What happens if two skins have the same genetic value? I would like to make slightly hairy versions of all the Lyran skins (which I have as defaults and made genetic). Would it work if I put these to have the same genetic value as the non-hairy skins of the same colour, so whether the sim had visible body hair or not would be just half-half chance?

I think the awnings and storybook build set came with Pets and I really like those. But Seasons is the best - it has kitchen decorations, leftovers, and really nice lighting effects. That's the main thing I'd miss - even without actual weather, summer looks sunny and autumn looks... autumn-y. It adds more variety. It's one of those things that's so subtle it's not really gonna be mentioned much but, to me, the lighting is what makes Seasons. And obviously there's loads of other things about it but they've all been mentioned in this thread already.

So, where she lives, coal looks like jelly? That's... interesting.

The food that was in my game just completely disappeared with no bad effects, though I kept the files in case, so thank you

I'lll delete the learnt to cook memories for those foods. I'm glad that was brought up, I would never have thought to check those! o_o;;

Quick question: if it's either out (on tables) or stored in fridge as leftovers, will deleting custom food from outside the game break anything? I can just make them eat/compost the leftovers and then exit and delete the files, but it would be quicker to do it externally. Plus, it would be nice to know if anyone has any idea about this (for future reference)

(I ask this because I know furniture will harmlessly replace itself with whatever it was cloned from, I just don't know if food will be different from furniture in this case.)

With pre-made families you don't want, or ugly townies, it might be easier to start a new hood than to remove them from your present one. I don't know if you've seen it but there's a good tutorial here on how to make all those pre-made families not come with your new neighbourhoods, and how to customise your townies.

However, my hoods don't normally last long because I find something new I want to implement from the start I think I'm just about done with things like that now, though, so maybe this one will last more than 4 generations. XD So in your case it might be easier to get face template replacements and delete the townies you don't want (but properly, through the deleting tutorial), it just depends on your neighbourhood(s) and the size and age.

It's perfectly possible, you just need to install SimPE.

The guide I used to do this myself is here, in tutorials

That reminds me of my dead, glue-coated paintbrush, with tissue paper wrapped around it. It's not even like that creator was aiming to make something that resembled hair, surely? Why does the headband/dried-on tissue paper have crease lines on it when it's obvious that the hair is glued perfectly straight, and the headband is glued to that? What on earth is it creasing on? x_x

Why does the headband start after his head starts to flatten out? How is it staying straight like that? Wouldn't that be horribly uncomfortable and probably impossible?

Why do the highlights go all the way around and not reach the top? Is someone running around him with a low-power torch and aiming it at his hair? So where on earth are the crease shadows coming from, again?! (Also, why are they doing that?) It seems like a lot of effort was taken to make the ends look nice and natural, so why not the rest of the hair? And are there really two little cut-out pieces just above his eyes? Why?

That "flowing" hair reminds me of one (possibly peggy) hair I had that was also badly animated, and really, really violently flicked about, even when the sim wasn't really moving. :S

Yay JMP! I'll get the new one then, some random strays have been spawning in all my hoods and it's upsetting me (This is still pre-Seasons, too, and one definitely unplayed neighbourhood has grown them without my playing it, and with empty templates correctly installed. It didn't have a single character file the other week. :S)

I'm also using the UK English version - perhaps I should have stated that earlier. (I really don't see why all this trouble has to come about when it's simply US/UK versions - they don't even change it to 'neighbourhood', I had to download something from MTS2 to do that. Other languages I can sort of understand.)

In the picture, though, it looks like she has hair. It's ok as a hat/headpiece - a bit strange, but well-made and vaguely attractive if you like things like that, but without the hair it just looks like weird head-growths :S

The simlogical birthday cake allows you to age pets when you want and the one with the global patch will also stop them from aging. If you have that and it still won't work, you might have a pre-Pets one or something. If you've looked through your downloads folder for anything with the word 'aging' in and got no results, it could be that hack? It shows up as a golden cake in the same section as the normal birthday cake.

This is just what I've noticed, not anything official or researched:

To get a sales business up, make sales. Don't just wait for people to buy things, either - make sure you're doing the sales socials on them. Obviously this gets you money, but interactions with staff seems to be what gets the stars, too.

The customers tend to only want what you're selling. I've never had a customer demand an item I don't sell from my staff. Cheap things like plants sell well, as do expensive entertainment things like tvs, stereos, hot tubs, etc., but I'm pretty sure if you sell even just one type of item, sims will buy it - they go to the business to buy things if there's not much in the way of distraction. (Also, you can force them to buy things with a good salesperson )

If the customer stands waving their arms a bit, scratching their head, you need to get a salesperson to do the May/Can I Help You? interaction, in Sales (I can't remember the exact name)

Dazzle won't work if the customer's in a foul mood. It may also not work if they hate the salesperson, but I'm not sure. Either wait for them to do something fun, go to the toilet, eat something before you try it or fill the place with snapdragons (or cheat, obviously)

The maximum business rank is 10. The perks I go for are the wholesale ones and/or the money ones in a shop. Whichever has Manipulate as a top level perk is probably useful, too, though I've never used it.

It's fairly complicated for the Sims, isn't it? XD I had trouble getting to grips with it at first but now I can keep anything but salons and restaurants in the green (seriously, I just don't get how you're meant to even break even with them!) I rarely run straight shops, though - normally they're half entertainment venue. Oh, and always, always have a ticket machine!

I am fairly unawesome. I can use SimPE to do simple editing without, like, breaking things, but I have no idea what 'normal' is meant to look like... ^_^;

The pets in the adoption pool were yours in the (existing) neighbourhoods I just checked. After an hour of normal play today, nothing has exploded.

Is the weird thing on the side an edit button? I'm not using that one :S But perhaps the Gods of Editing just like me today XD

In the folder, they're all named and credited. But in CAS, they're all called 'Enter breed name here...' or whatever that default is.

I'll go back into the house and ring up the adoption place again - while I was hunting for a cat breed I could recognise, not noticing they weren't being used, they came up different each time I loaded the house without previously saving, so I'll just do that again.

I'll try a new neighbourhood, but I've got blank templates? Does that still help your testing at all? Some of them I did myself but one I had to download, I think it may have been the pets one.

It doesn't work, but I doubt it is this - it's hanging up and eventually completely crashing just like it always had. It's most definitely not nostrayrespawn because I removed that, but I doubt it's this either. :S

Never mind - I forgot that simply thinking and typing that you will move a hack from your downloads folder doesn't make it happen. I'll go back in and try again

2nd edit: Ok, without the hack, it works. As in, phoning spawns animals - I'm assuming they must be yours (I think I'd need the siamese to tell) as everything else from the petbreeds folder is in documents\ea games\backup breeds. I'll have a look in CAS too

3rd edit: No breeds show up in CAS. I'll move them out of the folder and see if that works. This would explain the pets I generated all being rather homogyneous in appearance, as they weren't using breed coats or anything.

4th edit: After putting them in the main \petbreeds folder, they show up fine. They're even better looking in the game The breeds don't have names, but I can deal with that. Thanks again for making all of these!

I use Lyran's default skins - I don't think the teeth are drawn differently but they're a bit whiter.

I've never seen default just teeth - I wonder if they would have to copy a maxis skintone (or whatever else you are using) entirely apart from teeth, which are copied on from makeup teeth, and make that a default? o_O; It seems like there should be an easier way, so there probably is

I've only just backed up my main hood and my other is completely expendable so I'll try out what you did (not that I am awesome, of course... XD)

I play with the nostrayrespawn but that doesn't let me adopt via phone, so I'm taking it out anyway.

Your breeds are all adorable. I even like the dogs, and coming from me, who hates the sim dogs more than anything, that's probably saying something! It's funny - from your 'deer' and 'sheep' breeds I could tell you were a Petz player before I read the links at the top. I remember all the 'fish' and 'giraffes' I used to have in those games, I guess it reminded me of it.

That's really interesting I assumed they were invisible because of half-alien sims who had eyes that existed nowhere else in my game other than their skintone. I knew they were inheiriting the alien eyes which weren't showing up. As I knew the eyes were from their skintone, I assumed alien eyes worked in the same way. I kind of wonder why they didn't do it like that anyway? :S

I think if that happened in my game I would probably scream and cry irl. That is terrifying!

Thanks for the advice on the patch and Seasons, and thanks to everyone who's posted their horror stories, for you have saved my sims' future children from an ugly (literally!) fate

'Alien eyes' are invisible, no eyes - if you're using an alien replacement skin that doesn't have the black eyes, you simply can't get them. I don't know if you mean you're using custom eyes? I think custom eyes generally override all maxis eyes for the first generation or two unless they're set to not (kinda like custom skins). I haven't found any alien contacts that are the same as the maxis default, so I'd also be interested if anyone can find one. I think the problem may be that not many people make contacts and you can't extract the alien face through bodyshop (I'm sure it can be done through other methods, though).

I know things don't always seem to work this way with sims games, but if I hold out until Seasons should I theoretically need this patch? That is to say, would these problems be 'fixed' (my past experience with sims patches says that's not precisely the word anyway ) with seasons or will they be written off as 'pets problems' and not dealt with asides from in the patch?

I just don't trust them any more and the only problem I've had that's listed there, I can avoid with daily backups - I noticed the thing about breeding dogs but I only have cats now, and I can't be bothered with werewolves.

Nope - I didn't like the way the water looked, I'm pretty sure I didn't get that one. However that's just based on a quick search for anything starting with G, R or L that looked like it could be that. I often forget that I have replacement default eyes, for example XD If it has a filename starting with one of those, I don't have it.


I don't think it's that. I'll have a look at my drivers but I think they're ok. I've had issues like that in the past, like see-through floor grids and whatever, and those were driver problems. This is weird because it seems to be one lot and one room inside that lot. I really, really don't want to have to do anything else with my downloads folder. (I've sworn off downloading things I don't love and I'm deleteing things I don't use with an aim of getting down to 3000 files :X)

I'm not sure it's to do with placement, as there's two other rooms with windows on that side and they're ok. Thanks for the input anyway (everyone)

Ah, so you think it's just something up with that lot? I guess I'll just live with it, then - that lot took a while to build and there's a business. Unless anyone has a fix? *still hopeful*

It's only in that one room (that I've noticed - some houses have poorly lit dungeon-type basements, but I guess there it doesn't matter).

It's every piece of furniture, also windows (I forgot about that until now). I'm not sure if it affects the lights themselves :/ And I can't remember what it did to the doors. Sorry I didn't include that :/

The room is pretty strange, I don't know if that would affect it? It's got a shop in one corner, separated from the main part of the room by counters. That part of the room is entered through a door. The rest of the room (including behind that counter) is accessed through a household-only gate from the corridor that has the shop door in. Going through that room is the only way to get outside, which is the only way to get into the basement or onto the roof. (I think a screenshot may be more helpful, it's a very strange house, but I don't even know if this has anything to do with it - if it is I'll get one )

None of my problems with this game are the sort that generate error logs. I'm sorry

Occasionally, objects in a rooms in a house I have go dark, like they're in a window-less unlit room. But they aren't. The floor is bright, the sims walking around are well-lit. Turning the lights on and off doesn't help. Removing/replacing the lights doesn't help. All that helps is picking up the objects themselves and putting them back down, but that doesn't last.

It's annoying because it's a fairly big room with a lot of furniture in (not stupidly huge - it's only a 3x1 lot, and a third of that is garden! XD) Does anyone know of a hack that would cause this error? I'm just not sure what to look for - I don't believe I've ever downloaded something that affects lights (not counting custom lights - could they be the culprits?) It's not a big deal, but I would prefer it not to happen.