More Awesome Than You!

That there is no hack on this site to allow player to enter owned community business lot to make decorative changes without the owner being hauled out of bed to attend to the edit?

Had to smile at that. I have given up with businesses. When I found that the owner had to be present for crafted goods to be restocked, I decided it just made a nonsense out of the whole concept. It's a pity there's no hack for that, either.

No hack is believed to be necessary to do this, at least as of present engine version. Just enter into cheat console from neighborhood view: loadlot "<LOTNAME>"

Pretty sure a hack was made for that by someone else, but the craftables business exploit is huge enough without restocking, since if you buy the store, and leave, all the items reload anyway. And if the owner isn't present, there's not much NEED to restock for this reason.

I don't think I know half the available cheats!  I will try that thank you.

JM, your explanation is all very well, but a business should actually earn money. Mr. and Mrs. Sim cannot jointly own a craftables business and it is stupid that, the deed holder, say Mr Sim, has to be there so shelves can be restocked. It just sucks that, even if the products are being crafted by minions on the premises during his absence, when the shop is managed by Mrs. Sim, the shelves will just get emptier and emptier.

The business owner normally appears on the business lot anyway, though. What happened to yours?

I think Mirelly means when another family member of the owner goes instead of the nominated owner.  They have some of the options of running the business but not all of them.

Yes, I'd agree it's a bit stupid about the craftables, but furniture and other buyables work fine.  I think it must be an inventory issue - if the owner isn't on the lot, then neither is his/her inventory!

Then why not spawn the owner as an invisible object, the way the game does when you have a phone call?

Inge, why not teleport him to the lot and make him selectable in debug mode?  Or, maybe, you won't even need to do that, if he brings his inventory with him!

It's not necessary to teleport the owner if it's during regular calling hours.  If one of the family members goes to the lot first, and simply invites other family members by phone, they all become selectable by default.  The annoying thing though, is that there is no way for them to leave individually.  If one leaves, the whole shop closes and they all go home together.

Once back home though, only the first sim who left gets out of the car/cab.  The other family members are still found to be in bed, gardening, tending the children, or what have you.  Their needs are just as you left them, too.  It's as if they never left home, except that they have relevant memories from their day at the shop, and their asps have decayed or refreshed, as per events at the business.

I haven't tried to to whisk the invitees off lot with the teleporter shrub, but that would be a tidy solution, if you only need them for a short time.

When I had a phase of playing OFB before Pets and Seasons distracted me, I used the teleporter a lot, and it's a lot quicker than using the phone.  And if teleporting them in brings their inventory with them, then you wouldn't need to make them selectable for restocking the crafted stuff, but if it doesn't work, then making them selectable should, I think, do it.

I don't know whether moving everything to the inventory of the family member you want to send to the business might work, but I rather think it wouldn't.

Squinge made the hack that allows craftable items to be restocked without the owner present. Try sims2graveyard. If it's not there, I can provide it.

You could have the business owner gift all crafted items in his inventory to the Sim who will be at the business and temporarily transfer lot ownership.

Well, I basically suggested the first idea, but the second one could cause problems if the original owner has the LTW 5 top businesses, and the Business concerned reaches the top while ownership is temporarily transferred, as the original owner would not get the memory.

True, but that could be avoided if you watched closely for it to hit level 9 and then transfered ownership back before it hit level 10.

Can you transfer ownership while on a business lot to a sim not on that lot?  I just wondered, as it's something I never tried.

Sorry I have no idea. I haven't needed to use the lot ownership transfer feature very often.

I don't think I've even bothered with an owned business since Pets!

I'm more into home based businesses. Until BV I was way too impatient to wait for the lots to load. Now since I've been forced to hop lots frequently whilst my Sims are on vacation I don't mind waiting for loading so much so I really should play more community lot businesses. I've always wanted to have a Sim run a small family diner.

I can't understand why it wasn't included in the home business options - after all, people in RL  often do "live over the shop" - pubs are a possible home business, but these days most pubs sell food.

Well I guess they like to leave certain things in game to be done in certain ways (which is lame and restrictive in my opinion) like how you can only get a puppy or kitten through breeding or over the phone when in reality you can get them from pet shops and we should be able to do so in game as well.

That is part of what I've always wanted to do, have a Sim live on a small lot over top of a diner they run. There are probably ways I can cheat or use mods to do it I just haven't bothered looking around to see if anyone in the community has made it possible to run a restaurant from home.

So many things that were possible in Sims1 just haven't been included in Sims2.  Kids rush out to greet returning parents, but in Sims 1 it was the family dog - a much more realistic scenario!  How many kids do you know who rush away from whatever they're doing to hug a parent they haven't seen for all of eight hours?

I'm pretty sure you can find the mods you are looking for over, maybe at MTS2?  But why not, for the moment, make a pub instead, and get the buffet tables from Paladin (www.simwardrobe.com) which can be arranged in one room of the pub as a self-service dining room?  The customers are automatically charged for their meals, and there is even a hack over there to make visitors hungrier so they want to eat more!

That's definitely a good point. Kids act that way towards a grandparent or aunt/uncle who spoils them but not after only an eight hour absence. In general, though, I've always felt that the Pets EP seems to be missing something. Dogs don't bring slippers or fetch the newspaper, which is a big disappointment. The lack of a covered litter box is also disappointing. I doubt many cat owners use non covered litter pans still.

Thanks for the tip about the buffet tables! I haven't been to Sim Wardrobe in ages. Doing things that way would definitely be less work. It says "This unique buffet table system will allow you to serve any of the group meals in the game". I assume that means it does not include the non restaurant specific foods?

Actually, I think it does include at least some of them.  The Replicator definitely does.

Around the Sims has a nice covered litter box.  And yes, I'd agree that most people would have them from choice - unfortunately, my Maine Coon has always regarded them in the same light as a cat transporter, and will only SLEEP in them!

The easiest way to make a home restaurant is to change the lot zoning to community, put down everything you need, and change the lot zoning back to residential. Everything works fine, you just have to be able to access the stuff. Alternatively there are 'buy anything at home' hacks that work for that, but I haven't seen a BV one - not sure if they're updated yet.

Just remember to buy everything you need before you change the zoning back to residential and move the sims in. You hafta do some crazy runarounds to get it to work if you change zoning with a sim on the lot.

True, you can do it that way, but a problem if your family is already in residence and you don't want to move them.

There are pet shops, look in your bin

eve_ftw: Thank you, I know that there are pet shops in the bin. That wasn't the issue, however. I merely pointed out the fact that one should be able to purchase puppies and kittens from those shops and you can't. (You can only adopt adult and elder aged dogs from shops like in CAS).


Buchignani: Good point, I can do that for Sims who are just going to move to a new home at least. It'd be a proper restaurant that way, too.


ZephyrZodiac: I haven't downloaded the replicator, I should to check it out at least. Thanks for the tip about Around the Sims, I actually use that all the time. I even made some recolors of it awhile back. Cats are so funny, mine don't sleep in their box but the little silver one does like to play in it quite a bit digging at the litter or sides of the lid endlessly. Rather like Sim toddlers in that respect I guess, playing in the toilet...

Well, I don't think my cat is all that bright, really, and he just associated something with a roof over it as for sleeping in, never mind that he should know what cat litter is for!

It does annoy me about the puppies and kittens too, means you really have to have a couple of CAS sims each with a breeding pair, and put them each (two famiies) into the game just for the purpose of breeding puppies and kittens.  I can't understand why it wasn't made possible to create puppies and kittens in CAS........(Maxis put a pregnant bitch into the game, so why can't we?

Pets really annoys me. I wish, like you, that puppies and kittens can be bought from pet shops. I don't like the way you adopt and you don't know what breed you are getting. I'm sorry, but I hate curly-tailed dogs and manx cats. I don't mind having them as strays, but not as my sim-pets. The pet genetics really, REALLY annoy me too, why can't we have mixtures of the breeds? I am sick of my grown up puppies and kitties all looking like 'mommy' >:(

Isn't there a fix for this?  I'm sure I've seen one.

I think TJ had a fix for pet genetics for a while, but I seem to recall that he said it was obsoleted by a later patch.  You could check his forums and see if it's still around.

Actually alot of the time my puppies/kittens grow up to look about 95% like their father and 5% like their mother. Their genetics seemed much more balanced before the "fix" EA included with one of the patches. Sometimes they do seem like a blend of the two, though. I had a few more recent litters of kittens that turned out perfect but they're third or fourth generation. Is there a way to turn an adult or elder animal back into a kitten? If there was a mod like that you could make a bunch of animals in CAS and then de-age them with the mod and then have the Sim put them up for adoption. You could even keep doing that by merging a family of pets into his or her house every time you wanted new kittens or puppies.

Edit: I forgot to say that I hate the curly tailed dogs, too. If I wind up stuck with one through adoption I don't mind too terribly much it does add some variety at least.

Unfortunately, making pets in CAS and then moving them in with a family doesn't satisfy the want.  I can't see the point in making it possible to make a pet without an owner in CAS if it doesn't, but EAxis so rarely think things through.

Yes they're quite good at overlooking the obvious at times...

I'd say they all have degrees in it! ;D