Me too! My brain was hurting! No problem, fun conversation. I think real life doors may be better designed that sims doors!

To be honest, I've always hated the Maxis doors because they're so problematic. What I do in some cases is put two single doors in to keep the door jams to a minimum-especially on community lots.
Sometimes it even works.

I always assumed those bars were these - they are common on fire escapes. To unlock the door quickly, you just push the bar. That activates some kind of latch that unlocks the vertical bar from a hole at the top (and/or) bottom of the door frame. Sometimes they are alarmed, to dissuade people from opening them to let their friends inside (e.g. for a bar where you are supposed to pay or prove your age).

You can't open them from the outside, but you can open them from the inside. They are meant to help avoid situations where a venue may be dark or confusing and impede exit in an emergency.

Do you mean that the bar across was an old fashioned style of handle? That does seem difficult for somebody in a wheelchair.

I imagined they were meant to be these:


Where the bar is fixed, sort of like this:


But th sims never have to push or pull the doors anyway, they open by magic!

No, that's not what I mean. There are some doors that each side only opens in one direction but one will open out and one will open in, and you'll have to push or pull accordingly to get it to open.

That does look similar Simsample! I've never seen that style of door before, at least not commonly. Perhaps they are not usually found in Europe. And, it's interesting that you would assume the protruding rectangle was a push plate. To me, the fact it's protruding would indicate that you need to pull. Here, a door which requires pushing often has a flat plate like this:

Yes I think you're right about the pull handle @simsfreq , although I remember our local Debenhams (England) having doors like the first ones I pictured, but you could open the doors either way. Haven't seen any like that for a while though.

Over time I realize that some things I found a bit uncanny in the Sims 2 are just normal in the US. Like these doors you showed @simsample, they dont look familiar at all. Same with the doors in game having round door knobs instead of lever handles. Knobs look very old-fashioned to me, having lived in France most of my life and now in Germany. I've seen them mostly in old houses that were not renovated (often made of porcelain) and I find them very awkward to turn

Sometimes my game will take ten minutes to load and sometimes it'll take an HOUR and there's really no telling beforehand what it's going to do. Sometimes I'll start it up thinking I have time to play three families and then I barely manage to get through one. >>>>

Monsieur Oshima, I sometimes watch a youtube clip with interiors of an American house or a streetview from a suburb or something and think: "Oh! And I thought that was a sim thing!"

@AndrewGloria this is way late but, just fyi, you don't have to place the mailbox or trashcan next to the road. I mean, the mailbox will need to be accessible by the Mail Carrier, and sims living on the lot need access to the trash can, but other than that, you can pretty much place it anywhere. On some lots I put the trash can by the back door, for instance, and move the mailbox to the porch where I make it invisible and put a deco letterbox on top of it.

Anyway, on that particular lot, just move both of them one tile back so they don't block sims trying to get in and out of cars, etc.

I've found that if i don't let the game close normally (as in on it's own) then the next time it starts up, it will take longer. I assume to do housekeeping from the abnormal stoppage. But if I let it run until it closes normally, then it is quicker to start the next time.

Now before you say, "But I always let the game end normally so that doesn't apply to me", be aware that even if the game has closed out the screen and it appears to be finished, it may not actually be done. I always check Task Manager to see if the Sims2EPx.exe has ended because sometimes, the exe will still be running even after the screen has cleared. Only after the exe has ended, which sometimes might take an additional 5 minutes, will I shut down my computer.

I don't know if that's what might cause your sporadic start times, but it would be something to check.

^ If you shut down your computer between each round of playing, the game usually takes a bit longer to start up. Same with Bodyshop, SimPE, or any other program. If the program generally loads fast, you don't always notice it's a bit slower, though.

It's especially noticable for Bodyshop - it tends to load very slow the first time after a startup, but if you close it down and start it back up again, it loads a whole lot quicker, even if you have a lot of CC.

I have noticed my game also starts up faster while I'm on the same run, usually when I have a lower CC load. (If I have a higher CC load I generally like to restart the computer, because in those cases the reason for restarting my game would usually be a crash or pink-flashing, which often is caused by memory overload, best fixed by emptying any working memory and whatever else the computer has going on with a restart, at least if the game has been running for a while and the problem is big enough. Just restarting the game isn't always enough).

See, I rarely turn off my computer at all, but that's been over a decade now and the problems only started recently. Honestly every device has been acting up lately so who even knows anymore. I certainly didn't download anything fishy but who can say with my grandma in the house.

It's annoying that if you make your sim call in sick and they are not actually sick, the boss says "Keep your vacation time, just get better!" and there is no penalty for missing work.

But if they are actually sick, it says something like "Thanks for letting me know, I'll subtract a vacation day from you". Huh?? Surely it should be the other way around!

Anyway, this reminded me that I had this exact discussion some years ago with BoilingOil on Simbology, and I was sure I remembered a mod that let you choose, but I couldn't find it on his site. I found WHoward's Duvet Days, though. That lets you choose vacation day or unpaid time off, but the description doesn't seem to mention whether it changes the code called if a sim is actually sick.

I noticed that too!

I remember a few years ago marka93 saying the same. I thought he must have got it the wrong way round, and posted to say so. No, he assured me, it was indeed the way he had said: if you just fancied a day off and called in sick, the boss believed you and gave you the day off on full pay; if on the other hand, you're barely able to get out of bed to get to the 'phone, the boss doesn't believe you, and you lose a vacation day.

I wonder whether this is just a mistake by Maxis, or whether somebody there put this in because they thought it was funny. Remember that The Sims 2 was programmed by people who in the final analysis were EA employees. Maybe it just reflects their experience of what EA is like as an employer!

That could be it!

LOL I had never thought of that, but maybe it is! I did wonder if it was based on American norms instead of British/European norms? It's not normal to get paid for sick days in the US perhaps?

It always seemed like a mistake to me, if I have vacation time then I just don't bother to call in sick. I found WHoward's old thread from when he must have been creating the mod and Chris Hatch replied to say if you're really sick, you don't need to phone in as the game will automatically not expect you at work. I don't know if this is what happens or not, but I know that you lose a vacation day even if sick, and I'm pretty sure you get the "the higher ups won't be impressed..." message if you miss a day while sick and don't phone in. If you phone in but have no vacation days, you obviously don't lose any, I can't remember if you get paid.

There is a good point for not using those vacation days-there is now a hack that allows you to cash them all out at once, and it comes in handy as extra cash for the household.

Just like I did when I retired-I had a lot of PTO saved up and my company paid it all in one check-a nice thank you from them as I didn't have the benefit of a 401K all of the time I worked there.

The gender toilets. I don't get why single occupancy toilets have to be gendered. We don't usually have 2 at home. While doing the business, I want privacy equally regardless of the other gender. In the game, I tend to forget which gender I am at the moment. (Lol.) And the symbol for male has the triangle that looks like a woman's skirt found inside the other symbol.

They doors cause a hurdle obstacle while modding, when I need to search for a bathroom, or deal with NPCs passing the wrong gender door.

The privacy requirement made using washrooms a nightmare when my sims were out at a community lot and even at home with only one washroom.I hacked it out so there's no washroom privacy and naked amitters are hacked out in my game so nobody reacts to a sim tkaing a bath out in the open on their lot.Haing a nakid reaction was once one of my biggest peeves and would've been in my pleasantview as that reaction would be out of place in the 17th century.

For the calling in sick thing--I always assumed it's random. Sometimes when my sim is sick the boss believes them and they get the day, but sometimes not. And yeah, if you have a vacation day, you don't need to call, you can just stay home and the game will deduct a day. I don't think the game has a separate sick day and vacation day bank--they're the same. (And yes, this can be a common thing in the US; it's quite annoying as we get little time off as it is. When your employer pools them, you end up getting less time off than you would have if they were separate and have to kinda hoard your days in case you're sick, or a family member is sick.)

As for the gendered toilets, I'm not understanding this at all. @jonasn the toilets themselves aren't gendered. Are you using them with the gendered floor tile or door? Because you don't need to do either of those things--if you use a regular door or tile, any sim can use the bathroom. I sometimes do this on my community lots and in dorms and have no issues. Sims can wash their hands while someone else is in the stall and there's no privacy complaint. I mean, it's possible I have a mod that I don't realize affecting this issue, but I really don't think so.

ETA: jonasn, I read over your post again, and I don't think it's a gender thing you are experiencing--it's a privacy thing. With single-use toilets, and showers/tubs sims will shoo any sim trying to use the bathroom while they are using it. To get around that, yeah, you can use the toilet stall and community shower or you can install a no privacy mod. There are several of those around.

I know I can put down a normal door instead, and I try to fit regular toilets instead of stalls if I can make the space. But until I get around to rebuilding a community lot, my sims have to deal with what is there already. I want my rooms to look decent, instead of simply having the doors swapped, but still having 2 blocks of stalls that are now the same.

On community lots where there is eating, NPCs have no problems passing the wrong door to get to the closest sink to wash dishes on a regular basis. And the people inside aren't freaked out by them. This is another task for building, to fit a sink or a dishwasher near the bar.

I searched the web on this topic and apparently gendered bathrooms in real life have been a topic of dicussion too. Apparently they are more common in America. I've seen single toilets for everyone in smaller facilities, like a doctor's office.

There is a recolour for the basic interior door that has a unisex/gender neutral symbol on the toilet door. You could just use these and give your sims gender free facilities.

I tend to try and place two different-gender toilets in for the sake of reflecting realism, but if the lot is too small then I just place one room with cubicles and a non-gender-specific door, they use it just fine.

The tile doesn't have any effect, it's just visual, to help you see from above which room is which. Sometimes I use pink/blue tile on the floor to help me see without having to zoom in and scrutinise the symbol on the door.