Since the first version got really large, I'm restarting this here.

Today I discovered that custom hair on infants can make the icon look like Cousin It. It's kind of creepy.

I discovered that pool reflections are kind of programmed in a weird way. It's not reflected in the water, but on the side of the pool, which would make sense if it weren't for the fact that it's reflecting things that are above and behind the edge, which can't possibly be reflected by the area that's reflecting it. Like the pool slide in this photo.


Even more strange is that the pool floor and walls will display shadows of objects around it, even though shadows are turned off. So I have shadows that abruptly end at the edge of the pool.

Making beach lots that work in more than one or two hoods can indeed be a stressful experience. No wonder why there aren't a larger number of beach lot downloads. I did read they were difficult, but "difficult" can be an understatement when it comes to these things.

how so?

You have to pay a lot more attention to the slope of the lot. Don't do that, and you'll wind up with lots you can't place, plug-ugly lots with weird slopes that I can't even fix with any cheat (which I got on my first attempt), or even crashing lots. And no lot ... whether it's from here, whether I make it, etc ... will fit in every beach lot area, even if you are able to place a blank lot. There are tricks to better the slope angle, but I'm still new at those. I also read that Lot Adjuster might work, but haven't tried that yet.

Here's an overview of the fun with beach lots:

http://www.thesimsresource.com/cont...%20Beach%20Lots

Flat beaches & flat beach lots work best, IMO.

I find at the very, very least, a minimal slope works OK. I made a beach lot in a hood area with a very subtle slope, and so far, it plays OK in at least some of the lots in the hoods I've tried. (To say I'm ecstatic is an understatement.) My Sims moved in without any problem. But there is no guarantee these lots will work in everyone's hood.

Learning to flatten beach lots properly will probably be next on my to-do list. Right now, I'm finishing up another personal Sims 2 project.

I flatten the beach area(s) of my hoods using the modify terrain cheat. You simply place a empty beach lot and that will flatten the land close to the water. You then bulldoze the beach lot and modify the terrain by starting at the edge of the water where the beach lot flattened it. Once I figured out that trick, I have been able to re-use my flat beach lots in any hood I make.

Well ... that's what test neighborhoods are for! I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

The fire dancer is not going to let a small thing like hail stop his performance, but he is going to up his game and protect his head while performing his routine.

This firedancer - priceless.

More things about vacation lots in residential hoods ... or vacation lots in general.

1. Do NOT use Echo's vegetables if you want to have a working farm/B&B. The housekeeper keeps picking the produce. I could try locking the gate, but it seemed that every tourist wanted to go into the garden to socialize as well, and they and the housekeeper do the Stompy Sim bit. I might try a couple of veggies from Plummbob Keep. They look fine to me, but the Sims don't seem to be as autonomously interested in them.

2. One of my lodging lots got so messed up that I had to delete it. I got tons of error messages in the cheat box. Through trial-and-error, I narrowed it down to two reasons:
a. I accidentally put a revised lot in the bin with the same name, or
b. I had the Sim walk to the lodging lot from a community lot.
Either way, things went crazy fast. The shuttle kept coming over and over until my Sim finally got on it ... holding a suitcase! (That does not normally happen with a hotel in a normal hood.) I'm leaning more toward A, but wouldn't do either again! Luckily, I packaged the lot, and have a good prototype.

3. Unfortunately, Plumbbob Keep's chickens, ducks and geese don't seem to work on a lodging lot. There seems to be no way to get the birds on there. My farm is going to be pretty bare! (And yes, I know about Rebekah's animals, but the last time I used the chickens, something bizarre happened, and I'd like to cut down on using NPCs.)

4. HOWEVER, the berry bushes and grapes work fine, and while the housekeeper keeps watering the grapes, at least she doesn't steal 'em. Looks like this B&B is going to be a berry farm (I already have a vineyard B&B.), perhaps with a few PBK veggies.

I tried the beach lot, by the way. Didn't work too well for me. Maybe I'm too clumsy with the terrain tool, but that land refused to flatten correctly. Good thing it's another test hood! But I'll keep trying. I found the tutorial with pictures and everything. I see one thing I did wrong already.

http://vimpse.tumblr.com/flatbeachlot

EDITED because I was half-asleep and made less sense than usual in one sentence!

Change zoning, place your chickens and change zoning again.

EDITED because I misread the PBK description. Again. And I can't blame lack of sleep this time.

I should have had the option on the nesting box to purchase the hen if I could use it on a lodging lot. No such option for purchase came up, so I might be out of luck. I'll try the full coop and see what happens.

I did read, though, that the chickens will die if not fed. This still might not be a good idea for the farm, since my Sims won't be constantly-vacationing, and I don't know how aging progresses. Will they do what the Echo crops do and continue to age/grow when no Sims are around? But again, that's what the test hood is for!

There will be the berries for my Sims to pick on the lot. And the fruit trees work just fine. I can have just a fruit farm.

My guess is the time will freeze if no one is on the lot. That's the way most lots work, right?

Wasn't sure where to post this as it's about the game but not actually in it. When sims do the smustle, there's this part where they say something like 'dooby-dooby-doo' several times. Now the funny part is, there's a bird that's outside the window beside my pc quite a bit and repeats sounds it hears. This morning I heard the bird singing and it's doing the 'dooby-dooby-doo' part. My sims had been doing the smustle just yesterday. (:

I learned that crib beds are not needed at all.
In an extreme poverty setup the Ottomas just couldn't afford more than two pieces of carpety-looking floor paint for their new babies, but they turned out just fine despite lying in the floor all the time. Now the twins take turns with Tommy using the only kiddie bed on the lot (one that allows toddlers and kids).

Some actions do in fact adjust to height differences, or at least they seem too. I have one sim, height of 1.02~ and another at .86~ and while most couple actions don't work well, backrub actually looks amazing.

I learned today that if you have two brothers and one has a live-in girlfriend and she cheats on him with the other brother and the parents of the brothers live in the same house, the girlfriend can apologize to the parents. As well she should.

What I discover playing the Sims today and other days as well as in the past follow:

1. Sims seem to be much smarter than us human, they know how to "not" pay their bills, and still keep a roof over their head.
2. How to spin around in a quick second to take a bath and change clothes.
3. How smart the Sims are to cook a great meal without using pots and pans, and how fast it take for their oven to cook food. I time it once it like a quick one second.
4.How to workout and gain muscle and still look like a skinny pole.
5. How to go to work and get promoted without during nothing.

6. How a Sims female get pregnant and have a baby less than 9 month, and no doctor is needed the baby just fall out of the sky.
7. I am still trying to figure out and discover why a Sims can drive a car day and night 24/ 7 and "never" need gas.
8. Still trying to discover what really going on under the sheet when the Sims woohoo that make the bed jump sky high.
9 If a Sims is married and is cheating on his Sims mate, and they find out, don't try to get back in the same bed because one side of the bed left or right is locked.

The game will not let the Sims sleep together until their relationship get better, if they decided to still stay together, I have had this happen in my game more than once,
I call it the "lock down bed" no you can't sleep with me anymore. Really these things are not much of a discover, the mods also I find have added on to new interactions.

They're rummaging through their firework box, surely?

I once used moveobjects on and pulled the sims out of the bed mid-woohoo. What I saw could best be described as a contortionist act. I've got screenshots, if you're that curious.

Anyways, today I learned that children (at least siblings) can share a double bed!

That it's possible for a playable sim to glitch into a neighboring apartment and get stuck there. I didn't see what happened exactly, but I'm guessing it was due to a traffic jam at the top of the stairs. She probably phased through the wall as the game was trying to sort it out. Once she was in the blacked out apartment, she couldn't access the stairs or door to leave. Fortunately, move objects came to the rescue. I was able to grab her and plop her back home.

This reminds of the time, back when I first started playing, when an apartment neighbor somehow got stuck in their own apartment. I'm still not certain what happen. Whatever the issue was, she ended up dying and her tombstone ended up by the mailbox. A sad state of affairs, especially since my sim had been in the middle of romancing her! Once she was dead, the game blithely went on to generate a new sim to move in.

It is also possible for an apartment occupied by a non-playable Sim to get infested with roaches. Somehow the place was full of trash, and the Sim household I was playing had to constantly call the landlord to go up and spray the roaches. I finally moved some playable Sims into that apartment to get rid of the roach problem.