Looks like Akatonbo was right.  Moved a Sim into that house to wait for servo to haunt and sure enough he was purple.  I would attach the photos but I don't know how 

Case closed.

I wonder if they fixed those stupid Mission dining chairs that my sim kids (Tessa Ramirez comes to mind) always seem to get stuck behind?  I don't even use the Mission stuff because of that.

I did save but no worries.  I like the unexpected.  Mostly I was just wondering if it was a glitch or something I needed to watch out for in the unlikely event I bother with another servo.

I have to say I am not terribly impressed with the whole robots thing.  The only one I have found of any use is the sentry so people leave those ^%& trash cans alone.  The others I have used break and make messes way too much to be of any use.

I didn't think of the flies akatonbo.  Hmmm, it was night so I really couldn't see the outside well and I am not sure exactly when the cleanbot broke or how long the mess was there while servo was at work.  That must have been it. 

Ha!  Not lucky since he was supposed to be holding the house!    now I am gonna have to finnagle some finances around 

Actually I almost NEVER have any Sims die of anything but old age since I don't have the heart to take pool ladders or fire alarms from their houses and they never kill themselves accidentally on their own *sigh*.  I can't even kill them having them play with the "run with scissors" thingy.  They just live on and on and on until they annoy the hell out of me.

And I don't trust the cow plant anymore.  Once I put it behind a fence and locked gate but somehow the nanny managed to get the cake anyway  and the social worker came and got the kids.  Something was buggy at that house though.  Every now and again I would check and there would be a grave by the plant.  Sometimes of people the family didn't even know who I guess had just been walking by or something.  yet, if I managed to get an enemy over to visit they wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

I don't know much about the servos because I usually don't have space in my lots for an extra family member but just this once I find a use for one and poof!  He has to go and turn into a pile of ashes for no good reason.  Just my luck. 

I know this probably belongs in RetardoLand but...

I don't use the Servos much and was just wondering how they can die?  I know I read somewhere about the pool/hot tub which makes sense but what else?

I ask because I am playing Strangetown today and had that mean old lady buy a servo so I could hold the house while Ophelia was at college (knowing that the old lady would die long before Ophelia got back since I play somewhat synchronized about a week each house at a time).  So, sure enough, mean old lady dies and the servo is living amongst the ghosts waiting for Ophelia to graduate.  He buys a cleanbot (Monique's computer, those badges just annoy me) for the puddles of the drowned ghost and goes to work.

When he comes home the cleanbot has gone haywire and there is trash, weeds and puddles EVERYWHERE.  I have him repair the bot and they commence to cleaning when suddenly he turns to ashes and gets a visit from the reaper. 

I have no idea why he died unless it was the red environment score.  Other than that he was very platinum (knowledge sim seeing ghosts every other second) with all other bars almost full.  He was even getting fun from the cleaning up being 10 neat.  So.... I guess my question is - can a red environment score REALLY kill a sim?  Well, a servo sim?

I thought Sims did "learn" from what you have them do somehow  .  Usually I play with free will on although I control most of what they do anyway until they turn perma plat.  By then I am tired of them and let them go about their business in hopes they will kill themselves but they NEVER do.  Which is REALLY annoying.  Mostly the old farts just relax in bed all day, jump up with a bladder or hunger bubble if that's the lowest motive and then lay back down because it is not low enough.

I do notice however that if I have them always eat the same food their whole lives they will autonomously go to make that food when they are hungry (usually chef salad since I avoid those annoying cooking fires).  They also will jump in the shower and go to the bathroom much earlier than when I first got them so no need ever gets really low and the only reason I could think of is because they had done the same routines all their little Sim lives under my control.

I think some Sims seem to do what makes sense because we have "rigged" their wants to make sense based on what we buy them, what we have them eat and who we have them talk to.  It took me forever to figure out not to have them talk to random strangers to avoid the "be friends with random guy I waved to at the mailbox"

My Melodie just happens to be in college right now too and I had the same problem at first.  What I did for that semester was cancel out the auto go to class at 11pm and sent her when she was supposed to go (9am for the major I picked I think).  She would then go just the normal hours. 

If I remember right, it cleared up after her finals that first semester and she doesn't have that problem anymore.

I don't mind messing up my hoods.  Just a matter of deleting them and moving them back if I can't get around something.  I can't recall how many iterations of PV I have played now but it is always interesting to see how many ways I can kill Angela, make Brandi's life more miserable than even she could have dreamed and how many lovers Don can get before Cassie finds out.

Guess I'll check into SimPE (guaranteed for me to break something and reload) and see what I can do about those stupid tombstones to make life easier.

Yeah, I just saw the post (been away for awhile on WoW).  Glad it is not just me.  The good news is they can still be revived but you have to move their graves first and then everyone thinks they just died and starts that annoying whining and disregarding what I tell them to do (which is completely unacceptable!! Don't they know who is in charge??  )

I am just afraid that I screwed up some files somewhere and would rather just delete the hood and start over while it is still young than find out many gameplay hours later that I am hosed.

I do wish I could have the Tricou's though.  I never even got to see them.  Guess that will be my next challenge!

This annoys me too but not nearly so much as a wife catching her husband's mistress out with someone else and getting all pissy at the mistress (presumably for cheating on her husband).

Silly, silly Sims.

I think I saw a mod somewhere that may fix this if anyone can point me in the right direction  -

In a new Pleasantview I decided to mess around with the dead people a bit but it seems like something happened that messed them up.  Morti decided to bring back some folks but was told he didn't know anyone who was dead until I did a "move all" command on the tombstones.  After that all the stupid Goths started bawling like those people had just died and got those annoying ress wants.  Checking their memories I found that the deaths were listed last like they had just happened. 

Same with Brandi trying to bring Skip back - she didn't know anyone who had died.  With his grave not even there (that I know of) I didn't know if I could get him back anymore.  I know I have brought him back before though so something must have changed.

Then I tried moving a family into the vampire house downtown and the graves were missing.  Not that it is a big deal since I have never figured out how to bring those people back with no one knowing them anyway.

Last but not least - Darren and Cass get married at Darren's and before I move them to the bin (to buy a new house) I grab Darlene's tomb and throw it in his inventory for his "see a ghost" wants later.  They move to the new house and Darlene's grave shows up out front AND is still in Darren's inventory.

Even though I can get around most of these things I am afraid I have corrupted files or something now since I don't know when or why this started happening.

I know there was a thread here awhile back about the piano not providing fun and I just wanted to note what I have seen lately since I just reinstalled and have no mods currently.

I think there was some difference in that some people reported it was still happening even after a patch supposedly fixed it and I think I have found the problem.  I never used to have any problems with my pianos providing fun (first because of a mod, then because of the patch with no mod) but it suddenly happened at a couple's house in my new hood but not until AFTER they "tuned" it.  Amazingly enough I realized that I almost never have to tune those things and that must be why I had never noticed. 

So... I think it is actually a problem with the "tuning".   Even though successfully tuned the piano stops providing fun on the "practice" option.  Force error didn't work but just buying a new one did.

Just a note on this and something to think about but ... I recently reinstalled everything and left all downloads out and this cleared up for me without a less attractive podium. 

They still eat while they are there but not obsessively and they can be interacted with before or after they do eat.

I have absolutely no idea which download to even look at since I had so many but I am loading them back as things bother me and making sure I go to a restaurant in between to check.

In the meantime - if you still have this problem go to FM and put soap in the fountain to make them all run outside (or put fountains at all your restaurants ) so you can grab who you want to meet.  It was the only thing I found prior that really allowed me to talk to them.

Ness, there is talk about this townie creation problem here - http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/smf/index.php?topic=3352.0

I never did get it to work with the mailbox either.

I feel your pain.  I tried the free will on thing (and I still leave it on) but I find myself controlling most of their stupid programmed behavior that doesn't make sense anyway.  The end result of that was - I got really tired of all my perfect homes with perfect kids, perfect jobs and lots of money. 

For awhile I would play a challenge, then try taking all my mods out, then try toggling that thingy with boolprop that says it changes their motivations or some such (FBA maybe? Can't remember now).  On and on trying to find something interesting in a game I was bored with.

So I left for awhile - played WoW, Civ IV, Kingdom Hearts II, EQ ... I even bought that lousy D&D Online to try out ... but I find myself always coming back sooner or later.

I think all games will bore anyone sooner or later.  Just take a break and when you come back look for some new great mods like I do that'll spice it back up again.  Poor Maxis can't keep up with our attention spans 

On a side note - I had just started playing the original Sims when Sims2 came out so I was thinking of going back and trying it out some more but now it won't run     Is there some kind of conflict with the 2 or something that anyone knows of?  I even tried uninstalling but now it won't even reinstall.  Guess I will have to go buy it again and see if it is the CDs 

sagana - I have the same problem keeping my funds separate but it is a little easier with Monique's computer.  It has a bank option that I use mostly just for keeping track of cash my teens are saving up but I also like the loan function so that my sims can afford bigger houses and what-not.  Kinda like a mortgage that charges them interest.  When they can't or don't pay I move them to this trashy Salvation Army shelter I have.

I don't have the link anymore but I got it from MTS2 if you haven't seen it.

Ahhh, I thought Canada had free clinics or something but heck even the US has free medical with welfare (at least for the kids, I don't think they do for adults anymore).

I just had some casual Canadian friends in an online community that talked like they had it much easier than in the US.  Wonderful women who left me with a certain overall respect for Canada.

I don't know on the taxes providing for everyone.  I don't think I like Bush deciding what to do with my money but I guess that is more because of our lousy politics here than anything else.  In theory it sounds good at least.

But - you would think that it would make sense that a country would want it's citizens educated.  I guess a lot of stuff sounds good but just can't really be done in practice.  Such is life.  In the meantime I guess we all just pay off our student loans for the rest of our lives 

The only thing I look at is the modder's track record with putting out things that work (for me).  Some of the best are not people persons 

Usually I don't even post when I have problems with a mod unless I think the creater would appreciate feedback on my testing.  Mostly because I run with so many hacks that it is hard to tell if it is just a conflict or an actual problem.  I figure I get them for free and if it doesn't work it is simply a matter of taking it out.

I finally got a pig in Bluewater Village yesterday.  I don't have any trained pet bricks though.  When I noticed was after I left Chester and Florence's house.  They had just got married and had twins.  I wish I would have checked when I used the firstborn randomizer while she was pregnant but I didn't even look before I went back in to finish the pregnancy.


Today when I went back it was gone.  It probably is just random and Maxis has bets on how long we will try to figure it out 

My blank want slots were caused by a mod I think.  I didn't remember to take out Inteen with OFB (which hadn't been updated at the time, not sure now).  As soon as I took it out I lost the jumps and the blank wants.  It may have just been the Maxis premade family I was playing that always seem to have problems with Inteen anyway for me but it is something to check anyway.

There are places that Uni is FREE!?!?  Now, I know Canada has free medical care and I heard other countries have much shorter work weeks/hours but free education??

*Sigh*  I have paid out the nose for my education and I don't even know much about the world outside the states.  Now I want a refund 

Maybe I should immigrate before my 4 boys get out of public school.... hmmmm

After reading their chat it sounds like something in-game causes the pig -

mrsarmybrat (Mar 16, 2006 3:07:40 PM)
are there any hidden things in ofb that might take a while to find?

MaxisHunter! (Mar 16, 2006 3:07:40 PM)
I'm waiting to find out when you guys figure out what makes the flying pig show up.

Now I am curious why I don't have a pig 

I'm not sure on the grades because I make everyone do their homework most of the time since most of them have jobs that require their grades be higher than a D (I think it is D anyway). 

I do have several teens who get nothing but the scholar's grant and then get a pretty free ride to college because they were too busy sneaking out and dating instead of skilling.  I'm not sure who's footing the bill but they certainly didn't get recruited by the college.  I do cut my romance sims a break for sleeping with those nasty looking professors.  Kinda like getting a tuition coupon 

Plus, I like to make the kids drop out if their parents can't afford the payments minus whatever money they get each final after living expenses .  Add some RL stressors to the game and a much needed way to get rid of some of that excess money floating around I always seem to have after a few generations.

I'll just keep messing around with the money order and familyfunds cheat although I seem to have problems with familyfunds when I have more than one household with the same last name. 

Hmm, I don't know about townies but on NPCs they seem to have to leave the lot first and then their tombstone shows up at the portal next time I load.  At least that's what happened to me with a nanny.  I haven't had any visitors die recently though.  Good reason to go on a killing spree all in the name of testing 

Does anyone know of a mod that will charge families to send their kids to college?  I know the scholarships are supposed to be for that but IMO I think the scholarships should go towards a tuition charge and not be free spending money.  Parents with underachievers should have to foot the bill themselves. 

It just seems too easy to fulfill those "graduate 3 kids from college" and to make everyone successful by having those extra college years to skill and network.

Right now I am just using the familyfunds cheat to take 10k (minus scholarship funds) away from the family per child and then taking the scholarship money away from the kid once it gets there.  It would juts be nice if anyone else has an easier way for something of this nature.