Well, it's been practically a year since I've posted here, but some beds are still more equal than others. Four posts good, no posts better and all as such.

I've updated this mod. I found that it didn't work too well with Ambitions as-is, and slow-sleep tents and beds really ruined my shit.

Install to wherever you use. Same energy deltas as before (1.5). Compatible with HELS, WA, AMB, and storeshit beds. Can't get any storeshit beds to work on my second installation of the game, so I'm only assuming that what was true a year ago will still be true now. For those that don't know what the hell I'm talking about here, this mod makes all beds grant the same energy gain without mucking about with their comfort and buffs/debuffs granted.

For anyone that used my billing mod (lump-sum payments and increases), that still works without any changes.

For those in the know, I had an older topic for this but wasn't sure if a necro-bump was better than a new post for an updated mod. Topic deletion for this topic or the other one would help settle that for me.

The story driver is automatically included with AwesomeMod, it is used automatically with the proper configuration, and this is laid out rather obvious-like with the config tool provided in the mod's topic.

As far as what it does, I'm not entirely sure and I haven't bothered checking, but I'd guess it's more Awesome™ than anything EAxis had to offer.

I don't know as that's the debate here; as far as I can tell it more has to do with EA withholding a procedural obvious-to-include feature to charge money for later, rather than the morality of them doing this. I think it's crap that they've axed pianos, hot tubs, and weather - of which the first two were just kinda implied by previous games, and the last one would have just been nice to not have to pay ~$30 for, especially since they've already got the base work down for it.

It's not immoral or horrible or anything, it's just stupid and disappointing and likely points to some kind of pathetic flaw in the human race, that we're content to keep waiting and paying for things that have already been done, even though a nicer alternative would be including the old stuff from the start and then, I don't know, adding legitimately new things to the series.

Plus, games don't necessarily die when official support for them falls out; a lot of the games I've played tend to have some overtly fanatical fans lying about in some country making half-bad/half-good unofficial patches and expansions for them. If a game does die, well, either it was simply too complicated for fans to sufficiently support, or it obviously wasn't worth keeping alive if nobody wanted to bother.

You have the option to use the Indie Stone settings enabled with the AwesomeMod config, ja?  I haven't had any problems like this yet with my game, running both Indie and Awesome though admittedly I haven't been using Indie all too terribly long.

No.

Also, quick meals are unmodded.  If they're taking longer, something has gone wrong in O-town, since I intentionally tried not to touch them.

Yeah, it seems they've really rather decreased the amount of relationship gain from mealtalking.  I haven't studied it much but it seems less than chatting, which it was effectively the equivalent of in TS2.

I wouldn't P&L about that reason, but the fact that the game was shipped so depressingly unpolished, the sole reason for the delay to build up hype for the next installment in one of the most popular video games in the world, general quality drop when juxtaposed against TS2, etc...

I can't really speak on the comparisons of the launcher, I never ever touched it with my eyepatch'd tryout and my feelings on my using the launcher to install store items can be summed up "shit sux".  I don't know if my downloads were borked or if it was just launcher failboating, but some items just utterly failed to install.

I had to uninstall and reinstall the game to get the patch to work in my retail/RLD edition, and this did seem to fix my launcher issues (files that weren't installing would actually install).  It could just be voodoo, though.

Weird, I'd never received any junk mail with the bills the fambly got when I was testing it with it on (I'd had it on 1, of course).

Oh, good.  I was looking for a way to incorporate that into this but couldn't figure it out.

As far as I can tell, it's obsolete or completely boring.  In one week of game time, nothing happened when I changed the value.

Hm, I'd no idea there were so many gem cuts.  How atrocious some of those values are, I'm totally going to "de-skill" that.  You should only have to cut gems multiple times to get more cut varieties if you are A) in a mummorpuger, or B) cutting the gems yourself.  Since you're mailing them off to get cut I find the latter rather doubtful, but given the development team's history, point A seems a bit likely.

I'd like to do this as well, since even though I made this mod, I usually tend to have sims expunge filth and then shower.  I've just been axing the autoqueued washing, since I don't know if there's a way to prescribe the whole "passive autonomous actions get baleeted by manually queued actions" quality to anything.

And I use the paper towels on the doors/knobx, because I tend to wear whatever's on me that's got sleeves.

But jolrei, bathrooms are pure, holy creatures - like trains.  Sims should do little else but spend their time in the bathrooms.

It is asinine that sims don't actually animate out of cars anymore - even without watching a vehicle I'd figured something was going to be wrong with the "go ahead and put them anywhere" driveways.  Pretense is for things that do not at present exist, and while there might not be a "get out of your car" or "pull into the driveway" animation, there is a hand washing animation.

I've been looking into a way to increase autonomy of this but I've honestly got no idea, the only mod I've made for it so far made the game stupid.

Washing hands bumps the hygiene bar up a bit, so it's pretty dandy for dirt defiant sims (and not that bad for other varieties).  Sinks can get pretty respectable hygiene ratings now, though the animation is short.

I tend to have them shower after utilising toilets, but I can't yet figure out a way to make an enqueued shower override hand washing (a la twojeff's hand washing mod for TS2).

I'd figured this was the case but hoped against hope that the mummopugoid TS3 would at least try to take into account favourite foods.  Would there be a way to make it promote the "that was pretty nice food +10" buff one tier and kick the clapping?

This might have some merit, but as far as I know it's mainly because tap water has more bacteria in it.  Drying your hands off sort of helps sop them off.  I used to be a science teacheroid and used to do a hand washing lesson, we'd use agar plates and test no soap vs. with soap.  Soap with drying had the least, of course, but drying hands still reduced manual bacterial load considerably if you were just rubbing your hands together under the tap.

So it's best to just stick with making the same food over and over again to gain quality EXP?  Does "favourite" do anything but make them clap while eating?

I figured that about the enfattenation but didn't know for sure, so... yeah.

... Gott im Himmel, I need to pay more attention when playing male sims.  Do they, really?

And washing hands after every use means that they have the neat trait, unless you're using this mod.  Then it just means they are not a slob.

That is true, but acting on it is, of course, contingent on wanting to be that anally retentive.  I'd rather just put the toilet in its on little toilet room.  Washing hands is just a generally good idea for a lot of things, though antibacterials are of questionable long-term merit.

If only a truly anally retentive version were possible - lid down prior to flushing in addition to hand washing.  Then and only then could sims be truly clean.

It's more a matter of proximity and medium than anything else, as well as basic good hygiene.  If you don't want the mod, that's fine, you don't have to use the mod.

Oh, urine is one thing - urine is sterile, urine is warm, urine is pungent, but pretty much every sim sits down on the toilet.  Admittedly there is no wiping, but it is implied.

Of course!  Slobs are filthy, unclean creatures, not destined at all for the holy land of not dying of easily stopped diseases.

Perhaps something is wrong with me, but I'm not neat by nature and sims not washing their hands after using the toilet just squicks me out.  Yes, expunge filth from your bowls and go on to stick your hands in your mouth.  Great job.

No toilet geniuses!  Plunging a toilet should not be great learnings for mechanical skill!  It is putting a rubber dome which is attached to a stick into a bowl of filthy water and pressing up and down again!  I have plunged many toilets!  I do not pretend I know how to fix a dishwasher cos I've plunged a toilet twenty times.  This mod decreases mechanical skill point gain from plunging toilets, decreases time it takes to plunge toilets (10 unskilled, 5 with >1 skill point), and both makes the game bother you about replacing the terlets later (50% rather than 15% breakability rating) and decreases the likelihood of most terlets breaking ("break" delta decreased from 2 and up to 1 for all terlets, starting values very slightly lowered). No toilets but the one unbreakable one are made unbreakable.

Installing these should be obvious now, so... yeah. The two mods are compatible with each other, should be compatible with my other mods (I'll be very confused if toilets mess with eating or sleeping) and Awesomeware.  They will probably not be compatible with other toilet mods, if there are any.

Interesting, thank'ee - I'd managed to extract all the cooking files but got a bit fed up with looking through them for specifics.  My faster cooking mod is for stoves only, I have yet to add barbecue functionality but I will eventually.  Stove cooking was noticeably faster with my mod in and accurate enough for my tastes - I spend more time chopping, mixing, and preparing than I do cooking, for the most part.

Sims should not enfattenate with my slower eating mod cos I've accounted for hunger per bite in each iteration, assuming that has anything to do with weight gain in this game.

I'll get to actually play testing my mod now and adding polish where needed.

What we have here are two mods, one of which I've just thrown together (it should mathematically work) and another which I've tested and can say that it does, in fact, seem to work.

The untested one is slower eating (increased the bites per meal, lowered hunger per bite to make sitting and eating MANDATORY you GOBBLING DOGS), increased chance of autonomous cooking of favourite foods (I can make any food, and I love fish and chips!  I'm going to make hot dogs for dinner!), and slightly increased the chance of people doing their fucking dishes after eating.

Slower eating (with moar talk, autofavourites, and dishdoing) comes in four exciting flavours, ranging from 2x to 5x (30 bpm to 75 bpm).  There can only be one.  I've corrected for hunger values, my target was 200 (since the XML said that and I am so smart and intelligent), but now I've corrected it to the normal ~120 range.

The other is faster cooking speeds.  It also improves the food quality tinkering improvement a bit cos I like even numbers (1.5->2.0) and because I can.  I will add a variety of unimproved improvement when I am able to.  Now you CAN haz faster food preparation - halfsies only, that's as low as I'm willing to go.  Want it?  Redownload.

I forgot to make RTFMs for these, but if you don't know where to put them by now, you frankly do not deserve to use them.  They should be compatible with Awesomeware and my other hacks, but will quite likely NOT be compatible with the other cooking/eating time mods floating around.

I'm looking into the former right now and am having a bit of trouble figuring out where the hell the values for foods are kept.  Food names in the gameplaydata just seem to include cooking animation specifics, and all I've found thus far is eating from your hand and eating from a can.  There doesn't seem to be anything for plate/tray/surface that I've found yet.

As for the latter, seconded.

Addendum: eureka!  How long are we hoping for?  Twice as long?  Three times as long?