The Good, the Bad, and the Randomly @Toaded

[Zarifeke]

Look at your stacked produce. Do you see the upper left corner that looks blue and raised a bit? Click it and you will get a seperate window that shows each item one by one, sorted by highest quality first. You can also click and drag that corner to move it in bulk.

[Insanity Prelude]

Clicking on most objects in the inventory shows their sell value. I haven't really paid attention to whether that works with items in stacks.

[Madame Mim]

Ah, I had discovered the moving in bulk, but not the opening up of stacks.

Three days playing and I only just discovered how to copy custom textures from one object to another 

[Heodez]

Three days playing and I only just discovered how to copy custom textures from one object to another 

Is there another way of doing it than saving the texture? I hate clogging the chooser with textures I use only in one room.

[brownlustgirl]

Yes, I want to know too. I have too many new textures in the game and buy/build has slowed down. I was gonna delete them cause I just wanted to save the one on the objects not in the catagories.

[tedw]

Using the CASt tool, click on an object with the desired texture on it - say, a couch - and drag the pattern on to the intended object - a chair - in the room/house.  This should ask you to choose a channel for the material to be replaced (so you can pick whether your pattern would replace the chair's fabric or its legs.  Then you can click on the chair and save it as a preset.

[blackcat]

[Inge]

Can't you just colour the objects in your room and then delete the presets when you don't need that pattern any more?  If they're just presets you shouldn;t lose the colours off the stuff in your room.

[J. M. Pescado]

You cannot delete the preset presets, but you can delete your own saved presets.

[Ryslin]

This being unable to delete families, presets, and other annoyances is .. well annoying. I guess that is why they gave us the "custom content only" checkbox?

[Gelina]

My thoughts and impressions after playing the game for 1-2 hours/day for 5 days...

Good
 - I like the CAST system.  It's intuitive and makes it easy to have a room with matching decor.
 - The sims are smarter in that they will actually work toward goals autonomously.  For instance, if I have promised them that they will increase their athletic ability, they'll actually go and exercise without me telling them to.  That's not the best example since TS2 sims would exercise autonomously, but I'm too lazy to think of a better example.
 - I really like the traits, it's easier to have sims with likes and preferences and uniqueness.
 - Other than the sims themselves, it's perty.
 - The houses are laid out much better than Maxis houses usually are.  I don't feel the need to tear down every house and build my own just so that my sims can get from point A to point B without walking some stupid ass route.
 - Children are less annoying because you can send them out into the neighborhood alone and basically ignore them.
 - There's a lot more to do.  Some have listed this as a bad thing, because it does take so much time to keep needs met, have a job and get a love interest - but I like that I have to actually decide what to focus on for a particular sim.  It won't be as easy to max out all skills, have 100 friends and 50 lovers while raising a family of 8.
 - The jobs are better.  Others have commented and I agree with them on pretty much everything.
 - Kids autonomously do their homework AND they keep it in their inventory, so no more games of "where's the homework".

Bad
 - The sims are so ugly, especially ones born in game.  I normally kill ugly sims on general principle, but there are so many I don't think it's possible.
 - My game crashing to the desktop.  I've updated my drivers and reinstalled, but no dice.
 - I really hate the neighborhood screen and the way that you have to go to certain places to be able to do things there.  For instance, you can get a part time job at the cemetary, but on the neighborhood screen, if you filter by jobs, the cemetary doesn't have an icon.  WTF?  Also, I need a cheatsheet of what you can do at each location.  I can't remember where to go for a cooking class, so I spend 15 minutes clicking every little frickin icon...grr.  Same thing with trying to figure out where your sims live.  They need a text/list based way to do what you can do from the neighborhood screen.
 - Kicking sims out.  Apparently, they can move into *any* open lot, even one that they can't afford.
 - The newspaper.  I have 2 issues with it: 1.) if I have to read the goddamn thing every day to find out if someone I care about died/moved/had a baby, make it more like the SimCity ticker or a icon on the toolbar that I can access without needing my sims and 2.) list the mother and father's full names for baby birthing.
 - Babies and toddlers take forever to grow up.  I know that I can speed this up with a cake, but it still annoying.  Also, there's nothing to do with them for the most part.
 - The clock is weird.  At first it was really, really slow - even at 3.  I updated my drivers and it doesn't seem as slow any more, but now it'll randomly go into super, turbo mode and 1/2 the day will be gone in 12 seconds.
 - Random babies with no mother/father.  This has been commented on as well, but it is super annoying to switch to a sim who was previously a bachelor to find him suddenly with a baby girl that does not appear to have a mother.  Did he adopt her?  Was she left on his doorstep?  Did he somehow clone himself?  These things matter.

Other
 - I'm playing with story progression enabled and free will on high (on purpose).  I tend to only like one sim at a time, so TS3 actually fits my playing style very well.  Mom and Dad have 3 kids, two are satanically ugly and one is less so.  I kick out the two and continue to play the one I like.  Later, I zoom out to the neighborhood and see that Ugly #1 has gotten married and had a kid, I switch to his house and to see what's up, while I provide a little god-like advice to his life.  I like this and appreciate the variety and surpise; what I don't like is that I don't know what the hell happened between the time I kicked him out and the time I started playing him again.  Did he have a different girlfriend?  Does he have other children?  I don't need a full memory of every single person he met and everyone he knows that got an A+, but I would like a short summary of major events tracked in his life.
 - I really want to control what last name babies and husband/wives take.

Edited to add:
 - A new annoyance is that if you change someone's hair and then switch to a different household, their hair switches back to their "genetic" hair.

[vagabondher]

(snip)

 - I'm playing with story progression enabled and free will on high (on purpose).  I tend to only like one sim at a time, so TS3 actually fits my playing style very well.  Mom and Dad have 3 kids, two are satanically ugly and one is less so.  I kick out the two and continue to play the one I like.  Later, I zoom out to the neighborhood and see that Ugly #1 has gotten married and had a kid, I switch to his house and to see what's up, while I provide a little god-like advice to his life.  I like this and appreciate the variety and surpise; what I don't like is that I don't know what the hell happened between the time I kicked him out and the time I started playing him again.  Did he have a different girlfriend?  Does he have other children?  I don't need a full memory of every single person he met and everyone he knows that got an A+, but I would like a short summary of major events tracked in his life.

The thing that scares me about this is that even though I'm like you and I'm okay with focusing just on one household, even switching over to another household (to check in on new developments) for just a few Sim hours, even less, could result in me returning to my main household to see that they've moved out, died, adopted 60 ugly babies, etc. I do not want this.

[Gelina]

The thing that scares me about this is that even though I'm like you and I'm okay with focusing just on one household, even switching over to another household (to check in on new developments) for just a few Sim hours, even less, could result in me returning to my main household to see that they've moved out, died, adopted 60 ugly babies, etc. I do not want this.

So far the moving out and random dead-age hasn't happened to me and I've been playing for about 150 sim days.  All of my sims are accounted for or have died of old age (although I can't find the headstone for one that died while I was away).  The ugle babies and/or unexpected pregnancies when you return are a given and happen pretty frequently.  Some of my ugly sims that have been kicked out have merged themselves in to other households, which makes it a pain in the ass to find them later.

Also - there's something up with one of my sims refusing to die. I'm playing on normal speed (life is 90 days) and some ugly husband is now 104.  I want him TO DIE ALREADY!

[Heinel]

All of my sims are accounted for or have died of old age (although I can't find the headstone for one that died while I was away).

Also - there's something up with one of my sims refusing to die. I'm playing on normal speed (life is 90 days) and some ugly husband is now 104.  I want him TO DIE ALREADY!

In my game Mortimer Goth died in my face and he didn't leave a headstone.  Bummer because I wanted to put it beside his guitar in the Goth backyard.  I'm not sure if that is a feature or bug though.

[vagabondher]

All of my sims are accounted for or have died of old age (although I can't find the headstone for one that died while I was away).

Also - there's something up with one of my sims refusing to die. I'm playing on normal speed (life is 90 days) and some ugly husband is now 104.  I want him TO DIE ALREADY!

In my game Mortimer Goth died in my face and he didn't leave a headstone.  Bummer because I wanted to put it beside his guitar in the Goth backyard.  I'm not sure if that is a feature or bug though.

In your face? That...must have been a strange feeling.

[JonaBullets]

The thing that scares me about this is that even though I'm like you and I'm okay with focusing just on one household, even switching over to another household (to check in on new developments) for just a few Sim hours, even less, could result in me returning to my main household to see that they've moved out, died, adopted 60 ugly babies, etc. I do not want this.

Yeah this is one thing that is going to piss me off... In TS2, I liked to create a few households with 8 sims, that I had edited in SimPE to give them jobs and skills and what not, and then use them to become friends with that isnt just some random EAxis Sim, the thought of doing this and then finding out that they have died with out WooHoo-ing something leave me laying on the ground in the fetus position.
Why would EA allow such to happen, Yeah I can see them doing standard things, like viisting parks, skilling up a little. But NOT spending money, getting useless jobs, or DYING!! or having/adopting babies! (this I would like to see a package to disable certain Story Abilities)

[maxon]

Bad
  - I really hate the neighborhood screen and the way that you have to go to certain places to be able to do things there.  For instance, you can get a part time job at the cemetary, but on the neighborhood screen, if you filter by jobs, the cemetary doesn't have an icon.  WTF?  Also, I need a cheatsheet of what you can do at each location.  I can't remember where to go for a cooking class, so I spend 15 minutes clicking every little frickin icon...grr.  Same thing with trying to figure out where your sims live.  They need a text/list based way to do what you can do from the neighborhood screen.

Isn't the home lot icon in green?  That was the one place I had least trouble with.  Also, you can send the sim home by pressing that little arrow next to their icon.  Didn't know about the cemetary - thanks.  Now I can make a creepy gravedigger sim.

[Gelina]

Isn't the home lot icon in green? 

It's not my home lot I'm having problems finding, it's the home lots of sims I've kicked out.  You have to click on each occupied home to see a picture of the occupants, or go to the "split household" screen to see the names.  This is a total pain in the ass when you are looking for someone.

[timelycorruption]

All of my sims are accounted for or have died of old age (although I can't find the headstone for one that died while I was away).

Also - there's something up with one of my sims refusing to die. I'm playing on normal speed (life is 90 days) and some ugly husband is now 104.  I want him TO DIE ALREADY!

In my game Mortimer Goth died in my face and he didn't leave a headstone.  Bummer because I wanted to put it beside his guitar in the Goth backyard.  I'm not sure if that is a feature or bug though.

In your face? That...must have been a strange feeling.

That reminds me of this shirt: http://tinyurl.com/5ty5s8

[JonaBullets]

Figure this is the best place to post this.. more just to get it off my chest then anything.
Ive been looking down the side at users avatars and seeing alot of TS2 Sim related ones, and how good they look compared to TS3, they really didnt put much effoct into making it better off the bat did they? *Waits for custom skins etc to make it oh-so-much better!*

[rufio]

This seems to be as good a place to ask as any -

Is it going to be possible to mod the game so that it can use some kind of TS2-style Mendelian genetics, or is the game missing necessary fields for specifying recessivity that cannot be created?  The ability to create new hair and eye colors in CAS could be awesome if it were possible to geneticize them as well.

[Ambular]

Has anyone figured out yet what controls Sim attraction?  It appears someone has successfully produced an empty neighborhood now, so if we know what draws Sims together, perhaps we can at least design them specifically for their intended mates and any random hook-ups will be with the appropriate person?

[rufio]

I'm pretty convinced that they can fall in love with anyone in a matter of hours, just by spamming various romantic socials.  Whether they will do this autonomously remains to be seen, though.  In theory sims with opposite traits should not have a lot to talk about and thus have a harder time with relationships, but I expect this can be overcome eventually.

[Marhis]

I doubt there's anything like attraction system, yet; in TS2 it come with Nightlife.

[Ambular]

I doubt there's anything like attraction system, yet; in TS2 it come with Nightlife.

Well, the bolt system and aspiration matches came with Nightlife, but even in the base game you could match Sims up by astrological sign, I think...