I've noticed the issue with the alien fit skintone and the S2 fit skin for a long time, although in my game the tops are wrong but the bottoms are ok.  I also reported the skin issue to Maxis.  I've found that using a custom skin for the aliens fixed that problem.  For S2 skins, I exported in BS, imported back to the game unchanged as a custom skin, and changed existing sim's DNA with SimPE as a work around. That's tedious though.  I'll try your hack.  Hopefully it will fix the S2 issue.  I use a custom PT with a custom alien skin, so don't have that issue in my game and I rarely have zombies.  Never noticed there was as issue with them.

Thanks for the simwardobe tip.  I'll check that out.

I've customized the season order on both custom neighborhoods, so that isn't it.  I haven't played with the weather aspiration object yet, and for the challenge it would be tricky to use, but I'll look into it.

Is there a way to change the day of the season on a lot?  Today in my game, sims moving into new lots are starting on the last day of the first season.  Yesterday when I played, it was the first day of the first season.   

Is this a random thing?  I've only had Seasons for a few days and haven't moved many sims into new lots.  I assumed every lot would start on day 1 of season 1 and that's what happened the first few lots I started brand new.  Then I thought maybe the starting point was determined by the lot you played last in that neighborhood.  But that would have been the last day of the 2nd season.  So that's wrong. 

Normally I wouldn't really care, but I'm trying to play a challenge of my own devising and it's somewhat difficult to play to certain rules if I can't guarantee the starting point.

Is there a way to change a lot to a certain day of a season, or reset the lot to day 1 of season 1?  I didn't stumble on anything in boolprop.  Maybe I should check InSIM.

I renamed my TS2 folder and let the game generate a brand new one.  Same issue.  So it's not hack/mod related.  Thanks for any help or insight.  Twain was having the same issue yesterday, so I assume other people have seen this.

I played the McGreggor lot in River Blossom Hills for a while, which has 6 fruit trees in a 3x2 pattern and 1 ladybug loft in the center.  Sims did a lot of spraying on that lot.  Could be a radius issue.   Those trees seemed kind of far apart, maybe they weren't in the range?  The garden is on the other side of the lot.  I never put a loft near the plants, and they needed spraying more often.  (On that lot I was happy to get a plantsim though, so didn't mind.)

I was wondering if the lofts are more for prevention or for elimination.  I thought I noticed some bug swarms disappear on their own when I was playing yesterday, but then many did not and the bugs seemed to spread to surrounding plants.  Maybe I'll try leaving them alone longer and see what happens.

Well, I've only had Seasons for 2 days.  On the other lot I've been playing, I stocked the fridge with the harvested produce and didn't see the normal food capacity drop after that even though they were making plenty of sparkling food.  The fresh food capacity was dropping though.  So I just assumed sims could live off what they can grow.  If not, I'll just use harvests as a source of income I guess.  You would think that if you grew food you could eat it.  And yes, I did make sure there was a pond on the lot so they had plenty of fish by winter.

Ah well, I thought it would be a neat idea.  Didn't realize Seasons was so restricted in that respect.

Awesome, I'm not familiar with that site, so didn't find it.  But it's bookmarked now.     Searches here for 'plantsim' didn't bring up that post either.  That hack solves everything.

Thanks for the bughouse warning.  I have a pretty high end machine, but the game chugs on Vista.  XP performance is fine though.  With DJSims' hack I won't need that many.  I don't mind the spaying, just the plantsims.

Yesterday I was trying to play 2 sims on a lot living solely by the food they could produce on their own.  I wanted it to be somewhat challenging, but the plantsim transitions were interfering.  Plantsims are well and good, but too easy to play.  They don't eat and get the gold gardening badge immediately.  Luckily my 2 sims got the gold gardening badge before spraying was a problem, so that wasn't an issue.

Plantsim transitions have 2 other problems - one is aspiration wants and fears related to becoming one and curing one.  I was playing with one family sim and one knowledge sim and they were polar opposites on this issue.  The other problem is that even though plantsim-ism is easy to cure, a cured sim has maxed needs.  This was my biggest annoyance.  It's like a cheap ride on the energizer.  Not quite what I wanted for this lot.

I haven't found a hack to prevent plantsim-ism, which would make this all a moot concern.  So I started thinking about how to work around this issue, and I have 2 questions:

1. Lady Bug lofts - how many do you need for decent coverage to be effective?  I had 4 lofts covering 6 'plots' of soil, each 'plot' being 4x4 with a sprinkler in the middle.  I had the plots arranged one tile away from each other in a 3x2 layout.  Spraying was so frequent in the summer I had 5 plantsim transitions between both sims.  The lofts are fairly expensive, I'd hate to have to blanket the garden with them.  But maybe I'll just have to budget for the expense.  My sims cannot afford greenhouses yet (I want to build up to that).

2. I've read that the spay exposure is about 100 times to turn into a plantsim.  Is that over the sim's entire life?  Or is it a per season/per year count?  I was intending to play with aging off for a few 'years'.  If I got another sim couple through the first year with minimal spraying and no plantsim transition, would a plantsim-ism be more likely the second year?  In other words, does the spay count eventually wear off, or is it absolute and just keep adding up?  Anyone know?

Oh, and one more question:  do the different refrigerators have different finite capacities to stock produce?  I'm curious whether it pays to buy the most expensive one in this respect.  Probably not since food doesn't spoil in the inventory.

Yes, I believe it does.  I was playing yesterday with 2 sims.  No jobs, no income except what they sold directly from the garden.  They both got the $ over their heads while I was playing.  I assume it was at the $10k mark, but I'd have to check memories to be sure.

I had the opposite problem.  My sim wanted his wolf to be a vampire.  Turned out to indeed be hack related.

I probably shouldn't have even bothered to post this.  But I had taken all the job related hacks I could remember and still had the glitch.  When you go through a list of 222 files they all tend to run together.  It wasn't until I started taking out half, then half again, etc until I got down to a reasonable number that I suspected it was the noagediscrimination hack.

I finally went to the all hack list for Pets and downloaded everything with a modified date after Pets released.  Definitely something I should have done right away.  Oh well, I chose to be lazy.

I was wondering what my sims were learning when they talked to the bird.  I'll look into Squinge's hack.  I wouldn't mind feeding the parrot 1x a day though.  Most of the household are vampires, so feeding in the middle of the day just isn't going to happen.

Sims can teach a dog to 'speak' on command.  They can also teach the parrot to talk.  After that, they that talk to the parrot and they practically have a conversation with it.  Unfortunately you have to feed the bird 3x a day.  You might get away with 2x, but certainly not 1x a day.  My mother had a grey african parrot for years and I think she'd change the seeds every other day.   I don't understand why birds in the game eat so much.

Chester Geike befriended and adopted a wolf, Alegra.  Chester is a vampire (and knowledge sim) and gets perpetual wants that Alegra be a vampire.  It's her, with the teeth, in the want panel.  There is no bite interaction and I'm quite surprised that pets could be vampires.

Then I got Alegra a job....in the Athletic career as a team mascot.  Didn't think anything of it.  It's my first pet in the game, first pet job, I had no idea what the pet careers are.  Clicking on Alegra's job panel crashes the game to the desktop.

I cannot put a collar on Alegra.  Chester has bought 3, but there's no option on any mirror to change Alegra's appearance.

SketchElder kindly pointed out that team mascot is not a pet job, pets cannot be vampires, and suggested that the game thinks Alegra is a sim.   

Is this a known issues with wolves, an issue with any hacks, or is my game doomed to a fiery death?  I did take out all hacks and CC at one point, but all I tested was the crashing when clicking on her jobs panel (and it did crash). 

Any suggestions about what to do?  I could give Alegra away and not adopt wolves anymore.  Or I could move the family out and back into the lot.  Or I could quit the pet job and leave her be. 

Lastly, is it normal to get wants to be friends with pets?  The whole household gets that want for Alegra (she's the only pet at the moment, but Chester is friendly to all the wolves and I think he's gotten that want with some of the other wolves that have stopped by).  They also get wants to command Alegra to do the tricks she's learned.  I don't know what's normal and what isn't is this game.

Thanks for any help.

edit: after moving the family out, and then back into the lot, Chester's want that Alegra be a vampire is gone.  He now wants her to get a Service job.  However there are only human job available for her in the paper and on the computer.    

edit2: it was an old version of noagediscrimination.  (At least the jobs issue.  Don't know about the vampire issue.)  Downloading the new version now.

Don't know.  I didn't start playing vampire families much until I got OFB.  With just NL I only had one family with teen vampires and I already had built a hallway out to the work carpool spot for the parents and I just let the teens use the bus to and from school.    I did eventually get all four teens to carpool to school, but I don't remember if that was before or after I installed OFB.

That's not true, at least in my game.  They all return in the car.  As for the bat-safe-in-the-sun theory:  that's also not true.

For a detached garage, just put in a second floor and inside stairs, or make it large enough to hold all the coffins on the ground floor.  Teens don't have to sleep in the house.  Once they wake up to go to school, pause the game, cancel out the school bus icon, select each one in turn, click on the car, and select 'Carpool to school with/other students,' then unpause.  If you only have 1 other teen vampire only their name will be displayed.  If you have 6, you should get the 'other students' option.  I use this method to send my teen vamps to school, and they all return in the car just fine.  If you don't choose the carpool option for all teens at the same time, some will get left behind (unless you cancel everything out and do it again). That is, once carpooling is the active action for a teen, the car is unclickable and you can't add any more students to the carpool, so do it all at once while paused. 

You can also build a room very close to the bustop to hold the coffins.  That way teen vamps don't travel far outside.  I've used both methods.

Lately, I've been using insimin to stop them from going to school.  I concentrate on skilling for scholarships, and then send them back for a day or so before shipping them off to college.  However, for a while I had a household with 6 teen vamps and they all took the minivan to school each day, and all returned in the minivan.  I had them drop their homework once out of the car and I actually built the garage right off 1 massive bedroom with 6 coffins so they had a short trip back and forth.  Sending 6 vamps to school is a huge pain though.  It should be easier to get students to carpool together.

Looks like I'm going to go against popular opinion and say the restriction on craft benches sounds ok with me.  Snapdragons practically break the game.  I use them everywhere and everything is much much easier.  It's almost gotten boring.  I'll play the challenge with that rule regardless of whether it's ever made offical or not.  It fits in with the theme anyways.

I haven't started the challenge yet - won't until next month for various reasons.  But I wasn't planning to unlock NS soon anyways.  I'm curious how close to death I can keep my sims and still survive a generation or two.   

kutto, From what I understand, all zombies are sterile.  I've never actually tried to get them to mate, I just assumed neither way would work.

rohina, yes, I have Enayla's pixierot skin.  I was going to make it a default skin for S4.  I have 3 other zombie skins for the other skin tones.  I saw her other horror skins, but ultimately decided on 4 radically different zombie skins for my Apocalypse neighborhood.  My favorite is this one.  I have it as a zombie replacement in my current game.

I'll have to set up the neighborhood, then play a sim there to run a clothing shop so I can clothe all the townies Road Warrior style before I start the challenge with my founder.  It didn't take me too long to do most of Pleasantview with a couple of vampires and the sethour cheat.

Jelendera, textures?  Sorry, I've never made clothes.  The most I've ever done is change the HSL values to recolor the Captain Hero outfit to make my SSS suit.  But any Road Warrior outifts you make would be awesome.  I'd probably use them outside the challenge too.

I need Road Warrior outfits!  But that link is close enough, at least for female sims.  And by zombies, I didn't mean real ones, just townies with zombie skins.

I downloaded some zombie skins from MTS2.  I was going to turn them into S1-S4 default replacements and use custom skins for my founder and spouse from Uni (using SimPE to edit the future spouse's skin DNA once identified).  Heirs will have to marry zombies though.  I'll take out the zombie default replacements once the medical restriction is lifted.

I assume vampirism is ok.  I'm thinking about trying to get my female founder bitten when she's ready to start having kids.  It will make for easy pregnancies and she won't age.   Maybe she'll bear all the sims I'll use to lift all the restrictions.  Haven't decided.  If she's lucky and makes some cash on a chance card, I might not even have to get her married (I'm assuming that she'll lift a restriction first then get pregnant and quit the job).  That way she can have 7 kids on the lot, although having a non-vamp spouse might be very useful with many little ones running about, and he'll lift a restriction too.

Well double beds aren't restricted, and computers are only limited to having one.  My question was about bringing back items in order to circumvent a restriction - like the bathtub, or a guitar, or a fire alarm.  Pinstar did make founder exceptions with aspiration rewards and personal electronics, but these can't be used by other sims.  I'm wondering about the other stuff.  Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume restricted items can't be used if brought back.  Which means that unless you think the family is going to be dirt poor when the medical restriction is lifted, there's no point in bringing back a bathtub (or whatever).

Are the items brought back by the founder still subject to restrictions?  Earlier on this thread someone mentioned bringing a bathtub from Uni, but the medical restriction prohibits use of tubs and showers.  Elsewhere people seem to agree that snapdragons brought from college can't be used because of the Natural Science restriction.  What's the consensus?

This isn't consistent with the setting of the challenge.  It encourages players to purchase the most expensive objects so their family funds are as low as possible.  The other method encouraged players to purchase the least expensive objects so they would pay lowest amount of protection money.  It also encouraged players to limit the objects they purchase because selling everything and rebuying is such a pain.  Purchasing the minimal number of the cheapest objects makes much more sense in an apocalyptic world.

Oh, I'll have to try that.  Thanks for the tip.  My default skins are 30 MB each!

My guess is that you either don't have Nvidia DDS Utilities installed, or haven't configured SimPE to point to where there are.

You can download the DDS Utilities here:  http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_utilities.html

After installing them, launch SimPE and go to Extra\Preferences.  In the Preferences window, make sure System Folders is selected on the left, and in the line for Nvidia DDS Tools Folder click on Browse and navigate to the correct folder.  On my computer it's:

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA DDS Utilities

I could not get lots from the Exchange that required the FFS pack to install in my game with the TS2 Package Installer.  The Sims 2 Pack Clean Installer worked fine.  I had no issues with the lots once installed other than some barren walls and stuff.  (I have no idea if the random lots I downloaded had any FFS content in them.)  But your average sims player does not use the the Sims 2 Pack Clean Installer to install lots.  Depending on how many people purchase the FFS pack, your audience could be limited if you like to build. 

SMRalph, however, states that the 'issue' has been reported to Maxis.  But I think he was partly trying to head off a serious criticism of the FFS pack more than question whether or not this was intended.