Toddler, child, whatever.  It is damned ugly.

Ewww.  Is that what the children look like?  That looks like something from a halloween movie.  I do not have any kids right now, only babies.  Maybe I'll turn aging off and keep them babies, at least they are cute.

Personally, I think that they just made the footprint too big of the stuck together set they tried to make of the chess table and chairs.  The set I was having trouble with was not against a wall, but near the open square of the front door.  Even though I would put the set together outside and then move it, I would get the option of play a game with..., however, as soon as the Sim tried to get in the chair it would become unset again.  I finally used the alt key and moved the set slightly from the door square and it worked fine then.  I could just see the guy/gal that came up with this idea, saying look how cool this is, we can save all kinds of time placing chess sets by using it.  Meanwhile, he/she broke the objects placement and probably took more time creating it than it would have taken to just place the table and two chairs.  Genius...not!

How can we circumvent the launcher?  I am all for boycotting it.

Ahhh, perfect, Zazazu.  Thank you, it worked.  I was really hoping that I would not have to ditch the house.  It is cute and small and just enough that my Sims can afford right now.

How do the programmers at EAxis manage to do this?  They have working code out there (both Sims 1 and 2).  Have they never heard of reusing existing code, especially working existing code?  I will never understand this.  Never.

I am using a house that I downloaded and there is a chess set in it (Epic 10th Anniversary Chess Set).  There are two chairs, but only one of them can be used, which sucks because 2 Sims cannot play together.  I just wanted to know if it is just the chess set in this particular house (meaning the house has a problem) or have any of you come across this, making it an EAxis bug?  I guess that would make it an Epic Fail Chess Set.

@MasterDinadan:  I agree.  I miss the movies for first kiss and woohoo, as well, from Sims 2.  But with Sims 3 my Sims take off with the romancing all by themselves once I start them.  And once they finished they are not finished.  They cannot seem to get enough of each other.  I love that.  This is what I had hoped TwoJeff's ACR would do, but it never worked that way.  I just wish that the Sims now would actually initiate it on their own (just not constantly at each other all day every day as with the ACR).  I would like to get surprised with an unexpected pregnancy, one that I did not have to initiate.

Also, is it just me, or do the Sims move around as if they have a stick up their butt?  Sims 2 Sims had fluid motions and seemed more human.  Sims 3, for me, is like a love-hate relationship.  I love it and hate it at the same time.  Makes no sense.

Thank you!  That did it for me.  Great to have the hack back in my game.

You do not have to have the Sims relaxing on a bed to get the WooHoo menu item.  Once selected, they will go to the bedroom.  I only wish that the male Sim would pick her up and carry her to the bed.  It would be more romantic (but probably only for the first few times).  Once one of my Sims, after selecting WooHoo, headed for the bathroom (guess she really had to pee) and I thought that the action would drop from their queues.  To my surprise, once she was finished, the male Sim went to her and hugged and kissed and then they headed for the bedroom.  I just love what they have done with this aspect of the game.

Okay, add me to the list of crashing games.  I have had no trouble up until today with the latest version.  I have done everything that has been suggested.  Nothing works.  Not even putting an earlier version of the awesome mod back in.  Not even with only the awesome mod running (I only had HPs skins and patterns in since yesterday).  I am at a loss.  I am going to try reinstalling and going with a vanilla game until these issues have been solved.  Such a shame though.  The one thing that I can add is that I do not shut down my computer everyday.  It only is rebooted whenever there are updates.  I am not sure if one occurred and it rebooted and that is why I am now having problems.  None of this makes logical sense at all.

One question though: why is the d3dx9_31.dll only 73.5 kb when the same dll in my windows\system32 is 2.30 mb?  Is there a chance that there is a conflict?

Both the Launcher and the EADM are set to run in your system tray.  I stopped mine.

I am at the 'accept the EULA' stage of installing and decided to check in here before I even attempt to click the accept.  My distrust of EA is so immense that I feel like I am about to step off a cliff.  There is something inherently wrong with that.  You are supposed to be all excited when you get a new game.  I will only be using the Launcher when absolutely necessary, other than that, it better stay in its hole.

Hey Mootilda, I did not forget about you.  I am happy to report that using the Lot Adjuster did not mess up the hobby lots.  I played the same families and adjusted the same lot with no problems at all.  I will have to keep on digging to figure out what caused the corruption (or just forget about it, unless it happens again).  I had forgotten just what a finicky pita of a game the Sims can be.

Hi Mootilda, I am not saying that the Lot Adjuster did this.  I was just trying to think of what I did that was different from my normal play.  I also remember that I moved some neighborhood decorations in order to make room for a couple of lots.  Unfortunately I no longer have the backup from before I used the Lot Adjuster.  I just put a fresh copy of N001 in and played it before checking back here.  The hobby lots seem fine in the fresh copy.  If you want, I could experiment by increasing the lot size of the same lot that I did prior to this and see if any hobby lots break.  If not, then it may have been from my moving stuff around.

edited to add:  No, I do not have the Sims Store and would never download an EP from the EA store, ever (I like my hard copies).

Emma, thanks for responding.  No I did not touch the hobby lots.  I did, however, use the Lot Adjuster on one of the existing lots to make it larger.  Do you think that might have something to do with the hobby lot problem? 

I only got brave about using the Lot Adjuster because Plasticbox said it was so easy to do and has done on several of his/her lots.  It is just odd though, because it appears that the game code is looking for old hobby lots that Maxis decided not to go with for production release.  I know that it cannot actually change game code, so I am guessing that it has to be with pointers being messed with in one of the package files for Neighborhood N001, since none of the other neighborhoods have this problem.

I am finding odd hobby lot names in the dialog box in Pleasantview, e.g. OLD!!! Games of Glory.  It also displays a wire mesh graphic in the thumbnail.  There are three messed up hobby lots altogether, while the others are displayed just fine.  I actually sent my Sim to one of the messed up lots and there was only an empty lot with the head Sim of the hobby there to greet my visiting Sim (what I was hoping was that just the text in the dialog was messed up, not the lot itself).  I have searched the web and also here and cannot find anyone else mentioning this.  Has anyone had this happen or has everyone long moved on from playing Pleasantview?  I have been away from playing the game since the time of Bon Voyage coming out with SecuROM, so I just recently started up again and decided to play Pleasantview for old time's sake.  I would also like to add that the Free Time and Seasons neighborhoods have no issue like this with the hobby lots.  Has this happened to anyone out there?

The Pirate Bay

Mootilda, check out this site if you honestly believe that they are not hurting.  Electronic Arts Lays Off Six Hundred

And this one. EA Loses Big, Lays Off 600

I really do not know what to tell you.  Maybe you have a borked patch.

Good news, but I wonder how much EA needs to hurt before they realize that they need to remove SecuROM?

It is good to know that I have not been alone in my protest against EA.  I have taken it further and have boycotted all Sony products because they are the company that created this malware abomination.  And they are going to be hurting money-wise much more than EA.  I am also not buying Adobe's products anymore since they now are using SecuROM, as well as any game that contains SecuROM or any draconian DRM.  That included Sid Meier's Colonization that I had intended to buy.  If some company wants to tell me what I can and cannot have on my computer, then they better well cough up the money to buy me a computer.  Until then, what is on my computer is my business.

It feels good to rant.

Yes.  You need to put the original exe back in order to patch.  The patch is the Maxis patch.  Once patched, you then back up the orig exe again (patched version) and then replace with the hacked exe that bypasses SecuROM.

Yes.  I used Loder's version.  Did you remember to replace the original executable before patching?

There is more that someone could do.  If you have bought an EA game that contained SecuROM, then go to this site Girard Gibbs LLP.  And the other thing is, "Stop buying EA games until they remove SecuROM."  Until the Amazon outcry, I thought I was alone or in a small majority.  Believe me, there are far more people upset over this than the number of posts on Amazon, because my post there never made it.

Yes, I am talking about the spaceship items.  Not only weapons are disabled, but even the teleport up button is disabled in cargo.  I use the pause in the heat of battle because through all of the explosions and allies flying around, it is very difficult for me to know where the enemy is.  I do not usually play real time shooting games (FPS)because, basically, I suck at them.  Maybe in time I will get better, but I doubt it.  Until then, I really need my pause.  Hopefully I am not alone in this.

I cannot believe that no one else has mentioned this, but the patch disables tools when the game is paused.  For this reason, I am going back to the original version until someone releases a mod that will enable tools while paused.