Thanks, Blue!  I didn't preorder NL cause I wasn't interested in the car much, but since I have NL...

I am going to preorder OFB though.  The concept looks fun.  I'm actually looking forward to it.

If only that were true.  I've had sims bypass the nursery fridge to go down a flight of stairs to get a bottle from that fridge.  And the other one wasn't more expensive or anything.  I had to cancel and click on the frigde that was closer.

Have you seen a zombie personality?  I've never been able to encourage more than 1 personality point.  It's totally worth the money.  The family I last did this with has money to burn.  Time, on the other hand, they don't have.

That would be nice.  But I'd settle for just an undo button.  I like to experiment a bit before I settle on a face and use the undo button in CAS and BS extensively.  I hate using the cosmetic surgery machine because the only undo button I can find in the cancel one.   

So far, with both of my zombies, I've done just that.  The first one was a zombie vampire that couldn't get out of the sun fast enough (he just HAD to watch that abductee return home at 7am) and burned to death.  The second one I fed to the cowplant immediately after his first resurrection and resurrected him again to get the reverse personality.  That poor guy had max skills when he died (the first time).  After both resurrections they were all down to 1 point each.  Thank goodness he's a knowledge sim.  He's got an eternity to max them out again.

Eventually I'll have to do a real zombie, with the full sloppy/lazy/grouchy personality.

Well no wonder it crashes the game!  You (and your computer) get stuck in an infinite loop, looking for a house you can't see that becomes visible once you see it.
I hope I made myself clear.

I didn't know that the invisible house crashed your game!    Well, I'll just reformat my drive before I get to 62,000 game hours so that won't be a problem.

Thanks for the tip!

Thanks so much.  I was so tired of waiting for my vampires to fly to their coffin before telling them to sleep in it.  Especially the zombie-vamp.  He don't walk too good.

But doesn't it come back once you relaunch the game?  I read about that technique on several posts, but the plumbob wasn't coming back after quitting.  So I was a bit worried.  I hadn't been sending the teens to school, or I would have found out faster that I just needed to send one off lot.

Yeah, I saw that after I posted.  I should finish the thread, not just the page next time.   

Yes. Drinks from the bar do replenish hunger.  Not by much though.  But they might not be allowed, "This includes cakes, buffets, fridges, grills, muffin ovens, pizza, smartmilk dispensers, restaurants etc.  I can figure out how to survive the pregnancies, but the infants and toddlers have me stumped.  Especially w/o the cake.  I might give it a go.

edit: Why is the Counterfeiting machine illegal?  It's not electrical.  Is there food on it?

I was playing a family in a residential lot Downtown.  I was trying to get the teen's vampire boyfriend, Remington, killed so I could resurrect him as a zombie.  I used the mind control mirror and had him run with the scissors to no avail.  So I bought the electric reindeer.  He was electrocuted 2x.  The 2nd shock started a fire, but he survived and promptly left the lot.  So I had my teen invite him back over once the fire was out.  I had boolprop on too so I could get the resurrect-o-nomitron.  Aways, right before Remington arrived there was an error message about some object or something.  I clicked Reset. 

I killed Remington with boolprop (Kill\By Flies) and brought him back as a zombie and got him settled into the family (he was still a vampire by the way).  Somewhere along the way I noticed the plumbob was missing.  The game still plays, I can select sims, I still have thought bubbles, skill meters, friendship +'s and -'s, but there's no plumbob.

I have plumbobs on other lots.  I haven't tried taking them to a community lot to see if they have plumbobs there.  Aside from moving them out and to a different lot (or back to the same lot) I have no idea what to do.  I really don't want to move them, I've customized this house extensively and would like to stay.  I searched for 'missing plumbob' here, MTS2, and the BBS but pretty much came up empty handed.  ShowHeadlines is on, turning it off and on had no effect.  I looked at JMP's Lot debugger, but none of the options seem to deal with this problem.  Relaunching the game didn't do anything.

Anyone have any suggestions?  I suppose I could try deleting them, saving, and reentering.  Or maybe I should have them Leave World?  I fool around with it some more.  Any suggestions would be helpful.

EDIT: nevermind.  I sent the zombie to school and he came back with a plumbob.  Everything seems to be ok now.  (It was either that, or it was spawning the tombstone of L and D to rename him, I noticed after I changed his name.  I suspect it was sending him off lot though.)

That's an idea, I'll try getting to the club early then making them selectable.  Thanks.

And once he knows them, I'll use group outings.  That's good to know too.  Thanks both of you.

edit:  making them selectable works great.  It's a bit tedious, but they stay, and you can play them if you want.  Once you unselect them, they take off.  Thanks for the tip.

I get that alot too.  Teens and YAs (knowledge) with the baby-and-phone though bubble.  I don't know if they want to adopt, or wonder if they were adopted.   

I've looked for a hack like that and haven't found anything.  I was going ask here, but then saw your thread.  TwoJeff's Visitor Controller Community hacks work great to make a teens only club downtown, but they all still leave at 9:30 pm.  If you go later, they'll show up, but leave immediately and you can't interact with them.  I haven't tried it in a community lot in a normal neighborhood - is there a different curfew in the regular neighborhood?

Oh, and Monique's Visitors Stay Longer hack doesn't work to keep teens around downtown.  It works fine at home, and maybe if you called from a community lot downtown and invited them over - but then you'd have know them which defeats the whole purpose of going downtown to meet them.   

My teen is a vampire, this 9:30 curfew really cuts down on his ability to socialize and meet others.  I used the Matchmaker to set up a date for his twin brother, but I wanted to him to find his own.  (I was mildly concerned that she would set him up with the same sim.)

Anyways, the only solution I can think of is to get him up at 6 pm and have him drive to a community lot.  Trips seem to take about an hour, so it would just be dark by the time he arrived.  Only 2 1/2 hrs, but I don't see any other way yet.  I'll set up a club in the normal neighborhood, or maybe just move The Hub (the one I used TwoJeffs' hacks on) and see if that's any different.

I've heard that they fixed the Strangetown DNA too.  But it only show up on new Strangetown neighborhoods after NL.

Thanks for the replies.  I thought it was curious.

I had a vampire teen (Moza) try to get the dancing scholarship by practicing the smustle alone.  His hygiene would go down to 50% then he'd stop and have to shower.  So I put in a Uni wall shower nearby and had him practice right there in front of the shower head.   He eventually got the scholarship.  I don't know if regular sims get the same hygiene drop with the smustle or not. 

Is this a Maxis bug?  Has anybody noticed hygiene drops when sims smustle?  I thought it was a fairly fast drop, but then he'd always stop at 50% he was always dancing a fairly short period of time before he'd have to shower.  I don't think I have any hacks that would cause this, but I'll check tomorrow.  Maybe I'll time the hygiene drop too.

His older brothers (also vampires) were able to Dance Together about one entire night to earn the scholarship, and had no drop in hygiene.  They went off to college, and Moza didn't have the dance together interaction with his dad, or his dad's parter.  So I decided to use the smustle, which worked out well enough - if I had taken him to a club, it seems he would not have been dancing for long.

Anyways, I was just curious if anyone has noticed anything like this before.  The adult vamps in the house exhibit the same smustle/hygiene issue.  It kind of makes sense that your hygiene would drop dancing away all night long.  But I thougt it was odd that he'd workout on the exercise machine until his hygiene was in the red, but only do the smustle until his hygiene was 50%.

I uninstalled everything (display and chipset), then used Drive Cleaner Pro to delete anything left behind.  The game just froze on launch.  I was very relieved that it worked when I went back to the 6.70 nForce and 81.95 display drivers.  I was thinking I was going to have to give up the SLI (and one $500 graphics card).

As for the perfect heatsink - it depends on what you are looking for.  First you have to get one rated for your CPU, then you want to look at the noise level - not a standard measurement and reviews are hard to come by, then you have to make sure it will fit on your motheboard.  Massive heatsinks cool better but space can be a problem.  I know Tom's Hardward used to review heatsinks regularly, and Silent PC Review is totally focused on very quiet components.  FrozenCPU is a vendor that sells a huge selection of heatsink/fans and often includes noise ratings but that info is from the manufacturer so you probably can't compare one manufacturer to another, but comparing products from the same manufacturer is probably move valid.  Usually I look for a model that appears promising then do a google search with the model name or number and the word 'review' to see if anyone's taken a look at it, or even better if it's been part of a round up.

Yeah - it's not something that should be rushed.  You'll need to get good heatsink compound (Artic Silver 5 for example), be wary of static electricity, be careful with the force you use to attach the heatsink.  I've done it lots of times, and have never screwed up a CPU, but I was very nervous the first time I did it.  I'm lot sure if your Pentium has a metal cover over the CPU or not (forgot the technical term).  New CPUs (both Intel and AMD) do now so you aren't covering the actual CPU with heatsink compound.  Anyways, the research to find the 'perfect' heatsink/fan is the most time consuming.  http://www.zalmanusa.com/ is known for their quiet heatsink fans.  If they fit on your motherboard you could probably get a shop to swap it for you for not too much money.  I don't know though - I'm pretty much a do it yourselfer.  As much as I regret it sometimes.

You'll have to get another motherboard if you want to switch to an Athlon CPU.  But you could just look at replacing the heatsink/fan assembly.  There are probably some quieter ones out there.  I invested in a Koolance liquid cooling system to get rid of the fans altogether.  The system is quieter, but I've had to put decent case fans in to exhause the hot air from the RAM/motherboard/other components.  For a long time I thought that heat was the cause of most of my issues, but I've been monitoring the case temp, and it's around 40 at idle.  I can get it lower with another fan in the front - a project for the Xmas break.

Awesome tutorial.  Thank you.  I had that 'crimped lip' thing from SimPE's sim surgery mentioned by S|ckPuppy but had no idea how to fix it.  So I made an archtype of the sim's face and used the cosmetic surgeon to give him a new mouth.  I was using the Pollination Technician sim, so getting an uncorrupted version of him was easy.  Everything worked great, the mouth behaves normally and doesn't look so odd - and now I have the alien face as an archtype, lol.

edit: removed pics.

I am so happy!  He was looking really, kind of, well.....let's just say I was careful with the close ups.

Ok, thanks.  I hadn't thought to go back to an older version.  I'll try that.   

edit:  no can do.  When I rolled back to 77.77 the game wouldn't launch.  It froze on the start up screen.     Going back to 6.66 nForce drivers didn't help at all either.  The only thing that worked was removing a card so I was running only one.  When I went back to 81.95 graphics drivers and the 6.70 chipset drivers, everything worked again in SLI mode.  So I'll just tolerate the graphics glitches and hopefully Nvidia will correct that in a later release.

The game was working at one time with the 77.77 drivers.  I don't know why it's not now.  But I'm tired of rebooting with no end in site.   

I've only had NL a few weeks, and I've noticed some odd graphics glitchs.  I have an Athlon64 X2 4800+, dual Nvidia 7800 GTXs in SLI mode, and 2 GB RAM.  I just updated the Nvidia drivers this morning AND completely reinstalled the game, all EPs, the Holiday pack, and the NL patch.  I backed up my My Documents\...\The Sims 2 folder and let the installation create a new one.  At this point I have no custom content.  I deleted the C:\Program Files\EA Games\...\The Sims 2 (EP) folders after uninstalling, and before reinstalling the game too.

So, playing the Beakers in Strangetown, Loki's goatee is not blond, but red:


Other goatees seem fine, and other colors seem ok too.  The problem occurs on other lots.  If I turn down Texture Detail from High to Medium or Low - that particular goatee disappears completely, although it's selectable in the Change Appearance window, and looks fine.  At Medium Texture Detail other facial hair is fine.  Maybe this particular goatee is screwed up.  Actually, if I select another facial hair, then change appearance again, that goatee looks fine for about 5 sec then goes red as Loke walks out of the bathroom.  The thumbnail portrait on the left, and the pic in the control panel on the bottom show the red goatee too.

Newspapers now come in different colors:

I've seen purple and blue too.  Sometimes one color fades to another.  The first time I saw this I thought it was a new NL game feature - ooooh! the newspaper now comes in rainbow colors!  The angle of the camera seems to affect color intensity and at some angles it appears normal.

The big thing is the cowplant:

With the cake on the tongue, the cowplant stops looking normal.  This one is outside, which may have something to do with it.  I put one outside on Don's lot, and that was fine with the cake until morning.  Then I got the same bright green/yellow thing going on.

Since the cowplant looks fine until the candle on the cake shows up, and the newspaper changes colors at different angles, to me this appears to be a graphics issue of some sort related to the way light strikes certain objects.  I did not have any problems before installing Nightlife.  Choosing different Video options does not appear to change things (expect for Loki's disappearing goatee already noted).  Feeding the cowplant doesn't fix the graphics glitch either, but mabye a day/night change might do it temporarily.  I have another cowplant indoors on another lot, but haven't noticed anything wrong with it yet - but I haven't played that lot much since NL either. 

Has anyone had similar issues, or have any idea how to correct these?  I'm all out of ideas.  I thought it might have been related to a vampire hack I was trying out - but now I don't think it's hack related at all.  The goatee and newspaper aren't such a big deal, but the cowplant is a problem.  And I'm concerned other issues might crop up.

Thanks for any help.

I'd prefer to be able to beat the shit out of Mrs. Crumplebottom the instant she shows up on a community lot.  I currently have her banned with one of TwoJeff's hacks, but it would be worth it to clobber her once or twice before banning her back to oblivion.