More Awesome Than You!

I've just discovered that BV has introduced a big problem with the way time passes.   

The game has always been this way, but with BV its something you will have to keep a close eye on.   Hotels have a checkout time of 12 noon. 

If you stay past this time 1 day is charged to your hotel fee.  All BV lots decrease your vacation days by 1 at 12 midnight.   The problem is, it doesn't differentiate between the hotel and just visiting a community lot.   

As an example...you leave the hotel lot to visit another community lot at 9am,   you stay at the community lot until 6pm,  at 12 noon while your visiting the community lot, the game will register that your staying another day at the hotel (you get no message about this though),  when you return to the hotel, the time is back to 9am when you left and you also get a message saying you missed checkout time and 1 day has been added to your hotel charge.  While at the hotel, at 11am you will get a message saying "it's checkout time, if you stay past noon, you will be charged another day". When 12 noon comes, the game charges you again for 1 day.  You have now paid twice for 1 day stay. :(   

The same issue applies to 12 midnight when vacation days decreases by 1.  If your visiting a lot when 12 midnight goes by, vacation days left decreases by 1.   If it's before midnight when you return to the hotel,  while your at the hotel, and time passes midnight, vacation days left will decrease by another 1.   You have now lost 2 vacation days in one day. :(

I don't think there is anyway around this other then keeping an eye on the time when you go visiting other community lots.

Why am I not surprised?

Sounds like a hack fix is needed to make sure that time is only counted from the hotel lots, not community lots. Stupid EAxis

...but then unless your hotel lot is inordinately fascinating, you would practically never pay!

Hrm... I wonder how Crammyboy's Community Time hack would work to solve this...

I mean, it would be nice to have some realism here as well... so sims that went to another comm lot, when returning to the hotel, would appear as off-world for the amount of time they had been gone.  In the meantime, you would go ahead with the other playables on the lot...

The hitch would be that the hack would probably have to disable the ability to return home until all playable sims are present and accounted for.  Unless, sims can return home separate from each other... which would be even more realistic... but I'm sure that would be too messy to implement and probably just complicate things.

The 'simpler' fix as Kat suggests, would be to just ignore the time that you are on a comm lot.  Hopefully this might be as simple as inserting a check if you are on a comm lot, and then ignore/skip the lines that deduct vacation days/charge extra hotel days.  This is assuming that comm lots can be identified separately from 'hotel' lots.

Again, it's the case of very simple things that Maxis EA doesn't seem to even try out before releasing their games. ::)  Oh wells.

I'm hoping that someone can identify whether the new lots need emptying/cleaning.


Ste

Huh. I bet that'll be in the patch, then, since aside from the fact that it causes overcharging and loss of vacation days, time in vacation subhoods is supposed to be continuous, like it is in Uni subhoods.

Yes, but Uni subhood time is broken also. It has never worked correctly either, as evidenced by what happens when only part of a lot goes out, resulting in semester times getting completely desynchronized.

Problem (if it is one) seems to originate with EAxis using the Uni comm lot time structure without thought that there is no check out time in a dorm.

I would not mind that time is not counted on comm lots, as this is consistent with the way comm lot time runs in main hoods, and it allows more time spent away from hotel without racking up a bill.  However, if this is going to be the case, check out time should only be calculated when the sim reaches 12:00noon at the hotel.  However, this is generally inconsistent with the way most people run their holidays - generally, I would think that folks don't just stay in the hotel all day (well, some do if they have small kids that just want to use the pool, etc.).

If this does not work, time at comm lots could possibly be synchronized with hotel time, so that if you leave the comm lot at 11pm, having been there since 10am, it should be 11pm when the sims get back to the hotel.  

I'm thinking that this may be a "feature" not a "bug", in that EAxis logic might be that if the sims are going to spend a whole day at a comm lot, and then return to the hotel to spend another whole day in the hotel (admittedly on the same day), perhaps it is fair for them to pay for two days vacation in one.  We'll know whenever they patch this EP, whether they think this is a problem or not.

If you go from the hotel to the community lot after 12 noon, and don't stay at the community lot past 12 midnight, things are fine. This gives you aproximately 11 hours game time on any community lot.  You can then return to the hotel, time would be back at the start time, and you could then go off to another community lot for another 11 hours.  You could repeat this over and over and take advantage of the time issue and stay on vacation indefinitly.

Yeah, a bit annoying.  I generally reset time until finals using Insim when my students return to the dorm so that the term stays in synch.  Maybe something like this will be necessary when on holiday - fun idea to leave the hotel after 12:00 and return before 12:00 the next day.  That might eliminate the double payment problem.

Purists would have to make sure that they actually paid a bill, for overall realism.

Nothing good is coming from the way time in community lots is handled. You have drop-dead tired Sims at 7pm when you return from a date, you have college finals at 2am, your teenagers never have the house for themselves. I don't understand why Maxis did it that way.

JMP's College Clock has an option to sync everyone in the dorm's time to a particular sim.  Very handy for keeping multiple residents synchronized.

This just gets worse and worse. LOL

I played a different family,  booked a vacation at Three Lakes.   Checked in at the campgrounds Monday 10am. I spent the night and decided to checkout and try a hotel.  I checked out of the campground Tuesday 1pm. At this point two 12 noon checkouts have passed, but camping is free, so there has been no charge.   

Went to the Three Lakes Cabins. As soon as I finished the final check'in.  I recieved the message "Checkout time passed while you were away from the hotel, 475$ has been added to your bill".... Not once, but twice. So in the end I was charged the normal 475$ for checking into the hotel, plus 475$ twice for the 2 noon checkouts that passed at the campgrounds that were supposedly free ???

This is why I'm waiting for the patch and various hacks to correct this before I buy this expansion.  Plus, I just installed zOMGPetz and Seasons a few weeks ago (had to finish my thesis and graduate before I got to play), so I'm still learning the ins and outs of those two. 

Do you have to take the whole fam with you when visiting community lots or can you leave one person behind?  That might keep the room rate/vacation days from double kaching'ing?

Way to go screwing that up EA!~

This is a little off topic but in reply to the student problem being tired from an outing when an exam is coming up, I have made a hacked object/patch pair that "closes" the college for periods of time, so for the entire household classes and exams are not called and the timer does not tick down.   I found it was the only way if I had a house of 8 sharers to be able to get them all on an outing at the same time without finding one had just escaped to class or had a final coming up.

The College Clock has been able to timefreeze on home and community lots for ages, and I've never had a problem with sims running off to class, seeing as they don't go unless I tell them to. As long you avoid massive-desync issues caused by messed up time tracking, finals come at predictable times.

Well you probably have yours autonomy off.  It's a complete pain cancelling go to class off the queues of 8 students, especially after they choose their majors and you forget to check the right queue at the right moment.

Time passes in my game! When I leave the hotel at 9 am and come back at 6 pm, it is 6 pm in the hotel. It does not matter, if I visit the community lot with my whole family or with just one of them...

Same here. Even when I had all my "filthy" hacks still in the game, time passed regularly like it hadn't done before. 

Wow!  What happens if you left some sims behind at the hotel?  Or can't you do that?

You can leave some of them behind, time passes anyway. I have tried visiting other lots with the whole family and visiting other lots with the teenage boy only, his parents and little sister stayed in the hotel and time passed.

Yep, time passed for me too. It was kinda nice, actually

I suppose the drawback is that when you get back to the hotel, exhausted at bedtime, the kids you left behind in the morning still have their green energy ready to play all night?

It was not that bad, actually. I have found espresso machines in all hotels so far and just let the teen sleep a little longer in the morning while the rest of the family had fun at the beach.
In the morning, they all leave together to visit something and then in the evening kids and parents go to bed and teen leaves again, it works just fine.

Ah yes, if you actually have them in bed before going out, I can see that working.  I was thinking if the teen went out in the morning and got back at midnight, then the kids would be up all night.

By the by, the noon checkout/payment thing is from TS1: Vacation. Many's the time I lost track and got charged for another day. (Come to think of it, that's happened to me IRL as well.)

Yes, but on uni lots, you at least have the option to cancel the 'go to class' action (since the student will just have to go to class again once s/he goes home). That's what I do, and thus I never have semester-desynchronisation, unless I choose to exploit it in order to make a certain sim 'older'.

And in Uni lots this can actually be beneficial - student can go to class once from the comm lot and once from home/dorm in one day, filling out the performance bar, eliminating need to go to class in other days, thus allowing for more interesting activity.

With BV, the time/double charge issue would have a negative/cost impact.  It also seems now that the time synch issue is specific to some installations.  For others time away from the hotel is in synch with the hotel time (i.e. if sims leave hotel at 9am and go to comm lot, and leave the comm lot at 8pm, it will be 8pm when they return to the hotel and they are charged for only one day).  Things do not seem to be working consistently.  Might be a difference between CD/DVD and torrent versions?

Naturally, I can't really say, since Amazon has not sent me a copy of BV yet.

Have we verified that the synch problem isn't a weird hack conflict? I'm running vanilla (well, okay, I had to add the teleporter bush because I was dumb and had to rescue my family) and everything was fine.

This could be the case.  There seem to be a lot of the sheeple that simply won't run without their hacks, which may now conflict, so a lot of problems may be related to that.  It'll take some time to sort out what are real problems and what are "sheeple induced" issues.

It appears that JMP has updated his director's cut already for BV (just downloaded that in preparation), but I will run vanilla to test before moving in my regular hood and any hacks.  Looks like I have time to plan anyway.  Thanks Amazon.

I've installed BV already, but I haven't played yet. Is this EP so FUBAR that I should uninstall it again?

Ive had no trouble with the time issues mentioned. I played the game vanilla from the geto-go (got the lesson the hard way the last pack...)
When i leave the home lot (hotel, tent or vacation home) and head out somewhere, time passes as usual. If i go home again at 9, then it will be 9 when i arrive at my home lot. So no double payment there.

And no, its not so fubar its to be uninstalled. I quite enjoy it.

There is always some issue with a new EP.  Awesome hacks and fixes are already either updated or being updated (check the War Room section for the FFS director's cut for BV if you use these hacks).  Other issues seem to be experienced by some people, but not by others - this may be due to running with non-updated hacks.  All this stuff is normal. 

If BV is installed already, play a vanilla game for a bit (no hacks or CC) and see how it goes.  If you experience issues, check back here - likely someone has already had the same issue and there may be some commentary or ideas about how to fix it. 

If you take your entire downloads folder out (eg your custom clothing, objects, etc.) make sure you have a backup of your current neighbourhoods, because your sims will lose everything except maxoid clothing, and your houses will lose any custom content as well.  You can replace your neighbourhood from the backup after you test to see if you have any problems with BV.

I or my game is having some sort of psychotic episode...   Has community lot/home time always been synchronized in Sims 2, or is there a particular expansion when time synchronization started?  The reason I ask, is I now seem to recall when seasons came out that one of the first things I noticed was that lot time was now synchronized.  I've just tried a family in a main hood, and time isn't synched there either.  But I do know at one point it was.  So it looks like i will be reinstalling sims 2, because I think something is definitly fubared.

Kids generally tire out early anyways. I always give them naps on the weekend. Weaklings. I never took naps. That's actually how I figured out that time was passing for me...I had the family at the hotsprings and the kid was about to drop, so I took them back to the hotel for a nap until they could go out to someplace for a destination dinner. Ack! It was still 8:00 pm!

Until I get BV, my game is currently running only base and Uni.  comm lot/home time is not synched there.  If a sim teen leaves home at 7am to go meet friends at a comm lot, and stays all day, when he returns home, it will still be 7am, time for brekkers and going to school.  If comm lot/home time was synched, it was after Uni in any case.

I think the desynchronization is actually a purposeful feature and not really a 'bug' per se.  I mean, I don't know how you guys handle it, but when I had sims synchronized, and I actually let them play out the last 72 hours of their Uni time, they all tend to age transition about the same time.  Things got a little wonky for me.  I had this happen to me once though, so I don't know if it's reproducable... but when the taxi came, only one sim got in.  And then the other sim got left behind.  I waited for another taxi to come, and it never did.  2 sim 'days' passed (that is 4 semesters worth of Uni 'time') and still no taxi.  I was like wtf? ??? In the end, it wasn't a huge problem, since I think I was able to move him back home by phone.  But still, he woulda persisted 'living' there like forever as an adult.

So... I think the desynchronization tends to help out in this way.  The other minor annoyance with synchronized YAs, if you have 8 (or more... heh, with hacks of course) they all tend to pile up by the mailbox.  Again, not a huge problem, but with autonomy on, the pile up can be hectic and annoying when they start doin stuff you don't want them to. :P




Someone correct me if I've misunderstood, but... I think the OP was saying that, they sent their sims to a vacation hotel lot.  Then... from the vacation hotel, they sent their sims to a comm lot, that I assume is in the same vacation neighborhood.

Also... you mention that you sent your sims home at 9.  But the problem occurred when the OP kept their sims past midnight/noon.  They were charged an additional fee and lost an additional vacation day, even though, when they returned to the hotel lot, the time warped back to when they had first left.




I think that comm lot/home time is still not synchronized in Seasons.  I'm pretty sure you needed Crammyboy's hack to keep comm lot and residential lots synchronized.  That's why I mentioned that it would be great if Crammyboy could incorporate a similar fix for these vaction/hotel lot and vacation/comm lot issues.


Ste

As Ste said, no, time between home lots and comm lots has never been synchronized in the game (without a hack, anyway).  You could have a business owner go and run 5 businesses for 12 hours each, and he/she would still be home in time for lunch. :)

From earlier discussions here (in the various BV threads), it sounds like time IS synchronized on vacation lots, at least as far as the hotel and comm lots are concerned.  One or more incompatible hacks seem to be causing problems where the synchronization gets borked.

My poing being exactly, that I do not warp back to the time i left, i come back at the time it was when i went home from the com lot, (home being a hotel or a vacation home). This means that even if i stayed past midnight, it would be past midnight when i return to the hotel, and thus i dont get whacked with a double bill.

Does vacation time sync with the real home lot time?  IOW, if the family goes on a vacation at 8am Saturday, and stays 3 days, is it still Saturday when they return, or have 3 days passed at their home lot and it's now Monday?

The preview/adverts for BV indicated that sims do not age while on holiday, so I suspect that it may function like going to a comm lot with regular non-synched time.  I would expect sims would return and it would still be Saturday, in that case, since we are now talking about moving sims from the vacation scenario back to main game scenario (where time is non-synched).

Yea, I guess you're right, since they don't allow sims to give birth while on vacation.  So it treats the whole vacation trip like one long visit to a comm lot. Makes sense in a EAxian sorta way, I guess.

Otherwise the Lot Sync Timer would either get a major workout, or be rendered completely useless. :)

(I'll probably pick up a copy of BV this weekend...)

I was just thinking that it would be more of a time coding issue than EA is normally willing (able?) to handle, to synch the time throughout at this stage.  Anyhow, I generally don't mind the time synch issue in the main game - I can get 2 days out of one for interactions, if necessary by sending sims to the comm lots, and then running a normal day at home.  I'm happy if time is synched in the vacation scenarios, because who wants a full extra day to play just inside the hotel (unless the hotel is damned interesting).

I am going to try to buy after work today - I have an order pending on Amazon, but I hate the idea of waiting until mid- to late-October for delivery.  If I find one tonight, I can still cancel with Amazon.  Then I can join the "fun" by the weekend (since my wife is ultra-busy right now anyway until Sunday afternoon).

Ok... I are confused.  I think the OP said that, when they stayed past midnight, while still at that comm lot, they get charged (a fee if past noon, a vacation day if past midnight).  Upon returning... they time warp back to the time they left i.e. they had left the home/vactaion/hotel lot at 9pm, went to a comm lot in the same vacation destination 'hood, stayed at that lot past midnight/noon, and returned to the home/vacation/hotel lot where it was still 9pm.  When staying at that hotel lot past midnight they get another vacation day deducted, and when they stay past check out time, they get 'double billed' as you put it.

I confused with this sentence:


When you say, you come back at the time it was, when you went home from the comm lot, you mean to say that it is now the later time?  i.e. you leave the comm lot and it is 9pm.  you stay on the comm lot Past midnight, Past noon, which results in losing a vacation day and being charged an extra night's stay in the hotel.  You leave the comm lot and it is 2pm.  When you get back to the hotel, it is 2 pm (or... a little after 2pm that is)?!?!?!?

At this point, you aren't charged anything extra and you don't lose any other vacation days?

So... that means some hack must be borking this?


Ste

Yes, that's what they mean. In my game, if I leave my hotel/vaca home lot at 9 AM and stay out at a community lot until 1 AM, when I return to my hotel/vaca home, it is now 1 AM there, as well. It works like it does for Uni. It sounds to me like the OP isn't playing without their precious hacks to me, too. Which is why I asked if we were sure it wasn't a hack, since things like that aren't usually random.

Last night I tested the time thing pretty extensively with nothing but JM's director's cut in. I tested with two separate families. Both had the same results.
If my sims left the hotel at 9 AM and were gone for five hours it would be 2 PM when they returned to the hotel. The hotel time would say 2 PM.
If one sim (or more) stays at the hotel and the other sim/s leave at 9 am and are gone for 5 hours it would be 2 PM when they returned to the hotel. The only sucky thing about this is that the sim who stayed at the hotel will have the same motive state as when you left (so even if five hours have passed and they were asleep when you left their energy bar wouldn't have filled). The easy work around for this is playing in debug mode and dragging up the motive/s that you wish to impact. So if your sim was asleep when you left and five hours have passed you can drag the energy bar up so that they get "credit" for time spent asleep. I don't think that sounds cheaty since they did just lose five hours of time, but everyone is welcome to make their own decision of course.
The times are just examples, the time thing continued to work this way no matter what time they left the hotel and no matter how many hours they were gone for. This sounds like a hack conflict to me.

First I should say i'm running Bon Voyage with no custom content.

There seems to be a bit of confusion about what the problem is.   This is how it's working on my game.

I have a family checked in to a hotel. It's 9 am in the morning. I send the family to a community lot, when they arrive at the community lot they stay for the day. 

When it's 6 pm at the community lot, I send them back to the hotel. 

When they arrive back at the hotel, as soon as they appear on the lot, I get a message saying "Checkout time passed while you were away from the hotel, 800$ has been added to your bill".  This is correct and working properly.  I've gone past the 12 noon checkout and i'm being charged for another day stay.

The problem is. the time at the hotel is still 9 am, the same time as when they left.  I keep the family on the hotel lot.  At 11 am I get a message saying its time to checkout, if I stay past noon, 1 day stay will be added to my bill. At 12 noon I get a message saying "Thanks for staying. Another 800$ has been added to your bill". I've been charged a second time for the same day's stay.

The way it's supposed to be, and the way it seems to be working for everyone except me LOL is this.

When I leave the community lot at 6 pm,  when I get back to the hotel, I get the message saying "Checkout time passed while you were away from the hotel, 800$ has been added to your bill" like i'm supposed to, but the hotel time should be 6 pm, the same time when I left the community lot.  This way the 12 noon checkout is not passing by again and i'm not being double billed for the day.

I've already tried uninstalling Bon Voyage, H&M Stuff, Celebration, and Seasons. I then reinstalled Seasons, then Bon Voyage. And i'm still getting the problem of the lot time not synching.  So i'm going to uninstall the whole thing and reinstall everything from the beginning again and hopefully things will work then.   I've never had problems with sims or sims 2 in the past, this is the first time i've ever had serious gameplay issues. So i'm very frustrated at the moment.   I do appreciate and thank everyone for all the input you've given so far. :)

You said that the game started synching lots for you automagically with one of the EP's. That wasn't supposed to happen. Are you sure you don't accidentally have something in your downloads folder?

Have you actually checked the bill? I had this in my game, but when I checked out I only paid for 2 days, even though I had 3 pop ups.

That is actually the one thing that is really bugging me.

I could swear after installing seasons when it came out, going to a community lot with a sim, and when that sim went back home, the time on the home lot was sychronized with the comm lot. I remember being surprised by it.   But as I was writing this reply, something occured to me.  Sims Pet Stories does synchronize comm/home lot times.  And i'm wondering now if thats what I am remembering.

Downloads is empty,  when I install a new expansion pack, I always move my current sims 2 folder, and let the game generate a new/clean sims 2 folder.

Is there anything in the directors cut (or any hack) that would synch time on lots with no player input and thats why its not working now, because I don't have the hacks in?


I've checked the bill and I am being charged extra. But I think I will go back and double check, just to make sure.

I feel like a complete idiot, so feel free to poke me with any large sticks you may have handy.

When your at a community lot and want to go back to your hotel, you "Call Taxi" or "Walk to...", you then get two options.  Community Lot or Home.  When I saw Home, I mistakenly assumed it meant ending your vacation and going back to your house in the main hood.  So from the start i've been selecting Community Lot.  It lists all the community lots in the hood, including your hotel with a bed symbol beside it.  That's why lot times between the hotel and comm lots weren't being synchronized.  I finally tried clicking on Home instead and when I got back to the hotel, the lot times were synchronized.

I think this could still be considered an issue though.  If you go back to your hotel by the Community lot option instead of the Home option, lot time isn't synchronized properly and you can get hit with the double payments etc, and there is no warning at all about this.

Wow.  Thanks for the clarification.  That is somewhat of a relief.  But you shouldn't be poked at all, because I probably would have thought the same thing.  Home means... home. :P

Stupid Maxis EA. ::)

And yeah, I would say that still is a problem. I mean, how fucking majorly retarded.  Why would you ever want to visit your own hotel again as a community lot in the first place anyways?  That just seems like plain stupidity.  What would be the point of that? ???


Ste

It must be something that got left in because when you have a vacation home, you can visit hotels as community lots. And they didn't discover it in testing because of course they KNEW which option to pick.  ::)

Stupid Eaxis.

Prima guide, btw, makes a point of stating that 'Home' means, well, home, when you are staying at a hotel in a non-vacation neighborhood -- you can set up a community lot with a hotel in your own hood, and stay there, and then go somewhere else, and then go back to the hotel by choosing it specifically, but when you're going around your main hood, or downtown, or something, the hotel does not become your "home base" like it does on vacation. Whereas on vacation you have to use a much more deliberate command to end your vacation earlier than the number of days you booked.

Can someone explain what goes through the minds of EA developers when they do stuff like this...

After reading akatonbo's post about what the prima guide said, I decided to put a hotel in the main hood.  I thought the prima guide info might explain why the travel options were the way they were.  Well guess what, hotels in the main hood or non-BV sub hoods are pretty much useless.  They don't show up as destinations when booking a vacation (no big deal). You visit the hotel like you would any other comm lot.  When you get there you can reserve a room and then check in.  But you can't leave the lot.  The new "Walk to..." is disabled.  If you "Call Taxi" on the phone you are told "If you leave you will be checked out of the hotel and will have to pay your bill".  Once you check in to a hotel in the main hood, you can't stay there and visit other comm lots. You are stuck at the hotel until you check out.


Edit:  Considering my recent experience with Bon Voyage, it's possible i'm missing something completly obvious about how hotels should work in the main hood. So please correct me if i'm wrong. LOL

Hotels never were really supposed to work in the main hood. You CAN have them there, but they aren't supposed to be there.

The only real good it does is it gives you a community lot where your Sims can sleep. So if you're out to meet people or on a date or something, you don't have to cheat to bring the needs back up. *shrug* Walking does make it better, but I hate popping from lot to lot. For my community lots I always try to cram everything I might need onto the same lot. So the next time I build one, it will also have a hotel.  :D

Having a hotel in the main hood could be somewhere for your attached romance sims to take their latest conquest.  They could book in as Mr & Mrs Smith for a few hours for a little extra-marital fun.

The pre-built BV Inn that came with Bon Voyage has a 1 simoleon rating. It's 1000$ a day to stay.  Sounds like a very expensive date/fling to me LOL

It depends on what's in the room. Plus, the Maxoids rated it, not the game. My $$$$$$ hotel has $800 rooms. It also has $2300 rooms.  :D Still an expensive fling, but it will lend some realism to the game.

I never use Maxis-built lots anyway.  I suck at building lots, and even I can build better than Maxis can.  I'm sure I'll be able to find a custom-made lot (or build one myself) that's ideal for discreet romantic liaisons.

This has led me to two thoughts...

1. When I get BV I MUST make the seediest "pay by the hour" looking hotel possible for the main 'hood.
2. Someone should make a main 'hood hotel the old fashioned OFB way - beds in rooms and a ticket machine - and see if the customers sleep. If they do, voila! Sim-owned hotels!

/has light bulb moment/ Ohhhhh! I understand now!

Thank you everyone that has participated in this thread, it has been extremely helpful to me! Now I get why my lot time wasn't syncing up with that Sim I was playing last night.  Also nice to know how hotels work in the main hoods.

You guys are all Awesome!  8)

Cass :)

Someone on another forum has just discovered a drawback to this time synchronisation.  They took the adults out to do some sightseeing, leaving the child eating his breakfast back at the hotel.    When they got back, it was late at night, the child was still eating his breakfast.  But it had spoiled by then, and the child got foodpoisoning.

Prior to discovering cheats, my kids would go to bed before 7pm, wake up at 3 in the morning, and head off to school with a half full energy bar :o

So, don't leave people eating in a hotel when other sims go off for the day.  Additionally, this might seem to indicate that, while you can't leave kids in a house by themselves in the main hood, you can leave them by themselves in a hotel room without hiring a nanny.  Is this the case?

Probably because there are still adults on the lot, even if they're hotel workers.  Either that, or every hotel has a secret day-care center. :)

Dunno, best ask Madelaine's Parents ^^

Sorry, what?  I'm an old wreck of time and I am not able to process or comprehend your comment.

jsalemi: I like the idea of a secret day-care service.  Although in RL, keeping such a service secret would render it completely useless.  Very EAxian.

You mean Eloise. Madeline had her appendix out; Eloise lived in a hotel.

There's been a media frenzy over here purely because of Madeline McCann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_McCann). Or rather, her parents not realizing that it is a bad idea to leave your children (with a collective age of 7) in a hotel room unattended with the door unlocked. For some reason, the media has given massive amounts of sympathy to the parents, instead of condemning them, while the parents have been flying around the world in a donated private jet in an attempt to raise awareness (and get more money out of her disappearance). We'll never hear the end of it, regardless of if she was snatched, wandered off and got in an accident somehow, or if the parents killed her. Hell, some papers over here haven't stopped talking about Princess Diana yet, and that was 10 years ago.

OK, with you now.  I did see this story a couple of weeks ago over here in the Outer Limits of Canada, but the only Madeline that popped into my mind was the one from the "12 little girls in two straight lines" stories.  Was not aware of the 'leaving kids in room alone with door unlocked' part of the story.  That part was conveniently omitted by the Canadian papers (and any webnews I saw, come to think of it).

Fortunately, the 'secret day-care service' in BV hotels will deal with this in game, although it does not, apparently, stop children getting food poisoning while parents are away for the day (mind you, food poisoning is a feature of many tropical holidays for many people, so perhaps that's just realistic - do we also have hepatitis and other diseases available from drinking the water?).

That's odd. I have Sims leave their vacation lot for 2 days (the check into the hotel, leaving the pregnant Sim sleeping) and when they got back, I specifically noted that the food that had been left on the counter wasn't spoiled. When I woke up the remaining Sim, I had her put away the leftovers.

And the later is looking quite possible, based on the news today that the mother (and possibly father) is now a suspect.


(And now back to your regularly scheduled thread... :) )

Honestly, it's about time we get some more diseases. Including the "Get AIDS" Fear for Romance Sims.

Those parents should be shot. What kind of moron thinks it's safe to leave three children under the age of four in an unlocked hotel room? The level of stupidity is mind-boggling.

I agree that leaving kids in a room unattended in a hotel or holiday house, however close by you happen to be, is pretty damn stupid.  News reports I have seen indicate that the car with the bloodstains was rented 25 days after the disappearance, but this was in the context of the family making implications that the Portuguese police were likely incompetent and had botched the investigation.  Likely this will also help the story continue, on and on and on...

As for diseases in the game, I was more or less joking about the hepatitis from water thing, although one or two new amusing diseases might be interesting.  Frankly, I could never see the point of the "get a drink" option for sinks - does it accomplish anything?  I have never noticed any benefit, which would make a disease from drinking water rather pointless as well.  Possibly a random possibility of getting a disease from getting a drink at a bar while on holiday might be more realistic.  I don't care for the idea of AIDS, cancer, or disabilities in the game - reduces the amusing escapist aspect and makes it too much like RL.  Sort of like the period hacks available out in the non-awesome sphere somewhere - pointless and adds unnecessary annoyance factors.

"Get a drink" has a benefit for Plantsims -- it fills their need for water.  So it took 5 EPs, but it finally has a function. :)

Also
It also cools down Sims that are too warm. Quite useful.

Good to know that "Go Home" is the solution to the sync problem, I was doing the exact same thing.  I thought Go Home meant bail on the vacation.

Since we're thouroughly off topic: What happens if you put a hotel in a subhood like downtown.  You said you can't walk around if it's in the main hood, but can you walk around if you put the hotel downtown or in blue-whatever?  A "vacation" downtown would be kind of interesting if you still walk around to clubs and whatnot.

I assume this means it is possible to build hotels in the main neighborhood, by designating a new lot as a hotel? Or is it only possible by moving a hotel from the vacation hood to the main one?

There's a cheat to turn them into hotel lots. The only way to do it, since even in the vacation hood, you can't make hotels without the cheat for some stupid reason.

In fact, the teensy little BV pamphlet that comes with the CD version of the game says that to make a hotel you have to use the changelotzoning cheat.

They left the door unlocked?! :o I had some sympathy before since as a child I was always left alone in hotel rooms whilst my parents were downstairs eating dinner (as were most of the other children in the hotels we stayed at - the world was considered a safer place back then). My brother and I never came to any harm and it was only for a couple of hours or so. I did think it was rather stupid that they had left their children in an hotel and actually left the building to eat somewhere else but I didn't really think much else about it. Leaving the door unlocked though? That's just stupid. That's just so stupid I can't even think of a better word to describe it. Why would you ever think that was a good idea?

Back on the subject of Sims hotels, I read that part about the changelotzoning cheat in the booklet thing as well. So does this mean that like dorms in University they don't really intend that players should build them? Otherwise surely they would have added an option to the interface so you could choose when you placed a lot down? Perhaps that was too much effort though.

They didn't make it as an option? That's really lame.

As for children being left alone in an unlocked hotel room--the only thing I can think of is that you wouldn't want them trapped in there if there were a fire.  ???

That's been bothering me since I first heard about the case. I, too, was an occasional "stay in the room" kid at hotels when I lived with my grandparents. Again, different time as well as a far different class of ho/motels than this one apparently was. Each time, I was left with the remote, permission to use the hotel phone in an emergency, and lots of age-appropriate games, books, etc. Generally, they were downstairs having a meal together but on occasion they'd leave the hotel grounds to go pick up some forgotten supplies, have dinner with friends, etc. Of course, they were Jehovah's Witnesses and the hotels were usually at least 75% booked with fellow JW's when we stayed in them (for assemblies, etc held elsewhere in the state).

If they're too young to unlock a door in the event of a fire then they're too young to be left alone in a hotel room, IMO. Honestly, I wouldn't leave a 4 year old alone in my own house.
Although at this point in the case it seems pretty clear that the parents probably killed her. On Friday they found the missing girl's blood inside of a rental car that the parents didn't even have until 25 days after the kid "disappeared". I think that the parents probably killed her, hid the body somewhere, and then went out to dinner to create a believable story. After some of the media attention/police attention died down they rented the car and went to bury the body somewhere. At least that's what makes sense to me.

This has led me to two thoughts...

1. When I get BV I MUST make the seediest "pay by the hour" looking hotel possible for the main 'hood.
2. Someone should make a main 'hood hotel the old fashioned OFB way - beds in rooms and a ticket machine - and see if the customers sleep. If they do, voila! Sim-owned hotels!
[/quote]

Hahaha..  I did that with a bunch of Lizz Loves Autonomus Waterbed thingies whatever their called... worked like a charm and they raked in the cash!  Just make sure you have the no playable shoppers hack (snapdragons help too)

It was probably necessary, if the parents killed her. Clearly, the kid was defective in some way and needed to be eliminated.

Personally, if I were going to make a song and dance about a missing kid, I'd make damn sure it was untraceable - ie disposed of body - before I solicited worldwide media attention.

In this case, the children were all too young to even know about getting out if there was a fire.   At that age they should have been in earshot all the time - it only takes moments for a toddler or baby to choke on vomit or something.

From about 7 upwards things can be done to make short unattended periods safer.  They can be left with a mobile phone with a button programmed to phone you direct.  They can be told how to call out to passers-by or neighbours for help, they can be told what is not safe to touch in the apartment, that they should not open the door to callers etc etc.   At 2 and 4 years old respectively, those children were totally dependent on the close presence of a trustworthy adult 24 hours a day.

See, attitudes like this are exactly why children grow dumber and dumber with each generation. At that age, I knew how to load, aim, and fire the stationary machine gun. I knew not to touch the barrel because it was hot, and to get someone to unjam it if it got jammed, not to stick my fingers in it. And you're trying to say that a kid can't even figure out how to avoid a FIRE?

In this case, it sounds like the children would have been better off if they had been left totally alone. Rather than murdered by their parents >:(.

At the age of 4 I knew that it was a bad idea to touch anything burning/open the door to strangers/stick my fingers in plug sockets etc. I was left on my own (then with my younger brother when he was born) asleep in hotel rooms all the time. My parents would put us to bed, set up the phone baby monitor thing that linked to reception so they would be informed if we were crying and go downstairs to dinner. Most of the time we slept through their entire absence. At the age of about 3/4 however I wandered down to reception by myself because my brother was having a nightmare. I was old enough to open the door and remember the way downstairs but apparently not old enough to realise the importance of clothes when appearing in public. Luckily I was young enough that everyone thought it was sweet.

Also about the blood in the car thing. Apparently it's not actually certain it is blood, in fact it's most likely not - the police over there are apparently once again making assumptions. Scientists over here who have checked it out say that the match with Maddie's DNA is barely 50% and that the trace amount could just as easily have come from the cuddly toy Maddie's mum has been carrying around with her since the day it happened. Not really the conclusive proof some media sources reported.

Since this is totally off-topic so far I'll just mention that I'm definitely trying that seedy hotel in the main hood thing. I have a few romance sims that would be perfect for! I hope it works.

Well there were several differences between your circumstances and the McCanns
1. due to the use of a baby monitor, you were within earshot all the time in case of choking or screaming
2. the distance they would need to cover to get to you in an emergency was a few seconds away, not a few minutes
3. the journey for you to find your parents when you did so was in a relatively safe building, not across a couple of roads and past an uncovered swimming pool.

I do agree with you about the fact that the McCanns were a rather stupid in what they did. Leaving the building completely to eat dinner, leaving the door unlocked, being so far away across so much dangerous ground (the road and pool like you say - and if they really were going back to check the kids every half hour they couldn't have been having a very relaxing dinner, surely?) was a bit much with such young children. I was just meaning that there are ways to leave a four and a two year old alone without it being a problem, they don't really need someone physically there 24/7. Also my parent stopped using the monitoring thing once I reached the age of about 6 (my brother would have been 3 and a half). I was however a rather sensible child. At the age of 8 I heard the boy in the room next door crying so I propped our door open with a pillow, knocked on his door (he didn't want to open it at first, but I was quite persuasive and he was upset) and took him down to reception so they could get his parents. I have however taught 7 year olds who I wouldn't leave alone for longer than a minute even with a baby monitor so I guess it really depends on the child. (I'm thinking here of a child who upon hearing the school fire alarm decided to go and look for the fire ::))

Frankly, most of the time there is a murder like that, I assume that it probably is the parents/spouse/significant other/immediate family member, because usually that is what it is; sad, but true. I grew up without bike helmets or baby monitors or even the widespread use of seat belts, and with a lot of playground equipment you could never get away with now.  Has anyone ever noticed that the whole premise of *The Cat in the Hat* is that the mother leaves "Sally and me" to sit for an indeterminate amount of time until she gets back?  Because what kind of mother goes out and leaves her school age children alone for a little while?  An Eisenhower era mother who knows that the kiddies don't dare move from their chairs in the window until she gets back, that's who.  Without parents who leave their kids alone or abandon them in the forest or just plain die, or become separated in some other way, there virtually is no children's literature.

As for the seedy hotels in the neighborhood, I have one already and as a Mac owner, of course I do not have BV.  I have a creepy Roman Romance Sim and he owns a dive called the Herculaneum Hotel.  It's got a ticket machine, a photobooth downstairs (along with a DJ booth, poker tables and a bar), and upstairs it's all beds and hot tubs.

They aren't the LizLove beds, though, and without ACR regular beds aren't all that attractive to sims.  It's there partly to be funny and partly so my other Romance Sims have a place to go. It isn't a lot better for illicit WooHoo than some already-existing Maxis lots, except that the upstairs is relatively uninteresting and so other lovers are unlikely to wander up there.  Considering the high cost and the complicated zoning and charging issues with hotels, I think I would probably still make it an ordinary community lot, unless somebody comes up with a mod that enables Sims to be charged by the hour, which in essence ticket machines already do.

PB

PB, your hotel has brought me to tears more than once (mostly due to your Roman Romancer) and I can't believe I never asked how you'd set it up. LOL
Arighty, that's it. I'm making one NAO and I have ACR so this should get interesting..