More Awesome Than You!

Okay, this'll be the unofficial thread of posting annoyances and glitches.

Things in OFB that annoy me, but aren't because of a glitch:
1. Children now leave at 6 P.M. when they come over to visit.
2. Teen/adults/elder all have a obsessive fascination with dancing with children (Though I find this somewhat cute, but still annoying).
3. Building materials do not automatically go to the shelf, instead you must have them restocked. This pisses off customers because the restocker gets in the way.

Things that annoy me because they are glitches:
1. Toddler will not turn around if sim wants to pick him/her up, resulting in querie destruction, and it being very difficult to pick up tollders in a small room.

2. Customers have a negative response, no mattter what, for certain sims. Maxing out -everything- (including interest) still results in the same negative results.

3. Customers have a obsession with toys (FIRE TRUCKS), and ignore everything else in the store.

4. Inge's noautonomous fridge doesn't work! (I know this doesn't count, but damn, you really miss that hack once your sims start burning, I mean COOKING for themselves again, to your horror.

It's 3 in the morning. I'll think of somemore later.


NEXT!

My customers don't have an obsession with fire trucks.

Just to let you know.

err...kids always left at 6 PM. Is it just me, or can teens stay later now though?

Could that be because you don't stock that line?  ::)

Can I just say that OFB survives remarkably well on the NL edition of the FFS Director's Cut?

I cleaned out my FFS subfolder of downloads, dragging the unsafe hacks to a new unsafe hacks sub-folder ... then like the total dummy I am I got carried away in my childish keenness to see OFB in action so I installed and loaded up with actually dragging the unsafe hacks folder off to the desktop or some other limbo. I began to get suspicious when I noticed that my Authorised Personnel consoles still had menus ...   ::)

It used to be that kids left at 8PM I think.  Or rather, if they stayed too late a parent would come looking for them (if they had a playable family) or they would excuse themselves if a townie.

That all changed in NL.  Now they leave at 6PM, no exceptions.

This has led to two very annoying situations:

1.  Kid birthday parties can't be held on an evening after the 6PM age rollover because other kid-age guests will immediately leave the lot after coming over via the invite.  The only option here is too wait until the next day.  If its a weekend, that's great.  If not (as is usually the case) you're essentially screwed because parents often aren't home from work and by the time they get home you usually have a scant hour or two before it turns 6PM and all the kids leave the lot again (sending party scores plummeting).

2. Kids can't be invited over period even if their parents are present.  I had a situation where the grandparents invited over a group that consisted of their son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.  I wanted them all to have dinner together.  The moment the grandparents greeted their grandson he hurried off the lot because it was after 7PM, and he needed to go home.  No time to get him into a casual group so that he would stick around.  Pretty ridiculous since he was leaving his entire immediate and extended family behind and going home to a theoretically empty house.

 >:(

There should be game logic that prevents these kinds of situations from happening.

JMP are you reading this?  Perhaps a hack is in order???

Offering a customer a makeover (for pay) with the chair seems to do absolutely nothing. As far as I can tell, it's supposed to work like showing an item to get them interesting and start browsing it, but it doesn't do anything. They just nod and nothing happens.

Help please! I bought a grill for my community business, but i can't clean the plates after people eat!!! Is this normal? do you have the same problem? The clean option just isn't there and the dishwasher isn't clickable...so there are plates everywhere  :-X

Is there a trash can on the lot anywhere? I seem to recall the community grills using paper plates instead of regular dishes. I could be completely out of my mind though.

Cripe, I haven't even been able to find the chair yet! :-[

Its in the comfort/miscellaneous bit :)

The grill used to use real plates, I remember having sims trek all over the place to wash the darn things up.  However, in sims 1 it was always paper plates, so maybe they've decided that made more sense. ;)

After trial and error I discovered that you have to click the chair, and chose "Be Stylist," so if you only have the one Sim working you have to go back and forth from Sales to convince the customer to get a makeover, and being the stylist so that you can give the makeover.

As far as the plates on community lots, if you have a sink either in a bathroom or a breakroom, Sims will wash dishes there.

My biggest problem is that there seem to be routing problems around the new Mission style table and chairs.  Adults walk right thru the fronts of the chairs while cleaning up the dishes, and I had a child get caught between the chairs on one side of the table, and I had to use "moveobjects" to move her away from the table.

If that's a 'feature' and the way it's supposed to work then I'm not sure I like it or it makes much sense. If they get interested in it on their own you can sell them on it and then when they are ready to get their makeover they'll just sit down somewhere until someone is assigned to the chair, just like sims ready to be rung up will wait around for a while if there isn't a cashier at the moment. It doesn't make much sense to me that when you should them the chair they don't start getting interested in it by browesing it or just wait for someone to be assigned. It's also annoying to need two people for that and it seems pretty random and aribitrary as far as how and how often sims get interested and start browsing the chair on their own.

I'll give that suggestion a try, but I must say I'm not thrilled with it at all if that's the way it is supposed to work and won't be changed.

I saw two bugs in OFB so far.

1)When I bought a new fridge because I needed to make more Hamburgers, the fridge was still empty but couldn't be restocked.
2)Here's sort of a serious one.  When I was playing and shortly after I hired an employess the game crashed.  When I booted up the game again however, I found that there was no trace of the Shop Owner's house.  At first I thought the character was gone and he ended up being "vaporized" like in 1984.  However, he still is at a sim's house and can still be called.  If his house doesn't reappear then I'll have to move a sim into someone's house and have him move out.  Good thing that no20khandouts is updated, and I wonder if this bug is the reason they added the new cheat....

There's got to be more than I've listed but these are the two noticable ones I found by playing about 2 hours.  Also, I can't stand not having J.M.'s Hacks, especially macrotastics.  I believe that all this business crap will get easier when Pescado gets the game and automates everything.

I tried to move the mailbox and the trashcan a few tiles sideways and I couldn't place them outside the boundaries, even with 'moveobjects on'. That is pretty vexing, I can't even place a table there for the bills anymore. Thank goodness Monique has her computer updated to OFB, that way I can pay through the computer. I just have to watch out that the simmies don't get to the mailbox first.

The only thing that can be placed 'out of bounds' for me are flooring tiles. Bummer.

Same here, Veilchen, and there is quite a lot about this problem in one of the other threads.


Mister Paper, I noticed the same thing about the fridge.  I bought a mini fridge for the furniture store to stick in the little room behind the counter, and I immediately got the notice that the fridge was nearly empty, time to buy more food.  But I wonder if that's a problem with the LowfoodWarning hack, rather than the fridge (which it's supposed to ignore anyway).

I don't have that hack but am still having this same issue with the fridge.

*goes back into lurk mode*

Okay, I just tried this and it only sort of works but the way it works makes no sense at all to me.

Sim 1: Employee, gold badge in cosmotology, assigned to work the chair
Sim 2: Business owner, no cosmotology skill, gold badge in sales

The business owner offered a makeover to a sim and the sim accepted, however the owner (the person who offered) and NOT the employee who actually had the skill and was assigned to give makeovers, was the one who did it. He actually did a successful makeover, but I am not sure if that was due to her skill in some messed up way of transference or just luck. At any rate, his cosmotology skill seemed to go up a little.

Makes no sense to me. So I need an employee to just stand there at the chair before the sim who actually wants to give the makeovers can offer them? Seems like that employee is just dead weight that costs money. :p

I've replaced some of the fridges while playing OFT in its vanilla state and haven't noticed this at all.  Are you absolutely sure that no hack could be affecting this?  I had it happen back with TS2 on its own but it rarely happened after I got Uni.  

Are the lots you are having problems with the frig not being able to restock in the new neighborhood? If yes, did Maxis remember to put a store where you can buy groceries in the new neighborhood? Remember from NL - you can't buy groceries in a neighborhood your sim doesn't live in.

I can... oh, wait, I have no idea if I can restock my fridge in a custom hood with no community lots on it at all (yet), because I've had the fridge-restocking hack in. But still, grocery delivery by phone is probably NOT checking for a community lot in the hood with grocery objects on it -- that's way too sophisticated.

I'm not sure this is a problem as such, but I have a business (flower shop) that has now reached Rank 10 with about 180 customer loyalty points.

The thing is, it hasn't made any money since day one and I'm scratching my head, wondering why?

I have my items set at expensive (and that seems to be okay because plenty of people are buying the goods) and five employees on fair pay only.

Now, is it that I'm not giving it enough time to rake in the dough or do I have too many employees maybe? Though it seems I do need them as it's a very busy place.

Another thing, do employees get paid hourly or by the day?

It seems my expenses are outweighing my cash flow and my first instinct is too many employees, but if anyone can verify this or anything else I'm not doing right, I'd be grateful for the advice  :)

 Aussieone is your simmie still working at the store with the employees?   If you are running the business using a manager and not working in the store, the cash you make goes down.    I will have to look that up in the guide to see exactly what it says.

 The other thing that shows how well you are doing is the Cash Tracker.  The tool is used to view the business's financial history.  If the business brought in more money than it spent, the indicator will be above the line and green.   If the business spent more money than it made, the indicator will be below the line and red.

edit   The employee is paid every hour and deducted from the owners funds

Thanks Marg  :)

Yes my sim does work in the store and I've just laid off the manager because well, her pay was just too much in comparison to what duties I wanted her to fulfil.

Needless to say that as you pointed out the employees get paid by the hour, I think I made a good move as she was my most highly paid worker!

My sims are obsessed with drinking from the bar. I threw a graduation party and everyone just stood in the corner, drinking and then wetting their pants when they couldn't get to the bathroom. I'm removing bars from all my lots   :-\

 I'm wondering if the other business owners can take advantage of having some of the snapdragon bouquets
in their stores?      If they give a boost to all the motives except energy, wouldn't the employees work longer without taking breaks?     I haven't got this far in my game yet to see if this is even possible.     The owner of the business would have to buy them and put them in his inventory, then maybe put them for decoration in their business.

Is the "hang out" action been modified?  Now adults seems to be able to do it too!!!  >:(

Can anyone confirm that action is available in their game too please.  :)

Is this normal or not... if anyone with the prima guide could check I would appreciate.  Or if any modder could check that I would really appreciate it.

yes Adults and children can now join in hangout.

Thanks gypsylady, I still wonder why Maxis made it available for almost all the sims now....

Does lots dissapearing count as a problem? (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3302.0)

I've noticed slight problems with the computer(s) and the SSX game (or whatever its' called). Even after the sim stops playing, the animations and sounds for the game keep going on the computer screen. Sometimes there is nothing else to do about it but sell the computer and buy a new one.

For some reason, Don Lothario couldn't play the game at all: It kept disappearing off his queue no matter how many times I told him to play.

Is anyone else having issues with servo coming to other lots as a visitor? I have one who whenever he gets invited and shows up on someones lot just stops and stands there. If you try to interact with him, the action immediately drops out of queue. If I turn on debug mode I get errors. Reset doesn't fix him. The only things that will are either making him selectable or deleting him from the lot.

This is rather annoying as I want to play this servo like a regular sim but apparently he can't just show up as a visitor on anyone's lot.  ???

*Edit: Okay, I checked the error log, it's giving an "invalid constant" error.

Here's the begining of the log and I've attached the full log if anyone wants to look at it. Mackey is the name of my servo sim btw.

Object id: 476
name: N004_User00424 - Mackey
Stack size: 4
Error: Invalid constant.
Iterations: 620
  Frame 3:
    Stack Object id: 476
    Stack Object name: N004_User00424 - Mackey
    Node: 15
    Tree: id 8688 name 'Visitor - Motive Check - Check Queue?' version -32757
    from PersonGlobals
    Prim state: 0
    Params:    Locals:
  Frame 2:
    Stack Object id: 476
    Stack Object name: N004_User00424 - Mackey
    Node: 14
    Tree: id 8283 name 'Function - Main - Loop' version 96
    from PersonGlobals
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 6 20 1    Locals: 0
  Frame 1:
    Stack Object id: 476
    Stack Object name: N004_User00424 - Mackey
    Node: 6
    Tree: id 8193 name 'Function - Main' version 102
    from PersonGlobals
    Prim state: 0
    Params:    Locals: 6 20 0
  Frame 0:
    Stack Object id: 476
    Stack Object name: N004_User00424 - Mackey
    Node: 2
    Tree: id 4096 name 'Function - Main' version 17
    from NPC_Template_Servo
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 0    Locals: 0

[404'ed!]

Yes Motoki, same here. I have a servo named Dagmar (long story, lol). She shows up on community lots and businesses (home and otherwise), but any interaction immediately drops out of queue. My simmies can call her up and chat with her on the phone, but no interaction is possible on lots the robot visits. She doesn't even autonomously interact with anyone, just stalks around for hours and then leaves.

Okey! I discovered the mod that was giving me the problem...i overlooked it, and when i tell you the name you definitely gonna kill me (or throw me stuff at least). Name is: "NO COMMUNITY PLATE CLEARING"

*runs for his life*

*laughs* Sounds like that mod is going to need an update, so it can tell the difference between a community lot your controllable Sims are just visiting and should not be tidying up, and a community lot your Sims are running a business on and need to be able to keep clean.

Yeah. It really isn't an incompatibily, it's doing what is supposed to do just fine. But...as you explained, it's purpose doesn't fit OFB.

The one problem I've had intermittently is what I call the Bakery/Inventory bug, although it's not confined to bakery items, it has happened when my Sim did the "Make Many..." for other foods as well. Sometimes the food items that are made simply disappear from the owner Sim's inventory. I had my Sim make about a half dozen plates of grilled cheese sandwiches, and when I checked his inventory, only two servings were in his inventory - the others had just vanished. I've seen other people having this problem on the BBS as well. It doesn't happen all the time, though and I haven't determined which factors lead to the vanishing inventory.

I've noticed one thing, the burglars are passing by more often than they used to - thank goodness I can just ban them from the lot before they break in!  Mind you, the current lot the place is almost always open for mot of the night!

I've had no trouble restocking any of my fridges, and for those who wondered, I've a custom hood where as yet I have no stores at all, and you can still restock the fridge over the phone, so I don't think the problem with Mister Paper's fridge has anything to do with whether there is a grocery store or not.  I would definitely think it has to be a hack of some sort causing the problem.

I've tried the food option, and I can't get my sim to "make many", they just make one and eat it!

I decided to try lotbinning an owned business - Landgraab's nightclubto see what would happen.  Bad idea.  There was no warning about it being owned, it went straight into the bin.  I spawned it back onto its spot.  It was there minus the dollar sign showing that it was no longer owned.  Unfortunately, Malcolm still had the deed in his inventory, but now its worthless.  He didn't recieve any money for the property.  I made him buy it back.  Now he has two deeds for Club Dante, one has the option: 'view', while the new one has these options: 'view' and 'sell'.  Definitely a no - no.  Maxis should have included a warning system for this.  Malcolm's lost a small fortune.

As an amature error log reader, I believe Motoki's log is an error caused by different motives that Servo has.  Correct me if I'm wrong...

He only has 4 motives, so maybe that's part of the problem? Perhaps as a guest the game is looking for 8 motives and not finding them all?

More things that annoy me, but aren't a glitch:

1. Customers get into a fight/shove match/argument/ANY negative react with each other, and the owner loses business loyalty for both sims.

2. Customer loses loyalty because they didn't want you to try to sell them something? (this may not bother others, but we've got a program where I live that if you go into a store, expect to be asked if you need help, and expect to be told to LEAVE if you want to be a jackass to the person trying to help)

3.Customers get angry when "May I help you?" is performed.
 
4. Customers complaining about the stupidest things! I've had customers complain about the maid, paper boy, newspaper being on the ground, repairman being electricuted. Baby being born in their presense, children being in the store, toddler playing with toy. I could go on forever with this.

Things that are glitches:

1. things that are created (make food/toys/flowers/ect) dissapears after created and money is lost.

2. "May I help you?" confused morons, act like morons right in front of the register, making other PAYING customers angry, and throwing their bags down, resulting in loss of customer loyalty.

3. Assign is screwed up. Employee trying to sell something will continue to do so, even though the customer wants them to leave them alone, until the customers gets pissed, complains, then leaves.


Just another thing not related. The sooner someone makes a hack so a emplyees build just what you need (and maybe a couple extra of each item), instead of making fifty of one item, while the rest of the store inventory goes empty, the better!

Nope, that's not causing the problem. It's got to be a hack conflict. There was one constant added by OFB to Bcon 7F01EC29:2001 (that this bhav is trying to check but can't find).

I actually agree with this. Some people want interaction when they shop and some people don't. I'm one of the latter and tend to avoid the stores where they pounce on you the minute you walk through the door. I've worked in retail for several stores. Some of them insisted you must greet everyone  ::) but some (the smarter ones imo) told us we needed to kind of observe the customer feel them out, check their body language and use our judgement to decide if they wanted to be helped or not.

I agree with this and I think it adds strategy to the game. It also makes the assess perks useful because you check out the customers moods and leave the grumpy people be! I don't think someone like Pescado would want to be greeted or sold to in a store. That is, if he ever left his bunker to go to one.  ;D


Again, having worked in retail, this seems quite normal to me (well maybe not the babies being born heh). It's kind of like the headmaster, if you want to make him happy, you have to keep the place tidy etc. Some of the stuff like the paperboy is kind of dumb because you can't control it, but on the other hand you really shouldn't have a maid walking around on a sales floor during business hours or some woman dropping her kid in between the shelves.

Just my opinion of course.

Well I'm only using the ones that the creators have claimed to be clean. I guess I could try taking everything out and see if he works, but then if he does comes the joy of taking out all my hacks one by one and reloading the game.  :P

Is there any easy way to scan all the packages in a directory for that particular value?

It should come up as dirty using hackdiff if you scan your hacks folder(s).

Edit: and hackdiff will mention that particular bcon file.

I have never had any serious lot problems in my game berfore, mostly just hack conflict stuff and thats it. But the other night I built a new community lot for my sim in Pleasantview. It was a furniture/decor shop. All went well, got up to 11 stars and have almost filled my business perks board from this sim owning previous lots.

In the past, in downtown, I could exit the game while my sim was still working in the shop and come back to it later but I did it the other night and but when I re-loaded, I couldn't access anything my sim was connected with. My sims house said that this family was visiting their shop and there was no car in their driveway from the neighbourhood view. I tried to access the shop and it was just accessing build mode, thats it. I could see my sim and her car but couldn't play them. I could only build/add to the shop.

I couldn't move the lot into the bin as the game said that it was still in the middle of a save so I just bull dozed it and everything seems to be ok now.

Frustrating after all that hard work. I just had her buy the Real Estate place in the shopping district and she still has all her stars from her prevous business adventures.

Am disppointed though with teh Rea Estate business. You just sell books or your office furniture! Am I missing something here??

Yes, you have to buy up many, many buildings and then place the deeds for sale.  Sims will buy them, but shoo your playable sims away.

Oh joy, now I get to spend the better part of my afternoon trying to figure out this oh so user friendly program of Pescado's. Maybe the one by one process of elimination isn't so bad after all.  :P

You could use the divide and conquer method -- take out HALF of your hacks, leave the other half in, see if you still have the problem. If you do, it's one of the hacks you left in. If you don't, it's one of the hacks you took out. Repeat with the group that appears to contain the problem, until you have a small enough group of possibly-problem hacks that you are willing to move to swapping them out one at a time. It isn't a flawless method, as there are issues it won't catch (more than one problem hack, or a problem which is actually a conflict between two hacks), but it's reasonable and it's faster than going one-at-a-time from the start.

Motoki,

If you create the hacks.txt file, I'll scan it for you. I've already got the needed file.

Open a command prompt window, navigate to your downloads folder, then type this:

dir/s/b *.package > hacks.txt

Upload the hacks.txt file that's created and I'll scan it.

I think it would be hard to recreate seeing as community lot show ups are very random, and how dangerous it is for a sim to leave their house knowing they might never come back from the community lot.

The problem that Motoki is talking about testing is about Servo appearing on residential lots as a visitor.

Lil Brudder is talking to me. Read the whole thread before posting thanks.

I haven't played the game too much so far, but, I have noticed a few things that are annoyances.  I have started only one business so far, a home based flower shop.  Someone already mentioned customers getting pissed when an employee tries to assist them.  This has been a real problem for me so far.  When I noticed that cutomers were getting pissed I assigned my employee a different task, but the customers were still complaining.  I am having a really hard time determing what exactly the customers are complaining about.  Either the business owner or employee's face shows up in the customers thought bubble with an 'x' over it.  It seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of situation.

One of my biggest annoyances has to do with the damn lockable doors.  I have put a front and back door to the business that anyone can access.  The store part of the lot has potties, comfy chairs, a buffet that I always keep full, and a radio.  Eventhough I have all the comforts a customer may need in the store, they always want to go through the doors that lead to the owner's home.  I have these locked to let only family and employees enter.  The customers will scream and bitch incessantly for hours because they cannot go into the house.

I also have a problem with customers not leaving.  They will buy things and then start dancing to the shopping music on the stereo, pillowfighting, kickybagging and outhanging.  When I finally get tired of them and have my sim 'say goodbye - to everyone' , they get pissed and my business rating takes a hit.   I think next time I play, I am going to try that ticket machine and see if that cuts down on the loitering.

Have any of you noticed that your sims seem to be obsessed with the toy brick?  Mine will stop running the store to go pet the damn brick.  It was kinda funny the first time, but now it  is a real pain in the patoot.  If I can't find one of my sims, they are usually in the yard, teaching the brick tricks.  Damn free will.  I always play with free will on unless I am trying to orchestrate something special like a wedding or b-day party.  It just seems to me that free will has become more of a nuisance than it was before OFB.

Thanks Lil Brudder. Putting up deeds had crossed my mind but I wondered which sims would have that kind of money. Agree too that you wouldn't want your playable sims really buying property. I'm not sure that the game could handle it. I have some deeds still in my inventory from past business adventures. Can I sell those? Guess not if I don't truly own them.

I might give this one a miss and get into clothing or something as simple.

I'm having a problem with the doors not locking at all.  I have a home business (assorted stuff) in the garage.  I locked all doors to the house to allow only family and employees.  The first few customers into the store will walk in the house front door, through the house and into the garage.  If they enter the garage sometimes they can and sometimes they can't enter the house.  No one has complained about the door being locked at all.

C

BetsyJayne,

I have decided to just accept the grumpy customers, the ones where it seems that you can't win. I have taken to deleting them too with 'moveobjects on' if they piss me enough.

I hate how customers buy things then treat your shop as the social hub of the neighbourhood. I find that an individual goodbye is better than a group goodbye. Don't know why.

Also, I put in a coffee/barista machine in my furniture store and my playable sim became obsessed with it. Every free moment she either making herself one or lining up to be served. Shitted me to tears! I am thinking No Free will sounds good.

I would use the phone to select Real Estate.../Sell Real Estate and that way, you know its gone for good.

I have only locked the doors in my shop that lead to the "back of house" areas where I keep my workbenches and florist units etc. No one has ever tried to go in there. So far, circulation hasn't been a problem. I haven't had people getting in the way of others etc but then I haven't played a home business either.

Has anyone noticed that when you assign a manager to look after the business, they just seem to tidy up all the time? even if customers are waiting to be served? And how come your staff don't autonomously ask "May I help you?" to the lost losers who come in it seems at the most unopportune time.

That is what I have done but still the deeds are in my inventory. I haven't looked at them to see what they will do.

I haven't been able to assign managers yet.  My employees are too stupid.

I didn't know this until I got the guide, but you can only assign managers on a community lot business and not on a home business.  :-\

Thanks Motoki, I didn't know that either.

Also, does it say anything about employees quitting in the manual? I had a really good employee who I overpaid but everytime I assigned her a task that she didn't have badges in she quit. Is that normal? I re-hired her but it happened again. I wanted her to stocktake, she didn't have a badge in it and it all just turned pear shaped after that.

It just says the might quit if they are overworked or underpaid. You can kind of tell their mood by the color of the bubble above them. If it starts to get red give them a break or send them home. Just assigning them to something they don't have experience in shouldn't make them made, they just won't be as good at it.

re: hack causing conflicts with servo as a guest on lots.

I figured out Pescado's program, couldn't find any reference to Bcon 7F01EC29 though.

Anyway, I narrowed it down a bit and it's definitely something of Pescado's causing the problem because I took out all custom content and the problem went away, then I just put back in the directory with only Pescado's hacks and the problem came back. Here's the list of the ones I am using. Supposedly, they are all kosher and the most up to date versions. Most come from the new OFB moreawesomethanyou pack.

*edit: It seems to be lesswhiny. I just need to go through and try everything else without lesswhiny and make sure nothing else is also causing the same problem.

I thought dailygardener was a no no. There are always problems with that one and phone related hacks with every expansion pack it seems.

I just took dailygardener out of that list I updated above but had the rest in and no dice, I still get the problem. I'll keep at it.

Darkstormeye - when you leave your sim on a community lot and exit your game, you have to return to that lot when you reload to send him back home.  It's a pain in the you know what, but ther it is!

Zeph, thats the odd thing. It wouldn't let me play the community lot to send my sim back home. I only had the build option. No play lot option.

That's really wierd, when it tells you when you exit that you will have to do that!  Guess they left a bit of the program out!

I think I have daily gardener in, though as yet no sims can afford any kind of gardener, nor do they have anything to water or trim!  But if it was causing a conflict, I think it would do it even if you hadn't actually used it, wouldn;t it?

Yep, Motoki, less whiny is the culprit. I'll let Pescado know.

Yes, I just confirmed that myself too. Ran with no custom content but less whiny, had the problem with servo as a guest. Ran with all my hacks but lesswhiny, didn't have it.

That's a shame too because I consider it one of the essentials. I know Inge has a similar variant of less moaning or some such thing but I haven't tried it with OFB yet.

I suppose he should take it out of the OFB moreawesomethanyou pack for the time being and anyone who has it and intends to ever invite a servo over as a guest should probably get rid of it.

Would less whiny also conflict with the salon chairs issue that no customers seem to want to use too?

I for one shall remove it until the Awesome One has had a look at it!  (No servos in my game yet, though.)

I just tried Inge's nomoaningtilldesperate and it isn't causing the servo problem and doesn't appear to cause any issues in a short test, but it didn't scan clean with Hackdiff, it came up like this:

ijNoMoaningTillDesperate.package: may require possible updates:
    B 0x7F01EC29 0x2045 Motive Helper - Distress

On the other hand, lesswhiny which definitely is causing at least one problem scanned completely clean with hackdiff. I must say that concerns me a bit because I wonder what other supposed clean hacks may actually be causing problems I haven't noticed yet or have attributed to bugs or poor 'features' on the part of Maxis.

I suppose it's entirely possible that chair could be having some issues due to a hack. It seems like some people report being okay with it and others report having problems. I guess I'd have to try it without any hacks and see but I'm kind of tired of the trial and error at the moment. :(

Oh well, at least the servo issue is solved and I can invite him over now.

Maybe I could get one for Jennifer (when John earns enough to pay for it) and see what happens!  She's not doing too well with her flowers, in fact, I've decided the whole thing is better suited to popularity sims!

Haven't tried the game sans hacks yet, but in my playing session last night I noticed that the mailperson seems to have developed a jump bug.  She arrives everyday on the two lots I tried, regardless if it's a mail day or not, reaches into her bag to get something out, and then 'jumps' to the other side of the mailbox, walks around to the front of the box, reaches into her bag, and jumps again in a continuous cycle, until I moveobjects on and delete her.  Used the lot debugger to kill any stuck bills but she'll be back again the very next day.

I took out the hacks deemed dirty by JM and twojeffs but the next time I play I'll try without any hacks at all *sob*

Did you move the mailbox at all? Supposedly, OFB has isssues if you do. Also, is a blocked in any way? Just trying to think what could be causing that because I haven't noticed it yet. *crosses fingers*

Have you got payatbox?  That caused similar problems for me back with Uni.  If you keep getting problems, you can just ban him, if you have the NPC and visitor zapper - of course, it means that you won't get any bills at all.....

Nope, never - I tend not to move things that Maxis decrees shouldn't be moved unless they get bugged.  She's never had a problem getting to the mailbox before OFB and nothing else has moved. :'(

I first thought it might have something to do with the increased traffic at the Goth house (the first house I tried) as Cassandra started a home florist shop, but the second house is completely unchanged. ???

Oh and I took payatbox out when I got NL. ;D

(I wonder if forcing an error on the mailbox would help?)

EDIT: Oh, and I just remembered the other problem I faced last night - although this one was fixable.  Sims wouldn't be in the car when it would pull back into a driveway extension.  The car would just materialise like it does, but the sim would be sitting in the driving position back at the portal, then they'd just get up and walk off to wherever they were going.  Downside to this was that the car continued to make revving noises while parked (no-one there to take the key out of the ignition??!), which was my first clue something was wrong as I wasn't looking at the portal, and it wasn't possible to buy a car alarm.  Deleting and re-buying the extension seemed to 'fix' the problem.

this is a known bug, Maxis has a thing up about it that basicly says "don't try to play the affected Lots - wait for the patch"  ::)

I read elsewhere that if you interrupt ur sims while they were craft building, the items in the inventory would disappear. I didn't have this bug though.

 I wonder if anyone can make single serving of cakes for their bakery. I haven't run a bakery but a lot of people are unable to make single servings. It seems that Maxis might have left that function out although the option is there  ???

I never exit the game while in shop.I always go home to save. I think its safer that way.

And I notice that if you use ur cell phone to call the shop mgr,that progress bar for talking to mgr appears for 1-2 seconds and then disappears completely. But if you use the house phone, the bar stays on and when the bar is full, the mgr said  not to worry and things are fine. You could talk forever on ur cellphone and never get that msg.

I am begining to think this game is much more buggy than University.

That sounds like the 'invalid' mail bug that I got. Try the college adjuster & see if the option comes up to delete invalid mail on those lots.

The fix for the less whiny problem is a really quick fix (in fact I fixed my own copy already), JM should get a new version out soon.

Cool, cause when my sim rang her manager, on her mobile, to see how things were going they talked forever!! I didn't know what was going on!. Thankyou for this insightful post.

You are welcome. But if they talks on house phone, it also take them 2 hours. I noted the time.
I think our excellent modders and hackers here need to get real busy. There are a lot of bugs in OFB  :-\

I'm still playing without hacks, and I think the salon chair is just buggy. It works, but it's difficult to manage, the sims sometimes agree and don't get the makeover, they go to the top and then decide to forget it more often, and they're easily distracted. They also seem grumpier than my other customers :p Offering them a makeover when they first come in, and then using "be stylist" while waiting for the bar to fill seems to work the best. Still I guess I should have practiced more, cuz she has lots of unhappy customers and for once though the business is making money, it's sure not going up in loyalty stars. (Apparently the negatives subtract from the positives, so now I'm back at 0 ;) The salon is the most difficult business I've tried so far (I haven't done a restaurant or nightclub yet).

I had that problem with my mailman in a NL game in Uni. He was trying to deliver flowers into the mailbox (I saw them once). I'd distract him a lot after he'd put the mail in and then delete him if he wouldn't go away so I could pay the bills and used the lot debugger for stuck bills and eventually it went away.

Oh, is it just me or are date bouquets now worth money when you sell them and they weren't before? I'm making $55 on each one now and I coulda sworn they were worthless (and annoying after awhile) in NL.

I'm scared of the "can't get to my sims" bug (as I'm now playing my real neighborhood) and so am only using taxis to get to my business and never saving there. Now I'm worried about uniforms too. Maybe I just won't save any. So far, no lost sims or businesses <crosses fingers>.

I think the loss in inventory of craft items might happen when you don't have enough money to pay for anymore. At least it seemed to for me - took them away, I mean. I sorta forgot they needed to pay for the materials.

I love that I can sell anything. I'm using the decorative styling lotions from retail sims and selling them in the salon (well she has to have something). I was afraid they'd limit it.

Thanks Motoki, TJ, I'll take less whiny out and try it.

I have the same problem with the doors not locking. The option comes up, and I lock them, but everyone can just wander in. I resorted to removing the residence doors, but I can only do that on the lot where there is only one resident. Oh well...

ZZ, I can't find any thread with the moveobjects on discussion. Does that mean it has been mentioned in passing, so to speak, and no solution has been found yet?
(Yes, I did use search, extensively :D)

OMG!  I just realized reading through these posts that I got so caught up in building up the capital, building my robot store, etc that I forgot you can't take a car to your community lot!  I had my sim hubby start Wieberbots Robot Store.  Sent him there with Merola's painting to craft bots all night.  I saved there and quit.  Will he be gone in the morning when I restart the game????


C

I noticed a problem when you set the price for all items in a store.

I clicked on the cash register and the price was set for ridiculously cheap, so I set the items pricing to expensive. Then I clicked the cash register straight away to check that the prices were set correctly and the items set price said ridiculously cheap! So again, I set the items at expensive, went through the process again and yes, the prices had 'defaulted' to ridiculously cheap.

Buggy...?  Hack conflict...? Or am I just doing this wrong?

Anyway, I ended up just clicking each individual shelf and set the items price that way.  ::)

Whats this about cars and community lots?? Bugger me, thats pretty crappy then. I guess its always worked in NL cause you always had to drive home before exiting the neighbourhood/game. So if I get a taxi to my business, then I'm ok?

There is a sticky notice over at the BBS regarding using cars.http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=b1b9f42ed4fd1027f0054f07f1725eac&directoryID=103&startRow=1&openItemID=item.103,root.1,item.43,item.41,item.23

Has anyone else noticed sims just leaving after they've been greeted? It's not a needs thing or anything, it's just that they get greeted but still keep on along their way for some reason. I've been getting that a lot lately.

I also had my first shoplifter tonight, but like the babynappings I tend to think it's a bug and not a feature.

Cheers Sandilou. I avoid the BBS like a plague so I would never had known this!

I've done it several times and it's worked fine with one exception that the lot debugger corrected instantly.


Have you got that global that went with Inge's apartment doors? That was causing a problem for me till I found it lurking in my skins folder and took it out. It's "securitypatch" or something like that.

Motoki, I've noticed the greeting thing too.  I've still got a limited number of mods in my game.  Could it be JM's interactwogreet?

I've had sims leave without paying also, they all seem to be teens, and it happens at 9pm. It might have something to do with that being the time they leave a home lot if they are visiting?  Also had the problem with Servo's. Thanks for all the investigational work, will take out said hack.

After testing a few things the problem seems to be deeper.  Sending a Sim to a community lot to buy food got me into some weird information from the game, it does not show the amount needed to fill the fridge up like it used too when you clic on any of the food available on the community lot and this is happening in all neighnorhoods section community lot.  Any Sim can buy food on all community lot now too (in downtown too).  The only reliable way is too use the phone and have some food delivered to your home since going to a community lot won't help because it will cost you a fortune and I don't really know if you will come back with a little basket or not I did not test it out, but I will and let you know of the result.

I took out my downloads folder to make sure it was not a hack conflict.

EDIT:  I just tested it, we can buy food on communitly lots but we are better off taking note of how much is missing or we'll pay way too much for what we will get if our fridge is not empty, not really a problem for wealthy families but can be for starting families.  The most reliable way is still using the delivery system (by phone or computer) even if you pay a small charge for it.  Now let's put back this precious downloads folder shall we  ;D

EDIT2:  I did place a new fridge on a freshly made lot to see if the same thing would happen and it did.

EDIT3:  Are there others that notice that too or I am alone with this weird information problem?

Well, I'm enjoying OFB so far, but it's very buggy (big surprise, there!). I had the community lot bug last night.  I saved while my Sim was still at her flower shop and when I went back in she was stuck there.  Grr.  Luckily, I'd just started a new neighbourhood, so just deleted the whole thing and will start again tonight.  I can't stand waiting around for the stupid taxis, though, so I'm gonna have my sims drive to work and just not save until they're home again.

One thing I've noticed that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that you can no longer get married on community lots.  Has anyone else had this?  I spent ages building an awesome chapel with some of the cool new roof tools, turned it into a residential lot to place the arch and then turned it back again in the usual way.  Sent a couple of engaged sims over there and the arch is not selectable.  Really annoying.

Oh, and how could I forget the nightmare that is the CONSTANT fighting in my shops.  One of my businesses lost a rank yesterday because stupid Goopy and Kellerman couldn't stop beating the crap out of each other long enough for me to move them on.  I ask you, is this an appropriate way to behave in a toy shop?  I think not.  I've given them a short period of grace while I learn the ropes, but soon the killing will commence if they don't learn to control themselves.

Have you got that global that went with Inge's apartment doors? That was causing a problem for me till I found it lurking in my skins folder and took it out. It's "securitypatch" or something like that.
[/quote]

I'll have to check my downloads folder.  This was in my hacks folder, which I removed for initial play, so that wasn't the problem for me unless it got in my d/l folder also by accident.

C

Veilchen, i think it was in either the first Impressions thread, or the Second and third Impressions thread, and I don't think anyone had come up with  a solution.

I think the leaving after greeting thing has to do with the charging meter thing.  I've noticed that teens and kids invited home from school just leave, and adults invited home from work go and stand at the meter, either decide to pay and stay, or they leave too. Only when sims are at the best friends level will they visit, and then it seems to happen autonomously quite often.

I've taken it out, but I haven't had a chance to play much without it yet. I'll let you know if it still happens.


Hmm, interesting. My shoplifter was also a teen. Perhaps I will put Monique's stay later hack back in as that did seem to fix that issue with NL.

re: Fights

You can thank NL for that. Certain sims are just trouble. And certain combinations of sims are always going to end up in a fight. I really wish you could ask customers to leave. I notice if you invite a sim over, have a party or greet them walking by and they start browsing you can ask them to leave, but if they come in on their own as a customer you can't.  :P

The food court I live over has a sign that "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. That's how I should be able to run my sims business too.

Here's a few I've noticed so far...

1. Sometimes Uni sims will not go to bed when told, even if a hair away from collapsing. They'll walk over to the bed and it will drop from the queue. I haven't seen this yet on a regular lot, but as I was putting my main characters through Uni (after starting over) this happened frequently in their dorms.

2. A few issues when sending "multple sims" to a lot: Didn't it used to ask you, one by one, if you wanted to send that sim? Now it's sending ALL (well, almost all, see below) of them (age child and up), even pregnant sims (which I want to avoid)! When Sim-Me's family had a teen and toddler and I tried to send everybody, I got a dialog telling me someone would have to stay behind or I could hire a nanny, then it gave me a list of teen or older sims on the lot that could stay, plus the nanny. I chose the teen son over hiring a nanny.

So now the toddler is a child, but when I try to send everybody, the teen will not go (nor can he select the car to get in when someone else does) but the child will. I also can't de-select anybody from going... it just auto-requeues. The workaround for this is to just send one sim, then have them call up the other teen & older sims individually after arrving (and since they're automatically managers, they become selectable) but this is inconvenient.

3. Final exams still bugged if they occur at regular class time.

There's some other minor ones but I can't recall them. Though on the positive side, I'm glad they fixed the issues with the newer Nvidia drivers (no more color-changing pillows and newpapers!) and the sound settings going back to stereo on each load.

Well it's been that way since at least NightLife. I never actually used the send "multiple" Sims to a lot until NL and was surprised when I learned that all Sims had to go. However the easy way around this is to set up a Group with just those Sims of the household you want to send on a "casual outing."

This is normal since it is the NLP2 patch that is included with OFB, Maxis is aware of it and should come up with a patch for this.  Until then, go get JM "Final exam fix" which works perfectly with OFB.


Unless I am wrong, I don't remember we were ever able too do that unless we use a hack to do so.


You should take a look at Crammyboys' hack then, it does help having less fight on community lots.  You will need "less autonamous fight" and if you wish you can also add "no force watch fight", both are OFB compatible.

You used to be able to with the base game and I've done it before. I think you could with University as well. I've not been able to do it since NL though, or sleep in a bed on a community lot or secret society lot either.

I might make this into a hack, heh. Complete with angry "Get out of my house!" gestures.

Thanks!  I'll check it out.

Re the marriage on community lot issue, I've always been able to set up lots for this with no problem.  Even with Nightlife.

There I was missing all the fun of marriage on community lots and now we cannot do it anymore.  ::)

My Sims need to get married more often I guess lol.  ;D

I seem to have encountered a problem.  I made one of my sims who is at the top of the food career open a home business to sell bakery items.  Everything was going fine then all of a sudden cosumers were gettign mad and not buying stuff and I found that I couldn't set prices for anything in his cooler and even buying a new one didn't help.  So then I took out all mods to see if that was  the problem and that didn't help. So I tried with a brand new sim opening his own business and I can't sell his bakery items either.  Then I also tried a florist home based business in downtown and her flowers are not selectable to price and customers are angry because of something about her shelves.  So I made a home based flower shop in the regular neighborhood and her flowers are not considered merchandise either but I can sell stuff out of the catalog.  So am I doing something wrong or is my game buggy?  This si driving me CRAZI ???

Motoki, the NPC and visitor Zapper still works to get rid of trouble makers (also helpful if one of the burglars walks by (casing the joint) as if you ban them from the lot, there's at least a chance they won't get into the house before they get zapped!  At present I can't use SimPE to turn them into babies, which is what I normally do with burglars!

I've not had trouble asking sims to leave the lot. I've always had the "say goodbye to", or "ask to leave" options for customers.

I had a lovely couple start a home business. Their employees kept getting mad and quitting. So first I moved in a townie with a gold cash register badge. ha ha! you can't quit. Then I had him romance a former employee with a gold badge in robotics. And rehired her. Then later I asked her to move in.

When I first checked her job panel it said unemployed. When she woke up the next morning, it said "employee" 9-5. And then the carpool came to take her to work! (at her own lot?) and out of curiosity I sent her and she was just gone all day! BUt not at her actual job of course, which was supposed to be on her (now) home lot.

When she got home, I had her use the phone to quit her "job." That way she could get back to work making robots!

I'm enjoying OFB as far as it goes, but the real problem is the absence of some critical hacks to fix the more stupid elements of the game.

Way back in the days when home computers were still "micro" rather than personal I got down and dirty with Basic and with nothing more than grim determination I overcame my total math-skill vacuum and taught myself enough programming to write some half-decent "games" - I even did some crude animation for a flight sim.

My point is that if a farty old nincompoop who almost failed high school math can do that ... well.

For years I have maintained that computer games "cheat". This is a cause of derision but it's true. Take, as an example the fact that a sim will wait x seconds to be greeted before cancelling out of the wait (to avoid the bane of any program: the endless loop); but it always takes x+1 seconds for a sim to cease painting, reading the paper. Conversely ... shit, I mean perversely sims will instantly cancel out watch-some-TV-to-boost-your-fun-you-stupid-moron-cos-the-school-bus-will-wait just so they can be first on the school bus - they will of course miss school if you leave them painting. This is cheating. It appears to be cheating to innocent players who cannot understand the appallingly illogical behaviour and (worse) it is cheating by the programmer who couldn't be arsed to come up with a game that is challenging because of its sensible and logical structure rather than because playing is a constant struggle to beat an unfair system that is only designed to make it -- almost -- impossible to control.

Bugs I can live with. But, until games are made that don't rely on programmer's laziness to cheat us, I cannot live without hacks.

It's getting old to have the want slots clotted up with 1-2 "get a job in the X career," when they own their own business and are trying to make a go of that. Give me some other wants! I wish there was a hack to squash this want if you have a deed to a business. It's silly that being a business owner is catergorized as being "unemployed."  >:(

Okay, so in theory if you own and run a business you could have an "offscreen" job as well--but I don't need a want for that.

Well, after I moved Lilith in with the Oldies, she was still emplyed at her friends'  business, and I had to get her to phone and quit so she could go to school!  Now, a teen job is AFTER school, so WHY is a teen who is working in a home business or a community business in Bluewater village expected to miss school in order to go?  Either the game should distinguish between teens and adults, or else teens should not be employable in Bluewater village (or at least, not playable sims!)

Me too. I have noticed that just 'talking sales' with a customer is not a social interaction, hence you can't say goodbye to them. Its like they are in "buy mode". But after a sale is made at the register you can tell them goodbye or after talking to them if the option hasn't come up for a particular sim then the option to say goodbye should appear.

This is just my observation so far.

Me too. I have noticed that just 'talking sales' with a customer is not a social interaction, hence you can't say goodbye to them. Its like they are in "buy mode". But after a sale is made at the register you can tell them goodbye or after talking to them if the option hasn't come up for a particular sim then the option to say goodbye should appear.

This is just my observation so far.

I've had a couple of problems so far (in addition to the Renuyu orb corruption) in the little bit of time I've had to play OFB. The first problem is that once my family's crafted robots have returned to their bases after their initial startup, they don't ever leave on their own again. I don't exactly know what the CleanBots are capable of, but they remain on their bases while dirty dishes, puddles, and old newspapers pile up. I have one CleanBot on each floor and I've checked any number of times to make sure they are turned on but they just sit there taking up space. When I send my Sims to "reboot" them (turn off then on), they go off to water/clean for a few minutes and then return to their bases and never come out again until they are rebooted. Maybe I'm missing something, but I assumed that while they are in the on position they will leave their bases periodically to do the limited number of chores they are capable of doing.

The second problem is far more irriating though. I have a phone stalker who calls every evening for a Sim even though she died a few days ago. He was initially introduced to my Sim as a contact but that effect has long worn off. From the first time he contacted my Sim, he has called every evening at around 6:30 and then again a few minutes later (it's always twice). Before my Sim died, I would have someone else answer the phone and tell him she was unavailable. Now that she's pushing up daisies, when he calls he says something to the effect of "Oh Callista isn't home? Okay, I'll call back later." I tried removing the relationship between the two of them in SimPE last night so they have 0 relationship points towards each other and are, as far as SimPE is concerned, unknown to one another. I also checked both their memories and don't see a contact token anywhere, but the bastard continues to call every night for her. This happens with or without any hacks in the game - even with the phone hack he still calls. One small thing to note is that even with the phone hack installed and the phone ringer set to off, his phone calls still get through and the phone will ring for hours until someone answers. I've taken to removing the telephone from the house until I introduce him to the cow plant.

That's definitely wierd!  Have you checked their neighborhood memores too, and deleted any reference to having met?

Yup, I removed the corresponding memories of them meeting each other. I've done the same thing any number of times with other Sims successfully, he just doesn't want to stop. At this point I can't think of any other way to get him to stop calling besides killing him.

Well, you could remove all your sims memories of him and then delete him from your characters folder.

Gynarchy, that is really weird. Creepy almost. I can't think of any other suggestions except to kill this sim. I will be very curious to see if it continues after a cowplant feeding.

One problem (?) I noticed kind of after the fact was that somehow my two sims in a Uni dorm ended up with a bank account of over $191,000 without having done anything that I noticed.  I hadn't started playing any of the OFB specific stuff yet because I needed to graduate one of the gals before she could start her business.  I've never seen dormies accidentally end up with that kind of money and unfortunately I don't know exactly when it happened because I wasn't watching their bank account that closely.

Next time I play in Uni I will watch closely for it.

In OFB specifics all I've done so far is have that sim buy Little and Local and turn it into an art store (selling wholesale).  It's fun but definitely trickier to figure out than I'm used to (that's not necessarily bad though).  One thing that surprised me was when I put racks of clothing in the store they got ignored - so on my "to-do" list is to go into one of the built-in player owned clothing stores to see how it's set up.

Invisible fish, anyone? Ever since installing OFB, all the fish in the aquariums have become invisible. I have gotten rid of the old aquariums and bought and restocked new ones and the fish are still invisible.  Even though my Sims still derive fun from watching them (how!? they're invisible?!), I miss seeing the fish. XD

I had a phone problem like the one mentioned a couple of posts ago in my old Pleasantview and that had to do with a contact.  One of Brandi Broke's grandsons was getting a call every evening (at 6.30, the same) from his auntie (Brandi's adopted daughter), who he'd never actually met.  The first call came shortly after he'd left the dorm to join a Greek house, but she has continued to call at the dorm every single day - I don't know if she'd carry-on after he graduated or not, but she certainly doesn't seem to know he's moved.  I even deleted all the relevant tokens and the rest in SimPE, but it made no difference.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention that, but I have a problem of my own.  Not sure how I can explain it, but I'll try.  Basically, in the past when I've wanted to put things on the parts of the lot that you can't place things on (such as where the mailbox is), all I've had to do is use the moveobjects cheat and they've been placeable.  Now, it won't work.  If I switch the cheat on and lift-up the mailbox or trashcan, I can't put them back.  This means I can no longer place driveways and have on-road parking, which is a real pain as I am using a lot of double-fronted townhouses to run business on one side and use the other side for living accommodation and they look more realistic with cars outside. 

What happens when I try to place anything is that it says it is out of bounds, but normally you can bypass that with the moveobjects cheat and now it won't work.  I've removed everything that might possibly have to do with it, such as portal hacks and the rest of it, but it's still happening.  If no one else is getting it, I will have to try removing all hacks and adding them back bit-by-bit and I hate having to do that, so I'm sort of hoping it's a glitch and not something personal to my game.

That problem has been reported here by several people in a few different threads, Ancient Sim.

Yup, I think it's the same in everyone's OFB. There's no way to place anything on top of the mailboxes or move anything beyond the sidewalk. I tried to move a school bus because it stopped right in front of the mailbox and the kids couldn't get off and I wasn't able to place it back down anywhere on the road. I didn't bother waiting for the car in front of the bus to leave, I just exited and sent the dad to work in his car instead the second time around. I hope someone is able to find away around this issue - I love the mailbox covers.  :-\

If your playable sims buy custom content at the stores, it ends up in your inventory, *not* in your shopping cart where you later have the option to keep it or not.

Is there any way I can move my mailbox or put covers on it? I tried every cheat known to Man and even placed a second mailbox from the weirdo collection on my lot then tried to force error delete the other one, without success...

I have a problem with dead sims  :-[
When the last sim on a lot dies, the command panel disappears and the dead sim can´t be controlled anymore. He/She just stands there and does nothing. You can leave the house after that, but the sim still "lives". It´s kinda creepy  :-\

Well, I re-entered Wieberbots yesterday.  After making a few sales and earning my first rank (hey, I've only played for a total of about 30 minutes real time in the store  -- the rest of the time has been crafting inventory and building the store).  I closed up shop and got in the car to go home.  I made sure I had placed a lot debugger before doing this.  The car and my hubby disappeared and nothing happened -- no loading screen anywhere.  So I looked at the debugger and clicked the "retrieve disappeared sim" option.  Hubby appeared floating in thin air at the car portal, but the car was AWOL.  No options on the phones at the business.  I looked at the debugger again and there was nothing I saw that looked like it might help, so I just clicked "re-enable controls".  Immediately, the Pleasantview screen started loading, then my house.  Hubby's thumbnail was on the left and when I clicked it, the business icon appeared at the top, followed very shortly by our dark sedan!  Woot!  Thank you FFS lot debugger!  The car pulled into the drive, hubby kissed me hello and all seems right in my pixel world at the moment.

C

The 'management'-'set uniform' option tends to stop working for me after some time. Lot exit reload fixes it.

I had to move my mailbox on the Trivar Greek house, it still works fine (so far) I just put it on the grass next to the sidewalk.
I noticed that it takes forever to stop 2 sims doing the slow dance >:( They will carry on dancing for about 90 sim minutes after the action being cancelled out.

Strange you should have this happen, anyeone.  I had a similar thing happen, which I attributed to moveinall being broken, but maybe it isn't after all.  I had Herb Oldie ask Lilith to move in, which she very happily did, and she came with 311,000 simoleons!  Obviously, daniel had some loot stashed away, and Lilith, being an enterprising little sim, dug it up and took it with her! ;D  But the Oldies now have a very nice little "House over the shop" (read Gaming club) and there's still plenty of cash in the bank, although at the moment their business is in the red to over 100,000, because I got them new furniture and built a garage and another bedroom!

But if moving in sims always brings vast amounts of cash, it looks like there's something else that Maxis definitely needs to fix - where's the challenge if just moving another sim in brings a small fortune as well.

Changing table gives the option to sell the baby ???My Daughters self sim had Twin girls and the first born of the twins had a wet diaper so I sent my  sim to the changing table with Ezri and clicked on the changing table to change the diaper.
 instead of change Ezri's diaper being displayed  I got sell for$5.00 :o I cancelled the action and then reclicked the changing table and got the normal pie which didnt include sell the baby

5 simoleons is pretty cheap for a baby!  ;D

I still can't get any of my sims to get management options when they click on an employee!

Is anyone else annoyed that there are some OLD bugs they STILL haven't fixed?

Teaching a toddler to walk after they've drank smart milk and when they adult has a smart cap on still doesn't work (broken since the base game shipped a year and a half ago)

You still cannot meet a cop through normal gameplay. You used to be able to in the base game, but since University any interactions you try drop out of queue (broken since University a year ago)

I guess people on the BBS aren't raising hell over things like this so they don't care and would rather spend their time appeasing BBSers by making some of their bogus rumors (twins cheat, a food that increases the chance of having twins) a reality. Ironically, the damned food doesn't even work right because apparently they never bothered to test that feature after they added it.  ::)

You CAN meet a cop in two ways:

1) release the burglar before the cop comes rapporting back. Infuriates the cop, but you meet them. (Requires very precise timing to get this to work)
2) wait for them to walk by downtown.

If a sim dies at a business s/he owns, the ghost can drive home and the grave appears next to the car at the house.  I wonder if this bug is related to that.

Do the employees have the circle above their heads?  If they don't, they're not actually at work, they're just normal visitors (they'll even start considering purchasing things).  I've found that when they first arrive for work (the first time you load the lot) the only thing I can assign them to is a clickable object, such as the register.  If I want them to sell, I have to either send them home and bring them back, or delete them and bring them back. 

Also, never make an employee selectable, otherwise they immediately lose their circle, the same way as making the nannies selectable removes the option to dismiss them or whatever.

As for other people reporting the problem with the moveobjects not working, I did search for it and found nothing, so obviously I didn't use the right terms!

I've never had them walkby downtown, but anyhow it's still an annoyance and they should fix it. I believe this was actually their "fix" for the issue where the cops sometimes would not leave and would just stay on a residential lot crying and peeing themselves. I had this happen with the base game, but I think this "fix" is worse than the problem.

Bottom line is, if they played they'd notice it. It's still a bug. They should fix it.

Oh, granted. Maxoid "fixes" are typically worse than the problem.

Take how they now made the sidewalk unable for placement, just to prevent idiots from deleting their mailbox and trashcan.

A sensible fix would be to add a way to restore these items, but guess that's too bleedin' obvious...

I could see a potential issue with having mailboxes and trashcans available to restore, I figure it would be likely that someone would try to create apartments with multiple mailboxes and trashcans which was cause a few problems. Its easier for Maxis to avoid the issue all together by making them unselectable.

Speaking of which, that kind of bums me out because I always moved the mailbox and trash closer to the house. So the mailbox cant be moved at all, or is it nothing can be placed outside the sidewalk tiles?

Not sure. I am completely unable to interact with the sidewalk tiles now -- it gives the same in-your-face error as trying to place stuff outside the lot.

Possibly if you moved your mailbox before OFB it is still moveable.

That's funny.  I had that happen yesterday in my shop.  2 customers were fighting. I had my sim walk up to one and "say goodbye".   He left. 

We need a hack that will allow you to call the police when a fight breaks out, and see them escorted out.  Would make the police earn their disk space a little more.  As it is they only show up on the very rare occasion you get burglerized.

The mailbox *can* be moved, you just can't place it outside the sidewalk tiles.

Karen

I actually just saw one like that on valdea.com the other day. It was pretty funny because they had a screenshot of the cop cuffing the gypsy who was being arrested for loitering. ;)

Unfortunately, I think you have to pay to get it.  :P

edited: here's the link http://www.valdea.com/?page=4

Apparently there's a starter pack that's free and the cop does come with it. You can call them to arrest loiterers and unwanted guests and if someone starts a fight you can call them and they will come and arrest the person who started it.

I'm going to try it out when I get home tonight.

This was strange.  I installed OFB yesterday and played the new neighborhood for a bit with no CC and no hacks.  Then I added the CC and hacks back and played another regular, pre-existing lot with pre-existing Sim.  Today, I associated a shop neighborhood with one of my neighborhoods, created a Sim, moved her into an existing Maxis house then when I opened that lot, there was nothing at the bottom of the screen to select.  No icons, no pics, no build mode, buy mode, nothing, zip, nada!  I had to Ctrl Alt Del to close down the Sims.  I've not reloaded the game yet to see if it recurs, but was wondering if anyone else has had this happen.  Is it a known bug?  Or do I need to start going through my hacks?  I've gone over all the lists of what works and what doesn't, deleted the ones that are not supposed to be compatible and replaced them with ones that are. 

Arielle - scratching her head (as opposed to scratching her butt)

Edit:  Yes, I found that post, disabled the teen woohoo, and it fixed the problem! 

There's a thread about it here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3305.0

Seems to be related to teenwoohoo hacks.

Well my problem (along with all the others mentioned  ::) ) is that i cannot make meals.  everytime i try i get an error "Reference to tree table entry that does not exist." my employees can make meals but my controllable sims can't (they can Have/Serve meals with no problem and cooking skill is maxed)  ???

haha that's just awesome.  I have to try that out!

I certainly have problems with meals too, the makeone/makemany just doesn't work!

How Awesome are the hacks at valdea.com?  Do they play nicely with MATY hacks?  Do they kill kittens?

I haven't used the valdea hacks for a while but when I did I had no problems with them and with Pescados's stuff or anyone else. Most of Danny's hacks revolve around creatign new npcs to help out with various tasks so they shouldn't mess with any MATY stuff as far as I am aware.

Someone might have posted this one before, but the Sims are suddenly WAY overobsessed with the espresso maker now. I had a hacked one in every house for quick need fills if necessary, but they were mostly on inaccessible corner counters because I didn't want them making espresso instead of going to bed. Now they keep pausing and getting bubbles showing the stove being in the way, or making espresso when they're 75% green, and I've been forced to get rid of the things so they won't obsess. I'm afraid to see what happens when I go to a comm. lot with one of those there. It's the worst object obsession I've seen in a long time, and made more annoying by the fact that the machines are in every house...

They'll also obsess with relaxing on the LizzLove beds even with advertising turned off, but as that's a hacked/new object I'm not surprised the expansion broke it.

I don't see a problem with espresso machines - maybe it's because you have hacked ones.

Hmm, that's true. It replaces the defaults, but since it's worked since the base game I've kept it in, as they also make regular espresso like the normal ones do. I'm not sure why it'd be suddenly obsession-worthy, though, since they only want to make the regular espresso on it and don't autonomously use any of the hacked options that I can tell. Since I have other motive-adjusting hacks now, I might just toss it.

I've had Danny's police for some time, but I don't use them anymore because when they arrest someone, they charge whoever telephoned them $25,000 for running an illegal bordello!  It may well have been fixed now, I haven't updated in a while, but certainly the first few I downloaded all did it.  Must be some sort of mix-up with the woo-hoo pack or something.  What I still haven't tried is the hit-men - I was going to have JMP pay a hitman to bump Komei off (or the other way around) but then they went from worst enemies to best friends somehow or other, so I didn't get around to it.

Not really the right place to ask but.. do you know if you change the appearance of any of Danny's NPC's?

Just joining into the choir who´s complaining about the bakery/inventory glitch (it´s not dependent on distraction nor on lack of money). I hope it will soon be corrected by a hack.
The fridge sometimes is not stocked up properly even when using the delivery option. (Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the food dialog was changed?)

Yes, I just searched for a post exactly like this and thankfully it appears I'm not alone.  I noticed it last night with two of my servo's visiting my business lot.  They appear to keep resetting without debug mode on, and with it they constantly generate the error.  Workaround is to delete them from the business lot with moveobjects.  You can pause immediately after hitting reset if debug mode is turned on and has generated the error.  I filled in the bug report at the bbs on this a short while ago hopefully anyone else who notices the odd behaviour of visiting servos will do the same.

I haven't read any further than this post of Motoki's yet so if I've missed something relevant please forgive me for wasting space.

**Edit**
Okay so it seems this has been narrowed down to one hack by Motoki and TwoJeffs.  I updated a couple of hacks today and I think LessWhiny is one of them (dated 6 march).  I'll leave that in for now then and see if the problem stops happening.

The update fixes it yes. Pescado has been mysteriously mum lately on his updates, I suppose it adds to his mystique  ;D so we kind of have to keep up with the updates ourselves. I check the OFB/hacks directory at least once a day and sort by date. Also some people are posting in the all hacks directory thread when there are updates.

I don't know if he's been updating the MATY pack or not so I would encourage everyone to just download their files from the directory.

In fact you have to check the Firing Range, The Armory, The Hack Directory and the Directors Cut (all of them) in frequent intervals. Hackhunting has become an important part of the game - and since most serious players sooner or later end up as MATY customers, Pescado just keeps us trained for the hard world outside MATY by his version of brain jogging!

I appreciate the confirmation Motoki  :)  Yes, Pescado really does like to keep us on our toes,  I have a few newly updated ones today though it was only friday I think when I last checked in  :D  I have a link to the OFB directory and check the dates in there now instead of going by the forums section.  TJ has been busy lately too from the looks of things.

On a slightly different but still on topic note..

I hit a setback in Uni, my young adult went to her first class at 1AM instead of 1PM and never returned.  Lot debugger had the 'retrieve missing sim' option but it didn't work, and she would have died if I hadn't exited without saving.  I couldn't force errors on offworld because she was the only controllable sim on the lot and her 'at class' icon wouldn't cancel.  I think I've seen something like this mentioned on the bbs (OFB) but couldn't find the post it was mentioned in.  I'm just wondering how many of you have played with the Uni ep since installing OFB and whether you've experienced anything like this.

If you mean that the check food supplies option is not available, I experienced that right after the installation but then noticed it was back -or at least it is in the lot I am currently playing.

Also, because it is a home bakery run by the second and third generation of my Pitt family (plenty of $$$), I purchased a second refrigerator and stove so I could have two family members bake at the same time.

When I order groceries, it appears that both refrigerators are filled at the cost of one - but I do plan to confirm this tonight by letting them bake their brains out till there's no food in either fridge.

Is your problem by chance that you have not labeled the items as saleable?  Go to the price tag on the buisness tracker.  If the items are not highlighted yellow then you need to use the 'for sale' tool to set the price. 

Try temporarily closing the business while the custs leave. Use the time to restock and tidy, when they all leave open it again.

I thought this was fixed in a patch? Though really there isn't a reason for the adult to have the hat on, since once the smart milk is made the hat doesn't boost anything, I thought. Just wasting hat charge.
The cop thing anoys me too, I keep wanting to be friends with that blonde one with the braids.

Now, I'm tired, my eyes aren't seeing right. I'm about to make a bakery, I know that sometimes food seems to be vanishing from the inventory, I heard manually restocking seems to fix it, and what's with the refirgerators? What's the fix for not being able to be able to fill them up? It seems I saw it in this thread somewhere...

Seems to be something similar. There were two fridges and  both could not be filled completely at the same time by the same delivery order (some food seemed to have been randomly assigned to each of them)  I will tell my friend who´s run into the problem several times in his bakery to check again for more details. (I have not encountered the problem pre-OFB, and I sometimes did use two fridges before). Please let me know what you find out, I am away from home and cannot do any testing myself at the moment.

The bakery/inventory problem or selfcrafted/inventory problem has been mentioned in this thread several times and described in (short) detail, therefore I kept myself even shorter. I myself love speedy reading, but sometimes its better to take your time....  No, I am not the sort who´s BBS customer ...
I think (and hope) the awsome, important people have already taken notice there is something more in the category "annoyance" and will take a look at it in proper time as soon as more serious issues are resolved.

A little glitch or two I noticed, having sent Jennifer to her shop at the weekend while Lucy wasn't at school.    Lucy, who because of dizzy's smart-serve, can make herself a meal with no problems, can't do so at the store - but it's only a mini-fridge, so that may be why.  She could, however, phone for groceries and accept deliver, and put them away.  She was also able to phone for a taxi, but the taxi didn't show up and Jennifer had to call again.  I shall have to try putting Carrigon's pizza oven back in the game to see if that works ok!

I have been having most of my problems with university after install ofb, all my juniors, and seniors have lost there extra want slots, I can fix the want slots but it is a pain when you got 5 lots in university and there are all full. I have also notice, I tweak some of my sims personalities before ofb and now they're back to the default personalities.

Yep I also noticed the Invisible fish too.

*scratches head* So far I cannot reproduce the stuck-on-the-lot bug (I've tried sending Sims to their business in their own cars and saving there several times and everything is still working normally) or the disappearing lot bug (I've changed uniforms, deleted uniforms, and deleted uniforms that an employee was wearing at the time). I also didn't have any trouble with my townie cashier ringing up a sale -- she was slow due to lack of badge, yes, but she didn't dawdle about actually starting to ring.

I've barely played at all, though, mostly just trying to replicate bugs and then making a Sim to craft a Servo.

Mr. phone stalker was fed to a cow plant and has so far has not placed any calls from beyond the grave. My robot problem seemed to clear itself up too. I don't know what made them shape up but after what seemed like the 50th reboot they did what they were supposed to do. The Cleanbots seem pretty useless to me though - most of the "mess" in my houses come in the form of dirty dishes, toilets, and bathtubs, not puddles and dirty newspapers. The risk of having 500 piles of trash when one goes wonky is not remotely worth the effort of keeping one in the house.

My family just managed to build a couple of Servos and have noticed a couple of things that annoy me about them. The first is that the carpool does not come for them, nor do I get a message saying that they have the day off/a car is coming in about an hour. I suspect it might be related to a hack but I haven't gotten around to taking them out and seeing which one could be causing it. I also noticed that the clock doesn't speed up when Servos are powered down like it does when Sims are asleep. Their "do chores" routine sucks too. They'll clean one or two things and then stop for about an hour or so and then clean another couple of things, wash, rinse, repeat. I tried the nodochores hack but I do want them to tidy up the house when things get messy. I just wish they weren't so stupid and slow about it.

Well I just got the stuck-on-the-lot bug. My Uni Sim has a gym and uses the pay poll thing. He dose not own a car. He took the taxi. I played for a few days on the business lot. I had him call a taxi then closed the business. He started blowing his whistle and yelling. He never stopped! Even when there was no one else on the lot. Or when the taxi showed up to take him home. I tried to exit out and told him to get in the taxi, but he was stuck in a loop. I deleted him, thinking I could just reload the lot. Well he was just standing there but the live mode is missing. It is just build/buy mode now. The lot shows him as being at his business, so now I can't play the dorm he came from. I will try the lot debugger hack and see if I can get everything working again. :-\

Oh and I never saved the lot till after I deleted him. I don't normally save a business lot since it dose it when you leave.

When he keeps blowing his whistle, then it means hes trying to herd the customers of lot. And if there is no customers on the lot, you have got yourself some offworld loiterers.

Constrain floor elevation doesnt seem to produce good effects in my game, it causes a crash.

I was trying to use the the raised foundation things and create a staircase to an upper level, it didnt work, you cant use stairs leading to an upper floor with them, which in my opinion sucks so much butt it isnt funny. So I tried turning off constrain elevation, immediate crash ensued.

I cant seem to use much of anything with the raised foundations, no doors, stairs and the windows are funkified. What is the point of providing a new tool if it only works halfassed? Not cool. I feel I must rant because I like to build, its the one thing I really enjoy and I was really excited about all the new possibilites with the foundation tool...blech. So basically I got some new roofs...yeah there are new stairs and lockable doors and other stuff that talented modders were already making...so yeah, new roofs. yay. Well I do like the new roofs dont get me wrong, but if constrain floor elevation is only going to cause crashes, thats pretty damn limiting.

Anyone else getting crashes from attempting to use constrain elevation?

Apparently I had a config file still hanging out in stairs but failed to put the actual stair mesh back in game. Yes I am the dumbass here. BUT I still cant get doors to work or windows to place properly on the stages...so there.

Not only is deleteallcharacters apparently bugged, but the NPC/townie generator is messed up, too.

Damn Maxis.

Really?  I made a a house with a raised foundation and connected the second level to the foundation with the connecting stairs, so it was quasi split-level.  I have been having some funky stuff happen with windows- if I try to flip them so the arrow faces out, the window drops and the only place I can put it is between floors and it is, of course, walled out. 

I also have problems when I make multiple story homes.  Even if I have a full foundation and the walls all connect to form an enclosure, when I move up to the second floor there are places I can't place walls, some of them directly over the first floor walls.  I have to put down flooring to give me the guides and then I can place walls. 

Jordi, can you tell us more?

Well, I was just coming here to post a problem with the customer generator.

I'm playing the Broke household and they are going broke as no customers ever come to the business. I figured out that I wasn't marking the food as a sell item before putting it into the display case. But, the first day the shop was open (before I "priced" anything for sale) two customers and a reviewer came. No one bought anything as nothing was "for sale". Went and read the Prima guide and some threads and figured out my problem.

Now, I have items for sale and the only person that comes every day is a reviewer - not always the same one - but all they do is stand there are look at stuff, pull out their clipboard. You can sometimes do a sales interaction and the meter goes up and down but never to the point of purchase. The only sale made was to a classmate Beau brought home from school.

No customers ever generate. I get this error:
An error occurred in object "Controller - CLP - Community Lot - Populator #45
Error: stack number out of range

No customers come for the lemonade stand either.

When the error has popped up, I have only tried resetting as I'm not sure if deleting a "controller" will cause a problem. Meh. That's what I'll do next.

Here are the error logs:

[404'ed!]

Update:

Next time the problem came up at the Broke household, I chose "delete" instead of "reset". Now nobody comes - not even the reviewer. There are still occasional walk-bys, but they don't seem interested in the business.

I then used the phone to close the business and then used the phone to "start a new business" thinking this might spawn a new controller - if that's what I deleted. Nope. Still no customers.

Simmiecal, did you deleteallcharacters and then put in all of JM's no spawning hacks (NPCs, Townies, SS, Baristas..whatever?   Logic tells me that this game won't work without townies.  You need them to shop and you need them to hire.  I wondered what impact the nospawning hacks had on the hire list, especially if like me, you don't create new townies.  My hire list dropped from 6 to 5 and then to 4.  So I took the notownieregen out.  But then after reading some scary stories here, I put it back in;  I haven't played the game today so I don't know what impact the mod will have on the game now.

I have the noregen hacks in, but I'm still mucking around in a test Pleasantville and I didn't deleteall characters. In fact, there are 443 of them there. I'll try taking out the noregen hacks and see if that makes a difference to the generator. But, there are definitely sims in the hood.

I was just reading about the 'teen shoplifters' up above and remembered something.  A couple of days back my teen sim asked a teen townie on a date at her business after hours, when he was left unattended for a while he walked up to the till even though the shop was closed and payed for items he had obviously left with before.  I thought when he first walked onto the lot at the beginning of the date that he seemed to have a shopping bag, but didn't realise it wasn't my imagination until he actually paid for the goods later in the evening.  I've never seen the 'shoplifters' in action though.

Gynarchy.  The carpool doesn't seem to show if your Servo is recharging or powered down at the time of the warning dialog (blah blah has one hour before the carpool).  Make sure Servo is not doing either of these in the hour before the car is due.

Simmiecal, I had this same problem with NL - there was no one on my downtown lots but Crumplebottom when I visited, and with debug mode on I got the Lot Populator error. I don't have many townies, only playables, and a few townies I made in CAS and turned into townies with the shrub. I wish I could remember which hack was causing it - maybe it was notowniechildren which isn't apparently needed anymore... but it was definitely an older hack. Whatever it was, after I removed it, the lots populate fine with all my playables, and I still have the nodormie, notownie and nossregens in. Maybe check to see if it populates okay without hacks in, or at least none of the non-OFB-approved?

3) Get them as a date through the Matchmaker (Nightlife)
4) They walk into your shop as a customer (well I've seen a maid and Gordon the burglar, the chef from downtown, Mr.Big, The Diva, Count & Countess, and Robi the exterminator so the cops are bound to turn up sooner or later right?) OFB.

My problem seems to stem from one of the prison mods. I've left a post for Inge about it. I've removed the prison files from my download folder and now the Brokes have more customers than they can handle.  Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

Good to know, thanks miramis!

Ok my new issue is that you cant really place any of the robots on the shelves properly without using moveobjects cheat. Then even though you can at that point get them there, it apparently causes some bizarre teleporting effects with the inventory. It teleports the out of stock sign to various places on the lot, either at the portal or at a back corner and you cant move them until they are restocked and then you can move them back to inside the store. The ones that ended up teleported to the portal simply arent there even when restocked. Kind of a pain really. So all the floor type bots have to placed on the floor - taking up premium floor space - in order to restock properly. My other issue with the display shelves is my snapdragons dont seem to work when placed on them even though they are marked not for sale - so again they must also take up floor space.

I am also having some LTW issues, folks are loosing their plat status and I am having to fullfill another LTW to get them back where they should be. Also some sims seem to be getting motive stuck, which is fine when they are all greened up but apparently some actions cause certain motives to drain and I cant get them restored because they are stuck. I have tried deleting the sims to reset them but so far no luck. Perhaps the lot is bugged now I am not sure. Shame really as its a high ranking business.

So overall as I play I am starting to run into several bugs, including the fell in love with self as I play longer on various lots. I have also run into too many iterations...seems to be a memory issue so I will try to start saving more often and see if that cures anything.

Didn't feel like reading everything, so repetitions are likely.

A business that reached Level 10, then sunk to 9, then rosen again to 10, counts as new-built top-Level-business, and the owner gets the attached memory. This way, you need only one business to fulfill the LTW to build up 5 top-Level businesses.

Visiting a business lot results in Chaos. No one of the employees does what I told them when I was playing the owner. Instead, the owner and the manager are busy all the time by redirecting the employees between different tasks. Seems as if they intend to let no one finish their job. One might say "Hire an employee for every single task on that lot", but I have no money to waste. And when I only call the manager to run the business, there's already a mighty loss on money: Being there, I earn several thousands a day. By just calling, I get lousy 300 to 500. So I have the choice: build an imperium and switch from b-lot to b-lot all the time or just nevermind running a business. But managers aren't good for anything.

And is it just me who can't buy food on commlots even though it's given a price?

About the vanishing plates...

I actually saw the sandwiches disappear from the inventory right before my eyes!  One moment they were there, I grabbed a plate off the side (he'd been interrupted while making it) to add to the inventory and as I clicked to add it they went Poof! leaving him with only that one plate I'd just added.  Bloody frustrating.

i cannot even place doors on houses/buildings let alone get them to work right - every freaking time i try to place a door my game crashes to desktop.  i've started with a fresh install from the base on up to OFB and i have zero downloads installed, so there's nothing i can remove to see if it's a hack or an object interfering.   i play the game mainly for building and interior design fun so this is putting the old kibosh on things for me, heh.

this is on maxis made, in-game lots btw, not lots i've downloaded from a site.

Is there a pattern to your movements when placing doors?  Have you tried placing them in buildings you've made yourself?  Are there any cheats enabled when placing the doors?   Are you trying to place them over split levels?  You're sure you haven't downloaded a single thing - not even maxis made?

this was a fresh install from the base game on up, not one single download, on plain vanilla maxis made lots or lots i made with maxis items.  i was so frustrated last night i almost uninstalled the game, but then thought to delete the groups.cache file, and since then i've been able to place doors without crashing.  next up, installing all my custom content - should be interesting 8-)

Same here. She'll stop doing her work to hang around at the espresso bar drinking endless cups of coffee (then peeing herself because she'd rather drink more than go to the toilet). I'm not using any hacked machines.

Oh, for Christ's sake!  >:( This was the most fun thing to do in the game. Good going, Maxis.

I've played quite faithfully up until now, but the relative complexity with the OPB expansion coupled with the usual bugs and stupid rubbish is really making me consider binning the entire game altogether. I'm starting to wonder if it's actually still fun at all.

Oh, for Christ's sake!  >:( This was the most fun thing to do in the game. Good going, Maxis.

[/quote]

To be fair, Maxis never did plan for people to be able to use a wedding arch in a chapel, demonstrated by the fact that it's not available on a community lot.   We had to use a cheat, or a hack in order to place an arch on a comm. lot.   So I'm expecting that sooner or later a modder will come out with a hacked version of the arch which will work again.  Hopefully before I have a batch of sims to be married :)

Well, yeah. But the whole community lot wedding deal has become quite a big thing, and a lot of people enjoy doing it. You'd think they'd appreciate that instead of breaking it completely so nobody can do it anymore. But then, why care about how people like to play their individual games?

Another gripe, although not really what you'd call a problem per se - all the stupid new outfits and headgear in the catalogue are like, right at the front. Put the diver's helmet AT THE BACK OF THE CATALOGUE, along with other stupid stuff like the viking horns and the hat with the propeller. You can still have your little "made for this particular expansion pack" icon in the corner, but put them away if nobody's going to use them regularly! For the love of sweet baby jesus!

It might be worth looking into seeing how the catalog sorts things in CAS.

no community lot weddings ? well a big WTF to that.  i never have my sims marry at home, they always marry in a really cute chapel i built.   thanks a lot maxis,yeesh.

i'd love it if someone found a way to hide all the maxis items in both the clothing and the buy mode catalogues.  never use any of it, can't stand to look at it.

re: my previous door placing prob - just installed all my custom content and everything is fine, door-wise.

Well Motoki did find a way to hide the maxis elder clothes so it is possible.

It's easy enough to do if a bit tedious, unless there's a batch way to do it that I don't know about. It's just a matter of changing the flag value in the property set to 9.

The order the items are organized in should normally be base game, then each expansion pack in the order it was released then custom stuff. I think these 'uniforms' and mascot outfits have a different flag though. The Christmas pack seems to as well.

I'll probably get around to doing at least a Mascot hide file since those outfits are ugly and ridiculous for the most part and I have no intention of ever using them.

So you dont really think there is a way to resort the catalog? No values for flags or something that can be tweaked to make them go to the back?

Oh sure it can probably be done, I even managed to get custom stuff to sort as base game, or uni etc. I think it would change some things though, like aren't some of those outfits only available via assign uniform and not through buying, or am I wrong on that? I'll have to look again when I get home.

I was just wondering because I really dont want to get rid of anything, but I too am annoyed that those crazy things are up front in the catalog. I share my game with another and she might not like it too much if I remove her options.

I dont recall not seeing the same outfits I can assign with "assign uniform" in cas....I could be wrong however.

You could be right. I'm kind of assuming there's some reason they sorted the uniforms separately from the new OFB clothes and hair, but then again this Maxis so who knows. :P

That does sound rather tedious though, you have to reassign each and every peice of clothing? (that you want moved) IF thats the case, you are a very patient person! (elder mod)

I guess it wouldnt be so bad with the goofy hats and informs since there really isnt all that many, I dont think...I will have to look at them tonight then I guess...unless a very patient person comes along and figures it out.  ;D

Sort order in my game is always

XP3 - XP2 - XP1 - Xmas pack - base game

"hidden" outfits show up at the end of their section, so the XP1 uni career outfits are shown just before the Santa suit.

Motoki, how do you make custom clothes work like default clothes? If there is away to do that, townies would use them...

And yeah the catalog sorting is painful, since SimPE doesn't do macros. That's why I didn't continue my 'ugly uniform hiding project' -- there's over a hundred files involved!

Oh, and WHY do you have to hide the fugly uniforms? Maxis townie generation. I have already gotten a townie with the gorilla suit.

Uh because they are fugly.  ;D But I suppose if you play like Pescado and like fugly sims those outfits would work well for you. ;)

It's possible to change a custom outfit to recategorize like a base game or EP outfit. The custom ones have a zero in one of the values while the base game has 1, university has 2, nl 3, OFB is I assume 4 (haven't checked), no idea what the Christmas pack is but I am guessing 1 and that it's just sorts later because of a later file date, order or name. *shrug*

One particular problem has come up I have not yet seen mentioned, the smartmilk object won't work.  When I click on mom sim to make smart milk, she is in gold asp, the pic comes up in queue and immediately gets replaced with hold "name of baby".  I have tried with all members of household several times but same response.  I have several hacks, mostly JMP's of course.  Off hand, are there any hacks which could cause this.  I have used all the same hacks pre OFB and never caused this problem b4.  Any suggestion would be great.  **If need list I will add**

Also very annoying is the fact there is absolutely no way to make single serving dishes with out the process of making / serving / and quickly putting into one's inventory, very time consuming.  Also when assigning an employee sim to make anything, there is no way for them to make one only.  They keep making many until you unassign them which takes several queued actions and my owner can't do anything until assigned sim stops.

It would be awesome too if there was a way you could have a new pie menu with options of making 5 of one, 5 of another.  Most business can at least assume you are going to need certain quantities of each item you are selling.  Just a wish of mine.

Thanks

do you have no smart milk drag by Pescado? It stops sims from going to get the baby (even if only a few tiles away) before making the smart milk. I havent had any issue with it yet, even my servo can make it although he cant train the skills.

re- community weddings.  Is the problem just with making a new lot, or have existing community wedding lots stopped working as well?  The original post was from someone making a new one who had used lotzoning to change the lot to residential and couldn't place the arch.  I wondered if it was lotzoning that was messed up rather than the arch...

Motoki - I would love to hide all the maxis hats - I have about 4 sims out of all my hoods who wear hats.

Hey Motoki, if you can hide clothes and hair...is it possible to hide objects from the catalogue and have them exist solely in collection folders? I would def spend all my free time fixing this issue in a heart beat if it is even possible (and I knew how).

No I don't have that hack.

I got OFB last Friday and been playing all weekend.  Haven't noticed too many things yet.  I've even had my sims driving to their community lot bussiness with their owned cars.  But I kinda feel like I'm playing with fire by doing that, so I've made sure there are lot debuggers on every lot.

A couple of things I have noticed though.  Macro/Caffienate doesn't seem to work for managers.  I had one who was low on energy, and when I had her use that she just stood in front of the expreso machine doing nothing.  I tried canceling the command but it wouldn't drop from the que immediatly.  She stood there for a few more seconds before she became controlable.

Another thing I noticed was a problem with one of the new dinning tables that came with OFB.  Whenever I que up some commands for my sims they will stand up and get stuck inside the table.  I think I've read other threads about this, but I'm not sure if its specific to this certain table.  The only time I've seen it happen was in the Ramirez house.  (One of the new pre-made families in Bluewater).

As far as teen shoplifters go I haven't seen that yet.  But I've been using TJ's visitor controler.  And it completely kills the curfew that teens have.  So that might be why.



@ ZephyrZodiac about Lilith moving in with the Oldies and bringing an obscene amount of money with her. 

Were the Oldies living in downtown or Bluewater while Lilith was living in Pleasantview?  I've had a lot of Propose/Move ins happen like this.  It seems to only happen when the sim you ask to move in lives in the base hood and you live in a sub-hood or vise versa.  I'm pretty sure someone said this was a known bug when I posted about it.  I'll have to dig up that thread.



I haven't even played any Uni lots since installing OFB.  Can't wait to see what, if anything, is screwed up there...

Here's the thread on the rich move-ins.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=780.0

Trepie <swoon>,

I've played a sim through Uni with Bluewater as the commercial district.  Uni sims can buy a business lot and go to Bluewater and run it.  They cannot start a home business (atleast not in a dorm).  I don't think they can from a greek house either.  But I could be wrong.  I've deleted that neighbourhood now, as it was experimental.

PS: Trepie you've got a growing fan club.  See: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3469.msg100594#msg100594 ::)

*blush*

Gee, and I didn't even spend that much time creating him.  I just grabed a sim out of the Uni CAS Sim Bin and altered him for my own use.  I didn't even try all that hard to make him look exactly like me.  I'm sure I could tweak the facial features if I wanted too.  But I agree with a few others in that thread.  Super realistic sims kind of freak me out.  I've no problems with them looking cartoony.  In fact I perfer it.

Rest assured that the red hair and facial hair are realistic though.  The eyes are somewhat realistic (there's no hazel eyes, at least without cc.)



Edit:  You had a YA buy a community lot?   :o  Were they loaded up with scholarships?   :)

I can see how a home business would be nice for a YA living on a residental lot in Uni though.  And I can see how one wouldn't work in a dorm.  I couldn't tell you if they worked for greek houses though.  I've never had much experience with them.  Guess they never appealed to me.  That and the fact that they would "Visit Campus" like 50 times a day and fill the lot up with pizza boxes annoyed me to no end...

thats normal, it has always been like that, they go and get the toddler and then fix the smartmilk.

if you get JMs "nosmartmilkdrag" hack, your sims will make the smartmilk and take it to the toddler.

Posted by: Trepie
 

Nope: When I was testing out OFB,  I made all the sims in Sim State Uni into townies.  When my playable sim pledged former Tri Var and Urele Ore Cham house members into his new Greek House, they brought literally a shop load of stock in their inventories.  So I experimented with Tiffany Sampson (former Tri Var).  She had already maxed her study bar for the semester, so it gave me a chance to play her.  She got the business up to level 3 by the end of her first year.  She did have to study for the second trimester, so I stopped sending her to Bluewater. 

I found it challenging - and fun.  I plan on doing the same again when I play my real neighbourhood.

Greek Houses are the best way to play Uni if you don't want to die a death waiting for sims to graduate.  If you play the game right, sims bring back much more than pizza.  Get your sim to be the 'big sim on campus' and start to reap those rewards;  These include barbecues, desks, pianos, bubbleblowers, radio controlled cars, sofas, armchairs, tvs and much more.  These are brought in  a black dustbin sack, so if you see your sim walking back with them, don't interfere until they've placed the bag down;  it transforms into the reward object.

Two more problems noted today:

1) Sim had a home business and one employee. Sim dies of old age and is the only one living on the lot, so naturally, the home business is defunct.

I switch to play the employee. The employee has want to "resurrect Sim" who died but still has his employee job working 9-5, and still goes to work everyday. Where is he driving off to?

2) Sim has a nightclub venue. Bought the DJ station. He hired a Sim to be the DJ, but assigning DJ to the employee doesn't work. No assignment is made or when clicking on the DJ station, it drops out of queue. The employee Sim is a teenager, but I don't think that should make any difference, especially since the option to assign as DJ is presented. So it appears the only one who can work as the DJ is the owner.

Edited to add: Layed off teenage employee and hired an adult, who was able to be the DJ. So maybe teenagers can't work the DJ station?

When I went to play Brandi Broke last night it said she had a job as an employee but her pay was zero. I have no idea where she works because it doesnt tell me so trying to figure that out so I can have her pay raised is a bit problematic. I had a her quit her job instead.

I've noticed that once a playable sim is hired as an employee, they will stay an "employee" until you make them quit. Even if the business is sold or the owner dies and does not pass it on. I think this is a 'feature' so the sim still has a job even if the playable owner sells the store. I guess it's better if you know you are going to sell a business or the owner is going to drop dead and not pass it on to lay off the workers.

It sucks. I had a home business running and the owner wanted a community lot. I had her purchase one and close her home business. Poof! Two perfectly good townie employees are no longer available for hire by anyone in the neighborhood. I don't call this a feature, I call it a bug and it's a good thing SimPE was updated so that I can repair those townies (I don't have very many to begin with).

Won't the townies still come as hirable even though they have a job, just like any other townie who is currently employed but shows up in the "to hire" list?

A usually lurker... But I have some serious problems with OFB.

First of all, if you save a set of uniform for your employees, and decides to delete them, then when you go home, your business is gone. I am serious. The shop is gone and what is left there are a blank, patch of lot.

Another bug is, whenever my sim went out (on a date or just went out), sometimes there are a CASUAL GROUP waiting for them at the community lot. And if they are not there, they usually accompany your sim home but your invited date will not appear home. What the hell is wrong with those people? Desperate for a company?

No, it seems they are removed from the pool of eligible hires altogether.

I checked the files of my problem townies in SimPE. They were still assigned to the lot number which they used to work on with their jobs set to "Unknown". I presume, one way to resolve the issue would be to open a home business again, call them in, lay them off and then finally, close the business again. Personally, I did a little repair work in SimPE by comparing them to townies who aren't and haven't been employed anywhere. Changing their files accordingly made them available again.

One REALLY annoying bug I've just come across: putting playable sims in uniforms changes their entire face! For example, one of my CAS's suddenly had the same face as Remington the Maid! With no eyebrows! I haven't seen this with any townies I've hired, but so far almost every adult, playable sim has had their face literally rearranged by putting on a uniform.

Also, I had mentioned this previously for Uni lots, but it seems now that base neighborhood lots also have the problem of sims not always going to bed when told. They just walk up to the bed, it drops out of queue, and they decide to do something else totally not going to bed related. Even when about to drop from exhaustion. They don't always do this, but when they do, it's usually at the worst time.

You know, I thought I noticed that happening but I didn't bother to zoom in and look.  :-\
Guess we're all workforce clones, hmm?

I noticed this problem too and it bothered me very much until I found a cure : change appearance at the mirror (even if you don't really change a thing, simply accept the change (don't click on the X))
It seems to be necessary for every CAS sim after you created them and for every sim each time they change fitness level (from fit to fat for example and the other way around).
Hope it works in your game the same way as in mine
Pioupiou

Actually you can rehire them but not if you have Pescado's no lame hires hack, you have to take it out because it prevents re-hiring them.

And SimPE only shows that career as unknown because it's new and doesn't know how to identify it yet. I'm sure Quaxi will add something to the GUI so it labels that value as "employee" soon.

I just experienced the problem with the sims dying of natural causes (old age). The age transition doesn't clog up the queue anymore but they die and their children aren't receiving their inheritance. I have hacks but they mostly come from here. I have lizzie's lovebed and medicine cabinet.

I had my sims have an obsession with espresso, but it was seemingly caused by that espresso machine hack which added some menu options (like max motives, rejuvenate), since when I took it out, their obsession stopped.

Shame though, since it was a favorite hack.

Yeah, I understand the SimPE issue. I was just explaining how it's done (in a round-a-bout sort of way).

Really? nolamehires is doing this.  :-\ Pescado!

He knows. I told him about it in the thread for it over the weekend. Says it will be fixed in the next version.  ;D

my probem is a build one
having spent the last couple of weeks actually playing with the businesses and stuff and feeling a bit smug because i haven't come across problem that i couldn't fix by taking a hack/hacked object out, i decided to start building something

i wanted to do a raised area using the new split level tool. foundation works fine, i can recolour the sides and lay floor tiles. what i cant do i is attach stairs
i took out my sims 2 folder today and reinstalled the EP, went in and tried again withouth the mods and custom content and still had no joy
smug feeling has  now gone and i join the ranks of the frustrated

are you using connecting stairs (modular)? The regular staircases dont work, you need to use the connecting ones. Did you accidently leave any stairs scripts in and not the meshes? (that was my issue)


*because I cant spell I must edit

Last night I had to bust out the teleporter shrub because Nina Caliente singlehandedly pulled my Level 3 home business (it's a lounge type thing) down to a Level 0.  She had been in before and accrued three positive loyalty stars.  The next day she came over, paid to enter the lounge and immediately turned on the lot owner, waiving her arms and getting the Storm Cloud of General Dissatisfaction over her head. 

I've had unhappy customers before, but they usually have been hanging around for a while or have been "hasseled" by the sales help.  Nina hadn't been on the lot 20 sim minutes before she freaked out and no matter what the Owner did, he couldn't get her to leave.  I would queue "Ask to Leave" and the action would be canceled by Nina's next epic bitchfest.  For three sim hours they were locked in this cycle, with the business level dropping lower and lower (and despite the fact that the other customers were having all kinds of fun).  Has anyone else had this happen?

I had the same problem with the raised floor when I tried to play with it. Having no custom modular stairs in at all...could not place stairs. Move objects cheat didn't work either. I think it was saying "no floor tile" or something similar when I clicked to try and place.


*edit to say I still have the problem, haven't found a solution any where.

No, but you could've just deleted her. After all, in RL, we have security for these types of cases.

yes i'm using modular stairs and...ah,  i'm pretty sure the only script change i have is Numenors recolourables. i could hunt out the originals and try that, thanks nectere

edit...nope...thats not it, they aren't aren't a script change (had it in my head they were) i've checked all the stairs and foundation scripts and i have no added, or changed ones. and Numenors stairs are present and correct. these can't be the probem as i have tried with a freshly installed game with no downloads in at all

Oh, once I realized that something was definitely not kosher, I teleported her off the lot.

I had some Invisible townies after changing their clothes.
This happen on community clothing shop lot; Everything went fine as far as the changing of their clothes and the sales, but some of these townies became invisible after changing clothes, I change their clothes with the (recommend an outfit option.). It seem to be a random thing, I had change 4 of townies clothes this way, but 2 became invisible.

I figured this out when I noticed shopping bags floating around the shop, but the sims were invisible, I use the mind control mirror to see who they were, I found it was the same townies that I sold the new outfits to a few hours before on the lot.

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this or not, but I can't find anything with Search.  It may be intended, but it's still annoying.  Basically, when I send someone to restock, they never stop.  Even if everything is fully restocked, they just keep wandering around as if they're looking for something else.  This makes it hard to tell when they've actually finished.  Anyone else getting this?

I have that too in my restaurant but I didn't seem to have it in my home retail toy store. Of course when I played that house, I didn't have all the hacks I have in now so it's possible one of them could be doing something.

I think that's as designed, probably so you can assign a worker to the task and they'll keep doing it as more things are bought up.

I'm not using any hacks, so it's not to do with that.

That behavior applies only for employees. (and cashiers).  I wish we could do the same for our controlled sims.  I'd love a "sales" and a "stock" function.  It's extremely annoying to micro-manage.  I'm hoping that JM will come out with one of his famous macro's soon.

I have only been playing home based businesses.  I just think they are more realistic.  Otherwise they just work in some kind of time warp. But I'll admit that it does sound easier to run a community business.  But I hate the loading time!

I thought you did have a restock option at home lots. Click on sim and choose restock. Sales is the only assignable task that is missing on home lots - at least for me anyway.


Has anyone been able to give a guy a makeover in the salon chair and have options show up? I have done it several times now and I dont get any options, they just get a "haircut". (the stylist has gold badges so that isnt the issue and it works fine on females)

With a playable stylist? Yes, I've done it. Gave some elder townie the Fabio hair too. lol

yes i've done it several times too....i now have some very interesting looking sims  ;D, i gave Komei Tellerman a new receding hairline hairstyle and some custom eyebrows

I've had a couple of glitches with sims jumping out of the carpool and appearning to the side of the house.  First time it happened two teens were coming home from school.  First teen got off the bus and TJ's Bring Friend Home dialog popped up.  I clicked Okay because the guy this teen wanted to bring home was the other teen's boyfriend.  After a few seconds the second teen teleports right next to the house with no homework.

Second time it happened the teen was at their job.  I got a chance card that got them a promotion and the carpool was coming back the drop him off, but when it got there he teleported next to the house like the other teen did and didn't get paid for his day at work.  But he still got the promotion and won the scholarship for reaching the top of a teen career.

Not sure if these are isolated incidents are what.  For what its worth I moved this family out of the main part of Pleasantview and into that big unoccupied house in Bluewater.  (it costs around $77k I think).  Next time I play there I'll turn testingcheats on and see if I get any errors.

Not really a bug, per se, but a bit of a warning for anyone playing romance/pleasure sims: Don't take your dates to community lots that have have the ticket machine. Your date will waste all of your time trying to decide if he/she want's to buy a ticket or not.  ::)

Yeah, I'd been using changing appearance mirrors as a workaround, but didn't know that changing fitness levels retriggered the bug... thanks!

This should be fixed in the current version.

I have a problem that seems to be related to the baking glitch - my sims now cannot make any food at all, whether it is have/serve meal or make/make many, whether it is spaghetti or pie. They will go through the process of making fine but when it's supposed to be finshed it just disappears into thin air. They have to rely on snacks or me cheating so they dont starve to death. It has happened  on every lot I have played since installing OFB, even without hacks in. 

Are you selecting "make one/make many" or "serve" or "have breakfast?"

The first two options are strictly for bakeries. They go straight to your simmies inventory. The other ones should work like normal.

For me, 'smart serve' was causing that issue because nobody was hungry.  :P

Jelenedra and Radiophonic:

It was happening even when I clicked "have...." and "serve....." pie menus

The sim was clearly hungry and was still happening without any hacks. (sorry if my inital post wasnt clear)

The weird thing is, I went back and played it a bit since my post to try and figure out what was wrong and it has seemed to fixed itself!  Oh well as long as it doesnt come back again I dont mind  :P

Thanks for trying to help me  :)

I seem to be having a problem with weddings.  I was pretty pissed off when I realised that community lot weddings ain't going to happen any more, so last night I threw a normal house wedding party for an engaged couple I have.  Everything went fine until they got into the honeymoon limo.  It just stayed put and they didn't come out.  In the end I had to delete the limo.  Then I went into another lot and held another wedding party for another couple.  Exact same thing happened.

That was happening well before Open For Business. I believe that particular bug was introduced in NightLife. However, it may be worse now since my SS kids are having messed up limo trips to the SS lot as well.

So far, the most annoying issue I have is that I can no longer interact with the cow mascot to kick it's butt or influence it do clean my dorm.  >:(

JM help us!  :D

EDIT: Oh, look at me, I'm toopid. I was missing inerractwithoutgreet. Prepare for butt kicking, Cow.

Are we still posting problems here?  Seems a better idea than lots of separate threads.. but I don't want to be accused of necromancy again....

I've noticed that some items in OFB are not the same as in base game, but the base game objects on lots were not updated during the OFB install.  That sounds like a potential problem to me.  Maybe I'm just a worrier, but lots not being updated properly in a patch did cause the bug that killed Happy Valley.  And the new example is OFB and the RenuSensorOrb(Sp?) on lots (fixed in patch).   Here's what I noticed when converting my community lots to OFB businesses....  (I've added OFB to base game - no Uni or NL)

I noticed the pool lights had the same name in the Catalog, but were at a different height in the pool, so I'm deleting old pool lights and putting the new ones in just in case.  I remember there was some problem with pool lights in NL.  I didn't pay enough attention to remember what though.

When I went to redesign my Farmers Market as an OFB business, I couldn't understand why it was so expensive!  Luckily I noticed that the food cabinet used to cost 5000$ and now costs much less (1,500?).  I sold 6 old cabinets and replaced them with 2 new ones for a big saving on the lot price!  I guess that could be that the lot stores the value of the item separate from the sale price in the OFB package file.  If so, that's worth knowing, but isn't a real problem.

Any other items worth replacing?

I know 2 simmers who could never get their old 'hoods to run properly with NL.  We never worked out why and they both uninstalled it.  I'm wondering if this kind of thing might have been the problem.

update - I also notice Spambi posting on the OFB patch thread that a sim played the piano for 4 hours with no fun.  Replacing the piano fixed the problem.

... So THAT'S why the tiny gas station I made on a 1x3 lot when NL came out costs something like 67K to purchase! Good lord.

That bug has never been fixed. The piano will corrupt itself and stop being fun again in a day or so. Get the pianofix and all pianos will be cured.

Well all Maxis ones anyhow. Unfortunately, all the custom ones I have come across cloned off the pianos with this problem.

OK will do, but any comment on my own observations?  Anything that needed conversion and didn't get it  is a potential problem in my book!

I made a new 2x2 lot last night and it came out a lot cheaper than the old 3x2 ones I converted even though it had more items.  I suspect the calculation of lot value is screwy. I guess I should rebuild an old lot and test that.

I'm also having terraintype problems again.  this goes way back to the first time I tried to put a green lot into strangetown and change the colour.  It just didn't work.  Whatever I tried the neighbourhood view looked fine, but the lot view had the wrong terrain type.  Other lots in the hood were fine.  Yesterday I installed a lot in one hood and converted it to an OFB business.  No problems with terrain type though it could have been one of these problem lots.  Moved it to another hood - looked fine in Neighbourhood view.  Had a sim buy it - it was white!  Bugger!  Entered boolprop terraintype temperate - no joy - did it again with capital letters - no joy.  Played  he lot anyway and saved.  Made a completely new 2x2 lot.  Perfectly normal.  Played it and it was white too.  WTF?   

All available evidence suggests that this is a Cwykes problem, and is certainly outside the scope of general hacking.

That figures!  but thanks anyway!

That food cabinet and the pool lights are definitely different though.  I'll replace them as and when I find them, but I'm still wondering whether there are other objects I ought to replace.  It really doesn't seem terribly clever to have old versions of an object left in my game.

Did you ever use one of those snow terrains? You could have a part left or it snuck if from a house.

Never had snow anywhere, but thanks for the idea. I did use maxis terrain paints on the lots to make well trodden paths and greener grass, I even used maxis sand to cover up the grass. I've had the odd foreign terrain paint creep in with a download of course but not on those lots.  I can't see how a brand new lot got corrupted.  Is that what bad terrain paints do to a hood?  Misuse of boolprop terrainpaint was my best guess at the problem.  I'll see if anything got fixed by shutdown restart when I start my game today.

Update - shut down restart didn't fix it, but picking up and putting down fixed the new lot.

Among other appalling errors...
So far, in every wedding since installing OFB, the bride & groom do not dress for the occasion. (no wedding gown & tux, even w/ wedding party under the arch)

I understand there are hacks out there that do this intentionally.  I don't use them.  Never have.  Wedding gown & tux worked properly till OFB.

Anyone else notice this?

It is by design that sims wear their planned formal wear for getting married in OFB. I'm sure there are places to download the defaults so you can use them again, but you will have to plan them as the formal wear for the sims getting married before the wedding.

My Maxis outfits for A, YA & E file that comes with the Clothing Equality Mod in Peasantry does enable the Maxis default wedding clothes to show up in the game as buyable formal so you can still use them that way if you want. I'm not sure why Maxis didn't do this since I'm sure some people would still like to use them.

Post-patch now, it seems that my university kids no longer get the five hour finals warning. Not a big deal really, but does this happen (or rather, not happen) to anyone else?

Yes It happens in my game too.I just sent 4 sims through uni last night and the whole time they did not get any 5 hour warnings until final. The only notice they got was so and so has final in one hour.

I've got a problem with a lot post-patch.

It's the Just flowers N More lot in Bluewater Village.

When customers are in the lot they gather around the flower beds (the pre-made ones) and all of them get the thought bubbles above their heads with a wall in them.

Now, I haven't changed one thing on the lot since I installed the patch and it was working perfectly fine beforehand, so I don't get why they think there's an obstruction or whatever they think is a problem  ???

Is anyone else playing this lot and if so, have you had this problem or does anyone else have any idea what's happening?

Edit: I deleted and replaced the flower beds and now sims will buy flowers instead of gathering there with the 'wall' thought bubbles, HOWEVER, now they gather inside the shop and get the thought bubbles. I think the lot's buggy and as I can't be bothered to go through all stock, delete and replace I think I'll just sell the fucking thing and let my sim cut his losses  :D

Hmm, speaking of which, one of my shops went poof as well. I can't get into it visiting or to go to work. 
The game just crashes with a windows error rather than a sims2 error dialog and thus, no error log is created by the game. :-\

Damn. I wonder how many other shops are broken for me.

Oh well. :)

Anyone else think "Ring up these customers" drops out of the queue too easily?  My sims stop ringing up sales to listen to a joke!  Queue of people, some blue bags all beginning to get anxious and this sim stops ringing them up to listen to a joke from some total stranger! 

In dealing with queue's it's definitely worth pulling a sim out of the queue to reset their meter on waiting time.  Old NHS waiting list trick for those UK simmers.  Target the second in the queue or the most upset sim behind him by telling a joke or showing them something else.  A quick social interaction makes them happy again and resets their meter when they rejoin the queue.  And by the time the queuing sims have manoeuvered to reform the queue around my sim and the customer who is obviously standing in the way now, the cashier has rung up the first one.

Put a barrier around the cash register with lockable gate style doors. ;)
It might not be too glamorous, but it works.

But the action shouldn't just drop out of the queue completely.  If you queue a sim to ring up sales, they should DO it.  Not decide to do something else instead.  It looks buggy in my game.  It needs a fix not a workaround if it's buggy.

I haven't had a five hour warning since NL came out.  It could be a hack conflict for all I know.  But I've gotten so used to it that I've never tried to fix it.

OK, here's mine...don't know if it is a bug or an annoyance. either way it irritates the crap out of me...
I own a salon...and have 2 stylists and someone doing sales pitches. anwya if the sales person comes up to the customer right after they make the decision to buy...they do the pitch..and then the customre has to start over...doesn't work with other stuff, acutal objects they will still pick up and go, after the sales pitch...so i'm losing business becuase of this, or can't have a sales person except the playable sims so that i can time the sales pitch properly...ugh...if someone could find a fix for this, that woudl ROCK!

Karen

I'm still wondering how the heck I'm supposed to move the cleanbots out to display in my robotics shop after I've made them.  I go into buy mode and can't click on them to move.  I go into inventory mode and no dice.  I use the move_objects cheat and I can move it, but once I'm done there's no interaction with the item; can't set a price or activate it or anything.  Is there something I'm doing wrong?  I only make a single one of these at a time because they're time-consuming to make and I know they're not going to fly off the shelves.   ???

Are you grabbing them from their bottom base or the robot part that sits on top? I believe you have to grab the base IIRC, though I don't think anything in the game ever explicitly states that. :P

on the cleanbots i noticed you have to grab the stand that they are in...that seems to work, and that is what you click on to make them sellable, not the robot itself...kinda like the the plates and food.

K

Huh I didn't realize that these things had bases.  Maybe I'll zoom in next time and see if that works.  Gracias.   ;D

yeahhh-this is one of my big pet peeves right now too. you use family to try to keep the "overhead" down in your business, but then you have to click on each and every customer to do sales. that drives me batty.  There should be an option to assign a family member to do sales and restocking automatically-like employees

Same here. I haven't the warning since NL.

You can click on a sim and set them to restock (yoga, meditate,restock!).  You can also set a sim to "Be cashier" by clicking on the till.  "Ring up these customers" frees them up when the queue has gone.  Then you only have to handle the sales individually.  Do you really want that automated?   It'll go better if you choose who they target and what kind of sell they do.

Yes the lots work in a timewarp. It is odd. Dad can go to the shop before breakfast and spend days there using the energizer but still get home in time to catch his ride to work!

Here's a glitch.  An unfinished painting cannot be finished if your Sim leaves it on the business lot and comes back to try and finish it later.   I've lost a half-finished masterpiece that way.  I think it happened with an unfinished pic left on the home lot, but I can't actually swear to it   :-[

I think this is a glitch relating to instantiation object IDs vs. NIDs: The "Artist" of a picture is stored by object ID, which will naturally change on a business lot since when you leave, all sims are de-instanced, and respawned when you reenter. The same thing would happen on a home lot if you deleted a sim, forcing it to respawn by the mailbox, and it wound up with a different object ID.

Changing how this works, however, would break every existing painting.

What's the reasoning for this?

Probably because so many people complained that the default Maxis wedding gear was boring and made everybody's weddings look the same.

It's gonna be a pain in the ass to replan outfits before and after every wedding. But so be it I guess. Sims look pretty stupid getting married in a cocktail dress.

http://www.pronupsims.fr.st/

Pronup Sims is your new friend.

Note: This website doesn't appear to work in Firefox anymore.  :(

Hmmm. Thanks. Maybe this will be fun after all.

Rats!
OK, if I put it in my sim's inventory and take it home with me will it be OK then?  If the artist is being referenced by a different number on the home and business lot, I guess it won't help.

So if I sell paintings by famous artist Sim Picasso in my business, they won't go up in value when he dies, because the game can't tell that he painted it.  Rats again!

I guess I've gotta find my avatar again....

Oh, it is. You can have gothic weddings and everything now. (http://prft.co.uk/images/smilies/thumbup.gif)

I have not had that problem, but I have only had weddings on community lots. They always dress into default Maxis wedding gear. Also, I don't use the arches, I use an altar....perhaps that is the difference.

Are you saying that that altar (did I get it from MTS2?) works on community lots with OFB?

Yes it does. (Yes you did) You can even take two sims that don't live together to get married, and when it is done, it will add the other sim to the family right there at the community lot.

works for me with firefox at  http://www.pronupsims.net/

What altar is this? The one I see at MTS2 isn't set up to work on community lots... the posts suggest fixing it yourself and/or change lot zoning to get it onto a community lot. Is that the one you mean? (I can change lot zoning, but I thought that didn't work) <confuzzled>

Start out with a community lot, fix it the way you want it, then change lot zoning, exit, re-enter, add the altar and anything else you want, then change it back. I added a bottle of champagne, wedding cake, and a buffet table. You don't need more than one bottle of champagne because apparently on community lots, they are bottomless. In fact, after about the 10th toast I make them dispose of it before anymore toasts happen :P

That sounds easy enough, thanks! I'll give it a shot.

For some reason I had the idea changing the lot zoning to community after placing the arch broke the arch in OFB. Maybe the new coding (for clothes) makes that one break but this one, cloned from the old arch, still works.

If that made any sense at all.

Excellent - if you are right, I am very pleased.  I've decided I prefer it to the wedding arch in my churches.  I can load OFB now which I'd been putting off until after Peter and Marianne's wedding.  Thanks for the info.  However, I also infer that TwoJeffs formal wedding hack doesn't work with it, yes?

TJ's hack doesn't work with it, but with OFB you don't need the hack anyhow - Maxis has made it so that sims use their planned formal wear as a default behaviour in OFB.

Yes, I know that.  I suppose I'll have to get on and load OFB now.

Magwitch posted soon after OFB that they'd made a new community wedding lot in OFB and the arch didn't work. That's why.   http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3287.msg103671#msg103671

"One thing I've noticed that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that you can no longer get married on community lots. Has anyone else had this? I spent ages building an awesome chapel with some of the cool new roof tools, turned it into a residential lot to place the arch and then turned it back again in the usual way. Sent a couple of engaged sims over there and the arch is not selectable. Really annoying."  Magwitch

Ooooo, so the altar works?  Marvellous!

*Runs off to download*.

I've got the following problems - they aren't worth their own thread so it's necromancy time.

jump bug
blank want icons
wants to slow dance but no slow dance
pre-OFB and new lots with desert terrain type in Veronaville.
pre-OFB Pleasantview lots crashing the game instead of installing in Strangetown.

I can't see any pattern on the first two, but the descriptions of the wants are there if you hover, I'm just missiing the icons. I think I don't have slow dance because I don't have NL and the want coding for OFB doesn't match. 
There's a history on the lot problems, but I can't see how it should have caused the latest problems.  A lot newly made in Veronaville shouldn't be desert terrain when I play it!  Pick up and put down fixed that one, but still... A lot made in Pleasant view pre-OFB shouldn't place fine in a green hood, but crash the game when placed in Strangetown!  (custom content all removed beforehand)   I suspect not having Uni and NL is a problem as No one else ever seems to have had problems changing terrain.  I can live with it, I guess.  Just don't try and move even empty lots around!

I've got some nasty jump bugs as well as the blank want slots as well. Like you, I can't seem to pinpoint what's causing them either (eg. no object error logs, etc.).

As a side note that's more comical than on topic, one of my post-uni family sims has five blank want slots and the sixth slot is always "Woohoo in bed". I guess that's all she wants now that she's done it all. :D

My blank want slots were caused by a mod I think.  I didn't remember to take out Inteen with OFB (which hadn't been updated at the time, not sure now).  As soon as I took it out I lost the jumps and the blank wants.  It may have just been the Maxis premade family I was playing that always seem to have problems with Inteen anyway for me but it is something to check anyway.

I took them all out yesterday trying to track down whether or not a hack was suppressing my slow dance interraction before I reported it to EA.  I don't have inteen anyway.  I still had jump bug and slow dance.  I didn't play for long enough to notice blank wants, that pre-OFB lot crashed the game twice and I quit!  I'll look again today.

The one that was causing me problems originally was an old version of moveinall from MTS2.  That suppressed management and sales interactions. Glad I found that one eventually.

**perks** - Inteen has been updated for OFB?  I didn't know.  Oh joy unbounded.  I'm going to find Jase and press his Thanks button.

Not quite yet -- Jase has the OFB version of InTeen in private beta testing.  No word yet on when public beta testing starts.

Every time you use Inteen, god steps on a kitten until it dies a horrible, bleeding death.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/kittenkiller.jpg)

lolol! Lord-i'm SURE they don't mean to dis on ya like dat. Forgive them-they know not what they do!  :P

And this is supposed to discourage me how?  hmmm?

Nah.  It's quick.  Easy.  Painless.

One thing I've noticed is that when the game picks a sim to appear on a community lot (but not business), I get a huge slow down.

I believe it's because I have so many sims in my neighborhood, I get the same thing when it picks which sims will visit when a family first moves in (I guess it goes through all the sims to see which ones live nearby). But it's weird that it happens for a community lot, not a business lot.

I think it checks for sims that you don't know.

Found a few more interesting things:

toddlers can get wants for customers to get a loyalty star. ::)

The headmaster can't get through locked doors on a home business lot when the business is closed.  Visitors can just walk straight in, but not the Headmaster.  I thought it was bugged again when my sim was trying to give him the tour and he just stood there on the porch and said "I've already seen this room".

Cleanbot is obviously for cleaing up after Hydrobot has gone berserk..

I didn't get blank want icons today to begin with - but I began to get a few when the game had been running a long time. (3hrs+)  You can hover over the want and see what it is, but the icon isn't showing.  My game is almost vanilla - I haven't taken out the camera hack or the scripts for stairs, but there's nothing in downloads at all.  I'd forgotten how irritating the coffee cups/make beds/buying aspiration objects gameplay is!  Thank you for those hacks all over again.

Wanda and Stephen are on their second set of twins, no cheesecake - I guess she has a pregnancy modifier or that damn randomiser is stuck on twins!

The first thing I noticed was the camera hack wasn't working anymore.  Is this one you did yourself or is itthe one from MTS2 (Gun Mod)?

I have Gunmod's Camera mod and it's working fine?

The reason why old camera mods don't work after installation of an expansion is because the game overwrites those files - or at least, mine were, and I didn't think to back up my cameras folder. Re-replacing the file worked. Lighting mod is similar, although in that case it's because the game is then using the lighting file from the new expansion folder and ignoring the old ones.

No - me neither.  Thanks for the reply.  I knew it would be a case of wrestling with the files again.  Still I stuck the Tricou's right on the edge of town so I'll have to do it soon.

Oohhh...my computer went belly-up and I didn't even notice, hehe.  I had to reinstall the files anyway.  :P

ROFL..What a BRILLIANT pic!

I've got snappledude's no EP one.  I put it back after installing OFB.  Maybe I'll take it out and try gunmod's

Anyone else think robot restocking is broken?  My game often restocks cleanbots with hydrobots even though there are cleanbots in inventory. You end up with two hydrobots in the shop instead of one of each.  I haven't noticed it the other way round or with any other robots?  It doesn't happen all the time either.

Ring up these Sales also drops out of the queue way too easily.  Faced with a line of customers, Sims stop ringing them up to listen to a joke and robots rush off to cook food you don't want.  Be cashier is OK.  I don't know what triggers the duration of Ring up these Sales, but it needs fixing!

ok i seem to be having a problem with the driveway extensions. what happens is i send a teen or a parent to work/school. if the car the were driving was placed on an extension piece, right when they are going to turn into the driveway the jump out of the car and are just standing there. the adults are treated as if they skipped work and they do not get paid. the students arent penalized for missing school, and they dont have any homework.

i was playing a house last night where i had this problem before, but it seemed to have stopped. i sent some of the sims to work on their community lot. the next day when everyone was returning home they started jumping out of their cars again. i had boolprop on when this happened and got an error concerning the pieces. anybody else having this problem?

I heard of something similar on another site.  Can you post your error logs (attachment) so someone more awesome can look at them?

ok well here is the error log from the last time it happened.  ???

Just a tip for the next time you need to post an error log: please add the txt file as an attachment instead of copying and pasting. Thank you!

I had a vehicle parked on an extension and one on the main driveay. I qued up for my sim to drive the one on the extension and it kept dropping out/freezing the sim until it dropped. The one on the main drive worked fine.

Biggest Problem: I have a home business (a junk yard) and right after the first perk (I chose cheaper inventory) I couldn't coook anymore. Everything was fine up until that moment. Now it's fubarred and I don't really know what to do. Never really had a lot go bugged before! I tried the Boolprop force error on everything, but it didn't work.

I don't have the patch installed--would the patch fix this? It wasn't on the list of things fixed... ? Help?

Not a bug, but a funny oversight (?) by developers.

Robots: Cheerleaders and Llama mascots cheer to them, Cow Mascots try to pester them. Sims will sometimes walk by them and do the "you're ugly and you turn me off" animation. And the robots have thought bubbles over their heads while they work (they have the Family aspiration).

Robots, family...hmm, the "Maximum Overdrive EP" is coming soon? Who made who? Sims be doomed!  :D

Robots get the aspiration of the one that iniatialised them.  That's why I have 2 romance robots (ugh) and you have family bots.  They get his/her skills and personality too, so mine couldn't cook much and had low body skill.  Not sure about interests.   My Sims give romance bots the samew "Wow" reaction all romance sims get.  They can wear aspiration helmets by the way.

Have you had the restocking problem I mentions - finding hyrdrobots instead of cleanbots when you've restocked?

This doesn't work in real life, so I wouldn't expect it to work in the game, either. :P

No, I haven't had that particular problem.

well, they used to just get in and appear on the road. Did the EP change this?

As for the above mentioned problem: I stuck my backyup in and ttried to recreate it. It didn't happen again. Weirdness....

Would like to add that IndigoRage has not updated the altar for OFB (apparently he's working on it), so the sims still change into the default wedding clothes.  :( Just found out by the trial and error method...

That was a very necromantic observation.