I also tried copying my Electronic Arts directory from my laptop (where the game works) to my desktop.  Still no dice.

Nope.  That didn't fix it.  I ran Advanced Uninstaller Pro, cleaned the registry, uninstalled each EP, cleaned the registry after each uninstallation, cleaned the registry a final time, reinstalled the main game and the EPs.  Didn't reinstall any mods or even downloads from the sims store.  And still my neighborhoods are vacant.

Prior to using Advanced Uninstaller Pro, I'd tried using CC Cleaner, and that also didn't work.

I installed Late Night on my desktop, and when I load it up I can load the neighborhoods, but they're devoid of any pregenerated sims.  The "choose a household" option isn't available.

To fix it, I first tried taking out all my mods.  Didn't work.  Uninstalled everything, wiped the registry, and reinstalled.  Didn't work.  Installed Awesomemod 2.0, just in case that did something magic to fix it.  It didn't fix it.

I know it's not a problem with the disc, since I installed it on my laptop and it runs more or less fine. (Just not as well, because my laptop's graphics aren't as beefy.)

So I'm open to suggestions.  Any ideas?

I don't see this problem mentioned anywhere else, so here goes: After installing LN, when I load up a fresh neighborhood, it contains no residents.  There's no option to play a pre-existing family, and they're all missing.  I removed all my mods, and the problem persists.

I was getting that with the low-end refrigerator.  Once I replaced it with a better model, the bug stopped.

Here's my bug: My sim visited China, met the old woman who sold the special items, then left China.  When he came back, I noticed he was heartbroken.  Checking his thought bubble, I see she died.  He barely knew her, so whatever.  He's there for 8 days this time, so two days of moping around is bearable, I guess.

Then I noticed his last name had changed to a Chinese last name.  And apparently the game decided that he was married to the old woman and he's the father of all her kids.

In one of my houses (in the $14,700 lot in Riverview; can't remember the address), I pretty routinely get the "ghost arrival" carnival music.  There are no ghosts.  AFAICT, no one has died in any of the surrounding houses, either.

I always get the teddy bear for the social boost, for those times when the kid's sleep schedule and the parents' are 180 degrees off.  I also had no idea you could stick it in the crib.

I had this happen with an entry-level thief in Riverview.  She was unable to go to work at all, and I've never had a law-enforcement sim in the neighborhood to muck up the opportunity.  I haven't decided whether to fix the neighborhood or just abandon it, as she's only a second-gen sim.

I second this.  Also, Pope Palpatine is SFW, which is where I usually end up reading MATY.

Yep.  There are some problematic "same" animations.  For instance, the animation for looking through the telescope is always the same, and it always looks like you're worried someone will see you peering in the neighbors' window, even if you're scanning the heavens for new stars and planets.  Sims choke a little on their food altogether too often.

But it's hardly surprising that the same interaction always looks the same when different Sims do it.  That was the case in Sims 2 as well.

I agree with this.  I want more chance for random wackiness, more supers, etc.  Then again, random wackiness never afflicted my games before, either.  My sims always either died of old age, or I moved them to another lot and stopped playing them.  Freetime was a godsend for getting alien abductions because, outside of my first Sims 2 neighborhood where one sim got abducted every couple of nights, the only way I ever got to play greenies was to play Strangetown.  


This I don't necessarily agree with.  Some things about gameplay need to be touched up, but in Sims 2, the game didn't really do anything to make Sims any more unique than Sims 3.  Childhood was spent skilling.  Teenage years skilling and maybe getting a romantic interest.  College, skilling and romance (and using a mod to jump through as quickly as possible, because it was boring).  Adulthood, fulfilling a LTW/hitting permaplat, unless you'd already managed that earlier.  

There needs to be more of everything, pretty much, and autonomous actions need to be tweaked (so that Sims don't default to reading a book, playing guitar, or running in the sprinkler whenever they've got some spare time), but I don't think Sims 3 is a gameplay disaster.  Heck, Sims 2 was as good as it was mostly because of Awesomeware.

It's definitely a problem with the warehouse in Riverview.  I had my sim try the Criminal career one more time, and she couldn't get in.  I had her join the Culinary career, and she went right to work.

I haven't had the opportunity that blocks the warehouse, though.

Tomorrow, I'll try the patch.

Nothing is truly necessary, but putting a bed on your empty lot is really useful (since I don't think any community lots come with beds--unless you edit them in).  Everything else is available elsewhere: showers and toilets in the gym (and in other sims' homes), free food in gardens (or in trash cans if you aren't picky about quality), etc.  You can read books in the library to gain skills.

One thing that's really useful, though, is a guitar.  You can use it to build up lots of friends very quickly and then visit them and stay over in their beds.

My homeless sim started with just a guitar, and I didn't sell any of the collectibles I found.  Instead, she started gardening on her own lot, eventually joined the music career, and built a tiny shack with room for a bed, tub, and toilet inside, just so I didn't have to spend time running to community lots to use the restroom.  After a while, she married Don Lothario and built a kitchen and a proper bathroom onto the shack.  (And bought a picnic table for dining.)  Now, the third generation has just been born, and the house has expanded to a two-story, three bedroom, two bath, sprawling monstrosity with a pool, a garden, and a giant meteor in the front yard.

Her traits are, IIRC, Athletic, Love the Outdoors, Kleptomaniac, Hopeless Romantic, and . . . something else.  But not "Good."

I've actually had her join the Criminal career twice, and I've had her quit it each time since she couldn't go to work.  The other thing I'm wondering is if the game somehow didn't get confused because the day she became an adult, she joined the criminal career and got knocked up.  The second day, she was unable to go to work, so I had her quit.  She became obviously pregnant about an hour later.

I chalked it up to the game not letting her go to work when she would be put on maternity leave while she was at work.  After she had the kid, she tried rejoining the career and going back to work, and can't.

Of course, now that I think about it, something similar might be happening because her kid has only been a toddler for a couple of days and she's trying to go back to work since her mother (who is a rockstar) can stay home with the kid.  The game might be enforcing maternity leave even when it's not necessary.

One of my sims cannot stay employed as a Criminal.  She can join the career, but if she tries to go to work, she'll get as far as the door to the rabbithole and then going to work will delete from her queue.

I have not yet tried to give her a different career to see if she can work at all.  (She was able to work during high school, as she took a part-time job in the graveyard.  When she took the crime career, she had to give up the mortuary job.)

The only things unique about her as opposed to any other sim I have are:

* Child of Don Lothario and my own homemade sim.
* Had job in high school and didn't quit it herself but was auto-quit from it when she got a grown-up job.

Has anyone else encountered this before?

The only mod I'm running is Awesomemod, and I have not patched.

I wish elders didn't lose all of their muscle upon aging.  I'd made Don Lothario into a swarthy Hulk, and when he aged up, he was suddenly a stick-armed little old man.  (Also, I wish the facial meshes for oldies were less puffy.  Don L is barely recognizable now.)

A new interaction allows you to forcibly put watermelons in other Sim's heads, turning them into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon_heads">Melon-heads</a>?

Actually, an entire expansion just doing stuff with MATY memes would be kinda neat, too.

Yeah, those things would be great, too. 

I mean the haunting, the water ghosts leaving puddles, and so forth.  (I know there's a mod to allow for haunting random objects.)  


I chose it because a) forum title and b) I think it'd be kind of neat if they did expansion based on genres: horror, romance, sci-fi . . . I'm kinda morbidly curious how they'd do comedy.

Lots of stuff is acceptable for teens.  I figure if it could be in a PG-13 movie, it can be in a T video game.

But I don't anticipate them ever doing this.  It's just something I'd like.

If I could tell EA to get to work on an expansion tailored to me, here's what I'd make:

Sims 3: The Horror

This would add vampires and werewolves back into the game, and give playable ghost sims the ability to do all the annoying stuff that ghosts did in Sims 2 (I don't know if they still do annoying stuff in Sims 3 when they're not playable, as the ghosts on my lots just seem to watch TV or sleep), as well as fixing ghosts so that they don't age independently (but can still be forced to age with the birthday cake).  Death by flies would also come back.  In addition, it'd add in a few new things:

* Zombies!  Not boring Sims 2 Zombies, which were just ugly, slow, immortal sims with bad personalities.  More like Frankenstein's monster, down to how they're created.  Sims have to go dig up bodies (new interaction) at the graveyard to get enough pieces to put together a body (pieces can also be sold or used to fertilize plants), then use a laboratory (buyable by anyone) to bring back the dead.  Reanimated Sims would have green skin, get a boost to energy from being electrocuted, and if they saw a fire would go berserk and start breaking items in the vicinity.  They don't age.

* The Murder Room!  I've never had Sims die from random events, and in Sims 3 it can be hard to intentionally kill them off.  In Sims 2, EAxis gave us the Cow-Plant, which was a great way to kill off unwanted Sims and turn them into immortality.  We don't have anything like that in Sims 3, so here's the answer.  You build a room and put a special "Murder Door" on it.  Sims that are directed inside are (probably) killed in a random way with an amusing animation.  There's a chance they'll escape, though, and become your enemy (based on the higher of Logic or Athletics).  Burglars are strangely drawn to it.

* The Cabin In The Woods!  It's a community lot of a cabin the woods, or maybe an abandoned summer camp.  Point being, it's kind of spooky, but there are beds on site and romantic interactions get a big boost here.  However, there's also a very small chance that an NPC Slasher (I picture him having a hockey mask, but there might be legal issues; making him a clown would be pretty easy) shows up and attacks a random Sim engaged in a romantic action.  The fight is decided as normal, except that a Sim who has never woo-hoo'd will never lose (this would necessitate adding one tiny piece of info to each Sim, recording whether they've ever woo-hoo'd).  Losing the fight, however, means death for a Sim, although the Slasher can be defeated but not killed.  (Dead sims can be brought back as normal).  Social actions can't be performed on the Slasher.

Gah!  No eyes or anything? 

Something I noticed last night, and maybe it's just that something else happened behind the scenes that I didn't notice: When one of my sims went into the special agent career track (joining the vice squad), his relationship with his boss went a little into the red.

Is this something that normally happens (to simulate that the captain has had it up to here with his screwball antics) or did my sim somehow make his boss upset when I wasn't looking? 

Huh.  In my game, I had a sim befriend a child ghost, move her onto the lot, bring her back as a playable, and then marry her off to his son.  They now have a ghost baby.

I'd ask how you're not able to do this stuff, but if you knew that, the question might be unnecessary.

What is the underworld gate?  The crypt in the cemetery?