A lot of people complained about how dark Body Shop is.  I figure the brightening is Eaxis's half-assed way of "fixing" that issue.

I've downloaded some of hacks in the Director's Cut, though I can't say if "antiwatchout" is among their numbers, and I have had no issues walking between lots.

I did have a glitch with booking a honeymoon.  Brandi and Jeremy were engaged before I installed Bon Voyage and had the wants to be married locked.  Brandi called to arrange a honeymoon, and there was a pop-up saying they would need someone to watch the house, which is strange because they have one cat and no kids.  I agreed to the nanny and the next pop-up said that the wedding would trigger the vacation pick-up.

I decided to have them have a date to get them into platinum and then they got married at the original wedding arch.  It generated the special events movie, and they have the memories of having gotten married, but it didn't fulfill their wants to get married.  Then the nanny arrived and said "This lot has no children, I'm getting out of here" or something equally obnoxious and the vacation taxi never came.

I ended up cancelling the honeymoon and just booking a regular vacation at Three Lakes (and this time the nanny came and stayed).  So far, they're enjoying themselves and I'm having a good time playing.  My main issues so far:

1.  The hotel lots, while mostly quite nice, are also huuuuuge and tedious to navigate.  Brandi and Jem stayed at the cabins and it was almost comical how random the routing was.  Elsewhere, the surrounding mountains cause the camera to shoot up when you move it around the lot. Lag wasn't bad, even with the neighborhood decorations and neighbors visible, until it started to snow.  The beds/plumbing at the cabin and the showers at the campground are cheap, so sleeping and bathing takes an annoyingly long time to fill needs.  There are also no mirrors to be found anywhere. 
2.  Learning a gesture is frustrating, because you have to have the local approach you with it, and they don't like to wait until you finish another action (even a cancelled action).  It is hilarious to watch them try it when they still suck at it.
3.  They dug about 30 holes and found two worthwhile things- both maps to the secret locations for the other two vacation destinations.
4.  Skill points gained from positive chance cards don't get applied.  This can be fixed by an updated skilling on community lots hack, but it's still a bunch of bullshit.
5.  The locals are generated like crazy.  I saw four or five that were on about every lot along with a few new faces, but then I had this happen:

Four new sims, same outfit type, same last name.  This worries me. 
6.  The Unsavory Charlatan isn't playable.  I knew this before, but now that I've seen him in his top hat and monocle, twirling his evil little mustache and cackling to himself, I want to marry him into a legacy at some point. 

Cyclonesue is really bad about non-level edges. I love the look of her Age of Industry buildings in a neighborhood, but they screw up a terrain something fierce. 

I've stopped using Maxian lots at all these days, except for the pine sided one by the pond that came with Family Fun Stuff.  I have so many problems redecorating that it's just not worth the hassle, especially since most of them can't be played without some sort of revision.  I also prefer small, flat, densely plotted neighborhoods so I can ruin an entire block with a non-level lot.

ps.  Squee! ZephyrZodiac!

I'm usually a little bored with the game by the time a new EP comes out, so I jump on the chance to have something new to do.  I move my downloads and important neighborhoods out and play with a new, cc-less sim in a preset neighborhood until the hacks are updated.  With the hacks I've been using in my main 'hood in, and provided I don't notice any bugs, I'll put my neighborhoods and downloads back in and go on my merry way.  I have had far fewer issues with my game than most people and I have a high tolerance for Eaxis stupidity, so I don't stress over it too much.

 Cyd's not too bad to play.  He's generically good looking (a straightforward number 2 template, I think) so his genetics won't fuck you over, he has an easy aspiration and he's nice and quiet. He's also about a hundred times better than the genetic abominations that came with Seasons. 

- are you more into building lots, decorating lots, creating sims, or playing families?

When I first got the game, I was totally into playing families.  Then I discovered custom content and became obssessive about lot building.  Now I do a lot of both, but it's cyclical.  My most recent challenge attempt got derailed by my own infernal meddling, so now I'm building.

- lots: do you play highly decorated, with walls up/cutaway, with a focus on 'whoever has the most toys wins"? Or do you play barely decorated, walls down, with a focus on interractions/spawning?

I keep the decor pretty straightforward inside and out- simple but not bare.  Every now and again I clutter because I can, but I hate lag and useless items, so I usually keep it to needful things at 90 degree angles.  I play with walls down, usually, putting them up for pictures only. 

- is genetics your thing? Do you like watching spawns, and spawns of spawns for how they turn out? Or do you barely get through one generation before you're off to the next family?

If a family interests me, I usually get to the third or fourth generation before I get bored.  I love the genetics, especially when certain features are still going strong four generations down.   Noses and eye color are my favourite things to geek out about.

- do you build lots of hoods, or have you been playing one or two hoods forever?

I've played a lot in Maxi hoods, but I like to create my own neighborhoods.  I even make my own terrains in Sims City 4 and have spent whole weekends just doing that, but I end up using downloaded terrains more often than not.  Currently my big project is a main neighborhood with wolfsim's lots, a downtown with plasticbox's Backdoor Lane lots and a beachside shopping village and tiny university with my own creations.

- in terms of what your sims do: are you into relationships and interractions, or are you more into how they skill and climb the corporate ladders?

I keep a nice balance, I think.  I like to keep my sims happy all around, so they get what they want.  I also like to watch their crazy expressions and reactions when they interact.  They're like a little television show I have all to myself.

- do you play lots of community lots, or are your sims homebodies?

I love community lots to meet new people and for dates.  I think it's a lot of fun to have my sims "go out" and I usually send newly aged teens straight downtown to scope potential spouses. 

-city/country/suburban?

A little of all three.  Mostly suburban.

- do you do themes? (aliens, medieval, Victorian)

I've tried, but I find themes too hard to stick with across several lots. 

- do you play with pets?

I have, but they have a tendency to bork my game so I only have them in lots that I don't care about. 

- do you do the vamp/werewolf/alien/zombie thing, or are you more a 'real person' player?

I adore the supernatural, but have only played extensively with vamps and aliens.  Zombies and werewolves are usually relegated to the townie sect, because the moaning and loping bug me in the long term. 

- hacks: do you like to make life simpler or harder? insim? inteen?

I use MATY hacks to make things run smoother, to make the tedious less so and to get the socio-political climate of Batelle Land the way I want it.  I have insim to give CAS sims a boost out of the gates and to fix genetic woes.  I don't use a ton of money cheats, but I do use shop at home functions for clothing.  I like to have a few outfits on hand for everyone in the household.

-custom content: lots or a little? what do you have the most of?

Tons.  1.8GB at last check (and that was before Holy Simoly released their latest donation pack).  I have a lot of everything, but I have a weakness for women's casual clothing, beach-themed stuff, retro objects and industrial/grunge decor and build items.  My biggest subfolders are Cyclonesue, Windkeeper, Shannanigan and Holy Simoly. 

- and finally, if you share your creations...what do you create?

I can barely do simple recolors, but I have shared a few basic houses that I built.  If my uni turns out the way I hope, I might share it. 

Jeezie creezie, twist ties.  I think 99% of the catfights in my house are over twist ties.  I have no idea where most of them come from, either.  It's like there's some portal to the Land of Twist Ties in my spare bedroom and only one of them can visit it at a time.  My girl cat's favourite"toy" is an unwrapped maxi pad.  She carries it around and "cares" for it until the wrapping is in shreds and then she puts it to pasture near her hidey hole (Pop. 5 Ponytail Holders, 2 paperclips and a dead beetle).  I don't give them to her, she's taught herself to open the bathroom cabinets.

I've had one in game cat ever sleep on the kitty condo without being instructed.  Sucks, too, because it would be nice to have an all-purpose scratching-post/bed. 

I had my download folder at under 1 GB and was so proud of myself.  For objects, I did some investagatory work and figured out what creators had the best quality to file size ratio and booted out the rest.  Hair and clothes I waded through in CAS.

A week or two ago I got a bug and decided I had to have a new neighbourhood for a story that spans centuries and continents.  I think I just wanted to go on a download spree, and that gave me an excuse  My folder is now up to 2.5 GB and I'm already sick of loading times.  I think I'm going to have to go back to my basics because even with a metric assload of options, 99% of my houses are built and decorated using only objects from Holy Simoly and by Cyclonesue and Windkeeper and I never use any of Peggy's hair. I really need to come to terms with this. Is there a support group?

I was wandering through the older sections of MTS2 looking for inappropriate children's clothing when I stumbled upon this:



I don't know if the fact that they're pajamas makes it better or worse.

I voted no change, although I wouldn't mind a slightly higher chance of bizarr-o death.  I very rarely have accidental deaths in my game, and I'm not always that careful when I play.  Most of the accidental deaths that I do have are visitors who get taken by a hungry cow plant in an unlocked enclosure.  I had a pregnant sim die after coming home from a community lot (this was before Nightlife) and her husband couldn't reach the Grim Reaper to plead.  All of those sims I was able to resurrect with the resident knowledge sim who gets major aspiration points for such endeavors, so it's not a big deal at all.  

Other than those and the inexplicable choking death, I can only kill sims with testingCheats or extreme  effort, and sometimes that doesn't even work.  It gets frustrating sometimes, especially when I play the Legacy Challenge and my house is packed with three generations of sims, some of which (elders) have served their purpose (elders) long ago (elders).  I would love for some of them to be vulnerable to a "wierd" death just to get them out of the way and to make my ghost collection less monochromatic.

Of course, I'm someone who loves the aliens, vampires, zombies, werewolves, plantsims, cowplants, death by falling satellite doofiness.  Even when I try to be serious with the game, something awesomely ridiculous happens and I realize that I have much more fun when I just embrace the fact that I'm basically playing with cartoon characters in a cartoon dream world.

That is why your web site is called "More Awesome Than You"    I haven't attempted to garden yet, so I didn't realize that children were good for that. 


I know that's more efficient, but I always forget about it when I play (or I get someone who is five days from elderhood get abductedand come back with an unplanned pregnancy).  Ultimately, I'm really not concerned with grades because I know that as long as they go to school and do their homework they'll get up to an A+.  Since Uni, my sole intent with children has been to get them in position to earn as many scholarships as possible.  Before that they were little friend making machines. 

I'm sure you would find my playing style infuriatingly lax.  Of course,  since Seasons has brought about a (seemingly) higher level of queue dropping madness anyway, in addition to some needs dropping faster than they did before, I've been turning free will off and using macrotastics a lot more than usual. 

I can't make that happen.  Now I try to coincide fall with their childhoods.  Children are useless- they're not cute and they can't use the energizer/babysit/work on sim owned lots.  The only thing they have going for them is that they can put themselves to bed and (with leftovers) feed themselves.  With the hygiene issues and them skilling almost continuously the rest of the time, I can only get my toddlers up to 8 in charisma.  With Seasons I've timed it right twice where the kids age up on the first day of fall and end up with at least 8 in all the skills and have become lords of the dance days before they're teens, which frees them up for friend making. 

I noticed that, too, but even then the infants weren't terribly fussy

I also noticed that toddler hygiene seems to go down way faster than it did before.  I usually only bathe a toddler once, at the most, and my last four toddlers required two or three baths per child.  It's quite vexing as I don't use tubs as a rule and it cuts into vital skillbuilding time.

siggylove, your confession has forced me to bust out a Village People Sex Over the Phone avatar.

Judging by the ten dollar bill, Alexander Hamilton was one handsome founding father.

I used clones of Bella and Mortimer in CAS to make Cassandra and Alexander look like they could actually be their children, and then used the plastic surgery function in SimPe to make it permanant.  My Alex is still dweeby looking, but he's not blindingly hideous now. 

It's not that cats are slower at learning, it just takes them longer to decide to give a damn about what you're trying to teach them.

Have you tried juicing his intended with Love Potion?  I've had three-bolt married couples not be able to fall in love after one of them is resurrected, and having one of them drink the Love Potion worked perfectly.

I haven't even had loading time issues.  Not that I've installed my downloads again or anything, but the first load was amazingly fast.  The only slow down I got was loading the first family with pets, but even the second time around that was zippy.

My cats aged at 11 am as well.  It threw me off whenever I heard the aging noise, so I made a not of the time.

My cats usually catch the mice, drool on them and leave the whole carcass in a doorway where we can find it and congratulate them on their exemplary hunting skills.

The last time, though, one of them was hungry because he ate the mousy back end and left the rest of it on my office chair. 

I had a sim brefriend a stray last night.  It wasn't too difficult, but this stray have been an exception.  The sim went right for the belly rub and the dog was more than happy to accept. 

I would hate to have twenty strays wandering around my house, though. 

I don't think Uni has anything to do with it.  I had a sim in my very first neighbourhood ever, before any expansions and before I discovered the glory that is custom content, that had his arms go all numeral like in your picture.  I forgot what I did to rectify the situation, but I definitely did not unistall/reinstall and it did get fixed.  I think I deleted him, exited and restarted the lot. 

I think your best bet is to just have the sim who's going to be pregnant wear a custom outfit that shows the pregnancy belly. I don't really understand the issue of not wanting to waste your sims' money on a dresser, especially when the lockers are pretty cheap and you can just delete them after using them once. 

I have one Peggy hair that I adore and use on my self sim, but the ends go all wonky and streaky during certain animations.  I would love to edit it if anyone figures out if and how that can be done. 

That's true.  They do only care about the sandwiches.  The first grilled cheese sim I ever made was a trophy bride/former romance sim.  I hated her for causing problems in my neighborhood so I cheesed her.  She was amusing to watch because she would be so cheerful about eating the grilled cheese, and when it was done she would stare folornly at her empty plate and slump a little.