Thanks all for the advice.


True but then they're knowledge Sims (most vampires are); they get all depressed about not going to school and you miss out on the "Get A+" want, not to mention the stupid schoolbus arrives anyway, wakes them up and they burn to death before you can save them. And every civilized vampire has to have an education.

I read somewhere that vampires in bat form are not affected by the sun so the garage doesn't need to be connected to the house after all. If Macrotastics forced the vampires to fly everywhere it would help a lot, especially if it forced them to fly to their carpool/schoolbus.

Doesn't have to be *that* bad. It's the Sims, after all. Realism and authenticity should have been sacrificed in the name of producing playable vampire sims.

What I'm wondering is why can't sunlight just make them really sleepy or something instead of burning them up? It's a fatal weakness.

Guess I'll build a massive garage and give everyone their own vehicle.

I'm trying it out atm. If it works then my next (and final) problem is that I'm using the House of Fallen Trees lot in the Maxis Downtown. The garage is a separate shed near the back of the compound and the walk there is almost as long as the walk from the front door to the street. And the house is on a foundation so I can't connect the two. WTB Sims 1 "Hole in the Ground" teleporter.

It does but then there are two teens and one car, so only one guy can drive?

I'm trying an all-vampire household. Major problems arise when the teen vampires try to go to school since they are exposed to sunlight both going there and coming back. This is especially bad when they come back with homework as they waste 3 secs putting the homework down and another 3 secs complaining before they can be ordered to sprint for their coffins. Thing is, teens have to go out during daylight to go to school, unlike adults who can get night jobs. Even young adult vampires can get through university without going to class. I tried sending them to school with the car but that's not enough since they come back on the bus. Is there any hack/mod that allows vampire teens to be homeschooled or to attend night classes? Thanks in advance.

Hmm, so if two Sims should so much as exist on the same lot, their fates will cross and their innocence will be lost forever?

I notice that many of my Sims have dozens of defunct relationships (0/0) cluttering up their relationships panel. I used Insim to remove the relationships and the MATY Lot Debugger to purge the neighborhood gossip. I then went into SimPE to remove the "Met So-and-So" memory. Is there anything else I need to do to get rid of the relationships for good or does anyone see a mistake in my procedure?

Edit: I'm worried that I might have overlooked something and ruined my neighborhood. Has anyone messed around with removing memories and is it safe to do so?

That hack is "antiredundancy". The game will only create one of each type of NPC. If say you happen to fire your maid and decide to hire another one, then the game will create a new maid for you to hire.

Is it okay to link mods in testing? http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/test/

The hack is in Crammyboy's Propane section.

No, sorry if I gave the wrong impression. What I meant to say was that using sleep/energy as the sole factor in plague recovery is risky because normally speaking the option to sleep or take a nap doesn't appear until a Sim's energy ear has reached a certain level (70-75%). So, if the comfort + sitting recovery bonuses are nuked and if a Sim comes back sick with a 90% energy bar there's nothing he can do about it until he gets tired enough to go to sleep.

It's funny how merely sitting in a chair with high comfort and energy scores produces (6+4) a faster recovery rate than sleeping (8 only). On the other hand, you can't sleep until your energy drops to 70%, I think, whereas you can sit down anytime.

Are custom animations really that difficult to make? It seems that modders can alter game behavior, create new meshes, new textures and even new sound files on a regular basis, but there don't seem to be that many new animations being created. Why so difficult?

Yes, directly from Sim bin. Since they show up as dead (blue icon background) in SimPE do I still have to delete the SWAF/DNA/SDSC files or are these resources still 'connected' to the two characters? Erm, also they were brother and sister (ie family ties do exist). Is my entire neighborhood destined for the great Sim bin in the sky?

Actually, I think this might be the cause of John Burb's telepathy. Mary-Sue also started getting strange memories involving Dustin Broke and Skip becoming a zombie, and Lothario wants to kiss himself.

Doesn't the flu already to this?

I created 2 Sims and moved them in, had second thoughts, and then moved them out and deleted them before they met anybody. They show up as dead in SimPE. Is there still a danger of BFBVFS?

Runs thru the LTW in order as opposed to simply rolling one at random. Useful for when there's a particular LTW you need and you don't want to waste time rerolling duplicate results.

The dream trackers seem to control who or what your Sims dream about. So if your Sims start dreaming romantically about people they have never met before or, worse still, start dreaming romantically about grilled cheese sandwiches, then you might need to nuke them. The trackers, I mean, not the Sims.

Yeah, just nuke the sit bonus. Keeps it simple and yet increases the difficulty. But then maybe you need to increase the influence of energy or something to compensate, otherwise the Sim would recover as fast from working out as from vegging in a corner. Make them have to go to bed or something inconvenient.

You could also create a deadly guinea pig virus that cannot be cured except by medicine. Guaranteed death in three days. Of course the original guinea pig virus was also hard to catch (had to be bitten while playing with a dirty guinea pig). Or maybe a zombie plague that drains motives at an ever-increasing rate until death occurs, whereupon the victim becomes a zombie (this last is wishful thinking).


I agree. Sometimes I wonder if Maxis should go a step further and introduce a "disaster" expansion pack for Sims 2 with triggerable mega-disasters like in SimCity. Imagine your Sim family having to deal with a sudden flood, meteor shower, house party getting gatecrashed by aliens with head-mounted lasers, or an invasion of plague zombies. The best drama always has a healthy dose of real danger and excitement mixed in, and I don't mean retarded Baked-Alaska-set-yourself-on-fire kind of excitement.

Do any of the plagues give the victim nasty pus-filled sores? I thought they were all invisible flu-type *cough* *cough* *drop dead* plagues.

The reason why the comfort motive has the greatest impact on recovery is probably because the designers want the Sim to sit down more and waste time. However, a Sim can do a lot of things while sitting down (skilling, eating, socializing) and can gain comfort rapidly. Even taking a dump bumps his comfort meter up a noticable amount.

I suggest that only energy and perhaps hunger affect recovery/death. Good hygiene doesn't help you recover from flu, it just helps prevent you from catching it in the first place. Comfort relates more to relaxation than to proper rest (energy), and thus has a negligible effect on the progress of the illness. Sleeping in bed will help you recover, merely sitting in a chair most likely will not. The energy motive is a lot slower to replenish, even in the best beds, and the Sim will be unable to do anything else while sleeping. He can woohoo, I guess, but since that drains energy it might prove fatal.

The "No Autonomy" just prevents them from indulging in the activity when left alone on free will, I think. It doesn't usually disable the option of ordering it manually.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Macrotastics can dole out servings of group meals in Sim inventories as and when they are needed. I think the only conditions are that the Sim with the food in inventory needs to be on the lot and that the hungry Sim's cooking abilities are inferior to the food that is available in inventory. So you could just cook one or two group meals in advance, place them into inventory and the family will eat on that throughout the day. It's not quite the solution you wanted but it might be a good substitute, although guests would be a problem. When a toddler grows into a child I usually get the parents to toss 2-3 group meals into his inventory and turn auto power idle on. That way the child feeds himself until he becomes a teenager.

I use all three mods and my game hasn't exploded (yet). I'm not awesome enough to understand how to use the hack scanner, unfortunately.

Well, to me it would be better if the Sims just stood there like sheep waiting for directions than relying on their current AI which is inferior and even self destructive. It's all the lobsterthermidor/prank/kickybag/ADHD/pillowfight/admire/congratulate/busking/swooning/hogcomputer/snacking kind of stuff that gets me. Many of these actions are lame, idiotic, hard to cancel out of, or just plain dangerous. And when the Sims run into trouble they scream and holler at the camera, blaming ME for their crappy AI. I feel that they should either be lobotomized or given smarter AI. The current AI produces nothing but irritation.

Just a suggestion, no offence intended: with regards to the flirt options the casual romance mod allows you to perform some of the "lower level" flirts even at high levels. Perhaps it might make a safer alternative to using the allmenus cheat?