Oh, I've never heard of that poem! And I never thought to google the word. Actually that poem (or what parts I'm able to understand) fit in pretty well with the overall storyline of that 'hood.

Depends on if you have a set of custom skinned PTs or one that uses the default skin - you can change defaults at any time. With the custom skinned versions I'm not sure if you can just change the skins.

Thanks for the offer. I found CatofEvilGenius's binner and that worked.

No. You can move the tombstone to the cemetery right away. If your Sim stays up to the small hours the ghost of the late Sim will spawn.
What I don't recall is whether the ghost will spawn the same night [if there have been only a few hours since he/she died] or the next.

From my own experience - most of the time, I send the tombstones over to my graveyard straight away, and ghosts don't spawn unless a knowledge sim lingers on the lot for a few days. Having a grill, coffee bar, and bathroom facilities helps a bit.
Or I just use InSim to summon the ghosts.

Build a cemetery like it's a knowledge sim's personal playground, chess tables, darts, dancing and snack machines. They'll hang around and ghosts will spawn after awhile. (:

If your Sim can meditate you don't need anything of the above.
Ghosts do spawn, but it might be a timer between the hour of a Sim's death and his/her ghost's appearance. Mourning family members have their chances increased.

I was going to say telescope - but then the ghosts will probably spawn while the Sim is being abducted

Here's the deal:

Ghosts take, on average, three days to spawn. Sometimes they will spawn more quickly than that, sometimes more slowly. (I had one that took 11 days, once.) If the tombstone happens to be struck by lightning, the ghost will spawn right away, even if it's it's daytime. For ghosts on community-lot cemeteries, the issue is that community lots don't save when they are exited by your playable(s), unless the playable in question happens to be the one who owns the cemetery lot. So, if you immediately send graves to a cemetery without allowing the ghost to spawn first, and then send a playable there, the likelihood is that you won't see any ghosts UNLESS your playable spends a lot of time there. You might get lucky because sometimes ghosts will spawn quickly but, like I said, the average is three days...which makes for a long visit but, sure, it can be done fairly easily if you have "facilities" on the lot and don't use Community Time. HOWEVER, after spending all that time on the lot to (maybe) see a ghost, when your playable leaves, the lot resets. So, in order to see ghosts again, you'd have to send a playable there for ANOTHER likely long stretch of time to allow the ghost(s) to spawn again. Which is kind of a pain in the butt given that one of the main reasons why people want cemeteries is so that their Knowledge Sims can see ghosts on them, right? (The exception is Gothier Green Lawns, in the Maxis Downtown, where ghosts for the graves that are there from the get-go are "pre-spawned." However, if you send additional graves there, the above applies to those graves.)

So, what I do is have ghosts spawn before their grave goes to the cemetery. Generally, I leave them on their home lot until the morning after the ghost spawns, at which point I summon the owner of the cemetery (who is always a player-made NPC -- a Sim I create in CAS but who I never play and who is given a prisoner token so that he/she never shows on community lots, eliminating the chance of accidental death while he/she has graves in inventory). I make the gravekeeper selectable with the Sim Blender, and then dump the grave(s) in his/her inventory and then use moveobjects to "delete" them from the lot. And then occasionally, usually once a rotation, I open the cemetery owner's "home lot" (which is just a tiny 1x1 empty lot) to send him/her to the cemetery to place any graves in his/her inventory.

I will also use the gravekeeper's home lot to occasionally do "townie culls" when I want the townie population to age up/die off in order to be better in sync with the playables and so that the game spawns new ones to replace them. (I don't use anti-respawn mods. The more the merrier, for me. So long as you don't have just the base game you can have 32,000-and-some characters in a neighborhood without it going belly up. My main neighborhood has about 750 -- living and dead, and including all strays/wolves, townies, NPCs, etc. -- after 2.5 years of playing it, so...Yeah.) Once done with my aging and killin', I turn off motive decay (aging is always turned off on that lot) and put the game on the highest speed, pull out my Kindle to read something, and wait until all the ghosts spawn before moving all those graves to the cemetery. I've done this a lot over the years, so I can confirm that the three-day average is correct. But yes, it is an average. Sometimes a ghost will spawn the very next night after death. Sometimes it takes a lot longer than that. But generally, it's three days-ish. So, if you choose not to spawn ghosts before graves go to cemeteries, bear that in mind.

What happens if a Sim dies while visiting the graveyard?

I imagine in that case the gravekeeper would just pop onto the lot and wait for their ghost to spawn before heading back home again.

Actually, I might take the gravekeeper idea for myself. I'd love to use that Grim Reaper outfit from debug mode but then their head clips through the back. Well, since I'm here: Is there a way to remove a Sim's head so they can wear that outfit without it clipping?

Perhaps somebody has made it custom and fixed it - I don't know, you could try to ask in WCIF. Not sure,though, Grimmie would like others wearing his outfit

I can't really say for certain. Whenever I've had a Sim die on a community lot, since I have a buy enabler, I've had a playable put the tombstone in their inventory, take it home, place it on their lot to allow the ghost to spawn, and then summon the gravekeeper as usual. Without doing that, or without using the game's "Move Grave" thing -- which sometimes doesn't work right -- I would think that if the lot is unowned, then the death might never have happened, since those lots don't save. (But I don't know that for certain.) If it's owned, and you're playing the owner of the lot when the death happens, then I would think the grave would remain there, unless you remove it by some means.



There is a safely playable extracted Grim Reaper floating around out there somewhere. There's a user here -- can't remember their name, alas -- who plays them and also extracted, playable Hula Zombies. If you can find that, you could have Grim Reaper as your gravekeeper with no head clipping.

EDIT: There is this: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=196699 but the links on the download description are dead, and I'm not sure exactly what you'd get if you downloaded the Sim without getting those things. Can't really tell if anything's included or not. :\ But you could give it a try and see...

In the vanilla game,I had a student die on a community lot, but then she was not there alone, so I could send the other four home. Hanging on to my Sims (dying is very NOT the trend in my hoods) - I did allow two deaths in my hugely overpopulated hood last year. First grave reached the graveyard without any problems. Few days later another one died - and, yes, the grave vanishes completely. (Have all the mods needed). I did everything everybody said I could do, but to no avail. No gravestone, nowhere. No sign of it in the Hoodchecker either. It is just gone. (I have in the meantime backed up that hood, because there are 224+ families, not counting the 18 students in dorms and it has become a bit of work rather than play, but the hood is fine, gravestone or no gravestone).

The "three days for a ghost to spawn" doesn't tally with my experience. I've got three cemeteries with a substantial number of graves, most of them sent there straight from home within a day of the sim dying. And if one of my living sims pays a visit and hangs around long enough, I get three ghosts, pretty much every time.

I found something I think you might be able to use: the Memory Manipulator from the Sim Manipulator site:

http://simmanipulator.forumotion.co...ory-manipulator

I haven't messed with it much in my game, but I did see several LTW memories on the menus for it. Would this work for you? Get your sim into platinum with the Blender or pizza box and then use the Memory Manipulator to add the specific LTW memory?

EDIT - SimPE probably does that sort of thing much better anyway. I was going to delete this post, but there might be others like me who prefer in-game tools and might find it useful.

Stupid Question ?
 

Why in Veronaville (in neighbourhood view) is there always loads of traffic on the Italian (West) side of the canal, but hardly any on the English (East) side, where all the pretty Tudor houses are? In my game there's been a lot of commercial development on the Italian side, but, as Maxis made the 'hood, most of the houses are on the English side, with hardly any traffic, while all the cars, taxis and vans are driving round on the West side, where there's almost nothing worth driving to.

Well, the roads are quieter in fancy suburbs, aren't they? Those traffic is looking for factories to make/collect deliveries

The reporter in my game is tiptoeing each she appears on a community lot. Is there a way to fix it because it's getting old ?

If using sim surgery on a sim, does the genetics go by original features or the surgery ones? If original, how do you set the surgery ones to genetic or DNA, however it's referred to? I remember from long ago an option to do something like this, prior to having all EPs. No Simpe info please, I don't use it and don't want to. I have batbox, simblender and simanipulator. Thanks! (:

I could be wrong, but my impression has always been that to make changes genetic, as opposed to only "skin deep," you have to use SimPE's "Sim Surgery" function. Everything that you can do in-game, like the plastic surgery station and things that use its coding (Like I think you can do "plastic surgery" via the Insimenator), only produces "skin deep" results, not genetic, heritable changes.

You should have options on both the batbox and Cyjon's pizza box.

Duine: all the tutorials I know to make surgery genetic require SimPE.

That reporter is probably a former thief then? Or just a criminally inclined one.

In an apartment building, I temporarily made a neighbor Sim selectable because he was blocking up the stairs and wouldn't move. However now the game is a little confused and his wages are being added to the current family's funds. Is there a quick fix to this?

The family - don't they want the money then?

More like I'm worried about other nonintentional effects of the whole thing. Hehe.

It's not really quick, but have you tried moving your sims out and back in again?

That's what I'm trying to avoid here, if at all possible. It takes about 2 real-life hours to get all the furniture and stuff into place again.

To move a sim, have your controlled sim use the 'shoo' option, most often they move away. If that doesn't work, I usually use move objects on but open inventory and use the hand tool, this way I don't make a mistake by deleted the sim, of course you can't put him in inventory so they should be safe. This also saves time from not having to open buy-build modes. Apartments work much better with stairs placed double wide and porches big enough to place the newspaper or other deliveries without those placing them and block their own exit. (:

What about moving your neighbour into your household and then moving him out?

Actually, the suggestion about using moveobjects gave me an idea - next time he appears outside his apartment, I'll try deleting him, saving, and reloading the lot. Maybe that'll reset him.

Please make a back up first, I don't delete neighbours anymore as it can bork the whole lot, nothing tragic but the neighbour is stuck outside and his door doesn't display his name anymore but rather the build mode name of the door, "unique separator".

Your neighbour seems already messed up though, judging by the wages thing.
Have you tried the option on the batbox under the fix menu (bad apartment residencies or whatever it's called)? I'm not sure what it does but it sounds like it could be pertinent (with a backup of course)?

If not, if you have a spare sim handy, you could move him in quickly (then back out to the family bin) just to kick out the neighbours.

I didn't see your post before trying. Yup, that's exactly what happened. Well, I packed up all the furniture in their inventory, I'll just move them back in and out. If that doesn't work...restore from backup.

EDIT: It worked. Unique Separator is no more.

Nope, she's a real reporter. ;-) The thief is a male and I hope he'll go to jail when my cop will catch him. *Well, still need to build that police station though*.

Can children ask other children on outings?

They can use the Manage Groups... option on the phone and use that to invite children over to their house on an outing (or just for fun). If there's at least one playable teen, adult or elder (from the child's household, so, like, actively being played at that time) in the group they can then go to community lots as a group. I do that sometimes if I have a very sociable child who would want to hang out with his/her friends at the weekend - they use the phone to set up and invite over a group including all of their child-aged friends and at least one teen+ household member, then when the other children come over the older household member takes the lot of them out somewhere, for example to a playground or for lunch or whatever. As far as I can remember children can't ask anyone on outings if they're already on the lot with them, but I could be wrong......

They can't, I just found that out the hard way! But I didn't know about them being able to do the groups option, so that could be useful. Thanks!

Is there a reason that all the lots in downtown seem to be low class? I know that surrounding lots affects the lot class, but when I placed a few expensive and well decorated lots near the House of Fallen Trees, all of them ended up being considered low class. I've had no problem getting high class lots in other neighbourhoods without using cheats. Is something about downtown that is drawing the class down?

It might just be the House of Fallen Trees. After all, it has a spooky reputation.

Sorry that I didn't see your post earlier. Bink13y made a set of headless sims years ago. They work great for making playable Grim Reapers.

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=86687




Actually there is one other option. Several years ago, Christianlov made a program called cpackeditor that had a "DNA Fixer" function in it. You do your plastic surgery in the game, exit TS2, aim the DNA Fixer at the "Characters" folder for your neighborhood and click a button. The tool automatically finds and fixes all instances of plastic surgery in that 'hood.

The catch: when Christianlov left the simming community, he removed a lot of his mods, including this one. It is now very very hard to find. I got my copy from the very generous person in post # 144 of this thread:

http://www.modthesims.info/download...25#startcomment

The second reason that I love this thing is that the other tool in it which Christianlov got working before he left is the loader for his skintone switcher painting - aim this at your downloads folder and hit the button. It finds all your skintones and loads them into the data file for the skintone switcher. (I think he said somewhere in the support thread that it can hold about 200 skintones?) Don't like the skintone your favorite sim is using? Just click on the painting and pick something else. :lovestruc (this is the tool I used to change Stella Terrano's skin in Sim Expressions & Emotions (v5) post # 546 )

He apparently planned to add an eye switcher and some other neat stuff to cpackeditor, but didn't get any of them done before he left.

Well can you share it?

Edit: Nevermind, it's here.

Is Crmelsimlover in that link I pasted no longer sharing? I'll be happy to share my copy (give me a few minutes to find it and figure out how to attach it to a PM).

Do be aware though, I have heard that the version at Simbology.com is an earlier version and DOES NOT have a working DNA fixer. The one I have is labeled version 0.2.4.128

EDIT - I don't see a way to attach a file to a private message. Is that a feature only CC creators have? I see that it's possible to attach files to the message board posts - are we allowed to do that in this board? I don't see it mentioned in the site rules.

According to Orlion at Simbology they state that it will NOT change the dna in the game that SimPe is still needed.



Crmelsimlover may have a more updated version than the one over at Simbology. I would be interested in the one you have

As for attaching it to a post go advanced, then look down below and click on the one that says attachment.

(Edit: Gave info for when editin not origial ...)

You know how when a Sim invites someone over they sometimes ask to bring a friend? How does the game decide who they bring? I've had Sims show up with perfect strangers in tow.

I've noticed the same thing. I think it might be randomly generated. I'd love it if someone made a mod (or linked to an existing one) that made the selection more logical.

Also, more out of curiousity: Is there a way to make the Charlatan target a specific Sim? I know making him selectable is a Very Bad Thing but I was thinking there might've been something hidden in one of the debug tools or allmenus for it. Or even a posebox - I could make a Sim identical in appearance to him for this.

Christianlov's cpackeditor with DNA fixer
 

The PM that Carmelsimslover sent to me had links not file attachments (don't know how I could've managed to forget that ). I figured it would be easier to post the links than to upload the files. They were sent to me last summer and appear to still be working.



I tested this when I got it and it appears to work as advertised. I made a pair of sims, gave them both the same face template (I think it was #1 "heart"), and dropped them into testing town. I then used Christianlov's clothing rack to do plastic surgery on them and give them more extreme features - I think I gave one of them face # 18 and the other one Argon's unlocked Maxis alien face. Saved the game, exited and ran the DNA fixer.

I then reloaded the lot and made each of the two pregnant with twins by the other. According to my limited understanding of TS2 DNA, since both parents were originally made with the same #1 face, if the DNA fixer had not worked, all 4 kids should also have had that face. Instead, each of the 4 clearly had a face that was a combination of the plastic surgery features I gave to the parents (and quite an endearing group of freaks they were too!)

Does it change personality to be genetic ... is personality even genetic to begin with?

@Charity: Genetic Personality? In a manner of speaking, but not exactly... There *are* two sets of personality traits for each sim, and one of them *is* considered the *genetic* set. To determine a baby's personality, the game uses the genetic personalities of both parents. It may use a few of the father's traits and a few of the mother's, or all of the father's or all of the mother's. But it may also add or subtract some random points from any traits it uses to allow for variety.

During the course of its life, a sim may, however, be encouraged to change certain traits. Those changes do *not* make it into the genetic set, though, unless something odd happens to the sim that *makes* it so. Like one of the features in my Alien Experiments mod, which can cause the current set to overwrite the genetic set, or vice versa. But normally, encouraged changes do not make it into the genetic set, and are therefor not usually transferred to a sim's children.

is there a cheat that moves things like half tile or less?

I have downloaded some houses with other lot sizes than I have in the game, is there a way to change the lot size in game or do I need downloads/ convertions or what do I need to get these lot sizes without houses?

@wolfenhase: Yes, there is such a cheat:

CTRL-SHIFT-C "setQuarterTilePlacement on". This cheat will allow you to move objects a quarter tile at a time. It may not work well with some objects, and it's possible that some chairs, beds or other objects are less well accessible if they are not snapped into proper tiles, tho.

CTRL-SHIFT-C "boolProp snapObjectsToGrid false" is also an option. This cheat allows much finer control of where to place objects. But I would only advise that for use with OMSPs and decorative objects that go on them. Objects with slots may not be very usable when placed with this cheat active.

To help with the lot size question, there is a tool called Lot Adjuster that allows unoccupied lots to be made larger or smaller, you can also download empty lots of various sizes.

Woah.... really? I think you just blew my mind, I have been wanting that for a long time. Do you have any links to any?

I'm pretty sure I've seen some on here for 1X1 lots but its been a while so I can't say for sure

Found them!

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=250096

I quit. Not from playing the game. Not from this forum (sorry). But from trying to make the Uni Cook (Inge's mod) and the housekeeper behave themselves.

The housekeeper freezes constantly when near the Uni cook. I wish to remove the UNI cook and make a small restaurant. A little ritzy for a B&B, but it's better than seeing that housekeeper just standing there. Or I might just put the fridge and counters in there for Sims to make cereal and instant meals and give that housekeeper something to do besides freeze.

Is it safe to yank a Uni cook out of a dorm by removing the stove? I would think so. It's not like one of these lives at a lot. I would think if you can yank one out of a dorm, you can yank one out of a hotel. Am I correct?

I've never had any problems with yanking Uni cooks. When I plopped down one of the stoves in another lot she just turned up there.

Is there really any difference between "practice romance" and "practice speech" at the mirror? I never really saw the point of having both, since they both give charisma points.

The simlogical schools - does it work on unowned community lots?

My education minister is collecting a lot of money in tuition from university, and I'd like to add one or two schools to town with the funds, but then donate the lots to the community instead of having him run them. If it won't work, I'll have other teachers own the lots, but I'd love to have at least one be unowned so that anyone could come and teach a class without having to buy the lot.

this is really stupid but...
Can I move a family from one hood to another without cloning them?

No. That would damage the hood they moved from and the hood they moved to.

You could, but you'd corrupt both hoods in the process. Not good.

No, to make simlogical schools the lot must be owned (residential or community lot). My school is on a community lot.

Not unless you plan to play them until both hoods blow up and are happy to throw them in the trash. If you wish to keep your hoods for any length of time then no don't ever do that. Extract with simPE, clone and delete the extracted sim using the clone in the new hood.

I removed the Uni cook in the B&B. I added extra sinks and bathrooms, since my Sims seemed to love the one non-hotel-room bathroom, kept congregating in that one, and made the housekeeper freeze. And what does that wretched housekeeper do? Freeze in my SIM'S room. And for some reason I can't figure out, she does great on the first day and freezes on the days after that.

At this point, I can only presume it's the layout of the B&B house that's creating a problem. The housekeeper works far better in my two boxier hotels, and so far, appears to be working in the somewhat-boxy one. Fine. As I look through the hotels on this site (not as many as I originally thought, but I can see why!), I notice that at least 70% of them have a basic and/or boxier layout. I fully understand why this is a good idea now. Even the Maxis hotels lean toward basic and boxy.

Nevertheless, my former B&B might make a nice vacation home instead. Except for the housekeeper, other Sims seem to like it! It would be a large house, but it might do for larger families or groups. I'll bulldoze the current hotel lot, re-load my community lot template and get rid of the Solidity doors and concierge podium. But from what I'm reading, changing lot zoning from community to residential ain't as simple as it used to be. (It's been a very long time since I've done this!) Is this the correct procedure?

http://thesims2.livejournal.com/7061586.html

Or should I stick with community and make it a kinda-hotel? Any tips on how to do that, from those who have gone this route? I have the community-lot-sleeping mode already. How would I keep Sims from milling in others' rooms, for instance? Myne doors?

My Sims simply lock their doors.
There is always room service in hotels even if there are no sign of a kitchen or a cook anywhere! Just a phone in the hotel room needed. And if all is locked out (including housekeeper) room service waiter can still get in. So actually, you do not need any cook stove, kitchen or restaurant at all on the lot.

What I can do is to try to lock the housekeeper out ... though I'm not sure I can lock it out of rooms my Sims aren't taking. And I'm not sure if that's going to fix the problem. I am revising, re-trying and re-routing like mad, and nothing is working with that housekeeper. Why the concierge is perfectly fine with everything and the housekeeper isn't is a good question. It's worth one more try to attempt to lock all the room doors, though. Those lazy Sims can clean their OWN rooms, as others have written.

But I can also place the community lot a second time and rezone it as a residence as well. Just remember to give it an entirely different name. I truly like this house. I know there's a use for it ... somehow!

And this is why it's a good idea to package SOME sort of version of a lot, just in case.

I have not seen her really going into unused rooms in my game - she hangs around in the foyer or sometimes outside, so she does not bother the playable Sims. (Yes, my Sims clean their own rooms. Their own homes too. And they do their own gardening. Only nannies allowed for help).
I actually like the idea of them making their own food when they want to - re the kitchen - no idea if it will work, though. What will the housekeeper do? I have not seen her in hotels with restaurants trying to clean in the restaurant - the waiters seem to do that. (Have been playing a number of Maxi hotels in a testing way for the building competition because a hotel seems to be coming up next). But we know a BBQ works, if all else fails

I still like the Box hotel

With the SImlogical mod that lets you put the Uni cook anywhere, she had this obsessive need to clean just around where he was working, and just luved, luved, luved the Shinytime stove. The freezing might have been due to two routing reasons, actually, and that definitely had to do with one of them. However, she froze elsewhere once I removed him.

I'll try locking the door on the hotel lot version sometime in the next couple of days. I was seeing if I did the mailbox and trashcan correctly for a residential lot.

I did try putting the fridge and a couple of counters for the Sims to make a light meal. The housekeeper still froze. But again, I think that might be the layout. This lot much more house-like than hotel-like, and the hallways are narrower. That might be a problem. Normal Sims have no difficulties, but the housekeeper is not a normal Sim.

On a note that made me smile, when I rezoned the B&B to residential (yes ... I still have that community lot prototype! ) and moved in one of the Sims with whom I've been testing to the point of exhausting her (poor thing ... she went on many, many a community vacation lot excursion ... I thought she should have at least a nice place to live for all her trouble!), she was really comfortable with the place, and it got Garden Club membership right away, without my even doing anything to the grounds. So far, so good as a residential lot. It does make me feel better that in a worse-case scenario, I at least have a serviceable converted saltbox house for my richer Sims to enjoy. It's got a small barn, a windmill, and a place for a chicken coop as well! Speaking of which ... I can put the chickens and geese back on there now! No thieving housekeeper!

I find the housekeeper's liking for the stove entertaining - if she was not a stupid object, one might have discovered a Sim with a LTW to be a celebrity chef there! Or maybe she just liked to be close to the Uni cook

The thought has occurred to me if the lot could work as a (very nice) apartment - seems one can put a shared kitchen in one (but then there will probably be a multitude of new problems).

I am so happy that the box lot survived

I totally do not understand what Gazania is building. Are you forced to have housekeeper? Maybe replace it with this one who disappears (until needed) when is done.

She is building a hotel - and the NPC housekeeper in the hotel is the problematic one - I don't know if the one above will replace her at all - hahaha - if you (can) add the above one, and she actually shows up at the hotel - I would love to see what the housekeeper does - will she freeze even more?

Thank you guys for the answer!!!!

I haven't had a problem with the housekeeper since I installed Paladin's hacks. I'd check HCDU to make sure that there isn't anything clashing with them.

Yes there are differences: the more serious sims are most likely to use the "Practice Speech" variation, whereas the playful sims will most likely choose "Practice Romance". And there is also the cosmetic aspect: you can hear and see from their way of acting and speaking at the mirror, which choice they've made.

I had a sim fist pump when I told him to go 'practice romance'. I think he was a romance sim though .. lol.

I'd rather not find out!

HCDU didn't come up with anything particularly alarming re the housekeeper's interactions.

But I am noticing something odd. The fact that the housekeeper always freezes on this lot on the second day (once I got rid of several routing issues that initially froze her) intrigues me. Why the second day? And it's usually right before checkout. Even when I locked her out, she froze.

I'm going to check her out on my Boxy Beach Bungalow lot again. Initial tests have been successful, and the hotel area on this lot is flat as a board. I will put this in a beach vacation hood (and still in a test hood), and see what happens.

The game has a few different ways of telling you your custom hotel lot isn't laid out correctly. I've seen a few already after doing six hotels (and yes, I'm including the infamous Box Hotel!).

1. "The shuttle has been dispatched" as soon as you arrive.
2. You get one day of vacation before you get the notice that the shuttle is arriving.
3. The housekeeper freezes right away.

Could a fourth be that she freezes right before checkout?

If that is not the case, and she's freezing on the Boxy Beach Bungalow lots after two days, though I shudder at the thought, I probably should check my CC. It could also be that. So sorry, Margot. You'll have to leave your pretty house and venture forward again.

I ran Hoodchecker today and fixed the few memories errors I had.

How do I fix those? I added the sim as subject, hit commit and saved the file. It seems the changes didn't stick.

A clue! A clue!

I tried the game with only the two fixes. The housekeeper froze like mad anyway on the cabin lot in Three Lakes (no surprise there ... it didn't have the usual anti-freezing safeguards I've kind of accepted, such as ample doors in the lobby). But the NPC worked fine in the Blau Lodge.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, 50/50 with vacation lots isn't the most effective, since the game likes to save when you leave one.

But I did notice one thing. The housekeeper loves watering flowers. A lot. It's what the housekeeper does a good chunk of the time.

Remember my Boxy Beach Bungalow hotel? The underwhelming lot I just did? Well, I thought it wasn't without appeal and added some trees and Sunni flowers. When I re-entered the lot, though, I got the freezing again. My other lots are fairly sparsely-decorated, and mostly with trees and other plants the housekeeper doesn't touch, including the flowers on Parsimonious that you can place everywhere because I believe the game treats them as decor.

When I moved my Sim on the lot again, I got the freezing housekeeper. This lot worked really well before. The only difference was the plants.

Plants are not the only thing that will freeze a housekeeper. I know that from at least three dozen attempts. But if the housekeeper is trying to do his or her usual thing with the plants and is blocked from doing so, even it's because of a mod, plant or other obstacle. Is THAT causing the freezing? Stalking the little pest, I notice he or she follows a certain pattern. There is an order of things in the housekeeper universe.

I went back to the scene of one of my last successes ... my yurt camp. I noticed that the things the housekeeper likes are there.

1. Wiiiide open spaces.
2. Double doors on both sides of the lobby. (Strange that the Maxis area where the housekeeper froze was one of those that DIDN'T have that.)
3. Lots of space around the lobby in general
4. No-care plants, including a couple of Sunni plants (so that's not it ... )
5. Boxy, boxy rooms

The housekeeper loved it. Did very well. So it's not a bad mod, since he or she would have frozen on that lot as well. There is something in the layout.

I plan to build a wider saltbox and not overdo the plant decorations, even if the Garden Club DID like my scheme. For now, keep any plant that needs tending off it. Stick with pine trees, plastic shrubs, no-care flowers, and put the Perfect Plants mod back in. Make a double staircase with at least two tiles of space around the sides using Maxis stairs (recolors are OK, and so much for historical authenticity with the wide hallway). Currently, I have one of Inge's, and the way I have the house laid out, really can't put a double staircase in there. Take the fence down around the property. Keep the NPC cook off it. He or she can go to a community lot next door, away from the housekeeper, if I want him or her that badly.

It's not going to be nearly as pretty as the original. My boxy beach bungalows certainly weren't! But it may work this time.

I want to add some facial hair to the game but the files have .package and also .bak. What is .bak and do I need them?

They're backups of the files. You can delete them.

Keeping an eye on your progress, Gazania

Gazania, that's why I mentioned people swapping out to plastic hedge on my resort- or I think I did. I know from my own testing that the housekeeper does indeed have a thing for plants and my resort is chokers with them. Gardening mods will also help or take care of it. If you swap to perfect plants she would have no need to trim or water so there is that solution.

the skin of any character can be changed, but I take only in SimPE; not aware of any other ways to change skin of characters.
for characters not part of a neighborhood, it would be through their respective Property Set resource; skintone line.
for characters part of a neighborhood, it can be either that way or through SimPE's Sim Surgery; unless they have no character data.

What if it's an occupied lot? I want to package an occupied lot, but I don't want to move out my sim in the current hood. I just want a copy of the lot.

If I package the lot (with the sim), move it to a new hood, and move out the sim, will it affect the lot?
(Yes it's a dumb question, but this is definitely what the forum is for. lol)

Yes, I read that on your resort notes. That might have lit the light bulb in my brain, and thank you for that!. I thought I'd be safe with the Perfect Plants mod, but I do have the one that excludes orchards, and combined with the narrow house layout, that might not be helping. So it's no-care and plastic shrubs for me right now. And a wider house. Much.

You'd still corrupt it. Actually, both lots. (EDIT ... and hoods too, of course!)

@AliaD85 Adding to the above ^ Both lots and both hoods. Never use the ingame tools to move an occupied house between hoods and never install one either. http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...ding_corruption

Lots are best saved to file and the lot bin after making them. With no sims, not even sims in to test. What you can do is move your sims out, package the lot and use simpe to remove all sim references before using the lot elsewhere.

And both neighborhoods. Never, ever, ever put an occupied house in the lot bin.

When you package the lot, the original will not be corrupted, and its hood is safe. But if you unpack it into another hood while it's still occupied, you WILL still corrupt the new hood.

If you only want the building, it is safe to package the occupied lot to a file. But before you install this file back into the game, you must clean it up. Open the package in the Sims2Pack Clean Installer, and choose the "Lot Only" selection. Safe the result as a new file and install that new file in the game. Now you'll have a furnished lot without sims in the bin that you can place into your new hood.

All this time I thought that packing an occupied lot would make my game shit itself so back in the days where I moved in a sim before I built their house, I just let it be for them or manually remade it so thanks for this tip.

If done properly, you can package up occupied lots and move your sims from one hood to another. I've been doing it for years without blowing up any of my hoods.

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Instructions for safely saving sims on Lots, for use in other hoods:

1, Package them on their lot.
2, install them into the throw away hood using clean installer (making sure you only install the family and the lot - no one that isn't living on the lot)
3, use Simpe or Pescado's Lot debugger (ffsdebugger) to clean up their memories (or use both (No Sim Loaded also helps with this)).
4, re-package them on their lot.
5, install in your new hood.
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@SleepycatDSL I'd also remove the sim references before packing the lot.

@Jawusa is right: At least the references to sims that do/did not live in the house, should be removed from within the Sims2pack Clean Installer before repackaging.

I have a question before using an option on the batbox. I asked a long time ago about this but didn't get a clear enough idea what to do. All households have the option to fix 'stucked diners'. I know, in my case, this is not a reference to diners at home or community lots. This hood has no food lots just yet. All households are fine. The only time I've seen this option is when there are ghosts, and not ghosts on those lots. The hood is Sedona and there are 4 ghosts on a community lot that didn't die of hunger. I'd like to know exactly what it means and if it's safe to fix with that option, what does it fix?

My sims can't use the phone in one of my uni houses. One sim did, and I was about to click "invite sim over" but then the pop-up disappeared and she was just stuck there. So I force error'd her and then the phone. but now whenever someone goes to use the phone, they pick it up and put it down straight away.

I'm thinking the game thinks that a sim is already on the phone, so would using the batbox to get rid of off-world loiterers solve the problem?

Option to clean off-world loiterers is appearing only if they are present. So you can use it if you see option. Be careful it will end talking on phone too.

I've had the issue before - managed to fix it by having one of my sims use a cell phone. It might've just been a fluke but perhaps it's worth a try.

Looking for advice and opinion of these two mods from experienced players. Trying to figure out which one is better to use ? advantages? disadvantages? Conflict reasons.
Stay Thing shrubs
http://www.drealm.info/simlogical/s...2_MiscHacks.htm

FInd own place mod
http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=48193

I've never heard of the second mod, I've always used the shrub. Of course their are also opinions to the fact that it's cleaner for your game to wipe all things from a lot. I only ever leave things like kitchen and bathroom fittings, I have the sims pack up their belongings as you do. Beds you should always buy new, they tend to be buggy. I would not move a lot that has used the stay things shrub into another hood since it carries sim references.

Sorry, but both links go to the same mod: the move out mod. And actually, from what I read, I think I might try that one