No, I used the default installation, the folders are all where they ought to be, and the game runs just fine on its own. I can play, and I can build worlds, but I can't build lots in the new world in-game. It's weird.

I have a new computer and just this weekend I installed the base game, Ambitions, all the patches (using the MTS patch updater, not the launcher) and CAW. I have been using CAW just fine, but when I tried editing in game, I got this message.

"Unable to find installed version of The Sims 3 base game"

Googling provides no answer, neither does a search of either MATY or MTS, unless I've been using the wrong search terms.

I suspect this might have something to do with not having EADM. I thought about the launcher, but I have it, I just don't run it. Any ideas about how to fix this would be most welcome.

Isn't that the same as the "screw debugging, let's get coffee" school of thought?

The pink-hearted "first lurve" moodlet shows a two-day time period when it first appears on my teens. However, I'm pretty sure I've never seen it actually last two days. I thought I was imagining it, but yesterday I double-checked. My 12 confessed his lust to an ugly girl on Friday night, and sometime Saturday afternoon he was pink-heartless. This is very annoying, and I can't imagine what he might have done to piss of Michael Bachelor's uglyface granddaughter that much. It's not like he flirted with anyone else  or anything.

My other long-term moodlets have never suddenly disappeared. Death, ambrosia, LTW and spa moodlets count down as normal. It's only the first love that vanishes when I'm looking the other way.

Sadly, the base game file gives me a "header corrupted" error when I try to open the zip.

Damn. I was hoping since they included that option, it might be, you know, actually useful. Apparently it's just random clutter though.

So. I have completed the Jack of All Trades LTW once, but it was the stupid way around. It can be done if you choose career tracks that have sufficiently similar skill-sets, thereby cutting back on skilling time. However, it is obviously more efficient to utilize the game function that generates opportunities to switch from one mid-level job to another one in a different career track. I have encountered this opportunity a few times, but I never had the foresight to jot down what the source and target careers were, and at what level.

All I remember for certain is that someone in the military track got an offer to switch to (I think) the athletic track. I also know that the switch offers tend to center on similar careers: science/medicine, business/politics etc. The career level of the offer tends to be between 4 and 6 for both tracks.

If anyone remembers the specifics of such an offer, post here. I will edit this post to compile the list. Unless you think this is monumentally stupid, in which case delete it and pretend this never happened.

I patched my game to 1.7 something and one of saved games has been emptied of books. All the books are gone from the bookshelves in the active household as well as the library. Is there a hack/cheat/code that attempts to restore lost books, or am I imagining things again?

The official forum is not a good source for this sort of thing.

My game just will not behave itself. At first I just thought I'd fallen on a crop of incompetent babysitters, as many of them are. Once I'd selected the toddler in question, though, I noticed that "pick up" actions were being queued and dropped. Several of them in a row were dropped before the sitter finally gave up. My game is patched to 1.7.9 and my AwesomeMod is updated. I tried testing it on a mod-light environment, but if it's being caused by a mod I can't find it. Controllables have no difficulty interacting with babies or toddlers, it's only NPCs.

Has anyone encountered this? I'm inclined to think it's a patch bug, but I've only just installed the patch, and I haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else. Of course, it's possible that everyone but me has utterly despaired of the babysitters.

For the record, cleaning the computer did reduce overheating dramatically, but the culprit is some CC, I'm not certain which. I'm still in the process of isolating the problem, but once I went down to the basic mods I could play for an hour or so with no problem.

AM story mode has been rapidly increasing the procreation in my neighborhood, but this is at least the second generation, and it never crashed this often before. The lot is pretty big, but the house is not so huge, and again, this is at least the second generation that's lived in the biggest lot.


Desktop crash. I click something, suddenly I'm looking at Firefox, no error message or anything.

Whenever my computer gives me trouble, I put my hand on it to feel how overheated it is. This time it just wasn't that warm. I preemptively closed a bunch of background processes. Still, getting it cleaned is the A-plan, I think.

My game has been crashing a lot lately. At one point it crashed only when I hadn't saved in a while, so I started saving frequently. Then it started crashing when I tried to edit a sim's clothing in CAS through the dresser. I removed a few mods (pregnancy morph, and the NRAAS computer) and tried again. I was going okay for about fifteen minutes, I managed to edit a sim's appearance, and then I got a crash when I tried zooming out. Other than AM, I only have the gym buff and no intro mods, and some non-mod CC, mostly stuff that's been in there a while.

My computer might be borked, but usually when it gives me trouble it's because it overheated, and it's fine now. Any ideas?

What about using non-optimal cuts to unlock the more expensive cuts?

What reasons have you encountered for a non-controllable rejecting a controllable's flirt, compliment, and other low level romantic interactions? Other than low relationship scores, I've found that various social traits make sims very difficult. I'm not sure if contradictory traits will cause the same effect. My latest rejection stems, I think, from the Hot-Headed trait, even though it's not in the description. I can't think of another reason for this specific pair. Sims with partners will usually reject flirtations, unless they have some interesting trait like Evil or Mean-Spirited. Then they cheat with gusto.

Even with the best lighting, you wouldn't be able to see the difference between 100-55-75 and 101-56-76 with the naked eye. I meant 16 million from an arithmetic perspective, for the logical engine of calculating inheritance. And I have not noticed that TS3 is noticeably "browner" than TS2.

Basically, they sacrificed the more complex genetic engine (though still much simpler than realistic inheritance, which isn't perfectly understood) for more design options? Because the ability to choose any RGB value for hair and eyes, and almost any for skin, does make designing the logic of a genetics system more complicated, not to mention implementing it. I mean, they've gone up from 4-5 color options to, what, 16 million or thereabouts?

Are death flowers always perfect? My observation has been that they are, and I assumed this was because they're not ingredients and can't change the quality of food, but my sample size is pretty small.

I think you mean indulge, not divulge. Besides, there's plenty of the game's fanbase that don't like the supernatural aspect and don't play with it. EA could have easily been listening to them instead of the people who like their Servo-vampire-werewolf-witch sims.

I've found that sims drown easily after working out to exhaustion, and are usually too stupid to make for the ladder once they float the "Drowning" moodlet. The loss of killer ghosts is saddening. What I would have liked is if there was an easy interaction to toggle ghosts' homicidal urges. It's my second most wanted mod, after the genetic donation baby incubator.

I had a child roll Astronaut, which was probably because of the telescope as mentioned above. Then again, he also had the Good trait which is meant to bring up law enforcement/military careers.

The pee interests me only as a metric of lowering of needs to the point of fatality. There goes my fatal ghost apocalypse.

I've had limited experience with ghosts in TS3, for whatever reason. So far, I've only queue-dropped a "see ghost" interaction from a sim's queue a couple of times, since homebound ghosts seem to wake up after my sims' bedtime, or whatnot. The cemetery ghosts have been oddly quiet. As such, I haven't seen a ghost scare yet, and certainly not a malicious, needs-dropping, pee-in-your-pants, virtually lethal ones, like the kind that made TS2 so interesting.

Is it safe to assume that, like violent raging jealousy, the deadly ghosts have been vanillified? Has anyone witnessed a killer ghost? Had a sim die from ghost scare? Is there any hint of such a possibility in the game's package files?

I was thinking the apocalypse challenge, actually. I've been compiling a list of most useful traits for apocalypse sims. Inappropriate unlocks the sponge bath interaction with no hygiene limitation, but so far I haven't seen any autonomous sponge bathing. Unlucky is good for broken appliance insurance, if the business career continues to restrict service sims (since business is hardly a priority). Ambitious and/or workaholic, obviously.

Police brutality?

Yes, yes, I know. You probably meant the other thing.