I was thinking to myself, "Hey, this looks like my local college town bar, but without the puking freshmen," and then I noticed the fishtank. Well played.

We are very proud to announce the beta of TSR Merlin. This will soon be your best friend when it comes to Custom Content and The Sims 3.

This tool lets you quickly and easily install custom content, mods and other creations in both .sims3pack and .package formats for The Sims 3. You can just as easily uninstall the same content through Merlin's easy to use Download Management facility.

To make installation safer you have the option to view the content of a file before you install it, giving you complete control over what you install into your game.

Points of note:

    * It's very fast. Installing/uninstalling a .sims3package file takes seconds instead of up to a minute with the Sims 3 Launcher.
    * Supports both Mac and PC. Since Merlin is written in Java it supports both platforms, making sure noone is left behind. You will need the latest framework of Java available here: http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp.
    * Full preview of the content. You will see all contents of a package including images and every file included, making it easy to decide whether to install it into your game or not.
    * Keeping your downloads organized. With the Download Management facility you have full control over the content installed into your game.
    * On the first run the required framework for installing and using .package files is automatically completed, making sure all you need to worry about is what content to install or not.

Post beta feedback, questions and requests in our Merlin forums here: http://forums.thesimsresource.com/forumdisplay.php?f=690

Coming soon:

    * Detailed information about installed content types, such as a Sim's traits, an object's behavior, a clothing type's age groups etc.
    * An icon in Downloads Management that indicates whether a file has been installed or not.
    * The possibility to install files using the right click option on a file.

Download the tool from here and read installation instructions here. Enjoy!

Credits: Jfade for development and Echo for letting us use her libraries.

That's what I thought too, but when I went to edit the school (didn't actually make any changes, just entered the Build/Buy mode from Edit Town) they were still stuck when I restarted the game. It was well into the night at this point (over 8 or 9 hours stuck). That's when I switched to my other lot and got the Invisi-Sim/Flagrant System Error... at that point I figured I would just shut it down until I figured out what was wrong with it. I forgot to save a separate copy of the broken file, though.  I reloaded it today from the previous save file and everything seems okay so far, but I've only played for a few minutes.

It's so creepy - I can identify four kids in there, including poor little Mortimer Goth's shoes!

I'm pretty sure the hair is by Peggy, and you can find it packaged free and non-replacement over at Garden of Shadows.

New bizarre bug: when I switched to the Crumplebottom household and found Agnes, she had become some sort of two-faced monstrosity...



After allowing the game to run for a second or so, she changed back to normal. I suppose that makes this more amusing than distressing.


EDIT: And then, to make things more disturbing, I got this:


It seems that all the schoolkids, instead of going home like they should, stood in the exact same place outside the school and merged with each other. Every time a new kid would come out, he would walk straight into the pile and mush with them. I'm in control of the top two on the pile, but they won't obey instructions to "go here" or "go home".

Could it be that they were intended to function, but some sloppy programmer borked the code? I've heard about other remnants of code that exist but for whatever reason don't function (can't think of one off the top of my head, will edit if I remember) - I've no idea how hard it would be to find the candle object in the XML and see if there are any properties associated with it.

I don't suppose the doctor can tell if your sim is having twins? I've never had one in my game.

I assume it's probably necessary to have the bubble bath set out on the tub to get the moodlet, right? May as well toss a rubber duckie on there while you're at it, since tubs can hold two objects.

Oh noes! I was rather annoyed when I saw the latest EA patch removed the option to make beautiful spawn with Grimmie.  I have downloaded a family containing a Grim Reaper, and had intended to have some Baby Grims before patching, but unfortunately the game and AwesomeMod refused to load properly and made me patch.

Has anyone tried making Grimspawn with downloaded Grims? I am hoping that, since he is a Sim living in the neighborhood and not an NPC grim, my newly patched game will still allow babies.

EDIT:
Loaded my downloaded Grim into the game and found him a lady. I was able to get them to Try for Baby - with any luck it will carry his skintone! Although, isn't one of the features of AwesomeMod a skintone blend, rather than a striaght 50/50 shot of the mother's or father's skintone being passed on? I suppose I'll have to wait and find out. 

Much to my amusement, when Grimmie and his date popped out of bed, I got a glimpse of him without his robe - he's actually rather fetching, if you scroll up close and see his face.

No more reaper spawn! I wonder if any of the families that had the shadow larvae have been uploaded. Also, I am absolutely dumbfounded by the sheer length of this list of things they failed to fix before releasing the game... and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

You know why else fireplaces suck? For some reason, at least on the one I was trying to customize, they rotate the patterns. This means that when I was trying to make a simple brick fireplace, all the brick patterns wound up vertical, which looks really stupid.  Anyone know how to avoid this short of making new patterns?

I've found that Sims recognize up to first cousins, aunts and uncles. I believe the game matched up a pair of my Legacy outcasts who were second or third cousins at one point.

I'm almost positive I've harvested fruit from the correct type of plant after rolling the want, and still not achieved it. I'm thinking perhaps that you have to plant an entirely new seed after rolling the want and wait for it to mature and bear fruit.  I'm also not sure if the want will accept qualities better than it asks for, or if you have to get the quality exactly right.

I find sims with the flirty trait can be coerced into making out/woohooing/trying for babies without any kind of romantic attachment forming, at a level barely above friendship. Just have them lie on a bed and initiate the interaction from there.

I had a file that threw Error 12s and 13s at me at perhaps 15 consecutive saving attempts. I finally gave up and started over from the backup file, which had been saved a few hours before. I was able to play just fine for a while longer (keeping track of the save file sizes, I had since passed the size at which I got the error before), but the next day started to get the exact same error again, when the save file size was perhaps twice what it had been when it had the problem originally. I've tried the Edit Town trick, as well as deleting the .BAD save files, neither of which has worked for me even once.

I suppose what I'm trying to say in a nutshell is that just because the problem seems to have vanished doesn't mean that it won't pop up again, at least from my experience.

Whenever my sims have an overnight visit, I find it's acceptable for them to shower anytime after they are granted permission to stay over until the visit ends - if I have a sim wake up at 6 am and shower, for example, that is usually fine. I have had some issues with the hosting sim evidently deciding my sim has overstayed his welcome rather early in the morning, and I was wondering if it had anything to do with the time the host is due at work. The game might be "ending the visit" without bothering to notify you in order to give the host ample time to shower, etc before heading off to work.

YES. The stupid toddlers in my legacy family are always going outside, and since the mother just popped out freaking triplets, I often wind up with the following scenario:
Mom picks up toddler #1, walks towards door.
Dad picks up toddler #2, walks towards door.
Toddler #3, for whatever reason, decides to plant his lazy ass right in front of the door.
Instead of stepping over him, Mom and Dad instead decide to collide with each other and Toddler #3, and by the time they sort themselves out the toddlers have all crapped themselves and are in too bad a mood to learn anything anyway.

EDIT: Here we have a classic. Dad comes home from work, moves to take toddler upstairs for bedtime. Toddler psychically senses he is going to be moved, and starts to crawl outside. Dad and toddler stare idiotically at each other across the one-tile door for as long as I allow. The maid looks on, disgusted.

Have you tried switching to that family and double-clicking on the picture of the baby in the family list? I seem to have a strange glitch in my game where babies in some families occasionally don't show up in that list when the family is active (thus far it has only happened to larvae I haven't bothered to buy cribs for, since they don't belong to my Legacy family), but reappear when I switch back to that family later. I'd wait a sim day or two and try making that family active again, and see if the baby is there then.

That sounds like a glitch to me - I've played through four generations of my Legacy family with 'Lucky' as the family trait, and never had anything like that happen.

Mind posting pictures of the older version?