I just keep all my neighborhood templates in a safe folder on my computer and when I want a fresh neighborhood, I copy the template I want to use, changing the name to the new town name, into my Saves folder where all the neighborhood saves end up. I don't think you can replace the original drop down neighborhoods (nor may you want to either).

My bad. Yes I did turn off Robotic Hand of God. I didn't realize that was what paid the bills. I needed to turn it off because it kept cleaning up the dinner before anyone got a chance to eat it. It's okay though because I do get the message to pay my bills and can click it and have never had the repo man show up unexpectedly. Thanks for setting me straight J.M.!

Knock on wood...everything is working pretty well in my game. I update AM religiously, so no problems there except one little thing. I noticed that suddenly bills aren't payed automatically and I have unified billing enabled. I get the pop up that the bills are due and can click to pay them immediately which is fine but I thought they were supposed to be paid automatically. Did this get changed? No problem if it did as long as I still get notified. Just wondering. 

Yes I can now, now that I know what happens. I have to admit my anticipation was a little more exciting. I guess even Pescado couldn't make someone's computer really turn into a BFBVFS. Bummer.   

Yes I forgot to state that I cleared my cache before every restart. I always do that on a normal basis anyways.

I FINALLY solved the mystery of the missing school bus (at least in my game)! 

At your suggestion that Twallan's career mod was at fault (although I have the most current version), I removed all of Twallan's mods that I had and started a fresh Riverview and chose the Brokes to play (since they have children).  Result - no school bus still.  I then also removed AM and restarted again. Result - still no school bus. I was beginning to think school buses were lies and propaganda.

So next I removed all my CC and restarted again. Lo and behold, it was a school bus!! The first I have seen in TS3!

Now I had to find the problem, so I put everything back in and removed all the mods except Twallan's and AM. Result - no school bus. WTF!

So back in went the Hacks folder and out came the Misc which contains only objects (vehicles, furniture, paintings, plants, etc.). Once again I loaded up the Brokes and was I shocked when the school bus actually showed up. I couldn't think what object would stop the school bus from coming. After analyzing what was in the folder, I decided that when I downloaded all the community vehicles that someone on MTS had unlocked, the school bus must be the problem. I removed just that file and when I reloaded the Brokes, I got the school bus! Mystery solved! 

Sorry J.M., I'm really beginning to feel like a tard, but I can use Supreme Commander and set households to Sacred, so wouldn't that mean the AM is running? I didn't try moving anyone else out again (as I don't have anyone to move out). I may switch households just to give it a try later after work. I just am really thinking this neighborhood is borked since it is the one I have posted about with no busses, screwed up relationship panels, etc. The only thing is that the sim I am trying to follow has had an interesting life thus far and I wanted to see it played out. So for now I am just dealing until this neighborhood drives me insane enough and I move on. (Unfortunately...or fortunately?...I have a high tolerance for insanity!  )

Hey Sita...I applaud your bravery but I'm not sure how anyone expects one to get answers if one never asks questions, correct?

I just thought I'd let you know that I too am running service pack 3 with no problems. You can open your resource.cfg file with notepad and it should look as follows:

Priority 500
PackedFile Mods/Packages/*.package
PackedFile Mods/Packages/*/*.package
PackedFile Mods/Packages/*/*/*.package
PackedFile Mods/Packages/*/*/*/*.package
PackedFile Mods/Packages/*/*/*/*/*.package

If not you should download a new one. This is the resource.cfg in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 (or whatever your directory is). Then you should be able to put hacks in the hack folder if you like. I put AM directly in the Packages folder, I have a folder called NRaas for Twallan's cool stuff and all my other mods are in the Hacks folder. I have subfolders in my Misc, Build, and Skins folders and everything works great.

Hope something here might help.

Wizard and JM - I appreciate your explanations and I know that is how it is SUPPOSED to work. Obviously I have something borked in my game (I'm thinking in this neighborhood). When I try to move one single sim out and BEFORE I select either Kick out, House or Empty lot, the screen already shows the sim moving out with all the family funds and the rest of the family with nothing. So I have something messing with AM to screw up your money split. It was working fine and now it isn't (at least in this neighborhood). One occurrence, the sim would be taking the whole $253,000 simoleans the family had and I tried to move her into a $48,000 house which I know has 4 beds and 2 cribs. The only way it would work is if I made her the active family. This would be fine and then I would switch back to the original family and use the money cheat to correct both household funds except she then has everything that was in the family inventory (paintings, gems, etc) that I wanted the original family to keep. I may just have to give up and start a new neighborhood because I think this one got screwed up a long time ago.

I was getting Flagrant System Errors this weekend as well although I was in a rather bad mood and didn't take any pictures. I got PO'd enough that I just mashed the keyboard until the message suddenly disappeared and my game resumed.  I'm not sure what key I hit that cleared the error but I couldn't click out of it because my message was too large as were others here. I was having the issue discussed in another thread with homeless families generating like rabbits and I was destroying them by bus loads. At any rate my game would continue fine so I didn't care. 

You don't know how hard I have to fight the dark side every time NOT to enable that just to see it happen but I've lurked here long enough to know better. 

That was my understanding as well. However the first set of 8 homeless families I destroyed had 5-7 members each. The following 2 sets tended to have only 1 or 2 members each. Don't know what's happening as this was new this weekend. 

Thanks snowbawl. I used to have houses without cribs but no one would use them so I assumed the homeless families had infants/toddlers. So I added at least one crib to every house except a couple. However the new homeless have new last names to the neighborhood, so they must be generated fresh and not moving out of their families houses. I just delete them and figure if a member of a neighborhood family disappears, then they "moved" out of town (in my mind's story anyways).

I beg to differ (and hope not to get eaten alive for doing so) but I got rid of Indiestone quite a while back. Yesterday I saw the first random death from starvation in my neighborhood. My sim was at the library when suddenly a townie clutched their stomach and dropped dead and along comes Mr. Grim. No matter to me as I didn't know this sim but a little annoying to say the least.


Also for the first time yesterday I had 8 homeless families on the list when I typed listhomeless. However every house in my neighborhood is occupied and I only have 2 empty lots to put houses on.  I tried to place a house to move a member of my family out to and it was snatched up immediately by a homeless. I have destroyed the homeless 3 times but new ones keep coming back. If my neighborhood is full, why is the game generating more families?


Lastly, do you not need the work pusher with AM? I have both but didn't realize that I didn't need the work pusher because AM would take care of matters.

While I'm asking questions here...I also have a problem with moving sims out of my house. As the teens become young adults, I want to move them out. However when I have them use their cell phone to move, the game gives the sim moving out all of the family funds and leaves nothing for the rest of the family and then it won't let me accept the move unless I make the sim moving out the active household. I want them out and to keep playing the rest of the family. Any thoughts?

Thanks ElviraGoth...I hadn't heard of the fixall cheat. I used that resetlot cheat at someone's suggestion and all the kids in my family started going to school again but still no bus. They all rode their bikes and then when teenagers and I assigned them cars, they drove those. However that cheat seemed to bork the relationships panel. When I click on the relationship panel, it doesn't necessarily show me the relationships for the active sim. When I click on family, sometimes the active sim is there and I can tell by who's missing, who's relationship panel it is. If I click back and forth between all and family it eventually shows me the panel for the active sim. Also every sim in the family seems to have lost many of the relationships they had but the last square in every family members panel is a solid red square with no relationship and can't be adjusted positive or negative.

Also "move out" is borked. As each teen becomes a young adult, I wanted them to move out so eventually I'm left with the one child I decided to actually continue on with. If I select "Kick out", the sim disappears and never shows up again. When I tell them to move on the phone, I get the usual screen but it wants to give the sim moving out ALL of the family funds leaving nothing for the rest of the family and I can't accept it unless I make the sim moving out the active household.

coconnor - I thought about saving the family to the bin and putting them in a restart but the story that was playing out was too good and I doubt I could "force" some of the things that have occurred autonomously. I also figured they would lose relationships, skills, etc. So I am suffering through since this was the first time ever in Sims I was trying to play through several generations. It's frustrating at times but I' managing.

Yes this did occur in Riverview. I have yet to play a family in Sunset Valley so I don't know about the school bus there. I have not seen a school bus in TS3 yet at all. I reset the lot I was playing on and now all the kids go to school but for the first week or so (sim time) I had to direct each one individually to go. Then suddenly they started going on their own but still riding their bikes. I get a message for each one that the bus is coming but alas...no bus. 

Also their relationship panels are a little borked since I reset the lot. Every member of the family had only a few individuals showing in relationships and every one of them showed  the last relationship as a big red square. I use AM with debug on and can raise and lower relationships but not on this red square. Don't have a clue what that's about.

I will eventually try a family in Sunset Valley just to see if a bus actually does show up but haven't gotten to it yet.

Sandman - I had this problem once upon a time and like coconnor suggested, I updated but it didn't solve the problem. I then removed all mods (hacks) except AM and the game ran fine. It took a little time but I kept adding back the mods in groups until I narrowed down which one was giving me the problem and got rid of it. I think it was an ITcareer hack but I'm not sure. It's been a little while now.

Hope this helps if updating didn't.

It's my understanding that AM only removes the blur in certain situations. That's how it worked on my computer. I use the "no mosaic" mod (I got it at MTS) to always remove the blur. Also I think you need another mod to actually have interactions between teens and young adults, setting it in AM just allows the other mods to work.

That's my understanding. Throw knives and correct if I'm wrong.

Unfortunately we all have to be sheeples to a certain degree. Until someone else comes out with a game that rivals The Sims but it's worth playing in base form, we have to stick with what we can get. Fortunately we have geniuses like Pescado to make it a playable game and all the creators who make awesome creations so we can ignore the fugly EA crap. If there is another game out there, please direct me to it! Otherwise we have to take the base game and make something of it.

Therefore I still insist that EA doesn't care because they don't have to (until they get some competition....Pescado??)


All hail...King Pescado! I definitely agree. That is the way the company I work for is run.

I searched for this topic because I swear I read about before but came up with nothing, so here goes...

I have a family that had 4 toddlers and a baby. When the first toddler aged up, he went to the school on the other side of town but about 25 children/teens stand outside and don't go in. I had read somewhere that you can create a lot with a second school and the children will go to the closest school to their home. So I made a new school lot (and it does show as a school with the option to take a painting class) at the end of their road so they have to pass it to go anywhere. The first child still goes across town to school. When the next 3 aged up (twin girls and a boy) they went to the new school. However only those 3 are there and they stand outside the school and keep cancelling going to school from their queue. It shows they are skipping school and after a couple days their grades are dropping. I keep telling them to go to school but it keeps cancelling out of their queue. So I decided to delete the new school from the neighborhood and make them all go to the original school. Now the oldest continues to go there and the other 3 don't go to school at all. As fast as I click "go to school" it drops from their queue. They are all down to a "D" for grade and I'm afraid the social worker will come get them. What can I do about this?

Also I get the message that the bus is coming in an hour, but I have yet to see a school bus in the game ever. Is there one? All my kids always ride bikes to school, no matter how far it is. I only get the message about the bus for the oldest boy who will actually go to school still.

I am using Awesomemod and Awesome Story Mode. I have other mods but I haven't added anything new since school working fine for one family and being screwed up for this family.

Any suggestions would be appreciated or any leads to a forum with the answer.

Not to play devil's advocate or anything (although that is my job title where I work in RL  ), I don't think EA "cut" anything from the base game. They know damn well what EPs they plan to make and they merely "set up" as much stuff in the base game as possible to prepare for it. They're in it for the money and they'll get every cent they can. If anyone ever thought they were in it for the game or the players, they need their heads checked. Get real. If they cared about the game or the players, they would be listening to all the forums on all the sites and none of the mods would even be necessary.

Yes I have played all the Sim games but I never used (nor heard of) Macrotastics. I guess I understand what it will do. Is it true what I read that if you turn SC on, it can't be turned off?


Is chosen the same as sacred?

Okay I'm going to risk being sent to Retardo Land which is where I thought of posting this but was afraid no one would answer.

I have decided to try using Awesome Story Mode but have a few questions.

1. What exactly does "nuke" do? Kill everyone? Clear junk?

2. Is there anywhere that explains how Supreme Commander works?

3. What does therapture do exactly?

I have searched for these and found many discussions about them but no real explanation or answer. I appreciate any "awesome" help I can get.

I keep seeing where Snob is the trait that supposedly makes sims want to "gussy up" and "check self out" but I have not used Snob yet and I had a sim you wanted to do these all the time. If given free will, he was in front of a mirror. As a matter of fact, he went from room to room to check himself out in every mirror in the house. Finally I used droptrait on the Flirty trait and he stopped.

I am not currently playing Awesome Story Mode but am trying to keep up with issues on it in case I do. This crib thing is one issue I would have.

My simple question is this...why the obsession with cribs? My son's friend and his girlfriend and baby lived in my house for several months (as opposed to both their parents allowing them to be homeless) and there was no crib. No one could afford one, so the baby slept on a small mattress next to his parents bed which was also a mattress on the floor.  Shit happens, the economy sucks, and people can't afford things like full bed frames and cribs but life goes on as does procreation apparently.