I have a sim family that cannot successfully visit China any more. One couple did several times, and one of them has a level 3 visa with China, but when I tried to go again, after loading Shang Simla the camera just zooms down to the base camp. Time passes and people walk around, but there are no sim thumbnails on the left side, and they do not show up. View my sim doesn't move the camera at all. I entered 'edit town' to see if I could then return to the active family, but there was no option to do so. It seemed to treat it like a town before I had moved in a playable family.

I tried again with a few different individual sims to see if the game didn't like one of them going, but this happens for everyone in the family.
I then tried a different destination (France), and it worked fine.

I am confused by this. I thought maybe I should buy a vacation house and see if it would let me go there instead of the base camp (maybe just the camp is borked??) but apparently you have to already be on vacation in that location before the buy vacation house option shows up under the phone menu.
The family didn't purchase a home when their visa level hit 3 because they didn't have enough cash for one.

Gotcha, thanks! Not long-distance-call-to-chattable either, or is that still a potential problem?

There's still the other friend that it also won't let me call, but maybe they're a secret shopkeeper or something and I didn't notice.

My sim visited France and made a couple of friends there. When she came back, I tried to call her friends to come visit, and look, 'invite foreign visitor.' OK. It lets me select this, but announces that 'my sim doesn't know anyone in another location that well' or something. Odd, because she made 2 full-bar best friends, but one of them was the special crap dealer, so maybe they can't visit or something. I then just tried calling long distance to chat, and got the same thing -- it allowed me to select the option, but told me I didn't know anyone abroad.
I do not know if this is an Awesome Mod thing, an 'I don't know what I'm doing' thing, if I need to wait a certain time after returning from abroad, or what. But if it is an AM thing, it might be a bug. Or maybe consorting with the enemy is forbidden.

I hired a babysitter (in an AM game, of course) with updated EA patches. The babysitter arrives and tries to interact with the toddler, but the attempt to interact keeps flickering in and out. In the meantime, the toddler is trapped in a high chair unless someone leaves work to rescue her.
I have not tried reproducing this with other families or babysitters yet; I came here to see if this was a known issue.

What I did find was a mention of it in the 'new bugs thread' around page 22 from back in December. Nothing else relevant appeared from a search for 'babysitter,' and nothing appeared too helpful on the first couple of pages of threads.

Since it was mentioned in the bugs thread but I didn't see anything else, is this a known issue? Is there a workaround? This will be a touch troublesome for 'two-working parent' families if it is persistent.

I had a similar issue -- just got WA, and it ran ok once I set up the framework, apparently correctly... but then I updated my AM, and now it gets hung at 100% load bar.

So, I should have the framework set up in the WA folder. Should my mods be under the WA folder or the original game folder? My 3booter and fpslimiter and such that I got from here are still important, and should also go in the original folder, not WA, correct? I've also got the resource.cfg file; not sure which folder that should be in, now.
I think the thing that confuses me most is that it actually played just fine before, but now it won't load. No changes except replacing the awesomemod package.

ETA: Grrr, I think the issue is that I had not properly updated the game to keep up with MATY. Will try that. I feel a little silly.

Thanks!
It turned out to be an abduction hack that I thought I had taken out already.

The commlot jumping may be from another conflict, but since I haven't been able to pin that day to reproducible, I don't know for sure yet.

I installed AL and did my best to update hacks, but I suppose I missed something.
I noticed some jump bugs when taking a teen to a community lot. Then the lot got screwed over when all the characters were deleted or something and it switched into build/buy mode.

I noticed that several of the sims had their portraits regenerated and some had their LTW's fiddled with -- on a few different lots.

Anyhow, long story short, I tried to find a reproducible error to get a log of to see if that helped to find the problem. I found the following (attaching log) when I saw that sims would jump when asked to use telescopes -- and they were always given the $500 dollar award for discovering a planet twice.

Now, sure, the best way to find this is a binary search, but here's a related issue:
since installing AL the game takes a ridiculous amount of time to load. I start the game loading and go get a snack or watch tv now, and when I come back it's started if I'm lucky -- I haven't timed it but it has to be on the order of 10 minutes or more. So I'd rather not try to run a binary search a dozen or so times. It would help if I can narrow down what I am looking for.
And what on earth is making the game start up so slow?

I think I've narrowed down the problem. I forgot to pull out an old community lot parties hack that apparently doesn't work anymore with BV.

Unfortunately in the meantime I uninstalled BV and am having trouble trying to restore backed-up versions of the neighborhood.

Anyhow, I think that's the issue. Might be useful to know for anyone else having the same problem.

I am running all the EP's now -- uni, NL, OFB, Pets, seasons, and BV.

I did attempt to remove the hacks before installing, but I do have a very messy downloads folder, so I'm thinking it's possible that something was missed.

I didn't see a BV director's cut -- latest director's cut I found was for Seasons. I must have been looking in the wrong place. I was mostly just downloading the files I thought I needed from the BV folder.

Hey, all. I hadn't played in a long time, then I grabbed the more recent expansions and plugged them all in. I also tried to update my hacks, but maybe I missed something and that's causing my problem.

When my sims attempt to use the phone, the action is just dropped out of the queue. It shows up if the game is paused when I select it, but on unpause it immediately drops out of the queue. In addition to that, my sim that owns several businesses doesn't get the 'check in with businesses' option, but I wonder if that's simply because the expansions have moved that to somewhere else where I can't find it.

I thought that perhaps the problem was that the phonehack was not up to date with BV, but I redownloaded the BV version and it was the same thing I had already put in there. I'm hoping that someone recognizes the problem or has a good idea where to start before I start messing with a binary search to pin down what's going wrong.

My point is that they're not being treated as the same thing. Both the hydrobot and the cleanbot use the same sort of base. If I sell a hydrobot and have both hydros and cleans in inventory, the restock command seems just as likely to put another cleanbot down as a hydro. It's clearly just considering the base as the object for sale, not the whole robot, and will happily put down either kind of base that fits the bill. I'm not angry about the bases disappearing with the sale, that is of course supposed to happen. What's driving me batty is the idiotic way in which the game replaces them.

With any luck there's already a fix or three that I've missed because I didn't play for a pretty long time. Feel free to call me a moron and point me in the right direction. Both, please.

I'm trying to run a robot shop, both to try out a different business I didn't run in the 2.5 hours I originally played OFB and so that I could make some of the robots available to the whole neighborhood if they came in to buy them. Trouble is that the game seems to get confused about restocking -- it seems to be selling the base of the robot stand rather than the robot itself, so it will happily replace a hydrobot with a cleanbot and vice versa; same issue with the sentry/munchiebots. It even keeps the old price -- if I had put a sentrybot down originally, I sell it, and the restocker replaces it with a munchiebot, it keeps the sentrybot price up for the new munchiebot.

This is intensely annoying to me, both because it makes the shop pretty stupid, but also because it always winds up with all sentries and no munchies or such. Then when I send someone in to buy a robot, the kind that I want is, inevitably, the one that is not available. Not that the clean/hydrobots are even remotely worth purchasing in the first place, but that's a different issue.

Is there any sort of fix or hack (possibly a workaround other than 'only sell one type of robot') to clear up this stupidity? Something that forces the game to remember which kind of robot was originally for sale would be optimal. A 'craftables as buyables' hack would, I suppose, fix at least one of those problems and strikes me as more likely something that already exists.

Thanks for the details, notovny!

I do use the BRY thingy, but don't end up actively using it much, so unless it has some autonomous/passive function I don't think I'm getting much out of it.

As per the gardener/portal deletion business: I have some of Crammyboy's things in the game from way back to stop various portal deletions, and these include a 'portal monitor' that came packaged in. I don't see an rtfm for the monitor itself. What does it do... warn when a portal has disappeared? I didn't get any warnings related to the gardener thing. Does it need to be in 'debug mode' and if so, how do I turn that on (never messed with it, always used hacks to fix things as they show up)? Finally, will the broken portal pose a danger to other lots in the hood, or is it more of a symptom of greater, very bad things?

Question the first:
OK, OFB is old as the hills and restaurants have been around forever. Nevertheless, I always figured they'd be annoying enough to run that I'd just do without.
I decided to go ahead and give it a try, and good lordy was I right. Is there a half-decent guide to running restaurants around? I already tried a general google search and a more specific search here and on mts2. I guess what primarily annoys me is that there seems to be a ridiculous amount of effort involved in getting customers to give you money VERY slowly.
First and foremost -- my sim is an expert cook -- maxed skill. I figured it would save me a lot of hassle (and probably some cash) to have her be the chef. Maybe I can find a half-decent cook and train them up for later or so that the restaurant can work ok as a community lot to visit (for that matter, why is it that if you visit an owned lot with another sim family the owner doesn't show up by default like the employees do?). That means I've got a waiter and a hostess. What appears to happen, though, is that a few customers show up and wander around like goons. I can have my chef stop chefing and show them the menu, at which point they do the 'should I buy this?' thing at the podium. I was sorta hoping that the hostess might take over at this point like a regular salesperson would, but no -- the owner/chef/shepherd has to convince these people to get something to eat too. God forbid anything needs to be cooked. There does not appear to be an 'assign -- sales' option in the restaurant to get someone else to do this by default. After all this, if I'm lucky, I might get them to order 18 bucks worth of food or something.
I will be sad if this is how it is supposed to work.
I am prepared to be sad.

Question the second:
On an unrelated note, one day my gardener showed up for work and got out of the truck, at which point the truck disappeared and a new gardener showed up. Repeat as desired. All these gardeners decided they would rather watch TV or eat snacks than garden, so I guess they were behaving as normal visitors. I finally managed to use something (don't remember what) to delete the npcs on the lot so they would go away. The next time I had the gardener come over, a whole pile of them (maybe six or seven) got out of the truck and proceeded to make themselves at home. I haven't kept playing to see if it will happen again.
Is this something that anyone is familiar with? Perhaps a faulty hack? I think I have 'daily gardener' or some such from here, maybe some others. I'm still just using OFB, and have not gotten any hacks that were not (theoretically) OFB-compatible. In fact, I haven't gotten many new ones at all in a long time, because I stopped playing for a while and now I'm seeing if I'm interested enough in the game to shell out for pets and seasons.

Yeah, I was pretty upset at the 'chinese food' -- it takes way too long to eat, and always causes fatness. I really don't understand what reason there is for getting it instead of pizza, other than variety, and I hardly ever order in food for sims anyway. What was the point?

All in all, I was disappointed, as there are few things I enjoy more in real life than Chinese takeaway.

Hiya. I've got a pair of sims living in a house with a home business going on downstairs, so even though the real estate is big the living space is all crammed onto the upper floor, and there's not a lot of room.
Trouble is, one of the tiles that's right in the middle of the combo kitchen/dining room won't let me put anything in it. It's next to the wall, and to the best of my knowledge hasn't had anything in it, although I may have put a cabinet in there at some point. As I said, I can't put anything there, as if something were already occupying the space, but nothing is selectable there.
It's not next to a fridge -- I know I saw something at some point about 'stuck fridge tiles.' Nor is it in front of a door or anything else that should restrict that tile.

I'm almost 100% sure I've heard about folks having trouble with invisible stuff showing up -- invisible hot tubs etc. The trouble is that since I can't see it, I can't select it to delete it.

I DO have the FFS lot debugger doo-hicky, and have gone through the options there (even the ones where I wasn't really sure what they do), but that doesn't seem to have resolved anything. I do get a message that objects were fixed when I use the rerandomize sim generator, but since that exits out without saving it doesn't do any good, and I have no idea what it's fixing.

Any other way to activate this / ideas on what it is / advice on how to work the debugger?

Thanks in advance.

Choosing a LTW is one of the few things I can manage to do without being led by the hand on SimPE, so even for those afraid of doing horrible things to your game, it's not complicated.
Unless something has happened to change all that with OFB -- haven't tried it since then.

Still, it's not an in-game hack, but if you really want to choose out of the whole list instead of randomly selecting with one of the existing hacks until you get what you want, it's doable without too much trouble.

A quick search didn't turn up anything relevant, but I'm also not very good at quick searches. So point and laugh if this has already been dealt with.

The 'door locks' in OFB are doing me no good. I have a sim with a home business, ground floor is business, upper is private living. The door to get to the staircase is locked -- I've tried the locked for all but me, all but household, and even all but household and employees, but people just keep on walking through. In fact, EVERY customer marches right upstairs. Making them selectable, I noticed that they're all going upstairs because they're 'walking away from portal,' so that might be a conflict with one of the hacks here (TJ's?), but even if I deselect this option for them, they still like to wander upstairs and use my tv. They'll happily march through the locked door.

I imagine that it is probably a conflict with a hack -- something that changes door behaviors must be overwriting the door locking gizmos in the game (don't I sound knowledgable?). I took a spin through the clean installer, and didn't see anything that jumped out at me -- hacks are supposed to show up in red in the installer, and I admit that I don't keep a clean downloads folder. If someone could point me too the package name of a likely suspect, that would be great.

Things I think I have that might cause a door problem:
JM's security thingy, but I updated everything on his list of things to do for OFB.
Tuna's doors -- don't remember if they used a global hack or just changed the doors. I don't have any of tuna's doors on that lot, and I didn't see them in clean installer to take out. I can look again if I need to, if they do in fact alter global code.
the Simlogical door controller -- the one that let's you put in colored fire alarms and control access. This is my chief suspect, since I remember installing some sort of global doo-dad, but I don't know where that doo-dad is to make it go away.

And the move away from portal hack seems to demand that folks go upstairs to move away from the portal; I can try removing that one cuz I actually found it!

Thanks for helping me!

I would also suggest building the house first, then moving in; at least that way, if something goes wrong, you still have the house you worked so hard on. I think it also cuts down on the loss of money due to instant depreciation of things you make in build mode.

You might also want to try cloning the sim in simPE and rebuilding her personality; if there's a bug tied to that sim's id somehow (I don't actually know what I'm talking about), then maybe that will help.

Wow, I don't think I'm that old, but I remember when 3.5 inch drives first came out and some of the games we got had to include both 8.25 and 3.5 diskettes for the same program because not everyone was totally up to date and had 3.5's yet.

Course, I also remember when it was a big deal that we upgraded our Apple IIE from 64k to 128k of memory so that we could play Wheel of Fortune.
And trying to play with paint programs on a monochrome screen...

Half as genuine praise, and half just to annoy JM --

I finally got around to plugging this one in, and is does indeed work great! I was amused to see a toddler start dancing along with the music and start getting body points -- don't know if that was an intended feature or happened via bug in my game, but it made me laugh.

I don't know -- I love being able to make my sims dress as poorly as possible. Then I can laugh at them.

I guess the thread can't go off-topic if it was to begin with. So I'll chime in.
Another problem with the above thinking is that even though rich people pay more taxes, they are also much better able to afford high taxes. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but do folks who make less money (around minimum wage, through say my private school salary at just above $30k in an expensive metro area?) pay a higher tax rate than they do in America, or is the entire increased tax load shifted upwards? Because then it becomes remarkably unfair that people who didn't go to college, perhaps never intended to go to college, end up paying for someone else to go to college. Someone who makes 200,000 and pays 50% taxes has 100,000 to live on, which is annoying, but quite liveable. Someone who makes 20,000 and pays 20% taxes is stuck at a very difficult 16,000.
Even if the more socialized economic system offers more support programs (National Health or what have you) in the higher-tax economy, you're still cutting the legs out from under economic freedom.

Inge -- Happened with both systems.
Tuna -- Right, I got confused as to whether the override overrides the fact that the door is locked, or overrides the sim's ability to go through the door. I straightened that out eventually, which is why sometimes the sims would go through and sometimes they wouldn't.

Does anyone who uses JM's door locking system know if it's macro-compatible?

I'm sure I'm doing something dumb or reposting an old question or something to make someone hate me. Regardless, I'm trying to design an apartment-style lot with several families with their own space; I've been using Inge's security system for that, and then replaced it with tuna's privacy doors over in Peasantry. The problem is that I like to use macrotastics, especially power idle, when I'm running six or so sims on a lot. When a sim cues up 'be used,' for example, they will happily go tearing off through a door that they're not supposed to be able to enter to use the bathroom there, or even worse, they'll stand at that door waiting patiently for hours for the door to disappear. They also want into other people's apartments to eat their food, etc. I was using the 'private' setting, which I thought would make them ignore things on the other side of the door, but I think that the macro is overriding that and trying to use things in there anyway. Especially annoying is standing a sim in their apartment next to an empty bathroom, macroing up a use bathroom, and watching them run to the other end of the complex to a bathroom they can't use. Is there a way to convince macros and security systems to be friends?

(BTW -- I posted this here since it combines questions about several different hacks from different parts of the site.)