The commercial type awnings which came with OFB do not seem to keep out weather or lightning...at least from what I've used of them in game so far.

They have no 'walls' so that could be the reason why.

However, I have covered second story balconies with angled roofs using columns and those roofs DO seem to keep the weather off the covered balcony.

Been a couple days since I've been able to spend any time playing, but hope to this evening...will test this roof/weather thing in game then...

Indeed, you may have hit upon the crux of the problem.

Prior to installing seasons, odd shaped roofs (round, spires, etc.) could be made to meet the edge of the walls. 

Houses where I had roofs that just met the walls like this, would get 'weather' in the room directly under the roof if I did not enlarge the roof to make an 'eave'.

But, with flat roofs, one doesn't normally have an eave. 

Come to think of it, I haven't made a flat roofed house since I installed Seasons.  I have made community lots with flat roofs, though and don't remember any problems with them, but that doesn't mean anything as I don't think I've left a sim on community lot long enough to experience much weather...

I removed some roof COLORING tiles and had the 'weather in the house' thing.  You would think that the roof would just resort back to Maxis default (it looked like that was what happened), but apparently the game thought the roof was gone.  Pain in the butt...had to re-roof every house where I had used those tiles.

So apparently Seasons code for 'there's an actual roof over this house' is very touchy. And in more than one way?

2x2 or SMALLER?

Apparently all my sims got huge inheritances when "Uncle Bob" passed away...

I prefer the long lot - 3 deep x 5 wide...nice for double car garages.

All this talk of aliens and cyberpunk made me miss Neptune Valley...my brightly colored alien skins are all gone with the big download flush when NV got f'd up when I installed seasons... so last night I did it.  I've abandoned my cleaned up version of Riverblossom Hills and began a new neighborhood... one with a small radiation problem - The winds would carry radiation from a oopsie at Hanford east, so I picked the lovely 'bedroom community' (the real inhabitants would laugh if I knew I just called it that) of Vaughn Junction...and have started populating it...  I think I may try to salvage some of the community lots from Riverblossom Hills.  I get so tired of building the same stuff over and over...

Oh yeah, and I'm using Enayla's elf and pixie skins...they aren't as brightly colored, but dang they are so beautiful and even with the facial embellishments, so much more realistic looking... will be interesting to see over the generations which skins dominate...there's always one.  In Neptune Valley it was an orange one from Genensims which seemed to pop up with increasing frequency.

Even though I try very hard to make each house unique, they all wind up looking the same - garage on the left, pool behind it, and then the house with a deck on the back.

Of course, with the advent of Seasons, the deck on the back with the hot tub has become the grim reaper's stomping grounds...

So I am seriously considering adding a 'spa room' to most houses...and putting the hot tub in there.  I used to do that, but got away from it after a while.

One thing that I frequently did before the no buskers hack was written was to make a music room and put all instruments in it and only add a door when I wanted a Sim to play.  The lockable doors with OFB and no buskers has removed that need, and yet I still frequently include music rooms just to have a place to put the instruments since they don't usually go with the living room decor.

The other thing I try to build in is one bathroom per bedroom.  So when there's a large family I can have a 5 bedroom/5 bathroom home...thank god Sim moms don't have to vacuum... The worst thing about selling my little 1200 sq. ft. home and buying a 2400 sq. ft. home is that now I have twice the square footage to vacuum.  What was I thinking!

I knew someone here would know her name.

I just remember the nails...and there are days I wish I had some just like 'em.

So maybe it's not so much 'William Gibson Style' as it is 'William Gibson Influenced'? 

I haven't read any graphic novels - too Farenheit 451 for me, I guess.

Have read most of Gibson's work, and Sterling's, and then there's my favorite - feminist sci-fi authors..Tepper and the late Octavia Butler...but that's a completely different genre.

But would William Gibson's cyberpunk world REALLY look much different from the world as it exists now?

I just finished "Pattern Recognition" and it's set in the here and now...

And I remember a lot of the descriptions of clothing in the Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive series as being t-shirts and jeans... so Maxian wardrobe would actually fit right in there (ugh)...save for the chick with the nails...and someone can tell her name, I can't find my copies, must still be packed in a box somewhere, and obviously it's time for me to find them and read them again...

Edited to add that the first thing I thought of when I saw 'Steampunk Victorian' is "The Difference Engine"

I'm not sure if my experiences with the missing restock signs will help or not.

I have noticed that the restock signs appear across the street or in the corner of the lot IF one or both of the following has occured:

I have used "Move Objects On" to place multiple items on a display counter AND/OR the items placed for sale were custom items.

I have had everything from custom cars to custom knick-knacks cause this to occur...I remember several 'oriental' decor items from TSR causing this - especially the umbrellas.  I am wondering if those custom items that cause this are based on objects Maxis did not intend to be set for sale (although the cars would be based on cars and all Maxis cars can be set for sale, so that blows that theory all to Hell).

What I usually do is have someone on the lot replace the item to remove the out of stock sign from the lot. Then I replace the item with something from the catalog that does not cause this to happen.

It's bad juju for the business owner because they just paid for inventory that they can never sell, but I can't stand having those signs in the corner of the lot.

Dontcha know the mailman is from Seattle?

The hogging of objects, from the shower to the bookcase to the computer...well Crammyboy fixed the 'computer madness' anyway, but there is apparently no fix for 'bookcase madness' or 'shower madness' and I find that married sims seem to suffer from a sort of 'esp' where whatever one is doing, the other must do it as well and in or at the very same object.  It is very annoying, but it is not 'broken'...it's just Maxis.

Without hacks from here and MTS2, I could not play my game.  Not because it wouldn't run.  It'd just be too damn frustrating.  And I don't think I need to have a stroke over a game...and likely you don't either. 

I lurked a long time around here, too...lots of good information to be found on this board and it's really not that hard to navigate...I've seen much much worse.

I've never played Maxis anything.  Not from the first day of the first Sims1.

I make my own neighborhoods and using a hack from here, I kill all townies and they don't regenerate and I can play in peace with no Marsha Bruenig or any other annoying townie.

I also am a firm believer in TwoJeffs visitor controller...another game sanity thing for me.

I do have to admit that even though I once read here that the magic number was 800 sims before the neighborhood went wonky, I'd say that the number is much closer to 500...as my last neighborhood imploded for multiple reasons, but I suspect among them were that my sim count was closing in on 600.

But, I've also figured out that if you create ALL the sub-neighborhoods FIRST and THEN do the deleteallcharacters thing with the notownieregen installed...you get even fewer townies, so you start with a much lower number of maxis made characters.

In my experience hair is genetic period.  Even custom hair binned under the asterisk will appear on a toddler.  However correctly color-binned hair is the best way to go...gives you more options when it comes to attractions.  When I create sims, I use custom everything, the genetic offspring will have one or the other, all custom.

And, Ideally, the room should be EMPTY and STAY EMPTY for each 'change'...

So build a small room, Put in NO objects save a single light fixture.  Then put a sim in it.

Change ONLY the floor and wallpapers  and see if the sims environment score changes.

Ideally, this should be done with floors and wallpapers that have the same exact costs, but different colorways in order to correctly discern whether or not sims have a 'color preference'.

Okay folks, like an idiot, I installed it.

Now, my female sims with infants and toddlers all get the 'I can't leave my poor defenseless baby' thing when they leave the lot - for work or shopping, etc. in spite of the father being present...

And, I must have saved the game and quit due to something in real life, and did it in the middle of the day while a Sim was at work.  He was standing on the lawn and his car was missing...it never did show up...had to purchase another for him (thank goodness for rich dead uncles).

So unless there's something seriously wonky with your game that you KNOW that patch is gonna fix, skip it.

Just wanted to add...almost ALL my blue accessories were based on XMSims meshes.  So they were removed from my game.

But before I did so, I did install both the recently updated Pets patch and the Seasons patch.  I figured this would not fix anything, especially after reading Pescado's explanation of how patches 'work'.  But, on the outside chance, I tried it anyway.  Nope. Still had blue eyewear based on XMSims meshes.  So they are gone.

So far, I am not experiencing problems with earrings based on Sim Chic mesh or Lianaa's TSR mesh. I have also not had problems with earrings based on Dr. Pixel's mesh downloaded from All About Style.

I have a cat eye glasses from Lianaa at TSR that I have yet to try out in the game - I am hoping that mesh is not going to cause the 'blue' problem, but I'm not holding my breath.

uh, maybe to sims it's harmless... but I jumped off my chair about 6"...so it scares some people (and no I never watch horror movies of any kind, so it's probably THAT kind of people)...

hmmm...so true...

They obviously aren't...considering the statement made by maxoid on the official BBS and quoted here.

this all just makes my head spin.

maybe I should just stop playing and go back to selling on eBay...gee...which one is more aggravating?

Okay.  I played last night and installed earrings and glasses on several female sims. 

Started the game up this morning and sent a business owner to his lot where I knew all the females including the manager would show up sporting their new accessories.

Here's what I got:

The manager wearing glasses based on an XMSims mesh:


customer Octavia wearing earrings from Sim Chic (mesh from Sim Chic):


customer Tara who should be wearing Sim Chic earrings, but she's preggers, so maybe that's why they aren't there:


and another customer wearing earrings from TSR based on a mesh by Lianna at TSR:


And I asked my personal computer geek (husband) since I never get this stuff right and he says I have a Radeon 9600 video card, 2 gig of RAM and an AMD 2.1 gig processor.

So now I'm wondering if it's a conflict with the video card?

All I know for sure is that the glasses are all going.  No sense letting them clutter up the downloads folder if their gonna go blue...


edited because I used html not BB code.

Reminds me of Sims1 when you had a bad hair file...

shudder.

I can't imagine what could be causing that...any recent downloads that might have affected it? I'd remove anything you put in your downloads folder in the last oh week or so...

Oh what a letdown.

Put the scarecrow on a lot.  Had the wifey sim look at it a lot.  It scared her.  She laughed and went back to talking to the trees.

thud.  that was me fainting that Maxis might have done something right...

I try very hard to 'micro manage' my custom files...clothes are a problem because of the meshes...if you delete ALL the custom clothing files associated with the mesh, you'll want to delete the mesh, too (because it's likely the biggest file size-wise)...but not always easy to figure out.

I have on occasion deleted custom hair files and custom clothing files in use by sims.  The hair defaults to either black straight with center part or bald.  The clothes will all default to the same maxis skin (there's one for each type and sex) - not sure if it changed with seasons, but previously it was the white capri pants and red shirt for female everyday.

Other than that, the game has suffered no ill effects...

I can confirm that with the installation of Pets and subsequent installation of Pets patch(es) I also continued to have this random blue glasses/earrings problem.

Of course, with Seasons, somehow my whole neighborhood got borked and I deleted ALL my custom content and started over, purposely NOT downloading or installing any custom glasses or earring files (much to my dismay, as even in 'rl' I am a jewelry freak)...

So today, SimChic came out with some fabulous new earrings.  I have downloaded them but am afraid to install because I've actually liked NOT having all my female sims have flashing blue squares.

But, just for the sake of discovering if installing Seasons and removing around 10,000 files from my downloads folder has somehow fixed this problem, I'll install these files and see how it goes.  Will report back, but I suspect it won't be good news.

Oh yeah, my video card is a Radeon.

And re Katie's post of the deformed trench coat - just before installing seasons, I had several townies show up at commercial lots looking like that except they were red from the head down.

I'm beginning to think that some of us somehow have forgotten it's a game...

It's NOT real life and at least in my 'realm' the only connection to real life is that sometimes it distracts me from doing what I SHOULD be doing...

My relatives consider it akin to when I was 7 and played with dolls - according to them, my 'dolls' are just virtual now.

In any case, death is a part of life.  I've always believed that.  So death, even odd non-sensical death, should be a part of a 'life simulation' game...