Ah, this would explain why the tombstone of one of my dead sims has disappeared. When I installed BV the sims on that lot would all have been asleep (I almost always save the game in the middle of the night) so the ghost sim must have been out and about. Any advice on how to get his tombstone back? Is there anything I should be doing to fix my game or is it just as if I deleted the tombstone manually? (I'm assuming deleting manually doesn't cause a problem, is that right?)

So when I added a second Uni hood to my main neighbourhood I got 50 more students? Even though I have all the noregen hacks?

I'm just checking because this group of townie students looks exactly the same as the students in the first uni. Are they spawned from a special set of templates? I have default face replacements that I installed after creating the first uni but before creating the second so if they are spawned randomly you would think they would look different.

I couldn't find secuROM under services.msc. I have no idea where \windows\system 32 directory is so I can't look in there for anything.

I'm running on Windows XP SP2, I didn't bypass the launcher immediately, although I have now and I always play with the DVD in the drive. Sometimes if I try to start the game up with the internet plugged in and before the computer is good and ready I get a message saying that something could not be verified within the time limit. I can't remember the exact message but I think it's suggesting it's trying to verify that I'm running the game legally. Is that something to do with secuROM?

I've never seen this happen. Is it only sims that are furious with the residents that steal papers? My sims are far too nice and never get mad with each other so maybe that would explain it.

We don't have mail boxes here so sadly I can't now fill one with concrete and wait for some idiot to damage his arm trying to destroy it. Before we all got special wheelie bins from the council we did used to get people slashing bin bags and strewing the contents over the pavement, I guess thats the same as trashcan kicking, just without the trashcan.

Some NPC's don't have any identification in SimPE. I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that the remote control car was one of them, although I could never work out why that object had a character file in the first place. I know that there are at least 4 characters that were known to always show up as unknowns in SimPE, although that was a few expansions ago so there might be more characters added to that list since then.

I know relationships to unknowns are safe to delete because they just regenerate next time you play the game if they are needed. I don't know about the actual character files though, I would suspect not, but I'm sure someone more awesome than me can confirm either way. I'm quite interested to know more about these too since I like my neighbourhood files to be nice and tidy.

Same here. I always type my cheats a certain way because they didn't used to work any other way.  I think 'floatprop tvVolume 0.1' is the one I always had to get the capital right for. Also 'moveobjects on' definitely doesn't work if I type it all in capital letters.

You're joking? That's nearly £5 and I'd happily playtest for that amount of money (not forever obviously, but as a temporary summer job or something back when I was a student). I'd only make an extra 35p an hour working at some crappy supermarket and that's only because I'm over 22 and therefore qualify for the £5.35 per hour minimum wage, no doubt when I was under 22 I would have been paid much less. Happily I now get paid a lot more than the minimum wage so I don't need to worry about it anymore.

I didn't get the triple speed problem on community lots until suddenly everytime I visited one the community lot populator started throwing up errors. Once I'd managed to get rid of the error messages by turning off debug mode the game would flip to triple speed. This happened all the time until I found out which hack needed updating to stop the errors.

EDITED because I can't spell sometimes.

I haven't seen this one yet, but if I ever do that's so going to be their excuse.

I did think it might be a stuck cleaning thing but when I made her selectable and checked she only had 4 neat points and no cleaning skill. Very random. It seems to have gone now anyway, when I reloaded today she was bubble free.

Never had the constant pouring bird food, although I have had a sim get stuck with a sponge in her hand after cleaning the bath and it just wouldn't go away no matter what I did. Eventually it went after I installed a new expansion pack and the sims all reset themselves (this was back in the days when I didn't know about forcing an error to reset the sims). I've also had sims get stuck with their hand raised as if moving a chess piece. This actually happens quite often but now I know to just reset the sim, previously it used to really annoy me.

He was playing Marco Polo at the time so maybe that's why he did it. Shame you can't direct sims to do it though.

The girl was a tourist on the hotel lot. When she jumped in the pool the bubbles didn't go away they just fizzed up around her (making it look like she definitely needed some charcoal tablets). If it's just one of those random glitch things I won't worry about it, no doubt next time the girl turns up on a hotel lot the bubbles will be gone. I was just worried it might be one of those things that spreads throughtout the neighbourhood, I didn't fancy having all my playable sims walking round with bubbles coming out of their butts.

When playing a hotel lot on Twikkii Island I noticed one of the children had a stream of bubbles following her everywhere she went. These persisted even after she got into the pool. Any ideas what has caused this?



Also whilst I'm here I saw a sim holding his nose and ducking underwater for the first time today. I've never had one of my playable sims do this, is there anyway to get them to do this?

Yesterday I was playing Takemizu Village with debug mode on and everytime I loaded a community lot I would get constant errors referring to a community lot populator. I kept pressing reset and the error kept occuring. Since I didn't like to hit delete I ended up turning debug mode off. In all I visited three community lots and this happened on each one. Once I managed to get debug mode off I could play each lot normally, except for one lot where no tourists or locals were generated at all. I have no idea what caused this, but I've got a lot of error logs which I have had a look at. All of them talk about the pickpocket NPC and since he never appeared on any lot I assume this means the game was having trouble generating him. Why this might be though I don't know, it takes someone more awesome than me to interpret these error logs.

I reckon EAxis might have moved some of the pre-made families between neighbourhoods when they first made the game. Probably they first planned one pre-made neighbourhood with a few different family situations (like aliens etc.) but then that evolved into 3 seperate neighbourhoods and they just moved the sims around.

On another note I carefully went through and deleted all my duplicate sims using SimPE to remove all memories, gossip tokens, relationships, SWAFs and finally character files. This was before I installed BV. The other day I was looking at my neighbourhood using the QA version of SimPe and noticed that some of the duplicate character files have come back!  Is this because I didn't delete them properly and what is it that might not have been deleted that could cause them to reappear (relationships, memories, SWAFs)?

In my extremely old neighborhood (I've had it since the base game but haven't played it consistently) I was seeing those random squiggly lines on a lot of my sims. Since no sims had died yet (they all had an unfortunate addiction to the elixir of life) it can't have been corrupted death memories. I cleared all gossip tokens using the lot debugger and also all memories and relationships to non-existent sims using SimPE (I had moved sims from another neighbouhood back before this was known to be a VBT) and I haven't seen the squiggly lines since. I think it was the gossip tokens that were causing the problem (although obviously not death gossip tokens in this case), you could try deleting them all with the lot debugger to see if this helps.

I didn't know you could do this, I always end up noting their file number and looking trough the SWAFs manually to delete them. Sometimes I've found sims with a blue background in SimPE don't appear on the lot debugger so I have to delete them entirely through SimPE. You mention Sim DNA but I thought deleting that, even for sims you wanted to delete from the game, was considered a VBT?

Ah, the delights of opening an 11 years old's book to see the sentence '"but u sed it woz alright mum." said jane.' causing you get out a very large red pen and scrawl '"But you said it was all right, Mum," said Jane.' You then proceed to spend the next few minutes with your head in your hands wondering why on earth you wasted an entire year attempting to teach these children decent spelling and grammar.

Back on the topic, I like the fact that time doesn't pass on vacations. The problem with the Community Time thing would be when you sent only part of your sim household on a holiday. Since you can't play the home lot whilst some of the sims are on holiday those sims would arrive back much older than the sims they had left behind. The seven days away from work shouldn't be too much of a problem though, simlogical has that object which shuts down college for a few days, surely it wouldn't be too difficult to have something to shut down work for a few days? (So it would be as if your sim was on leave from work.) I'm speaking here as someone who knows nothing about making hacks or mods so it's probably a lot more difficult than I imagine!

I'm also looking forward to making some beach lots in my main hood as soon as the new Sim PE comes out. I haven't been able to access the Sim PE site for two days though, is anyone else having this problem?

I'd be happy if my toddlers developed an obsession with the rabbit head because it builds charisma and since I rarely use reward objects it's their only chance to build that skill before they become teens. Unfortunately my toddlers are obsessed with the logic toy to the point where a twin will often sit and whinge that their twin is playing with the logic toy when there's a choice of xylophone and rabbit head nearby.

I hate the lack of child related activities as well. I thought this would be the perfect expansion pack for them to introduce more child centered activities since that's what family holidays are usually all about. I know there's the pirate ship and the sandcastle building but that's only on Twikkii Island. I was hoping to see adventure playgrounds and treehouses (and digging, why can't they do that?) and other exciting things in the mountain location. I can live with the village location being more centered on adult sims, it seems a more calm and grown-up destination. Maybe I was just expecting too much

I can't figure that out either. I thought putting on all the stuff from one vacation hood might do something, but nothing so far. Maybe I'm missing an item or maybe that's just not a solution at all. Has anyone tried putting all 6 souvenirs (2 from each hood) on the shelves?

I noticed a lot of people mentioning the triple speed when going to community lots on vacation and also the fact that food on vacation lots is unsatisfying and that sims talk excessively again whilst eating. I don't have any of these problems in my game, which seems a bit weird if everyone else is. Vacation food is as satisfying as a sim with decent cooking skill cooking for themselves at home and the community lots only triple speed until the game actually makes my sim walk onto the lot, then the speed automatically goes back to the slowest setting. Is anyone else's game doing this?

Some more annoyances:

Sims have now started dropping certain skill-building user-directed actions autonomously. I tell them to paint, they do for a bit then suddenly decide that because their bladder motive is halfway down they're going to stop and start chatting to their family member who is supposed to be skilling charisma on the bathroom mirror but who has also stopped. This never used to happen, if you instructed them to skill build they used to carry on until they were ready to drop (or wet themselves, whichever). I've noticed that logic building actions don't have this problem.

Room service doesn't work for me. I ordered it, waited and waited and nothing materialised.

Everyone think rain is the most fasinating thing ever again. Grrr

The not eating together in restaurants is annoying, but I can see why they set it up like that because you don't want one hungry sim forcing all your non-hungry sims into eating because they only eat as a group.

Also one last problem. Yesterday I sent two sims on a honeymoon, when they left their house (which had other sims living in it) I expected it to save the home lot. If it did the game gave no indication that this is what it was doing. The sims then arrived at the hotel and checked in. At this point I had to go out so I saved and went to quit. When I pressed quit a dialogue box came up, and assuming it was the standard "Are you sure?" box I automatically went to hit yes. Unfortunately it was just as I hit yes that I realised the box actually said "Are you sure you want to quit from here? If you...." That's all I got before the box vanished. So was the box telling me that the original home lot hadn't been saved and that I needed to finish the vacation and head back home in order for everything to be saved? I really hope not, but I guess I'll find out later when I play.

I don't dislike it because it's an upright. I also grew up playing an upright and of course that's what most people have and is the most realistic to have in the game. I'd actually prefer to use an upright because I do like my sims houses to look realistic. What I don't like about it is the weird carving/decoration on the front of the piano and the strange unvarnished wood it seems to be made from, that's what reminds me of a saloon from a Western and makes it look out of place. All the pianos I've ever seen in people's houses are flat and plain at the front and made from shiny varnished wood and I think that looks much more elegant.

My favourite thing so far is the grand piano! I've been wanting a new piano since the game first came out. The original one is ridiculously themed and didn't look right in anybody's house (who lives in a Saloon from a Western film?) When I saw it in the catalogue I practically danced for joy! (what can I say - I have no life)

Other good things include the new turn ons/offs because I always thought there should be more of them; the new walk between lots feature because it seems more realistic, especially for students on campus; the holiday memories that you can aquire because I like having a new goal to aim for; and actually all the new holiday activities, they're a nice break from the usual routine of my sims lives.

Overall I think this might become my favourite expansion pack after Seasons once all the little problems are ironed out.

I do agree with you about the fact that the McCanns were a rather stupid in what they did. Leaving the building completely to eat dinner, leaving the door unlocked, being so far away across so much dangerous ground (the road and pool like you say - and if they really were going back to check the kids every half hour they couldn't have been having a very relaxing dinner, surely?) was a bit much with such young children. I was just meaning that there are ways to leave a four and a two year old alone without it being a problem, they don't really need someone physically there 24/7. Also my parent stopped using the monitoring thing once I reached the age of about 6 (my brother would have been 3 and a half). I was however a rather sensible child. At the age of 8 I heard the boy in the room next door crying so I propped our door open with a pillow, knocked on his door (he didn't want to open it at first, but I was quite persuasive and he was upset) and took him down to reception so they could get his parents. I have however taught 7 year olds who I wouldn't leave alone for longer than a minute even with a baby monitor so I guess it really depends on the child. (I'm thinking here of a child who upon hearing the school fire alarm decided to go and look for the fire )

Whoever it was that realised stopping the game from dialling home reduces loading times is a genius! When I started the game without cc in place it took as long as it did for Seasons to load with cc in place. When I put the cc back it was taking 40 minutes to load BV and another 10 minutes to load a neighbourhood and 5 minutes to load each lot. Now by simply removing the internet cable from the wall before playing the loading time is actually less than it was before I installed BV! Since I was about ready to uninstall BV/buy a new computer/scream/kick the cat this is a huge relief.

Now my only dissatisfaction is that hotel lots run so slowly. I used to be able to have parties on home lots with 8 sims living there and 15 guests barely any lag at all. Now in hotel lots when there are my 2 playable sims plus 12-15 tourist sims present the game crawls. Even at the fastest speed it still runs at an extremely laggy version of the slowest speed (as in one sim minute passes every 3 seconds) I sent my sims to sleep, turned the speed up and went to make lunch. When I returned my sims were still asleep.  Not impressed at all. I ended up building a hotel with just two rooms to limit the number of tourist sims and that plays just fine. All normal community lots at holiday destinations also run fine.

Anyhow I think the time has come to upgrade something on my computer. The graphics card (a RADEON 9600 with only 256MB RAM) is looking the most likely candidate, but if anyone knows otherwise I would be happy to hear your advice (I have 1GB RAM, should I look at increasing that?) My computer knowledge is somewhat limited and my brother doesn't play the sims so isn't really best placed to give advice. His solution is "buy a new computer, yours is rubbish" which isn't exactly helpful.

At the age of 4 I knew that it was a bad idea to touch anything burning/open the door to strangers/stick my fingers in plug sockets etc. I was left on my own (then with my younger brother when he was born) asleep in hotel rooms all the time. My parents would put us to bed, set up the phone baby monitor thing that linked to reception so they would be informed if we were crying and go downstairs to dinner. Most of the time we slept through their entire absence. At the age of about 3/4 however I wandered down to reception by myself because my brother was having a nightmare. I was old enough to open the door and remember the way downstairs but apparently not old enough to realise the importance of clothes when appearing in public. Luckily I was young enough that everyone thought it was sweet.

Also about the blood in the car thing. Apparently it's not actually certain it is blood, in fact it's most likely not - the police over there are apparently once again making assumptions. Scientists over here who have checked it out say that the match with Maddie's DNA is barely 50% and that the trace amount could just as easily have come from the cuddly toy Maddie's mum has been carrying around with her since the day it happened. Not really the conclusive proof some media sources reported.

Since this is totally off-topic so far I'll just mention that I'm definitely trying that seedy hotel in the main hood thing. I have a few romance sims that would be perfect for! I hope it works.