love when you find a cc window set that you love, but the glass is bluer than sonic the hedgehog

Two Sims who don't live together are on an unscored outing; it's just the two of them in the group. One of them invites the other one on a date. The date ends successfully as a Dream Date on a lot that has a restaurant. Both Sims have locked wants to dine out (locked during the date). So I send the controllable one of the pair to the podium and select "Be Seated". But the original "group" for the outing was dissolved when the date started, and the date is now over. So they're no longer in a group, so the Sim dines alone.

I wish the game would reinstate the outing group when the date ends.

Hairs are my new pet peeve lol. I cannot manage to make a hair mesh show up for adult, despite linking using the TXMT numbers. I cannot figure out how to add alpha groups, so I have to use a weird workaround. Plus, the only hair colour is black, so I don't have a blond base for Pookleting.

^ You can compare the 3DIR and PropertySet instance numbers (should be identical). In most cases, adult, YA and elder share meshes, so as long as you figure out which ones are the resources for teen and younger, you just link up the rest.

This one may come in handy for adding groups - it's a bit of a workaround since you have to make a new recolor, but if you're stuck with things that don't work, it's by far the easiest way: https://rented-space.tumblr.com/pos...groups-in-simpe

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My biggest pet-peeve right now, at least creation-wise, is awful UVmapping. It sincerely can't be that difficult, can it? This person needed 3 huge UVmaps to put 3 colors with a hint of shadows on a mesh? And so many hidden polys (delete, delete, delete!) - I'm already down over 16k from roughly 45k on a mesh I'm fixing up, and can barely even see a difference from the original (and no, not using my biggest pet-peeve, the Blender Decimator thingy. I hate that thing with a burning passion), and the UVmap is so much neater now. Been a while since I tinkered with a more complicated mesh like this.

This can actually be fixed pretty easily in SimPE!

That was so much easier! Why does noone ever mention the property set!

It is the best method, but some tutorials probably mention you should use the 3DIR and PropertySet that sort together in the list, without actually mentioning you can sort after instance numbers (sometimes they're not sorted, which can be confusing), and some people may get the instance and "instance (high)" numbers confused (sorting after the second one rarely works).

I've seen several people saying that comparing the PropertySet line in the 3DIR (the bottom line) is fine, but you should NOT do that, because it very often has the wrong age for hairs, and is often why things tend to go wrong with the linking.

Checking by materials can also be used, but it's a bit more time consuming since you have to go more forth and back. There are probably still a few things I'd use it for (I briefly used it as a "crutch" between figuring out that the PropertySet line was wonky, and the Instance was the right way to go), but sorting by Instance is faster for linking purposes, and it works for both hairs and accessories (with the MeshOverlay resource), and most likely all other CAS items with meshes, too.

Now I'm confused lol.

I was matching the Instance numbers that go 0x00000001 (1) - 0x00000006 (6) in the Property Set and the 3DIR.

That's the correct ones (for hairs)

Maybe I over-explained too much - I tend to do that

Guests who have to be called to dinner a thousand times before they come. And when they do come, they take food from the counter instead of sitting down at the dinner table where it is waiting for them and then eat it standing in the kitchen.

Two things I do help.

(1) I use Neder's Variable Meal Servings, and set it so that my Sims only make the right amount of food. So there's less chance of there being any food left on the counter.

(2) If the food preparation counter and the table are in the same room then Sims will carry their food towards that table. If there's a vacant seat at that table then they'll use it. If the seats at that table are all occupied, but there's another chair or sofa in the room, they'll sit and eat in that chair, with their plate in their hand. If there's no chair at all available in the room, then they'll stand next to the table and eat, again with their plate in their hand. As long as they're all in the same room, they can join in the conversation round the table. All in all very much what I think most real people would do. The problem of Sims standing and eating alone in the kitchen arises mainly when the kitchen is in a separate room, especially if it's a small "kitchenette" sort of room. (Popular in the 1930s before fridges, freezers, dishwashers and the like were commonplace.) The dodge I find helpful here is not to separate the kitchen from the table with a door or even an archway. If Sims have to go through a door or an archway they perceive that as going into another room. But if instead of a wall with a door or an archway, you just leave out one section of the dividing wall, then the game sees it all as a single room, and Sims carry their food to the table or a chair near it. If you have Veronaville with its original buildings in your game, have a look at the house at 19 Chorus Court. This is the house where Andrew and his mum Gloria have lived ever since I moved them in on my very first day of Simming in November 2012. They've never had any problem carrying food out of the tiny kitchen because it was never separated from the main downstairs living area. Here is an ancient (2012) picture of Gloria and Andrew eating burnt spaghetti together.
There were still dirty plates on the dining table, so they've chosen to sit on the armchairs to eat. They've probably got the TV turned on as well. You can see the one-tile-wide gap in the dividing wall beside the fridge. And beside that tell-tale puddle on the floor.

Now I'm sure I've seen a mod here on MTS that brings more sanity to where Sims choose to eat, but I can't remember who it's by or what it's called. But I remember it let Sims carry food (including snacks) out of the kitchen, and sit down to eat, even when that means going into another room. I thought the mod was by MogHughson, but I've checked all her mods and it's clearly not one of hers. I wonder if it might be by Numenor? I think it was by some quite talented and prolific modder. Maybe someone else can remember and post a link.

That's a great hint.

I missed Neder's Variable Meal Servings mod. Almost 12 years of unnecessary problems.
As for the second part: in my starter houses the kitchen and the table are usually in the same room. Problems arise when my Sims get some money and move to a bigger house where the kitchen is separated from the dining room, often by a corridor. In these cases I either use "TestingCheatsEnabled" to make guests playable for the time needed or utter a few unprintables and leave them alone.

BTW, I was shocked to see that you still have snapshots from 2012. Mine have all been lost some PCs ago.

The fact that the wall decoration wheel/tire can't be height adjusted down to the actual floor... I get that it's supposed to be decoration more than an actual wheel, but still- other things adjust down lower, why doesn't this?

That you have to turn on debug mode in the neighborhood before entering a lot if you want to manipulate skill and personality points. Sheesh.

Don't even get me started on using the simdna cheat.

That the setquartertileplacement cheat only works with certain types of objects and not with others, and there's no logical explanation for that. What do you mean, I can perfectly align my one-tile TV with my two-tile couch, but I can't center a door properly ?

You can quickly reload the lot by pressing CTRL+ALT+L CTRL+Shift+L. You'll lose all progress since the last lot load (or since you last saved the lot).

Because doors (and windows, probably some other things as well) aren't configured to work with quartertile. Just the way things work in TS2 (this wasn't "fixed" until TS4, several years after the initial release. For TS2, nothing much can be done, except downloading doors centered either on one or two tiles, depending on what you need).

There is a logical explanation for various buy items (especially CC ones) - they need the cheat to be enabled in the OBJD. Easy to fix - in the OBJD RAW data tab, change the "sale price" to "35" (if set to Decimal, or "23" if set to Hexadecimal). Doesn't work for all kinds of objects (such as build tools - fences, doors, windows, etc.). but works for most buy objects, and I think it works for trees/plants.

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While we're on pet-peeves with the moving cheats, I'm always annoyed at the Snapobjects/Off for not having some kind of option for still snapping to walls, just with free movement sideways. Just a button you can hold, or something. I mean, sometimes I want stuff to not snap to the walls, but occasionally it would be nice if the items would go down with the walls, or not having to be so careful with the placement (lots of things going through the wall...)

And doors. I wish stuff could snap to doors. So many times I want a sign on the door instead of beside the door, but I don't want to make a recolor of the door. (I did find a CC item that kind of does this, though. Just wish it was there from the get-go).

And ohgoshfreakingWHY! does the game have to be so insistent on signs (or anything, really) in too close proximity to a door (or window) if placed with snapobjects completely ruining the wall cutouts, if you accidentally move the door/window? And then have to move everything away, move the door/window back again, and move everything back into place. So. Many. TIimes! AAARGH!

If you exit the lot and reload it, it should have the door/window cutout appearing correctly again. May or may not be faster than moving stuff away from it like you described, depending on the particular situation, but I've often relied on this with some of my more overlapping lots.

Usually I'm in the middle of something when it happens (usually something for storytelling that takes way too long to set up), so re-entering the lot tends to take longer time than just fixing it. Most of the time I don't tend to place a lot of stuff around doors/windows, but occasionally for storytelling it's needed, and of course it's always small/thin things that are difficult to grab, or the doors/windows happen to have an extra large grabbable area just to be annoying.

That's a thing? COOL! Thank you for the tip!

Sorry, my bad – it's actually CTRL+Shift+L. When I wrote ALT, I was thinking the Windows key combo CTRL+ALT+Del

when I really want a boy or girl baby, and the game keeps giving me the opposite (reloading the save before birth)

My cat walked on my keyboard last night and attempted to start about fifty instances of Sims 2. My poor old computer! I ended up forcing shutdown. I haven't tried to start it today.

The little miscreant is currently asleep in my lap, so I have a very good reason to not get anything housework accomplished right now . . . as well as a few feet of snow as an excuse for outside, but I'm a bit scared that the forced shutdown messed something up.

@Sunbee Good kitty! Years ago when I was MTS moderator my cat sat on the keyboard and removed three items from the Downloads section for not being good enough! I had a lot of explaining to do, as those items were really good...

I wish I could call Sims in the Sim bin if they have a cell phone in their inventory. Just found out I still have to move them into an empty lot if I don't intend to actually play them but want to call them.