More Awesome Than You!

Okay this one is making me about to scream, I can't figure it out.

I have a new 'hood...just made it a couple of days ago so you would think it would be pretty error free but apparently not.
Last night I made a university for it... well actually the whole university 'hood right now only consists of one dorm that I built myself.  This is the very first dorm I have ever built.  I found instructions to make sure everything worked right...made sure my lot zoning was right blah blah all of that.

I moved my sims in.

They were not selectable...I had no panel that displayed their wants, needs, ect.  Their thumbnails were not made visible on the left hand side of the screen....no pause or play buttons, nothing.

 
I'm completely stumped.  I have moved them in and out..tweaked multiple things and nothing will work.

Then I decided to use a Maxis dorm, since maybe I have an inability to create a proper dorm or something.  I moved them in and waited...and waited.....the cab never arrived.  Arrive at college and age transition cued up multiple times in the top left hand corner but my sims never appeared anywhere on it.

Each time I've had to use my task manager to shut down the game b/c I've had no control panel.  So it's getting majorly frusturating trying to figure out what is wrong and having to restart the game 3-4x..and each time having to shut it down b/c I can't exit out of the situation.

Any help would be appreciated.  Maybe my college is just FUBAR.

Where are your sims now?  Are they in the students' bin, or in the dorm?  Or neither?
If they are apparently in the dorm, and they are sims you want to keep (ie, they are part of one of your sim families) I would be inclined to move them back into the bin, then go and load one of the Maxis colleges and try moving them into one of the dorms there. 

After you know your sims are safe, you could delete the college you started and try making another one using a different template.  And don't move any sims in until it has more than one dorm.  If you don't want to go to the trouble of making a lot of comm lots, you could just make copies of the ones in the default college.

Well I searched and searched and couldn't find any answers and anybody who had ever apparently experienced this strange circumstance so I tried another route and just moved them into a lot that was for rent.  I guess I should have just went ahead and tried that to begin with but I really wanted these sims in a dorm.  But that actually worked...so it seemed like it was something with the dorms.  I'm just going to delete that college neighborhood and try again next generation that comes around ready for college and see what happens, but it will be a while before I get to test it out again.  Unfortuantly all the Maxis made uni 'hoods are already associated with other  neighborhoods so I can't use them.  I have another custom 'hood or two where the custom uni 'hoods work fine, dorms and everything so I'm not sure what the heck happened.  Quite puzzling to me but at least my sims are safe.  I guess they don't have to be in a dorm if my game wants to be retarded and not allow them to be.

I've had a similar problem in my hood. I wanted to move in Johnny Smith and Oliviathingie into a dorm but the taxi never showed up. For me this happened in a custom uni I made using the Bluewater template. I just figured that was the problem and nuked it all. However it doesn't when I move students into dorms with residents already in it. Maybe you should just stick to maxis-made uni's, I reallt dunno sorry, just rambling :-[.

I think you can use the Maxis colleges as often as you want, just not two of the same linked to the same hood.  I have as many as 9/10 hoods in one game set, each with a uni attached, and none of them are custom.

However, I've frequently done this and it's worked:  build house or renovate existing house, changelotzoning dorm, save and exit, move sims in and then changed back to residential, save and exit.  Never had a problem doing that.  I've also used the five-roomed dorm on many occasions with no problems, frequently making it residential after a while, with all five rooms occupied by playables.  However, some of the larger dorms I've found either unplayable because of the size or just plain screwed-up!

Yes, but the problem is we just can't move sims into dorms because the taxi will never show up, de camera will just be floating above the lot and nothing happens. I've had this happen several times with small masix-made dorms

You can use the maxis uni's as many times as you want, as ZZ said -- you just can't use the same uni twice with the same base neighborhood. Same with the Downtown and Bluewater Village pre-mades. Since each base neighborhood is unique, the sub-hoods associated with it are also unique, so there's no overlap with sub-hoods in other neighborhoods.

You'll get the same set of pre-made students again, but if you don't want to play them you can just turn them into townies/dormies with Inge's transporter plus bush or the testing cheats.

Or leave them in the students bin forever!

This may be a simplistic answer, but did you try pressing the tab key to get the panel back?  If you hit tab, it will hide the panel -- I've done this by accident a number of times (yes, bad case of fumble fingers).  Anyway, just a thought.

Sometimes that's all you need to do, but it seemed that the reason for the screen not appearing was that the house/dorm concerned hadn't finished loading, and therefor the menu bar wouldn't appear.  Even if you pressed tab, it might not work, and if it did, you would almost certainly not get the option to quit if the game is still in the loading phase.   It just seemed to me that in this case there was more going on than a missing menu bar.

Yea, but after a while the cluttered bin starts to annoy me. :)  Easier to leave the ones I may play someday in there (or move them to a dorm where only they'll live and not my usual playables), and make the ones I'll never play on their own townies/dormies to add to the pool of potential mates...

Mine never ever marry townies/dormies or any other -ies these days!  And I don't let my romance sims woohoo them either - used to once, but I dislike them so much - I think the worst thing about them is that every time you play a hood in a new install you still get the same old ugly faces!

The Plastic Surgery Station or the Face Lift in Insimenator is your friend. :)

I just can't be bothered!  Send them all to work in the sweat-shops of Bluewater Village and forget about them!  The kids can just revert to babies (after the trouble they caused me when I deleted them, it's easier) and the teens can go to college - I quite like the teens!  they mostly turn out much better than you'd expect, although poor Orlando needs a pretty thorough facelift, and Ricky banefits from a nose job!  But give Tosha Go hair from Seomi and she's a stunner!  As for Sophie, she may be a bit of a grouch, but it's surprising how much she improves after she falls for Nolan Rusiewicz!

Yea, Tosha Go is in the Meadow Thayer class of good looking teens; she's on deck to go to Uni whenever I need a new love interest for a b.i.g. sim. :)

I love Tosha Go :D I usually give her the brown/blonde Maxis 'custom' slanted bob, and the Yellow dress outfit with boots, cos it suits her so much! She makes a very pretty adult-and her kids are very attractive...I usually save her for my current favourite male teen sim :)

Try one of Seomi's shaggy cuts!

And you should see Sophie and Nolan in Compulsive D's dreadlocks!

I tried the short one, but it just isn't Tosha....when she is an adult I usually put Lola's 'Up All Night' hair on her in blonde :D

Well, I think she looks great, and no, she doesn't look like the old teen Tosha, but really, those pigtails are sooooo ....Cassandra!

Those pigtails look cute on the toddlers and kids-but as soon as they are teens, they are changed :D They look ridiculous on older sims! :P

And absolutely gross on grandmas!  Like the mohican hair - unless you are using it for aliens - looks totally ridiculous except at the teen/student stage!  (And very 70's!)

 :D I tend to make all my aliens bald!

I never use the mohican-I just don't like it!

Tend to agree with you on that - I never liked it when it first became fashionable, and now I find it rather repulsive - but I did use it on a family of "aliens" in one game - but not green Maxis ones, I used the elf face and father and daughter had the mohican, but his brother didn't.  Somehow, though, it looked ok with the space-suit type clothes.

I managed to accidently abandon my own thread but I appreciate the suggestions although I see it has now turned to townie talk hehe

That's really odd that I can't seem to be able to use the maxis made universities over and over again.  The option is not available to me at all.  When I went to create a new university I only had the option of creating a custom one...hmm

And I wish it were as easy as the tab key...I would have felt like an idiot but at least that would have been an easy issue to fix lol

Maybe you need to move out all your hoods and uninstall/reinstall Uni - it sounds to me as though something isn't properly installed.  (I've had to reinstall every EP because the first install was buggy!)  Now I think that would mean you'd have to do the same with NL and OFB if you have tham.

Hmm when installing the patch I had to uninstall/reinstall OFB so maybe that caused an issue as I didn't uninstall/reinstall any of the other EPs. 

I have a sim teen who I'm thinking of sending to Uni early in that 'hood so I'll try deleting that university and starting a new one and see what happens before I go the entire reinstall route again.  What a PITA lol