I've always believed that there must be some sort of correlation between literacy and nightvision in inbred Kentucky hillfolk.* The less you can read, the better your nightvision. That's the only way I can explain the poorly lit roads there.

Thanks for go-ahead, JMP!

*I'm from Indiana, so I have to say this kind of thing about Kentuckians. It's nothing personal, just the natural order of things.

Alright, I'm getting into my 4th generation in Pleasantview, so some of my families have expanded quite a bit. I'd really like to keep second cousins from being attracted to each other and being able to procreate, so would it screw up anything if I mark them as "Family" in SimPE?

Just checking before I do it, just in case it's a VBT.

I don't know if I'd like the "relationship cap" idea. I'd like the potential for good relationships to be there, but I'd like it to be more challenging to keep it that way.

I think it could be better accomplished by having more autonomous negative behavior from mean sims, if such a thing is even possible (is it?) As it is, it seems that mean sims do "mean things" (argue, annoy, insult, etc.) to sims they don't know very well or don't like. But when they get to a decent relationship score with that sim, the mean things stop. Why? I'm not saying that mean sims should only do mean things to other sims, but the way it is now, the only actions sims perform autonomously are relationship-boosting actions. I'd just like to see that balanced out with some autonomous actions that are relationship-damaging (slightly). That way you can either let it go and it gets progressively worse, or you can keep working to make them "make up."

Sorry, don't mean to take over your thread with my own ideas. Just throwing it out there since we're kind of looking for the same effect here.

I agree that Sim relationships are too easy. My problem is more that you can get them maxed out really fast and then it just sits there - there's no change in STR/LTR unless you make one sim do something to upset another. I'd rather have more autonomous negative behavior, and make it continue even if two sims have a high relationship score.

Rather than type out the whole thing, I'll just post the link to the thread I started about it: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6633.0.html

Okay, so I've had this problem with one of my families. The mother had skintone 1 and the father had skintone 5 (found here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=160572). They had 4 kids (2 boys, 2 girls) and I couldn't figure out for the life of me why they all had skintone 1. I tried quitting without saving again and again, but no matter what I tried, the babies were always pale. I finally gave up on it thinking that somehow the game wasn't recognizing the father's skintone.

Now the kids are grown up and I noticed that the sons have hairy arms. VERY hair arms. Then I remembered that I had downloaded a hairy skintone so I could make Randy from Trailer Park Boys in all of his hairy cheeseburger-gut glory. It seems that what I made the couple in CAS, I must've accidentally chosen that skintone for the mother instead of the regular Maxis skin. Now all of the kids are stuck with it and will probably pass it on to their children. This upsets me.

So now I'm here to ask - what's the easiest way to change a sim's skintone and make it genetic? It's been a little while since I've played, so I'm a little rusty on how things work. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I had 3 sets of twins in a row in my last go-around with Pleasantview. Two were in the same family, and then I went to play another family and they had twins, too. I had way too many twin births in that neighborhood though...it was getting to the point that every stinking family had a set of twins. That was one of the main reason I started the neighborhood over.

I don't think I've ever had an accidental death. It's way too easy to keep sims alive and able to procreate, which (in my experience) leads to over-population and predictability. That's why I instituted my "Random Death Policy."

Every sim day at 6 o'clock, I roll a die for every teen, adult, and elder sim in a household. The number rolled determines whether they take a run with the Giant Scissors of Death. As a sim gets older, their odds of having to run with the scissors gets higher. It goes like this:

Teens to age 30 - Only if the die lands on 1
Ages 30 to 59 - Only if a 1 or a 6 is rolled
Ages 60 to ? - Even number, they run; odd number, they don't

If they do keel over, I roll the die again. If it lands on an even number, another sim can try to save them. If it's odd, no such luck.

So far it's done a pretty good job of thinning out the population a little bit and keeping things interesting. It's actually kind of exciting to see whether they survive or not. Sometimes it's hard to accept the death of one of my favorite sims or one I had specific plans for (my self-sim's child's future partner died as a teenager - pfft), but I make myself stick to it. I mainly play Pleasantview with a couple of my own families, and so far I've lost Cassandra (age 32), Darren (59), Daniel (71 - almost made it natural death!), Angela (36), Brandi (54), Brandi's son that she was  pregnant with at the beginning (16), Lucy's and Alexander's oldest daughter (16), and one of Angela and Dirk's kids (14).

The unpredictability of it makes everything a lot more interesting to me. I don't like having control over everything.

Oh. Ha. I think I've got it. I wasn't even thinking of all of those other files. *smack forehead*

Ah. No, I didn't. What all has to be renamed?

True to form, the things I think will be very simple always end up taking a lot of time to figure out.

Before I got Pets, I restarted Pleasantview. My old neighborhood had gotten a little out of control population-wise because I married in too many townies. So I took out the old Pleasantview, and a new clean one generated. I've been playing that one for awhile, but I've been thinking about some of the sims in my old neighborhood. I mostly just want to see how some of the kids turned out, since I was just getting into generation 3. The problem is that I installed Pets after I took out the old neighborhood, so it won't work.

BUT I thought I had figured out a way around it. My fiance's computer can run the game really well, too, so I thought I'd just install everything up to Pets, put in the old neighborhood, and then install Pets to update the old neighborhood. It seemed so very simple. So I copied my neighborhood folder (renamed N004) and my downloads folder, installed the game and EPs, and put my stuff in. But it doesn't work.

First it was crashing during the loading screen. I took out the downloads folder, and that fixed it. But now neither my neighborhood or the new Pleasantview are showing up - only Strangetown and Veronaville. Am I leaving something out? Or is this not as simple as I thought it would be? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Alright, I think I've fixed it. I couldn't change their appearances with the mirror at first, because the action kept getting dropped once they got to the mirror. I tried putting the mirror in other places, no luck. Then I decided to have a sim wash the pet and then try to change their appearance, and that worked. I didn't save because it took so long to get that taken care of that the rest of the house had gone haywire. But next time I play I'll do it again and see if it sticks after I leave the lot or quit the game.

Thanks, miros!

Okay, I tried taking the heirloom cake out of my downloads, no change. Then I put it back and aged up the third dog in the household to elder. She was fine, still had a body, had the gray overlay. I hadn't thought of trying to change their appearance with the mirror, so I'll try that.

No, I don't have the patch. I'm too scared to install it after reading the thread here. Besides, I haven't really experienced any of the problems the patch is supposed to fix, so I thought I'd do without.

I know I've used Inge's heirloom cake to get all of those pets to elderhood, just because I think they live way too long. That's really the only thing I can think of that might be a problem though. But I've been using it for awhile and never had any problems before now.

Okay, so I started up my game for the first time today, and go to my self-sim's house. There are 3 dogs in the household, two of which are elders. That's when I see this:


I checked my other houses that have elder pets, and they're all the same - heads and tails are fine, but they don't have bodies. Nothing's wrong with the adult pets or puppies/kittens. I have no idea what could be causing this, because I played just yesterday and I haven't downloaded anything new in the meanteime. Any ideas on what the problem is or how I could fix it?

And then they call every day to chat. Or at least that's what they do in my game. Animal control officers must be very lonely people.

Wow, that was quick. Thanks for the help. I knew I must be doing something wrong.


Ooh, yeah, I found the merged neighborhoods thread. That looks very, very interesting. But it doesn't look like it's available for download anywhere at the moment. 

Okay, so I'm trying to restart Pleasantview, as the current version is becoming boring and bloated by marrying in too many townies. I made a back-up of the neighborhood in case I ever wanted to revisit it, and then I took the original neighborhood file out of the folder. Am I crazy, or isn't it supposed to regenerate a new Pleasantview when you take out the existing one? Because that's not what's happpening here. Now I just have Strangetown and Veronaville. Anyone know why it's doing this or how I can fix it?

Yeah, but I want it to happen autonomously.

Right, it should only do a little bit of damage to their relationship scores - one argument shouldn't make them hate each other. It wouldn't destroy a relationship unless you let it go unchecked, in which case their relationship would just get progressively worse. But of course, that would only happen if you let it.

I had the same thing happen with my old computer, because I couldn't run the game on high detail settings all the time. When one of my in-game born sims became an adult, she started off with a pretty decent nose, but then sometimes it would look totally different - bigger and even a different shape altogether. I thought it was just a glitch, but I finally figured out that it changed depending on what settings were selected at the time.

I also used to have a problem with all of my teenage boys having protruding foreheads and big googly eyes, but I'm not sure if it was the same kind of problem.

I think that's where attraction would come into play, since attraction is partly based on personality compatibility. If a mean sim is compatible with his wife, he'll be nicer to her than he normally would with other people.

First of all, I'm a new member here but I've been a fan of MATY for a long time. Longtime listener, first-time caller, as people always seem to say on talk radio.

Anyway, I've been thinking that sim relationships are a bit too idyllic. You match them up, get them to fall in love, maybe get married, and then....nothing. Their relationship scores hardly ever change, unless you force them to argue or make one of them cheat. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against long-term commitment...I'd just like it to be a little more difficult to keep some sims together. Even mean sims stop being autonomously mean (mostly) once they get to a high relationship score with another sim, romantically or platonically. This just doesn't make sense. I mean, even the best relationship has problems sometimes, and it shouldn't always have to be related to fidelity.

That's why I think it would be great to have more autonomous "mean" behavior, like arguing, teasing, annoying, etc. The fewer "nice points" a sim has, the more frequent their mean behavior. With romantic relationships, attraction could also be a factor, so that two sims who are not so attracted to each other would be more likely to argue with each other also. It would make relationships a lot more challenging and diverse. Two extremely mean sims would be nearly impossible to keep together, while two extremely nice sims would never argue with each other. Sabotaging relationships through infidelity is fun for awhile, but the reality is that most couples split up because they just don't get along for some reason.
I'm not really sure how feasible something like this would be, but I thought I would throw it out there as a suggestion.