the required skills and when they don't, I hope they roll a want for them or autonomously get them.
I was expecting two of my family sims to fail. Both passed even if one of them went on probation once.

Mine also have most of the required skills when they get there. All skilling has to be done on community lots, though, and they must write their thing in the library, do their assignments in the library, and then they have to spend time on making friends and on hobbies (especially those who will start businesses right after uni). I also do not stay at Uni until they are done, I go to and from their families and back, and there are tons of family reunions. I play to wants, and students often roll different ones every day, so it is keeping me busy to keep up. (When I started, I used fancy dorms with everything in - now they have a very basic dorm and basically just sleep and sometimes eat there - they don't even have a cook these days, but there are cafeterias on my community lots in the Uni hood). They also have to earn money doing all the things they can earn money with.

Normally my sims don't use hat hair, but yesterday I created an AM using a hat with a suit. As I chose the rest of his outfits, his hair changed and afterward I had to reset each category. In doing so, I noticed that all the hair choices do not show up for each outfit type, not counting hat hair. He could wear the hat hair with everyday, formal but not outer wear, which is kinda dumb, wearing a hat indoors is usually a no-no, but he can't use it outdoors while wearing winter wear. What planet was Maxis creators from?!? (:

I think I'd use more hats if there were an accessory rather than a hair. I really hate when the hair itself changes length and style when it's 'off'.

I once wanted a bald guy, but I wanted him to wear a hat sometimes. Nope, he had hair when his hat was one and miraculously was bald when it was off (such as to swim). Seriously annoyin :/

On the "Change Appearance" dialog in the mirror - if you click "Set Hair for All" (the top icon) so that all the other categories are grayed out, it should set the all the hairs to match the everyday one - if it's a hat, then the outerwear hat should be the same as the everyday one. If you click "Set Hair for All" to get all the other categories to light up, you've told the game that you want to set each hair manually. That's why they appear to change - the game starts back at the beginning of the bin for each category to let you choose which hair you want for that category.

In the test account on this computer (no CC, minimal mods) there are some hats missing from the formalwear category, but all of them appear to be available as outerwear. I'm pretty sure it works this way in my regular game too. Which hat were you trying to use?

This one . . .


The hat was pretty useless anyway when a hail storm pummeled him to death.

Well, I seem to have solved one mystery. I've mentioned before that I have several houses where a sim calls every evening to talk to someone who has either died or moved out, and just for once I managed to get that someone on site to take the call.

This was in Grott Mansions, the house I built for Operation Grott - Get Rid Of The Townies. I made the core townies playable, one by one, by inviting them into Grott Mansions, where they would live out their lives, have a child, and die, at which point I would move in another one. It's a bit redundant now, since after getting notownieregen I made all the townies/downtownies playable and scattered through various subhoods.

Anyway, every evening, Grott Mansions gets a phone call from the younger Ivy Copur (now an adult in a house of her own) asking to speak to Ivor Copur (son of the elder Ivy, born in Grott Mansions but he moved out as soon as he became an adult). One resident of Grott Mansions is the Diva, who is still friends with Ivor, so I had her invite Ivor to pop round one afternoon, made him selectable with testingcheats and waited for the phone to ring. Sure enough, Ivy rang. Ivor answered. And it was just a case of "Hi Ivor, my friend so-and-so had a really great time with you the other day, do you want to go on an outing in Downtown?"

Which actually translates as "Someone I'm probably no longer friends with had a great time with you ages ago, look back far enough in your Memories panel and you'll find a Dream Date icon, that was probably it, and I've been ringing up every night ever since to ask you on an outing you're not remotely interested in having."

So that now explains why every evening High Willows gets a phone call from the Diva who wants to talk to Sebastian Goodbody, who's been dead for something close on 100 sim-days, long before I made the Diva a playable sim. She wants to ask this long-dead guy out for an outing because he dated some other townie who's also probably long dead unless it was Jan Tellerman who hasn't quite snuffed it yet (though she won't be around for that much longer).

I can't wait for the Diva to die. Typically she seems to be going for the full 30 sim-days as an elder so High Willows is going to get those evening phone calls for a good while yet.

Tank Grunt, a graduate, used to call University every night, at the same time, wanting to talk to Johnny, who had also graduated. He was hanging out with Johnny and saw him all the time, while they even talked on the phone back home, after graduation. There was another case where Johnny adopted a boy who was always around community lots and the school bus. Forgot his name, but he had that bowl cut hair style. Once he was adopted the phone calls started for him every night, mainly from the female with the scarf, the diva maybe? It was so annoying as his relations panel was loaded with a ton of townies, some of whom called too. Apparently that's where he lived. This was all pre-UC.

I was playing Daniella Granville-Carver's household. She just gave birth to twins girls and her eldest daughter turned into a child.
Daniella invited her mother and the family members who wanted to come over.
I notice an animation from Claudia, Daniella's niece that I've never seen before:


See the pointy finger and her mischievous expression... she had "shock" in her interaction queue. Be aware that I play in French so the translation may not be accurate.
And then, this happened:


Mali get paralyzed.

Claudia wanted to do the same to her cousin Davina but didn't succeed.
Claudia is 3 points nice BTW.

Ahh, static shock prank? I've only had one child do this to another. Lately my kids are spamming wants to torment some one. Another one of those things I've never seen until it was mentioned here earlier then happens in my game.

Unsavory Charlatan has fitness skills. Don't ask

Well, my Unsavory Charlatan has "Earn 100,000 simoleons" LTW. Looked with simPE.

Today I learned that taking screenshots for a story is grueling work. I spent a solid hour trying to take *one* photo. This is going to be fuuuuuun...

Screenshots for clothes you've made are even worse.

It seems that I missed the beginning of the animation: https://youtu.be/icMaJ0D6zY0 and now I'm wondering if it works with CC rugs.
Kids in my game always want to torment some one. I let them if they want to.

Sims can roll wants to read someone to sleep. I just had a young adult living in a dorm roll that want. I think he was just missing younger family members as he is really close to his family and is very nice, but the image of him reading to one of the dormies (like the guy in the cowboy hat that he barely knows) struck me as odd - both funny and creepy.

Lol, maybe that dormie is dyslexic and he is trying to help him?

It's from all those fisticuffs he gets into. If he'd stop trying to rip off my ten-body-point sims, he wouldn't get beat up so often!

Ghost sims remember family members even if they haven't visited the cemetery

I don't get why ghosts get angry at the controlled sim, when they weren't there when the sim died.

Sometimes a ghost is angry because the controlled sim sold his/her bed. it happened to me many times, so now I usually keep the bed I would like to get rid of in the inventory and never sell it.
p.s. where did you find the thombstone decorations?

I discovered that some of my sims were immune to disease. I don't know how since I only gave immunity to the sim playing the exterminator thanks to simmanipulator.

The controlled sim I mentioned is a visitor, or group of visitors, to the cemetery and wasn't around when these sims died. Their anger seems more directed at the sim who initiated the lot visit. They don't focus only at that sim as the scares are random. The decorations are random cc from the buy catalog. Things that represent their family, like child drawings or a teddy bear. The satillite is what killed one of them.

It can rain on the Neighbourhood screen! I just launched the game and its RAINING in Widespot! Amazing!

@kidhedera The neighbourhood weather will be set to whatever weather was on your last active lot. So if you play a lot where it is snowing, it will be snowing in the neighbourhood too.

Wow..better late than never..with you guys last posts, I now discover another good reason to play sims 2 in rotation...just to make sense!. That itself, should be a goodenough reason. lol

Two small things: that adults can join their kids in playing with the dollhouse, and that teenagers relaxing on a swing will talk to another person swinging/relaxing, and turn so they face them. I totally adore both of these interactions

I discovered that kids can learn Charisma when talking to their pet birds. The mom taught the bird to talk (learning charisma in the process) and then the daughter talked to the bird and learned charisma as well.

If you watch SBN channel, one of the clips is a house fire. You can see in the clip that a firefighter was lying on the ground and crying like a baby, literally. Remember Knut Futa? Aparently EA loved to break their own game while making video clips, in addition to populating a neighborhood and creating stories.

I read the introduction text for Pleasantview and discovered it ended with "And will Mortimer ever be normal again?". It must have been me and/or my older sister adding that many, many years ago, when we had Mortimer "go crazy" over Bella's disappearance, which he expressed by painting his face and growing a large beard.

If you click CTRL+o, you'll get a hidden graphics control panel. It's like a graphics/performance settings panel, just with a bit more in-depth settings, including toggling bump mapping, GUOB and other settings that are normally toggled via codes.



If you hit CTRL+u, you get a UI browser/modifier. Using it, I was able to move certain buttons around, and hide certain strings (hide game version in upper right corner, switch order of video capture, camera capture and ceiling visibility buttons, bring zoom in and zoom out buttons closer together, remove the top down and 45° angle view buttons, move undo and redo buttons a bit further right).





I'm fairly certain this can only be accessed in debug mode.

ETA: I saved and restarted the game, but the modifications to the UI didn't stick; I think this is mainly the reason to my having all game files locked for writing.

Also, as simsample below says, the game should be booted into debug mode; to do so, follow the steps 1-5 found here.

I always run in debug mode (haven't turned it off in years), but I can't get those dialogs to show in my game. Do you use the Allmenus cheat?

@RoxEllen1965 I think you need to have your game booted in debug mode, as you would to use the allmenus cheat.

If you don't have enough money to pay the Nanny after one comes home, she'll get very angry and take things as compensation.
Except, she stole the baby's crib.

One of my nannies stole a toilet of all things!

It is. I have the testingcheats enabled from my userstartup.cheat file. It's the first command there and has been for years. I can't remember the last time I turned it off.

It's not a big deal. I don't know if I would ever use any of that stuff. I was just curious to see it and poke at it for myself.

My game ALWAYS boots in Debug mode and yet, I do NOT get these windows when I press CTRL-o or CTRL-u. Just nothing happens.



Yeah, that's a known thing... Crappers are the most highly prized possessions among Nannies. :P

It's not just nannies who do that. Be sure you have enough money to pay all of your service sims (gardeners, maids, butlers, bartenders, repair people, etc.), or you will find some of your sims' possessions going missing. I seem to remember having difficulty hiring another maid for awhile after that happened (I guess word got around), but it was such a long time ago that I don't remember the details. My sims aren't allowed to hire servants anymore unless they are well able to afford them!

@RoxEllen1965 @BoilingOil No, I mean that your game has to have debugmode enabled at boot time, not after boot as your userstartup.cheat file will do. You need to modify your globalprops file to do that, like this:
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_guide:Allmenus_cheat

Terry Granville-Carver was invited to an outing downtown.
When he asked to be seated, the host said that there was no places available or booked by another group.

I do not know if this can be the cause of your problem, but I read that putting a center piece on the table can cause issues to waiters while they serve food.
And also.. can tables at restaurant be booked?

While very amusing to see the logic, I'm guessing it's just going to grab the item that's closest in sell price to the amount you owe the service NPC. If that happens to be the crib, or a toilet, then that's what they'll take.

I have center pieces on tables in my playable restaurants and never had issues. I barely play unowned restaurants as my sims don't often go downtown.

Loose translation of the pop-up I got:

Bit late to the party on this one, but this happened when my Nervous Specter (originally named Nervous Subject by Maxis, but he'd reconciled with his birth mom Olive before her death) came home from work only to find that Olive had died (electrocuted by unlucky ROS roll) while he was gone.

I'd only ever seen Nervous roll the "read to sleep" want once before. Now it showed up again, along with the want to talk to a family member. It seemed particularly poignant in context; Nervous has no other family. I interpreted it as he wished he could have been there when she passed.

@Essa
I don't know if this can be the cause, but with (some? all? I don't know) center pieces, tables can become useless, since no Sim can use it anymore. There's a fix for that: http://www.modthesims.info/d/287228

@TychoH
Thanks for the link but I already have that mod. ;-)

That happens on hotels where the game still considers people to be seated, sounds like the same thing is happening. I would go in build and buy mode and replace all the chairs.

Oh! If that's the problem, the batbox has an option to fix "Stuck Diners," under either Nuke or Fix. Only appears when it sees any.

(I started placing a batbox at every one of my hotels; they really accumulate a lot of crud with use. Should have included a better algorithm for cleaning those, Maxis.)

Would love to know if that would solve Essa's problem, though unless the community lot had been played for a while after loading, it seems less likely that it could have developed.

Thank you very much, Simsample! I wasn't aware of THAT distinction. I'm gonna try this interesting stuff

FYI, that tissue box was already centerpiece-enabled by default since it came with NL and lots of premade diners had that since the beginning.

I was thinking that the outing members are too many, and the host can only seat a group on 2 tables at most. Since there are only 6 chairs available, maybe the group members are more than that?

Please, do report back whether the changes stick (if your game files are unlocked for writing).

I had no idea sims get a new lifetime wish after achieving one, as today was the first time one of my sims fulfilled theirs.

They do, but I've never tried to fulfill the new wish. Has anyone? and what happens then?

They go permaplat again if they weren't still permaplat, or else they...er, stay permaplat. They get the new aspiration points. And then they roll yet another LTW. That's our sims...they always want more.

If you play with aging off and they will get top career and roll for another and another... then it will be like in Sims 1

Oh okay, so it is something do to with the Allmenus cheat. I've been waffling for awhile over whether I want to go to the trouble to do that. It looks like it could be quite useful, especially the money cheat (familyfunds doesn't always cooperate in my game). I'll have to set aside some time on a weekend to look into getting that set up on my computer.

A couple of years ago, I was either trying to open the cheat console or absent-mindedly trying to save my game from the keyboard when I accidentally hit CTRL+SHIFT+S and got this framerate readout that's almost too small to see. (Hit CTRL+SHIFT+S again to turn it off) I don't know whether this is actually much use to anybody.

Well, I cannot remember why this was not aknowldged by me already..and I remember having discussing this on here a few years ago, so add to my shame.
When a sim is performing for tips in an household, other sims from that same lot, living there can give tips too. This looks so silly at first, because they all share the same family funds.
BUT!...a few minutes ago, I remembered to pay close attention to what would then happen with the funds, as tips was givien...
Family funds didn't budge when she gave the 100$ in the jar...but when Roman was done playing piano and took the jar, 100$ was actually added to the family funds!
Woah...this is better than I thought.

Let them tip autonomously, you will get money. If you direct them to tip money will be taken from funds.

And if you have some desperate fortune sim with unfulfillable wants who has a make money want, tips from their own household funds will fulfill that want.

RoxEllen1965, I don't know if the frame rate readout thing is helpful, but I find it really annoying when I do that as I never know what to re-click to get it off.

More of a rediscovery but I forgot how many really adorable interactions there are in sims 2, especially with toddlers and kids! Looked away from the game for a few seconds and looked back to see a child playing peek-a-boo with his toddler brother and it was so freaking cute! And you can swing your kids around or have them stand on your feet to dance.

I basically never realised how much I missed all the little things in sims 2 till I started playing again!

Yes, I far prefer it to Sims 3. Never have tried Sims 4, but I kind of don't see any need to; I'm quite happy with 2!

Here's what I discovered today: at least one of the beds included in Michelle's new top-bunk versions of Maxis single beds works with TwoJeff's Smart Beds! Someone was asking about that on her first download thread in the series, and I remembered it was afternoon for my Newson family and I'd wanted to rearrange their bedrooms anyway, so I had at it.

I love it when cool new things for the game are compatible with cool older things.

Editing to add an unrelated blog post I stumbled across. That's a neat little discovery about shy sims.

The only time I've ever seen the stuck diners on batbox is when there is an urn/stone on the lot. I always thought it referred to ghosts. Even at a cemetery it shows up on batbox and there are no dining tables with chairs there.

Yeah, I *love* the way shy sims flirt. I also love how they dance solo... very timid and reserved, sometimes hardly moving because it would be too embarrassing if anyone noticed. So sweet.

You know, I do find myself with that option regularly at the owned cemetery in my megahood. But...it has two poker tables on the lawn, and sims are always getting up from those because some ghost or another is about to scare them, so I figured that's why. Incidentally, that cemetery batbox often also gives me the option to Fix Buggy Paintings, which I always do.

However, I have also had the Stuck Diners option several times in my hotels with restaurants, now that they all have batboxes too, and in some regular residences. I do not leave urnstones on residential lots (I summon the cemetery owner and put them in her inventory the next time it is day, or immediately if it is daylight), and I sure hope there are not urnstones I do not know about on my hotel lots; AFAIK, no one has died in the latter. So I guess in my game, it's not exclusive to cemeteries. I've been wondering if it just pertains to situations where sims get interrupted before the chair they were sitting in has completely let them go, codewise.

Editing to add: @BoilingOil, it so is! Saw Nervous Specter do it most recently---instant squee.