Probably a hint that the business won't work, so party instead!

Sims who play hooky from school won't lose a grade if they're off-lot thanks to Community Time Project.

I just found two things I hadn't seen before. Tell me if either came from a mod, though I don't think they did, because I haven't seen these things in any mod description.

When a parent and child are sitting on the same sofa, they get a "snuggle" option, which results in parent and child snuggling together on the sofa, which is very cute.

When a sim Views the cheap alien face among the stars poster (don't remember the name), they gain science enthusiasm. I had my sim viewing the various posters in his room one after the other when science enthusiasm popped up, and kind of went, wait a minute what the hell was that and had to send my sim back to view the alien again to make sure of what I had seen, LOL

I was just reading back through the thread when I saw this and what a coincidence. That design is basically a shotgun shack, and I just built a row of them as skid row apartments!

The AI's dimensions are seriously weird, but yeah, that's pretty much a shotgun house, which were fairly common in the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century.

Not quite today, but only a couple of days ago. I discovered that the main staircase in the Goth mansion, the one from the ground floor to the second floor (first to second floor in American parlance?) is an ordinary staircase, rather than a modular one. Which means only one Sim can use it at a time. Now, with all the living rooms on the ground floor, and all the bedrooms and most of the bathrooms on the first floor, that staircase is bound to be a high traffic area, and, if only one Sim can use it at a time, is bound to become a bottleneck, especially at times like morning, when they're all trying to get downstairs for breakfast, and most of them are in a hurry, because they've got to go to work or school. Well, I changed to a similar looking modular staircase.

I really don't understand why "ordinary" straight staircases are in the game at all; modular staircases are so much more flexible and useful. The only thing I can think of in favour of ordinary staircases is that they are easier for absolute newbies to place. Were all staircases like that in Sims 1?

The first thing I do when I open a fresh version of that house is replace that staircase. The staircase in the Pleasant house is the same.

The "Snuggle on sofa" option is ingame, not a mod. It's adorable!

Yes, all staircases were like that in Sims 1. There weren't any deck stairs either. And you could click on the staircase and select the option "Go upstairs/downstairs".

One issue with modular stairs is that they don't work properly in apartments; they don't link the floors properly in the way that an object staircase does, so the game thinks that everything linked by a modular staircase only to the floor where the front door is, is part of the communal area. Sims can still use items in that area, but you can't move or place furniture there, it's annoying.

I think object staircases can look much grander, too, the banisters in particular can be more ornate. And you can make them look more rustic without as much effort - there are recolours which achieve a rustic look with modular stairs (gorgeous example here: https://modthesims.info/d/560593/pr...-town-quot.html) but they are really fiddly to use.

Mansions and Gardens added some lovely mansion type staircases too, with flares. And a nice animation for child sims to have the ability to slide down the banisters, only on object staircases. They also added an annoying thing though where you can no longer place stairs directly next to a wall without using moveobjects on Why they couldn't have enabled that ONLY for the fancy mansion stairs, I have no idea!

I have just found this which solves my "function over form" dilemma https://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=7538

The Sims 1 staircases were actually a lot worse. In Sims 1 only one Sim could use the stairs at a time...no matter whether they were going up or down. So when one Sim was going up the stairs, another could not go down those stairs at the same time. It led to many people including multiple staircases in houses.

In Sims 2 the object stairs at least allow one Sim to go up the stairs and one to go down the stairs at the same time, so that was already a marked improvement. The modular ones allow more.

There's a fix for regular staircases: https://modthesims.info/d/654748/stair-mods.html
Works great!

Oh yes!! I THOUGHT I had seen that but I forgot where. Of course it would be Simler90

The Macrotastics action for paying bills is "Render Unto Caesar."

Overall I prefer modular stairs. But modular stairs have a disadvantage. If you place two monolithic staircases next to one another, they will both be used. But if two modular stairs exist, people will try to use the same one even if it is occupied. If one person is running and another is walking, they will bump into each other. Modular stairs also issue a push to walk away to any person standing on the opposite end (because he just climbed the stair). This happens on testing the portal while the walker is still not near. If a stair is blocked by someone standing there, it is ignored. This causes a group of people walking together to stop one another and often fail to reach the destination. If their walking is at priority 70 or so, the push will be issued at maximum priority and interrupt the walk. For example, in the Bernard's Botanical Dining.

I have made a mod that improves on this.

Unfortunately the straight stair mod has dependencies on Apartments or Mansion functions because the author tried to accomodate spiral staircases.