I had a problem with getincarfix, or similar name.  I didn't have it in the folder with the rest of Pescado's hacks, so didn't know to take it out when it wasn't part of the new director's cut.

With this hack in, one Sim could walk to another lot without problems, but if there were 2 Sims no one could leave by walking.  After removing this hack, walking to other lots worked fine.

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Not sad at all.  Writing the design document before you start is a good idea, and the right way to go about it.

Unfortunately, I really can't help you, but the idea sounds like a good one.  How about making them get a new aspiration *every* time the therapist shows up?   After all, isn't this what therapists do?

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I made a business to sell fresh veggies and fish without cheating.

I have a Sim couple who have a large garden, fruit trees and a pond at home.  Once they had a lot of stuff, I built a store for them to sell it on a community lot.  Each display case is set up to hold 3 fruit/veggie items (to reduce customer crowding) except the ones holding fish, which have one fish on each shelf.  Get a customer controller and set it for playable local non-poor Sims.  Hire a restocker and a cashier.  Make sure everything is working properly, then ignore the store. 

The Sim who owns the store will have to do a bit of fishing and gardening occasionally so that the store doesn't run out.  The store cannot be sold back to the community, because then the veggies and such won't be buyable.  Send all your playable Sims to that store for their fresh food needs.

Set the prices however you want, as it's your Sims who will be doing most of the buying.  Do I need to point out that setting an orange to 10,000 is a bad idea here?  If you're playing the store much, you may have to set the price on a scarce item higher than normal to keep from running out, at least until your Sim can grow more of that item.

Enjoy.

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And as long as she's wishing, she'd really like a pony.

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Hm.  Manual-navigation, perhaps?  Do you use this in your game, maxon?

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The headmaster's stats are randomized every time you invite him over.  I can imagine problems if you get a headmaster with maxed outgoing who would come in without being greeted.

There's an option to deal with AWOL headmasters on the lot debugger.  I'd suggest using this before you invite one over again.

A search should turn up literally hundreds of posts about headmaster problems, and how to solve them.  Invite him over the same day you want to run the headmaster scenario, and don't save the game between inviting him and the time he leaves.  Have someone outside to greet him when he arrives.  Don't do any kind of cheats while the headmaster is on the lot, as it doesn't take much at all to break the scenario.  Other than that, good luck.

My high score for the headmaster scenario is 161.  This is not a difficult scenario to pass.

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Before you give up on your drive, have a look at SpinRite, at http://www.grc.com

I used to have to use this regularly back in the days when drives weren't nearly as reliable as they are now, and it saved me from a lot of problems.

For those who aren't familiar with it, SpinRite will scan your hard drive for errors and correct them, saving the data in another location if necessary.  It used to be able to do a low level format, with all data left in place and unharmed.  I'm sure it will still do this if necessary.  It's a little pricey ($90), and doesn't have a free trail period any more, but worth it if you need to save valuable data.

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I don't have any of that on my system either, and I'm running the game straight out of the box, but with a shortcut to the ep6.exe rather than through the launcher.

There are registry entries for SecuROM, but they're in user areas, not where you mentioned.

I downloaded Fairlight's no-cd crack and it seems to work without jumping through hoops:  exactly what I'd expect for a no-cd crack.  Sure, I'll have to replace the original file if EA ever thinks to patch BV, but I've done this before and keep backups.

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Interesting.  McAfee was set to allow EP2 and EP5 access to the Internet, but had no setting for EP6 (BV).  I just blocked EP2 and EP5 and started the game, and the first thing that happened was McAfee reported that EP6 was requesting access to the Internet.  Ain't gonna happen, guys.

Cute bastards.  If you can't get there through the current EP, you try previous ones.

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I sent a Sim to the Wise Old Man, knowing that I'd have to bow and serve tea.  He was just sitting there, and when I queued my Sim to bow, nothing happened and bowing eventually dropped out of the queue.  I had her serve tea, and the WOM joined.  Then she performed tai chi (I think I invited the WOM to join) and after a very short time the WOM said my Sim was gracious enough to learn and told the story.

My Sim had done tai chi enough to be fairly good at it, and I'm wondering if this made a difference.  I like sloppyhousewife's story about learning to bow from the WOM.

The only problem I've had, even without the hack, is that I only sent one Sim of the two on vacation at the time to see the WOM, and he was no longer there when I sent my other Sim.

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Depends on how quickly you get sick of sending Sims on vacation.  I've got less than 45 hours playing BV and I'm already tired of it.  Worse, I haven't even been on a mountain vacation yet!

I have 28 tour guides, 8 charlatans, 5 ninjas, lord knows how many other extra files.  But only around 900 character files total, and this is my most-played neighborhood, and includes moving a couple of occupied lots from other hoods so I have extra default townies.

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I didn't mean to imply that he invented the idea, just that the system was his baby.  I can imagine how much a graphical development system would help hardware designers; I used to draw the schematic and logic diagrams for documentation for a living.

I've seen a good graphical system for object oriented design called Rational Rose, which has probably been merged with something else since then.  Some things just lend themselves to graphical methods.

But flow charts?  Structured programming made flow charts obsolete back in the mid 70's for any procedural language that had the proper structures built in.  You could even force assembly language into structures.  Apparently the development system used at Maxis is nothing more than a system to allow programming by flow chart.

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Possibly the same way they do in a normal bed, because they indeed do gain energy from sleeping in a bed.

I think.

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I suspect a bunch of inexperienced programmers who have never been taught structured programming are using a graphical development system, sort of like someone tried to turn software development into a computer game.  Even if they knew and used proper structured techniques, the end result from the graphical environment may end up looking like spaghetti code, even if it's sorted properly in the BHAV editor.

This graphical development system is, of course, Will Wright's baby, and has as much chance of being scrapped as the Pope has of converting to Buddhism.

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I had a problem with the tour guide not showing up, and I didn't have this hack installed.  I doubt the hack is the cause of the problem.

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The lot debugger's "Upgrade pre-uni Sim" works very well indeed.

When I have an adult Sim I've been playing since the early pre-uni days, before I upgrade them I have them write a novel.  I figure that the actual amount of work involved in novel writing is about the same as what they'd do in uni, so it feels less like a cheat.  If they don't have all skills maxed, I make them write two novels.

Things get odd if you marry a dormie.  They don't have the option to upgrade, and they never got beyond the first day of school so they don't have the extra want slots and locks.  You can add additional want slots and locks by spawning Vincent's Sim Modder.

Everything's taken care of by one awesome hack and stuff built into the game.

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What's the difference between a 8 1/2 month pregnant woman and a Playboy centerfold?

NOTHING, if the husband knows what's good for him.



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I haven't looked at the code, but Sims appear to learn skills about twice as fast for about 12 hours.  It doesn't affect badge skills or homework, far as I can see.  One thing I've noticed is that a Sim will suddenly put the book they're studying away for no apparent reason.  I'm guessing this is when the effect wears off.  Time to hit the juice again.

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And welcome back, Virgalibabe!  Long time no see!

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"Realism" is a dirty word.

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Amin Sims showed up as a walkby once on one of my lots.  He walked right in the door and made himself at home, playing a video game with one of the kids.  Amin has high outgoing.

While this isn't the sort of behavior you'd want in real life, for Sims it makes a bit of sense.  If you're playing feral Sims, completely hands off, it's nice when something like this happens and they can make a new household friend.

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Pes, since you never allow a relationship to decay below 98 before having a macro call everyone, you'll never have had the problems of multiple friends trying to call you at 4 pm.

I've occasionally seen Sims teleported to the lot after the game resets, but I've never seen it happen otherwise.

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The problem wasn't so much that it tried to connect to the Internet, the problem came in when the program crashed when I denied the permission. 

Then there was the fact that the program had 20 downloads in just a few hours.  That's not typical for peasantry stuff.  Normally it would take a week or more to get 20 downloads.

All this added up to some pretty suspicious behavior.  This is why I posted what I did.  Perhaps the program is totally benign.  But there was no way of knowing at the time.

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Either he's done a new version that doesn't connect to the Internet, or it's doing it and you don't know about it.  Trust me on this one:  nothing's going to connect to the Internet without my permission on my computer.

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I'm almost certain I used the groom action on a child once before training him in logic on the medicine machine.  Seemed like a good idea to make sure his hygiene was maxed out before messing with the machine.

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