I figured it was probably related to the hack in some cases, although I've seen a couple situations where it can't be just the hack/core interaction, because only a few social actions are missing instead of all, or because it's not a social (cell phone actions sometimes disappear until I have the sim move a few steps, and I'm still trying to work out what causes Tai Chi to sometimes vanish.) But definitely,the OP's issue didn't really sound like total game borkage.

I've seen it intermittently. Usually, right before the stray is leaving the lot, but also sometimes when the sim is doing something like sitting in a chair, performing tai chi... things with minor undocking procedures. I've seen a couple other things disappear temporarily from pie menus, the most extreme being all the social interactions other than "Greet" disappearing from walkbys if the sim trying to socialize is indoors. Moving outdoors first makes the social interactions reappear. Likewise, social interactions with strays often reappear if I make a sim leave the house first, or just walk a few steps if already outside.

Although it's fun watching a big pile o' you fighting, I'll step in and simply report what I did last night. Actual data about a file format is always better than how someone *feels* about that format.

I don't have Pleasantview, Strangetown, or Veronaville anymore, but I have hoods in slots N001, N002, and N003, where they should be. They are not named the same as the default basegame hoods. I copied the .reia file to the appropriate neighborhoods. The animated buttons appeared for those neighborhoods; I'd hesitate to call them "movies", because they're more like really big animated GIFs. The animations were clearly for the original hoods, not the ones I created. Clicking on one of the buttons popped up the info for that neighborhood, with the PNG graphic I'd created. However, entering a hood did not trigger the flyover cam sequence.

Next, I peered inside a .reia file. The header identifies the file format as RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format), one of the many descendants of IFF. Specifically, it's the one Microsoft created for WAV and AVI files. I saw at least one chunk labeled "frameP", which makes sense if it's a video wrapper.

Conclusion: the flyover cam sequence is not part of the .reia file, but is hardcoded and linked to the names of the EAxis hoods. The .reia file is just an unexplored video format.

First thing I tried was getting her back in the pool, then climbing out the normal way. It didn't reset it.

Next was trying a few things that interrupted her normal state, thinking those would reset the swim effect. You know: ninja teleport, sitting in a chair and getting up again. No go.

Then, I sent her off-world with Jogging. That had no effect.

I knew from the start that reset should work, but I didn't want to lose any skillpoints or other advancement she had done that session. So, I sent her spouse off to check on his business (he has a dojo where he teaches Tai Chi,) and when he came back, reset her, twice. That worked.

For future reference, don't queue up something like "Use Pool Slide" after a command from the baby controller to fetch the kid. The sim fetches the baby, then takes the baby for a swim, making it impossible for her to exit the pool -- which was how I wound up with a sim that swam through the ground.

Could also be the ghostwalk. I haven't tried to do it, but I know I've seen either a hack or a cheat that lets you turn on ghostwalk for a sim.

On the borkination side, if a sim is levitating because of meditation or otherwise legitimately flying, and something goes wrong so that you have to fix the sim with a cheat (like MoveObjects,) it's possible the levitation/flying state may get stuck. Haven't had this specifically, but I just had a similar borkage happen with the swimming state, as a side effect of a problem with the baby controller. Sim was swimming through the ground instead of walking or running, would pop out of the ground to sit in a chari or pick something up, then switch back to swimming when a task was finished. Only way to fix it was to reset the sim twice.

Maybe the badges have some bearing, then, because I definitely have had a missing "be salesman" option that appeared later.

One thing that may be confusing the n00b is that "Business.../Be Salesman" won't appear unless there's currently a customer on the lot with a sales meter. This makes sense, but when I first went looking for that and couldn't find it, I thought BRY was broken. Fortunately, I tried again when there was a customer and discovered how it works.

You need video, too. And I would upgrade that DVD drive to a DVD writer; backing up crap from a 500 GB hard drive onto CDs is going to suck. Also, does that motherboard include a network card? How do you connect to the internet? If it's a cable/DSL modem with USB connections instead of network connections, your motherboard probably includes USB (although you should doublecheck.) If the modem uses CAT-5, you'll need a network card if it's not already on-board. If you're on dial-up, you'll need a modem.

If the problem goes away when the teleporter is removed, contact the maker of the teleporter, Paladin.

That will be $25, pay at the window, please.

OK, I know why it's free ASP, but I don't get the reference to NL. Possibly because I'm old and my memory is fading. Did buy wants work differently pre-NL?

It handles bathtubs fine. In fact, for one household with a shower tub, one sim always showers, while the other prefers baths. All BUY-controlled. For a house I have with no showers, only a tub, the sim bathes. Only bathing-related BUY issue I've seen is: if you have a sink in the bathroom and bathe a baby in it, the sim will put the baby on the floor after finishing bathing the sprog, then gets kicked out by BUY, creating a problem in childcare.

Coffee Cup Hack + Bathroom Uses You will do the trick.

Or stop putting sinks in bathrooms. I never put sinks in bathrooms, unless I want behavior like that. OK, I'm lying; I think I have a couple places where I used a sink purely decoratively.

So: what did you download, install, or change one week ago?

Double-dipping isn't much of a problem. Being your own employee, on the other hand...

I had a Fortune sim with a floral shop who hired his son-in-law, then later sold the show to the son-in-law. When playing the new owner, he is able to visit his business, hire employees, and phone his manager as expected. However, he also still has the entry-level shop clerk job -- clearly double-dipping of the worst sort. He had to stay home from work to care for a baby one day and got the message that he missed work and should be careful about his job performance.

Naturally I'm investigating this by refusing to let him go to work, to see if he gets fired... and if so, what happens. If there's no other effect on the business, no biggie. But if something weird happens, I may be coming back to ask for a bug fix.

I use CCCP to make sure I have all the right codecs.

The problem isn't that people don't know what a technical term in the science of optics means. It's that the word is more commonly used to describe corrosive substances, like sodium hydroxide. Wider-spread definition drives out more specialized meaning.

I don't think this means TSR is partnered with EA. It probably means the website is partnered with the official Sims website. The quoted comment is about website/bbs policy, not EA's business policy.

I point to the Legal Threatz as proof that there is no such relationship with any paysites, at least not currently. EA was concerned only with links (to a website that Pescado does not own) for downloading their garbage products, but made no comment about downloads (available on a website Pescado does own) for garbage garbage from paysites.

You can't even choose the town's name. And you can't choose where to place lots, only what to build on them. So no, you won't be able to choose the town's size, although you could manually kill off most of the sims and bulldoze most of the lots.

No way I could even Arrr that, then, unless I bought a new computer. Mine's a P4 1.6 GHz with 512MB RAM.

I find the specs amusing. Some of the early interviews about TS3 claimed they were planning on making the specs *lower* than TS2, so that it would work on "your grandma's computer". That is now revealed to be blatant L&P.

You know, I have serious doubts about this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is: you have two separate accounts on the same computer, with each account thus having its own Neighborhood folder containing separate versions of Strangetown? One of which you've played through?

Sounds dangerous.

There was a discussion last month, or maybe the month before, in which Pescado mentioned that IDs for things like sims and lots are, stupidly, not kept distinct for each neighborhood, but intermingle in weird ways, which is the source of much of the weirdness when occupied lots are moved into the bin. Assuming the new sims installation has *never been played*, in any neighborhood, you might be able to transfer a lot from old Strangetown to new Strangetown. This is assuming that the neighbor IDs and things like that are assigned sequentially. If they aren't, or if you've played one of the other neighborhoods or started adding lots, things may blow up. Also, I am assuming here that there's no saved catalogue of all lot/neighbor IDs, that it's recalculated each time the game loads. If there *is* a catalogue, it will be corrupted if you move a lot or family with an ID already in use.

This doesn't apply to restoring a house from a backup because you are replacing a file with the same lot and neighbor IDs. It's a lot like editing characters in SimPE: the game already knows about those characters, so changing information about them, like their current bladder state, won't hurt the game. In contrast, something I've been wanting to do -- add characters by hand to a neighborhood, bypassing the normal CAS interface -- probably won't work, now that I've paused to reflect on this.

One point I could see for duplicating career rewards would be to clone the Execuputt, buy a comm lot, and create a miniputt golf course.

Yeah, I haven't done it myself, but I've heard of all sorts of tricks that depend on cloning. Like, for example, someone once posted directions on making retarded sims: wait until after a sim has aged up, but before you get the pop-up message, clone the sim, then delete the original sim. The result is a toddler trapped in a child's body (or whichever age stages were involved.) Probably a VBT, though.

You gain STR points from chest-pounding?

Not true. Any sim who's been greeted with the gesture at all can do the gesture. However, they need to do the gesture several times with a sim who already knows the gesture before they can do it right. I have plenty of townies roaming around trying to do the chest-pound and bow gestures, but failing.