I'm not that desperate to get it - it just might have been helpful. I have been adding quite a few hacks I didn't previously use as they cancelled out stuff I had been prepared to live with, such as people napping on sofas, pillow fights and hanging out, but I've noticed that since I added Two Jeff's anti-pranking hack that my Sims have fallen back on other social interactions that they now take to extremes. I have one family where I have invited three Townie teens to join the family and it was already a sizable family before that. Now I have adult Sims who prevent my teens from skill building by continuously wanting pillow fights and to play red hands or that really stupid 'Punch You - Punch Me' game. Macrotastics makes life so much easier, but I notice that as soon as one of the adults goes on a Pillow Fight/Red Hands/Punch You - Punch Me rampage, the teens find their way blocked by the grown-ups, drop out of their Macrotastics tasks and end up playing silly buggers with the adults instead. And with that large family, they all cluster around the same spot in the house, so no one can get past them to do other things.

Another reason I'm holding back on buying OFB is purely financial. I'm planing to move to LA in September to go to Film School for at least a year. Although the cost of living in LA is comparable to where I live now in the UK, I'm still going to need as much money as I can to see me through the year, so I'm cutting back on my regular purchases of games, CDs, DVDs and all that stuff.

Having said that, I might still buy OFB if it crops up cheap at Play.Com.

This is a very useful list as I'm having problems with the game on an almost daily basis. I have noticed that since the arrival of NL, cooking fires are much more common. It used to be that once you got past level two or three in cooking skill you didn't get cooking fires anymore, but now it seems that around one in five times (or there abouts) you get a fire. In fact I had one family who just had fire after fire, no matter how good their cooking skills are.

So I looked at your entry for the firemod.zip and thought that would at least be a bit helpful. However, this is not listed in the NL hacks section - only in the OFB section. Does anyone know if you can use this version even if you don't have OFB? OFB does not appeal to me one bit and I'm no rush to get it (even for new game features) until JM and TJ have rendered the entire thing mostly harmless. I went through endless 'pulling my hair out' moments with the original game, Uni and NL because I bought them as soon as they came out (well, I'd actually learned my lesson with Uni, but someone bought NL for me as a 'sorry' gift).

Any guidance on this OFB version of the hack would be welcome. My hair thanks you all in advance.

OK, so I can rule out driveways as being a potential problem in the adoption problems. I went to the Calente house and had Nina adopt a toddler. They don't have a car, but I had exactly the same problem with the social worker and her car.

Nope.

It's every time I adopt any child, anywhere, on any lot. It's always the same. The car arrives and I get to choose the age of the child. The car pulls up and the social worker walks round to let the child out. Then I get the error message. As soon as I click on the 'Reset' option, the baby or toddler jumps into the arms of the social worker and I get the next error message. I click on 'Reset' again and then the social worker is stuck on the lot. The baby or toddler is being held at an awkward angle. If it's a toddler, I teleport it away from the social worker, but it's usually hovering in the air, stuck in the pose of being held. A family member can interact with the toddler which makes it jump to a sitting position in the middle of the road.

When I make the social worker selectable, she is stuck standing on the far side of the road where she was when she removed the child from the car. 'Force Error' doesn't free her up. So my only option is to use the teleporting bush to get her to leave. When I select this option, she disappears from the lot.

I'm beginning to wonder if the driveway for buyable cars could be the problem, as that appears in that paragraph of the error log I posted. I say this because I've had problems with buyable cars too. If a Sim takes a car to a community lot, all is fine until they go home. Then I can hear the car trying to return, but nothing happens. The portrait of the missing Sim is there, but they can't get back onto the lot and the Buy/Build buttons are greyed out. No one can walk over the driveway where the car should be parked. I've experimented with loads of things when this happens. I even tried having a Townie move in and she replaced the missing Sim, effectively wiping out that Sim. The only way I've found of curing this is to go to another lot, invite that Sim over and then have them move in. Then I go back to the previous lot. The moved out Sim appears in the loading picture, but is missing after the lot loads up - as is the car. I can then move the Sim back into the house, but a copy of him/her remains at the other lot. If I move that Sim out, I can then delete it from the Neighbourhood screen.

Because of the way driveways need to be placed, they always end up being located to the left of the lot (looking at it from the street). This means that various NPC cars tend to park right opposite the driveway, or the area it takes up to allow for cars to reverse onto the street. I'm trying to remember if I've adopted kids on lots where they don't have cars/driveways.

I think I'll have to try adopting a kid on a lot where they don't have a car. If it works OK, then it narrows down the problem and maybe someone can do something about it. I'll try it now and get back to you, but it could take a while as I'll have to create a family just for this purpose. 

Hah! Now this is something we've needed for a long while. Thanks JM. Downloading now.

I get bad tiles all over my houses - even new ones where there are no cellphones and no one has played kicky bag. JM's advice was to use fire, so I downloaded a buyable fire item from Mod The Sims 2, but you can get the same effect by buying a cheap cooker, have someone place a TV Dinner or a toaster pastry in it and then have them go and do something else and move to cooker close to the affected area before it starts to burn. But be warned - you must fence off the area to prevent Sims getting burned. In a room, remove the door to the room and all objects and then place the fire or cooker close to the area and just let it burn away to it's heart's content. It's also a good idea to not have any objects next to the walls of the room that is burning. They shouldn't set on fire, but it has happened to me once. Once the fire is out, replace the door and have your Sims tidy up the ash. Then see if the bad tiles are now working. If not, try it again. It doesn't always work, but around seven times out of ten it does.

I tried to attach one to this reply, but it was far too big. I can't see anything obvious, but then again, I wouldn't know what to look for even if I had a copy of 'Understanding Sims 2 Error Logs For Dummies'. Please take into account that when I was at school, you operated a computer by poking little holes in cardboard strips and if you did it right, you got a print out that read, "Yoor a twat!" repeated about 200 times. 

Anyway, here's the first section of one of the the error logs. Don't know if this sheds any light.

Build: 1.2.0.337
at Sep 30 2005,18:18:13

Object id: 263
name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
Stack size: 2
Error: Object referred to must be a person.
Iterations: 47
  Frame 1:
    Stack Object id: 555
    Stack Object name: Driveway - Concrete - 1, 5
    Node: 42
    Tree: id 4130 name 'Adoption - Family greet' version -32750
    from Car_SocialWorker
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 236    Locals: 231 555 0 0 555
  Frame 0:
    Stack Object id: 263
    Stack Object name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
    Node: 20
    Tree: id 4096 name 'Functional - Main' version 90
    from Car_SocialWorker
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 245    Locals: 0 0 236

I've been having a recurring problem with adoptions since installing Nightlife. It's something that never happened prior to this. I have found a way around it, but it would be better if someone knew a way to cure it.

All goes well, right up until the point where the social worker takes the kid from the car. At this point the game crashes. If I have the 'boolprop testingcheatsenabled true' cheat running, I get an error message instead. Clicking on 'Reset' makes the car disappear and then I get another error message and the social worker is stuck holding the baby/toddler. I have now installed InSIMinator and that allows me to teleport the toddler away from the social worker (doesn't work with babies as you can't select them and if you use the Selectable function from InSIMinator on the baby, the game locks up and crashes). Because the social worker is now stuck on the lot, Buy/Build and all save/exit/quit functions are greyed out. I get around this by using JMP's Lot Fixer. I then have to have someone interact with the adopted child, or it's still linked to the social worker and will disappear with her during the next step. Then another Sim uses the InSIMinator feature to make the social worker selectable and finally, I have to use the teleporting shrub (I think it's by Merola) to get rid of the social worker.

So far, this has worked OK in all cases except for when the adoptee (is that a proper word? I guess it is now) is a baby, but it's still a long process and it's made even worse when you don't like the child being offered because it looks like it's been thrashed with an ugly stick and you have to keep quitting and trying again.

Has anyone else had this problem? Is there anything that can be done to reset the faulty car and social worker without one disappearing and the other becoming stuck?

See? This is what annoys me about The Sims 2. There are all these options that you never find out about unless you buy those Prima guides. Other games supply detailed manuals (either in the form of bits of paper stapled together to make one of those old-fashioned booklet thingies, or as one of those new-fangled 'computer document' wotchamacallits) - but not The Sims! I really bugs me that if I want detailed information about what all the new features, objects and interactions do, I have to shell out almost as much as the expansion cost to buy a tome that repeats everything from the original guide and then has a tiny section that deals with the new expansion. But my experience with the original game taught me that each new Prima guide is next to useless because the information in them does not tally with the game/expansion itself. Vacation was the worst. It listed completely different uses of items and the treasure hunting features were all wrong because Maxis made changes after giving the information to Prima.

You'd have thought that Maxis could publish detailed manuals for each product on the official site. It's not as if anyone can get onto the site. As soon as you register a product, you should be able to download or access an up to date manual complete with an option for tips and tricks.

I've also had problems with the inventory. I had planned to take urns/gravestones with me as I moved families to bigger lots, but after reading this thread, I won't bother. I'll try the move gravestones function ... which I knew absolutely nothing about until now. So thanks for this information.

I posted a reply and it didn't turn up. I had mentioned that I don't allow my Sims to use cellphones or play kicky bag. I also came up with some ideas about getting around the problem that hackers could try, but it was very spur of the moment stuff and I can't remember it all now (dratted virus is playing with my brain).

I always thought the Lot Debugger was incompatible with NL, but things are getting so bad that it's worth trying it.

I'll also check out the other thread.

One thing I've noticed is that if it's getting close to the time when a visitor leaves (it's much earlier for kids and teens now) and you've stacked up a load of social interactions when they decide to leave, the Sim will run after them to try and perform the next interaction. After that, they sometimes run everywhere for a few days, just like the way kids who have just transitioned from toddlers do. It's a bit odd to see them running everywhere for a while, but it eventually cancels out. I've not had them get stuck though.

When anyone gets stuck, I use the 'Force Error'/'Reset' option from boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and this gets them back to normal every time. It also cancels out the running thing when it gets on my nerves.

Finally awake again.

Can anyone expand on this invisible object finder from Spiffy's? Does anyone have a link to the site so I can take a look?

I've invested a lot of time building this lot (though nowhere near enough time playing it) and I'm getting really fed up of having to bulldoze every lot and rebuild after four hours of play because something always goes wrong. I'd like to try every possible solution before I have to bulldoze yet again.

I've actually bulldozed and rebuilt one particular lot four times, and I've probably only clocked up something like 20 hours total play time over the four versions of that house.

Finally, thanks for the interesting comments people. What a change to the 'official' site where I'd get endless replies about updating my video card drivers, defragging my hard drive, doing a complete reinstall, removing those evil hacks or being asked if my PC specs were up to scratch. Oh, and lets not forget the fact that you always get at least one reply over there that says, 'Well MY game works fine and I've never had a single problem with it!'. 

It's nice to get intelligent replies.

I've had the going black thing both at a community lot and using JMs pile o' clothes dresser thing. I found that just changing to a different category and then back often changes his back as it should be, but it's happening with more frequency recently. Choosing the clothes that had displayed as black on the mannequin are OK in the game though - or at least they have been so far.

The other one I'm getting is that in Create-A-Family mode, I have a similar thing where the borders of the different sections go all odd and blocky, or turn into loads of very thin lines. Again, selecting a different category seems to (eventually) cure this. The annoying thing is that until NL, I never had any problems in these areas unless their was a corrupt clothing item and then the game would crash.

I'm not sure if it's NL or the patch that is the problem here because I only got NL a day or two before the patch came out. It could be a bad download, but so far, whatever I put on a Sim, it seems to be OK apart from those long Maxis shorts for teenage boys. If a male teen gets those as he age transitions, then they make the lower half of his body invisible and they are the same if you buy them in any of the normal ways. And it's all of those long shorts that do this any colour, so it has to be a fault with the EP.

I know what you mean. I also used InSiminator and discovered the hide icon on some NPC students. Very annoying.

When I get fed up of TS2, it's usually because the bugs, annoyances and niggles are getting me down. I haven't bought many games recently, because everything looks the same. I borrowed Civ III ages ago and finally got around to buying my own copy because I sometimes go over to visit my mum and when she hits the soaps, she's gone for ages and her PC won't handle TS2. But Civ III is pretty boring. So I end up falling back on C&C (various versions). Last week I bought SSX On Tour for my PS2. It's good in the early stages, but I prefer racing to trick competitions and I currently have a screen full of trick missions and no new race options. But I love free-riding from the top of the mountain to the bottom. It's very relaxing and takes about 25 minutes to complete - longer if you find one of the hidden half-pipes and stay there practicing tricks. Then I go back to the top and do it again, this time taking a different route. It's pretty much no-brainer stuff, but sometimes that's all you need.

I know what you mean about the nastiness though. The new 'furious' feature is a complete pain in the arse and I have Sims that do nothing but fight. In one family, the two kids were forever fighting and then mum got pissed off with dad for being in the toilet when she wanted to go. It started with poking and ended up with them continually attacking each other. Even after I worked the relationships back up, one would still poke the other and the furious state would return and it would plunge into fighting again. I just couldn't cope with two pairs of Sims doing nothing but fighting and eventually the parents had to break up. But have you noticed that the reverse is just as annoying. Sims in Love now do nothing but kiss, cuddle and flirt and ignore all other needs? They don't eat, pee, bathe or sleep and then end up in a right state. Kids don't get fed and the threat of the social worker is always there. Send a Sim to serve a meal and they cancel the action and return to the kissing.

And is it just me, or when the game first came out, didn't Sims move around much more intelligently? If another Sim was using the stairs they also wanted to use, they just followed on behind them. Now they stamp their feet, whine, point around and then cancel all their actions and head off to kiss/fight their lover/partner/sibling. I'm almost at the point where I'm about to turn off free will and that's something I've never done with this game or the original Sims.

I'm also thinking of getting Civ IV for the same reasons. I like some aspects of Civ III, but it just takes too long to get anywhere and the game punishes you for doing well. But I recently had a really good game of Civ III where I just seemed to do everything right. I was playing with expansions and played the Japanese. I ploughed all my money into scientific research, made about 6 warriors and sent them out to auto-explore. I then started building cities like crazy. By 780 AD I was in the Industrial Age and I had Steam Power by 910 AD. It took me much longer to get iron and had to build right into the spaces between rivals, but by 1470 I was in the Modern Age and building tanks. By the 1700s I was thriving and had wiped out the Indians and the Mongols. But then the long dark endgame had begun and I got bored even though I was winning easily. I read a review of Civ IV that said that the endgame is still tediously slow.

If you're stuck waiting for hacks to make TS2 playable, and you have a PS2, then consider buying SSX On Tour. It's a bit of a toss up as to whether SSX 3 or SSX On Tour is the better game, but the latest version is much easier to get to grips with for beginners. Events get progressively harder, but they take place on the same set courses. Like SSX 3, courses run into each other, but there are many more of them, so a freeride trip from the highest peak to the bottom takes around 23 - 25 minutes to complete and is great fun and the feeling of speed is superb and it's much easier to get onto rails now. If you like Motorhead, Def Leppard and Iron Maiden, you'll love the soundtrack, but I preferred the SSX 3 soundtrack. Maxis were obviously involved in the design of the character generator (clothes, boots, hats, hair, make up, beards, stubble, skin colour, body build and size). The new boarders and skiers look so much like Sims. And yes, you can ski as well as board now. Finally, you can knock over recreational skiers and there's even a mission where you get to just knock over kid skiers which is mean, but great fun.

Finally, to Two Jeffs. I'm sorry to hear that your PC decided to try to kill itself. Having suffered simillar situations, I understand the frustration you're going through. Like many, I'm eagerly awaiting NL versions of many of your brilliant hacks, but when things like this happen, there's no point in us 'users' getting upset about it. Good hacks are worth waiting for. There's no point trying to rush things. Enjoy Civ IV and come back to the hack design refreshed and sated from all that stategic fun.

Thanks to both of you. Actually, commiserations aren't as useless as you might think, because if people share common problems, then it sometimes ends up with someone trying to make a fix for it.

As for the fire thing, I've found it to be useful for some things that get stuck and can't be deleted (especially cookers that set on fire and then you can't get the food). So far, I've never had it work with stuck ground or stuck foundations, but as I haven't tried that on this lot, I'm willing to give it a try. I'll download the fire thing from MTS2 and give it a go.

I'm currently suffering a virus (biological, not computer) that is making life pretty crappy and I haven't slept for over 39 hours, so at some point (probably very soon) I'll pass out Sims-style (most likely on my sofa as it's more comfortable than my bed). That means I may not post an update for some time about whether the fire thing works or not. When the swaying stops for long enough, I play TS2 or read posts here. The rest of the time I just lie down watching DVDs (see how well I care for myself when I'm ill  ). So I will reply, but if it's not for some time, I'm either asleep of the virus is getting worse.

Oh, and the above isn't an attempt at getting sympathy messages. I've been ill before and I will be again. I'll live. ... although any nice young ladies who want to come round and pamper me, make me cups of hot tea, chicken soup and tidy up my place for me would be welcome ... even when I'm not ill. 

Some time back, I had a problem with areas of lots becoming unusable - just tile spaces on the lot. Sometimes it was inside a house - sometimes outside in the middle of an untouched grass area. A search around and I discovered that it was kicky bags that was causing the problems and the search eventually led me to the College Adjuster by Two Jeffs (back then it was on Mod The Sims 2). It cured the problem and there was much rejoicing all round (well, I was happy about it).

New College Adjuster also has the thing for getting rid of stuck kicky bags, but as I have a hack that stops all autonomous use of kicky bag, it doesn't get any use ... but nice to know it's there.

Just prior to getting Nightlife, I had a house where I got a tile that was unuseable - right in front of the cooker in the kitchen on the lot. Nothing I did would free up the tile and after a short while, more began to crop up. No games of kicky bag were taking place and I tried both the College Adjuster and JM's Lot Fixer, but neither cured it and I eventually had to tear down the house.

Since installing Nightlife, it's started to happen more often. I built a house for a new family a few days back. Five kids later, I decided that it was time to expand the house a little, but was annoyed to find that there was a strip of unusable tiles right in the path of my intended extension. As this house is on a foundation, I needed to extend that first, but nothing would help. No kicky bags (at least no option to remove them on the College Adjuster). I can't raise or lower the land where the affected tiles are, but Sims can stand there and I can place shrubs and flowers there. Worse still, even though I can't build the foundation out, I would have been content with a overhanging room on the second floor, but I'm cursed there too. As soon as I attempt to place a floor tile that would be floating above the affected area, I find I'm not allowed to place it. I can build up to and along the affected area, but you're talking about building a house that will have a slice missing out of it.

I've noticed that there has always been a problem at the crossroads where the Broke house is. All lots you place on any of these corners end up having problems - either objects won't place correctly and bleed into other objects or walls, or you can't place on/in some areas at all. It did this on my old PC and now on my New PC which was a new, clean install. But this is now spreading all over my neighbourhood and it's occurring more and more often. I only have 12 families in Pleasantview and have none in the other default neighbourhoods. I haven't sent anyone to college since installing Nightlife (and that was a full reinstall with a fresh start of the game, so there's no old students at Uni). I'm on first generation Sims, so it can't be associated with multi-generations. I have the hack that prevents Townies from respawning, so even though a couple of Sims have Townie family members, there shouldn't be hundreds of new Townies taking over the game.

Video Drivers were recently updated and the PC is well and truly way beyond the recommended specs. There's over three quarters of the hard drive free.

Any chance someone with more knowledge than me can take a look at this problem with invisible objects and come up with something to nuke these hot spots (hmmm ... mixed metaphor?)

Finally, sorry if some of you read half a message that just cut out, but I hit the Tab key by mistake and the message was posted, so I had to update it with the rest of the message.
 

It's not the clothing tool I'm talking about. The outfitplanner is a totally different hack and is now rather old, so it may be incompatible. But the previous poster pointed out that the thing about Sims going to work in their non-work clothes is intentional. Could be, but trust Maxis to not do it properly and have a glitch that allows Sims to go to work in their PJ/undies - same as what happens with YAs going to class in PJs/undies in University.

Sorry. Re-reading my post, it does appear to be a bit nasty, but that wasn't my intention. I wasn't inferring that YOU were a fool, just that based on their track record, buying new Maxis products is a foolish thing to do. I've also had horrendous problems with Sim City 4. I was very sceptical about buying The Sims 2 and was proved right. Same with University and Nightlife, but I still went ahead and purchased them in the vague hope that Maxis had cleaned up their act. So I KNOW that I'm foolish. Thing is, I love TS2 and put up with all the crap programming just to experience the good bits of the game. But they've burned me too many times now and when the console versions go wrong, there will be no hackers like JMP and Two Jeffs to help out.

Some people say it's EA, not Maxis who are at fault. Whilst I don't think EA are totally blameless, how come other EA products aren't as bad as Maxis games? I bought SSX On Tour two days ago and it runs perfectly. Same with the Command and Conquer series. Only problem I had there was that Red Alert 2 was incompatible with my new PC, but there was a patch available at the official site. If the C&C guys can support such an old product, why can't Maxis sort out their new product? The fact is, they can't be trusted to do anything right and that will be the same for the console versions of The Sims 2. There's no way that three PCs and a brand new PS2 can all be faulty and it seems very unlikely that all of the disks are faulty too, so it has to come down to the programming. Based on the simple fact that so many people have had so  many problems with all of these products, it doesn't bode well for the latest batch of console games - not least of all that there are so many variations covering every console currently available.

So, I'm suitably chastised and head is pulled firmly in. Once again, sorry, but I really didn't mean to offend.

I have noticed that since installing the patch, my Sims have started going to go work in their ordinary clothes. Worse still, they sometimes go in their pyjamas or their underwear. I've even had a Sim get out of the bath and try to go to work naked. And yesterday, Angela Pleasant was trying to 'Read to ...' her toddler sister when the school bus arrived and she took the book with her to school (picture included). When she returned home, the book seemed to conflict with her homework and she placed the book on the previous days homework ... as if that was the homework. She then couldn't access her other homework, so I had to move the book. I had her do the previous day's homework, but according to Macrotastics, she still had homework left. Selecting that option brought up the icon for a task to do, but then clicked out. A few days later, her grades began to go down because she had an unfinished assignment. I even tried clicking on the book she carried to school, but it behaved like a normal book. I finally did a force error on Angela and that seemed to clear the problem.

Now this whole 'going to school in whatever they're wearing' thing could be a new bug, or it could be a conflict with a hack. I've looked through my hacks folder and can't see any obvious conflicts with one possible exception - the outfitplanner hack. It's the only thing that I could even remotely associate with clothing problems. It's also one of the hacks not on Dr Boris's OK list. I removed every other incompatible hack I had, but somehow, I missed this one. I've noticed that if I cancel a Sim's action to go to work, I can send them to a wardrobe and select the 'Dress in work clothes' option, but that really is the only way I can get them to go to work in their work clothes. I've had the outfitplanner hack in my game for so long that I can't remember if this is a feature of the hack, or a standard game function. 

Part of me likes the fact that my Sims go to work in their ordinary clothes as most of the work clothes are awful, but I'm not happy about them going to work/school in their PJs/undies/naked. If a Sim brings a friend home from work, they are in work clothes and NPC/Townie Sims are always in work clothes when they visit or are on Community/Downtown lots (I need to get the hack from MTS2 to nuke that).

I'm going to try running the game with the outfitplanner hack removed to see if it makes a difference, but somehow, I don't think this is the cause (although I'm willing to accept that it could be, as unlikely as it may appear). My question is, has anybody else experienced this? Is it a new game feature (very unlikely), a bug (possible), a glitch in my game requiring me to reinstall everything (yet again), or a known hack conflict?

Even though this problem is not a game-stopper, it's very annoying and any help would be appreciated.


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I came rather late to consoles - just 2 years ago when I bought a PS2, mainly so I could play SSX 3 and the Final Fantasy games. One of the games I took with my offer package was The Sims: Bustin Out. This was mainly because I had so many problems with bugs in The Sims that by the time I got to Unleashed things had got so bad as to make the game unplayable. But I missed my Sims, so I thought that a PS2 version would be OK because 'Playstations don't crash'. It's true! Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and X-2, Gran Tourismo 3, Buffy: Chaos Bleeds, SSX3 ... not a single crash. Sims: Bustin Out ... er ... OK, so Playstations CAN crash, but only when you try playing a Maxis game on them. Add to that, work buses going to the wrong part of the screen and merging with the school bus, objects becoming stuck and unusable (and with no boolprop or moveobjects that means game over) and Sims getting stuck. Now where have I seen stuff like this before - AND since? Over on the 'official site', I've had the entire gamut of excuses as to why it was my fault and not the fault of shoddy programming from Maxis: 'It's your Playstation.', 'It's a faulty disk.', 'It's your personal hygiene.'. OK, so not the last one, but it might as well of been there as it's as good a lame excuse as all the others.

So, The Sims 2 on consoles might be really great, but having been burned so many times by Maxis, I'll not buy any of them for any format other than PC. My PS2 is for SSX (On Tour should arrive with the postie tomorrow morning) and Final Fantasy. As these two franchises move to the PS3 I'll buy that machine too and continue my relationship with those games on consoles. The Sims 2 is far too big a game to play on consoles and too many things can go wrong with it. Maxis are not keen enough on getting things right or putting them right. The game might be great, but it has to be on a platform where modders can sort out the bugs that Maxis can't be bothered to sort out, and that means the humble PC.

What I can't understand, is why anyone who uses this forum - knowing how shoddy Maxis's programming is - would be fool enough to even consider buying a console version of a game that is almost 100% certain to be buggy? Buggy AND limited in it's gameplay and options.

Thanks for all the replies folks.

Time for me to install the new version of Clean Pac Installer me thinks.

After reading the posts, I checked my downloads folder and found that I have Inteenimator on my PC. I have InSIMinator, but had passed on Inteenimator. So I guess it came with something else I downloaded. Serves me right for not being more careful. I was wondering why my teen Sims had so many more 'options' available to them. Now I know what it is and how to resolve the problem, I'll keep it in for a while and 'experiment'.

Thanks again peeps!

So there's this Independent Teens feature in Nightlife. I've encountered it twice now - once with the Broke family and now with the Williams family (obviously, one of my own created families).

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that this is completely pointless?

There is no warning that this is going to happen and there's nothing about in the Nightlife pamphlet ... er, sorry, I mean 'manual'. One day my teenage Sim is happily going to school while the family try to build up enough cooking skill and pretty objects to impress the private school headmaster, and the next day, the teen can't board the school bus or drive to school any more. Now my teen has to stay at home getting bored because she's the only person at home and her social motive is dropping. By the time everyone else gets home, she so tired that she just wants to go to bed, so she still doesn't get the chance to talk to anyone. She can't spend time with her friends because guess what they're doing? Yep! They're all at school. She can't get a full-time job, so she just does housework. OK, so she could clear off to college, but that means that her teenage life drop to eight days!

I have tried using various things to remedy this situation, but the only one that seems to work is the InSIMinator's aging tool. But that sets the teen back to the start of that life stage, and she's suddenly younger that her brothers and sisters.

Does have any one have any information on what this stage of the teenage period is supposed to be about?

And JM ... when you eventually get hold of a copy of Nightlife and set to tinkering about with the mechanics, could you PLEASE make a little something that cancels this out and lets my teen Sims stay at school? Pretty please?

Interesting that this happens to Nervous. I haven't played in Strangetown for ages, but I have encountered a simillar problem in Pleasantview with Dustin and Angela. He invites her for a date and as soon as they arrive Downtown, the date meter pops up, but then cancels out and Angela walks off the lot. If I have Dustin hang around Downtown, Angela sometimes turns up as a wandering visitor to the lot. Dustin can interact with her just fine, until he asks her to make it a date and the same thing happens again, but this time I get the score for the start of a date.

I've been told that this is a glitch in the EP, and unless it's been fixed by that thing in the patch that prevents Dustin from continually bringing Angela home with him (although he hasn't brought her home once since I installed NL), I guess we're stuck with the problem.

Back to Nervous though ... the only time I played him, I noticed that he has no stats whatsoever. Maybe that is the problem and his GF finds him absolutely dull as a date. OK, so that sounds like I'm applying intelligence to Sims, but what I mean is, maybe there's something in the game code that makes Sims reject other Sims with no/low personality when they enter the date scenario? And poor old Nervous - being a Maxis-made Sim with altered game parameters (like Dustin) - can never go on a date without it ending in misery. It wouldn't surprise me one bit as Maxis are notorious for overlooking things like this.

One last thing ... did you make his girlfriend? Any chance of posting her on the MTS2 site as a downloadable Sim?