After having tested this for about half a week, I'd like to report a few bugs and also provide my personal notes about it:

First off, I've had a jumping bug. Yes indeed, one of the sims (my self-sim no less) had troubles sleeping and shifted every second from lying in bed to stiding through the bed. I should have saved a screenshot from that.
I didn't care really since this jumping did not disturb the energy recovery, but it got worse: the self sim began teaching a toddler to talk and again, shifted from sitting on the floor to standing twice a second. Very annoying.
About here, the spouse also began teaching a toddler to talk, and was done - the message popped up and everything, but she did not stop teaching the toddler. That was more serious.

I tried remedy this through the old TS2 way, by making the sims usable and simply deleting them, returning to the neighbourhood and return (where they should in TS2 style, return standing by the mailbox, fresh from bugs and whatnot). They didn't. I ended up with a household consisting of one (1) toddler... So don't delete sims, will you?

Apart from the bugs, I don't really mind the game - and this is indeed a game as Pescado said earlier. It IS possible to make quite good sims, and by using and undertanding the color wheel and materials, you can make anything look exactly how you want. Using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V in the binary field also makes sure everything has the exact same color. The building and buying tools are a blast.

One thing I really do mind is the animation set, or rather, the lack of animations. The animations are dull and flat and the facial animations even worse. A good smile is more than just showing the teeth. The walking animation seems to be taken from The Movies where the theatralic way of walking was more in line with the actors, but for normal people or sims, the walking looks just wrong.

Since this is a game and a new way of approaching family life, I think it just is a matter of getting used to the new style and way it is played. Even if I don't like that I can't make my own setting but is limited to Sunset Valley it could have been ok, if there would have been options to a) remove all the crap EA has filled the family and house pools with, and b) would have allowed me to put down a few lots of my own.

Things are EXPENSIVE, and I'm not talking about the game itself, but the stuff in the game. Building a house for a couple and keeping it under 16000 simoleons is hard, especially if the girl is knocked up. Not that I mind actually - it was way too easy to make money in TS2, but here you actually have to earn your keep. That is very, very good.

The most fundamental things in life are weather, time and seasons, and not having those included was a disappointment.

Got to love the rabbit holes. I don't give a damn about how a school looks inside, I just want to know there is one in town. Very good initiative.

The lack of hair styles is also a disappointment, and also the fact that my teen boys can't grow a five o'clock shadow. I don't mind the lack of clothing styles that much, mainly becuase the customizing tools makes most of what you want.

For the game itself, I find it odd that a game that is not holding everything that was promised is to be released, and that so much will be available only through download. Perhaps EA was inspired by the great paysites debate, and decided they wanted some of the cake. Since EA and Maxis are companies they are out to make money, and that's fine by me. However, trying to make money this way, by making people pay for extra content that was supposed to have been included from the start, that sucks.

Have a nice day.

Why in heaven's name use this snapdragon thingy? Use the no fire from cooking hack  instead - then the nanny might burn the food, but the house willl still be there. A more realistic option IMO since a) kids do need to eat and b) it is very uncommon that fire breaks out due to cooking alone.

I have never understood this nanny problem - maybe I'm just lucky... 

Thanks people for reminding me why I never let ANY of the oddball characters into the game...

I kind of like that real companies are finding their way into games - I think Ford and other car companies already made an impact on different kinds of car games and if it helps keeping the cost of the game down, then so much better. I see it as a win for everybody - I, the player get a realistic real car, the sponsoring company gets some PR and Maxis get some of the development cost reduced.

It's because the entire skill system suck. The reason Maxis have used the "home skills" for work must be purely lazyness - I admit there IS a use for cleaning at home, and cooking can be used for both cooks and at home, but the rest of the skills have no or very little real use so to speak. Add to that the worthless career climbing system and you can say hello to my pet peeve of the game.

I work on an alternative system which will be presented to Maxis - perhaps implemented in The Sims 4, but we'll see about that...

I'd like a medieval mod - ie, more diseases, less money, the risk of being dragged off to fight and die in some unknown country, bathing once a year (imagine a sim doing that!), landlords pushing the peasants around, no school, more starvation, a lot of dirt and little or no cleaning, families with 12-13 kids living at home and so on. Will never be possible though in a world were the fridge and the TV are the centerpieces in the home and showering twice a day and taking out the trash is the highest priority...

It's a step in the right direction though.

x2. I've kind of needed this... And I need a drink as well...

Nah I think it's ok since the Devil-child didn't exist after a move-out-move-in. Kind of a post-birth abortion...

I have a sim who's first action after moving into the hood was to sit down and study cooking, so nothing strange there. However, after one week, when doing something else after saving, exiting to the neighbourhood and entering again, she is studying cooking again which she was not supposed to do. Actually, it seems like the time is reset to day 1 even if she has retained her experience, work and skills. I noticed this after trying to squish a baby bug in which the kid a) would never stop crying, b) the kid and the mother got stuck in the change diaper animation and c) the baby couldn't be picked up for birthday toss.

Now, is this something new, odd or a discrete fireball visible from space?

ETA: After moving out and in the little family, I found out that the sim was indeed reset - no baby, no skills no nothing... That must have been a morder alien baby or something, screwing up the game like that...

I like the suggestion as I'm a realism-freak. The thing is, people can be quite good neighbours even if they don't have anything in common. Let's take an example from life:

I just graduated from the career counseling education with a bachelor's degree which took three years. During this time, I was in a group with six other people which I had a lot of contact with, but not really anything in common with (a former artist, a former politician, a former house-wife, etc). I became 'friends' with them, but no amount of time would make me call them up now just to chat away some time with them, and I think the bonds are quickly dissolving as I type. My real friends however are friends even if we don't speak for months, simply because we have more in common. I can't see anything change from that. The mates from the education however, they seemed to have more in common and I think three of them are buddies from now on.

Taking it back to the sims, I would realy like to back the OP up on this. There should be a threshold on how good friends (or bad enemies) uo could be with others.

Roger that. Thanks for the clarification.

Thank you sir! That's a what I'm looking for and I guess I'll keep on looking for more hacks like those. I agree especially with the car hack - cars are terribly expensive to own (and I guess I'm going to tweak the hack too to at least double the charge for using a car).

I agree it's a more realistic sum but a little blunt if Poor Sim is living on a 2x2 lot pays 300 just as his neighbour Rich Sim on a 5x5 lot. Or am I misunderstanding something here?

Thanks Morague - that might settle the headache I have with university and economy. Would it be possible to make something similar for the rest of the hoods (or along my guidelines in the OP)?

Not really - I guess I could set up someone as a landlord and make him Government, but it doesn't feel right - especially since I try to keep the number of sims down. It might be a solution though.

ETA: There are also numerous hacks for auto-refilling of fridges, as well as one that allows you to buy groceries directly from the Buy catalogue. I believe these are also available from MTS2. Just do searches there for terms like 'fridge' (or check the game mods section).
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It's not the refilling of the fridge I'm out to get, it's the price of filling it that I want changed.

Interesting. Would it be possible to make fridges like that? I remember from my last time playing a couple of years ago, I couldn't arse yself to call for delivery, so I simply sold the empty fridge and bought a new one. Seemed a little unrealistic, but that's maybe just me...

One thing I'm disturbed of when it comes to the Sims is that all living expenses (food and bills) are too cheap. Generally speaking, when food and bills are paid for by general working Joe there isn't much left, and I would like this to be depicted in the sims if possible - the only things costing as it should are clothes and furniture IMO. I was thinking something like this:


1. A certain rent for the small lot size (a 2x2 is 20x20). I'd say the smallscale dimensions would be enough (20x20).

2. A rent of $3 for each floor tile inside (ie, not counting terraces and flat roofs).

3. Three times as expensive to fill the fridge. Food is a major factor when it comes to digging holes in people's wallets.


Example with the changes mentioned:
A substitute teacher (lvl 3 in the education career - not very high ranking thus) earns $452 a day which equals (5x452) = $2260 a week. If he lives with an unempoyed housewife and two kids, the fridge will need restocking once (since the kids and him are eating out every weekday). To restock an empty cheap fridge at the end of the week it will cost him (3x450) = $1350.
Living on a 2x2 sized lot, the lot rent amounts to (20x20) = $400.
The house has a total of 120 floortiles so the rent will go up to $360.
Added to this is the ridiculously low cost for the detoriating furniture and other things in the hoe - say $50.

That would leave our guy with about $100 bucks to get drunk with which in this case seems quite reasonable. Note, this is counted as a single guy working at a low-level job with kids and wife to support. Maxis throws money at the sims everywhere and the kids are bound to come home at least once with gratulation money, and I think it's quite seldom people let one adult sim be home alone all the time, so they will realistically have a lot more on their hands to buy clothes, pizza and other things for.

Came to think of it: I would like to raise the floor tile rent to $5 or so to really put some pressure on the economy and also double the normal bills amount. To make this easier to handle, I'd say the mailman should only come around once a week too, but that could be changed.

So, Lords of the Hacks, what do you say? could this be made? I would really appreciate it.

Neither it appeared - it seems it was the hacks that had become corrupted somehow, but only the regen hacks... Thanks anyway guys!

Bug as it may seem, I'm still fascinated how it turned out...

But that's the way I did it... Still, why does the townies regenerate as MALES?

After installing the no regen hacks, I have got some really strange issues - more of that later. I began with opening all the default hoods and ripping out all the houses I wanted. Then, I went on to create an empty hood, even without townies but with all the appropriate hacks installed correctly. That worked - when I began building my neighbourhoods I didn't have any characters.

However, the notownieregen hack doesn't seem to work, and neither do the antiredundancy hack (can't say for the other hacks yet): First, I get about 200 townies I don't want. Then, after killing off a few and checking the hood with simPE, I can't find the not-so-dearly deceased, dead or alive - and there are STILL those pesky 200 I don't want. Finally, the most bizarre glitch is that all townies are treated like males...

Now, I know how to use hacks and all the other hacks are working fine, but this goes beyond me. Does anyone have any suggestions?