There is still one thing in BO's mod. If family goes to vacation, they need still hire a nanny for these 10-15 min.

Yup, and there are a few other situations, too, where it still won't work.
For example, if mom and dad are both temporarily absent, you can't send your teens to college if that means leaving a baby, toddler or child alone, even for just ten minutes. You must wait for someone to come home to watch the kids for that one.
Sending sims away by taxi cab is also an issue in many instances. If your sims leave walking, there's nothing wrong. If they use the carpool to work or the bus to school, nothing wrong either. But the taxi? No way, José!

I have yet to find out why, and if there's anything that can be done about such things.

Hmmm that must not be the one I have after all. I've had parents die leaving toddler orphans and had them grow up on their own just fine. I do use max motives liberally, though. Maybe that makes the difference. But still, they are alone for an extended period of time inasmuch as they raise themselves.

Thank you for the correction, BoilingOil; it's been a long time since I read the mod description. I've had a couple of occasions in one house where toddlers woke up with very low hunger bars or where social was nearly empty, and the social worker had never shown so I assumed the mod was preventing it completely and started intervening myself. Aside from kids obsessed with bed jumping I've never even gotten a warning, and I can't recall if that warning was before or after I started using your mod. I guess the game's threshold of care is lower than I feared it was. It's good to know that if the tots are in real danger the social worker will still turn up; I prefer that to not having her at all. Thank you for creating such a useful mod.

@smorbie: and there you have it: "Neglected" isn't necessarily the same as "alone". Neglected means that they are in a very bad condition because nobody takes care of them. When you use maxmotives, you're improving their motives, their needs. So they're not in the red for an extended (very long) time. Therefor, the social worker will not come.

@stitching: usually, one motive in the red isn't bad enough; their overall mood is still greenish yellow or yellowish green. But when the child is continuously crying because their overall mood is in the deep orange or red and their wants are never met either, then sure... she WILL come. Having a toddler's fears come true a few times, and not fixing it, that will also do the trick, eventually.

Thank you for the tutorial iCad. It's greatly appreciated. I also downloaded Mootilda's mod.
That's a cute house for your sims. I like the colors you used and the landscaping. Would you mind a small WCIF? I think I'm in love with the blanket you use. I love orange but it seems that my sim houses are mostly decorated in blue and green.

I don't mind at all. The blanket in that pic is one that's slaved to Jonesi's bed blanket, and can be found here. I have a ton of JBB slaves in my game, for better or worse, as well as a ton of recolors of the bed blanket; they're cornerstones of my in-game decorating. Anyway, that particular recolor is one made by riekus13, who's on Tumblr and SimPearls, I think. It's part of a very nice orange-and-black recolor set they did around this past Halloween. I'll head off to their Tumblr and edit this post with a link to it...

EDIT: Here it is!

And yeah, doing on-street parking is MUCH easier with Mootilda's mod, as is building things like side- or rear-entry garages. It was such a pain in the butt to build such houses before that mod existed, so it's one of my must-haves now. I still miss Mootilda a lot.

character creation.
the "New [age] [gender]" interactions on the Tombstone of L & D; are there third-party equivalents of those interactions? besides pregnancy.

Body Shop.
is there a easy way to change its graphics settings? mainly shadows. lighting can be changed with the Body Shop Mechanic.
can the directory for projects be changed? if so, how?

"First 15" (installation game).
the pictures in the side panel; where do they get stored? found the directory for that game.

FYI, I have found that my sims are unable to leave the kids alone in the house in University (I have InTeen) with this mod. Not a problem, the nanny still comes over. :D

@SciBirg: Hmm, nobody has ever mentioned that before. I can't test such myself, though, because in my game all ages except young adult must live *outside* the Uni hoods, the way it was originally designed by Maxis (add: no Inteen in my game). So there you have a kind of 'conflict' that probably doesn't show up in HCDU, but does affect the game. I'm glad you don't consider it a problem, though. Because I fear I would be totally unable to fix this.

Anyway, thanks for mentioning it. Maybe I will add a note to the download page mentioning this 'feature'

...Well, after dealing with HCDU crashing repeatedly, I discovered that sshack has a conflict with a single BHAV in InTeen. sshack runs last, but I'm guessing the two of them are getting mixed together and causing the issues I described earlier. Well, I'll keep testing, if I run into any more issues I'll think about switching back to BO's mod.

When I start a new neighborhood or have several teens that have just aged up, I use TwoJeffs' SimBlender to make sure there are no sims with zero gender preference. I go to Traits > Hood > Gender Pref > Adjust Bi % (set to 100 - this can of course be set to some other percentage if you prefer) and then Traits > Hood > Gender Pref > Run Randomizer. Select "No Pref Only". This sets everybody with no gender preference to bi without having to use any romantic interactions. After doing this, all my sim has to do is greet, chat, joke with, etc. a neighbor or townie to see whether there are any bolts of chemistry. No romantic actions necessary unless you want to.

Thank you for both links. I think I'm going to add more slaved JBB CC in my game but I'll need more willpower. I keep adding stuff and don't often get rid of the things I don't like. Time to make some changes.



I also use Pes' sshack. I get warnings for kids left home alone and kids with bad grades.
In my game, kids can be left alone during one hour with no harm when they're back from school and the parents are back from work at 16.

In my game i had baby and toddler left alone for whole day when parents went to work. Baby was changed and feed just before parents left to work and toddler was trained. So baby and toddler slept over all this time and toddler played with toys before getting to bed. I have BO's mod and Rebecah's toddler beds.

Was hoping to take an informal poll about info/spoiler buttons. I've been using them to keep posts visually manageable (and also easy to scroll past when someone is not interested in the topic, which I try to specify outside the infobuttons so they can not bother with it).

However, do folks tend to automatically not read info under a button? I seem to find that a lot more often, even though the buttoned info is typically just what they might have wanted to know (based on their subsequent posts in the same thread). Would anyone like to weigh in on whether I ought to keep using buttons or ought to perhaps just try to use regular headers, but not hide any of the text?

(One idea that I have is that perhaps in a general thread, like this one I'm posting in, I could still use buttons to share research results because the thread is about lots of other topics too. But maybe in threads only about a specific topic, such as here where I've written sort of a manual for usage of a couple systems now only found on the Graveyard, I ought not to use buttons, because that information can be assumed to be relevant to everyone reading the thread. What do others think?)

Long posts are not in and of themselves a problem. Spoiler tags should be to hide pictures (which load differently than text and can be a PITA, especially on certain platforms) and details that people might not want to know.

Just break up the Wall of Text into idea-sized chunks for ease of reading and you're fine.

You will still find that some people won't read it whatever you do, and some people will misunderstand you in a way that will seem positively willful. But that's not your responsibility.

Having spent the last week attempting the test the whole birthday party thing - and failing because apparently I'm rubbish at getting the birthday party want to appear at all at the moment - I'd like to thank natboopsie and BoilingOil for the testing/fact-checking they've done, and retract my comments on the topic.

I never use info buttons, but spoilers yeah... first of all - ofcourse - to hide pictures. But also to hide details that may not be interesting to everyone skimming the topic.

Within the brackets, I simply type "spoiler=whatever I have to say", and what you see is a button saying "Show Spoiler about whatever I have to say". Works well enough for me, and it allows me to hide several things each with their own short title/description.

The results of tests that you do, is a perfect example of what *I* would hide as well, just like you.

Thanks to those who have already weighed in! OK, so @Peni Griffin seems to be saying that it's not really necessary to spoiler anything but pictures---just break text up in logical chunks. @BoilingOil seems to be saying that my research results probably should continue being under spoiler buttons, though I am interpreting him to mean that in that case, in an entire thread I start with the intent of sharing research and collecting more info about a specific thing/topic, perhaps I don't have to spoiler all the details, since you're only in that thread if you want details.

(I hope both Peni and BO will say so if I have misunderstood them.)

I've often been surprised at how many more responses and views posts and threads seem to get when given at least a couple days to sit, so I'll ask folks to please continue to add your thoughts if you have a different opinion than I believe either BO or Peni has. Or, if you agree with either BO or Peni's positions, could you hit the Agree button on their posts?

Then I will take a look at the numbers after giving folks a couple days to check out the thread. After that, I'll start posting (and perhaps edit some old posts) in a way that reflects the majority vote.

Thank you to all in advance for your help!

ETA: You're welcome, ieta_cassiopeia. But if you do manage to get a good situation for testing going and find something different, it could still be interesting to hear about it!

If I understood Peni properly, not just pictures.

My own opinion would be to continue just as you usually do. I agree also with the fact that if a thread is started to show research and results, then no spoiler is really needed..unless the thread starter thinks it is. Members/guests are viewing this because they are interested, indeed.
How do you end up having anything else than *spoiler* showing up though? I see this very often..but have no clue how...I tried with your example..but the = does not work. lol
Sorry I am derailing da thing.
Editing so i don't bother BO now that Nat told me. lol

I hear ya! When it comes to custom meshes, I try to keep them at a minimum. Mostly what I have are add-ons to Maxis sets (which are slaved to a Maxis mesh) or, indeed JBB slaves. Basically, I would rather have lots of those meshes than lots of "stand alone" custom meshes that also require lots of recolor files. It reduces the CC load a bit and has the benefit of keeping my catalogs a little neater, too. But in general, I try to work it like I do buying real-world clothing: For every new item I buy, something I have that I no longer wear has to go to the thrift store. But I'm not always successful at that, not in the game and not in the real world. So...Yeah, good luck to you!

EDIT @natboopsie
Personally, I find the "spoilers" to be annoying in general, but of course everyone else's mileage will vary. As I understand it, the only time they're required by the forum rules is if you're posting more than four images inline in one post, to reduce load times for people with slower computers/internet connections. (As a person with extremely slow internet -- usually less than 1MBps -- I appreciate it when people don't post loads of big pics in one post.) Otherwise...I say let all your text hang out. Scrolling is not difficult if people don't want to read it and text will not affect load times. But, yeah, I doubt you're ever going to get a consensus about this issue!

I was thinking mostly of actual spoilers - anybody who references the locations of clues to the Polgannon murder should put them under spoilers, for example, and make clear that this is what's under there. That way no one (like me) who intends to play Polgannon but hasn't yet accidentally finds out more than they want to know ahead of time. But detailed programming notes or the kind of tech specs that go on for days also qualify.

Always read over your posts before posting. Anything that makes your own eyes glaze over slightly should be rewritten to be more interesting, or hidden, or deleted entirely.

Thank you, Rosebine! (And apologies, Peni, that I misunderstood your full meaning just by...not properly reading, lol. How's that for irony!)

Well, the question then becomes, how would I decide what other people might/might not want to know? But I see Peni is in the thread as I type this, so perhaps she is already clarifying.

About using the syntax that gets all the buttons and other formatting to show up, I was very pleased to find this reference page right here on the site. That's how I learned to do any special formatting that I know how to do here.
ETA: That page even has a clickable index, basically, if you scroll all the way to the top. The commands are all listed alphabetically, and if you click on anything in orange font, it scrolls down to that point in the page.

Oh I see. Thank you Peni.
OH!!! thank you Natboopsie!!! ahah, now I see what my mistake was when I tried the = sign.
How useful!!!

*Should* is a big word... I would not tell anyone to put stuff in spoilers that is on-topic. But if we're in a thread about random questions, and I suddenly start veering widely off course about something very specific like userstartup.cheats, that might not be interesting to everyone except the person I'm responding to, so *I* would put it in a spoiler. I'm not telling anyone to do the same, but I'll understand if someone deems some of their stuff worthy of a spoiler tag.

(I hope both Peni and BO will say so if I have misunderstood them.)







Well put, @Rosebine.

@ETA: @natboopsie, nice page that you linked about the tags