I had a problem with inactive, sacred sims not going go work unless I selected them and made them go with the ASM when I first started using it.  After I had played each household once, they started going on their own.

But it started again when my sims had a baby/toddler in the house.  Some go to work fine, others have to be sent.  I'm wondering if it has anything to do with having a little one that requires a babysitter when the parents are gone?  When I was having this problem the first time around, there was a toddler in those houses as well.

As I was watching sims leave for work/school at that dreaded 8-9 am timeframe, I thought it looked like they were taking turns moving.  One sim would move, stop in midair while another one on screen moved, etc.

I started pausing when I knew a sim was just waiting for their clothes to load, and that helped some.

Then I tried switching to map view during the "get out the door, now!" hustle, and they all seem to move faster.  All the kids get on their bikes (except the current household's kids, who ride the bus), and all the workers get out to their carpools much faster than when I stay at the lot view.

I may be wrong, but I think it's the way the game handles all the movements onscreen.  It doesn't have to work as hard at refreshing the graphics in map view.

I have a sim who was pregnant at the time I installed the latest AM and she had the pregnancy icon with the amount of time remaining, in hours, under it.  Haven't had any get pregnant since, though.  Seems it would start after they let you know they're PG.  You know, 24 sim hours after you hear the lullabye.

I played Sunset Valley for about a week.  I've been playing Riverview ever since.  I always have the school bus show up for the family I'm playing.  Kids in other houses ride their bikes.  And I don't have to switch lots to tell them to go to school.

The only time I have to worry about someone not getting to work or school is when some stupid sim decides to visit at 6 am and the sim that isn't leaving for work/school is chatting with the visitor.  They don't seem to want to quit talking and leave!

Maybe you need to try the fixall cheat.  I don't know if it will work for the bus problem, but it helped me with another problem I was having, so it's worth a try.

Ah, I see.  Makes sense.  So even if a sim in an inactive house doesn't own a car they have a carpool car that doesn't count as an NPC driver. 

I thought maybe this was why some of my sims (not in the active house) have to be "pushed" manually to go to work.  That they had to wait for a carpool car to become available.  But I know that they don't have to wait for a vehicle to show up, they just go to the street and get in a car.  I thought these might be part of the carpool.

I was looking at NPCDriversManager and saw this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<base>
  <Current_Tuning>
    <kMaxDrivers value="6">
      <!--The size of the npc driver pool used for player taxis, player limos, and the school bus (we'll probably move the bus into a separate pool).  If all npc drivers are currently in the world, the player Sim will have to wait for one of the other car routes to complete and for the driver to be released to the pool.  Note that this tunable can have a substantial effect on performance as it increases the number of actual Sims in the world.-->
    </kMaxDrivers>
  </Current_Tuning>
</base>

Doesn't this mean that only 6 carpool vehicles will be allowed at one time?  And that any sims who have to use the carpool have to wait their turn if there are already 6 vehicles out?

Suppose you have 4 households, with two working sims in each, and all go to work at the same time.  If none of them own a car, then 6 of them may be picked up right away, but the other two would have to wait until 2 of the ones already picked up were dropped off before they got a carpool vehicle.  That's how I was reading this.

And it sounds like the school bus is part of the carpool, so if you have a kid going to school in the household you're playing, then you can only haul 5 of those adults to work at one time.  Kids in other households ride their bikes for some reason.  I didn't think the bikes or cars owned by the player's sims (ie: chosen) counted in this number, just the carpool and taxis.

I was looking at the carpool section the other day and saw that they have a max number of 6.  I was also wondering if it would be a VBT to add 1 or 2 to this number.

I wasn't sure where to put this.

When my sacred sims have a baby, the house is no longer sacred.  Is that supposed to happen now?  The new baby used to get the "chosen" trait, but doesn't anymore - starting with the AM of maybe a week ago. 

The last few AMs I've downloaded don't set the new baby and I lose the sacred setting on the whole lot, so I have to reset it.

I haven't downloaded the newest one yet today, but I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, so I thought I'd ask.  And search didn't give me anything relevant.

I'm not concerned about bosses unless they need to "suck up" or whatever.  And, admittedly, I don't have the most recent update because I wanted to finish this round of household playing first.  I'm using ISM for some of the options and when I update AM it seems to mess up my configuration for ISM.  At least I think it does - I know something did, but I'm not exactly sure if it was the last time I patched or when I updated AM, so I was waiting to get through each household one time, just in case.  (One week each.)

Then, if I have to redo my ISM configs, it's not as big a deal.  If not, then I know it wasn't a new configuration of AM that was the problem.

And I watch the bug reports, so that when AM looks like it's stable enough for me, I download.  It looks pretty good now, so I'll probably update this weekend.  This may be in an update from the last couple of days.  My game is actually pretty stable right now, and I'm not crazy about messing up something that I finally, after two months of frustration with this game, got working the way I want to play.  AM has been the biggest contributor to keeping me interested in TS3 - I would have shelved this game a long time ago it I didn't have it!

My sims DO meet my other sims at work/school, but they seem to meet the Brokes or whoever BEFORE they meet mine.  I haven't decimated the townies yet - saving that move for what may be an inevitable emergency - so my sims are still meeting them.

I guess I'm really more concerned about school than work, since these kids are going to be the next generation and I'd like to see who they might pair up with fairly early.

I know, I'm probably one of the few who prefers multiple families over one single household (I get bored with only one). 

Because of the nature of TS3 I have a set number of families I'm playing that I hope to be able to maintain with the apple/watermelon baby gender thing.  One of each per household, marriage only between the families I play.  I'm trying to set it up so that all families have their sprog at about the same time so all the first children age together as do all the second children.  (Is that proper English?)

I have some of the 1st gen with two "chosen" sims who work at the same job.

So I'm wondering if it's possible to have a setup where "meet new friends" would preferentially be set to meeting chosen sims first.  That way, if one sim has met all of my other chosen sims at school/work, I could ignore the "meet..." option after that and concentrate on the socialize functions.  I don't want any more new families moving into town than necessary.

If not, then I can always send them next door and spend what I consider unnecessary and tedious time meeting neighbors, but I really hope this is possible and thought I'd throw it out there as something to consider.

If I don't need the 1.4 patch for AM, I won't bother with it.

I followed Pescado fron Rentech, too.  My first hack was the fix for the UNI final exams (had a sim sent home at the end of his freshman year), then I got JM's piano fixer.  Couldn't play TS2 OR TS3 without my MATY patches!

I had a pregnant sim laying on her bed reading and looking at her from a view at the foot of the bed I could see right through her to the bedding.  No sim skin at all between her top and pants.

I think she was wearing the zippered sweat top and sweat pants.

I've been wondering about this, too.

Did you place a copy of your sim in the bin and then place it in the other neighborhood?

I can't deal with the story progression thing.  On or off, awesome mod or not, free will on, low, whatever.  About the only way I figure I can live with this game AT ALL is:

Play each household for a day, week, whatever.  Save game under its own name - i.e. Riverview Goth, Riverview Bachelor.

When all households are at about the same time on the same day, put a copy of the household in the bin.

Then place all households into an "all" version of the neighborhood.

Then if I have a sim who's aged up to an adult, get him/her their own house.

Play each household and save under the name I was using for them before, overwriting the old game.

It would have been nice if the saved games kept each playable house separate like TS2 did.  Then I could just copy the house save file into the neighborhood.  But then, I probably wouldn't have to.

I'm still trying to figure out how I'll do this, but I'm in the process of giving it a try.  Game and households are still new enough not to care if I screw them up!

Smart milk.  It takes wa-a-a-ay too long to teach toddlers to walk, talk and potty train.  Actually, I miss a few of the aspiration rewards.  And I'm not crazy about the lifetime aspiration rewards offered, either.

I liked the career rewards they had in TS2.  Most of them were essential in every sim home.

Playing multiple households was one of the things that kept me interested in the sims.  Having to play one household in a neighborhood is boring as hell.  I've already gone back to playing TS2 because of it.

The piano was usually the only musical instrument my sims had because children could play it.

Toddlers and children getting skills instead of the promise of getting to "start" at a certain skill level as a teen.  WTF?

The toddler wabbit for charisma.  That's how my toddlers spent their time in TS2 until they became children.

An actual ultra speed.  The ultra speeds in TS3 are the equivalent of speed 2 in TS2.  I can clean my whole house while my sims are sleeping.

One thing I do find amusing:  When a sim dies, if you leave the urn in the house (don't know about tombstones) the ghost of the sim comes out and does things around the house like read and work out.  My husband ghost would then sleep in bed with wifey until he got sucked back into the urn.  I then found out that wifey could talk to her ghost hubbie.  Cute.

Gee, I guess EAxis made so little money on all the Sims & TS2 games, EPs & SPs and all the other related crap that they have to go after a website that makes NO money on fixing the bugs and providing the EAxis customers saps with a game they can actually play.

Actually, that's probably the crux of the whole issue here.  "Oops! We made a really bug-ridden game and kept adding more bugs in every EP and SP we put out, so shame on you for fixing our crap!  AND giving them and allowing links to usable sh*t for free!  Communist!"

BIG bunch of BS.

Couldn't remember which one had the stages - thanks!

I only allow one career and its associated reward per adult/household.  Because of that, my sim children aren't usually maxed out in skills unless they're a third or more generation in a house.  And I don't always use the teacher/link skilling method, because I just don't think to use it.  And I kind of like playing the UNI part, for some sadistic reason.

Actually, I think JM's list of skill gaining rates lists the mirror at a higher skill gain than the parrot - mirror 200 and bird 150.  The only advantage to having a bird is that they talk to it autonomously once it has been taught to talk.

The list is by no means complete, I'm sure, this was just why I got them and why I keep them in my game.

I wasn't really interested in all the expansion packs, but I got them because of some of the things they added that I really wanted.

UNI: New careers/aspiration rewards, extra want slots, which can be gained using the batbox.  I don't care about Greek houses or secret societies, but I just had a sim abducted into a secret society for the first time recently.  Ok one time, but - meh.  I send all my sims to UNI so they can meet other sims they might not normally meet for potential mates.  I also set up dorms with tj's buyable career rewards (when it still worked) so they can further their skill levels.  (On a new UNI I just added, I snarfed career rewards from a cow mascot and a professor after making them selectable and then unlocking all their career rewards.  Grab what I want, then send them on their merry way!) 

I send all my teens to UNI the day before their birthday to adult stage.  I used to send them earlier, but if a sim wants to max out all their skills as a LTW, they can spend more time at home finishing what they can there, then the extra time at UNI makes it easier for them to accomplish.  Most of them have their 7 skills maxed out by the time they graduate.  (I don't usually try to get them maxed out while they're a teen, but a few have!)  Then they can spend their time on other pusuits while an adult, like hobbies or crafting, from the other EPs.

NL:  Cars and inventory, which I think was carried over into another EP.  I didn't care about dates or the new places they could go.  It gave me the ability to move sims into a larger house/lot and keep their stuff.  The cars provided a means to send them to work/take kids to school on the day they moved (always starts out a new lot on Monday).

OFB:  Don't care about running a business, but it added elevators, which I really wanted.  Also added crafting benches which give my sims another way to gain income - you can sell items right from the bench at a profit, if the item wasn't screwed up.  Otherwise, I would have passed this one up.

Pets:  Meh.  It added some new build mode options, otherwise, pretty useless unless you like having your sims have a pet.  The bird and charisma building it gives to a family who doesn't have a golf putter or podium is about the only reason I keep it in.

Seasons:  Also some nice new build stuff, like the stage and greenhouse, which I sometimes use for a porch!  About the only thing I like about the actual change of seasons is the boost they give to various things - like friendships in summer and skilling in fall.  Also nice to be able to put leftovers in the fridge.  Really tired of the rain storms and lightning strikes, which happen way too often, but the weather machine can fix that.

BV: I passed on this one, and only just got it.  I have a neighborhood I had set up a year or so ago of pirates and island girls and I saw that this had the pirate ship, beaches, and a few other things that would make this hood more like I wanted.  I had already made my own hut bamboo & thatch walls, but it also added some new roofs that I like for some of my other hoods.  Also adds the pagoda roof styles and some nice kimonos.  And I may yet use the pyramid stuff on a pyramid house I started clear back in the early days of the game, but never finished beacuse I didn't have everything I wanted to make it realistic.  Will have that egyptian theme hood yet!

FT:  I wanted crafts.  Also like the ability to go to a different neighborhood from the lot without having to got to the neighborhood screen first.  Also added new careers, which I haven't fully explored yet.  I got FT just about the time we were looking for, bought, and moved into a house, so I didn't have the free time to play it!

AL:  Makin' Magic was my favorite EP from TS1.  Also wanted apartments to move my graduated sims into instead of back to the parent's house, since those families have way more simoleans than they could ever spend.  Also wanted spiral staircases.

M&G:  Don't have, may get just because they have ceiling fans!  Otherwise, I haven't seen a lot that this offers that interests me.

Stuff packs:  I only got FFS for the stuff for my pirate hood.  It has some good decorations, like crossed oars and a globe.  Also has some cute stuff, like pjs and beds, for kids.  Glamour life has a couple of things (mainly dresses) I can use for my eventual Egyptian theme hood.  It also has some cool pjs for adults and some nice furnishings.  These are the only two SPs I considered worthwhile for my purposes.  What you want to do determines if or which of the SPs are worth the memory usage.

So it depends on what things you really feel necessary, or just plain LIKE, that an EP/SP has to offer that will make it worth keeping and taking up memory space.  I bought a computer 3 years ago that I figured would be the ideal game machine, mainly for TS2, but also for some other games I play.  I was at that "unusable" stage on the computer I had prior to this one, so I know what you're going through.

I also have a hood I started just for monsters, like vampire and werewolf.  Haven't had either yet, and I got each EP as it came out, except for BV.

Also on the fence about TS3.  Dosn't look like it's going to offer a whole lot, but the ability to change sims bodies into more realistic builds and to be able to customize walls, furniture, etc. by color/pattern within the game might make it worth looking at.  Still undecided as to whether I think it's worth it, though.  I have a lot invested in this game, and I figure I'll keep playing it for a long time!

Sorry, I thought you had AL.

No, I didn't get FTp3 because I had FTp2 and the third patch just looked like it added the store stuff.

According to the descriptions for the barre, the exercise machines, and the bike, they all have a fun value of 1.  And they were fun before I got AL.  So I don't know if they were borked with the third patch, but they weren't with the second one.

Weren't the barre and the bike new with FT?  I don't have BV, so I don't know if they were added then, but I don't remember seeing the bike before FT.

Yeah, I was watching both of them pretty close last night and it seems that the fun drops at the normal decay rate.  I know they were both gaining fun before I got AL, so it has to be something they messed up in the latest EP.  Big surprise. 

Mine lose fun right from the start.  Brand new, right out of the box, they get on and the fun goes down.  It's slow, I didn't notice it right away, but when I watched for a minute I could see the arrow at the left side of the fun bar instead of the right.

I can't figure out what can be causing it.

Hmm, I guess I'm kind of in the middle when it comes to playing styles.

I have a sheet that I made in a drawing program when I first started playing my genetics 'hood.  It lists the last name, then husband (or the sim that is the equivalent if they are same-sex), then wife, and then has places for up to four children (name and gender).  The info I keep on them is astro sign, aspiration, job, skin, eye and hair colors.  I haven't started giving any of them secondary aspirations yet.

At the bottom of this chart are blank areas below the parents for various notes (such as whether they turned elder or when they died) and below the children's info is a Mon-Sun tick-mark area.  As I play a day, I put in a tick mark for that day, and if a sim got married I'll put an 'm' by the tick mark for that day.  Also "pg" for got pregnant, and when there's a birthday, 'p' for preschool (toddler), 'c' for child, 't' or "tn" for teen, and "c#" (like c1 or c2) for college/child number.  But I don't note which one grew up on which day.  When there are 4 tick marks I'll put a line under instead of through the other 4 for the fifth Monday (or whatever) so I don't obliterate my other notes and put any 't' or "c#" notes beside it.

When a baby is born I note its name, gender, skin and eye color.  At the transition to toddler I write in the astro sign and hair color.  At teen it's the aspiration.  When they get a job as an adult it gets entered.

I also may note what other sim(s) the children seem to be attracted to for later possible marriage/partnerships.  And in the column below where I note their gender, I also note if they are a twin.

I have three charts on one 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and print it on both sides so I don't have an encyclopedia-sized notebook in front of me!  I keep families together on a sheet and have dividers for each family so I can find them fast.  My genetics 'hood is now well into its fourth generation, so I have a lot of sims to keep track of.

It also makes it easier to just transfer the info I keep track of into the "parent" info when they start their own household.

I had two user accounts, but got tired of having to keep separate downloads folders and stuff, so I took my second user account 'hoods and moved them into a storage folder.  As I complete a round of each house, each 'hood, I swap the 'hoods I played with the 'hoods from the other account.  So I have one storage folder for each account and move them back and forth from my sims2 folder to the appropriate storage folder.  I also have a loose-leaf notebook of the genetics sheets for each "account".

I recently started using whatever the database I have on my computer is to enter the names and generation of the sims in my genetics 'hood so I'm not marrying any of the youngest of my gen 3 sims to the oldest of my gen 4 sims.  And I can see at a glance who's married/partnered and who isn't.  But I don't have anything in the database except names and generation.  I thought about putting all the other info I track in there, but just haven't done it yet.

I've searched high and low and can't find anyone reporting this, so I hope I just missed something somewhere.

With FT, the new exercise bike and barre were fun for pretty much every sim, and they would be used autonomously (sometimes a good thing, sometimes not).

Now, with AL, suddenly they're LOSING fun when sims use them.  Even sims with high active.  I took out my entire downloads folder and they still lose fun.  I just tried it with a sim who has 9 active points and her fun level was dropping on the exercise bike.  No hacks at all in, so I know it's not a conflict.  And I don't download lots or anything that might have some hacked thing straggling along.

Is this a "feature" of AL and how do I cure it?

The playing with the refrigerator thing was one of the first strange autonomous things I saw a sim do - it was a sim teen who's aspiration had gone into the red from a death fear.  And she had wants I had a hard time satisfying at the time.

I just had a cat go watch a ghost that was on the lot.  It had a sim's face in the queue, and when I moused over it the box said "Watch".  The cat went to where the ghost was at the time and watched it drift around the lot, following it for awhile.

Mostly playing families, but I have one hood I use just for building lots.  I made a couple of versions of the house we had that my kids grew up in and I use the smaller one for newlyweds and then move them to the bigger one when they can afford it.  I also did a few for some themes I recently decided to try (my own themes, not any you mentioned).
 

Barely decorated, walls down so I can see what my pixel people are doing.  Walls cutaway or up for pics.  Most of my houses don't even have curtains unless a sim wants them.


I have a couple of hoods that I made specifically for the genetics.  My oldest one is over two years old now, and I expect something bad to happen to it every time I play, but so far so good.  It started as a Color My World challenge, which got me started making color skins, clothes, decorations, objects, etc., just to make it easier to recognize who was in what family.  I then got to wondering what kind of genetics would be passed on as the colors mixed.  I have charts, too.


I originally was playing Pleasantview, a little of Strangetown, and my own hood.  In the last six months I added a townie town that I am using to see what the different kinds of deaths are like (take out my frustrations on! lol) and I got a hair up my ass to make one that is just going to be a "creature feature".
I started a second user account so I could start PV and ST over again, and added another color hood and townie town (the first one gave me a bunch of odd townies, not the usual crowd) and I started an Island Paradise hood with hula girls and pirates.


Some of both.  One of the "rules" of my color hoods is that they have to reach the top of their career and get the reward when it becomes available.  All sim teens go to Uni the day before they will become an adult to find their mate (hopefully) if they haven't already.


Mostly homebodies, occassionally I let them hang out at a community lot, but they usually only go to buy clothes or electronics.  Yes, they have cell phones, mainly so they can each talk to their friends at the same time (for relationship building).


Suburban, with the exceptions of the island hood and the creature hood.


The ones I mentioned - gee, I guess they're almost all themed in some way!


Very few, and then only if that's the only way a sim's wants will roll up something else!


I only have one zombie family, but have had a few alien abductions.  One guy in my first color hood has been abducted 3 or 4 times!  (Once as a teen, once at Uni, and once or twice as an adult.)


Mostly only what makes my game run better for me.  I like macrotastics and every lot has a debugger box.  I also have the InSiminator, mainly for checking on pregnancies, but I also use it sometimes for other things, like making a dormie playable.  I also have the pregnancy for all mod so I can
allow my same-sex couples to have their own kids (Genetics, of course.)  And crammyboy's cock hack.  Just because. 


Quite a bit, mostly my own.  Clothes and furniture, some wall and floor recolors.  When a sim age transitions in my color hoods, I will go make a recolor of whatever outfit they grew up into that corresponds to their color name.  And all furniture and walls have to match the color name, too, so I have done stoves, fridges, counters, beds, desks, chairs, couches, tables, robots, etc., ad nauseum to make the houses consistent.


Only recolors.  Don't really consider anything I've done to be so great that I'd put it up anywhere, but I did put my home lot on the exchange once and had an Uncle Sam suit up there once.  (Didn't announce them anywhere; I just wanted to see if there was any interest without pimpin' mah stuffs!)  I've done a hula girl outfit and a pirate outfit for toddlers, but haven't offered them anywhere yet.  Don't know what they look like in-game yet!


Interesting idea, seeing how people play!  Are you into fantasy or reality, basically.  How do you escape the tedium that is life?

So do you just put the folder named Downloads into the Overrides folder, complete with subfolders?  And do you have to move it into whatever your current EP .../Overrides folder is, or can you move it into either Pets... or Seasons... and leave it there, even when the next EP comes out?