I tend to give my sims names that reflect their personalities (as I imagine them).  I have a romance sim called Crimson Lane.  The name came to me when I was making her and I couldn't think of anything else no matter how hard I tried.

Sorry that was really tasteless.

I have been making three bolt couples recently and I have found a way to completely ignore the bloody star signs (which I hate).

Well so do I.  And I have a system - I play each family a sim week at a time and always finish on a Monday morning at 5.30am.  Mind you I always save at 5.30am every morning as well. 

So I won't be using this particular hack (thanks anyway P*) because I always know exactly where I am at any given moment. 

Hmmm... I think I may have control issues.

_{* why can't you just include a bloody thank you button?  That would do it for me.}

I wonder if it is because I play the game to tell stories.  It occurred to me recently that many people play the game as a game.  In that they play as though there's an objective and difficulties to overcome and avoid.  It would explain (to me) why so many people use to hacks to 'cheat' - to keep motives up or give extra money or whatever.  I say I thought about it recently because I would simply never have dreamed about using the game in that way.  I tell stories, so all the 'bad' stuff for me is grist to the mill - it feeds into my plots and so I don't seek to avoid it.  I think it's the for the same sort of reason that I don't use self-sims as so many people do - in fact, I'd find that a bit creepy if I was honest.  Agatha Christie once said that she couldn't tell stories about people she knew - only people she imagined - because the personalities of real people got in the way of the story.

Ha ha - I think you've misunderstood me.  I like having them precisely because of the trouble they cause but it's a lot of work keeping up with them.  I don't like them though.

Thanks Sara MK and ZZ.  I'll have a try at both those things.  That hack for bringing home food looks excellent.  I'm surprised I haven't spotted it before.  Thanks for the link.

Maybe it is because I haven't had too many family sims work.  The problem with changing their aspirations is that it is one of only two aspirations I actually like (though they can forget about the have 10 kids wish - in your dreams sunshine).  My favourite aspiration is knowledge (like me, I suppose) but if I want a sim who isn't a rabid intellectual, family is the only real option.  I dislike popularity (too much effort and who really cares THAT much about having friends and being well thought of); pleasure (what a waste of time) and fortune (used for only my money-obsessed sims - mind you, at least they are easy to keep happy).  I dislike Romance too but have a few because I like the chaos they bring to my game.  I can only have a few at a time though because I can't cope with more.  I'd really like a creative aspiration and, I dunno, perhaps some more that are less about the self.  I know the world is driven by ego for the most part but not everyone is like that and it gets a bit wearing sometimes.

Sorry to butt in on your nice thread but I wanted to ask what I think (hope) is a related question.  I have recently noticed that all the adults in my game have started doing that 'Hey, it's ME (y'know, the person that lives here), yay, I've arrived home, isn't that fantastic and aren't I great?' thing when they get back from work.  (Clue = No).  I remember that from some time back but they'd stopped doing it until recently.  Did I accidentally delete a hack when I installed Nightlife or is there some other reason for this?  Is it possible that no-one has actually made a hack to prevent this teeth-grindingly annoying behaviour?  Or have I just missed it?  And where is a Maxoid when you want to kick one?

If this isn't a hack issue and I have been somehow blissfully and mystically protected from it until now, do you think I could persuade someone to make one to stop this assault on my sanity?

Thanks for any input (and especially a link to a relevent hack).

Crap on a stick.

Salutes - thanks CB.

Oh - thanks for this - it's just (literally this minute - well 5 minutes ago) happened to me.  I'll give it a try.

Awesome - oh yes.

In one of my dorms I think I have a bug.  The rooms of the dormies are not faded out since I installed NL.  I installed your mod and, indeed, it has the desired effect: dormies passing out, dormies starving, etc. etc.  They are now sleeping in their little beds too - I can see them doing their zeds (is that zees if you're American?). 

Anyway, one slightly unexpected side-effect of the hack is this.  The dormies now sleep in their beds.  Some of the idiots also lock their doors.  When the maid comes in the morning, she spends hours walking from one locked dormie room to another, wanting to make the beds but not being able to get in.  As she seems to prioritise bed-making over something important, like say, cleaning the f***ing green-smoking toilets which haven't been cleaned in 5 days, you silly cow, she spends hours walking up and down the corridors not doing anything useful and then gets paid a big wad of money at the end of the day for it.  I have had to resort to taking the beds out of the rooms (because I can't unlock the doors without a major fiddle about) just so that she can make them in the corridor and get over her bed fixation.  It's almost as bad as the fish tank (has that been fixed yet?).

You know if you were to make one hack that would really improve the quality of my game play it would be one that would allow me to administer a smack to the sims when they did something stupid.  I know you can't make that and it's all wishful thinking but you have no idea just how much it would add to my experience of the game.  (Clean the fishtank for the nth time, smack!, clean the fishtank ..., smack ... sigh.  Perhaps I should play something else).

First - thanks to Ancient Sim.  Removing the objects with SimPE from the neighbourhood memories section (I mean, why would they be anywhere else?) seems to have done the trick.  The phone mutated it seems into a memory for a family reunion during the installation of NL.  I suppose that memory type is buggy - I spend a lot of time deleting those anyway - though why it should have got attached to a phone in my sim's inventory, I don't know.  I didn't spot that when I poked about with SimPE the first time because I had the version (48?) where they told us it wasn't working properly with the memories.  Anyway, I finally DL the newest version this week.  What is it with all those invisible memories (are they memories given by other sims)?  Can I delete them?  Well, I've been deleting some of them because they are memories of some obscure sim meeting some other obscure sim that has nothing to do with the sim who has them and who is unlikely ever to meet either obscure sim again.  umm - sorry OT.

Other points:  RMA: regarding beds, sims learn which bed is their own and will learn to sleep there and not elsewhere so there is an association set up in that way.

Thanks to everyone for their replies, especially Ancient Sim and Bangelnuts for the info about gravestones (I did that with a set of Jack Thompson graves and will have to go and retrieve them - as soon as Jack Thompson II (the only survivor - well, when I say survivor, he's a zombie but let's not get distracted) has been released from prison)  and JMP for the general guidance.

Guess what I've been doing in MY game recently:

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Maxis gave to me:

Twelve Drowning Swimmers
Eleven Runners with Scissors
Ten Hit by Satellite
Nine Roaring Fires
Eight Electric Shocks
Seven Poisoned Dinners
Six Empty Fridges
Five! Cow-ow plants
Four Deaths by Flies
Three Hacking Coughs
Two-oo Scared to Death
And a resurrected sim zom-bie


aaah ... happy days

I hope I can ask this here without drawing down the wrath of He Who Must Be Avoided Revered.

I have been having a small problem with sim inventories and wondered if anyone had any insights as to what the *&^% is happening.

When I installed NL, all the mobile phones disappeared except for one which seemed to have become corrupted in the owner sim's inventory.  In that, when I clicked on it, the game crashed.  I sent all my sims out to buy a new phone and then installed the patch which reinstated all the missing phones (naturally) including a copy of the problem phone (non-corrupted).  I just mention this last bit because it annoyed me and because I also assumed the corrupted phone was some sort of copy of the original.

Anyway, despite not being able to find the corrupted phone poking about with SimPE, I decided to carry on and just cope.  But since then, I've had another problem with a (different) sim moving house.  I put a pile of stuff in his inventory, moved him and then found whilst unpacking in the new house that a computer in his inventory had also become corrupted and I couldn't move it out because clicking on it caused the game to crash.  What's particularly bloody annoying is this is probably only about the fourth crash I have ever had since I installed the game, including the crash and the 'let's just try that again crash' from the mobile.  My game seems to be stable for the most part and I can do without this.

Does anyone have any ideas and, particularly, does anyone have any ideas how to solve it?

Thanks

Right - d'oh

Oh so THAT's why all those bloody annoying people have been coming round kicking over the dustbins and stealing the paper?  mmm - my own solution was going to be to make it Against The Law and then imprison the buggers in my new prison (thanks Inge).  I've been busy working on passing legislation for sim crimes ... maybe I won't use this just yet.

Thank god for that.

Way to go CrammyBoy

Yes, I know that although, in my experience (in my own game), I've found that it's only really crucial if you want to end up with a residential lot (which includes dorms) because you can't buy the mailbox and dustbin (trashcan).  With community lots, you can get the phone and litter bin out of the buy catalogues (and they work and it doesn't seem to affect the portal - I'm assuming they're linked).  I have started community lots as residential, deleted the mailbox but kept the dustbin just because I like that better than the litter bin to put behind shops.  Doesn't seem to be a problem and I don't get error messages when I run the lots with testingcheatsenabled.  Come to think of it, I think the Wheatsheaf pub did start out as a residential lot though the Regency Hotel didn't.  I have useable beds in both though the ones in the hotel don't usually get used for sleeping in - a favourite Downtown destination for student couples, you know.

What I find bizarre is that everyone's game seems to respond differently and that mine seems to run without problems when other people have tremendous trouble.  This seems especially puzzling as my system is over three years old now although I have beefed it up with extra RAM and a new video card.  The game is still running fine even stuffed to the gills with hacks.  About the only thing I don't have is the CEP though why that should stop objects working is beyond me.

I was puzzled about your comment about SimLogical - I've never seen anything as a pay item on Inge's site.  Did I miss something?

Outstanding

Oh, I have no difficulty with that.  I buy the beds while the lot is a residential and then change it to community.  It's always worked.  Is that unusual then?

Oh, she's terrific - I loved her.

Cowplants will eat nannies.  It makes for satisfying viewing.

umm - that's not my experience.  Using deleteAllCharacters did just that - everyone, everywhere.

All my custom eyebrows appear in all the eyebrow bins - you can have any custom eyebrow with any colour hair.  Is that what you mean?  You're right, at least with Bodyshop, there are no colour bins available, the Maxis options you get seem to be dependent on hair colour.

An answerphone would be excellent and then your sims would be able to use the phone properly whenever they want and not either have to answer the constantly ringing phone and tell the calling sim to 'sod off and stop calling me' and then pick it up quick before it rings again or wait forever till the bloody thing stops ringing.

You know Ancient Sim, I felt uneasy about the blur on the baby when I first saw it last year and then started using the patch so wasn't bothered by it again.  You made a similar comment to this recently on another thread (possibly on - whisper it - another board) and I thought about it for the first time in ages and I think you are exaclty right.  There is something definitely unhealthy and unpleasant about blurring a baby having it's nappy changed (not to mention the silly reaction you get from passing sims but that's perhaps another issue).  It's saying something like, 'there is something corrupt about your gaze on this pixellated representation of a baby.'  Ugh.  It makes my skin crawl.  A baby is just a baby and for that matter bodies are just bodies - to pretend there's something wrong with looking at them is not good.  I can understand that people don't want to look at adult bodies in the game and they should have the blur for that if they want it but blurring the babies is bordering on pathological.