The patch is because if you have a fridge on the lot when you use the shrub to make things stayable, the fridge gets that no-cooking bug.  The patch overrides a BHAV in fridge globals that stops cooking if the fridge is marked to stay on the lot.  No idea what the design decision was!

But you don't need the patch if you are prepared to buy a new fridge after using the shrub.

Tom did you make a note yet of the bug about child visitors going home too early? 6pm they leave now.

Yeah I'd like my Sims to choose their own partners too, as long as I am allowed to overrule them when I see fit.  I mean they can kiss who they like but I expect them to wait for my go-ahead before they actually get married or move in together.

You don't need to be a member of the site to download whichever is the current public release of SimPe - and the NL-compatible one will be out soon.  But you do need to be a member both of the site and of the Quality Assurance testing team if you want a nightlife compatible *test* version to use immediately.

Love is a wonderful thing 

Another thing I tend to do if I want to keep the furniture in the house is I use the teleporter to move in the new occupants before the old ones leave.

Shift-click!!  Ah that's what I haven't been trying

Guilty is not the right word.  Peter and I eat while programming too, I consider it a virtue

Well we have been asking for this aspect of real life to be represented in the game for a while now...

Well I wasn't talking about modifying the exe either.  Ok it would be a LOT of work editing all the BHAVs anywhere that get your sim naked, compared to hacking the exe or using the cheat, but I am convinced it's doable.  For myself I am happy with a compromise where the standard objects apply the standard blur, but specially hacked objects will allow you to set up occasions or lots where you Sims can be nude and blur free.   Eg my door and that accompanying patch I made so they don't realise they are naked as soon as they idle.

Yup

But it's only the player-entered cheat that's been taken out, isn't it?   It's not as if EA have done anything to stop hackers showing the Sims without their blur.   In fact the blur is applied specifically in the hacker-accessible code.  For instance, my doors that make Sims get naked as they went through them never applied the blur in the first place, so it didn't need removing by any cheat.   Those hackers who called the global undress function to undress their Sims will have had the blur applied, whereas those who called the primitive change-outfit directly would not.   It would be a free choice open to those doing the modding.

I have a feeling a lot of people are not understanding this issue fully.

It makes them pretty much like artificial plants I'm afraid.  I don't use it myself because I like to see them growing and being cared for anyway.  Presumably by now people have made standalone decorative plants, so you can put those ones in inaccessible corners while still having butterflies generated by the ones at the front.

I did a patch for not needing to care for plants, though of course I don't know yet if it will break something in NL

Thomas Riordan says he's been using the teleporter plus without problems.

I know.  If I was a censor I would get rid of the woohoo option, especially that tacky cut-scene video.   I wouldn't bother with blurs as it just draws more attention to the naughty aspects of nudity instead of letting it look natural and innocent.

Funnily enough, since that Jack Thompson started fussing, a google search of The-Sims draws out pages and pages of matches containing the words "labia, genitals, penis, pubic hair", which it never did before.   If you have children googliing for things to do with their favourite game, that is going to expose them to far more of the subject he was hoping to avoid them seeing than ever before he piped up.

I didn't start really playing a serious neighbourhood until after Uni was out.  Until then I was just getting my teeth into how we could mod the code, and testing, and experimenting with ridiculous in-game situations.   I also had a problem feeling at all involved with the Sims - I couldn't empathise with them at all with their weird facial expressions, I had got used to Sims 1 where you chose a face complete with its fixed expression, to portray a certain personality of Sim.   To me all the Sims 2 sims looked like the same sort of person.

Then I decided to start a proper game and see what happened.  I made 4 men and 4 women and spent ages getting them exactly right - and each of them had unique and deliberately exaggerated facial features, like huge brooding eyebrows, or a tiny pointy chin.

Since making those, I have played through at least 6 generations, rotating through each house at midnight Sim Time to keep their ages up to date.   I play one Uni Year to one Sim Day in the neighbourhood.   But I only allow myself 4 regular home lots, one temporary overspill emergency lot, and a holding lot for boring Sims I might want to bring back into play some time.   That means I have to practice restraint with the breeding.  Often in a family of 4 children, only one of those children will be allowed to marry and have children of their own in the next generation.  The others live in the holding lot, or join a large household and have parties (so my breeder sims can meet and get to know one another).

I have actually become very fond of a couple of Sims in this neighbourhood, and was actually quite tearful when one of them died.  My current favourite has just become an elder, but she's still beautiful to me.   I think the ones you like don't seem to go as braindead when they become elders.   In fact I use my birthday cake to do euthanasia on the more boring elders.

What is niggling me is - and this is only speculation rather than an allegation, because I don't have any evidence.  Well what I am trying to say is look how quickly aid started arriving at the dome in New Orleans after Bush had visited the devastated areas.  If it could get there within a couple hours of him signing a piece of paper when he got back to Washington, then if he had signed the paper before he started his journey, the aid could have got there even sooner.

I have this horrible sick feeling that the aid was held back until after his visit to make it look even more like he was the delivering angel who made it possible to help people.   So people would associate seeing Bush with the relief of finally receiving food and water.

Well that does surprise me, cos even us Brits were quite pleasantly surprised how well the authorities coped with that

On a similar subject, I occasionally want to non-controlled Sims to initiate a proposal and a dialog come up to ask if I wish to accept it.

Dunno if this is relevant to anyone, but if you have my hacked birthday cake, it has an anti-aging feature enabled by default.  Click on the cake and turn it off if that appies to you.

Although most people are in disagreement with me, it's heartwarming to see that it's possible to have a controversial discussion politely, and what's interesting is that it is taking place on one of the few forum sites that don't censor threads for flaming etc.   Just goes to show if you treat people like adults they'll behave like adults!

Ah, but the point is, in my scheme those grandparents would have had the same opportunities when they were young parents.   Obviously it's not going to be fair if I raise my daughter without any help (which I did) and then she has a baby at 16 which I also raise without any help while she is out clubbing - and then presumably I get old and frail without help too...  No I was thinking of the scenario where it is always the people aged 35-55 who take responsibility for both very old and very young, and outside those ages do their own thing apart from dropping a baby or two between 16-20, for its grandparents to bring up

This is getting frustrating because some people are not bothering to read *all* of what I am saying.  You're seeing "teenagers should not be discouraged from having babies" and stopping reading at that point.   I already said I agree that most teenagers would be unable to raise a kid and run a home in the way parents are expected to in western society in 2005.   I agree with you there - have you read this now?

I am saying that I don't agree that the person who runs the home and makes decisions for the child should necessarily be only the biological or legal parents.   I am saying that yes, the parents should be around while the child is growing up, but no they don't need to be the people paying the bills, doing the cooking, driving the child to football club, or having the final say on house rules.   The people doing those things could be older family members who share the house.   Lots of cultures do it that way.   If the eldest woman continues to set the rules, then it doesn't matter if a teenager has a baby she was too mentally immature to parent - she will be taught how to do it and someone will be there to step in if she isn't getting it right, or if she deserves a night out clubbing.

You've been conditioned to thinking a home means Mummy, Daddy and Baby.  In that case, no, a 16 year old cannot make a home for a child and support it financially unless they are an exceptional 16 year old.   But if you'll pardon the pun, this is pretty much throwing the baby out with the bathwater

What exactly is wrong with playing with dolls after having a baby?  Has anyone here managed to fool themselves into thinking they're *not* playing with dolls when they load up The Sims?