Is anyone else irritated by the long pause Sims have before they enter the shower? They stand there for like fifteen to 20 Sim minutes staring at the shower wasting time when I want them to get ready for work/school whatever. Not to mention how long it takes for them to shit, shower and shave before they can go downstairs for breakfast. It does not take me 2 hours to get ready for the day! Are the EAxis guys just that slow and lazy? I have taken to getting them showered the night before so I can get them up in the morning, but just cooking breakfast can take an hour! Making waffles takes an hour? Have you no Eggos in this world? I find the time lengths for activities in the Sims3 are still just as annoying as they were in the last two versions. I do not grok the logic here.

I have searched the internet looking for a fix for this without luck. Aside from speeding up studying times, or lengthening the time it takes to eat a meal, temporal issues seems unaddressed. As an illiterate in coding, is this a difficult fix? Could I destroy my game quite nicely by trying to figure out how to do that, or is it something even I could manage without creating a BFBVFS?

I think its gorgeous and i was loving playing with it, but my game kept crashing (this isn't happening with any other Neighborhood) and I noticed routing problems to the fishing pond on the lot across from the theater. I couldn't get my Sim to fish from the lake, she kept getting the "route fail" thought bubble. I could handle that, but the crashing was getting problematic.

From her sentence structure I would hazard a guess that English is not her native language. Since my Chinese is far more execrable than her English is, I will not attempt to judge her grammar in this instance.

You mean to make the kids have hyphenated names? John Goth-Pleasant, for instance? That sounds like something that after a few generations would quickly become untenable. Can't you make parents for your sims and have them in the family tree with her previous last name, so you can keep track of that?

This happens to me occasionally as well, though never for more than a minute or two. It usually seems to be the computer thinking about how to do something and then it unfreezes again. If you are having it happen for an hour though, that sounds like you might have a more serious issue.

She must have paid a lot for that haircut!

On a related note, when on vacation, my sims' kids show up in thunmbnails as infants again, even thought they are now teens. I suspect that there is some deep problem in WA that really borks family timelines. I am hack illiterate so I have no idea what the afore mentioned problem could be, but it seems to be EA once more being full with the stupid.

My German is pretty rusty, but it looks like Rothschilde has solved the game effects problem. I will try it out later to be certain. Though I don't mind not seeing people pee. I have two small children, so I get enough of that in real life.

There is also a whole thread here on MATY about compressing your files down with either the Compressorizer or with Sim3PE to reduce lag. Works like a charm, by the way. I find that running a search through the board will answer most of my questions before I have to post here.

I'm so broke right now that its beyond pathetic. However, I gave you forty once through the "Sign up for the password" screen because I didn't know that you had a pay pal account to donate to. So you know I'm good for it. As soon as I actually get paid for this cover I'm doing (any time now, ass-hats!) I will shoot you some fiduciary love.

I had to restart a game at an earlier save and when I went to France for the first time again (the earlier trip being wiped away) merchants were different since the game was essentially respawning them again. I have to assume that essential folks get respawned after marriage etc.

Not to mention what a hassle it is to have to deal with all of these workarounds just to get custom contest (Some of which I actually freakin paid money for!) to work in the game. I mean even the stuff I PAID EAXIS for no longer shows up! How dumb is that?

I apologize for the double posting, I was typing with a baby in my lap and it's difficult to hit all the right tiny buttons when you only have one hand and the grub is wriggling like a fiend. Thank you for your patience.

I hate having to patch all the way up just to use AM, I'm not loving the CC work around, but I can't play this game without AM to make it enjoyable, rather than just bearable.

Not a compressed file. Just put it in your hack folder.

Right click and "Extract here", works fine for me. Maybe your download hiccuped.

No, my dude was single, never been kissed even before I married him off to a China native girl. He got engaged to her in China and then married her when she came to visit.

That's okay, since the game got patched everything in my game has a glow around it. It's really odd looking. Sort of a "soft focus Playboy set" sort of look.

JM - You are, as always, correct. I go to do over.

Yes, that part I had figured out by carefully reading the instructions. (LOL) I had intentionally tried to switch over to the International version (2) because I wanted to install an argh'd version of WA that happens to be international. I was hoping that by doing so I could launch the WA installer without the dreaded "region" problem. This worked just fine, by the way. However, I was informed that the game needed to be patched. And herein lies the rub. I cannot seem to get the game to patch either through WA or just straight without using the hated Download manager.

I have now tried patching it every way I could figure to do, still with the Invalid File error. Clean install, no custom content and now neither the US or Worldwide patches will work.

This must be because I am special... like one of Jerry's kids. Sigh.

I think the problem must be that I was patching with international patches and had changed the SKU code to 2 from 1. I am going to try dl-ing US versions and see if that fixes it. Otherwise nothing was modified. This is why I try not to mess around with my computer, I am so not flight checked for this.

Fine. They are making money and the world is full of pretty flowers. I am not going to argue about EA's profits. especially when all my info is second hand. You all probably know more about it than I do anyway.

Has anyone else had problems with the whole Invalid file found, even after doing a clean install and removing all custom content? I cannot patch this monster and it is driving me buggy.

EA's leading cash cow is NOT the Sims. They make far more money on their sports franchises, like Madden. The Sims has a good profit entirely because they don't spend a lot on making it.

" Electronic Arts announced today record profits in the quarter ending September 30. The company posted net revenues of $453 million, which was up from $240 million from last year. EA's success can be attributed to numerous blockbuster releases including Madden NFL, NCAA Football, The Sims, and Medal of Honor." Quoted from PSXtreme.

No, he says that they make enough money on it to justify a small staff and minimal effort, but not enough money to make it worthwhile to them to spend the dough necessary to make it a really good game. It turns a profit, but they aren't willing to cut their margin on it by putting on more staff and really working out the bugs.

Okay, I have tried downloading the patches from two different places and when I try to run them, I get "invalid file" right near the end of the installation process.I have gone back to the places where I found these files and read through all of their instructions, but I am not finding a solution for this. I have a valid copy of Sims 3, I just do not want Download Manager installing its DRM evils on my computer.

I talked to my b-i-l,  he informs me that the reason they use regions is related to copyright laws. International copyright law apparently requires the use of regions, if EA doesn't use the region system, then they forfeit any protections under international law as it relates to copyright infringement.

He also commented that the Sims games do not provide sufficient revenue, in comparison to other games, for EA to actually spend any money on it. He works for Activision, so he naturally shares my disdain for EA, but also comments that no other company will make a game like this because the revenue stream is to small.

How I hates them, my precious, I hates them, ... (but I needs my Sims fix, dammit. )