Sorry to interrupt, but I actually might have another bit of information to add.


The answer to this question is an unqualified "yes."  I once had an old book-affecting mod installed, patched the base game and WA, stupidly forgot to remove my mods, and started my game up.  While the bookcases at home were fine, all bookcases in China were empty.  I went through, found this mod, uttered several unrepeatable phrases under my breath, and removed it.  The books did not return to Chinese bookcases.

I started up a fresh instance of Egypt from within that same game, with the mod removed.  The bookcases there were fine.  Quit without saving.

Then I put that mod back in, started up a fresh instance of Egypt from within that same game, and the Egyptian bookcases were then broken just like the Chinese ones.  Quit without saving, then removed the mod again.

No matter what I did, including following all the advice I could find here and elsewhere, I could not get the books to return to the Chinese bookcases, even after removing the mod.  So it seems to be possible for an outdated mod to change something permanently within a game save, like The_Goddess is talking about.  I'm going to guess that this is what has happened in your case, though I've never heard of such a severe reaction as all Sim interactions being killed.

After a frustrating few hours, I think I've finally managed to un-break my game, which was showing a bug with the sound that I had never seen before, nor could find mentioned here or elsewhere.  I'm running the base game only with the latest patch, after uninstalling WA due to that annoying issue that there can be no two Pangu's Axes or sets of Eyes of Horus in the same game.  On top of it, either the Axe or the Eyes or both would disappear on me at the slightest provocation.  I do not run the AwesomeMod, although I admire JMP's work and lurk on this website quite a bit.  I do not own HELS and will not buy any SP that does not come with a hot tub or a diving board.

The bug I had involved the sound:  suddenly there were absolutely no game sounds whatever, apart from an endlessly looping version of ambient/street noise.  No Sim speech, no sound effects from any equipment or items used (although the animations would keep going), not even any game-related sounds from clicking on items or the like.  Going to Build Mode or Edit Town did nothing, nor did exiting to the main menu.  I could save the game without getting a .bad file, but then could not quit without using the Task Manager.  (And no, I do not have a Dell, though probably I might as well have one.)  I couldn't play the game for more than a few minutes, it seemed, without this bug coming up.

I cleared every cache multiple times, deactivated any possible CC culprit (not too hard since I run a pretty lean game), rebooted my computer, made sure my sound card driver was up to date, decrapified until there was absolutely no crap to be found within a 50-mile radius of my computer, and finally ran the AwesomeMod just long enough to enter "fixall."  The latter did a world of good, I'm sure, but didn't solve the problem.  I would never have figured out what was the problem until by sheer luck I noticed what happened:  the bug began when one of my Sims got on his bicycle to go somewhere.

Bicycle?  Yes, I had traded in my Sims' car for bikes for the whole family, not out of an urgent desire to make them go green, but because the cars would also cause sound issues.  Apparently changing to bicycles doesn't make it any better.  So as to whether this is due simply to my particular h4xx0rz cocktail (which hasn't changed much in recent weeks), or to the patch, I cannot say -- but I suspect the patch.  I had never noticed this bug before this latest patch.

So I guess, along with teddy bears (see Fernweather's post above), I can add vehicles of any kind to the list of items I must not give my Sims to use.  So it's the carpool, public transportation, or travelling on foot for my toons -- until another patch comes out that solves this problem but breaks three other things that had always worked until then.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.  

I have had this type of thing happen, under similar circumstances of moving previously nonplayable Sims into The One Fambly.  I don't know for sure, but I think the problem may lie in certain aspects/signals programmed into the first and/or last days of life stages.

It sounds like you have a game save from during the daytime, with the male Sim on the first day of his YA lifespan, but before he (wrongly) ages up to a mature adult.  What I would do in your situation is use the NRaas Supercomputer (or similar cheat that allows you to change ages), and subtract a day from the male Sim's life, adding a day to his YA life span bar.  As long as you do so during the day, before midnight (when apparently the aforementioned signals get sent), you should be able to stop him from aging up to a mature adult.  If having removed one day from his life bothers you, you can always give it back to him a few days later.

Alternately, you can certainly use the Supercomputer or similar age cheat to keep the male Sim in his mature adult phase until the female Sim catches up to him.  But the other way sounds like less of a pain to me.

Hope this helps!

For what it's worth, I gave this tweak a try, and I have no experience making mods whatsoever.  I just expanded my Sims' house, so it took a few hours of play time to notice, but lo and behold, finally I saw two toons walk right through each other.  One of them paused momentarily, but there was no foot-tapping or any such thing.  I should mention that I disabled JMP's "crappy XML tweak" first, since for all I know the two tweaks might have conflicted.

Claeric's point is well-taken -- I did save the original .ini file, and will switch the files back with each patch, just like I do with the .exe file that has the no-CD crack.  Actually, it might even be necessary to throw out the tweaked .ini file, put the old one back where it was, patch, then store a copy of the .ini file, and THEN make a new tweaked .ini file.

Either way, my game just got about 6.5% more enjoyable.  I think what I'm supposed to say here is BAAAAAH.  


*clicks "thanks" button*
I have now been edumacated. 

Agreed, I had the same hack, but to me it seemed to break about half a dozen patches ago.  His Awesomeness had made a crappy XML tweak (his words, not mine) to address the same issue, but it is rather old.  I can't remember if I've tried it, so I'll give it another try the next time I fire up my game.  I'll report back if it doesn't asplode my game.

Since the conversation has gone to mannerisms that annoy us, can I add mine?  The stupid nose-holding when they jump into a pool.  I mean, really.  At least let the 12-and-older Sims jump in without holding their nose.

Back on topic, pausing the game when a Sim hesitates to change outfits or strip for the shower does indeed seem to help -- if I can get to the pause button before they actually change.  It seems the worst to me when I start up the game after clearing caches.

Since I have this masochistic habit of patching my game almost immediately after patches come out, I did so again -- of course, after copying my Mods and Saves folders, and putting my TS3.exe file back the way it was.

For what it's worth, both WA and the base game updated just fine.  (I do not have HELS.)  Cringing, I started the game -- and incredibly, everything seems to work.  I haven't noticed any broken CC (not that I use very much), not even the nointro hack (a particular favorite of mine), the same no-CD crack works, my Sim and the others in his household seemed the same as always, and his trip to China and back came off without a hitch.

While I'm sure I'm glad that my toons can now eat pizza correctly, I could only wish the endless stream of patches would actually fix some of the things we've all known about for a long time -- disappearing items (Pangu's Axe, Eyes of Horus, pizzas, etc.), broken fridges, random crashes that can only (usually) be stopped by regularly decrapifying, work/school-push issues, and the whole rest of the list that you all know so well.

I don't frequent the BBS, but if the "grim reaper babies" were Sims like this fellow, it's nothing more than a skintone fail.  I had purposely taken this particular Sim's skintone out of my mods folder, with the intention of giving him a new one.  Actually I experimented most of the weekend with making my own non-default skintones and skintone blends, but so far my results have ranged between mediocre and complete failure.

EDIT:  A new version of the SkinInator seems to be out just hours ago.  I have just now downloaded it as I was getting the "green glow" bug with some of my skin blends.  New research currently in progress.

EDIT 2 for less wordiness

I read the thread and posts you mentioned, and though I can't say I understand all of it, the gist sounds plausible to me too, although the errors I've noticed were completely my fault and did not seem serious.  What I've noticed is that if I send a playable Sim into the wild with a non-default skintone, any progeny are likely to have that skintone too.  Which is no problem unless, say, it's a skintone for males, and the sprog is female.  I will notice this many Sim-days later when I see a completely black female Sim running around the neighborhood.  "Black" not in the sense of a normal skin color that happens to be dark, but in the sense of that disturbing blackish-silver color that seems to mean something like, "the doodad that points out which skin I should be wearing, is pointing at nothing."  So far it has seemed that if I send the Sim in question back to CAS, and choose a skintone that actually exists for him/her, there are no further problems.

Preventative medicine has been taking care to send any Sim I'm about to send into the wild (which I do a lot) back to CAS, and be certain that he/she has the default skintone.  I have not noticed any other problems since starting this practice.  I have to think that this will even prevent any of those wonderful surprise-half-siblings-from-dallying-with-foreigners (we have all seen them by now) from having invalid skintones, but I am holding off on considering my hood completely free and clear for a couple more generations at least.  It's already about the age when the BFBVFS happens anyway, though perhaps my decrapifying it regularly has given my hood more longevity than usual.

I am 99.9% certain that the NRaas Supercomputer will allow you to send any Sim back to CAS, even an NPC Sim.  I give puddings makeovers and facelifts all the time (unrepentant Sim plastic surgeon ever since TS2 and the InSimenator, Goopy always ran when he saw me coming).  I don't remember trying to perform plastic surgery on a mail or pizza deliverer, but I always make a point of sending babysitters back to CAS -- first to replace the Klepto trait so that they don't rob me blind, and second to make them better looking and dress them in something more appropriate than a tank top, casual dress pants with the suspenders hanging down, and bright red sneakers. 

(rewriting and shortening post)

No, although that certainly is interesting.  But through a bunch of tests, I think I've determined the culprit.  It seems a mod that was installed when I first loaded China, but is now uninstalled, broke China permanently.  I think it was the mod from MTS2 that added a Put All Books Away interaction to any bookcase, which instantly moved all books from the active Sim's inventory to that bookcase.  Why that mod broke China, and not the main neighborhood, I cannot say.  But with that mod removed, fresh instances of both China and Egypt loaded fine.

Anyway, problem solved, so it seems.  (Not really, since the bookcases in China will be broken as long as this hood lasts -- but it's not a big deal as I don't remember using bookcases in vacation hoods.)

Anach's mods are cleared for 1.9/2.4 now -- but I did neglect to mention that little tidbit.  My mistake.

Haven't had a chance to see what happens if I delete the free bookcase, though I'll admit (now at a more decent hour of the day) my theory of last night does sound a bit hard to believe.  I'll post back if I find out anything.  I figure it must be tight pants, since I never saw this before the patch, but no one else has reported it either.

Here's a new one, at least in my experience -- I started a new game after the patch, and couldn't find anything different until I sent my Sim to China.  All bookcases on all lots in China are completely empty -- the "Read" interaction is grayed out.  Back in his house, or in the library at home, my Sim has all the books he could want.

I immediately suspected tight pants, and the only mod that I thought might have something to do with it is Anach's "make-all-buyable (including books)."  But that doesn't make sense as Anach's stuff has always worked flawlessly before, and besides this is not a core mod by my memory.  In any case, I removed that mod and the bookcases in China were still empty.

I haven't sent my Sim to Egypt or France yet, as I prefer to get him through China and up to visa level 3 as soon as possible.

*suddenly has a flash of possible insight*

I wonder whether the culprit is the free bookcase that came out with WA?  It would follow the common EA pattern in which objects long since in existence suddenly break with a new EP, or even a patch.  Think in terms of the mini-fridges ever since AL in TS2, all the complaints about broken pianos, etc.  And just when I was going to download the other free stuff I'd heard about, it being, you know, free.

I will test this out tomorrow as it is getting much too late here.

After reading this thread, I decided for absolutely no good reason whatsoever to install the patch.  (Meaning that at the moment I have no intention of buying HELS.)  I do not run AwesomeMod, and in fact run very little CC of any sort -- some skintones, a few XML tweaks, Buzzler's mirror, the twallan Supercomputer, a very trimmed-down setup of the Tuneable Core, and that's about it.  I'm running Vista on a year-old machine with a quad-core AMD powerplant, adequate for the purpose but definitely not a high-end gaming rig.

The short form of the story is that everything seems to work fine, at least so far.  Both WA and the base game updated, pretty much without a hitch.  Which is more than I can say for the 1.8/2.3 update.  My guess is the game will in principle be running fine with the AwesomeMod any moment now, if in fact it isn't already.  In my lurking, which is mostly what I do here, I'm reading the comments about how the game works with Windows 7 with interest, since I am considering getting a Windows 7 laptop in the near future.

I sometimes get similar vacation opportunity glitches like Jonni reports.  The two that come to mind are the one where you have to bring a painting to Egypt, and the one where you have to bring crocodiles from Egypt to France.  In both cases, whether the item in question is in my Sim's inventory or in his family inventory, the game acts like it isn't there -- so that the opportunity cannot be completed.

I've got a new one now, though.  I first noticed pizzas disappearing from my Sims' fridges after uninstalling WA.  This would happen every time I restarted the game.  Since I never saw this problem with WA installed, I reinstalled WA.  But the problem remained.

Figuring it must be tight pants, I cleared caches, emptied the Library and DCBackup folders, and removed all mods except the no-intro mod (to squash that annoying and self-congratulatory intro sequence), which I have always had installed.  I had my Sim order a new pizza and put it in the fridge, checked to make sure it really was in the fridge, then saved and quit.  When I restarted the game, the pizza (and only the pizza) was gone.

All I can figure now is that I somehow broke something by uninstalling WA, or by something else I did.  Granted this is not a big deal, but it is puzzling and annoying.

Me too, and I'm likewise sure it only started after the patch.

I'm also having martial arts outfit problems, in fact more than one.  I haven't noticed hairstyles changing, but I have noticed my martial arts guys being given glasses when they get the green belt.  They lose the glasses once they get the blue belt (or sooner if I use the Supercomputer to send them back to CAS).  I haven't gotten any of my ladies that far up in the martial arts skill to know whether it affects them too.

I also had a case of a teenage boy getting his white belt, but the outfit actually had a black belt on it.  He soon aged up to young adult, still with only a white belt, and at that point the outfit displayed correctly.

I am long since used to this game being buggy, but it is the strangeness of the bugs that is surprising me at the moment....

I think I understand now.  This is fully consistent with what I saw happen in my hood, twice, if I hadn't intervened and pumped in a bunch of Sims.  It would almost seem that, failing to emigrate Sims (now that the latest patch brings along its own version of No One Gets Out Alive), the game digs in its heels and prevents marriage and spawning outside of The One Fambly, by way of continuing in its quest to rid your hood of all Sim life.

This time, I made over 50 new Sims in about a dozen display-grade famblies in CAS, including some single Young Adults of both genders, and moved them all into cheap display-grade houses.  Within two Sim days, I saw the first marriage, immigration, and fambly-move notices in the paper in about three Sim weeks.  (Oddly, the marriage was between newly-generated townies, not between any of the eight available young and mature adults that I had made.)  My older teenager became a young adult and I kicked him out, though I expect he will never marry or father children, and will die alone if I persist in not using the AwesomeMod, even though there are three eligible young adult women available.  I have yet to see a birth notice in the paper that doesn't involve my One Fambly since long before the mature adult father was born.

I've been (stubbornly, I know) running an unmodded Story Mode for most of the time I've had TS3, as kind of a control experiment.  I wanted to see whether it was really as bad as I heard from several sources, including this website.  Now, about five generations later, I'm coming to the conclusion that it is worse than I ever expected, and if anything worse than I'd heard.  In fact, I believe it gets worse and worse the longer you play out a given hood.  It may very well be that this hood is now so screwed up that even using the AwesomeMod will never bring it back into balance.

The one new toy I have is Buzzler's Birth Control Mirror, which if I understand it correctly, will at least allow me to control the begetting of future generations outside my One Fambly.  Time will tell whether I eventually tire of micromanaging my hood that closely.

I thought I'd add to this thread rather than starting another, this being the closest one I could find to my topic.  I'm in need of learnings regarding catastrophic population decline, but I'm not running the AwesomeMod at the moment.  The AwesomeMod was causing crashes, all of which were of common and well-established types, so I made the decision (probably wrong) that I preferred a stable game with a story mode that ran on no apparent rules, to an unstable game with a story mode that had rules behind it.

On getting the NRaas Supercomputer, I discovered that there are only five mature adults in my hood, including the parents in my One Family; no young adults, only two teenagers (both in my One Family, and one of which is about to become a young adult with no one to marry), and no children or toddlers.  I also had about 80 NPCs, with assorted homeless, which I ran out of town.  The 10 or so elders remaining are mainly the aged great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of EA Sims such as Pauline Wan or Stiles McGraw.

This is in fact the second hood death I've experienced.  The first time, I pumped in about 25-30 Sims, including all the bin Sims, and everything was fine for a while.  But as they aged, none of the younger Sims ever married or had children.  And now I'm back in the same position.  The game steadfastly refuses to immigrate Sims into the hood.

There are plenty of empty houses around the hood, including cheap ones.  Actually I had put a house on every empty residential lot, to try to keep Sims outside my One Family from living on empty lots, but further experimentation indicates to me that this is not what's preventing immigration.  I knew that the EA story mode tended to lead to hood death (especially now that there is no parthenogenesis, which although stupid, did keep the population going), but had no idea it was this bad.

Then I came here and read this relevant comment from His Awesomeness:


So I guess what I'm wondering is, what's going on inside the game that makes it decide when and when not to immigrate new Sims?  And can I force it to stop deciding not to immigrate new Sims?

Barring that, as I see it I have these choices:
1.  Start over.  It's just a game after all.
2.  Make a whole bunch of Sim families in CAS, move them in, and then start playing with AwesomeMod again.  <--- probably the best choice
3.  Make a whole bunch of Sim families in CAS, move them in, go on without AwesomeMod, and prepare to do the same again in a few generations.

Thanks in advance for the sharing of learnings.

The cheapest shower, single and double beds, refrigimator, and stove are all harmful to Sims, because they sometimes or usually give negative moodlets.  There may be a few other such things that Pescado means by "Kewian-based substitutes" in this context, which hopefully he'll chime in and mention by name.  I like this phrase "harmful to Sims" because that is exactly what they are, though I'm not awesome enough ever to have been able to come up with that description on my own.

That being said, I too am impressed with your houses, being as I am also a maker of ugly boxes.  I was finally beginning to be able to make marginally-acceptable houses in TS2, free of Kewian-based substitutes and complying with AwesomeSpec for whichever EPs I was running at the time, but good TS3 houses seem much harder to make.  So I'm always impressed when I see good work like yours.  Will probably download one or more of them at some point.

In that case, I'll turn on Awesome story mode too.  From reading the beta-testing thread, it seems the only issues so far are the cribs thing (which I may or may not care about) and the Sims-standing-around-complaining-about-motives thing (of which there's always some anyway, even in a vanilla game).

ETA:  Didn't work, I had it completely hang on me after doing nothing I thought particularly special.  Unfortunately I couldn't get a saved game file for examination as even the side-scrolling was completely dead.  I'll revert back to both ISM and ASM disabled with the remainder of the AwesomeMod on, and go back to lurk mode.

Although I've really resonated with a lot of the things that Motoki and Doc Doofus have said, I've come back to the AwesomeMod.  I've noticed the musical houses in my new Riverview game too, but I'm reassured knowing why it is happening.

In another thread, I posed the question as to whether the unmodded story mode could be adequate for those like me who play only one family.  Doc Doofus said I'd come back to the AwesomeMod as soon as a Sim moved out of town that I cared about.  And now he gets to say he told me so.  I had made TS3 versions of Skip, Brandi, and child-age Dustin Broke, and played them using the unmodded story mode.  When the three boys had grown up, I decided to play Beau and leave Dustin and Caleb (as I always called the youngest) to their own devices.

Soon Beau started receiving phone calls from a Dustin Ursine.  Turns out he had married some homeless townie, taken her last name, had a daughter, and moved in with some random family, but without his wife and daughter.  All attempts to get Dustin's wife to move back in with him failed.  Finally it was all I could do to change Dustin's last name back to Broke, and his daughter's as well for family tree purposes.  Both he and his wife had the Commitment Issues trait after all.  I can live with that, I said.

But then Caleb completely disappeared.  I'm guessing he likewise married a homeless townie, and took her last name so I wouldn't notice when they moved out.  The last straw was neighbors living on empty lots containing only a mailbox and garbage can.  They'd come home from work and disappear into an invisible house.  I must really be non-awesome not to have noticed this BS earlier.

If the 0100 lag is all I have to put up with to stop this nonsense (and said lag is much better than it was the last time I ran the AwesomeMod), plus I can have my no-CD crack and be able to edit Puddings in CAS, for now I consider it worth the tradeoff.

I think this is the part where I say "Baaahhhh." 

I see, I was thinking that maybe the non-core part of Indie Stone also needed updating.  Either way, I still see no problems to date besides the two extremely minor problems I mentioned earlier, and the occasional graphical glitch that occasionally happens anyway.  I have yet to run the patched game completely vanilla and see how that works.

I forgot to mention that the best bug that I got when running Awesome and IS together was when my family's 6 met himself at school.  Apparently something interpreted "Make genetic offspring from bin Sims and sometimes use them to populate the hood" as "Take the exact Sims in the bin and plop them in the hood as often as possible, multiple times, including copies of the playable Sims."

Not wanting my computer to turn into the fabled BFBVFS, I deleted that hood in a hurry and started over with Awesome alone, then with the unmodded story mode.

Finally, I had to respond to your post because it's the first time in months, maybe years, that I've seen both affected and it's spelled and used correctly in the same sentence on an internet forum.  I guess the high standards kept here, and the P&L engaged in when said standards aren't met, really do make a difference for the better.  

Legally bought.  Booted fine after I removed the old incompatible mods.  Did not run well with the ISM/Awesome hybrid, and no wonder, because ISM wasn't updated yet.  Got two small errors* running just the AwesomeMod, and surprise surprise, they're still there in the unmodded story mode with AwesomeMod removed.  I'm lucky that the patch only broke two such minor things as far as I can tell.


*Sims that were seated upon saving, are standing and interpenetrating the seat they were in upon reloading, but escape just fine when told to move; and the little Opportunity notification tune sounds weird.  I am sure that others have found and reported these errors already, and have yet to look for any solutions, since I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

The exact same thing happened to me.  In fact, that identical female TS2-style Sim appeared in my UI also, while my Sim's wife and three children disappeared from it.  In my case, getting rid of the older version of the no-CD crack .exe file did the trick.  Hopefully it's something like that in your case too.

I still have some bugs happening, but they seem to be because of tight pants.  Research is in progress.  I didn't want to install the patch, but I figured I had no real choice, since I'd get it when the first EP comes out in any case.

I think you hit the nail on the proverbial head in terms of why I'm playing only one family too.  That, and I just can't be bothered to micromanage that many spares -- and also, to some extent, because I'm still watching this game and trying to figure out how it works.  Really, I'm doing the same thing over and over again, and trying to keep an eye on the hood in general at the same time:  (1) Get male YA married, give the Mrs. plastic surgery if needed, feed her lots of apples, and spawn The One Manchild; (2) Age baby up to a toddler immediately, then up to a child as soon as he has learned all three toddler skills; (3) While advancing parents' careers, start the child on making friends (maybe I can find him a potential mate even at this early stage); (4) Age child to teen as soon as he's getting an A; (5) Increase teen's skills and school performance (parents will become Mature Adults by this time); (6) When teen ages to YA, age parents to elders and kick them out; (7) Repeat from step 1, moving into a nicer house at the same time.

I'm getting more and more curious about the Indie Stone mod, though it sounds so heavy-handed that I think I'd like it less than the AwesomeMod.  In the meantime, I'll keep experimenting with the more-or-less-unmodded Story Mode.  One thing I've noticed already is that I have had zero need for babysitters, due to the enforced maternal leave which lasts well into The One Manchild's 6 stage, and even then one of the parents is bound to come home about the same time as the 6.  I am not exactly what you'd call progressive, and still find this very insulting and annoying.  But I know others have commented on this already.

I've read this discussion with interest, and I think I'll finally ask the burning question I've had for about a week now, even though it may mark me as terminally non-Awesome:  Is it possible that the default EA Story Mode may be adequate for those of us who actually play Only One Fambly?

I'm a huge admirer of Pescado's work in general and the AwesomeMod in particular, but am not running it right now.  I used it for a while because I liked things such as the facial slider multiplier and the squashing of the teen curfew helicopter police.  I have downloaded the Indie Stone mod but have never tried it.  Right now I'm running only various XML tweaks to take the place of some of the AwesomeMod features that I liked.  In addition to this, the Indie Stone mod conflict detector tells me I'm running two core mods, namely Delphy's facial slider hack and klanly's InSimenator-like "duma" mod -- but strangely, it says there is no conflict between the two, and my game runs fine.

As I type, I just married off Lawrence Lum's son (or Theodore Lum's grandson), after starting with the bin Lum family in a fresh hood with Normal lifespan and the setup described above.  I've watched the hood around my family, and unless I'm missing something, have seen nothing unusual.  Sims have moved into and out of the town, which doesn't bother me -- I'll take my chances with my Sims losing friends.  (Though I do wonder where Sims go when they move out, as it doesn't seem like EAxis to delete them cleanly and non-destructively).  Single Sims are spawning clone babbies, which also doesn't bother me -- if I were playing a single Sim, he'd be allowed to adopt, so the townies might as well also be allowed to do so.  In public, I certainly see Sims interacting in the stupid hilarious ways I've come to expect -- I even saw my first TS3 fistfight in the park yesterday.  I do miss the AwesomeMod protecting my Sims from random bus firings, deaths, and body shape changes -- but I figure if my Sim gets fired, oh well, there are other jobs; if he dies, I will have a one-parent household and a greater challenge; and if he gets run over by a bus, my third-generation Lum family has long since had the body shape changer reward item.

Most importantly perhaps, I have no lags, at 1:00 a.m. or otherwise.

I would use the AwesomeMod again in a minute if there were a "Light" version that left the default Story Mode (mostly) untouched, but gave me the benefits I miss such as described above.  I will probably reread this thread and other similar ones because I'm sure I'm just not noticing all the problems with the default story mode, which is why I'll keep playing this Lum family through at least one more generation and watching the hood while I do so.  In the meantime, I'm certainly open to suggestions/macros/pointing-and-laughing regarding what I'm missing by using the default Story Mode, or if it indeed could work OK if you're running Just One Fambly.

One last question:  I read earlier how the AwesomeMod could lead to a dying geriatric town, which it did indeed do a couple of times for me.  I also read that this is probably the player's fault, unless I misunderstood.  If true, this is fascinating and chilling.  I would especially love to know what I did wrong in those cases -- probably I focused too much on my Sim's career and should instead have made sure he got married and spawned lots of kids.