The Legacy Challenge posted by Pinstar reminded me of a challenge I'm currently trying out in my game. I love the Alice and Kev story by roBurky, and thought it would be fun to do my own version. With the Awesomemod allowing famblies to not have an adult, my poor sims are a girl child and her older brother, who's a teen. They're not exactly homeless, they live in a small one room shack in the woods. I'm mostly making up the rules as I go along, but some of them are: randomized traits save for family oriented for the teen and frugal for the child, no free food in the fridge, no free books on the shelves, no free clothes from the dresser, and they have to take the first LTW offered. After moving in, I sold all the food and books then used familyfunds to take their simoleans down to 0.

Their shack has only the bare essentials. For the kitchen area: cheap fridge, cheap stove, and one cheap counter. Living area: 2 cheap beds, 1 cheap loveseat, and 1 cheap bookcase. I agonized over allowing a bathroom but decided a cheap toilet and cheap shower were okay. No decorations are allowed until they can buy them with money earned. No other skilling items, besides the bookcase (which is useless until they can buy books), either. Also, no alarms are allowed when first starting out, anything lost to fire or burglar is lost until they afford to replace it. They are allowed to earn money any way they can; busking, painting, or writing, provided they can save up enough to buy the tools and have the necessary skills. They are allowed to skill at comm lots though. In my game, the teen has a part-time job and is saving up to buy the child an easel because one of her traits is artistic.

As I said before, I'm mostly making up the rules as I go along, so it's not a real Challenge, just something I'm doing for fun. I'd love to hear of anything someone else is doing similarly or new ideas for this to add to my own game.

I've seen somewhere on here that someone discovered "reading" the book directly borks it permanently. Apparently, it's best to always do "learn song" through the guitar. In my own experience, I had this happen once, but I had just loaded up the game, so I exited without saving, turned off the part of Awesomemod that stops skill books from disappearing, and tried it again through the guitar. I'm not sure if turning off the skill books thing had any effect, but I'm positive that learning the song through the guitar and not the book itself is much safer.

My self-sim won't be complete until she has this to show you her stoopid. Another one of the negative moodlets could be waking up with a "sore throat" every god damn day. Or getting super pissy when you run out, until you get more you can only do mean socials.

Well, if freezing is the alternative, I guess I prefer Mr. Pasty Moustache Guy.

This. When I noticed this my sim was on call, when he first got home, Fugly was still in portrait. Making him change into his Everyday clothes fixed it. This has to be the most retarded bullshit ever.

I'll try this in a few hours and report back. Right now, my turn on the gaming computer is up.

Yeah, so is my programmer boyfriend. He says that it would probably help you to know that his own profile pic is working properly, it's just how everyone else views him.

Edit: He also says that since deleting caches didn't fix it, the data on this sim is probably corrupted. Does this mean he's just a lost cause?

Yeah, that's him, except for the picture.

Edit: There are no clones of this sim, that I'm aware of, and I'm getting the panel picture from his live-in girlfriend.

After I recovered from my temporary stupidity, and deleted all 4 cache files, The Fugly is still hijacking my sim's portrait.

There's only one file under Caches...Sunset valley.objectCache.

Edit: Oh, wait, duh. Under My Documents not Program Files. I'm so used to going to Program Files instead of Documents now.

Which one?

This is Jared Marley.


This is not Jared Marley.


Anyone else seen something like this, or know how to fix it? Every sim who knows Jared has him show up like this in their panel or when they have a thought bubble about him. As far as I know, this fake Jared does not even exist, or I've never seen him at least.

Which would make it the best new feature if the speeds worked properly. Hopefully, this will be fixed. I, for one, am sick to death of the P to 3 dance I have to do while my sims get ready for work in the morning.

Yay! But how do you do that? I can't find it in the RTFM.

Yes, but it wasn't possible to max the cooking the skill by cooking alone, unless your sim did nothing else, such as a baker with OFB. Now sims can learn more from doing than by reading, which I infinitely prefer IRL.

I forgot about that! I only played the game for 2 sim days without Awesomemod, so I forgot that in a vanilla game they still whine about every little thing. -1 for EA, +2 for Pes.

I agree with everyone who said the puddings lack the ability to make you give a shit about them. Don't get me wrong, I've never really given a shit about any of them since TS1, but at least in TS2, most of them escaped random death just because I got bored and instead had to piss me off first by refusing to stop doing stupid stuff. Some even got a pass to die peacefully of old age for doing something endearing. Like, I'll never forget the first toddler I ever saw cuddle with a puppy. That earned her the privilege of fulfilling her LTW and dying as an elder. There's nothing the puddings do that even comes close to this level of cuteness, which is probably why I have yet to have any controllables die of old age, they haven't earned it.

The lack of proper romance and weddings is another thing that makes puddings inferior. In TS2, my sims were destined for each other from birth. They'd play together as toddlers and children, have their first kiss with each other as teens, live together in Uni, and then marry and live happily ever after with their soul mate as adults. Each milestone worthy of many pics taken by proud parents. It actually seemed like they gave a shit about each other, which in turn, made me give a shit about them. I still have pictures on my desktop from my first TS2 wedding. My first pudding wedding was the first of many disappointments. I went into it thinking, "OMG, this is going to be so awesome, a destination wedding at the pretty little park behind their house! I'll get a buffet table and some flowers and balloons. I'll set up the cake right in the center, on display. Ohhh, I gotta take lots of pictures!" But the caek was a lie. I got so fucking bored, the sims getting married were the first to leave, long before the party was over.

Also, families just aren't worth the trouble anymore. I prefer to micromanage, so I'm not going to waste valuable skilling time raising boring larvae who don't even have the decency to be cute to make up for being a drain on resources. And I cannot believe that EA has forced the 1950's on me by making my sim mothers stay home until their spawn goes to school. WTF is this? This isn't even realistic. IRL, if you're kicking ass in your career as a doctor, you don't take years off to raise some kids while you're husband is a level one musician. No, you make his slacker ass stay home, while you bring home the bacon. This is why ALL of my controllabe families have been one-child homes. My sim females are go-getters who take the world by the balls, so they just can't afford to spend the best years of their lives raising children. This is another contributing factor to the early deaths in my game. In TS2, elders had their usefullness as free baby-sitters while the adults worked. Now, since mothers can't work, elders are just another drain on resources.

Another thing that's already been complained about is the lack of group socials. Most of my sims have NO friends because it's not necessary for a lot of jobs anymore and it's such a fucking hassle. The only sims who can make friends while doing something relevant to their lives are logic sims and musical sims. Everyone else is a loner because they don't have time to waste in front of the boob tube when they could be improving themselves.

Although this post is already quite long, in an effort to not be Ms. Negativity, here's some stuff I do like:
1. The openness. I like that my sims can wander around town for hours. Especially when I set them to exploring places with no roads, on foot.
2. Being able to let my male sims procreate without the hassle of actually living with the brat or it's mother. Although, forcing him to pay for this in the form of child support would be even more awesome.
3. The ability to learn how to do things by actually doing them. My sims hardly ever read skill books. If they wanna be good at cooking, they cook. Makes sense.
4. The fact that if I stop paying attention to a sim in the controllable family in favor of a more interesting sim, they won't starve themselves and scream, "Look at me, NAO!!!"

Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool, too. I had my sim name one after his daughter.

I can't believe this worked! LOL Thanks! The option's greyed out but at least it's there now. Now I'm back to my original problem of not knowing how to fulfill it though. When I hover over the option it just says that the requirements have not been met.

Oh, and my frustration made me forget my manners, thanks phyllis and roflganger for helping me out.

Edit: Solved. He just got up to 5 bodies discovered and can now go turn it in. Again, thanks for all the help guys.

When I click on the icon it gives me the regular science lab options. The only thing greyed out is the "donate insects" option. I know that it's supposed to list the opportunity too, but it doesn't. I'm starting to think it's borked.

Edit: He's up to 4 bodies found now, and still nothing. No change in the text and no option at the lab.

Nope, just the usual options.

Edit: The icon is there, though. Just no option to complete the quest.

Here's the exact text.

Search the galaxy using your telescope.
The Science Facility has hit a bit of a slump and they haven't discovered any celestial bodies in quite some time. They need to discover something soon if they want to keep their grants, so they've asked local geniuses to do some backyard astronomy. Search the galaxy using your own telescope at home and you'll be paid well for your efforts.

He just now got up to 3 bodies found, and the purple text still says, "Search the galaxy using your telescope." This is really starting to piss me off. I don't like open-ended shit. It should at least give you some idea of how long this shit's gonna take.

I don't know, he hasn't completed it yet. It still just says "search galaxy".

My sim got this opportunity for logic, but I can't seem to fulfill it. Seems pretty straight-forward, "Search the galaxy using your telescope" and the science lab will give you monies. He's searched 3 nights in a row, and found 2 celestial bodies, but nothing happens. Has anyone else gotten this and fulfilled it? I'm thinking that maybe he just needs to find more celestial bodies or something, but the description says nothing about that at all. In fact, it doesn't say he has to find any at all, I'm just assuming so because otherwise the whole quest makes no sense.

Edit: It seems to take 5 discoveries before the opportunity is fulfilled.

By the third generation of my game, the males at my teen female's high school were so OMFG FUgly, I changed her whole story and made her a lesbo.

My sim married her boss, and was able to keep asking for raises until he retired.