I usually just wait. In my game, it takes a few minutes or a lot reload for the LTW to show up in the pop-up.

It often does take several Sim hours, or occasionally even a whole day, for the LTW to roll. I just see it as the kids needing a bit of time to think about it.

Yes, @cosmaline, I think you're better to use the trusty old batbox. That Tombstone of Life and Death sounds a bit too scary for my liking. (I prefer to keep away from tombstones and Death.) None of my Newsons has had a birthday yet, but I play a very slow game with aging usually off. My Newsons actually came into my game by a somewhat irregular route, so the game probably just sees then as CAS Sims. Anyway, if any of them grows up to a teen without an LTW, I'll undoubtedly use the "Reroll LTW" option on the batbox. I've used it lots of times before when Sims had LTWs that I thought were totally out of character as I perceived it.


Not actually today, but about a week ago, I finally worked out why Heaven's Fashion Design career wasn't working for me. It was actually Dummyans thread about translating craftables' names that put me onto the right track. I already thought it must have something to do with language and translation, but when I saw that thread, I spotted for the first time the drop-down list of languages in SimPE in the CTSS (Catalog Description) resources. That turned out not to be quite the right place for me, but when I looked in SimPE, I found similar drop-down lists of languages in STR# (Text Lists) resources, and indeed in Bidou's Career Editor. Using the latter I have been able to copy all the relevant texts for Job Levels from the English [i.e. American English] version to the English (UK) version, which was previously empty. As my game is configured to use UK English that means I'm now getting the correct texts for the Fashion Design career, when previously I was seeing the text strings for the Maxis Athletic Career, which Heaven must have cloned the Fashion Design Career from. I am now starting to work through the Chance Cards. This is proving a bit cumbersome in Bidou's Career Editor, as changes only seem to commit when I exit Bidou's editor to the main SimPE program. So I'm having to keep going in and out of Bidou's editor in order to save all my changes. So far I've done the Chance Cards for levels 1 and 2, and I don't think I have any Sims above level 2 in this career at present. (I habitually ignore all Chance Cards anyway, ever since Gloria's outrageous Dishonourable Discharge from the military.) There's probably an easier way to get my UK game to use the American texts (like the "Export Lang" and "Import Lang" buttons on the STR# resource screen?), but my method, though laborious, is working, so I'll stick with it for now.

I didn't actually realise that my game was using the UK English version until now. I have now told SimPE to default to UK English too. Getting UK English in SimPE, means that I'm seeing the UK English names for several Sims, that always showed with their American names in SimPE before. One of these kind of upset me. Jon Smith Tricou had become Jonathan Tricou, I have always known him by his North American name (I believe he was French Canadian) and, in my head at least, all his illegitimate children know him as Jon Smith Tricou too. So, despite SimPE listing him as non-editable, I've changed his UK English name to Jon Smith Tricou. I don't know for what reason SimPE calls him "non-editable". He has full character data, and I'm sure lots of people have resurrected him. Personally I haven't the slightest intention of resurrecting him (or any other dead Sim), but I want SimPE to call him by the name I've always known him by.

[EDIT] I started writing this rather long post before Lamare's post. So nothing in my post should be construed as disagreeing with her.

The Default Language Only button will turn all the strings in a resource in one go. It deletes all other languages except US English, and the game will display that. If you're making a package for your personal use and don't care about other languages, this is the fastest way. But. Since you told SimPE to default to UK English, I'm not sure what happens... Probably still the US English will remain as default, but just to be safe I'd try it on a copy of the package.

That cancelling a sim in CAS edit mode then going to the CAS family screen still leaves the sim there. The sim in edit mode is gone but in family mode it's still there. Makes me wonder if the game makes 2 copies of your sim?

That is expected behavior. When you're editing a Sim you've already created, hitting X is supposed to mean "disregard any further changes I've made since they've arrived to the edit screen and keep only the last revision/edition". To delete a Sim in CAS, instead of using the edit button (person with a pen), use the trash icon next to it to delete the Sim.

I've discovered that it's possible to do the newspaper crossword standing up! Every other Sim I've seen doing the crossword has sat down to do it, but, for reasons best known to herself, Jessica Macbeath (pronounced "Macbeth") chose to do it standing up, although there were were eight dining chairs and a sofa in the room. The only thing I can think of is that Jessica gave birth a few days ago, and maybe she's still feeling a bit sore "down below".

Try to force errors on the chairs, they might be stuck or something.

Thanks Pideli, but I don't think there was anything wrong with the chairs: within 2 Sim Hours every chair in that room was occupied by Sims eating lunch meat sandwiches -- prepared by none other than Jessica. I prefer to just think that she's eccentric. Like a lot of my other Sims, and indeed like myself! Maybe they all caught it from me!

I have discovered something that my brain should have realized: that when you have hiders, the items they hide will not appear, and that goes for all items-including careers.

I'd downloaded and installed career hiders in my medieval game, and had some default replacement careers for the Maxis ones,and could not understand why they weren't appearing. Even the aspiration wants were messed up. The custom ones showed up, but not the standard ones.

Old lizard brain says: 'take away hiders, maybe everything will show up!'

And voila, they did. All the careers, and the aspirations that go with them.

I'd always wondered if the hiders actually worked. I know now they did.

I'm embarrassed, because how long have I been playing a medieval game, and did not realize this?

Big DUH! to me!

*******************************************
A real discovery for me:

For the first time ever in my game, I had a 'stood up at the altar' interaction: Daniel Klein and his fiancee Esther Williamson had had a very bad falling out, but had moved into together into a new house, and Daniel took her to the church to get married.
Her relationship with him was in the negative numbers, as was his-I just wanted to test out if they would actually get married, and they did not.
She rejected his ring and walked off in a huff.
Daniel was devastated and they returned to the lot un-engaged...and still very angry with one another. She moved out and he went to work.

I discovered the SimRetriever and it works!
I have a corrupted neighborhood that throws numerous errors when I open it in SimPE and more errors when I click on any sim-related resource inside it, or sim browser, or anything. In game, it crashes on loading. The Hood Checker couldn't fix it, but the Sim Retriever was able to extract the sims and give me a chance to clone them.

The controlpets cheat affects apartment roommates too. I was wondering why my sim's new roommate was controllable, so I looked it up and...huh. I guess the game kinda-sorta treats roommates as pets...

==
I read that as "pests"...which could also be true. If only you could call the exterminator.

I discovered two seated social interactions I've somehow never seen before: "love-talk" and "hot kiss" (directly translated from Swedish; I dunno what they're called originally).

The same happens with sims you bring on holiday with you as guests; it's really funny in retrospect

I found that when a pixel is very lonely, and has a garden gnome, they'll talk to it.

Alan Buckingham, the only male teen in Arundel, is very lonely-nobody wants to talk to him because he's a nasty prankster-in desperation, he flipped over (this one is new to me) his garden gnome, kicked it and then stooped down to talk to it. What a sad young man he is. The other teen, (a girl) doesn't want anything to do with him.

I found two new features in Sims 2:
First - you can go around the bed in a room with three tiles length when its headboard is sinked in the nearby wall
Second - the curtains can be put on top of each other without cheats

That post is screaming for pictures!

I found out that I can't play the game with a camera mod anymore. Six months ago, everything was running perfectly fine.
For some unknown reason, I can't hear the voice of my sims after a few minutes. I still get the other noises.

1 That the GPA at university actually matters! Two sims with the exact same skills and family friends (since they live in the same household) got to start out at 2 different levels in the same career. The difference between them? One had a 5.0 GPA and the other had a 4.9! (I know it's lettered grades in English but I don't know the counterparts, maybe A and A- ?)

2 If the principal doesn't finish eating before the time is up, they get 0 points for the food and thus fail. Not my fault you take 4 hours to eat!!

3 If you disable the plumbbob, you won't see the therapist.

Holy crap! I assume the social bunny as well?

I guess it depends on how you disable it, I use Ja's No Plumbbobs , and I can see the therapist.

Thanks for the GPA info !

Don't know, haven't tried but my guess is yes since they're very similar NPCs (in terms of function)


I use the plumbbobtoggle cheat. (I've put it in my userstartup.cheat file as a short command so I only need to type in "p")

I also discovered that if the principal cancels his "take a plate"-interaction for whatever reason (like if a sim stands in the way), it doesn't work to direct him manually to the food, even after eating he still doesn't give you your due score. So the only way to fix it (thankfully I found it with 6 seconds left ) is with the batbox. Nuking the scenario gives you 100/90 points. Pescado knows what he's doing.

The code for whether or not to show the therapist/social bunny is in the plumbbob, so it makes sense. The code for making the plumbbob also looks at the imaginary NPCs on the lot and checks to see if any are "yours" and if not, they'll be invisible to you (you the sim, not the player).