If you use the teleporter to zap one of them off the lot, they'll move out, but their apartment will stay empty and no one new will move in.

Uh, is there a reason why a mini icon of the vending machine is IN the vending machine??


Found this while zooming in with Cameraman Mode (Tab). It reminds me of the snack bags having mini versions of them inside them. I think that had to do with meshing, so what exactly does this do?

I just solved it by creating a new Sim and moving them in in order to evict the townie who was causing most of the fights. I then teleported all the Sims over to my utility Gravekeeper's lot and then reset their relationships and fury. Hopefully it'll stop them picking more fights for a while.

I noticed I was unable to call dormies. The townie household 0x7FFE didn't have a phone in SimPE, so I enabled it. Did I do something horribly wrong?

You mean in the neighborhood package? I doubt that will have any effect on anything. Regular townies should all be callable normally, but most people probably just install Lazy Duchess's call anyone mod and don't worry about it regardless.

I am playing a number of custom populated hoods. Some older ones I've played had their own sites to post pictures, but I can't find sites like this for newer hoods. As, The New Beginning of Pleasantview Plus by the new hood building group (here on MTS). I did post a question on that download, but couldn't follow the link. And now I'm now also playing 2 other hoods. Is there a thread (I can't find one) for me to post comments & pictures about custom hoods like this?

You could always start one?

Heavens no
 

Besides, I know there IS a thread ...somewhere

There is a thread called "What did you do with the beginning hoods?"

I found a currant one called "what did you do with the Beginning Hoods Characters" so I guess I'll go with that one

After editing a downtown lot, now the thumbnail shows another lot that was in front of it:



Is there a way to fix this?

Move the lot, edit it, then move it back.

Well that's... awkwardly obvious now that I see it.

I had the same issue with Hans Trap Door blocking a lot I edited

You can also edit the package in SimPE, but it's tedious (you'd have to exit the game and relaunch it, only for the sake of a thumbnail).

Sorry I know this is from a while ago - but I was just looking at the AL Prima guide randomly and it has LOTS of info about social class:

https://issuu.com/thomasvaughan5/do..._life_prima_off

This is so stupid; how do you package terrain paints/covers/ground covers? There is an option to do so in Sims2Pack format in Homecrafter but I've seen people upload them without it. There are only the template files in my Projects/HomeCrafter Plus folder, so I have no idea where I need to look.

Homecrafter packages the files as package format, but spits them out as Sims2pack files (I think? Been a while since I made a project...). Whatever format, I'm pretty sure they too end up in SavedSims when done.

You install the Sims2pack files, and then you get the package files. The Sims2pack files are not needed. If you want to share the files, you can put the regular package files up for download.

(You can actually share sims the same way - just package files, without the sims2pack file (package in Bodyshop to collect the files, install into a decluttered folder, then zip up the files - can be useful if you want to share a sim with a Mac user, for instance). They don't really need the Sims2pack file, it just acts as a Sims-format zip file of sorts. I don't think it would work for lots, though).

So you can regularly take them from SavedSims when done importing? Assuming they come with the names you added to them like BodyShop projects do.
I knew Sims2pack was just an archive file with content but didnt know you could do this.

Some corrections (had to test it out first, like I said, been a while since I made HC projects...) - the files end up in Downloads, and they'll already be Package files, so no worries about that. You can choose to pack them as Sims2pack (it's an option when you've made the package file), but it's not necessary.

The package files will be named something like "wall_f5a43bc2.package" or "floor_f32d45c5.package"

Make sure to give them a good tooltip name (so if you lose track, you can figure out the name in SimPE and some other programs), and it's a good idea to rename the files if you want to keep track of what's what.

The "work in progress" is in the "Work catalog" (or whatever the translation is) in the Projects folder, and gets deleted when you either save the file or discard the project, so if you want to keep any project files (PSDs and the like) it's best to copy them and store them elsewhere.

Oh phew! I've made a lot, I had no idea they ended up right in Downloads. I'll rename them though because there's no way people are going to find them all with these names.
I noticed the Working Directory folder behaves weird, I don't know why EAxis made it like that while they could have done it like BS.

You're right of course!I really need to do for children what I did for teenage boys some eight years ago -- mainly so that Julian could wear something that looked reasonably respectable below the waist while while continuing to go topless -- because he really doesn't like textiles touching his skin! Here he is with Andrew demonstrating them:


Last night I kept looking at these teenage formal shorts with long socks, trying to remember how I made them, or indeed if I could think of a better way to do them. I looked at the Maxis girls' school uniforms, and indeed at the schoolboy outfit that Alexander Goth wears. I couldn't get any of them to work, and I was getting more and more tired. Eventually I decided to take the shoes from a Maxis boys' formal suit, the long socks from the kilt hose by jadedicara , and of course the Simphany.com shorts, both of which I already have in my game. ("Hose" is what we Scots call the long socks we wear with our kilts.) But I was too tired to do them last night, so I went to bed. (I seem to be permanently lethargic since my fall in February.)

This evening I made the children's formal shorts, with long socks and black shoes, and I think they look at least passable. I brought those kids (they're called Alan and Ursula) back to model them for me in CAS.


Maybe one day I'll come back and see if I can improve their shoes, but I think they'll do for now. Having made them, I was again too tired to actually play the game, or indeed to finish this over-long post. So now I've got up in the middle of the night to finish it.

Having modelled these outfits twice for me in CAS, I think Ursula and Alan have earned a place in my game, so I'll see if I can get them into Veronaville. Of course I'll need to give them at least one older parent or guardian to look after them. They could continue to act as child models. I probably ought to pay them for that. Maybe hold the money they earn in some sort of locked fund until they're older.

They look great @AndrewGloria Very stylish and smart.

Go into Game Options, and turn Neighbors off. It may help to turn Decorations and Clickable Neighbors off too. Open the lot and save it. You may have to make a minor build mode change. Hopefully the thumbnail will regenerate with no other buildings visible. You can now go back into Game Options and turn everything on again.

I won't guarantee this will work, but I think it will.

Julian may be the half naked one, but it was Andrew's butt I stared at for too long. XD

I had totally forgotten these. They're Hogwarts uniforms, but they'd totally work for muggle girls as well. XD Shirt with tie here https://modthesims.info/d/209408/ho...s-amp-ties.html, and pleated skirt with knee length socks and shoes here. https://modthesims.info/d/135999/ho...ovie-style.html And boys, for the shirts (no shorts). https://modthesims.info/d/208486/ho...s-amp-ties.html

Hope you feel better soon. Take care of yourself!

Do y'all ever forget some features exist in the game because you haven't used them in so long?

In the past 2 weeks, I've rediscovered pet jobs, the uni secret society, and assigning uniforms for business employees. Pet jobs I still won't bother with, but the other 2 are actually useful and now I have 2 new secret society members and my employees actually look fitting for the business they're employed at.

Any other creators have a weird downloads spike yesterday? It looks like almost all my uploads got downloaded at least three or four times yesterday, which is definitely more than most days, and it doesn't have a matching spike in views or thanks, so I'm not sure what to make of it!

I had a fairly high number of downloads overall yesterday, but the views matched them. I didn't go through and check individual downloads.

Not really. I had slightly more on the 19th than the 18th, but there were fewer on the 19th than on the 17th, 16th, and 15th and the downloads chart matches the views chart pretty much exactly.

I downloaded a few of yours a couple of days ago!

Re: Pet jobs, I always thought they were pretty stupid, but recently I've taken to giving some of my Police sims a canine companion that they are expected to train in the Security career.

And in one game, I decided Jodie and Jason Larson would be pet trainers for animals to appear in films/tv (Showbiz career).

Anyone know how to fix inconsistencies between the lot imposter and the real lot? I updated the roof and the imposter shows the roof correctly, but it's still doing this.

The imposter:


The actual lot:


The issue is the ground showing as green. Any ideas how to fix it?


I've been grabbing new mods also

Looks like you have a few problems. Some of your stairs and fence on one lot are flashing blue and you have a totally black window on another house.

The big black "window" will actually be a public toilet stall next to the outside wall. I always get that in my neighbourhood views. I don't think there's a fix.

I can't actually see the problem with the ground colour, but I do know some neighbourhood effects don't show up in lot view.

The ground problem is that in neighbourhood view there's grass under the statue and in lot view it's actually a stone floor. Plus the benches around the edges are a different colour and the monkey bars appear to be in the wrong place.

They're not flashing blue, that's just their colour.

I went with a blue theme on that lot, at the time:


(And now I look at it again, I'm debating changing it to match the others)


That's exactly what it is (hence in my newer builds I do a separate wall, it happens with elevators and stairs too)





Yeah :-/

I'm going to actually go with 'lot impostors are just buggy'. The blue stairs in your lot view look normal, whereas in the hood view they're extremely blue and off to one side.

Yep, lot imposters are buggy.

I would guess that the ground is slightly raised and the game thinks that the grass should show over the stone.

You could remove the stone, paint under it with a dark terrain paint like the ocean floor, and then replace the stone.

My random question: What causes crashing on saving? I never get this but I've been building on a large/complex lot today and I've had multiple crashes. The first was the most annoying because I got out of the habit of saving every few changes so I lost quite a bit of work. Luckily a lot of it was figuring out how to do something so I could recreate it fairly easily but I forgot exactly how I had decorated certain parts of the lot and had to start again. I saved every few changes after this but still had CTD another 2 (maybe 3?) times.

When Sims autonomously prepare a meal, is there any sort of game logic to which meal is selected or is it randomized?

My guess would be memory overload of some sort (especially with a large and/or CC-heavy lot), or issues with CC.

Yes that could be it because this hood does lag somewhat. How annoying. What does memory overload actually mean in the context of sims? Video memory, RAM? My graphics card has the full 4gb and I have the 4gb patch and it works. I have 16gb RAM so I would have thought that would be enough as well.

I remember in the early days of the sims 2 I had 256mb of RAM and I was always coaxing the game to even start up at all and closing every possible other running process including print spoolers why why why do I face the same issues today with a ridiculous amount more??

I've noticed the game tends to be a bit more unstable when parts of it are in swap memory (you can check this with RAMMap, which I also use to keep an eye on the standby memory).

What is swap memory?

If you run out of space on RAM, the system will start moving things to virtual memory on disk. It's much slower.

I can confirm this was the issue! Though, the stone is a terrain paint, so looks like there's not much I can do. I noticed it on another lot too where it was more visible that the ground is shown as raised to the rest.


Swap is a filesystem partition or file (depending on the setup) which the operating system (OS) can use as additional system memory. This will be stored directly on your storage device and have a limited size. Depending on the configuration of your system this file may be used to for memory data that is not being used/accessed very often or it may only be used when your main system memory (RAM) runs low and the OS needs to use it in order to keep running. When using the data within the swap file/partition the system will swap the data between the partition/file and your system memory while using it, thus the system starts "swapping" which can slow things down under heavy load.

If it's the neighbourhood terrain which is raised, you could move the lot, then flatten it using the cheat, then move the lot back.

Thanks for the RamMap tip. I downloaded it. However, I have literally no idea what it's telling me is there a RTFM anywhere?

In the first tab, 'Use Counts'. you can see how much of the memory is in swap (it's called Page Table in the list).

In the processes tab you can see which processes are using it in the 'page table column.

Also, note this blue section:



There's a glitch where the standby cache can fill up all of the available memory. If that happens, Empty > Empty Standby List can clear it out.

Note that the program doesn't automatically refresh itself. Use File > Refresh or the F5 key.

What could be the issue when some cc clothes look perfectly fine in cas but broken in live mode? It happened with some toddlers and child clothes. I thought I may have deleted the mesh accidentaly, so I redownloaded the files but the issue persists, it also happens with some default replacements.

Do you have "Sim/object Details" and "Texture detail" on high? If not, the game is probably reading the original clothing LODs. TS2 CAS CC meshes rarely, if ever, have LODs (low-definition versions) included.

Turn those on high, and the clothes should look fine (This is especially true for 3t2/4t2 meshes, since those have extra groups, which may or may not show without those two settings).

(you can see it on the mesh, which doesn't look like the t-shirt - it's clearly reading the wrong mesh, which is in turn reading the wrong texture - it's not reading the extra group for the shirt, but the "body" group that doesn't have a texture. Plus, I think I can spot the three last fingers on each hand being block-shaped, which is a classic sign of the "sim/object detail" being set to low)

CAS uses somewhat different graphic settings from what you see on-lot, so what you see in CAS isn't always what you'll see on-lot, and vice versa.

"Texture detail" on high helps if you're getting low-res textures close up, or you get the wrong textures.

THANK YOU!!! "Sim/object Details" was, in fact, on low. So simple, now I gotta redownload stuffs

Have people tried running the 3t2 traits alongside Hat's G-rated Religion (or Simmons' Lifestyles variation)?
Does it work?
Is it pointless to use both?

Any other thoughts/experiences on such a combination?

Does the thinking cap also increase badge gain or just skill?

It increases toddler skills if the adult teaching them wears it, so possibly? I don't know, though.

Is it safe/possible to change a sim's age in SimPE? I have some townies I have decided to keep but I don't need so many adults; I want to age some of them down to teens or children.

I could do this in game of course, but it would be much simpler if I could do it en-masse in SimPE.

You can change what age the game thinks they are without changing their bodies or clothing/hair in SimPE, if you want to create a bunch of teens and children with adult bodies who constantly squat to get down to teen/child height. If you want their age to get set properly, you have to age them down in game, ideally by aging them to the age stage below what you want and then aging them up one.

Ah, yeah, I don't want that XD Fair enough. Thanks for the tip also about going one age stage below!

Actually, could I do that in SimPE? ie, set them all as toddlers/kids and then age them up in game, would that set them correctly?

No, probably not.

In-game options for changing a Sim's age: Sim Blender, Sim Manipulator, Age/Time Cheat (accessed by turning on the Boolprop cheat and spawning the cheat item), etc. (I am sure there are more).

Here's an old thread on the subject of de-aging Sims: https://modthesims.info/t/458201

There's also the AgeSimsCheat, which comes with Nightlife. I used it a few years ago when testing a school mod for lientebollemeis. It worked for what we wanted it for -- aging a teen to adult to get an adult job, and then back to teen, but it did have the disadvantage that, when aging a Sim down to a teen or a child, it gave them an F grade. That's a minor problem for a teen, but is liable to get children taken away by the social worker. For that reason I have tended in recent years to use the Sim Manipulator instead. (I am forever aging CAS adults down to teens, mainly because I just like playing teens!) However a couple of months ago I ran into a problem. I made a married couple with a child in CAS, but, when I got them into the game, I aged them down to teens with the Sim Manipulator. However, before I aged the husband down, I had him get a job out of the morning paper. With a teenage wife and a young child to keep, I reckoned he needed a proper adult job. But when the time came for him to go to work, no carpool showed up, and when I checked, it said he was unemployed. The Sim Manipulator must have taken away his adult job when it made him a teen. And of course only pittance-paying teen jobs were now available in the paper for him. In the event it wasn't hard to fix -- I gave him back his proper job in SimPE.

But it's something to bear in mind for the future: if I want a Sim to keep their job when aged down to teen, I'd better use the AgeSimsCheat rather than the Sim Manipulator.

Can vampires have kids?

I suppose so, if they are Playables or if you are using Story Progression. (I don't use either of those options so can't answer definitively.)

Yes, the only supernaturals that can't have kids are zombies and servos.

Unfortunately, yes. XD *grumbles about them being supposed to be undead*

And bigfoot (and the uncontrollable genie).

If they already have a high grade, they shouldn't be set to a full F (I think it only takes them down one or two grades), so if you set their grade as A or B before aging down/up, and fix it to whatever it should be afterward, it shouldn't be a problem. Can be done with the SimManipulator (and similar mods).

Honestly, the default vampires in this game.. well let's just say, not what I would call vampires. They're just not dangerous enough, I mean they even eat regular human food instead of drinking blood. Logically you would think to feed they'd need to bite other (human) sims or drink packets from a blood bank. But regular food? No.

I have so many complaints about those vampires.

So I'm pretty new to mering CC. I know it ok to merge a mesh + recolors. But is it ok to merge several meshes + recolors? I have this private school uniform default with mesh for cf-cm-ft-mt. Can I merge them with the recolors together or is it a big no no?

That is why I have them modded to not be able to eat regular food and to be able to bite for food (rather than for turning).

Vampires are also so fragile. I know that can be modded, too, but I still find them tedious to play. I prefer werewolves, and I have a mode that enables them to attack other Sims to fill their hunger bar. It was very satisfying playing my YA werewolf in college and letting him attack the cow mascot who was picking on him.

Yeah, I have just one vampire in my hood so far, mostly because I wanted to try them out. First thing was to install:

https://modthesims.info/d/295358/de...nteraction.html [1]
https://modthesims.info/d/676491/au...esn-t-turn.html

And one of the skin ones, I can't remember exactly which one, but it still leaves some slight paleness and red eyes (I wanted those).

I'm not sure if there are other useful mods, but these are the ones I found while searching for biting mods. :D. The unable to eat human food sounds interesting though, any links?

[1] This mod does work, but only on townies, as EA added a check to prevent playables from being killed, disabling the check did work, but then it caused other issues where lots would load into build/buy instead of loading correctly, so I just leave it as townies only, that's good enough as I can always add a townie to family and then kill.. I mean, help them.

I use this one, because I use fanseelamb's Tru Blood drinks, but midgethetree's original has the same function except for the exclusions. https://jellymeduza.tumblr.com/post...or-blood-drinks

Nice! Also found your blood bags mod, installed, tested, working! Thanks!

Edit: Also, that means working well with T&A/A&N (Which I still use!)

I was reading Chamelea's post in the "What's happening in your game" thread and I just thought about something.

How come there has never been a Class Action Lawsuit against the manufactures of the Exercise Bike, Model Train, Telescopes, Hot Tubs (lighting strikes) and other items that cause great harm to Sims? With so much evidence, I can't believe there hasn't been some monstrous recall of these items. Ridiculous!

Ahhh, the exercise bike of doom. I put one down in my asylum challenge, not realizing what it'd do to noncontrollables.

Ask NASA for a compensation, or create an international row with the Chinese, when you're hit by a satellite.

I added body temperature exit condition to all objects, which is a bit lower for visitors. They usually don't stay long on exercise things. This avois them getting a red skin a new portrait. And an exit for visitors if rain has started. Does lightning into a small pool of water have a basis in reality?

Water attracts electricity, so yes. Open water and being the highest thing around are both to be avoided during an electrical storm.

I am pretty sure the exercise bike is a requirement (or at least a suggestion!) in the asylum challenge description.

I did that too, and then I regretted it because that meant I had a bunch of uncontrollable annoying werewolf dormies who all transformed into wolves every day and constantly howled and made my other sims pee themselves and lose aspiration points.



The requirement is one skilling item for each skill. You could technically choose a TV or a radio for body, rather than any exercise equipment. Or you can live on the wild side like Ephemeral Toast did and use the dance sphere.

Most people would have the fix to stop the 'bike of death'. So would not make a difference used or not.

The mod I'm using gives you a choice so you don't have to turn the other Sim into a werewolf when you attack them. I'm very choosy about who actually gets to be a werewolf in my game. I was just imagining all those dormies being werewolves on top of their other issues!

Is it safe to delete a pregnant sim with moveobjects? Somehow she is started to shine like witch and I try to solve the bug somehow. Reseting with ForceError and BoolProp did not work.

Yes. It is always safe to delete a sim with move objects.

Is there a way to fix how the terrain looks on a lot imposter? What I mean is, can this be fixed? I tried the obvious (cut out the foundation, use flatten lot tool, then re-raise, save with flat terrain) that did nothing, and it looks the same. If I move the lot to bin, the ground is flat. The terrain appears to be a part of the lot itself (it shows like that even when moving it).

Any ideas? Or am I just being too picky on how it should look?

It's bugging me now.

Have you tried Smooth Edges on the Lot Adjuster?

Just tried this (My first time using lot adjuster tbh :p). Sadly, also didn't fix it, I finally got it to show flat underneath when actually flat, but as soon as I re-raise it to as shown in the picture, it goes bumpy again. Must be some kind of game limitation.

(I'm starting to accept odd looking terrain, I get the funny looking lots with basements too.)

I would not recommend it if they are the only playable on an owned business lot.

You may get different results if you increase the resolution of the lot Imposters, Lazy Duchess' RPCLib or RPC Launcher will do this (Note- will increase your graphics overhead!). Or, changing the z height of the imposters might help (this will change the height of all hood imposters too).
If none of that works, then you could manually change the imposter textures, but this is not permanent if you edit and resave the lot.

Why do some of the lots on my lot bin have these red lines in the corner? The group of four at the middle are taken from the Arbor Falls recreation from here on MTS, the one highlighted is one I'm currently working on.

I'm already using RPC, but with optimised setting. I'll look into the others, thanks!

Though I'm thinking to do a rebuild, with a different foundation to fix it if not. I've had an idea.

Plan B it is, I used some cheats to allow me to alter elevation of the existing building to bring it down to the level the previous terrain was, and well, this is the result. Sorry if it looks sloppy, was a 5 minute rush job.

on that note...
 

I stopped playing apartments because of all the odd stuff. Like looking at an empty apartment - where a baby was laying on the floor, and seeing pets and people in the common area AFTER they have moved out and are now playable in another lot.

Is there a program or easy method for finding double-ups of files you might have accidentally placed in a (very) disorganized downloads folder?

If they are exact duplicates, you can use one of the dupe files finder programs. I'm gonna bring up Total Commander again. On the Advanced tab in the search dialog there is a checkboxes for "Find duplicate files" and "same contents".

For a quick visual judgement, you can sort your files by size and look at identical sizes. For this it's helpful to show them in bytes, not rounded to KB. In Total Commander there is a "Branch" view, which combines the contents of all subdirectories into one list.

So, I did some basic testing last night because I found out more about how to use the neighbourhood terrain level tool (Seriously, all these years later and I'm still finding new (to me) features.). So using that, combined with the Lot Adjuster's flatten edges tool I figure I might be able to level out some of those funny looking roads and high edges! I briefly tested it to fix a few things and it looked better. But then restored my backup (I was testing).

My question is, if I move occupied lots, businesses, etc. to a different part of the map (same neighbourhood, just dragged to a empty location on it using the hand tool) and then use the flatten edges tool on them, finally load the game and into the neighbourhood use the terrain cheat and then put the lots back to where they were, with flat roads - this should be fairly safe in terms of corruption? The main risk being that a lot simply doesn't load?

Granted my imposters will look a bit funny until I load each lot and save it to re-gen the imposter, but in this case if I do something that breaks it, it's just a noticeably unloadable lot, rather than some hidden corruption?

Any other "catches" doing this I should be aware of, before I bust my hood?

I think Delphy's Download Organiser does.

And HCDU definitely does for mods.

If I am remembering, I think it isn't advisable to use the LotAdjuster on an occupied lot. But I could be way out of date...Is it in the documentation anywhere?

Hmm, I found this:
https://modthesims.info/showpost.ph...80&postcount=47

But that seems to be more about resizing lots rather than edge flattening / moving. But then, that post was in 2008, a lot could have changed in the game since then.

Question for those who play integrated neighborhoods similar like Ani Bats. If the mayor gets fired from their Maxis job, should they be fired from their role as mayor as well?

For example, Mary-Sue is a playable mayor. One day, I have her go work at her maxis job instead of playing her at the city hall. She gets a chance card that leads to her getting fired. Should she keep her job as a playable mayor or be fired from that as well?

It seems like it makes sense for her to be fired as a playable mayor too.

I don't think there's a right answer to this question, just what would be right for your story. Yes, it makes sense that she is fired too. Or maybe it means she is under a recall threat and has to garner votes for an election. You could set a condition for that, such as family friends, and make it part of your story. Maybe there is someone in the neighborhood to run against her. I could see that turning into a very interesting plot twist.

I would have her 'quit' the job and then let someone else take over, if there is someone to succeed her.

Thanks so much jonasn! Are the dupe file finder programs available for download (and would you happen to have a link to one that you know is reputable?) - or are these tools something I should already have bundled with Windows 10? When I clicked on my search bar (in my downloads folder) and selected the advanced option, no category for finding duplicates appeared. Thanks again - I should probably have put this in help, as maybe it's not so quick and easy!

Edit: Nevermind - I've found CCleaner (which I already have), includes this function. You've been very helpful all the same, Jonasn - thank you again.