I have a question about community lots.  Just trying to figure out if it's working like it should or not.  I have Bluewater Village set for winter first, while the main 'hood starts with spring.  When sims in BV go to a community lot in BV, it is winter and the snow cover is exactly the same as in the house they left.  When they go to a community lot in Veronaville, however, it's not winter.  I thought it was supposed to be whatever season it was at home, but is this normal when you go between subhoods? If not, the patch isn't fixing it.

If you make the runway with a changing booth at one end and a mirror at the other, they will walk down it to look in the mirror when they try on clothes.

I wish there was a way they could prevent deaths of playable sims when they are on another lot and uncontrollable, but keep the risk higher for townies.  I wouldn't mind some of them being zapped, but I've been putting off buying the pack so my families don't die at each other's parties, or on community lots.

I think the teen uni thing is about the first semester not crediting properly.  Supposedly this was primarily a problem with Maxis created teens, thus their weird wording.  The only one who had that bug in my game though was the Ramirez girl, and that was without seasons installed. 

Guess this means I can go ahead and buy the expansion pack now.  I found Holiday Stuff on sale for $9.95 and picked it up to install after I buy seasons, and then I came home and saw the patch was announced.  But I have to finish writing a novel before I can play it anyway.

I assumed I was going to get three regular wolves, since there are three of everything else and the game created three pretty quickly.  But then one day it paused and created a fourth, while one of the existing wolves was already on the lot.  I was annoyed, but so far it hasn't done it again.  I only have two leaders of the pack.  Oddly, the game created one wolf and one leader of the pack right after each other, both named Baxter.  My other wolves are all named after food for some reason.

I haven't purchased Seasons yet, but I've been reading here and on the BBS to see what bugs people were having before I make the purchase.  On the BBS there are several complaints of actions dropping out of queue, and of children becoming cold enough for the social worker to arrive after a very short period of time outside.  I figure readers here are a more reliable source, so are these actually common problems?  Is the children's temperature problem caused by hacks as the overheating is believed to be? If these things are going on, and aren't caused by cc, I will avoid buying it until there is either a patch or mod to fix these things.  My large families will be unplayable if I have to play with free will off and micromanage everyone all the time, or play with it on and constantly have to re-assign actions.  And there's no point to snow at all if sims freeze before they even have time to enjoy it.

This happened to me when I installed the first pets patch.  Sort of.  Anyone who was at work the last time I saved their lot was back home because of the reset, which is normal.  But unlike all previous times (like when I installed the expansion packs themselves) their cars have disappeared.  The game still thinks they have one, and I have to delete the driveway and put in a new one before I can buy a new car.  The only things I have installed since Pets are the nostrayrespawn and the first pets patch.

I did eventually decide on the visitor controller, and it makes the kids leave at 8 instead of six.  I find that enough of an improvement.  I wasn't sure if the other hack mentioned was compatible with pets.

I find I might need to ban wolves from lots eventually, since they only come to lots where people are afraid of them, and the -750 aspiration points a night gets a bit old after a while.  If my sims would just stop worrying about them, they could go wherever they want as far as I'm concerned.

Is there a hack that prevents visiting kids from leaving at 6? My sims have been using the "Invite Household" option to help their kids make friends, but the children always walk off at six without their parents.

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem.  It seems to happen whenever there would be a change to the picture anyway, and in one family it was fixed after the next age transition.  It looks to me like the right half of the picture is missing.  The houses with pets actually don't seem to be affected, just the ones without.

Well, I think it's more that when they realized that the number of character files was causing certain uni bugs, they "fixed" it by making the game able to handle more files before these problems occurred.  There was some kind of reason they couldn't just remove whatever causes it, but they upped the limit with the uni patch and I assume they have continued to do so as they have released expansion packs that added character files.  But you know how it goes when you assume things.

I believe it was just number of character files, which includes all dead sims and all sims in the family trees of maxis made sims.  And I kinda assume pets are going to be included.  I'm well under 1500 at the moment, so I won't worry yet.

Just wondering, with all expansion packs installed, has the number of character files that you can have before your neighborhood explodes increased? It would seem natural for them to increase it with pets, because I can't imagine that pets don't count, but logic has eluded the programmers before.  What currently is the maximum safe population for a neighborhood?

My cat would remove their arms and probably parts of the face.  Well, the big cat would.  The little one would just fart in their face. 

On the subject of prey, though, cats eat the entire thing in my experience, so there would be nothing left.  My cat used to bring stuff home to show me before he ate it, but he never left any evidence when he was done eating unless it was a rabbit.  He never could finish the rabbits.  He'd start at the head and stop at about the waist.  I threw away a lot of rabbit-butts when he was an outdoor cat.

I'll try those, thanks!  I noticed there were three Age Baby cheats, but I think the baby was in the crib when I tried them, so that must be why the only one that actually ages the baby didn't work.  I might try the floor first though, as it's less complicated if it works.  Though most of my sims are having birthday parties these days so I can get party pictures for their albums, it's nice not to have to use the cake every single time.

No, I use a few hacks from here, it's just that I don't want very many.  I don't like having many downloads in general, because of load time and the complications of figuring out compatibiltity every time I get a new EP or downlaod a patch.

I actually trust it less as a cheat than I would if it were by Pescado or something, cause I was one of the people with the swarm of uni bugs so my faith in Maxis to make something that works isn't that strong.  I fought the "boolprop is evil" on the bbs during the pre-patch uni days, because it could effectively be used to fix the missed final exam bug, but I still like to hear from someone who has used it for a particular purpose first. I discovered a feature on the Tombstone of L&D called "Age Baby" which in fact does nothing of the sort and randomly created sims I didn't want on my lot, so I have learned not to assume that it will do what the pie menu says.

Incidentally is there a hack or cheat out there that will make my babies age if they don't get to a birthday cake before 6pm? Sometimes it takes over 12 hours, because the parents jump out of the action and just hold the kid instead.  I think forcing an error on the baby and resetting worked, but I'm not entiely sure it didn't just reach the point where the interaction randomly worked on its own.

Aha!  It was the NPC and Townie Generator I was looking for.  I couldn't find it because I didn't realize it was a boolprop item, and I'm not very good at skimming tutorials so I got distracted by the deleting and the hacks.  But thanks! Eventually I figured it out.  It's probably a good idea to ask, is there any reason I should not use this particular cheat?

That's far too complicated.  All I want to do is make a few sims into townies so they'll be available in the employee pool (since they have useful skills) but won't take up room in my neighborhood.  I have the OFB patch.  I'm not deleting anybody.  I thought I had read about a cheat to turn sims into townies, but I'm not interested if it requires downloading a hack.

I know there is a cheat to turn playable characters into townies.  Did it come with OFB? I can't find the syntax for it anywhere.  What do I need to type in?

I've been adding all the townie children to the Landgraab family with the cheat that came with OFB.  I used the cheat to make him know everyone, and every day he'd call up a child and get the relationship high enough to invite them over, and as soon as they walked on the lot I added them to the family.  I'm training them to create a useful employee pool, but it would be easy enough to get them taken by the social worker and then they'd be available for adoption. 

Knowledge sims with the right personality tend to want to teach their children as much as family sims do... teaching toddler skills and encouraging them in the child stage and so on.  So I can see the connection.  It may not make sense for real world equivalents, but it can make sense by sim logic.

This is one thing I haven't figured out about this system.  As mentioned in an earlier example, Family sims are attracted to Knowledge sims, but Knowledge sims are neutral towards family sims.  So, do they get a lightning bolt or not? What does a neutral/good combo get you in the game? What about bad/neutral compatibility?

It doesn't makes sense to me that the zodiac and aspiration compatibilities are not equal, but yet both sides of the couple have the same number of bolts.  I mean, I do understand that the bolts are the overall chemistry rather than the individual attraction, but I don't understand the purpose of this.  What is the point of attractions not being equal, if it has no effect on game play? Or does it have an effect that's measured in some way other than lightning bolts?

The repeat dropping off happens with everyone.  I'm not sure if they all just happen to have small porches, I'll try to check that out.  Not all of my couples bother to go on dates once they're living together, but Romeo's engaged to one who wants fifty dream dates, so they seem to have one a day.  Maybe Romeo was the one with the major glitch because he's premade, but the situation with the dormie is puzzling.  Especially as he's playable now, I've played him since Miranda moved out, and he's only messed up when I'm playing the dorm.  I think maybe my dorms are just glitchy too.

I've been having a lot of glitches with presents after dates.  The closest to your problem that I've had is with one of my dormies.  He was dating Miranda Capp rather a lot when she was in college, but then she graduated.  I had other sims in the dorm, so I continued to play that lot and he was still there.  Then I had him move into my fraternity.  Now whenever I play the dorm lot, he shows up every other day or so to drop off flowers for Miranda.  He's annoying me.

Mostly I have trouble with sims who live on the same lot.  Whenever a couple goes on a date, sometime after they get home the one who did not initiate the date will stop what they're doing to drop off the flowers.  They put them down, sigh longingly, then they kinda jump and the flowers are back in their hands.  They put them back down, sigh, do it again...anywhere from 2 to 6 times.  And once, Romeo completely jumped out of the action, the flowers disappeared, and for the rest of the day he could not interact with his fiancee in any way unless an object was involved.  When he was active I could not click on her, and vice versa, unless they were both in the hot tub or sitting on the couch together.  Eventually I used boolprop cheats to force error on Romeo himself, and that seemed to clear it up.

Is there a mod out there that will prevent gift giving, so these glitches will just go away?

I would be happy with just a mod that allowed sims to fight at a higher relationship level than the game currently allows.  I think my couples ought to be able to argue and have their relationship decline without resorting to infidelity.  Especially the ones who aren't married yet... I want the option of short term relationships, especially for my young adults.  If they've dated and fallen in love but aren't engaged, it would be nice to be able to actively decrease their relationship level below love and crush so that they can move on to someone they're more likely to marry.

I wouldn't use it with my romance sims, I just have them stop calling after they get the woohoo they want.  Whether they get caught cheating or the relationship simply dissolves from lack of content, is just a matter of luck and timing.  But my family sims might want to shop around before they choose a lifelong mate, and my popularity and pleasure sims like to go on dates, and I don't think it's normal for everyone to marry the first sim they flirt with.

I like the pleasure aspiration sometimes.  They're the most likely to go on dates and outings, and they're much more fun in college than knowledge or fortune sims because they always want to date and party rather than rolling wants to study after they're already guaranteed an A+ for the semester.  But the panel full of 500 point wants really is rather annoying.

Well, in my game, if the toddler autonomously begins playing with a toy, they will automatically stop playing when the parent reaches them.  The only time I have to stop the action manually is if I told them to play with the toy in the first place.  Even then they stop when the parent brings a bottle if they're hungry, but they don't turn and the parent throws a fit and leaves the bottle on the floor.  I have no hacks related to toddlers at all, so is it the hacks that stop the child from being interupted?

I always play with free will on, but tend to keep my sims micromanaged anyway so they don't have time to use their will very often. 

When they had a survey asking about the booster pack idea, I thought it sounded good.  That's because I thought when they said new items, they meant new items.  They just meant different looking ones.  Now, if this pack had a slide and some toys for the pool, that would bump up its value considerably.  If the silly costumes came with a new "costume party" interaction, it might be worth something. I like the look of some of the decorations, but it would have to be awfully cheap for me to buy it if that's all I like.