Hi guys,

Does anyone else experience the above? For some reason my apartment neighbors stay out for hours and hours to the point where in the winter, they freeze and in the summer, they overheat - both of which result in the picture-in-picture window pop up showing them falling over which is SO annoying (I like picture-in-picture for my current households gameplay, I don't want it for the neighbors).

Also, where the apartment neighbors freeze/overheat, my game freezes and lags while the cold/hot skin overlays are applied to them - again, super annoying and disruptive to my gameplay.

Obviously I know apartments are buggy as hell but I was wondering if it's normal for apartment neighbors to hang around outside so much? I have a mod to make them go to their jobs etc at the times they're supposed to but they still seem to float around the apartment lot for too long... Maybe I just need to use another mod to stop them being out of their apartments for such long periods of time?!

Anyone got any ideas on
a) if this is normal gameplay behaviour
b) if it's a bug
c) how I can stop it!

Thanks in advance as always :D

Do they go back in their apartments at night, or do they stay in the public areas indefinitely? It's not normal, so you either have a glitched apartment (the batbox/ FFS debugger might show some options to fix apartment residencies), or a mod that's causing this.

Yes, apartments are weird like this without a mod. Get apthack, or the SimLogical apartment mod to tell the apartment neighbors that they can satisfy needs in their apartments.

Hmm, what mods do you have? Because you shouldn't need a mod to make them go to their job--they should already do that; it's vanilla game behavior.

And while yes, neighbors tend to hang outside a lot, it shouldn't be 24/7. They should go inside sometimes and in fact, I would think that they'd go to their apartments when their needs get low. Since they are not, I'm wondering if the mod(s) you have is preventing that/telling them to stay outside. Like, if you have the apartment mods from Inge/Simlogical, it's possible that sims aren't going inside because you are not setting up signs telling them that they should. It's been a looong time since I last played with that mod, but I do remember having a similar experience, with sims not going inside when I expected and hanging out more often.

So I would actually recommend backing up your game and neighborhood. Then take out your apartment mods, see what vanilla behavior is and if it's suitable. I know when I did, I found I didn't really need to direct sims' behavior as much as I thought. Neighbors (and dormies!) were for the most part quite fine without my meddling and I just needed a few actual fixes. And then for Roommates I make them controllable with the Pets cheats.

Now, for your lag issue, I had thought there was a mod somewhere for the lag when sims get freeze/sunburn, but for the life of me, I can't remember who by. Anyone else have an idea of what I'm thinking of?

Thanks everyone.

The apartment neighbours do go back into their apartments at 10pm every night but they still seem to loiter outside on the lot between the hours of 07:00 and 22:00 (which is obviously long enough for them to burn/freeze!).

I do have a few apartment 'fixes' mods so maybe it's something to do with one of those...

Becks_ApartmentNannyControllerFix
DiseaseThrowUpToiletApartmentFix
Enabled 'Rent Furnished Apartment'
Midge_ApartmentNPCMoveOutFix
Midge_ApartmentResidents
NyshaMTS_NoTownieApartmentNeighbours

@Phantomknight, Thank you - I didn't realise that there was an anti-lag mod for sunburn/freeze! I'll go and hunt it down :D

Yeah, that just sounds like the game's default apartment resident behavior without either apthack or the SimLogical hack. If you have the NPC apartment residents hack, that's why they don't go to work, probably.