I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by "limit for making lots this close"; could you elaborate on this? It sounds a bit as if it weren't possible to put lots right next to each other (with no space in between) .. is that so? Or did you deliberately leave a little space in between because you wanted sims to be able to walk between the lots?

(Reason I ask is that for me it would be quite a bit of hassle to install CAW and test it myself - I'd have to set up a dual boot machine, buy Windows, install Windows, reinstall the game, and install CAW - but if I can't place lots next to each other the whole thing would be useless for me. So I'd be really grateful if someone could enlighten me on that .. thanks in advance =).

The Overacheiving corner counter has always been broken for me (only displays the default colour), no matter which game version. As a workaround I've been using the base game modern counter for the corner only, and the Overacheiving one for the rest - since the doors don't show on a corner counter, the difference isn't all that obvious.

There is no 1.7.9 for OS X.

The direct download is the exact same file that the Launcher would download when you click "update". That's how I know the URL.

The usual way newbs acquire a patch is to press the shiny "update" button that's dangling in front of them. I think the OP is talking about some random download, not about a patch .. given that patches aren't usually downloaded, they don't come as rar, they're not packages, and you don't put them in a folder either.

(I also have to wonder how they open anything with winrar when winrar does not exist for OS X.)

nanacake: the people above you are talking about OS X. OS X thinks .exe is some kind of garbled text file, so doubleclicking on one does nothing useful.

sweetbajan's info is perfectly correct.

That said, I've been running both with and without launcher and the Awesome-NoCD has always worked fine for me. Seems strange that for other OS X users it doesn't .. maybe the patches are making a difference? (I've only ever used 1.0, 1.2.7 and now 1.7.11) Right now I'm using twallan's NoCD with 1.7.11 and the launcher enabled (because I keep being too lazy to dig up that file to re-disable it), and that also works without issue. I believe for both of these NoCDs to work one has to start from cider though, not from app-doubleclicking.

If you already have it set up in BootCamp, I wouldn't go back to OS X if I were you - it's just not really supported by EA. Cf the fact that the world builder tool is going to be Windows-only, patches are delayed, graphics features implemented months later etc pp .. the OS X version is obviously a byproduct, nothing more.

I'm not going to get WA (not much into kiddie adventure games), so you need to ask somebody else =).

Just to let other OS X users know: the 1.7 patch is now available for OS X too. This is a prerequisite for direct download users who want to install WA, and (possibly) nice to have for the rest of us.

Official blurb: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/131447.page

Direct download of the version I used (note that I upgraded from 1.2.7, which is probably not very common - I guess you can modify the URL with whatever version/language you have): http://llnet.thesims.cdn.ea.com/sims/u/f/sims3/mac/To-3043-1.7.11.002002-From-2706-1.2.7.00002.tgz

Worth noting, perhaps: clicky-pointy "Upgrade" via the Launcher did not work for me ("failed to launch task: launch path not accessible" - might be either the usual Launcher crap or my paranoid network settings?). I didn't investigate, since the direct DL downloaded and installed without a hitch.


I've noticed a bit of a weird performance change - I didn't playtest much, just tested out build mode: on one hand, the graphics are more shiny now (some graphics features had been missing in 1.2.7/OS X - raytracing shadows, antialiasing and such, so now I have all of those (yay)), and there is a bit of lag when zooming around, which I kind of expected - on the other hand, my machine runs several °C cooler now and the fans are running much less at the same time. This might be a good thing, on the other hand it might mean that 1.7.11 somehow isn't using the full potential of this machine. I dunno, it seems strange. In 1.2.7, my fans were permanently going full speed. Maybe 1.2.7 was more crap than I realised.

This is an Intel MBP with 2.4GHz dual core, 4GB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT, OS X 10.5.7. I don't have WA.

SimVeggie, I believe yours is a different issue - you're on Windows.

Custom hairs not working post 1.3 under OS X is a known issue; nobody seems to know what exactly is causing this. EA are not all that competent when it comes to make graphics work for OS X,it seems … they did a bunch of graphics changes in 1.3 and I'm pretty sure there's a connection between that and the hair suddenly crapping out.

For me, this does work (and thanks for posting about it =). I'm running Razor 1.2.7. I've only started the game onece or twice since I edited the plist, though. But i figure even if I do get glitches on the long run, it's easy to revert.

I forwarded your tip to Mac Help at mts, as well: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=365310 -- no problems reported so far (but then not many people read Mac Halp).

Krib, the OS X performance problem has nothing to do with cider. EA fucked up the graphics for OS X in patch 1.3.

I'm running 1.2.7, and I have no lag whatsoever with all settings on High. My machine is older and lamer than yours.

I believe the traits xml in game data is nicely commented -- you could look at that to compare. Not exactly sure what it's called, but it's the one that controls which traits become available at what age.

What exactly do you mean by "random deaths" - sims of any age die like that? Or "only" elders?

If you just mean elders, that's a known issue for all I know .. default game behaviour. At least for up to 1.2.7 (with old Awesome - that's what I'm running; I have no experience with newer versions). What version do you have? Are you sure you're up to date?

Here's another thread about deaths with no gravestones: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15308.msg463589.html#msg463589 -- I think there's at least one more, basically always the same thing .. some sims going poof without leaving a trace.

This has nothing to do with Supreme Commander - I have that door too, and never used SupCom, and my game puts sims behind locked doors all the same. Guess there's a reason EA didn't enable this code .. the one thing the lockable door *is* useful for is for locking out visitors/walkbuys in an active lot, but you can't do multi-household lots with it.

Ah ok. So basically with the new version sims can now give away their old couch to their neighbour, yes? Just like they can alredy give away ingredients, fish, books etc.

Cool. Thanks for the info. I guess I was just confused by the slightly different meaning in TS2 vs. TS3.

In the most recent update/changelog post in the AwesomeMod d/l thread, it says


I'm not sure what "NPC" means in this context: a game-generated character, like the "classic" mailmen/paperboy NPCs? Or any player-created sim that isn't currently active/selected?

(I can't just quickly test it to see for myself -- I'm on OS X, so I'm very much under the impression that any attempt to install the current patch would result in a lenghty uninstall/reinstall/banging head on keyboard procedure).

I believe having them selected amounts to the same thing as looking in that case -- they're being run on high detail simulation. In my game it's the same with sims who still have stuff in their queue when unselected -- as long as they do what is queued up, they're on high res.


I have a question re. the CarLimo .. what car exactly is that? On what occasions is it being generated? Asking because I seem to have *no* CarLimos (when checking with the flushy toilet). Not one. Could this be because I have none of the rabbitholes? Or is it perhaps a sign of upcoming trouble (cars being blackholed somehow, or something)? I'm on 1.2.7 with an old Awesome that doesn't yet have this feature, so they can't have been auto-flushed by AM.

When you say "game perfomance just degrades in time", what exactly do you mean by "time" -- time that has passed in-game, or real time?

I noticed yesterday that my sims were abnormally slow when "taking their turns", and since the game had been running for rather a long time (several hours realtime, some of it paused) I tried simply restarting -- and that seemed to actually help; upon restart, in the same household, same situation, they suddenly started to move on.

I'm still on 1.2.7, with an old Awesome, so YMMV. Pathfinding has always been painful in my game (both 1.2.7. and pre-patch), not so much because of the slowness alone but because of the sheer idiocy of it .. a sim standing right next to the fridge will wait half an hour for another sim to hike all across the lot just because that sim is "first in line" to use the fridge. This isn't affected by restarting of course, but the time it takes to actually make the decision to walk to the fridge was noticeably shorter after restarting.

For all I've seen, the trait allocation is completely random -- but what's not random is the age at which every trait becomes available, that's defined in an XML. And since babies get 2 traits to start with, and those 2 traits are taken from a relatively small subset, you're going to see the traits from that subset much more often than others. Half my neighbourhood was friendly virtuosos because of that  -- for me it helped greatly to tweak the whole thing, nuking the traits I have no use for, and enabling basically everything but the romance-type ones from baby onwards. I had a lot more variation after that.

I'm not exactly sure whether the current Awesomemod cooperates with external Traits XMLs (I use an old one), please doublecheck before you try this.

Or make a screenshot and check it out in your favourite image editor? (but then I don't know how reliable those CAS swatches are .. I seem to recall they're somehow button-shaped, with gloss and stuff)

But if there's a way to view the data the way the game sees it (i.e. what nanacake said), that's obviously more straightforward.

If you'd post your RGB values, it would be easier to answer this. Nobody can see what you mean by "red", "green", "blue", and "normal".

I have no idea about the rest of your problem, but this


is because for cooking, sims will always use stuff in their personal inventory first, then from the fridge, then insta-bought (via the fridge). So what you see here is merely a symptom -- when the food doesn't go in their inventory anymore, they have to buy it (they don't look in the family inventory).

Er, no. That is a conversion from TS2 to TS3 -- the OP is asking about the other way around.

Scale is totally the same, yes.

I'm not sure what the state of affairs is with TS3 meshing, but as soon as you can import the meshes into a 3d editor, you can also export them from there into a ts2-digestible format and take it from there. I believe import for Milkshape already works, doesn't it? One would just have to cobble together some "flat file" textures from the ones in ts3 which are in bits and pieces -- probably not complicated, but I imagine it's rather tedious.

Some TS3 items look really rather crappy (the sinks! the tubs! argh!) -- I was wondering whether they really did that to save some polys or just out of sheer laziness/lack of taste, seeing as other objects (several of the windows for example) are almost like their TS2 equivalents, only with *more* detail and not less. And an average house will have significantly more windows than bathtubs, wouldn't it?

That was a good idea! Here is a link to the Thanks, This is Great thread for your convenience -- I'm probably not the only one who feels an urge to post there now.

I always use the 1000§ tub and the Tranquil option is always there.