Has anyone run hackdiff on this to see which engine it's running? Some people are saying "It's AL/M&G, duh" without checking, but I don't trust EA to be that smart and historically the combo packs have their own twisted object.packages. Plus from what I've heard there are 3-4 updates once you download, so even if it was based on M&G it might have been modified from there. I'd do it but I see no reason to touch this pile of crap since I already have all the packs.

Probably too late to help the OP but No Butler NPC Harassment might fix this problem. Or it might not. It's been so long since I played I don't remember how my mods work anymore.

In other news, this thread made me realize that mod had been incorrectly posted so has been invisible to everyone but me for nearly two years. My fairly useless Apocalypse Fridge has been similarly misposted for over five years.

The werewolf memories fix needs a tweak. In Pets the game expected OID, which is how you fixed it, but starting in Seasons it changed to wanting NID. You can see it in the memory itself, group 7F60E687. As a previous poster reported, this means instead of reporting random crap objects, it reports random crap sims.

If you are still looking for a hack like this, I created Bigger Bills specifically to approximate Apocalypse-level bills in my regular game.

ETA: Ah, but one small problem is hackdiff shows changes in AL and M&G.  Since I have neither of these, someone would have to look at the changes to see if they would actually affect the mod.

Is there a reason that body skillination doesn't use the basketball hoop (training rate 300)?  It has a greater energy drain than the treadmill or other exercise machines but less than the exercise bike.  Plus it gives more fun and less hygiene drop than the exercise machines.

I was in the process of cleaning them out when you volunteered.  I figured I'd let you do it so you could take the blame if anything went horribly wrong.  But since you're not going to cooperate with my evil plan, I've posted mine in the Clean Templates thread.

Well since Emma's too busy *pfft* PLAYING the game to make clean templates, I'll post mine instead.

Clean Riverblossom and Desiderata

These haven't been extensively tested.  I installed them and poked around to make sure everyone's memories and family trees seemed right.  I tended to err on the side of caution in my slashing.  For example, Desiderata still has 3 social bunnies.  However they are in the Default family, aren't wearing their costumes, and the game makes a brand new social bunny rather than using one of them.  As near as I can tell they are dead social bunnies, and that's too funny to take out.  There are also several unknowns that are almost certainly unidentified NPCs so I left them in.

BirmanKat, you (or anyone) are welcome to mirror them at your site or do anything else you like with them.

My understanding is that each EP already includes the patches for the previous EPs built in.  The exception is Seasons since there was a Pets patched released after Seasons hit the shelves.  You definitely want to install the Pets patch before installing Seasons.  (Yes, I know the OP doesn't have Seasons.  That's just general advice.)

Then again, I'm an anal-retentive weirdo so I installed each EP then the corresponding patch then the next EP and so on.

- I'm mostly about playing families with stories

- My houses usually end up as "big box with stuff in it" designes.  I try to be more creative than that, but they usually end up boring boxes.  I rarely download houses as most of the ones I find are just cute building tricks that are completely unplayable in an actual game.  I've played around with trying to build houses from real architectural plans and that's been a bit more interesting.

- For me it isn't so much genetics as it is family history.  I like seeing how the generations mature, who ends up with whom.  However I have yet to play a neighborhood past the 3rd generation

- I always play one hood, all lots time synched, until I install new EPs.  Then I completely uninstall and reinstall from scratch, starting a new neighborhood.  My first hood was the base game, next was Uni, third added NL and OFB, and I'm just gearing up for Pets and Seasons, playing a test neighborhood as I install hacks in bunches.  Once the game is stable, I'll create a new hood as my real one.

- I'm very results oriented and I've had to push myself away from the "skill constantly, reach the top of the career, get all the badges" because that becomes a grind.  I try to balance skilling and promotions with relations and family.

- I play a few community lots only as owned businesses.  I've never seen the point of taking my sims to lots since I can do pretty much everything at home.

- Suburban.  My latest game I'll probably not even create a downtown, just lump everything together in the main hood.  The only real reason for a downtown (for me anyhow) is Grand Vampires and I can just make a sim a vampire if I really want one.

- I occasionally try themes on a lot, but not a neighborhood.  Themes usually come from having to find some excuse to use the godawful Maxis clothing or hairdos, sometimes from custom content.

- I just got Pets but I doubt I'll have one in every household.  Just a scattering here and there.

- I like having about 10% of my population as aliens for variety.  I'm experimenting with my first test werewolf now but I doubt I'll have many.  My problem with vampires, zombies, and servos is the immortality.  They become too static.  My plan for the new neighborhood is to have a 10% chance of every sim death to return as a vampire or zombie.  I had an idea of using servos as townies, hiring them to manage my multigenerational stores.  I age my townies so it's annoying to have to keep retraining managers as the old ones die.

- hacks: My last game had just over 200 hacks, mostly MATY and my own.  In my current one I'm up to 164 and still have a few more to go.  It's interesting how many of my previous hacks I'm not bothering to install because things aren't annoying me too much.  Yet.

- custom content: I'm increasingly frustrated with CC because of things like unbinned hair, underwear classed as everyday, tile floors priced at $1 per square, and so on.  I'm being very picky this time and pre-processing everything myself so it shows up right in the game.  I'm also decustomizing many things so the townies can use them.

- I make hacks, mostly for my own use.  I have a few up on MTS2 but I find the support side of it annoying.  I have several dozen in my own game and a to do list of about a zillion.  Like many modders, I'd rather play than mod so I don't accomplish as much as I would like.  I also *gasp* dare to modify awesome hacks to appeal to my own tastes.

I had one and there was no problem.  It displays 6 but keeps track of all 7 so every now and then he'd get aspiration points from a want I didn't even know he had.

My favorite "wacky jealousy" moment was the time a sim got mad when she saw her husband's mistress kissing another sim.  Hey, if you can't trust your husband's mistress to be loyal, who can you trust?

Yup, it's true.

Neat - Cleaning
Serious - Logic
Playful - Creativity
Outgoing - Charisma
Active - Body

Nothing helps mechanical or cooking.  For every point over 5 you earn the skill 10% faster, up to 50% faster if that personality trait is maxed.  That's reversed for serious, so +10% for every point of playful below 5.  There is no penalty for being at the opposite end, so sims of neat 0 learn cleaning just as fast as those with neat 5.

Agreed.  My guess is that when a sim fights a fire it uses a different BHAV than the firefighter does and that routine is flawed.

The "stuck fire" has happened to me with both fires I've had since I installed this mod.  It's harmless since the fire doesn't actually burn anyone.  I save, exit to the neighborhood, go back in and the stuck fire is gone.

Short answer: Yes, get OFB.

Longer answer: Zazazu summed things up pretty well but I'll add my own sage advice.

* Personally I think servos are overrated, but everyone else likes them.  Maybe I'm missing something.
* RIDICULOUSLY easy to make tons of money.  This could be considered either good or bad.
* I finally figured out the "employees quit for no reason".  Employees salary requirements go up when they gain a new badge.  Rather than asking for more money, they suddenly up and quit.  Now that I stay on top of raises, I've never had one quit.
* Get "Business Runs You" for sure.  That was the mod that finally got me to install stuff like macrotastics and is absolutely critical if you have a business with employees.  You should probably also the other business fixes such as relevantwages, missingmanagerfix, etc.  Of course "get all the MATY mods that fix the stupid crap" is standard whenever you get a new EP anyhow.

I believe ghosts can't cross water as I remember building a moat around the cemetery in Strangetown.

For turn-ons and turn-offs, I created a spreadsheet which picks a hair color, a body type (fat/fit), and an extra (hat, glasses, makeup/facial hair, costume makeup).  It then uses a weighted average to pick which one is the turnoff (fat and grey hair are more likely to be turnoffs, fit is less likely).  I threw out transitory things like clothing and perfume.

For looks, I go by personality.  Nice get hats, outgoing males get beards, sloppy males get stubble, non-shy women get makeup, serious get glasses, playful get costume makeup and/or custom hair.

I have four functioning computers: my gaming/video editing computer, my utility computer/file server, my writing laptop, my non-writing laptop.  I used to use the non-writing laptop sitting on a footstool for all my game statistical stuff.  I rearranged to move my two computer desks in an L so I can reach my server from the game computer and now use that instead.

Yes, I live alone.  4 computers per capita seems reasonable to me.

I also have tons of parts and could assemble probably 3-4 more functioning machines.  Since those parts include 286 motherboards, a zip drive, and a 40 MB (that's MB not GB) hard drive not all of them would exactly be bleeding edge systems.  I really need to dump the hardware that's more than 5 years old.

I'm using two separate computers.  I'm a statistics weirdo so I do Excel things with almost every game I play.

I'm not doing a challenge, though I'm going to do an unoffical Apocalypse challenge in a few game days when the designated victim graduates.  Unofficial meaning I'll follow the rules when I feel like it and ignore them if they become annoying.

You can get the legacy software from http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/DownloadLegacy.asp .  The password is "family" so you can avoid giving them your email (though they've never sent me anything other than the password).  The software lets you add pictures, events, generate family trees and web pages, etc.  It's pretty nice.

It's not the penalty, it's the bonus.  You go up a letter grade if you have no homework.  Since kids start with a C they would get a free bonus to B on their first day.  I'm not saying it's a GOOD idea, just that was the logic behind it.  A better way to have done it would probably have been to start kids with a D then give them the free day 1 bonus to a C rather than skipping a day and generally confusing the issue.

That's how I do it.  To keep track of events I have evolved from handwritten notes to two Excel workbooks (one for Sims 2 in general and one to track this particular neighborhood), two Word documents (one for narrative events and one for behind the scenes notes which generally involve me typing STUPID GAME!!! over and over) and Legacy (free geneology software which is very nice for tracking my sim generations).

Obsessed?  Me?

I think the original intention was that when a child comes home from school the first time, he shouldn't get a grade boost for having no unfinished homework.  He has no homework because he hasn't gotten any yet, not because he completed it.

There is a similar change that will prevent grades from changing the first two days in a new home.  There is no homework the first day because the family just moved in and homework isn't carried from the old house.  There is no homework the second day because the first day in a new home starts at 8 am which is too late for the bus so presumably the kid didn't go to school on day 1.  Of course, the presence of cars means they might have gone to school that first day so that check makes less sense in the post-NL world.

Of course just because the "first day of age" check makes sense for children doesn't mean it makes sense for teens.  I noticed the check in my "Partial Homework Credit" mod but didn't care enough to fix it.  It would be easy to add an age check so that only children get the free day.

I also recommend backing up your game regularly.  I play each lot in sequence one day at a time and I backup the Neighborhoods and Downloads directories at the end of every game day.

Never save the game with anyone talking on a cell phone (I assume that bug wasn't fixed in Pets or Seasons).  That lot will be corrupted and unplayable, though there is a fiddly way to fix it.  I save each lot only at 6 am as everyone is waking up so no one is on the phone.

I think that was the goal but *gasp* Maxis messed it up.  Students learn to study faster in all seasons, though they complete their homework faster only in fall.

I don't need help because I figured it out, but I thought I'd post the solution in case anyone else does anything this dumb.

I had a sim making a call on her cell phone.  When she went to put it away, she jumped.  It's always bad when they jump.  After some investigation I realized her cell phone was still in her hand.  After more investigation I realized the problem wasn't with her phone it was with her inventory.  I could no longer place items into anyone's inventory even on other lots.

My recent changes to the game were mostly adding clothing and a couple of minor hack tweaks, none of which should affect inventory.  I exited to game to revert to older versions and I noticed something.  SimPE was open to the neighborhood browser.  I tried closing that and going back into the game, and everything was fine.  Since SimPE was holding the neighborhood package open, the game couldn't make changes.  I guess inventory is kept in the neighborhood package rather than the character packages.

So the next time the game is being wonky, make sure SimPE isn't open.

At least Romance sims get 3500 aspiration for each boring act.  Pleasure sims get 500 so you have to do 7x as many boring things.  I generally play with only two romance sims in my neighborhood (one male one female) but I won't play with pleasure sims at all any more.