I think they are disagreeing with you when you say your sims are going to come out of your computer and poke them. Everyone knows it's the other way around- humans pull sims out of the game to poke them.

That's how it works for me, anyway!

To me, even without ever having tried, just the idea of playing only one family, and having real control of only one sim in that family, is too confining. From what I heard and saw, I was quite charmed with most features of the new implementation of Plantsimism. And the idea of the entire hood loading as a unit - deminishing load times - sounded good as well. But when that results in only a few dozen sims per hood, and having to relocate them all the time as many players seemed to need to do... Nah, TS3 is not for me.

TS2 is the only version of Sims I've ever tried (and I was late to the party at that), and it was the first game in my life that I didn't put away after playing it for 3 months tops. Sure, there is a lot wrong with the game. But there is also a lot right. And the wrongs actually strengthen the community of modders, mod-requesters, CC-creators, recolor artists, etc. I cannot think of a game that does that much better, even after all those years.

The first time I started playing Don Lothario's lot in PV, he was still engaged to Cassy Goth. I had him throw a party, and invite all the lady friends he had. Cassy appeared first, and saw the Caliente sisters come in. Don stepped up to greet Nina with a romantic kiss, and Cassy just stood there looking and not responding. Howeve, not a minute later, as Nina decided to play some tonsil-hockey with Don, all hell broke loose and the engagement was ended then and there!

Clearly, when it's part of a greeting, kissing is no problem at all. And this all happened when I did not have AL/M&G yet, so those packs aren't responsible for it, either. I hope this helps

First - thank you for the mods, Boiling Oil - I use some of them and am very happy with the way they improve my game

Then : I have to go and wonder about this hello/goodbye kiss now even when it has never bothered me before! If it came with BV, maybe it was intended to say good-bye to the Sims in the Far East/Mountains/Islands to whom your Sim was attracted/made friends with/ had a bit of a holiday affair with - and, from what I have learned from reading about things - maybe EA never intended it to go over to the general hood, but we know by now how they sometimes did not do what they had intended to do in the first place.

I know why I downloaded and installed gummilutt's mod . Because my young sims used kiss greeting and got "Kissed (sim) first time" memory and it disabled "First Kiss".

@Justpetro, you need not thank me for my mods here, you know? I made most of them because I wanted them myself I *would* be most appreciative, however, if you would not put a space in my name, thank you. Sorry to be a stickler, but it's one word

Anyway, that's most certainly true: EA/Maxis often had plans/ideas that in the end they seemed unable to deliver. They've made bunches of mistakes which never got fixed. At least not by themselves. I'm not sure if that was the case with this one, though.



Ah, yeah, THAT is true. Teens do get a First Kiss memory from this greeting and lose the opportunity for a proper Very First Kiss! That's a very good reason to mod it away... I may have to have a look at gummilutt's mod. Thanks for the link, Annaminna :lovestruc

Make a mental note to spell BoilingOil correctly in future.

I have not realised that teens get this memory (my poor teens are so busy that they do not always get that first kiss before going off to Uni ) - going to look at Gummilutt's mod.

That kiss did come with BV. Peni helped me work it out. It showed up when she installed OFB, BV, and M&G all at once. It can't be a problem with OFB, because AndrewGloria has OFB (but not the other two) and does not have that kissing problem. It can't be M&G because I had the kissing problem in my Mac game, and M&G is not Mac-compatible. However, BV is Mac-compatible and I had the problem in a game with BV installed. Therefore, the kissing problem showed up in BV. Logic and teamwork!

Smooching directly on the mouth is how you say goodbye to a casual acquaintance in the far east/mountains.islands, I'll keep that in mind.

You know how there is an effect for hot air balloons and a flying pig that is triggered by a water tower? How come there is no Santa sleigh effect triggered by winter season? Or some sorta Jack Frost effect that acts similarly to the UFO.

Also, why not some christmas light 'landmarks' that you can connect like the telephone pole? That sparkle in colors? That way you could decorate the neighborhood in neighborhood view.

With the above, you'll probably need a pine tree with christmas lights as well, and criquette-like neighborhood deco to make a sorta 'park' that is not a lot.

Is anybody planning on making a christmas card with their sim game? Especially is you get that sky box thing for the neighborhood, the game can look quite scenic:

Because in some places Christmas falls in the middle of summer! Oh yes, Santa goes surfing here.

Nice picture though, very pretty,

Ah, I'm always forgetting. I seem to be having short memory these days

Lovely picture Rinchan. :lovestruc

Jo, I never get used to that about Oz. I've only lived here 3 years, so the reverse seasons thing still throws me off.

I didn't realize you were new to Oz. Hope you are liking it.

@NewSimgirl2011, if you're still needing body hair for your sim guys, Quinctia has a fixed overlay box on her Livejournal here.

I started playing TS2 again while waiting for Get Together to be released, and now I'm kinda hooked again lol. Playing legacy style (as always) and realizing I've missed it a lot actually! Here are some things that I've thought about while playing:

The lights are BRIGHT! Were they always this bright? In TS3 and TS4 you need 3 or 4 lights per room just to get decent lighting - in TS2 I find myself having one light per room and even that's too much sometimes (right now I play with most of the lights off because I don't like how saturated everything becomes when they're on, lol).

I don't understand how the graphics of an 11 year old game can be better than the most recent installement of the franchise? Seriously

I missed the little cutscenes - they're so cute!

The chance cards are great too (even though I got the same nature related hobby question 3 times and no matter what answer I gave, she lost her interest in nature. Mess.) I remember being extremely lucky back in the day and getting a chance card with an answer that granted like 50,000 simoleons - goodbye cheap furniture and living in a shoe box

The needs decrease hella fast. My legacy founder was pregnant and had food poisoning at the same time - I spent the better part of her pregnancy keeping her from falling asleep in her food

So many public lots and there are actually sims there.

One thing I haven't missed is the friends requirement for job promotions and the fact that they're all clingy and dramatic af and disown you as a friend if you haven't called them in a day and a half lmao

@Pelouse Always that bright. As a Sims 2 player the darkness was one of my beefs with TS3.

Remember to tick the perks related to needs, they really do help.

You can mod out the friend requirement. http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=15.0

It's more the style than the colour of a Sim's hair that makes it pleasing to me. I like Andrew's hair, and it's pure base game Maxis. Generally I like hair that covers the ears, and that is combed forward onto a fringe, or partial fringe covering at least part of the forehead. (They seem to be called "bangs", but I never heard of them before I came to MTS.) That goes for both males and females. On average my female Sims may have slightly longer hair, but the styles are similar. You can get an idea of what I like by looking at the pictures of my CAS Sims I've posted here.

Maybe it's because I play in low-resolution graphics, but I don't think I really get the point of Pooklet recolours. As I see it, they offer a wider range of hair colours, similar to Peggy's, but with more exotic names. As they're standardised and used by different creators, I suppose a Sim can change her hairstyle and it will still look like her hair, because the basic colour is the same. And maybe they're just higher quality. Personally, at the resolution I play at, Peggy's and other colours always look realistic enough. Maybe some of you devotees of Pooklet can "sell" her hair colours to me. Why are they so good?

I prefer to Ignore the hobby-related chance cards; too little gain, too much risk and no way to rig the odds in your favor. If you win, you almost always gain one measly point of hobby enthusiasm...which you can gain easily enough from actually doing the hobby. Whoopie. If you lose, you might lose a point of hobby enthusiasm, but you could just as easily lose money or get demoted, maybe even fired. No thanks.

But those Career Track chance cards? I usually take those...or always take those if either A) the Sim has the second aspiration perk in the Work column ("Business Instinct") or B) was lucky enough to Save the lot shortly before the chance card came up. Carmilla von Carstein (one of my vampires whom I won't shut up about) used to live in a crummy three-story tower right out of college. She reached Mad Scientist, went to work one night, came up with the chance card, beat it and pulled in $45,000. She lives in a hilltop manor now.


Just get them up to max Short-Term Relationship (and perhaps even Long-Term Relationship as well) each time you see them, and they won't be so much of a bother. A few suggestions for accomplishing that:

• Popularity as your primary Aspiration, with all four perks. Invite them over and Chat the blazes out of them.
• Romance as your primary Aspiration, with all four perks. Invite them over, Smooth Talk, Backrub, Smooth Talk, Romantic Hug, Romantic Kiss, Make Out, Make Out and WooHoo them once or twice.
• Throw a party with the low-relationship Sims as the guests (but try to keep them to three guests or fewer) and get them all in the hot tub with you. Even if the party tanks, you'll still pump your relationships back up quite nicely.
• Invite them via phone invitation or party. Plunk down a bubble machine. Seriously, why do Sims love the bubble machine so much?
• Buy Love Potion 8.5 from the Gypsy Matchmaker or a High Witch; if you're a witch yourself, save some money and brew it yourself. Invite them over, drink the potion and get your WooHoo on.
• Build your Mechanical skill, take a vacation to Twikkii Island and get a Voodoo Doll from the Witch Doctor, then come home, invite your nagging friends over and hit them with Voodoo...Friendship or Voodoo...Romance. Keep the bathroom and the kitchen open, and be ready for any voodoo backfires.
• Take a three-day vacation to Twikkii Island with plenty of money. Come home with oodles of souvenirs. Pick the Je Ne Sais Quoi vacation perk. Smother your house with souvenir shelves full of Tropical souvenirs. Invite them over and get your WooHoo on. If the season is Spring, bonus!
• Take a three-day vacation to Three Lakes with plenty of money. Come home with oodles of souvenirs. Smother your house with souvenir shelves full of Mountain souvenirs. Invest in some Cool Shades if your Charisma sucks (or if you're overflowing with Aspiration points, screw it; just buy the shades anyway). Invite them over. Get your Mood up to Gold or Platinum, clap in the Cool Shades, Chat, Chat, Chat, frickin' Chat, turn on a stereo, Slap Dance, Chat some more.
• Take a however-many-day vacation to Takemizu Village, find the Pagoda in the Shadows, make tea for the Wise Old Man, get the Dragon Legend, come home, invite them over and sit them down with some Dragon Legend. One telling of the tale is usually all it takes, but a second telling couldn't hurt.
• If your home has a fishing pond, just invite them over, start fishing and invite them all to join. If their moods seem to be tanking, cook up some of that delicious, sparkly fish that you just caught and call them to dinner. Then it's back to fishing. Sims love fishing, possibly even more than they love bubble machines.
• If you're a Good or powerful enough Neutral Witch/Warlock, invite them over, blast them with Compello Acceptus and do whatever you want with them. They have to accept.
• If you're a powerful Infallibly Good Witch/Warlock, invite them over (or cast Appello Simae if they're being stubborn) and blast them with Mactoamicus.
• Wait until your Social is low, then call that Sim just to chat on the phone. Just make sure that you have a Simmy hour or two to spare.

Some of these ideas may or may not apply, depending on whether or not your Sim is hardcore Popularity, hardcore Romance or a compromise between the two. Carmilla (the vampire/witch with the big house back there) is a perfectly bisexual Romance Sim. WooHoo is just her way of saying "Hi, how have you been?". She blew through her "20 Simultaneous Lovers" Lifetime Want and attained Permaplatinum about 20 Sims ago; she has racked up around 36 to 40 lovers from both sexes (because being a vampire means being able to go on lots of dates every night), and her phone rings almost constantly. She has no trouble snatching up job promotions.

There are mods for that! Inge Jones made a "More Realistic Relationship decay" looooooong ago, and it's still available right here at Simlogical. I know that some others made similar mods, but I can't for the life of me remember what these mods are called, or where to find them. But Inge's mod, I can tell you, works miracles!

Thanks guys, I'll take a look at the mods!

Also, kinda unrelated, but is there a way to stop the showers from leaking water everytime the sims take a shower? It's not broken, but the floor gets soakin' anyway.

Are the Sims taking the showers Sloppy? That's just one of a Sloppy Sim's drawbacks. The only way to stop the shower water from spilling around the shower room is to somehow make the Sim not Sloppy.

But Sloppy Sims can also save time by using the shower to satisfying their Bladder Need along with their Hygiene Need...peeing in the shower, you know? So they're not all bad.

(...but maybe that's why the shower overflows. Ew.)

What if there was some sort of shrub that has 2 options (start and stop). Click on start, and then until you click stop, it would remember the placement of deco items for a specific season or party type. That way we could bring to TS2 the TS3 seasons decoration feature. Dunno if possible though.

@Pelouse: Pizzatron-9000 is right about the cause of the puddles. But there is a mod to drain away leakage water, pee puddles, rain puddles and the likes. It's a drain (duh) available here on MTS, somewhere... Let me go have a look where it was again...

ETA: Yeah, HERE it is!
And there's an invisible recolor for it here. That should do, right?

I do not have such a big problem with my Sims keeping their friends. Regular outings just for fun and a number of small house parties seem to do the trick.