More Awesome Than You!

It's that time again, kids. Time to bitch about what we don't like, drool over what we do, and inadvertently find bugs that aren't super-obvious. I'll start, because I'm impatient.

Likes:

• New outfits are a definite win.
• New objects so far seem good, at least as far as looks go. Good variety of cheap & expensive.
• The few new greetings I've tried have been cute and well animated.
• Apartment move-ins are smooth. Neighbors are easy friends.

Dislikes:

• Everyone, I mean everyone, hangs out in the common area 24/7. Not only unrealistic, but I keep having to shoo playables away.
• More Maxis fug design. Some of the buildings in Belladona Cove aren't that bad externally, but the furnishings look like someone was on psychedelic drugs when they placed them.
• "Hidden" lot is total fail. Took, what, 5 seconds to build. Oooh, a suspended octagon! How awesome!
• Toy dog is a glorified hamster, with animation errors, that takes up more room.

I like that going into buy/build mode doesn't show you all of the stuff in your neighbors apartments. I usually can't stop myself from cheating in dorms by selling off the dormies furniture (they don't need a bed, they just stand there by the door).

I don't think I'm going to like having the "everything's ok" popup from the landlord every day, I assume he/she is coming over to fix broken equipment in the apartment and my stuff doesn't break often.

I like the new outfits as well. I don't even play Elders and I am so very happy that all the new Adult stuff if available for Elders as well. While it is lazy, I appreciated a lot of the FT adult outfits getting conversions for Elders too.

The hair, the only one I really liked is the Betty Paige hair. More ponytails, yay. Even one is the same lazy Teen Stuff hair converted to female.

I haven't had a chance to check out build mode stuff yet. I am hoping that the microphone plays nice with the UNI instruments so we can has actually have bands now.

Build mode has some really nice windows and doors, and although I'm too lazy to utilize them, an abundance of grates and ductwork for MOAR building realism.

Spiral stairs are kewl.

And, you can woohoo in the new closets, which I think is hilarious,
and will enable me to make mralways a funny video reeactment
of the time that I got really tipsy on martinis and we destroyed a hotel closet.

Spiral stairs also don't seem to be horrible traffic-jam creators that I had predicted them to be. They are overused in Belladona Cove, but I'll definitely be peppering them into my real 'hoods.

I haven't gotten to look at Build mode much (I only had about an hour to play last night) but ditto on the ductwork. Will go great in lower-income housing I have planned. I need a bunch of trailers and slums for Horseshoe Court in Coggeshall Village, right outside of the wealthy section.

I'm disappointed that they didn't add public toilet woohoo. It would be a relatively similar animation to the closet woohoo or changing booth woohoo.

Maybe they didn't add it because no one wants a blumpkin?  :P

Do the air ducts do anything, or are they strictly decorational? I didn't get to play with my sims at all. I just took pictures of all the new clothes.

OK, I've got the game but won't be able to play myself till tomorrow night and I'm curious to find out something from the people who are playing already... Is the witch stuff made in a way like the computer from that Humble guy where you had no choice but to see and be annoyed by it? I don't personally want witches in my game and am wondering if I'm going to have to make an anti-witch hack like the anti-vampire, anti-humble, and anti-plant-sim hacks I made... :P

Jfade feels that AL is offensive to wiccans.

I believe you have to ask a witch to teach you- you don't get infected by it.  You will still have the two witches from the game( you probably will need to de-witchify them) - bad thing will be the witch NPC's but I'm sure Two-Jeffs will update the Visiter Hack that will allow you to bannish them.

When I played a house where the family already knew both witches, they came over on day one, but I have yet to see them while playing any other families.
I also didn't notice anyone popping up with any witch type wants other than the the first family.

Well I haven't played a large amount but I do really hate most of the EAxis apartment buildings, they are truly awful.  In fact I think it is putting me off playing a bit.  I'm starting to wish I'd built some generic ones pre-AL so all I would have had to do is update with correct doors etc. to make them playable.

I seem to have experienced some kind of jump bug on a few occasions with the spiral stairs - nothing proven yet though.

The More Awesome Than You bed, is that meant to have a vibrate option?  Or is it just assumed that it vibrates because it says it does in the description.

Had lots of stamping of feet from sims who wanted to talk to a sim that went through the sekrit bookcase.  I'd prefer there to be a 'where did they go' animation (a bit like the 'hmm what shall I buy/I am lost customer' OFB animation) as opposed to the feet stamping.

I was intrigued by the room mate going off to 'run errands' for about 5 sim hours and wondered what he was going to bring back.  Unfortunately it was nothing.  Also noted that the room mate did not seem to be responsible for half the bills just the rent.

My mean witch did not appear to turn green.  Perhaps you have to be evil as opposed to just mean in order for the greenness.

Likes:
- Maxed out good witch (infallibly good witch) = pretty. The new skintone is subtle with the little sparklies and the sparkling effect is KEWL. The magic effects when casting a spell, making stuff in the cauldron... also purdy.
- Most of the objects are very nice
- So far, apartments don't seem too laggy
- New height variation for wall hangings without having twelve gajillion meshes designed to give that effect
- Playground stuffeths FTW. I especially like the "play on playground" interaction so they autonomously move amongst the equipment choices.
- New NH deco - power plant and pond are especially nice, alleys are so-so

Dislikes:
- Gee, Eaxis, great job, you learned how to make age conversions of your meshes. Too bad you did it an EP later so all the good FT clothes that were worth converting had already been converted by the community. Uhg. The teen gypsy clothes, sweater vest/skirt combo, male sweaters... already had those. But, ya know, thanks. Glad you learned something new.
- I'm about 50/50 on the new clothes... some are really nice, some are pretty fug. I'm not big on the whole "here is my midsection, let me show you it," trend, nor the super tight outfits.
- 30 new hairs, my ass. We need 6 different colored barrettes or ponytail holders WHY? Who plays zoomed in enough to actually make it that noticeable?

In all, so far I'm liking it muchly. I personally think it's a nice way to finish out TS2.

Annoyed by:
- the way you have to do the new roofs; it's not an actual roof, but rather pieces in Buy/Decorative/Other that you place
- the 45-degree view; clearly it's just to show off the ceiling cat

Amused by:
- the Sims3 poster (Buy/Decorative/Wall)
- the eerie similarities between new duct work and CycloneSue's duct work


So far I've just looked around... will play and do some building later this afternoon.

I discovered I couldn't place my hacky boxes (batbox, macrotastics box, lotsynctimer) outside an apartment as nothing can be placed in a communal area.  I think of those as being "out of world" items, and normally place them outside the house.  I tried turning dorm build mode on (since that works for community lots and hotels) but that didn't allow me to place them either.

I played a pre-made couple with a child and toddler - and found that the child's bedroom is adjacent to the neighbour's wall.  She was woken up by noise, and by the time she woke up she wasn't tired enough to go back to sleep.  Fortunately the toddler was close to aging up, and I managed to squeeze 2 beds into his tiny room in a configuration that is definitely not realistic.


The Cordial twins, the remake of the Pleasant twins, right down to their grandparents' names - Sage & Coralia (Herb & Coral) and Jeffrey & Artemis (Jeff and Diane).  Faizah was playing them, and she said the house suffers from the "remove the roof and lose half the upstairs walls" issue, so we assume it's not weatherproof.  The design is a modification of the Pleasant house, and since EAxis were modifying the house anyway I don't know why they didn't make it weatherproof.  At least this time the twins both have black hair, as they should.

It would naturally be ironic if the bed was, in fact, broken, and we had to fix it. :P

A lot of the unused ones also are only one-bedroom units. And ick, the color-clashing. I just put up a remodel of the House of Fail that works as a communal living building, one bed apartments. I'll probably throw together a quick lot tonight or get one of my packaged buildings that'll convert easily to play instead. I play smaller lots, so all the EAxis buildings are so ungainly to me.

I like that, actually, because I can see using it in unconventional ways.
Did you try it with Moveobjects on?

Argh, I didn't think of that.  I had Faizah in the other room telling me to come and look at what she was discovering about the game while I was setting up the lot for hackiness, and was distracted.

/me wonders if that's enough post content to prevent this being moved to the Thanks, This is Great thread.

Thanks for that, I'll give it a try.

EDIT to add: Tried turning moveobjects on, and I still couldn't place the hacky stuff in a communal area.  They have to be placed somewhere in the limited space inside the apartment boundaries.  I assume the lotsynctimer should be inside the apartment boundary anyway.

New DO NOT LIKE: Beach apartments = much borkedness. Apparently, this is mentioned in the read-me (who reads those?), I saw it mentioned on Sims2Community and just had to try it. Yeahhhh... hard to describe, but lots on any side and the ocean were way up above the apartment lot and kind of floating there with neighborhood sky blue underneath. Not pretty. Didn't seem to do any permanent harm once I deleted the lot, but definitely not playable. Booooooo.

Well you read the readme to find out what the new cheats are to allow for changes to outside of apartments of which there are none.

I yanked all my custom stuff and am fooling around in one of the pregenerated neighbourhoods, and so far i am happy

I really like the new spell stuff, and i also like the apartment part of it

What ive found so far on the negative side, was, my sim befriended the evil withc, asked to be inducted, and went green instantly. Not what i had planned.
Also, for some reason my game keeps thinking theres mail in the mailbox all the time, but when a sim tries to collect it, the old mailbox from the regular houses turns up for a split second, and then the sim jumps.

Other than that, so far only thumbs up from me :D

Kyna, the cheat is apparently "boolprop apartmentBuildBuyRestrictions [on/off]".

I didn't realise the sisters were remakes of Angela and Lilith (I did notice the house was the same though). Interesting... Anyway:

Good
+ I like the premade apartments, and I like the sheer amount and variety we are given with apartments, houses and community lots.
+ Great clothes. Yes some of the elder clothes are conversions, but is that really a bad thing considering they had about 2 dresses and a potato sack to wear before?
+ Spiral stairs!
+ Magic seems interesting, from what I've tinkered with.
+ Belladonna Cove. They even thought to give us a cemetary, go figure.
+ My idea to exploit the game and have multiple working apartment entrances seems to work.
+ That god awful FT loadloop has been replaced with something MUCH nicer.
+ Subtle, rather nice TS3 L&P

Bad
+ Not so subtle, rather bad TS3 L&P
- The pre-made family trees are borked to the point where I have absolutely no idea what some of the reletives are supposed to be. Is the guy the father, son or brother? WTF?!
- That annoying redundant space that is now in front of every tooltip, and how the "Needs" text is insanely tiny. Things like these drive me demented.
- The fail that is Windoze Watervista.
- No beachfront apartments, but amazingly, they at least tested that.
- The usual culprits for bugs don't apear to be in AL (have they finally realised?), instead, we get shiny new bugs.
- I can't change my witch's portrait. It will change, then automatically change to something else!

Here is the "very cool hidden lot". It might make an interesting House of Fail one day:
(http://i36.tinypic.com/jhd7us.jpg)

All I can think, when I see that hidden lot, is of the witch Baba Yaga and her hut with chicken legs (http://www.oldrussia.net/baba.html).  That must be what they were going for, they even added the lame-o chicken feet scratches in the dirt.

I'm bummed about the beach lots, I made some really cute beach condos. 

For those who have played apartment lots, how nonsensical is the routing? 

No question about it, it's Baba Yaga's house of the chicken feet.  Funny how that's filtered into American culture so thoroughly that it's immediatley recognizable.  Fits with the theme, but wow, it's a fairly small and trivial lot.

 - Gus

Is that syntax correct?  Doesn't seem to be working for me when I try: "boolprop apartmentBuildBuyRestrictions off" (without the quotes), I also tried with using false since boolean properties are usually either true or false.

I found the portraits on non-witches also change.  Noticed a couple of them changing when they came out of the shower in the morning.

On that out of the way lot, I put a swimming pool under the building between the spiral staircases.  Haven't done anything else to it yet.

They're doing it wrong.
If it was Baba Yaga's house, it wouldn't have any windows. And it would stand with its back facing the road.

I don't mind the house too much (other than the fact it has no fucking front doors)! It's kinda unique. What really sucks is how bloody difficult it is to get to it...

At least they didn't put a premade family in there.

Anybody else finding that you can't use the walk in closets they put in every single bedroom on apartment lots? Only options you get are to change into work clothes or to woohoo if there's an appropriate partner available. I had my Sim buy a bunch of new clothes and when I got her back home she had to buy a dresser to be able to change into any of her new outfits. Not like there's a lot of extra room in those bedrooms for dressers, and besides what's the point of having walk in closets if you can't use them?

Hope I'm just overlooking something simple. It seems somebody would have mentioned it by now.

I love how the sun shines when good witch is getting rid of the rain :)

And I hate how the wheels in the trailer park don't touch the ground, because they just can't be lowered any more.

EDIT: Sim, who lives in the trailer park, just served mac and cheese to the whole neighborhood, both outside and inside. She lives alone + roommate. Now this I really hate.  Oh, and apperently sims can freely sleep in a strangers house. He won't mind at all.

Love:

The packaging.

Hate:

The error message... 

Error transferring TSData\Res\User Data\Neighborhoods\E001\Lots\E001_Lot141.package

Do you want to Retry, even though that'll NEVER work...or be pissed off for hours trying to manually install?

And laggy. I moved both witches in and my game is hell. I'm officially wanting a nowitchsparkling hack D:

Ah! That hadn't even occurred to me. I'm not terribly familiar with Russian fairy tales, but I did read Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. I had pictured the hut as more of an ungainly oblong. Plus, did they miss that the Baba Yaga tale includes furryism?

Need a paws-off hack. Or something of the sort. I can't think of a good name, except maybe, "nokittythatsmypotpie" by that's kind of long.

Biggest disappointment thus far: The "I Can Has Cheezburger" spell was renamed something dull in the final release.

"backoffgetyourownsandwich"

Also too long. Cartman reference is much funnier.

Nosoup4u

Annoyed; at the toy dog which is really only a hamster.

Annoyed that someone can steal the apartment garden gnome, but my sim can't place it back down there after retrieving (I am sure there must be a cheat for that).

Also the vending machine seems to place my sims under a spell and they just stare and stare at it without purchasing anything. c'mon it's not a TV set despite the pretty lights.

Love; most of the clothing, especially for the ladies, the witches are awesome too, most of the included furniture is nice, and the waste disposal system is cool too.


<------- time to crawl back to my sick bed now

Two questions:

How do the spiral stairs compare with Marvine's? (By which I mean - right and left? Matching railings?)

How are the apartments set up? I was wondering if some of the houses that make good dorms might also make good apartments. Conversely, I've got some good "apartments" that make lousy dorms (darn that elevator bug!), but I've been hanging on to them in case they'd actually make good apartments for AL.

Oh, I get it - it's meant to be a hut on chicken legs.  I wondered what that was about when I read someone's description.  Well, that kinda makes sense.  Kinda.  Still, it looks crap.

Somebody at EAxis is a Hellboy fan -- that kinda looks like how Baba Yaga's hut appears in the Hellboy comics.

Love

- The new outfits (although slightly disappointed they copied the 'nerdy' outfit from FT, but not the bohemian one for adults, just for teens and elders (don't have FT))
- Build mode stuffs, especially the new fences. Was squealing with glee when I spotted those.

Hate

- Lag
- Me having to uninstall AL already because of it. Loading an unoccupied, empty lot took ages, and after 5 mins or so I'd get a pop-up from windows informing it had run out of virtual memory. Pc just can't take the strain. I'll give AL another try after I buy a new machine. Those fences are worth it.

sooo... what is the verdict on securom? (since it seems those more awesome than me are installing the game straight out the box  :-\)

What gave you that idea?

hmm, just assumed since the game came out yesterday/today(?)...off to check Arr'd threads...

REALLY Tasha!1!!! THANKS.!!!1111!!!!!    :P

In Soviet Russia, fairy tales are familiar with YOU!

WTF?

I think it was trying to be funny or something. You aren't the only one confused.

I'm uncomfortable with that particular fairy tale being familiar with me. *glances furtively about for grizzly bears*

I think that was e-sarcasm.

How the hell do you get a witch to teach witchcraft?

I've been playing the Le Bateau family, the daughter has been skillinating body in the communal gym.  They also have a butler who leaves food on the table before he goes for the day.

Now the neighbours are complaining about the smell.  All night they've been coming up, banging on the door, waking the daughter up to complain about stink.  All 3 neighbours have come several times to complain, waking her up each time.  At 5am I told her to macro/caffeinate, and she has been interrupted from that twice already at 6.30am.  It's a queue stomper too.

Not sure if it's the food left out by the butler or the stink from the daughter.  But the non-stop complaining is extremely annoying.  Will fire the butler and keep the daughter working on body, to see whether it's the food or the daughter they're complaining about.

EDIT to add: I fired the butler, he left with "it's an honour to serve you", and he's back in the kitchen making more food.  And there's no option to "dismiss" or "end services" on him. 

Second EDIT: Ah, it appears to be because I inventoried the breakfast he'd made before he'd left the lot completely.  That constant drive to serve food (whether anyone is home or not) is going to stop me from hiring any more butlers.

Only managed to play for a very little bit to check things out, but thus far I can say...

Annoyed by:

Ceilings (yay?). If they disappeared with the walls with the wall down options I could deal with them.. but a floating floor with no walls attached? Might be just me...
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/rnkis/snapshot_757f6a61_d5c1f320.jpg)

"Shadow people" in non playable apartments. Furniture, etc, disappears but you can still the occupants standing idle inside the dark apartment.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/rnkis/snapshot_757f6a61_95c1f1a0.jpg)

Closets:
I know there are clothes inside. I don't need to see them AND the closet door blocking all my click paths.



Very like:

Most of the new build/buy mode objects.



...little list so far. I just installed!

I just spent hours and hours building an apartment. Only to have it disappear because I used the "changeLotZoning apartmentsublot" cheat. I. Want. To. Kill. Something.

My experience so far...


"Wrong disc inserted.

Please insert the original "The Sims™ 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack" CD/DVD"


I hate failing at life so badly.

Major disappointment: fencing doesn't count as an apartment divider. I tried to convert one of my SC4 lots into an apartment complex with mucho success, except that the doors into the partitioned yard prevented it from being changed to an apartment. I thought I had a work-around by changing without the doors, adding doors, then saving and exiting to the 'hood, but then it showed as having 0 apartments at $0.

Inaccessible walls get noise. I have a wall in a stairwell blocked by the stairs and that's where the noise controller chose to spawn.

A couple good things: I did get a male changed to an evil warlock. Quite interesting, and I find it fitting that the evil witches love to start lightning storms and spawn cockroaches. I couldn't find the good witch (she definitely exists, just wasn't spawning on lots) but you can turn a sim into an evil one and then study good magic long enough to become good.

Toddler-to-toddler hug is the cutest thing ever. EVER!

Can you use apartmentBuildBuyRestrictions [on/off] AFTER you zone it without doors and move someone in?  :-\

Because I have to ask...





...did they break the 'primp' action? :P

No, it's still there. Enjoy the new bugs.

.The shadow man exists for me too on that particular lot in that particular apartment unit.  Didn't notice this on any other apartment lot.

Yes, the functionality of that cheat appears to have been removed. No one is yet sure of what it did, but as it is no longer listed anywhere it apparently no longer works as was intended.

I'd like to know why the buy/build mode restrictions cheat isn't working... I bet it's something completely different.

What is the point of the new things sims can study from the bookcase?  They've been rolling up wants...I have them study it until it is fulfilled but there seems to be no point.

Me, too. I've also played a few other apartment lots and haven't seen it otherwise.

I am disappointed that I wasted days of my sims life teacher her evil spells only to have them disappear when she learnt neutral or good spells.. i didn't think the other spells and craftable items would disappear from her spell book but unfortunately they do.

Oh well, now I know I don't have to waste so much time again.

   I've also got a shadow man (with his bathtub) on the trashy-trailer lot.  At night, some of their indoor lights will come on.  The shadow man doesn't seem to re-appear when you go to visit him tho, you just end up with TWO shadow people.  lol

I fired it up for a little while last night.  I only ended up playing for about 15 minutes though after the whole install and initial load times.

My first impression thought of the new neighborhood was "Gah!  My eyes!"  It was so cluttered I didn't know what to look at first or what I wanted to do.  I ended up playing two families for short times.  The biggest thing I noticed was a plumbob "shark" swimming menacingly in the floor of an upstairs apartment as the woman in the apt below walked around (she was the selected sim).  There were also green smiling friend faces that floated up through the floor like pungent odors

And is it supposed to happen that the other playable families in the building are able to be observed going about their daily life when they are not selected?

Dislikes: Miffed that they chose to hide the witchy furniture objects from the buy catalogue.  I wanted a witchy throne and the cool firey torch thingy from the evil witch's castle :( and no cheat to alter apartments after the tenants move in, that's just dumb.  Ducting, cornices and other build deco is in buy mode, it should really have been in build.

Likes:  Most of the clothing, most of the buy mode stuffeths, though there is some really weird stuff in there.  Witchy FX are cool and purdy.

The witch furniture stuff is craftable using the cauldron. They get unlocked at various magic skill levels, like other craftables do with badges. Some are also alignment-dependent.

Ah, I don't have the guide and haven't been following the hype so I'm kind of groping in the dark.

Behold, the power Cheese (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12847.msg366293).

It happens to me only with Cho/Riley households. I guess they are borked, like the shadow man in the trailer park.

Is anyone else getting an odd jump bug when directing a playable resident to speak to another apartment resident? The active sim seems to turn 45 degrees each time I click on another sim to interract. Will get error logs if necessary.

those are the ones I was playing, yup.

and so irritating that the plumbob sticks through the floor.  So annoying.

The problem with households was solved by moving out/moving in of Cho family.

About the plumbob. It seems your sim was standing on the stage, cause generelly the plumbob is low enough not to be seen.

Would the Locktiles cheat help with not being able to place anything in communal areas of apartment blocks?

Likes:

The clothes, objects and community lot points-of-interest are almost uniformly cool.  There are some lazy textures (the swanky living room set) and an overabundance of thigh-high boots, but for the most part it's all nice.

The social groups add a little personality to the background of the community lots.  I did think it was strange to see a socialite shopping in the bad paet of town.

The witch effects are nifty, but they do cause some lag.  I wanted to get a picture of Julien Cooke huggling the Most Evil Witch's familiar, and it took me about a minute to pan through the sparklies for a close-up.

Dislikes:

My evil witches don't change color and my good witches don't get sparkle skin.  It's more than likely because of my default replacement skins, but if it's just an overlay, why should it matter?  Vampires don't have these issues. Grrr. Argh.

The apartments that come with the game are almost uniformly fug and annoyingly laid out.  I hate having the wardrobes stand between the main living space and the bedrooms.

I don't like the ceilings.  They're too low and it makes the rooms feel claustrophobic, especially when used with stages.   

Awesome  ;D Got rid of those pesky trees blocking my view  ::)

I'm using default replacement skins and get the overlay for evil. I haven't yet gotten to see a good witch. I am, however, using a custom default replacement overlay for the evil skin from Insim.
[/quote]

I think the ceilings are a realistic height though.  Maybe people who want higher ceilings can use building cheats to make the walls taller.

Ceilings ARE optional people.

I like the ceilings.

What I DON'T like is what they do when you're trying to place them.

Case in point:

I was building a warehouse apartment and trying to put a ceiling on the second floor.  The first floor is open to the second floor (except the bedroom loft).  While I have the ceiling tool selected, NOT clicking, it just adds floor tiles to the second floor, assuming I'm putting a ceiling on the first floor.  I have to keep deleting the damn things.  GRRR.

I also don't like the cheat confusion when it comes to enabling build/buy mode.  Why did they have to make it so hard?

Are the ceilings just repeats of the textures of the floor above?  Because it's very rare cases where I wouldn't want white ceilings everywhere.  I'm asking because it appears to be that way in most of the pictures I've seen.

I think from past reading the ceilings are only meant to form under floor tiles.  I think it might be a bug if you are getting ceilings half way up double height rooms where there is no floor.  Once deleted do they stay deleted?

Yes, they do.

At the time, I had the DC installed, minus a few hacks...but I can't imagine something awesome causing this.


Right, so it's creating floor tiles if I accidentally have the tool (not clicking, mind you) on the first floor ceiling grid.  I'm pretty sure you understand what I was saying, but my explanation was confusing, so maybe it's clarified for others.

You can place them exactly like floor tiles, just above instead of below. You do need to have floor tiles above though (the game automatically places them if you don't)

So has anyone figured out what criteria lots actually have to fulfill to be able to work as apartment lots? I hate that the game just says "revert to residential mode to correct" blabla, but it doesn't say what to correct. I had a row house (three adjacent apartments) being turned into an apartment lot just fine with the right doors, but when I added a third story to it it won't let me convert this time. grah.

Are you using the apartment doors?

yes, those with the doormat.

Did you remove the roof before adding a third story?  Did you add a roof after making the third story?

I have NO IDEA if this would cause problems, just throwing it out there as a possibility.  :-\

Yep, I removed the 2nd floor roof and added a new (auto) roof to the 3rd. Would it technically be enough to make sure there are no other doors than apartment doors from apartments to the outside?

edit: nevermind, it's working now, after I fiddled with the doors quite a bit (finally deleting and replacing them all seemed to help for some reason).

Hm. In my game, it seems that all sim's portraits are being regenerated every time their lot is loaded, not just witches. Apparently there's an added feature that automatically regenerates the portrait every time a sim changes their Everyday outfit, so my guess is that they borked it up and is now regenerating it seemingly at random?

You don't mean portraits as in paintings made on the easel do you?  I would hope they stayed wearing what they had on when they were painted!

Hey, I imagine that pregnancies and agings will have the tenants pooling outside of your, unable to break in.  Am I right?

Oh gaaaahhh!!! Am I stoopid or what? I still had my hacks folder in my downloads.

I took out everything except the CEP and the walk in closets are working normally now. Though I don't particularly like them and I hate that you can't take them out if you'd rather your Sims have a regular dresser.

Oh no, no! They're fine (though if we keep mentioning it they'll make a note to break it in the patch) I mean the Sim's individual "thumbnail" image, that you see in the relationship's panel, when interacting, ect. It seems to be regenerating at random. I just noticed Jessica Peterson's portrait changed while I was playing in Live Mode, purely at random for absolutely no reason at all.

I noticed that happening with the DC I downloaded yesterday. I removed it, and it stopped. It's been updated since, so I imagine downloading it again could help.

Likes;

The new options on the 'phone- gee, I wonder where they got that idea from?
Some of the clothing conversions for elders, but not the 'teen' ones, that's just creepy.
The evil witches, they cackle, and they're, um, green. Ooh and they set fire to stuff.
Couple of nice options from networking, one being discount on all furniture purchases, win!
Going into neighbours apartments and finding them furnished, yup, it's happened and it's pre made.
High fives and manly type rough handshake thing.
Palace and Fortress.
Mysteriously Mysterious Mystery Novel, heh.

Dislikes;

Stoopid routing, main gathering places and sims obsessed once again with kicky bag/pillow fights.
12 gazillion colours of hairband on fugly hair, and what's with that attempt at an awful '80's 'do? ugh, do not want.
20 sims at a com lot trying to greet my sim, breaking all actions he has lined up, to do so.
Bit of a jump action if two sims are at the top of the spiral staircase. Sims can't run down a spiral like a normal staircase.
The fact that none of the premade apartments have mirrored closets, and you can't change them without an enormous (ok, a small) effort.
Once again the new windows can't have any other curtain put on them (without a cheat) other than that awful Seasons thing that sticks out a mile.
Roomates, they are stupid, they suck, they don't go to work even if they have a job and they don't sleep in the bed provided for them, they just 'run errands' and then 'gather', or stargaze- what'd happen if a Roomie got abducted? huh? did ya think of that EAXIS?! 

Other than that- yup, not bad so far.

Aph.

Maybe someone can make a mod to enable ALL spells learned no matter what stage a witch is at. Otherwise, I agree, it is kind of useless. Do the evil spells come back if you revert ur witch to that stage? (Like, if at one time u were an evil witch and learned all the spells and lost them due to becoming good, if you were to turn evil again do they reappear?)

I have a replacement skin for evil witches and it works for me too. They don't get the evil skin until they've studied for a few hours though.

Likes:
*Witches
*Spiral stairs (very well executed)
*Nice standalone decorations for shelves (though not enough)
*The move stuff up and down walls option
*Butler: does more or less any chores autonomously

Dislikes:
*Butler calls firemen everytime my evil witch starts a fire
*Butler doesn't clean the pets stuff (the plates they eat from)
*Ceilings: I can't see them in live mode unless I'm zoomed in at the "right angle"
*Apparently there's a bug where the evil witch doesn't make the "lamp thingy"
*Appartment neighbours stole my news paper: The idiot put it in the community zone instead of his own appartment
*You have to continuesly make ingredients to be able to use spells
*You need ingredients to summon the cats
*You lose points in either Good/Evil when you use neutral spells: it should be you keep on gaining on evil/good points if you use them. Neutral spells doesn't add nor take fromm evil/ good points when used. You only lose evil/good when you use the opposite of your allignment!

If anyone could advice me on the fastest way to get a super Good/Evil witch? I've been casting spells on random townies that pass in front of my lot without any luck

Interestingly, familiars have all the normal needs except for bladder. I believe they stay out until actively recalled. They have a relationship panel and can learn skills. I'm unsure if they can get jobs or breed (I doubt, they look to be male/female) but will be trying that. The evil familiar I got was full-on aggressive. My good witch should be getting the spell soon, so we'll see if it is full-on friendly as I suspect. EDIT: Nope. Not full-on nice for good witch's familiar. Both display as female, so the breeding is up in the air, but I suspect not. No getting pet jobs for them.

Virgali, I've just been having them study evil or good from the books. Not sure how fast it is comparitively. It took my evil warlock about three days of continuous study to reach full magic level. He was the worst description from day 2.

If you have more than one playground object on a lot, you can use the interaction Play on Playground. Kids will play on all playground objects. I finally got my back yards to work with the build cheats and have a nice setup for the one kid.


The sparklies/witch effects/familiar effects are getting old fast. Like Zone effects, but constant. Must die.

I looked for that. I hope you're not going to tell me it's in the bookcases section, rather than doors.  ::)

I haven't played too long, so there's not too much for me to like/dislike yet:

I like
- the ceilings idea in general
- the evil witches
- neighbors being available for fast social/fun bar filling, so no need to call someone or leave the lot

I don't like
- the ceilings cutting off wallpaper crowns, so I can have either ceilings or decent looking walls
- the schoolbus coming every day even if you're playing a family without children

I hate
- the permanent portrait changes
- the hobby spam for families I don't play. I don't fucking care if my neighbor becomes member of a SM club or not.
- the obtrusive "network" freaks

There is a way to "turn off" the witch look and keep it off, right? I want to teach my "psychic" Sims witchcraft and pretend it is PSI, but it kind of ruins my imagination if they all look like witches, or if I have to constantly keep the costume from showing up.

I have just finished downloading AL, but I am waiting until there are new and updated hacks before installing it.

Once you're a witch, the only way to turn it off is to drink the cure.

Haven't been playing long and probably will add to the list later, but...

Like so far:

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I love the AL loading screen music. It strikes some chord in me, I don't know. Very soothing, makes me feel good.

Some of the new outfits are nice.

The paperboy comes right up on the porch and sets the newspaper near the door. I like not having newspapers left out on the sidewalk.

Thought I'd like and don't:

Ceilings. Nice feature for screenshots but otherwise they're an annoyance and cut off the tops of wallpaper.

Don't like so far:

All the bugs reported, and more coming in. Hire some beta testers, you cheap EA bastards. Ever heard of quality control?

Total strangers coming up and hugging each other. I just move a Sim in and Christ! Every friggin' neighbor comes over and hugs him or her. I'd call the cops if people did that to me in real life. Back off, perverts!

New landlord NPC spawned every time a new tenant moves in. One landlord per lot is plenty.

Spiral staircases that only go one way. I'd like left-sided and right-sided ones. I remember the same annoyance in Sims 1 spiral staircases.

Useless roomies. Even if you use a cheat to make them playable, they're buggy. I tried to have a roomie lock her own bedroom door so the playable Sim wouldn't keep trying to sleep there, and the roomie couldn't get into her own room. The only Sim who can lock/unlock doors is the original playable one. Annoying. If I want to make them both playable, that should be my option, and they should be completely playable. Rant rant rant.

Thanks - I was wondering about this. I was so looking forward to AL and now I'm thinking I'm not going to install it until I have to. :/ I love my Marvine spiral staircases, not least because I can set a left and right one next to each other and it looks very cool.

Stupid EAxis... :(

Found something I really hate... Evil witches on community lots = cockroaches bleh! >:(

At least they actually go to the side, unlike TS1 spiral stairs which went in the opposite direction of the bottom steps. I think they did it this way so they could stack...

I´m not sure if somebody has posted it already - the cheats for activating the build mode in apartments are:


boolprop aptbaselotspecifictoolsdisabled false for empty apartments and

boolprop aptsublotspecifictoolsdisabled false for inhabited (is that the rigth word  ???) apartments.

When you used the last one, sometimes you have to click additionaly on a submenu like walls.

Already under discussion in this thread. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12847.0.html)

Pescado recommends against using these cheats on inhabited apartments unless it's to move/pick up a date reward:

Okay, sorry.

I am not here very often - english is not my first language.

It was kind of you to take the time to post anyway, in case we had not seen it before :)

You know what's awesome? The ingredients and witch furniture can be sold in OFB businesses! I haven't tried the cures or ReNu potion yet. It was late when I finally got to that point. My current plans for turning pink pirate Plum into a good witch with a sparkly kitty (if I can change kitty appearance on them, a sparkly pink kitty) who sells cures and runs a grassroots campaign against the Vitelli family's imperial ways is still on!

Tasha, where did you find such nice looking potions? Are they customs or default replacements?

I think they're from Parsimonious. They are remakes of the love potion, anti-vampire potion etc. The ones the gypsy sells.

Yep, they are. I have them in my game, and they're gorgeous.

Thanx, I found them. Here is the link http://www.parsimonious.org/furniture2/modded/k8-Panacea.shtml (http://www.parsimonious.org/furniture2/modded/k8-Panacea.shtml) for all interested

Thank you for posting that.
I was just about to ask for a link. :P

I doubt anybody here has SecuROM, it's been too well documented how to get rid of it and keep it away. Just use a no-CD crack. No worries.

A goodly portion of us also have not purchased the EP, dominoe. Lurking is a lovely thing to do.

Oh I see now! I thought those options were there just to change alignment! *Does a d'oh* Sorry for asking this over and over then -.-; It's just that everywhere I read is it said that the more you use evil spells this will increase the witches evilness so I figured that's the only way to max Evil! *Does another d'oh*

Will go and try it out then ^^

Maybe I need to set the lock on my door, but my Sim went into labour, in the teeny little bathroom in her trailer park home, and her spouse, four neighbours and the landlord swarmed into that teeny little room to witness the grand event. *headdesk*


Tsarina - Your avatar freaks me out. I swiped at my monitor twice before realizing there's no creepy crawly there.  ;D


For those who are having the Gray Man effect... have you noticed if it's just playable families? Non playable neighbours show up full colour, inside an empty apartment, though if you go visit, all the furniture shows up once your playable sim arrives. However, if there's an apartment building with two playable families, the OTHER playable family turns up gray, and I can see all the shadowed shapes of their furniture, and each and every Sim. When my Sim goes into their apartment, he or she turns gray also. Freaky, they should turn normal when my active Sim goes inside.


I love the new clothes. Hate umpteen hairstyles just for a barette or hair tie colour change.  Sparkly witches, but I hate the green that the evil witch is. Looks like the flat texture of a mesh that got stuck in my downloads. Do Not Like. I'll have to go find me those default replacements that everyone keeps mentioning.

Squinge's pregnancy wear any clothing mod breaks the closets. But Dizzy at the Laden Swallow has a similar mod that works with AL and doesn't break the closets.

Don't like not being able to place stuff outside the apartment on a lot.


Edit: To add more stuff, to prevent multiple postings :)

I hate the new startup music.  Ugh.  Lounge music.

He. That's the first startup music I've liked in the sims since the Makin' Magic EP. It's just lovely.

At least it doesn't have any really obvious loops or pauses like I've experienced with most the previous start up musics.

I always liked the Nightlife music, except that it's at a lower volume than the other music, so I find myself either listening to it at a too-low volume and then the game itself sounds normal, or I crank it up, so I can hear it, and then get blasted once the game starts.

I really like the start-up music, too. One of the more pleasant arrangements of the Sims 2 theme, IMO, which is a good thing if I'm going to be listening to it for who-knows-how-long.

But you know, you can copy a previous EP's splash.package to overwrite it, if you really hate it that much. (Make a backup first, of course.) I had to do that with FT's start-up. I didn't mind it at first, but it got annoying very quickly.

I made a hider for the hairs so only one per style shows.

I'm with you. I just love it.

People have been walking in my Sims' apartments that have no business there, for example, the paperboy. He's been leaving the paper on the front porch nicely, but recently he walked right into my Sim's apartment, put the newspaper on the floor, then stood around waiting for someone to strike up a conversation before he finally went on his way.

On a related note, I sent my Sims on vacation to see if anything there got borked. I didn't notice anything odd except that my female Sim walked into an NPC-occupied hotel room to go to sleep, instead of going to her own room, and while she was there several other NPC guests walked in. One took a bath while another turned on the TV, waking my Sim up, then they all stood around chatting for a while. This never happened before but I really never played vacation lots that much. Thought I'd report it in case it's related to the AL problem.

Same here. Beat the crap out of my monitor with a flyswatter.

Thanks for the heads up! I would truly miss that wonderful hack. EAxis must hate pregnant ladies, they dress them so fugly.  >:(

 :)Likes

The new Bathroom Medicine Cabinets ( one is a mirror too ) with the new Face Wash and Teeth Cleaning interactions ( which should have been in from the base game considering Sims could clean their teeth in Sims 1  ::) .)
The kids playground stuff . Makes a nice change for the kids to get a few decent items  :)
The new pool table is far better than their previous efforts and more like a classic American Pool table .
The ceiling looks fine to me and the default white one goes with pretty much any colour walls anyway , Maybe the problems of the ceiling not disappearing with the walls are down to when you repaint the ceiling and/or use a custom flooring on the ceiling because the default ceiling disappears with the walls when needed to in my game  ??? And surprisingly the ceilings don't seem to cause any lag at all . When I tried custom ceilings ages ago I got lag in my game and expected the same with this , but these don't seem to have any affect on game performance at all  :)
Being able to move some official items higher and lower on the walls is pretty cool , although I was surprised that the Maxis plasma tv couldn't be moved like that ( I didn't expect custom objects to be movable in this manner though , which it seems they aren't )
The new vending machines seem non autonomous , which is good considering sims often flock round items like this like flies round shit if they're autonomous  :D

 :-\Neutral

Witches ain't my bag really so I don't really have much of an opinion on them . I hope those that wanted them like them , but it won't be something I'll be using in the game .
The same goes for the apartments feature itself . They're just like glorified hotel rooms in my opinion so I'll be sticking to my sims having their own homes , although I can see how this feature might interest some .
The reputation score thingy is not something I've really taken much notice of yet either , so I'll reserve judgment on that too .

 >:(Dislikes

The new auto-generating character thumbnails . Changing it in the mirrors was perfectly fine before . Using the ' batman box ' to change it whenever needed was even easier . So what do EA do ? Make it so it changes every single time they get dressed etc . It wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the fact that a number of the character poses for the thumbnails are awful sort of contorted grimaces . This new feature makes the thumbnail generating feature of Pescado's Lot Debugger redundant at present because it automatically gets changed too often anyway so if you currently used that to change it to a preferred thumbnail you'd be doing it constantly  ::) I hope someone , anyone , makes a hack to override this feature so we can go back to the ' Batman box ' and the mirrors for selective thumbnail regenerating because this new feature is crap .
The paperboy now seems to leave the newspaper outside the front door rather than the garden gate , which was pretty annoying at first seeing as I thought he'd not delivered one at all . No great shakes now I know where he leaves it though . I just didn't want several of them going ' missing ' cluttering up the lot , that's all .

I also like the music. Very soothing, and doesn't drive you insane like the FT music does. It's definitely my favourite alongside OFB, Superstar and MM themes.

I'm not sure I'm too happy about the new paper delivery feature. Yes it's great for apartments, but not so great for my more... unusual residential houses. Plus I can just see myself forgetting about it and tons of mouldy papers cluttering the front patio/deck. ;)

I was annoyed the TV can't be moved. I'm sure it's just a setting though, as they had the TV at various levels in a video awhile back. I want to move the TV up the wall a little bit, so it doesn't cut into the fireplace when placed above one.

I'm not touching my other sims until this portrait asshattery is fixed.

I've been hearing that quite a lot. I guess I could switch my avatar to something less horrifying if it's that bad.
Edit: are you silly, entomophobic people happy now? Are talking muffins less disturbing to you? Huh? HUH?

Oh, but, I liked your old Avi. It was freaky in a good way.

So did I. I still have it at PMBD. But cute muffins fit MATY better, don't you think?

Weird. For the first time ever, I heard a little ditty play when the Unsavoury Charlatan arrived at my newly built playground :-\, although I'm going to put this down to Argon's music fix, and not AL.

I liked your buggy avatar! It fit this thread nicely, don't you think?  ;)

No really, now that I know it's not a real bug I don't have a problem with it. A BIG bug, yes, I'd have problems with. DO NOT WANT big bugs. Or spiders. Or snakes. Not even pixelated ones.

If the cat's not your Astral somethingsomething, it came with the pest pets EP. I think it's catnip that does it.

Someone at EAxis renamed the subsets in the Windows GMDCs which borked the Windows recolors.

I love the witches - its half of what I liked from Makin' Magic, and the other half was in OFB/FT so....
Also love the living statue - that is so freaking cool, just wonder if I can recolour him so he looks made of bronze or gold instead of concrete.

I like the basic idea of the apartments, just really need to make my own buildings - though the little set of four row houses are pretty nice until mine are done. 

I hate that they seem to have completely borked the OFB windows.  I've got a collection of modern homes with these ugly red things and no way to change them without switching to custom windows.  That's my bit complaint.

And how do I get to Baba's Hut?

The witches out of the box are severely underwhelming. There are only *TWO* potions that are actually NEW to the game, the rest being repackaged shit that they've already sold us. Of the spells, most of the are duplications of things we either already have, or could easily make. Most of the rest are just useless.

That music plays in the game sometimes when he shows up...sometimes it doesn't.  I don't know why it isn't a constant thing...

Likes:

Personally I really love the witches.  I do think they may replace the vampires as my favorite non-human sim.  I also like how they sparkle and I like both the evil green skin and the sparkly good skin. I made two sims with the intention of making one a perfectly good warlock and the other perfectly evil so I made one extremely grouchy and the other extremely nice.  When both of them were turned into witches they both became instantly maxed out in their alignment.  Neither one had to study to get maxed out.  I don't know if it is personality based or based on something else...

I LOVE the playground and vending machines.  Both have been something I have been wanting since I first started playing the game two years ago...especially the playground since none of the custom playground objects had any interactions with them.  Parks are my favorite things to build and I was always frustrated that I could only put swings in the playground area.

Neutral:

...the apartments themselves.  I like them and they are very handy for a poor sim to move into, but then they are left with all of this money that they can then furnish their apartment very nicely and STILL have money left over to pay the rent for a few weeks.  It kind of makes the trashy apartments pointless unless you have money mods or just pretend that the sims don't have all that extra cash. 

Dislikes:

I don't like my sims setting the tables out in the community areas when they serve food.  I suppose in the future before I move any more sims into apartments, I'll put flowers or something on the outside tables to prevent this.

Dream

Like:
Belladonna Cove. One of the better neighborhoods they've put together. Much much better then the awful one from FT.
New objects. Lots of new outfits and hair.
New interactions.
Cute little touches...the cuddling in bed is great.
Nice arrangement of Sims 2 theme and very nice loading music

Neutral:
Apartments. Just seem sort of pointless. I would rather have a normal home that I can freely edit and have full control of. Also, too easy. You can get a decent sized apartment with a starter sim and furnish it with top of the line stuff, and you'll be fine when it comes to the rent because of the 20k handout.

Hate:
Extreme borkiness
Some errors in Belladonna Cove families
Murphy bed. It actually takes up MORE space then a normal bed!
So many ugly outfits cluttering up the everyday category
Extreme hair recolor spam. We do not need SIX HAIRS WHICH ARE IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY BESIDES A TINY LITTLE RIBBONS COLOR.

Since I've mentioned a few dislikes in this thread, I'd thought I'd mention a few of the things I like.

- The loading music
- That the townies/socialites aren't restricted to the base game careers.  I've had townies come home from work in some of Seasons careers, which is nice, and there's a townie tenant in one of the apartments who goes to work in the show biz "french fries hat" uniform.  I was disappointed with previous career-adding EPs when I discovered that the townies never had jobs in the EP careers.  The main reason I made my own townies was to put some of them into EP careers before I townified them.
- The playground equipment.  One of my favourite items in TS1 was the jungle gym.  I was disappointed with the base game when it only had swings.  Finally my sim kids have something to play on.

Like:
I like the new everyday clothes, actually. Yay for more gym clothes too!

Dislikes: Not being able to edit the apartment lots.

I don't actually consider the game 'ready' until I get all my old hacks back in business. I'm willing to sacrifice Belladonna to the borkiness gods until then. Once the hacks get sorted, I'll return to my 4th gen main hood and really give it a try. I like what I've seen so far, though.

Ugh. Wish I'd known about that, I hated FT's music so much. Some of the notes were very jarring, at just the wrong pitch, especially considering my 'sound system' is a pair of headphones at top volume, left on the desk. I love AL's music, but only time will tell if I really like it, or just think I do because of what came before.

I probably should list what I love/hate about this EP, to get back on topic.

I like...
...the ceilings. But, I groan also, as I have recently been taking a whole bunch of photos in FT, to the point where I don't ever want to go through that again. The sky, the sky, must hide the sky! Aaargh.
...apartment neighbours, easy friends. Plus, I caught one actually sleeping, in bed, in her own apartment!
...the enormously overpowered thrones at level 9 witchery. Feels every bit the cheat that it is, but, keeps the sims happy. Good in large house-holds. (Because I'd rather not play a poky little apartment, actually.) I should try sitting evil on good's chair and vice versa though, may be good for a laugh.

I could live without...
...the butler, the landlord's garden/tidy/repair routine if it kept him/her from spitting out 'Nothing to do, bye!' messages every day.
...the bazillion hairs with different coloured clips/scrunchies. If scrunchie colour was that important, surely there could be another way of doing it, perhaps an accessory?
...the bookcase 'doors'. Cute idea, but only really useful to block something from autonomous use. Even then, there's probably stomping and whining and "I can't get that!"
...neutral spells (summon familiar, teleport) pulling the bar to neutral. I think the spell book 'neutral' option should still do that, but not the spells. They're the only ones I can see myself using. Inflammo is fun the first time, but, after that, not so much. (Note to self, must see if Inflammo appears on another Sim's 'Cast Spell...' menu.)
...NPCs being immune to spells. (Though I can live with this one, too.) The gypsy was just standing there polishing her ball, she was obviously not too busy to act like a chicken.

I hate...
...not being able to BUILD in apartments, or buy for outside. I've only recently gotten into building, and it's annoying to have that taken away now. I could understand 'no structural changes', but since when has a fence or a floor divider or a telescope been 'structural'?
...the floor dividers counting as walls, cutting off what's beyond them from the rest of the apartment. Bleh.
...the run-together "poems" in the spell book. This would have made the 'could live without' list, if it didn't bug me that one spell is actually formatted correctly. If they can make one work, why not the others? Just makes the rest more annoying. Grr.

The gypsy dropping off the genie lamp no longer works. At least not in the trailer park. I would imagine it's because she can't leave the lamp in a 'common' area. She shows up on the lot as usual in her 'sneaky' mode, gets to your sim's door, then leaves without dropping off the lamp. She says the usual 'You have blah, blah arduous journey', etc. and then leaves. No lamp.

I'm kind of angry at EAxis because of this particular 'feature'. They said that they've 'added over 30 new hairs', and this is what we get.

Eww - thanks for the warning. I think it's time to test if Monique's servecount hack still works with AL...

As for the butler - I don't think he's too bad. I kept mine until my sim had enough group meals for the next 183 years in his inventory, then fired him. I just wished he would do a bit more butler stuff, like answering the phone, bringing in the newspaper and pay the bills. Also, I think he should be more expensive (but maybe this will be taken care of in a future "expensive NPCs" version?).

The reputation thing is funny. My sim (2 nice points) went from neutral to "lousy loser" in no time. The responsible townie is now part of his private graveyard.

Yep.


Nope.

Should I be able to tell him to do things?  Because I can't.  The only way I can get him to make a meal non-autonomously is to Influence him.  Even then, sometimes I get the popup, "We don't have enough fish for that meal."  I lose my Asp. points through the Influence, and he doesn't cook anything.  I never asked him to make fish!   ???

This happens (we don't have fish!) with other Sims I influence to cook, too.  I don't know if it's an existing bug or a known issue.  No tight pants, I can say that much.

If not being able to command him to do things is a "feature", then I hate it.  I hate having to chase him around the house if I want a sim to talk>chat with him, and I hate that he serves plates.  Just cook, dammit.  I'll Grab a Plate my own damn self!

My butler sucked and I fired him.  I hired him for the household that only has kids and he washed one counter and then paced the bathroom till the kids were about to pee their pants .  They were half starved and the toilet was broken and he wouldn't fix it.  Not much worse than the nanny who stayed out on the playground all day, when the twins needed her on the third floor(with her elderly nanny gait, she didn't get to the tots before they peeed themselves followed by her peeing herself.  It is really hard to play that house without cheats.

Fantastic. Now I can't decide if I want to keep the (recolored) skin overlays or not. I think not. Princess Plum the Good Witch shouldn't be able to pick out the crime lords of the Vitelli family from a hundred miles away.

Nooooooooooo! They're not taking my shiny away. My precioussssssss.

I finally found Hysterical Paroxysms sparklies so even my neutral witches will sparkle now.  ;D

as I was saying in #grah last night, what happens with driveways in apartments shits me right up the wall. IZ BORKD. you can't have just a driveway piece in an apartment, you have to have a driveway piece and a garage with the connecting piece inside it - coz if you try and put a car on the driveway outside the apartment, you can't. you can't even do it with cheats >.< hell, you can't even put an outside light in the garden outside your door...eagerly awaiting a MATY fix for that PoC.

There is no fix for Squinge's mod, however I believe there is another mod that works in a similar fashion (I think it might be by Dizzy).  Why are you running AL with outdated mods?


He can walk to school.  Click on him between 8am and 9am, and select "walk to school".  I haven't had any problems with school buses not coming, it could be a glitched lot, or it could be that you have an outdated mod in your downloads (Since you said you have one, then you probably have others).  Try running the game without your downloads and see if the problem still occurs.


Works for me, maybe it's another outdated mod issue?  Then again, I never use the cellphones to hire a service NPC, I always use the fixed phone.  Are you using a cellphone or a fixed phone to hire service-NPCs?


I haven't had any problems with not being able to call any of the new townies.

Kyna, I think they mean the bug where NPCs weren't available to call for socialization, not for hiring. Paladin had a fix for FT, no idea if it works for AL.

I didn't tell him to prepare meals (obviously, the only thing you can tell him is how to handle visitors). He cooked autonomously when my sim had a certain hunger level (<50%, I think) or when he had guests. Surprisingly, the butler seems to take fresh food into account. Before the first harvest, he always served rather filling meals like filet mignon or nectarine tartlets (I have the restaurant meals unlocked), but as soon as the first tomatoes where in the fridge, he served mac and cheese. And he never touched my stocked fish.

I don't mind spiders and snakes, but no cockroaches lol. But Tsarina, I wasn't complaining. I got a huge laugh outta the fact I actually swiped at my monitor a few times to find it's just a moving pixel buggy :D  you didn't hafta change it.



http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?topic=1140.0


It's the one titled magic-al1d.zip .. if you click on it, and instead of save, click Open, then pull only the global-allow-pregnant-outfits.package .. it replaces Squinge's outdated preg mod.  I put this in, zapped Squinge's and voila, my closets work for something more than woohooing in.  There are other mods in there I found useful, but keep in mind they are Non-Awesome. The preg mod doesn't conflict with anything that I've noticed so far though.


Moderator edit: double posting fixed

I'm not sure if this was mentioned before but the mike isn't compatible with the other instruments. Also it's incredibly boring. The Sim just sings the same thing over and over. Poetry takes a bit longer to loop so that's a little bit less annoying. The comedy option is incredibly annoying since it's even shorter than singing!

AL is the worst pack I they have ever released! Its level of borkiness set up an all time record and the few "features" that do actually work doesn't make up for it in the slightliest bit! >:(

My apologies. It was two replies on separate areas of the subject, and since it was asked in this thread, I replied in this thread. I hadn't seen it in the Podium, and all I was trying to do was be helpful. Perhaps I should return to lurking mode. Again, sorry for offending anyone.

I like the new objects, and the busyness of an apartment is fun to play. So far I have just played in Belladonna Cove, and it is certainly interesting, I like the neighbourhood decor very much. Once I am sure that my game is not going to explode, I look forward to seeing what my legacy families do in apartments.

I am ambivalent about the witches, but bad witches on community lots are definitely an annoyance. I hope for a hack to stop them autonomously casting spells on comm lots because hailstorms and cockroaches rather spoil a summer outing to the park. Also, huge lags are irritating when the bad witch arrives, casts a spell, or conjures a familiar.

The butler is another character I am ambivalent about. He is useful now that SShack has been updated, but BUY does not work on him so when he hangs around in the bathroom he effectively prevents any children from using the toilet. Some butlers do not like cleaning and won't make beds. I have seen a butler change a nappy and then carry the baby around for ages before leaving it on the kitchen floor. On the other hand, they are better at autonomously fixing things than landlords are, but having an NPC hanging around the house for 12 hours is annoying, I wish he had a designated chair he could go and sit on quietly when not carrying out an actual task.

What I really wonder about though, is whether Eaxis designers really think that most female inner city dwellers dress like sex workers. The ripped jeans, low necklines and thigh-high boots are really a bit much.

The hamster-dog is pathetic. Some of my sims have rolled wants to get one, but that huge pen takes up way too much space. My apartment dwellers are going to have lots of cats.

No love or hate just a thundering meh from me for this expansion pack. Got my expectations up a bit too much in anticipation I think.

Do like:

The new neighborhood is indeed shiny.
Many, many pre-made apartment lots, as I'm more of an interior designer to tell the truth.
The business of playing apartment lots, although the ever elusive neighbors and their fixation on (the highest advertising item in) the community area is a bit annoying.

Do not like:

Borkage galore.

Built restrictions on apartment lots, but then, I never do what Pescado says and will just use the cheat for it in abundance. I dare my neighboorhood to explode for four years now by doing VBTs on purpose, but besides the odd corrupted character file no luck so far.  :P

Some people complained about their playables serving food in community areas, I have the opposite problem. When I want them to serve food (barbecue) in the community area they do so only to grab the last dish and head three floors up into their apartment insisting on eating on their couch. Canceling and directing them to another dish same thing.

The Good

- Love the Witches; I think that spells and magic are an addition that I have waited far too long for. I think the designs for accessories for them are very good.
- Some of the new furniture is wonderful, especially the socialite and bohemian items.
- Love some of the new outfits, and the wider range of clothing now available for elders.
- I like the new reputation meter, though I haven't figured out all of the benefits available from it yet.
- Love the new spiral staircases.
- Love the fact that you can sell spell ingredients in OFB shops.

The Bad

- I know there are mods now to fix the witchy overlay, but the diseased look of the good witches really bugged me.
- Head witches casting 2 spells as soon as they arrive on any lot is a bit much, and the hail caused by an evil witch can only be stopped by another spell or a use of a weather-machine. My park owner was not happy to say the least.
- Hate some of the clothing, they look like they're filming Star Wars.
- The Witch's castles were pretty poorly designed in my opinion; they could have been made much nicer and more practical.
- I'm not sure what to think of the new secret door. I would have preferred it to be more secretive as the wall paneling is a dead giveaway.

The Ugly

- I was extremely disappointed with the Butler; I remember him being far more useful in 'Superstar'. He is too cheap to hire and he does most things on his own accord rather than being ordered to do them. It is possible to influence him, but should we need to?

I am liking this... Self-maintenance toddlers!

(http://i33.tinypic.com/dq5b7t.jpg)

They don't cry the wail of doom, they feed themselves and need little adult intervention. You probably don't even need a fence/gate (added for visual effect).

Are those pet beds? :D

I've been using the Toddler Floor Blanket from MTS2 for ages. Same thing, really.

Yep, they're pet beds. Very handy for those of us who've never downloaded the toddler blanket.  ;D

This SO reminds me of the feral children thread.  :D

I totally agree with you that in this case posting two seperate posts was much more logical than following some illogical forum ettiquette that has only recently started anyway.  In my early internet days double posting meant duplicate posts, or cross posting.  Also on a busy forum like this, if you go back and edit a post after 15mins, many people will have already read your post and will never spot the bit you added.   I have a feeling this is just one more of those rules invented to seperate noobs from old-hands.

Have a cup of tea.

I thought witches sounded fun, but I'm guessing ARR'ing the game on school internet would be a Very Bad Idea, and like hell am I giving EA any more of my money.

you call for emergency they didn't run, but walk.. !  >:(
so you have the house in flames, the sims can't call for help 'cause the action will be removed from the stupid "fire reaction"
so i hope someone fix it soon  ;)

I rather like the butler... mine seem somewhat intelligent.  It just seems like he should cost a lot more money.  B/c of the surplus of money anyways, even most of my poorer sims can have a butler, which doesn't seem right. 

Having him around seems to really eradicate the need my sims to always have somebody in the kitchen...for the most part, with the butler there is always fresh food prepared.  Yay.

I don't know if I have something in that is conflicting with my game... I think I've really only downloaded stuff from here, but I am getting townies showing up to my sim's homes and then complaining that I invited them to stay over but didn't give them a place to sleep.  I don't know what that is about.

I wish the Butler would answer the phone, and bitchslap trespassers (like in The Sims 1) who steal my paper and knock over my trashcan.

Love: Autonomous romantic actions (including woohoo) on the special new bed. Took me a bit by surprise that.

Hate: Stupid not being able to place things outside for apartments. grrrrr. Yes, I know there are hacks, but shit, you'd think they'd realise that sims like things that go outside, like cars & plants & stuff. Stupid EA.

It floored the hell out of me. To be honest at this stage it looks less like partial acr & more like a remeshed version of lizzlove's waterbed.

My teens jump out of the junk car Work on Body action.  I tested it without my downloads folder.  Adults can Work on Body.  Teens can only Work on Engine.

If other people's teens can do body work, I'll assume I dropped an incompatable mod into a different folder and forgot about it. 

Has anyone else tried out the helicopter? The take-it-for-a-spin animations are interesting but the second person sitting in vehicle is whacked.

See the amazing helicopter woman! Part blond, part machine.

(http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs36/300W/f/2008/245/d/1/Amazing_Helicopter_Woman_by_dragonarts.jpg)






edited to add the picture. Oops.

I suppose it does take the meaning of "piercing stare" to a whole new level...

I think I k now why you cna't put stuff outside even though you can in dorms.  If apartment lots could only have one playable family you would be able to.  It's because when you open the same lot to play another family, they will have saved it as it was last time *they* were played - and when you save it, the other people's car or whatever would be overwritten with the fact of not having that car in the drive.

So many errors! I expected a few as per usual but not this many.
I got the game three days ago and haven't had chance to play as I've been too busy downloading the fixes for stuff people have found so far.
I've found some stuff too that I haven't seen mentioned.

- The gold and silver textures on the 'Eloquent Divinity Living Chair', 'Curvaceous Love' love seat and the 'Riveting Rivets' sofa don't work properly. They deform the shape of the rivets and poke through where they shouldn't. The bronze recolour works fine.

- The molded belts and cornice outer corner pieces can't be used because of the placement restrictions. They have to be placed against a wall but they are designed so that they need to be placed where there is no wall.

- 'Vim's Ventilation Small Wall Vent' and the large version too, can't be placed over floor objects as although it is a wall object it seems to need to occupy a floor tile. It can be placed above kitchen counters but then it raises itselve into the room above!

- The two 'Pipeline Decoratives' that touch the floor can intersect with other floor objects as they are classed as wall decorations.

If I had any idea on how to fix these issues without a compatable version of SimPE I would give it a shot but I haven't really got the necassary knowledge. I only hope somebody else out there can correct them or that an AL compatible version of SimPE comes out soon so that I can try and utilise that.
Is SimPE still alive btw?

I was (stupidly) expecting actual useful spells...or at least entertaining spells. 

You can't even use the "start fire" spell on people or in comm lots, so what's the point?

Only the good witch gets a house cleaning spell...or a love spell?  What's that about?  I'm pretty sure that magically seducing someone is evil.

Also, I was hoping for potions that affect personality...I mean, sure, you can do that with cheats, but still...

and what about spells that either fulfull wants (good) or fears (bad)..that's where some real fun would be...instead, you can just make people sick?

So... has anyone tried building an apartment lot with cars already in place before moving any sims in?  So, say you planned to move in 2 families; then you should be able to place 2 driveways and 2 cars before moving those families in.  I don't know how well you'd be able to claim those cars for one particular sim though, or even if you'd be able to use them properly.  Anyone?  I don't have AL so I can't check it out yet.

I'm thinking you should be able to hack this similarly to the method Goggalor used to make yards off foundations work. Invisible walls/fencing. Place the driveway extension piece at the sidewalk using the moveobjects cheat. Use invisible fencing/wall to seal off any areas you want to appear open. Seal off the rest using fencing or half walls. Sims should then be able to place their own cars as well as use them.

You'd have the animation issue present with street parking. Cars would fade in and fade out. No biggie. Will test.

EDIT: Works!

Yes. I used witch's 8 Bedroom Monster and turned it into a boarding house of sort, and my playable was able to use either of the two cars already on the lot.

What is the largest you can make an apartment, four separate apartments?

I think the limit is 10 apartments, but you can only have 4 playable families on it. The rest will be taken up by townies.

Love the fact that we finally have magic.  Am underwhelmed with the amount and execution though.  In the WTF category:  My good witch and evil warlock are camping on their vacation lot (they didn't have much money, so the building itself is basically enough to hold the bathroom and a small kitchenette, and they were sleeping outside in a tent). 
A burglar cometh.....  So of course immediately they wake up and run out of the tent (nono idiots, stay in there, then at least the tent will be occupied and he can't take it...)  Anyhow, I figure I have an evil warlock, let's have him actually get some use out of his evil spells - but nooooooooo. the warlock tells me such and such is currently busy, better not disturb him with a spell.  What's the point of HAVING the evil spells if you can't use them because - oh the burglar is too busy STEALING MY STUFF!!!  Wouldn't that be exactly the moment when you'd WANT to use the bee chasing spell or the attack spirit?????? 

So - hint, hint:  can any of you awesome people come up with a hack that lets me use spells if the sim I wan't to use them on is "too busy"????   I can't for the life of me think of what the logic behind not letting you use spells when you see a sim doing something your evil warlock won't like. 

So now my evil warlock will have to train with Echo's magic wand - I bet that won't have any problems interrupting the burglar's queue - and now the next burglar will simply have to DIE instead of being chased by bees.  Are ya happy now EAXIS!?!?!?! >:(

Also: my god, hope someone writes some additional useful spells.  I mean - oh cool, I can set my own house on fire!  so what?  Oh and I can spend lots of time and effort to make spell ingredients so I can cause a bug infestation.  Yay!  The evil spells don't actually do anything for the evil witch.  I can see the good witch not getting too much personal gain (oh god, been watching too many charmed's here) -  but the bad witch should definitely have spells that let them gain preferably while causing loss to some one else....


Other than that like the fact we finally have apartments, but think it's waaaay too late in the series.  that should have come right in the beginning when it was still more difficult to make money, more difficult to meet enough friends, and we didn't have small and cheap enough lots yet. Instead it comes in the end when most of our Sims are already part of a long line of sims and have the accumulated wealth of generations...

Oh, but don't forget, it's EAxis that we're talking about, setting your own house on fire and/or peeing your pants is SO FUN!

Has anybody else noticed how rediculessly small the neighbourhood powerplant ploppable seems to be compared to the skyscrapers? Its tiny, the plant loading bay doors are only as tall as the skyscraper main doors!

Well, having finally got the thing loaded after it turned up yesterday (thanks so much play.com for getting it here so promptly), I can at last add something to this thread.  I have hardly played yet but had a good look at the skins and objects. 

My personal favourite object so far is the new fish tank and I like the vending machines, ducting and playground equipment - for different reasons obviously - too.  Did anyone else notice there's some new bedding and it's not too hideous?  It's not very interesting, but it's not hideous.  I like many of the new neighbourhood objects including the power station even though it seems a bit small - approximately the same floor area as one of the alleys.  I like the fact you can see the alleys from the lot view.

As for the skins, I like quite a lot of them though there are a number of issues.  Mesh conversions - so many.  Like others, I quite like many of the elder adapted meshes - the gypsyish outfit works quite well - and there's some quite nice new stuff like the loose jacket and trousers but the skirt, jumper and socks (converted from FT teen?) is meh.  Some clothes suffer from over-decorated-itis (plain is good, tasteful and classy EAxis) and there are some adult male clothes with the distinctive authentic Eaxis GAH! effect.  And those hairs: ain't it great to have so many variations: you can have any colour of hair clip you like?  (My eyes, see how I roll them).  The main thing about the new meshes for me - the main bad thing - is the feet.  What's with that?  Here's a pic of one of the teen dresses. 

(http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/Maxon/HowBeautifularetheFeet2.jpg)

Now, I admit I have my monitor on some weird setting at the moment (owing to Vista arguing with the video card - I really need to sort that out) but even so those feet are enormous.  They're as long as her shin is high.  And that's not the only mesh with great flaps of meat for feet.  The other main skin issue to my mind is this: WTF?

(http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/Maxon/WTF.jpg)

^ That's one from the 3-4 football-fan outfits added in AL. There's no shirt, it's body-spray, and there's matching face-paint too.

I can see that - it's still WTF?  If that had been made by someone at TSR, it'd be in one of the More Awful Than You threads.

Oh, sorry then, I thought you were wondering what that might be.

I won't disagree with you though, it's typical EAxis crap that is bound to be rarely used by any players.

I plan to populate a cemetery with any townies who show up in that face/body paint.

I plan to make them into pet zombies, dress them properly, and use them as butlers/maids/bodyguards/nannies/etc.

You KNOW their ghosts will probably show up in that...

Yeah the lack of scale really irritates me; hopefully someone more skilled than I will scale it up to a more suitable dimension. (And then line it up just so with the pig balloon (http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/2e/36/c08da2c008a0b1cccdf9b010.L.jpg))

Luckily, fanseelamb's got some default replacements up on MTS2. They're here if anybody else hates the EA originals as much as I did: http://sumomo.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=299307.

It would seem that the difficult and awkward use of the decorative cornices was intentional!? Why am I surprised?
I've just read an apartment building tutorial created by the Sims 2 team available at their site in the 'Get Cool Stuff' section and they point out how you have to use cheats and place floor tiles where you don't want them just to place the corner pieces.

That's kind of normal for most decorative objects excepting wall hangings. Of course, smart coder would have coded them like wall hangings.

The only one that you need to place a floor tile one is for the corner piece. I can see why that one couldn't be a wall hanging.

Maybe, you know, enslaved smurfs are forced to work in there?

I've actually managed to make a replacement package for the Powerplant now so that it is double the size. The only problem is I have no knowledge of how to relocate the smoke effect so it now comes out of the roof!  :(
If anyone can explain to me what to do then great. I know I'll be missing part of the package file needed as it only contains the GMDC and SHPE at the moment but I don't know what the other bit is that I'll need to extract and alter.

I'm also trying to create a text replacement for the "So-and-so has finished a 'regent name'." but can't locate the text.

Is the smoke effect not separate?

Probably. I don't really know what I'm looking for though.

Special effects in the neighbourhood decorations. You can put a smoke emitter anywhere you like, I know that's why the crashed UFO in Strangetown has smoke coming out of it. The crashed UFO object itself doesn't have smoke.

The power plant decoration smokes on its own.  It doesn't use the separate smoke decoration.

Anyway, I'm a little late to the party, but I'll go ahead and post my lists so I don't feel left out anymore.

Like:
-A lot of the new objects, specifically the TVs, computer, and playground stuff.
-Two, maybe three of the new outfits.

Meh:
-The apartments themselves, although I wasn't very interested in this feature to begin with.
-Witches.  The visual effects are cool, but the spells just aren't usefull enough to justify the amount of time it takes to make the reagents.

Do Not Want:
-The seven bajillion hooker/trekkie/just-plain-stupid-looking outfits.
-The seven bajillion identical hairstyles clogging up the menu.
-The seven bajillion new townies.
-The bugs.  Oh, the bugs.

Likes:

I *love* the new playground equipment!  I've been wishing for this ever since the base game came out.  Why it took them so long, I'll never understand.  I especially like the "play on playground" action...looks quite realistic.

The portraits regenerating on "change appearance".  Personally, I got very tired of constantly having to find either a mirror or the lotdebugger/clothingtool every time I sent them to Plan Outfit.  I will gladly put up with the occasional random ugly pose in exchange for not having to deal with that hassle.

I like the spiral staircases.

Neutral

Apartments seem fine so far, for playability (but I've had the game only a day, so I haven't run into any bugs yet).  I like being able to split up some of my overcrowded households into multiple apartments. 

New Study options on the bookcases are interesting, but I haven't tried very many of them so can't say for sure if I like them or not.

The "Knock on Door" sounds good in theory, but I have yet to see it actually result in the desired Sim coming out.

Dislikes

Absolutely HATE the inability to build on occupied apartment lots (I haven't tried the cheat method yet, will do that tomorrow, probably).  I can't stand those tall rectangular hedges, and routinely take them out of any pre-made lot where I see them.  Can't do that with apartment lots.   >:( 

The new phone harassment times.  Why they decided it is rude to call a friend after 10pm, I'll never understand.  Would love to see a hack for this one.

Witches.   :P  I have zero interest in the witches, as I prefer to keep my game as realistic as possible.  How can I ensure that I never, ever have a Sim turn into a witch?  (I would love something like jfade's No Plantsims Under Any Circumstances hack, only for witches.)

The Murphy bed seems rather pointless, as it takes up the same amount of space when closed as it does when open.  If you can't place objects in front of it when it's closed, what good is it, except as an extra path to get from one place to another?

I don't like not being able to automatically drop the outside wall of the apt.  I play almost entirely in cutaway mode, and it annoys me to have the walls get in the way when I'm trying to see what's going on.  Particularly in small apartments.

Karen

Very easily: When clicking on an NPC witch, don't choose the Teach me the Path of Darkness/Way of Light option. Witchery is always a conscious decision, sims can't 'accidentally' become one.

   I get the weird impression that 'knock on door' only succeeds once you have a fairly high relationship score with the neighbor, until that point is reached, i have to use 'ask to come out'.  Of course, when you first move in, you have to 'Introduce to Neighbors'.  Once you know them, and as long as the nieghbors are in their apts (and not asleep) you can call them up to make friends.
   What drives me bonkers, is a playable family as neighbors, throws that entire theory out the window.  Even if my sim knows one or more of that family fairly well, 'knocking on door' seems to result in either a random roll of who answers (or refuses to answer the door), or it's always the neighbor you know the least.   GRRRR

I placed a trailer park in one of my hoods.  There is no place to put an energizer.  How in the frell are they supposed to have one?  It was interesting playing them without it though.   :'(

Perhaps you could use the cheat MaxMotives and then keep track of when and how many times you use it for that lot? I know it's not the same, but if you REALLY need that energizer, it could be a way to do it.

I don't really need it for them.  I figure that is one drawback to living in a trailer, lol.  Want an energizer, they must move to a house.

In a way, that's part of what I like about AL -- it's pretty realistic in that space is limited in apartments, and you have to get creative on what does and doesn't fit. If you want more stuff, save up and buy a house. :)

like:
- the toddler and child playground equipment!
- the new social interactions
- ceilings! and spiral staircases
- some of the new 'clutter' objects are really nice

dislike:
- not being able to place items out of apartment bounds
- my sim serving the entire friggen building in the commons area when he makes a meal in his house *grr*
- the toy dog/hamster

I haven't seen the witches yet so I can't say whether I hate them or not.

Why do you ever need an energizer?

My home-schooled sim kids are enjoying the new things to learn. They work in the garden, go on hikes, study physiology, fire safety, couple's counseling, and the normal skills. Jumping rope is a good way to build body points when the tv isn't well positioned for working out.

Major annoyance for me, since I like taking lots of family photos...the new shelving won't hold photos. Grr.

I am starting to get irritated by the idle witch animations. I cannot decide which is worse, the sappy nice witch or the stagey mean witch.

Also, I have absolutely no idea how to place two objects on the same section of wall.

Oh, you press a key at the same time.  Ummm ... Ctrl-Alt maybe, Shift-Alt?  I've forgotten obviously.  Checks manual: God, that's a useless piece of trash.  You press a key - or two - while you're trying to place the object.  The instructions are probably in the help section in game. 

I didn't think so but maybe you are right - look I'll fire up the game and work it out.

Even with moveobjects on I can't place the new shelves so that they are one above the other.

Erm huh? Plz explain! I battle to put windows in the right way sometimes, so this might be just me.

BAA!

I am more than a day late and more than a dollar short, but now that I finally have AL working on two different computers, here goes.

LIKE
The garbage chutes!  I eventually stopped using both garbage compactors and (interior) trash cans, because they'd just need emptying anyway, all my neat freak Virgo Sims would keep autonomously emptying them, etc.  This solves the problem.

The new Walk To Work/School interactions.  Since I'm running just base+UNI+AL, I have no cars (except the helicopter, which isn't exactly a car and seems to be broken anyway).  Now that my Sims are finally able to walk to school or work, even late, I have no need for cars.  Though the Maxis apartments that come with carports are making me want to try it with NL or FT added....

The witches are interesting.  I couldn't find the Infallibly Good Witch the first time I played Belladonna Cove, so I turned one of my college student Sims into an Atrociously Evil Warlock, with the intention of making him good eventually.  It took a while, but finally I did.  I couldn't agree more about the witch idle animations.  Oh my goodness gracious yes, they are annoying.  At least it's fun watching them make the ingredients.

DISLIKE
Broken toy dog
Broken helicopter
Broken everything else
Not being able to add hot tubs and other essential goodies in apartment common areas after moving Sims in
Stupid Maxis clothing, slutty women and stupid men with painted torsos (I want to see a pic of the painted-torso-guy cemetary)

Apartment roommates being absolutely uncontrollable, even with the InSimenator.  I cannot change their skintones with Christianlov's painting that way.  It is also unfair that they get to stay up all night watching TV until they are almost in three different needs failures, then Run Errands to get their needs filled.

Not being able to build inside apartments (it causes "invisible furniture" after reload if I do).  This makes it much harder to make "un-shoo-able" bathrooms, since I can't add walls to make separate shower rooms and terlet rooms.  I can use UNI community showers and Hunter240x's divider urinals, at least for the men, but the other "shoo-able" items have to go by themselves into a spare bedroom, or even (as I did yesterday with Ajay Loner's apartment) on the back porch.  (I'm using an old "no naked emitter" hack, and even if I weren't, it seems that the apartment porches act like enclosed rooms.)

One Don't Like is something missing from AL that was available before; the option to choose an hairstyle for each type of clothing (i.e., everyday, swimming, pj's, etc).  That option doesn't seem to be available with AL - at least I'm not seeing it. 

Like - learned something new from TashaFaun.  Baaaa.

You can if you use the control pets cheat, "boolProp ControlPets true"and "boolProp petActionCancel true"
I have it. I seems to be in the same place it has always been for me.

another dislike - my "plumper thumper" sectional sofa isn't a sectional.

http://community.livejournal.com/thesims2/5816437.html#cutid1 (http://community.livejournal.com/thesims2/5816437.html#cutid1)  It's driving me nuts.

^ I'm not sure this will help, but maybe you had Inge's "Is Chair A Booth/ Is Sofa A Sectional?" fix? It has been updated for AL, no idea if it is related with your problem though.

Yep, that would be it.  Last time I checked her site there were no updates yet.  But now it's fixed and functional.  So... False alarm bug, heh.

Okay, has anyone figured out how to place two decorations on the same wall section yet?  I can move them up and down fine, but it won't let me place the second object.

You press and hold Ctrl and Alt while having the object against the wall. First you'll want to use  [ ] to move it to the desired height then place it.


I can't even find the new sectional sofa. I've searched all over.

I've only played a bit but so far:

Like:
The walk to school interaction. I can have kids miss the bus and stay home for nearly an hour more doing homework then send them off without being late.
Most of the new objects are great.

Dislike:
How easy roommates are to keep happy. Mine is a drunk, she drinks at the damn bar all night then shakes her ass at the stereo all night. None of the neighbors seem to notice the noise either.
Not being able to modify the apartment how I want in build mode once someone is moved in. It's understandable but whats even more annoying is not being able to modify it without anyone in it unless you rezone, save, exit, reload. WTF EAxis?

I was able to modify an apartment complex after I moved my sim to the sim bin.  Once my sim was moved, all the npc's moved out too, and I didn't need to rezone to change anything.  Thanks for letting us know how to add and move stuff to the walls.  I'm larnin' so much!

AL introduced a new feature - you press Ctrl and Alt together and then it will let you put more things on the same wall, without using move objects. 

The apartment building tools was also covered in another thread, but to reitterate:

If your apartment is occupied, use boolProp aptSubLotSpecificToolsDisabled false.

If your apartment is vacant, yet still zoned as an apartment, use boolProp aptSubLotSpecificToolsDisabled false AND boolProp aptBaseLotSpecificToolsDisabled false.

This allows you to add and remove walls, edit the common areas and do landscaping, all while occupied with sims to test the functionality of adding that extra hot-tub to the basement.

Having moveobjects_on is fun but when it means that actions drop from queues or environment scores are bottomed out because sims can't reach things, it causes a lot of stomping and general annoyance which is why I prefer to play with it off.

I will see what I can do tonight with control/alt and brackets.

Last night I had fun rearranging some apartment lots for my space colony 'hood. It is in permanent winter as terraforming is not complete so I used some of the Lot Bin apartments but added extra walls and some roofs to make everything under cover. An indoor playground works just fine, and I found the easiest way to build relationships, I put the "Don't wake the Llama" game in the playground as well and there are sims playing it at all times of the day and night.

I noted what some others have, that the school bus does not fetch children in the morning from that lot (Lot Bin lot) but it drops them off after school.

Actually, that's not new -- it's been around since OFB or Pets.

That's not caused by having moveobjects on. That's caused by bad design. Interactable items should have a clear path to them.

Also, you just hold Alt.

I love how couples cuddle in bed after waking up.  It took me by total surprise when I skimmed the camera over the master bedroom and saw the wife in her husbands arms, her head on his chest.  I've wanted better cuddle in bed animations forever, this is way more than I expected from them ;D

I also love ceilings!  I can finally delete all of those cumbersome cc ceiling tiles that always got in my way anyhow.  Someone mentioned how they don't disappear with walls down, but I think that's an advantage when you're trying to change the texture and the walls keep getting in your way.  If you don't want to see the ceilings, use the ceiling off option.  They're only there if you want them.

And the ability to place wall items at different heights helps tons.  You have no idea how many windows and paintings cluttered my download folder before, with the only difference being the height of the item.  Now I only need one of each variety, and [ ] with do the rest. :D



Yeah... as for things I don't like... I haven't actually played with apartment lots much... so I'm sure there's a ton of things that will get on my nerves that I just haven't discovered yet.  So far, I don't like how my sims have gained an obsession with giving friendly hugs.  Even my antisocial, ornery sims can't seem to resist hugging a sim they've just met... which obviously leads to failure.  This shouldn't be, I wonder if it's a hack conflict in my game, or a bug that needs to be fixed.   :-\

And where did allmenus on go?   ???  That was such a helpful cheat for storytelling.  Why did they disable it?

I haven't seen the cuddling in bed yet, probably because most of the time my sims go to sleep under sleepclock/BUY control, and as soon as they wake up they run to the bathroom. I'll have to give them a chance to sleep on their own one of these go-arounds and see if I catch it.

The cuddling is cute, but it takes them a year and a day to get up then. Not too bad with my work-at-home sims, but annoying for the ones that have carpools at 8 am and need a shower first because the kids tied them up the night before.

I've been reading these posts with dread and putting off playing as long as possible. I've spent the past weeks collecting mods and CC for the game but last night I decided to play for a bit. I purposely plopped the Orphan kids into a house to put off the inevitable frustration of apartments.

In doing so, I noticed a behaviour that quickly drove me to distraction. Every walk-by, after being greeted and talked to, walked straight into one of two bedrooms that were equipped with dressers and repeatedly changed clothes! Over and over and over. Four of the orphan kids did the same. Everyone lined up to change clothes. It was ridiculous! I finally deleted all dressers and the walk-bys. Bleh! I have never seen this behaviour in any EP before this.

Thank god I didn't start out playing an apartment, I would have deleted the entire building. :-\
If someone has already posted this issue, many pardons for overlooking it and possibly getting a fix. I miss my dressers.

Wait, what? Does that work with windows too?

That isn't a known AL bork (never seen it happen in my game, with the orphans or any other residential or apartment lot), so you probably still have an old hack lurking somewhere that's causing it.

I was gonna say, I could have sworn I've been using ctrl + alt for a while now.

Er, no... it doesn't.  I thought I read somewhere that it did, but I just tried to use it now and it won't work.  Darn.

Something new I noticed just now, toddlers can cause a ruckus by banging pots and pans ;D  And elders too :-\  I wish the would stop demeaning elders.  Not everyone gets senile when they're old. And they have a tendency to whip the pans out from nowhere, and pull the attention from everyone in the room.  Real aggravating at parties.  I still like the idea... but I have the feeling its going to get old very soon.

Toddlers being able to bang pots and pans isn't an AL thing. I've never seen it myself but I do remember seeing a picture of it aaaaages ago. I think around about when Pets was out.

Is it just my AL game or has anybody else noticed the new love bed not giving out woohoo memories after the act has been committed?

I've never seen anyone bang pots and pans -- is it an autonomous thing, or can they be directed to do it?

You sure about that ???  I could be wrong... but I've never seen it before and I have tons of toddlers in my game.  It seems real strange they'd wait till now to do it.

There are a few toddler toys made to look like pots and pans, cloned from the xylophone.  I had several of these in my gave at one point.   ;)

To answer your question jsalemi, it's autonomous, like throwing a tantrum - and since it demands the attention of everyone in the room, there'll probably need to be a hack made to take the edge off of the nuisance.

That sounds like a Holiday Pack thing, for New Year's.

They were having a new years bash, now that I think about it. I've had very few of those, so if it is part of the holiday pack, I could have easily missed it. :D

Why with pots and pans though? The noisemakers they use for birthday parties are so much more practical. I'll keep an eye out to see if it happens again. I'm still not entirely convinced.

It is definitely a New Year's party thing.

I think I've found another bug. :(
I got my one and only warlock to go to a community lot on an outing and the Gypsy Matchmaker turned up. My warlock couldn't greet her and so couldn't buy potions or talk to her. The only options he had were "Dismiss" and "Cast Spell..."

Have you tried "Interact Without Greet"? It's an old shiny that probably will allow you to interact with them again. While not specifically intended as a fix, it probably will fix it as a side effect.

Like:

• I can design a lot with lots of high fun/comfort/skill facilities in the commons, and it doesn't raise rent values.
• Roommate candidates list seem to refresh with a range of career progress similar to my playable Sims.
• Moving a family out of an apartment due to a bug (or perhaps a misunderstood feature?) and then back in recalls the previous group of unplayable neighbors, with friendship levels preserved.
• Did AL fix the NL neon bars so they're actually illuminated or is my new monitor doing this?

Dislike:

• I can give low-rent Sims fancy-schmancy common facilities that they don't deserve.  Why, when I was your age...etc.
• Social groups don't seem exclusive enough.  None of my Sims ever seems to get rejected for using the "wrong" gesture or story.
• Such obvious phail in some of the pre-made lots; hallways to nowhere, rooms without windows, grills on tenant balconies BAD!
• Fitted closets seem way too expensive compared to racks placed in walk-ins. Sliding door hardware does not cost more than a refrigerator! Come to think of it, how come Sims can't keep there underpants in the refrigerator?

Like:

The apartment option in itself. I'm enjoying playing with that.
The idea of the witches. They are quite fun. I love the broomsticks!
Kids playgrounds. I've been wanting something like this for a while.
Trailer building accessories included! Yay!

Dislike:

Not being able to place objects outside. I have a sim in a trailer and can't place the telescope.
The no schoolbus thing. I can't seem to make him walk to school either, as his adoptive mum is at work by that point. Social worker will no doubt be taking him back soon. I can't see him getting into private school, as they live in a trailer and mum is only a low level job. By the time you take rent out, and nanny fees (which are incidentally all day, as when tracking schedule, she doesn't take into account school hours either?), you are left with nothing much to decorate up the trailer.
I bought some clothes for the lad when he was adopted - brought them back to the trailer, which has two walk in closets in there, and it gave the message 'great, one of your sims has bought clothes, now they need a dresser to put them in?)

Stuff that may or may not have been introduced with FT:

Like:
How it counts the tiles for you in build mode.  No more squinting and counting identical squares of grass!
BFFs. I know it's silly, but it makes the daily grind of maintaining friendships much less of a hassle.

Do Not Want:
The Lifetime Aspiration meter.  This is one of the reasons I chose not to get FT, and here it is cluttering up my control panel anyway.  At least it isn't as easy as I thought it would be to get an accidental permaplat.

I have a problem with AL that I have not seen a post about yet.

My apartment dwellers cannot call each other on the phone or invite each other over for a visit by personally greeting.  They have high relationships scores.

This is very disappointing for me.  I had looked forward to inviting neighbors over for all the interactions you might have with sims not living on the same lot.

I use some hacks.  Mostly MATY, but also homework-on-the desk, and the power espresso by SimCutie.

Is this a "working as designed" feature?  If not, has anyone seen a hack that will give me these social options?

I am a first-time poster here.  I have read the forums carefully.  Please, I don't need a slapdown, I need an answer. 

Thank you

----------------

Yes, I know I am a noob.

Just to clarify.  I did try out my phone problem with other apartment dwellers, in other neighborhoods, both with sims already in place and sims that I created.  In the boxed lots and also CC apartment buildings.

It doesn't seem to matter how many people they know or whether they have gone to work, or a community lot.  They cannot call their neighbors or ask their neighbors to visit.

Sorry to annoy the moderators.


Edit by moderator:  You don't have to double-post.  You can edit your own posts at any time you like unless you are canned and exiled to Retardo Land.

Make sure your MATY hacks are up to date, and try loading up the game without the other hacks, just to check and see if there's a conflict.  :)

Has anyone else played a rented house on its own lot? I built a town house on one of MaryLou's minilots and changed the lot to apartment. Because it's an apartment lot there is no neighbourhood welcome wagon and because it's a single 'apartment' on its own you don't get the apartment welcome wagon either. Pure bliss.

BFFs did come with FT, and I detest it muchly. Thank Jebus and the FOJ for 'BFFsAreFor12s'. Hell, just the few each of my sims manages to rack up within that time is enough to drive me fricking batty. Oy, the endless self-invites! If a BFF would invite herself over, maybe, once a week or so, I'd be fine with that, but I have one house where no less than 3 BFFs wander in every. single. day. That's way too damned much! Especially since relationships are supposed to be decaying more slowly, so why do these nimrods need to come over every damned day? Especially when all they're going to do is plop themselves down on the couch and hog the telly Watching Movies while I'm trying to get my sims to pay attention to the Yummy Channel and get a skill point or two?

Wow... I've never had that problem with BFFs. Mine call a bit, but they don't come over constantly. Maybe it helps that I only let my sims make friends with people in the college they went to...

My most annoying household is the result of a lot of progeny (some related, some not) growing up together. Then a couple of kids came home from school with 'em 2 or 3 times, which meant they all had a gaggle of BFFs among themselves before the lot of them went off to Uni. And since I (apparently unwisely) chose not to house them all in the same dorm, it meant that in addition to the usual Cheer Menagerie popping by to Verbits and/or belch at everyone I also had the assorted BFFs dropping by ad nauseam. This routine continues back in the main 'hood, though mercifully without the costume brigade.

I'm guessing that's the exact thing that is supposed to "make relationship decay slower".

I like that BFFs are over all the time. With bffsarefor12s, that means it's mostly family that's over in each others' homes all the time. Since I like close-knit families (reminds me of how mine used to be before my grandparents died) this is a good thing.

Zazazu, was it you that was talking about homeschooling one of your sim kids? How do you do that please?

Or is this going to be a bunny/pancake moment  :D

Thats great Tashafaun. Thanks. It'll stop my adopted lad getting hauled back by social services until the issue with the schoolbus is fixed!

No. I tried doing that. He is only a child, and by the time he's supposed to go to school, his mum has already gone to work, and so can't take him.
I may be missing something, but if I click on the 'walk' sign, with him selected, there are no options, and by clicking on him, there is no option to walk to school.

I still have qualms with the bff thing, even after the hack.  I really wish they wouldn't roll wants to be bff with family members.  Don't get me wrong, close knit families are great,  but it's still family.  In real life, I don't refer to my cousins as friends, no matter how much I think of them that way.  It just seems strange to call them "friends" when we're family. 

So I keep removing the bff tags, but they continue rolling the wants.  Darn kids.   I wish they wouldn't always get along.  Sibling rivalry is incredibly lacking in my game.

Oh, buh. That is so lame, but you're probably right.

Yeah, I would like it a lot more if it were the parents who stopped by more often; unfortunately, in the 2 homes where the BFF traffic seems neverending, both parents have already done the Reaper Hula. And the other adult from my newly-adult male's childhood home isn't actually related to him, and she's started heartfarting for him big-time. That always creeps me out. I'm all for a healthy appreciation of age differences, but those who've changed your diapers just shouldn't ever be allowed to get heartfarty. Diaper changes and getting bottles need to, like, set a flag or something. Euugh.

That. I'm not using the homework objects she has yet, just using the school changer to set them to flexi-school. Monday-Friday the kids had to learn at least two things plus practice a trade. They usually had some sort of skill want, so they'd get a couple skill points and learn fire safety or somesuch. For trade, they were gardening. They went on nature hikes and the plan was to take them to hobby lots for hobby instruction. That's when I hit the bug.

I almost never have kids in public school for the first stages of a 'hood because I like to start mine from one house and build from there. Doesn't make sense that there would be a public school system when there isn't another house in sight.

I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet, but I love the fact that you can now take more than one sim, but not every single sim currently in the household to a community lot.  I've found it really annoying not being able to take two teenagers clothes-shopping without their younger siblings, and not being able to have two adults drive to their community lot business without dragging their kids along.

However, I am also peeved about the residual FT clutter which doesn't actually do anything since I don't have FT installed.

I'm pretty sure that came with BV.  I agree, though.  It was a much needed feature.

Just now, when my sim was in her apartment, one of the other tenants wandered in, so I made her say goodbye to him, and they grasped each other for the most romantic kiss I'd ever seen two sims with 3/3 relationship give each other.  So apparently she has a two lightning bolt attraction score for him, but for what it's worth, they are strangers!   ::) 

Well, needless to say, I've never had that happen before under those circumstances.  Something borked by al, I wonder? 

Like:

-Apartments. I always wanted them since I first got the game. These are great for Sims who just got out of college and CAS Sims.
-The ability to move paintings and such up and down the walls. This expansion is worth it for that alone.
-Shelves.
-Magic. I haven't done much with it, but I have a feeling I'll like it quite a bit.
-Vending machines. These will be useful for community lots.


Meh:

-Playground equipment. They are somewhat useful if the spawn have nothing else better to do, but otherwise they're a waste of space.


Dislike:

-The start-up music. It is too sleepy and slow, in my opinion. It may just be me, but I expect game music to be bouncy in some way.


Loathe:

-The fact that you cannot control ALL the families in an apartment, you just get to select one. Perhaps I wouldn't mind it if the other families are inactive while I am playing with one, but they aren't. I figure I could use the mind control mirror, but I worry that time is kept differently for each family, plus I could inadvertently do a VBT. I will have to test this out, but it simply irritates me to no end.

If I can't figure out a way to control all the families at the same time, then I'll have to restrict one family per apartment building.

Tasha, I only have the directors cut and ACR. I'll try taking out ACR and see if that helps. It's unlikely to be the DC. They are all updated - I binned my DL folder totally when I installed AL, and have only put in up to date hacks since then.

I apologise if there area any typos etc in my posts today - I have an eye infection and things are a little on the blurry side  ;)

I've seen some people saying this on the BBS, and I just don't understand it.  What would be the point of having an apartment feature with special doors if you still had to control everyone at the same time?  That's the way it worked before if you tried to make apartments.  You could still do it that way if you want to.

I must need to yank something, I only show about 12 of my downloaded skins, out of a huge amount. Did anyone else notice that? I am thinking I missed a hack. I reinstalled to get this much:( Upside is, I guess I have to go clothes shopping again?

The biggest thing which I'm kind of torn on is making a witch character high enough level to build a throne.  At that point, I'm playing that character in God mode.  Witch sims with a throne don't need to eat, or sleep, or talk to other people, or do fun things.  They can just sit in a chair and skillinate 24 hours a day.

Eugh, especially with the Education bookcase. Really, the thrones make me feel like I'm cheating horribly. =\

Sounds like another feature I'll just have to pretend doesn't exist, like the elixer of life, the energizer, and the thinking cap.

Anyone else notice the extremely small text in the dialog box when you have to name a baby now?  I find myself leaning close to the screen now to see if it's a boy or girl.

My nearsightedness, let me show you it.

Apparently, that is because EA left out some code. Alex knows how to fix it.

Likewise, I don't see the point of the apartment feature if everyone has to be controlled separately. I wouldn't mind it so much if the other player houses were blacked-out and the Sims inactive, say for going to work or school, but they aren't. They're fully, er, conscious and going about doing stupid things. Perhaps I am just a control freak, but it bothers me a bit.

Perhaps, once I screw around with some throwaway Sims, I'll get over it or learn to live with it.

It's a little better with a regular bookcase--but not much.  The throne regens needs *really* fast, so you can work a sim to the point they're in desperation, then sit them down to study something in a book for a little while, and they're full up again.  But at least it means you have to do things with them occasionally.

I don't think I'm going to make any more witches in my house with the education bookcase.

I want it both ways. I want something like clicking on the apartment door to turn control on or off and if it's off I want them inactive and blacked out. That would satisfy my inner control freak and my laziness if it was a mega apartment block.

The whole point for me is having other sims being on the lot that my playables can choose to interact with or not. Way easier than traipsing round community lots. It will be quite interesting to see what the other families do when I'm not playing them.

The sims in the other families are going to work and school in my game - the adults walk to work, and the kids & teens get on the schoolbus.  Teens also walk to their after school jobs if they have one.  And they all head off inside their apartments at 10pm.

The other apartments on the lot are supposed to be blacked out - and are in my game.  If they're not, I suspect that you are playing in the wrong premade apartments (some of the premade apartments are glitchy about blacking out, most notably the Cho/Riley lot) or that you've been using build cheats while the lot is occupied.

I enjoy watching the sims from the other families interact - especially if they're playables.  As witch said, it's like going to a community lot without the loading screens.  It's as if I gave the playables in the currently unplayed apartments unlimited free will, without any consequences.  The currently played family can interact with their neighbours (either by free will or by macro/socialise) or they can ignore their neighbours and be busy doing whatever else I have in mind for them.

I have an Undiscovered Shiny aimed at addressing this particular nuisance, where they are inappropriately asleep at odd times. Despite being vampires. Or run off in the middle of your group, or other such obnoxiousness.

Oh, so that's what the problem is. The only co-joined lot I played was the Cho/Riley lot. I really should have played with it more before opening my yap about the issue.

Hurr durr, don't mind me.

The fix for that lot is easy -- have whichever one you're playing visit the other for a bit, and then leave -- the other apartment blacks out properly after that.  Do the same when you play the other one, and everything works fine from then on.

Referring back to a point made earlier in this thread, I have created a fix for the broken spellbook text. You can download it at MTS2 here> http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=301159
Its only for English users though.
I have also made a Dutch version which can be found here> http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=301214

Oh good, that one has been driving me nuts squinting at the screen. Thanks.

Agreed.  What's really irritating is that it overrides the sleepclock.

It's particularly annoying in the pre-made apartments with only one bathroom.  If the carpool for one adult + child are coming at 8am, but the other adult's carpool is coming an hour later, then I want the other adult to stay in bed for another hour.  I don't want them waking and competing with the other two sims for the only bathroom.

I've noticed it only happens if the later-waking adult is at 100% energy, though.  If they're less than 100% energy they don't wake up.

This isn't really a like/dislike, but since it seems that some of the minor features from FT and BV got carried through, does anyone know if AL (without FT) has the option to age townie kids up with playables?  Because that would be cool.  It was one of the few things that actually made me consider buying FT.

I have a new dislike!
Roomies needs don't fill while they are at work like a regular Sims' needs do. As soon as he gets back from work he has to go "run errands" to refresh his needs and by the time he gets back he has time to either sleep or eat (which never seem to go green when he buggers off lot) just before going to work to have his needs drained again.
I have also nearly electrocuted my roomie twice by forcing him to repair my Servo. Broken Servos and apartments do not mix! Nobody attempts to fix them and because other Sims live on the lot they will not auto dial a repairman either.

Will the landlord repair your sim's servo? He repaired my family's tv without a hitch - quickly too.

I've decided I've got an actual annoyance with AL (at least, it's not something I've ever noticed before): Obsessive diary writing.  "Hey," my sims think, "I just went to the toilet and took a shower, and I didn't immediately have anything else in my queue--I'd better write in my diary about my latest BM!"

I can at least understand my sims wanting to obsessively browse the internets.  Keeping a written record of everything they do, immediately after they do it, is weird. 

And now you understand the reasoning behind trainwrecky blogs.

Sagana, the landlord wouldn't fix him because he broke down inside his apartment and the landlord will only fix broken stuffs inside an apartment if you ask them too. As he was broken my Servo couldn't ask.

I hate that, too, especially because sims don't need to get to a bookcase to write in their diaries. So when the action pops up, it's already too late to cancel it. And it takes fucking ages for them to undock. I moved TJ's "No autonomomous diary" from the "Nice to have" to the "Must have" folder.

Obsessive diary writing? Really? I don't think I've had a single Sim write in their diary since getting AL.

I had one wake up because his wife was going into labour.. instead of watching, out came the diary.  But apart from that one, I've not really seen it happen much. 

I didn't even know that mod existed . . . but now I have it and TJ's other "no autonomy" mods. 

Just discovered this one.  I guess EAxis got tired of everyone yelling and screaming for toddler to toddler interactions.

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/chipmc/960d6999.jpg)

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/chipmc/d99bef63.jpg)

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/chipmc/822038fb.jpg)

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/chipmc/ac7bbcc1.jpg)

Aww the cuteness!  I had a set of twin todders that did that autonomously, but I was too slow to take a picture. :(

"Huggle"?!

I think I just got DIABEETUS.

Haha! You'd hate it in my house then, we call it 'hug-wug'  :D That's what my (not quite 2) daughter calls it.

I like the toddler hug, it is so sweet.

Just what is it that drives small children to experiment by adding a rhyming suffix to words?  Is it because without realising we're doing first, saying things like beddy-weddy time and stuff?

I think it is just experimenting while learning to talk. Her favourite word at the moment is narna-barna. (banana)

Yes to both. Language Log had a post recently on toddler illeism (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=577) that talked a little bit about children copying parents and experimentation.

I think I know why she does it. I was watching her favourite TV programme with her yesterday called In The Night Garden. Characters include; IgglePiggle Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, Ninky Nonk and Pinky Ponk. ::)

Talysman, that is a very interesting article, cheers!

This reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother a few years ago. She'd recently found my old baby blanket, and I asked her if I'd had any 'pet name' for it ('binky' or whatever). She just gaped at me, baffled, like I'd asked her if I used to eat with my toes. "Of course not. You knew perfectly well it was a blanket; what else would you call it?" Apparently I also used to amuse their friends by spelling supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for them. Sounds like I was a super-fun kid.

Ok, I'm going to pose this as a question because, hey! it might just be me. Does anyone else's butler quit after two days, saying "It's been an honor to serve the household."? I hired him, he came, he served, he quit. I hired him again, ditto. I hired him again and he quit again. Is this a "feature?" Or am I doing something wrong? If I'm the messed up one, someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong. And if this is a "feature," is anyone more awesome than me planning to write a hack that keeps him from quitting all the time?

More likely a hack conflict or you have an old version of a hack laying around.  Run the HCDU, and if that doesn't turn up any conflicts, remove your downloads folder.  If the problem goes away, you need to make  sure you have the latest version of all your hacks, remove the ones that haven't been updated, and maybe do a binary search to find the culprit if the first two items don't solve it.

The problem with running the hack conflict detector is that is gives an error every time I do. I've tried downloading a new copy of it, but it still won't work. I'm not too knowledgeable about reading error messages, so this helps me not at all. I've attached the error message it gives, if that helps anyone.

As for old hacks, that's entirely possible. I have a couple that haven't been updated. I assumed they were ok to use since they don't cause any error messages. I guess not. The particular ones that I'm thinking of are Monique's. I just found an update for her child support hack today, and have installed it, but I haven't tried it yet. I thought her auto-payer mod was reported as being compatible, but I could be wrong?

This may be widespread knowledge by now, but I had the same irritation. My apartment dweller got all obsessed with the lady across the hall. I kludged it by having my sim give her a cel phone as a present. Now he can call her...but I don't yet know if she will call him.

my sims from a bit of days have a strange behave, in few words, they go to sleep as the first needs.
for example, the have fun < 50 and sleep need about 60, they will go to sleep and then watch tv  :o

I got some HCDU errors a couple months ago, and deleting the "Temp" folder cleared them up. (Cache issue, I guess.) If that doesn't work, you should report this at the HCDU support section at Simlogical.

I understand that it is not Awesomespec to have apartments touching, but I stacked mine. I think it's ridiculous that neighbors will complain five minutes after food on the table goes bad.

Another nitpick in general is that I have always been irritated that Pop Tarts have the same "shelf life" as omelets. COME ON.

ETA: I also wanted to add that I've been playing an apartment with a roomie for a few sim days. He is starting to keep a schedule and act human, doing things such as showering, sleeping in his room, and eating at reasonable hours. After a period of him acting like a robot (replenishing needs on errands and at work, lame) I decided to make him selectable and "train" him if possible, or at least make him less irritating.

Has anyone else had this experience? Do they settle in after a bit if you leave them unselectable, or did making him selectable and forcing things along help?

I want poptarts my sims don't have to cook. I never toast my pop tarts.

I don't even want to know what the muffins are made out of.

And, conversely, I can't get neighbors to complain about smell even when I deliberately left rotten food laying around all night in hopes of seeing a complaint for kicks.

I haven't had them settle in naturally at all. I've been using Inge's apartment fixes mod, in testing, it takes away their ability to replenish needs from errands and work, and I find them taking care of their own needs much better.
Inge's mod is in the testing area of her forum, but may be released soon.

LIKE magic magic magic!!! gosh it was my fave sims 1 episode i am totally stoned that they updated it to make it into a sims 2 expansion i think it is better than the sims 2 expansion but i miss the ghost train DISLIKE that its the last expansion i will miss the game

Get the hell off of my internet until you learn English. I am not at all surprised to learn that you are "totally stoned", since you seem to have the mental capacity to match.

As the OP, I'm officially kicking you off this topic. Go away. We don't want your kind here.

I will look into this, thanks, caterpillar. I really don't want to micromanage a roomie, but letting him go feral was taking me out of the "realism" of the game. I am so spoiled now with Pescado's hacks...most of the time sims approximate human behavior, so this was buggin.

I know exactly how you feel about the realism. The zombie roomies were driving me crazy.
Here's a direct link to the thread in Inge's forum for this mod. It is nearly out of testing. The mod also makes the other tenants behave more realistically in terms of when they go into their apartments and when they hang in the communal areas. It doesn't stop them from reading your magazines, though,  :D
http://simlogical.com/slforum/index.php?topic=1770.0

Thanks Roux. I tried what you suggested, and it didn't work. I posted the error over at simlogical, but also read others problems/solutions, and managed to fix the HCDU. The only conflicts it's showing are 4 versions of Monique's money computer (updated for AL over at Insim) using the same resources, and a conflict between Pescado's vampwere fix and the other one from here. I'll have to track that down and figure out which one to keep. However, while searching for possible old hacks I did find a newer update for one of the other hacks I had running, so that may have fixed it too. I haven't had a chance to try the lot with the butler and see yet.

Vampwerefix was replaced by creaturefix(es).

Don't keep four versions of MQs computer. Why in the world would you need all those? One is all you need. I use the version Chaavik did for AL.

I'm a bit behind, and just started playing AL over the weekend... 
Just wondering - Is there any way to simultaneously play multiple sims who are living in the same apartment building but in different apartments?  I hate when I have two sims living in the same apartment building, but different apartments, and I can't control them both at the same time...  I was hoping for something similar to the Uni dorms, when you can control all playables living in the dorm at once...  I know it would suck if you had big families living in the same building because it would be too many sims to play at once, but with single sims I would love if I could control all playables on the lot simultaneously, rather than playing one while the other hangs out in blackness, and then playing the other to catch up. 

Nope.  Just do it the old fashioned way if you want to control everyone at once.  Make an apartment building, but leave it as a regular residential lot.

Also don't forget to put an authorized person only security in each 'apartment unit' to force them to stay out of each other's areas or theyh will treat it just like one big oddly divided house... not sure how to set it up to do that though (haven't used APO yet but it looks promising) You can also use the multiple owners myne  door hack which lets multiple people use the same myne door (forget where it is, i think MTS2) then just assign each sub--family to a different myne door and lock it. SimLogical has some nice stuff also for lockable doors. Not sure how up-to-date the site is though, i know a while back he shut it down due to not having time to keep up with keeping the hacks updated or something like that though... worth a look though.

That was, like, in another era.  Simlogical's been back up and updating for as far back as human memory can stretch.  All the lockable doors work fine.

Oh great!  I use your teleporter all the time Inge, but I've never tried the lockable/keyholder doors. 
This is probably wishful thinking...  but would there be any way to incorporate the lockable doors into the apartment buildings, to set up a system where multiple people/families could live in separate apartments in the same building, but could be controlled at the same time?  I know you can set up home-made apartments on residential lots using the lockable doors, but would it be possible to hack the doors somehow (or the apartments somehow, I guess) so that the doors could be used in apartment buildings, where you wanted to control more than one family?  So that you could leave the zoning as "apartment", and keep the other "features" of apartment buildings intact...  e.g. paying rent every monday, the landlord, the other apartments filling up with townies...  I'm thinking something along the lines of "special doors" that would let you set up a 4 apartment building, with two playables, each living in separate apartments, and two townies filling up the other two apartments...?
I have no idea how the coding or hacks work, so I'm probably just grasping at straws, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case it is possible.

Maybe it would be best for you to go on over to Simlogical and have a look at Inge's doors?  She also has a really nifty forum, where you can ask about how to use them in apartments.

Off the top of my head, if you merge your two families, you can build a double apartment accessible with one standard Maxis apartment door.  Then use Inge's doors to assign each sub-family their own living space.

I've found something else I hate.
Why can't landlords/ladies grill food at Saturday parties without a communal fridge?! Most premade apartments are equipped with a communal grill yet the landlord/lady will always order pizza unless there is a communal fridge for them to use, which there usualy isn't.
I find this so very annoying.
Is there any way to update either the landlord data or lot data to let them use the grills without a fridge like on a community lots?