I don't have any packs past Seasons. The game wasn't saved so I'll take out InSim for now, play it over, and see if she pops up again.

She just showed up on one of my residential lots.

For what it's worth, I installed the InSIMenator and used the relations adjuster to force love between a couple of sims without first using the lot debugger to get rid of a dead romance. They fell in love then flirted and fell into crush. I used the debugger to clear the dead romance then had them get engaged and marry. They fell in love again, the game lagged for a bit, and then Mrs. Crumplebottom shows up. She stood around then walked off lot.


I should be worried, right?

Oh, no I've been saving during the birth, exiting the lot, and re-entering to get a new kid (or what I thought was a new kid.) The same way you'd do if you wanted a different sex. It hasn't been necessary to do it more than once or twice but I seem to be mistaken as to what should actually be happening.
 A lot of my Sims do turn out as Aries, but not with the exact same personality as their siblings. I assumed that's because most of the Sims I created were Aries, and this continues to carry down the line.

Oh, alright, I see. I usually play rather large families during a single session of play, without ever exiting the game. If I'm playing through one session which produces, let's say, 5 babies,no twins, then what should I be expect? That's with saving during the birth and re-loading the lot once or twice. Would that type of play be responsble for the non-identical children that I've seen so far?

Whatever the case may be, I've probably misunderstood something. So I'll have to check out my game again. Although, given what I've read so far, it does seem to be a lot less troublesome to just use the other methods.

Once or twice seems to do the trick. It seems as if the next child is always a copy of the one immediately before it, rather than of its eldest sibling. That being so, it doesn't seem necessary to reload based on the number of children in the family, as the sequence seems to start from the last born (maybe..??)

Well, I either make the baby selectable and check (then exit, re-enter, and do it again, just to be sure) or I age them up to toddler and check.
Or I don't check, play through the family and its next few births, then see whether any of them come out with the same personality.
The only time they do is if they pop out too quick and I miss my chance to save.


Yes. But I do the same thing for each birth, so I assume it continues to move right on down the list. Now if I forget, as I sometimes do, I'll end up with two siblings being entirely similar later on down the line (siblings 4 & 5 instead of 1 &2.)
Oh, I see. So continuing to do it for each birth should give me a different number, then?

I was just reading older posts about the First Born Effect and I just had a tiny little question.

People seem to recommend either using the Lot Debugger or refreshing in CAS in order to circumvent the effect.
But nobody seems to have mentioned just simply saving during the birth, birthing, exiting the lot without saving, and re-entering to get a new kid.
That's how I do it and I haven't had any issues. I get different personalities and such, just as you'd expect with the other two methods.

Is there something wrong with this particular method? Perhaps a potential gameplay issue of which I am unaware? Maybe the fact that you still have to birth the kid...?

Thanks for the suggestions you all. Shortly after posting, my computer crashed again...and again. I haven't really used it since. Before I put it in a corner, I did most of what was mentioned here. It's a bit much to explain it all here...but I eventually came around to checking my motherboard temp. Apparently it was overheating, so I turned up the fan on the heatsink. Once I did that, Sims 2 (minus OFB) stopped crashing and I didn't experience a restart...except for when I ran McAfee and Spybot scans.

I'm certain you're not supposed to run 'em together...but I didn't think that'd cause the system to restart. Problem with scanning the system was that it'd restart before the scan could finish. Same deal this time around, even though the Sims ran fine. Guess I'm hopin' that, once I hook it back up, I'll find that particular restart was due to only to simultaneous scanning by two seperate programs.

Anyhow, after that restart, I unhooked everything, bought myself some canned air, and got to dustin'. Geez...I made sure to meet the requirements for TS2 to a "T" but that isn't gonna save it from user error. All that dust building up in its little fans...I'll start it up once again this weekend and see how things go. If things still aren't working, I'm gonna resign myself to the fact that I can't fix this, and leave it to more able hands.

Bear with me here...

Few weeks back I installed OFB. Simple enough, right? Since then the game, and recently my entire system, has been crashin'.  And now, I can't play for more than 5 minutes.

When the game first started crashing, it would just dump me out to the desktop. I got no error message; I was in the game, and then I was out. Eventually, it also started freezin' (this began a few days ago.)

Today, I uninstalled OFB and tried to play NL without using my Pleasantview, instead opting to use the base neighborhood. It still dumps me out to the desktop, within 1 minute of attempted play.

Now, independent of the game crashes are the system crashes. These are relatively new (within the last few days) and involve my monitor shutting off and the system restarting, although the computer itself never turns off.

Before blaming OFB, there were some things I checked. First was the age of my system. I built it specifically to play Sims 2, when it was released in 2004, and I haven't had any problems until now. So, I checked drivers (couldn't find any updates for my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro), registry (some errors, and I've used software to correct), memory (1 GB), hard drive space (now 120/250GBs), spyware (none that I can find), and viruses (none detected.)

…I don't know if there's something I've overlooked where those are concerned. Truth is, my McAfee subscription expired and for about a month, I had no protection. Though not entirely certain about the timing, I'd say the dumping out to my desktop from the game started around the time I no longer had a working anti-virus. Thing is, this also coincides with my installing of OFB. As I'm not proficient with computers, I can't figure it out. I think I may have picked something up during that down time. I've also found that when my computer (or the game freezes) it affects my wireless mouse too. Usually it flickers, and the last few times when I've checked it, that's when the system would restart.

To me this seems to be a hardware issue combined with a memory issues, but I don't know what to do. I've read the posts discussing game crashes after OFB, and I made sure to check everything others have been told to check. Now I'm sort of at the end of my rope. I don't know what to do. Anyone have any ideas?

Now that I think about it, I've also had trouble with a little window that appears on my taskbar. It doesn't actually appear on screen, just on the taskbar, as if I've opened something and it's immediately closed. Months ago, this used to minimize my game, but it stopped. Now it's returned...I have no idea what to do about that either.

So, uh....please help?

I would hope not. My other families seem ok so far...

Honestly, I'd thought the reason was having her pregnant through an expansion installation. Perhaps it had messed something up. Not that I'd really understand why nor do I know how likely that would be.

Well, whatever the case, I think I'm always gonna be a little nervous from here on out, whenever a black-haired, brown-eyed baby is born in this neighborhood.

I see. Well, thank you. And yes, all babies do look the same. Of course, I meant from toddler to elder, each kid from this pregnancy had the same features, even when attempting to randomize. This seemed a bit bizarre to me, considering I tried for 4 hours yesterday, when it usually only takes one or to tries for a new mix of features. All the children prior to this have had a nice mix features, although with the same hair and eye color. I can easily tell them apart from one another, while still recognizing them as siblings. That's not the case with this pregnancy, no matter what I do.

It seems to me that this mother's features now completely overwhelm those of the father. I've tried about 7 more times today with different fathers; the only difference being in facial structure (jaw and the area around the eyes.) The mother donated the same features each time. Even with Pollination Technician as the father, the usually dominant facial structure has warped to accommodate the mother's. And those big, black alien eyes shrank to accommodate the mother's eye shape in the offspring.

Her husband mixes genetics normally with other Sims in the neighborhood. This one sim, however, seems to be giving all her offspring the face of her last kid (who resembles her the most), even with different fathers. Her eyes, her lips, her nose, they refuse to yield to the father's, regardless of the situation, so I'm done with it. No more kids for her; I don't need that.

But thanks for your suggestions. I'll try and change it up a bit next time I use CAS. Get some real variety in my families. ^^

My apologies. The personalities do vary, but the physical features are always the same. Actually, aside from personality, the only other variation are the eyebrows.

This isn't particularly important but it's an issue with one my sims. She'd been pregnant for some time prior to my installation of OFB. I went to birth that baby (making sure to randomize before the birth) but no matter what I do, the baby is a clone of the sister before it. No matter how I manipulate the pregnancy (forcing it as twins, different father, birth on a different lot) it remains a clone.

I've used the InSIMenator and the Lot Debugger, but have so far have had no luck. Even after having that baby born, the very next pregnancy results in the same baby (while still randomizing.) Anybody have an idea as to what would bring this about? I don't expect this to change, and I'm going to abandon the pregnancy, but I'm interested to see if anyone knows why this would occur.

Sleepycat -

Didn't have any hacks at the time, I don't believe. This was quite some time ago...

I did have the Jump Bug fix, although that's probably unrelated.

I honestly don't know what the deal was. It was a fun little tidbit I happened to find, but I'm alright with it gone. Actually, given all the issues I've had with that particular sim and his family since then, it's probably for the best that it's gone. Ah well...

Male sims who I controlled had been able to initiate Try for Baby in the changing booths on my Pleasantview Community lot, although never in their own homes. I've played a sim of mine for some time up until NL, inviting female sims (who I did not control) out and trying for baby. I knew at the time it probably shouldn't have been possible, but it was. I'd done it this way for a "story" of sorts. None of the female sims that he impregnated lived with him and it wasn't them I was playing. Perhaps there was something else I'd done and I'm mistaken. I'll reinstall The Sims 2 base game elsewhere and check.

Thanks.

Prior to Nightlife, it was possible to take my male sims to community lots and have them initiate "Try for Baby." This is no longer possible - I figure it must have been an oversight that was corrected with NL. I'm wondering if there are any hacks that would again enable this ? Or has it been fixed for a specific reason of which I am unaware?

I've put off asking about this since Nightlife was released, but I've been searching and haven't found any mention of (and thus no solution to) this. So far nothing I've tried has worked.

Dina and Nina have contributed genes to my main family in Pleasantview, the Monets. My main Monet, Major, fathered a son to both, but didn't marry either.


Dina eventually joined with his sister, while Nina remained single and stayed with Don Lothario, eventually producing with him a child as ugly as sin. Later, Major returned to father 3 more of Nina's children, after which she went off and was impregnated by Dina and Major's second eldest grandson.

Having had the desire to give Major a cousin, I had to marry Nina to Major so I could actually access that portion of the Monet family tree. She has since returned to Don Lothario's pad (still married), and is waiting for Major to pass on. Dina is happily involved and is about to welcome her 8th grandchild by her only son Leo.

 I have three major families in my neighborhood now, one of which is the Caliente(-Monet) family. I found them to be quite engaging, they bred well.

All other Maxis-made families have been assimilated. Nina's eldest granddaughter married Alexander Goth, who is now the "guardian" of his orphaned niece Virella (daughter of Cassandra and Darren Dreamer.)  She will most likely marry Dina's third eldest grandson, a Knowledge sim who shall be impregnated by aliens when his time comes.

For what it's worth, I've had the same thing happen to one of my sims. She's been missing since about March.
She isn't in the family tree and she's $Subject in all memories relating to her.

I've checked her with two versions of SimPE. The most recent one shows she's unlinked, while the previous
shows her as a teen (as I created her) and as an adult, but not as an elder (the age at which she disappeared.)
Her husband is still married to her, but their grandkids aren't related to him. However, they are related to
all of their aunts, uncles, and cousins, half-relation and full.