Has anyone succeeded in getting a restaurant to level 10? Or even 5? I could only get it to level 3 then I was fed up with all the bugs... too much can go wrong.

Yes, I've gotten restaurants to Level 10 before. I recommend that all staff be from the same household--a family restaurant, basically.

I have, at least three of my restaurants have ended up at level ten. They haven't all been financial success stories, but two of them paid very well in the end too. I suppose a lot can go wrong and does go wrong and I end up having to change things and fix things, but it's hard to think of anything off hand.

Hmm... let see, I let the sims I play, both chef and server/host (I tend to have one sim fill both positions to cut wage costs unless there are free family members), really suck up to the customers. Good relationship scores from the start means it's easier to repair a lost star with a joke about ladybugs and fried eggs or a game of kicky bag, so I'd say I actually focus more on those relationships than on actually serving customers. Lessens the risk of dropped food or no food on plate as well. But I have come to think of the latter as something I'll just have to accept and when that happens - tell the customer a joke, admire them, play kicky bag. They will forgive and forget and maybe even throw a star at us.

Sometimes, when something's gone wrong with a food serving (dropped food, no food on the plate, customer ran off to watch a tree burn), that particular table seems to be cursed and I need to lift the spell by forcing errors on both the table itself and all the chairs. I have the batbox, and I use that too, but in this situation I sometimes have to do that manual force error before customers can dine succesfully at that particular table again.

I keep the ownable restaurants pretty small and there is never a wall between the kitchen and the dining part. May look a bit sloppy, but it runs so much smoother that way. And I don't mind that customers distract the chef, but I do make sure there is always one serving tray loaded on the bench before I let the chef socialise.

Because my playables can't socialise all the time and they do actually have to get their jobs done, I always make sure there is more than one point of distraction for waiting sims. A pinball machine in the lobby, a hot tub outside, a karaoke room upstairs. Just as long as the sims I don't have time to serve at the moment are distracted with something else. But before they are allowed ot get distracted I make sure they are greeted, so they can be called over when we're ready to serve them.

@Anmal ! I've never tried an owned restaurant yet, but I think you've inspired me to have a go.

Meanwhile I seem to be having problems with my oldest unowned restaurant -- the poolside restaurant at Veronaville's Swim Centre. I built it nearly ten years ago, a few weeks before I added a Downtown to Veronaville. As a result the game had to generate three NPCs to staff it, and the same three generated staff seem to have been working there ever since: Craig Livingston the Host, Remington Hurt the waiter, and Phil Lawson the Chef. They've been working the restaurant successfully for years. But in the last few weeks they seem to have become unreliable. They all turn up. (Well I often often have to Force Error on the restaurant stove to make Phil appear, but that's normal for restaurant chefs.) But they simply don't run the restaurant. Craig doesn't greet other Sims, and as a result Remington never goes to take their orders. So my Sims don't get any food in the restaurant. When this happens, the only way they can get food is to buy it from one of two CC vending machines on the lot. (I never provided a self-service grill on the lot as there was a restaurant.)

This doesn't happen every time -- sometimes the restaurant works properly. But it seems to happen with increasing frequency. Craig just wanders around in or near the kitchen. Remington just cleans glasses to try to look busy. But nobody gets any food. On a recent occasion when this happened, I tried to solve the issue by forcing Error on Craig, on Remington, and on the podium. But it didn't work. Craig didn't greet anyone, neither my controlled Sims, nor other, uncontrolled, visitors. No one got anything to eat.

A couple of days ago a large group (seven) of my Sims went downtown and dined at Londoste. Craig was the host there, and Remington was one of the waiters. They worked this much larger and busier restaurant without any problems. So they don't appear to be the cause of the problem.

Can anyone think why a restaurant that has worked reliably for years should suddenly develop an intermittent glitch? The fact that it's intermittent makes it very hard to troubleshoot. The only thing I can think of is I might try replacing the podium. Anyone got any better ideas?

By the way, the poolside restaurant is a small eatery with seating for up to twelve Sims at six tables each with two seats. So it's ideal for couples. The kitchen and podium are indoors in a adjacent building. (The toilets are in a separate building nearby.) The arrangement is unusual but it's worked well ever since I added the restaurant to the Swim Centre in early 2013.

Have you tried forcing errors on all the chairs and tables? Or checking for invisible stuck objects blocking the host's and server's way? Or a "force error on all" via the batbox?

I usually have fun running the sims restaurants, I think you should go for it . I should have said above that it usually takes me a bit longer to get the business levels up on a restaurant than on other businesses, but I suspect time isn't such a problem in Veronaville.

My suggestion would be to go in and edit the lot, delete the host podium and stove, and buy new. Just in case they have become glitched somehow.

It might force different staff to be generated though, so if you don't want to do that, I would try AnMal's suggestion first.

You may also wish to try Inge's Hotel Podium from SimLogical - I don't know why it's called Hotel, as it's nothing to do with BV, but according to its description, the original Maxis podium only allows sims to consider eating, whereas the Hotel podium allows them to come and fulfil other motives as well. So they will swim before eating, and use the hot tub afterwards, for example.

@AnMal Thank you for the tips!
Some of the bugs I was referring to was staff not serving customers even when it looks like they have nothing to do. It's also difficult to have a separate staff room with a table and chair since the hosts want to place customers there anyway, which makes breaks not so convenient (have to remember to put the table into inventory every time and sometimes I forgot). Also at one point towards the end, the chef, who was also acting as waitress at the time since the actual waitress was on a break, got stuck standing by a customer's table, doing nothing. Just standing there. And when I force errored her, every customer snapped too, disrupting everything. During that time I was losing stars with time, not gaining, so I gave up.
I always use household members for staff, but they were only 3 and I used inge's teleporter shrub so there were about 30 customers towards the end (I increased it by 10 for each business level). Maybe that's impossible to manage, but that also means restaurants will never be full so that's dull most customers were standing at the podium and the tables were never filled fast enough before the old customers left. :/

I have a household that's now on the edge of unplayable. The problems have just gotten worse and worse. And it's not that bad in any other household and I don't understand what makes that household different from the others except the garden is covered in flowers (is that it?) Often there are periods where the game freezes every 3 seconds, and the freeze lasts between 4 seconds to a minute. Often there's unexplainable lag, it's far from my biggest household or biggest lot. I've checked, no off world loiterers, werewolves or issues I can think of. Shame to move them out, I've furnished the house so nicely and I don't like furnishing/building.

Oh dear me, Pideli! 30 customers?! I don't think I could handle even half ! I guess that means you will have to play your restaurants quite differently from how I play mine. But about the servers who don't serve food when it looks like they have nothing to do - probably there are many different reasons why this happens and I can't really say I know much about it, but I know I have had problems with the following:

1. Stuck invisible objects that block the way for servers or chef. I don't have a clue what causes this, but it happens now and then in sim businesses and sim homes as well, it's just more obvious when it stops service in restaurants or hotels.
2. Other routing problems. I just playtested a vacation lot where no one got their food because the server's path was really messed up. It looked fine from just looking at how the kitchen and dining area looked - there was lots of space and all, but the actual path simply didn't work.
3. "Cursed" tables. Like I described above, where a dining wasn't succesful in one spot, that spot can glitch out and the only thing that seems to help is resetting both table and all the attached chairs. If there are many of these "cursed" tables and I don't notice and fix it, the servers do just stop working.
4. Taking too many orders in one go. My servers seem capable of handling two orders at the most, after that things can go wrong in many ways - servers can forget to bring one customer their meal, forget to bring any of the customers a meal, or very rarely, stop doing anything and just stare. It works so much better to take an order and then serve that customer before moving on to the next. I have no idea how to work this with 30 customers though !

@Pideli Do you have any high poly CC on the lot? I had one lot where there was intermittent lag, couldn't work out what it was. Turned out that some very old (and very high poly) hairstyles that I used was causing it. It was okay if the resident sim wearing that hair was on the lot, but if another sim wearing a similar hair from the same creator walked by or visited, I would get the lag (computer couldn't handle two at once!). Maybe look at what time the lag happens, and who/ what is on the lot?

@AnMal Thank you, I'll give it a go!
@simsample Oh, possible! I use quite extravagant hairstyles. Although I do that in a lot of my households so I'm not sure that's it but I'll look out for that and try changing all of their hairstyles to see if the problem goes away. (I'll make everyone temporarily bald just to be safe ) Thanks for the tip!

May not necessarily be hairstyle- could be clothes or accessories, or maybe even something you have on the lot.

@Lionqueen129 : Over a week later my renamed Downtown is still called "Downtown Veronaville". No sign of it reverting! I think you must just have been unlucky enough to suffer from a strange glitch. Try renaming your sub-hood in-game again (if you haven't done it already).

So I downloaded ldSeasonsSync from Lazy Duchess's blog, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. This is what I've done with it so far in a test 'hood, Summer/Fall/Winter/Spring, with all new households starting on Day 5 of S1:

1) Played 8 sims for a week, moved them all to a new household, which reset to S1/D5, instead of S3/D2
2) Played a different household of 8 sims for a week, moved out half, these four's new household also started again at S1/D5

In both cases, I expected the households to reflect that all of S2 had passed, and that they were 2 days into S3. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what effect this mod actually has so if someone could clarify what behavior I should expect, I'll redo a test hood with no mods instead of a very lightly modded setup. I did have Cyjon's Smarter EP Check present at the time, but if there's another mod that ldSeasonsSync depends on, I don't know what it is.

I have an NPC masseuse in my town who knows all four massage types. If I invite her to a residential lot I can make her selectable and she can perform any type of massage. But as an NPC on an unowned community lot, she will only perform swedish massage. Is there a mod, or method, to have sims in a main hood (not a vacation hood) perform all massage types?

I used to have resteraunts glitch out and sometimes refuse to serve a sim on an outing so I had to make sure they could still get something to eat even when that happened.

Re: the masseuse, it works! Mod in testing from Whoward, Pic'n'mix mods.


Edit: Get it at Pic'n'mix!

Why that's fantastic!

Just got one of simsample's rare winks

That mod is one of those that I will use, because now that it is available, it leaves me no choice ? Great idea.

No way, Petro! He must like you.

The massage mod has been uploaded:
Any Massage on Community Lots

(Simsample winks when he likes you?! How does he spook people he doesn't like then?! I often sit with the computer late at night when I'm having a bad night, and he's spooked me so badly a couple of times!)

I give up on trying to find it in the thread I was reading through: please, can someone just say how you do that magic trick where you remove more than one tree at the time in the neighbourhood? I can never remember, I learn, I use it, I forget.

Press escape key while you mouse over the trees. Just remember to be careful, you can't press undo button and get them back.

[QUOTE=simsample]No way, Petro! He must like you.

Of course he does

Recently downloaded this lot :

https://modthesims.info/download.ph...9&cb=1670792933


Left a message for the creator, but in case they're busy --- I thought I should post it in this thread as well ; Thanks in advance for any advice.


Help !

I just downloaded and moved my sim into this lot.

The message kept popping up that a vehicle is trying to enter the lot, and that I have to place a driveway ?

Here is the message I copied down :
"A vehicle is trying to return to this lot, but there are no available driveways.
You must first place a driveway in order for the vehicle to return."



So I did.

Also placed another extension of the driveway.

Two cars showed up, neither of them occupied .
I deleted the cars.

Then a message popped up, "The carpool will no longer come for 'Lilith' (my sim)" ?

My sim is not employed and hasn't been.

Is it safe to just keep deleting the cars, or the messages if I decide not to place a driveway -- or just not put in a driveway and delete the messages saying that a car is trying to return to the lot ?
Thanks in advance.

This lot had a sim on it according to the description in the download --- but it was only a clone for testing; so it downloads as empty.

So any messages I can safely delete and if I do not place a driveway it should be fine, right ?
Tia.

I've seen that message once or twice, and I think it happens if drivable cars have been placed as decorations somewhere there isn't a driveway, or placed on an extension without a driveway. Doesn't always happen, so could depend on accessibility and other things. I had similar issues with a drivable ambulance once.

If the sim has a job, there could also be some issues with the portals that's messing with the carpool access.

It's possible they used a mod to unlock/unhide cars (no CC but unhiders can still make these accessible even if you don't have the mod), since I see the maid car and a few other NPC cars. It could be these that's causing the message to pop up (trying to gain access to the road, or anything like that)

Removing the cars/driveways should fix the issue. Could be a good idea to use deco cars for the broken motorway section of the lot, and skip the driveways.