I'd like to be able to tell my sims "clean all," "put away all books," "fertilize all plants" without having to queue up each book or dirty object. Fertilizing is the worst, as you have to tell it to fertilize each plant, and select what fruit/fish/whatever you want to use. I'm definitely missing being able to click "fertilize all with best fertilizer."

I'm both annoyed at and confused about the purpose of child skills. I had my sim child earn a 4 in all 4 skills (and he got to level 5 in one of them, possibly social), yet when he aged up to a teen, he had zero skills. When I sat him down at the chess table, he earned logic level one. I thought his mental skill of 4 would carry over, but I guess not. What's the use of having your child sims skill, then? Are their skills solely for grades? That seems like a waste.

I also feel like the loner trait is bugged. My loner sim's social dropped like a stone. I was constantly having to have her run outside and talk with people to keep her social out of the red. The whole reason I made her a loner was so I could have her focus on gardening, not to spend the majority of her day stalking her neighbors and requesting pen-pals.

I've hit an annoying bug trying to trigger the Dystopian future. I'm supposed to go around convincing six sims that the sky is falling, but no matter what I do, the option never appears. Googling shows that other people are experiencing this too. It's a shame, because otherwise I've mostly enjoying this expansion. The future is neat, I like the changing future of your descendents, and I really like having a robot nanny slave to raise the baby while my sims build more robots.

Anyone else experienced this? Is there a way to bypass opportunities/quests?

I sent three unrelated, fresh-from-CAS sims (two females and one male), and was able to move them into a dorm with no problem.

Donated what I could.

Aah, too late. I wish I'd thought of that before I spent all afternoon reinstalling the game. Oh well, the error is gone now and I'll remember to try that if it happens again. Thanks!

I just tried to open CAS in a clean, non-Strangetown test neighborhood and it crashed. I haven't been able to open Body Shop on my computer in ages, so I don't know about that one. The game also crashed when I removed all CC except the clothingtool, it just crashed faster.

I'm assuming something is corrupt or borked in the game files, then. I guess it's time to unearth my game disks and do a reinstall.

I decided to play Sims 2 after probably a year of not touching it. After booting the game, I was going around the neighborhood using the clothing tool to make over the playables. It worked fine for the Grunts and the Beakers. I then shut down my game and restarted it in windowed mode. When I tried to use the clothing tool on Jenny Smith, the game crashed. It crashed again on Jenny in fullscreen. I also tried a different person in Strangetown, crash. So I created a clean test neighborhood, plunked down an unplayed family from the bin, used the clothing tool, and it crashed.

Every log it generates is identical, saying the error is in "C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll" which makes me think it's not bad CC (which wouldn't make sense anyway, since the tool worked fine for Circe). Is there anything I can do to fix this? I have no idea why this is happening when it wasn't happening before. I attached one of the logs of the game crashing using the clothing tool.

I don't know if it's needed, but my system is:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Processor (3 CPUs) ~3.4GHz
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460

Donated $25. I hope that makes a little dent in the amount needed, at least.

A new town (I'm using Jfadeland). I wanted to start fresh to test things out.

I recently had a PC semi-custom built after an attempt to upgrade my power supply unit and graphics card went sour (stupid HP case and motherboard were too small). I now have a case designed for gaming with four fans, a new motherboard, a 600W power supply unit, a GeForce GTX 460 and 8 gigs of RAM. My Processor is an AMD Athlon(TM) II X4 620 (3 CPUs) ~2.6 GHz (I kept the processor from my old PC).

Theoretically, the game should be running great, right? However, after reinstalling it and copying over my downloads/the Awesomemod framework/etc., I'm finding the game basically unplayable. It freezes constantly, just for a few seconds, but it's annoying and happens most often when I try to zoom in or out, move the camera, switch between characters or choose an action. When I opened taskmaster, I noticed the CPU is jumping between very low and 100% usage. It only does this when Sims 3 is running- it hasn't happened when I play other computer games like Dragon Age 2, surf the internet or watch videos.

 Is there something I'm doing wrong? What can I do to make my game run more smoothly- or at least be playable without constant freezing?

Dpes anyone know if there are any bunk beds available? I don't care if the animations are kind of screwy, I'm just sick of having to move to some huge sprawling house because I can't squeeze another twin bed in.

I forgot about bodysnatch! I'll have to give that a try.

It ended up being some incredibly old "nude" tops and bottoms for women (as in, from when the game first came out old) I had completely forgotten I had installed. They hadn't given me any problems in WA, but Ambitions must have changed something. I rarely used them anyway, so I just yanked and trashed them.

Edit: Bodysnatching worked like a charm, thank you everyone for your help.

Thanks, but I ended up finding the offending CC and removing it. Sadly, the families in my library were a loss, as even when the CC was removed, they were placed into a clean game, and changed into default clothing, they were still "infected", but that's a small price to pay to get bodies back.

I'm trying to set a Martial Arts outfit for my sim, and followed the instructions I found by searching (make a new outfit in athletics, then type in outfitmv athletic.2 martialarts.1), except it's not working. A message pops up saying "MartialArts is not an acceptable category for age." The sim in question is a Young Adult. Has the command changed, or am I just doing it wrong?

Argh, this is just so frustrating, because I'm pretty careful about what CC I install. I've never downloaded anything from the Exchange, or TSR. Well, I guess I wasn't careful enough.

Honestly, it's not that big of a deal, and I don't know if I even want to bother saving my families, getting all new CC, etc. Maybe I'll just live with it.

I don't have anything installed the old way- I got a new computer before Ambitions, and just did a fresh install of everything when Ambitions came out, as I hadn't played in some time. I downloaded and installed everything new for this install, so I shouldn't have any old packages or sim3packs stored away, but I'll try yanking everything anyway.

Yanked, let it generate a new Sims 3 folder: new test neighborhood, body appeared normal while showering. Added my save files, tested again in the clean, new neighborhood: worked fine. Loaded up my original test neighborhood where the EA-default ladies were showering in shirts: Erin Kennedy is still showering in a shirt.

Damn. I suppose this means all my save files are damaged, which is a bummer. I suppose I will have to reinstall, but could I even add back all my installs and package files without this happening again if I don't know what is causing it? Are my save files all losses? Could the CAS families I made that are saved to the library be spared?

Yanking those folders changed nothing, Agnes Crumplebottom and Erin Kennedy still showered/bathed in shirts. However, I discovered something interesting- CAS females show up while bathing with the missing body, while EA/Maxis sims that came with the neighborhood shower in the shirts with the visible nude bottom. I tested this by plunking a fresh copy of CAS female out of my library into the same Test neighborhood as Agnes and Erin, and the CAS sim showered with an invisible body. Of course, I have no idea what this means, but it's extra weird.

wizard_merlin: yes, as I said in my first post, I tried every combination of removing things I could think of, so I tried it repeatedly with and without the skins. The invisible body/shirt thing happened with no mods at all (other than awesomemod one time, and the mosaic the other), so I don't think it's the skins causing it.

I'm having a small problem with my game that has become a major frustration. Since since installing Ambitions, whenever adult females (possibly elders as well, but I have not played any; teen and child girls have no problem) showered or bathed, their bodies were invisible. They had a head, hands and feet but everything else was gone. I finally decided to try and fix it tonight, and have had no luck. Instead, things have gotten even weirder.
Here is an example of how my game has been. At first, I thought maybe something was wrong with my default replacement skins, so I re-downloaded and re-installed them, with no change (I deleted the caches every time). Then I removed my packages folder, except for Awesomemod, deleted caches, reloaded the game, and had the same problem (see here, still missing the body, but with EA skin and makeup).

After this, I thought maybe it was Awesomemod's censor remover that was making things screwy, so I disabled the M and F censors and downloaded the No Mosaic mod linked from the Pudding Factory, put my packages back in, deleted caches and restarted. Here is where things got really weird- my females now had bodies, they were just covered up top with a shirt. I made a new, clean Test neighborhood and made a female sim take a bath (result here). I don't even know what that shirt is. I looked through my launcher-installed stuff, and my clothing packages, but I have nothing that matches that shirt. I tried removing my default replacement skins, removing clothing packages, but nothing changed it, so finally I removed everything but the Mosaic remover mod, deleted caches, and chose another never played household to test (see here). As you can see, she's naked on the bottom, but has the same shirt (in different colors, even) on as Agnes Crumplebottom "wore" when naked.

I honestly don't know what to do at this point, other than to live with the mosaic. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Kicked some in toward the server!

I'm actually experiencing a lot of freezing... not the game itself, but my entire computer will freeze up for about 10-20 seconds often while I play the game. I figure this is because I'm playing it in windowed mode and browsing Firefox at the same time. I'm not willing to give up Firefox while I play, so does anyone have any recommendations as to what I could upgrade to stop the freezing of my system?

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs)
RAM: 2046MB RAM

Oh, and I'm running XP, I'm assuming 32 bit? It's XP Professional, I have no idea otherwise.

I had this bug as well in Riverside. My sim, who had topped the Law Enforcement career, was able one time to raid the warehouse during the "Disable the Superweapon" opportunity, but every other time the opportunity came up, he'd get to the warehouse and then cancel out of the action with a blocked path thought bubble. Annoying, to say the least.

I have to agree, I find the white background easy to look at, and the blue makes my eyes hurt. I like crisp, functional web pages.

I've had this happen to a number of sims, but only when they are off at work. When they come home and change out of their work clothes, the portrait goes back to them and not Mr. Mustache.

My simself as an elder Mad Scientist:

One of her triplet daughters, Freya:

Her eldest non-triplet daughter, Alice:


The Fox statue my criminal recieved when topping the Thief career:


And a weird bug. Sage Greenvine, a green-skinned male, emerged from the Catacombs a normal-skinned female. He was back to normal after he showered, but I wish I'd tried to see if he was actually a female, or if it was just a weird skin glitch.

I've been playing it for most of the day today (though I can tell it'll get old fast). There are so many things that annoy me. I miss macrotastics so much- especially macro/socialize, because nothing is more fun than jumping from household to household trying to get four teenagers at four different schoolmates' houses to make friends. I've taken to simply playing with testingcheatsenabled always on, so I can drag the mood bars up, else they spend so much time sleeping and eating and peeing that there is no time for anything else.

Is anyone else immensely annoyed by the limitations on toddlers? They can only earn 3 points in logic and music, and then what? The playtable does nothing. After getting their six points and talking/walking/pottying, you're stuck with another 2-3 days of absolutely nothing (and man, do I miss Inge's bottomless bottle and the sleeping mat/dog beds. I'd forgotten how annoying toddlers are when they're not self-sufficient). I used testingcheatsenabled to force age my triplets to childhood, because I didn't feel like dealing with 3 cakes, but then they were unable to go to school until the time when they would have aged to childhood naturally. So annoying.