Well, I added my two cents to Twain's rant.  Still not locked, thankfully.

I always grow babies up to toddlers when they get the "birthday in one day" notice.  Had too many problems if I waited until the birthday, so I started (since base game only) using the cake to grow them up as soon as possible.

It would be nice if the new patch would stop the crying babies and let the toddlers stay awake all day, or at least sleep all night.

What's really lucky for me is I downloaded the patch the other day but my daughter & her family from out of state have been visiting all week, so I never had time to install it.  Whew!  Glad I didn't!

I have two user accounts and I just copied the downloads folder from one account to the other.  When I update hacks, I also make sure to copy them from one account to the other.

I've had no problems whatsoever.

This has been happening to me, too, since Seasons.  I send a teen sim to the computer to apply for scholarships, and suddenly, his mother, who is halfway across the lot, has the sudden urge to play a computer game or chat online.  Or a sim is standing in the kitchen with their hunger bar over 3/4 full, and another sim gets sent to get something to eat, and the first sim suddenly decides to get something to eat. 

It doesn't seem to matter what the object is that I send a sim to use, another sim somewhere on the lot who previously had no desire to use it, and whose need bar is either full or mostly full for whatever that object would satisfy, suddenly gets the urge to hog it before the sent sim gets there.  Or the second sim wants to clean the object or turn it off.

It used to just happen with 3-bolt couples who felt they had to be joined at the hip for everything either of them did, but now it's progressed to siblings, parent and child, etc.

Oops!  You're right, Ness.

I had forgotten, since I never play those sims.  When I sent her, I got her dad with her at the drop-off, and wondered why she had a parent with her, then remembered who she was.

I wasn't planning on playing any of those sims in this hood, but since I had already sent her by mistake, and had found the sim I was after, I went ahead with her.  I haven't decided what to do with her yet when she graduates.

Of course, it had to be one of the townies I sent - Melody Tinker.

This is my Town-E-Town - where I plan to wreak havoc on the dreaded townies.  And one of the guys who was a teen I had sent to Uni when I started (and is now an adult and living in the 'hood) has the hots for a Uni girl I couldn't locate, so I picked some sims to send to the dorms to flush her out.  Melody happened to be the third sim, and in the dorm where the YA girl I was looking for showed up.

No reason for her to be left out of the fun!

And I did have to change Melody's semester # at the end of her freshman year as well.  Ah well, I'll just have to adjust a bit - maybe more reason to have her build creativity with the crime career reward.

Well, I just came here looking for an answer to the same question!

I have two townies that I have sent to uni in a custom hood.  One of them advances at the end of the first freshman semester, but the other doesn't.  The one that advances gets the money, the one that repeats doesn't.  And she has a locked want of making the dean's list, but the want isn't satisfied because it doesn't seem to recognize that she has completed her final exam and has a 4.0 gpa.

I tried deleting the repeater before she goes to the final exam, moved her out and back in, moved them both out and into another dorm, took out all hacks, forced errors, etc., but she keeps going back to the first semester and no grant, no notifications that she passed.

I'm not using the college clock.  And I'd like to be able to give her the credit she deserves, grant money, etc.  Any help from anyone more awesome than me?

ETA:  I just had her do her final exam again, and she did get the grant money and the memory of making the dean's list, but the want wasn't satisfied.  She still went back to semester one of her freshman year.  I went into SimPE and changed her uni semester value from 1 to 2 and she is now in freshman semester 2, with the correct class for her major.

But I still would like to know why this happened.  I have all EP's and the Glamour and Family Fun packs, but I haven't had this happen with any other YAs.  Probably another EA "feature", I suppose.

I haven't gotten past fall yet in any of my hoods!  At the rate I'm going, it'll be Christmas in July!

But I've got some sim kids who have taken 3 times to get their homework help.  The first day - they were in the middle of getting homework help when I installed Seasons, so were reset, and the homework disappeared.  The second day, they must have been in the same situation when I installed the patch, and the same thing happened.

Will have to see what happens when I get my hoods past fall.  I takes me two weeks to get through one rotation of all my hoods, so it will be awhile!

I play Uni as one year (two semesters) for each day I play the main hood, so they are into spring now.  That's how I knew the term paper reverted back to 100%.  It will be interesting to see what happens with homework help.

If it's autumn, the homework help is accelerated so they get the memory before the homework is finished.  Also, at Uni, when doing a term paper during autumn, they finish writing the paper when they're actually at about 70%.

I noticed they were getting done with the term papers sooner than they used to, so while they were writing it, I checked by clicking on a computer, college...write term paper (it shows the percentage they've done).  They were finished when the percentage shown was in the 68%-70% range.  Once they got into winter, it reverted to the normal 100%.

I also noticed the homework help want was satisfied before the homework was finished, so I assumed that the same thing applied.

Geez, I thought it was just me!  My sims wave at each other when they get out of bed, when they pass each other in the same room, when the kids or another sim leaves for/returns home from school/work, when they're outside leaving or just got back and a neighbor/postal worker/paperboy walks by... on and on ad naueum.

I thought maybe I was doing something different in the way I was playing - that maybe I was letting them do more for themselves than I was before, and they used that "free time" to wave at each other, where I used to maybe have a queue full of stuff for them to do.

I was using pianofix before the EA patch that fixed it, but took it out when I found that the patch worked.

So I tried something last night after posting that.  Went into a lot, had a teen start to play the piano, and the fun level started dropping.

Took out lesswhiny, just in case of a conflict somewhere.  No change, fun still dropped.

Took out ALL hacks.  Teen, now reset and standing by the piano, dropped a busker and started performing, which increased the fun level.  Had him quit and practice instead.  Fun level dropped.

Put all hacks back in and added pianofix.  Fun level dropped.

Bought a new piano.

I also had another lot that I just decided to go ahead and replace the piano without even trying to see if it was fun.  I got the "Object can not be deleted with something on it or in it" message, (on a piano?!) so I used moveobjects to get rid of it.  Had the same thing happen in the next house, and I just happened to notice a busker sitting by it.  I've used nobuskers practically since JM first put it up, so I have no idea where it came from.

And in one house where I didn't replace the piano and no one played it, the season didn't change to fall during the 18 or so sim hours I played that lot.  It has in all the others within 6 or 8 hours, so I'm not sure it it's the piano itself that's just plain buggy, or if it's because these are very old lots that may have some corruption creeping in.

I noticed last night that some of my pianos weren't being fun any more.  Force Error didn't work.  I had to buy new.

And pianos were fun in my game again after the patch that was supposed to have fixed it eons ago.  I was just wondering if they had broken it again, myself.  Or if some hack I recently added was causing them to not be fun any more.  But I think the only thing I added before I noticed they weren't fun is lesswhiny.

And I think they were still fun in some of the houses I had played last week, or I would have had to replace them.  So it may just be something about these lots.

Just had another sim die, her son was crying and I forced and error on him.

Is this what you need, JM?

As soon as I saw the title of this thread I knew what it had to be about.  I was just saying this last night to Panther Pink.  His mother had died a few sim days ago (weeks ago in my time) but was still showing on the family splash screen. 

"Bring out your dead" wasn't working, so I used the Summoner from the InSim and she went away.  Panther cried for hours, constantly dropping things out of queue, and I just kept telling him, "She's been dead for days!  Get over it, already!"  And, yes, I went through the same constant sobbing when she had actually died a few days before, so it was a repeat performance.

Really, they can mourn with just a sigh as far as I'm concerned.  This crying at the top of their "lungs" gets ridiculous, though.  And not constantly.  Do one or two things, when they have a second or two that they're not busy, then they can hang their head and sigh.  That, I could handle.

The odd thing is that you have one sim who gets laughed at all the time, no matter where s/he is, and in my game it's this whole family, and they do it no matter where they are!  Kind of the same problem in reverse.

Just got seasons today (Circuit City sale!), still have to do the "check all households" thing before I backup and install, but I'm curious to see of the usual EP install reset will get rid of this.  If not, then I'll try the force error on off-world and see if that works.

If not, because I only get around to a household about once every two weeks, it hasn't started bugging me yet, and I get an occasional laugh!  I'm sure it'll get old after awhile, though.

I have a similar thing happening in one of my houses.  It started after one of the teens started dancing, and he was still inexperienced and fell down a few times.  The other sims started doing the finger circle around the ear thing ("He's crazy").

I play each lot for one sim day then move on until I've played them all, then move on to the next hood.  Next time I came back and played that house, the sims were ALL doing the "he's crazy" motion.  No one was dancing, no one was in asp failure.  I couldn't even remember which teen was the original target, because they ALL did it.

Next time I played that house, one of the teens was ready to send to Uni.  She gets to college, and she's still doing the "he's crazy" motion.  And for no reason in particular that I can find.

It seems that learning to dance is the common starting point for this behavior.  And I have all the EPs but Seasons.  This started after I got Pets, so maybe that's another bug feature of Pets?

And it's only the one family/household in only one hood of about 10 that I rotate through.  (I know, 10 is a lot, but at least I don't get bored!)

I've been using the buyable NPC & career reward outfits for awhile now, and I just noticed that the Paranormal and Natural Science career outfits aren't showing up for me as buyable.  I have the most recent file available.

I just recently realized I could use the shaman outfit & recolor it for a hood I recently started, and when I went to buy it in the game or load it in BodyShop it wasn't there.  When I went into CAS, I had to use debug mode to make these outfits show up there.

Is there a way I can make these available using SimPe?  I tried cloning the shaman clothing file, but I don't know what I need to do to it to make it available in BS.

Thanks!  I really love being able to have access to these.

Yep!  I had Intel integrated, too.

And I downloaded a "mini-mall" from somewhere, I think it had two floors, small lot, clothes and magaziines/games downstairs and groceries and toilets upstairs.  I still use it in one of my hoods.

The routing wasn't mentioned in the article I read, it was only about items with high poly counts that can slow down your game.  I remember the thing about fences mostly because of the Goth house.  That place was set up so stupid.  The paper would be delivered over around the side of the house instead of in the front.  And that's where Alexander would take his homework, too.

But it makes sense that the routing would slow things down a bit while the game calculates the sim's moves.

I've had sims glide across the floor in a seated position after playing chess.  Their heads were turned around and they'd glide for about a tile, stop, glide about another tile, stop, etc. until they got to where I sent them.  Then they'd stand up and do whatever I sent them to do.  And were fine after that.

The first time it happened was with Nervous Subject in Strangetown.  Since it had never happened before, I thought maybe there was something about him - that he was supposed to do it!  And that was base game only - before any patches or EPs.

It's only happened once or twice since then, to different sims in different neighborhoods.

And yes, I have the floating kids.  Had a toddler break a toy robot the other day, and sent Mom to fix it.  She had to lecture him first, and he floated at child's height while she lectured him.  It has only been children otherwise.  And that is only since Pets.

On my old computer, which had a crappy graphics card, lots like the Goth house were incredibly slow to do anything.  The day/night transition would take 5 minutes.

I upgraded the card & power supply, which improved things, but some lots, like the Goth's, were still slow at day/night transitions and moving from one story to the next.  I had read somewhere - maybe MTS2 - about fences and high poly count.  In particular, that wrought iron fence has a high poly count and will slow down the performance in general.

So I tried getting rid of a few fences and noticed that it did seem to make a difference in the amount of time it took to move from one floor to another, and the day/night transitions were faster.  Some trees can also affect the performance, so I got rid of one or two (who needs 10 trees on a lot, anyway?) and that also helped.

So when I got my new computer 18 months ago, I just kept in mind that the more fences, trees, etc. there are on a lot, the slower that lot will be in transitions.  This includes, zooming in/out, rotating the lot, etc.

My sims get from point A to point B fine, fence or no fence.  I'm not worried about the routing.  Just the overall performance.

And I have noticed that the lots I put fences on take maybe a second longer to transition than they used to.  My comp is 3.8 Ghz, 2 Gb RAM, GeForce 6800 w/256 MB RAM, so the time addition caused by the fences is negligible.  I just got used to not having to wait even a second for it to do anything!

It would be nice if there was just a way of keeping 3-bolt couples from being joined at the hip!  I purposely made some YAs with 3-bolt attraction so they would become attracted to the one I wanted for them, only to find they were flushing the toilet when the love of their life was in the shower.  Didn't USE the toilet, just went in and flushed it.

They are all now adults with children.  And still can't stand to be away from each other.  I'm getting to where I hate to play that hood, but I do because it's my newer version of my color genetics hood.  I figure after this gen, the rest of them shouldn't be so bad.  So I keep them occupied when they start heading for the room where the Other is relaxing/bathing.

But recently, I've noticed that my 2-bolt couples are starting to do the same thing.  I don't use any romance mods, and I only have a few hacks that aren't from here.  The only thing I use that is even close to affecting relationships is TJ's pregforall, and that doesn't affect relationships, just allows my same-sex couples to get pg.

I'd just like them to act like reasonably normal couples.  Wait - what am I saying - they're stupid Sims!

I used to run the fence around the whole lot, but when I started adding them back since Pets, I did the "doh!' thing and realized I only need it across the front.  So that's what I've been doing.

And I've been using the simplest fences that fit the look of the lot, too.  I just got used to not having them is all.

On most of my lots, the houses (with garage) tend to go nearly from one end of the lot to the other, and I still get wolves.  Lots are also placed side by side with no space in between.  I've always done this in the custom hood I've played the most.

Don't think I've tried the atomica.  I usually use the "ether" or whatever it's called.  Sometimes a stone wall.  I avoid the wrought iron and rail fences as much as possible.  I think I was going to use the atomica on one lot but didn't like the look for that particular lot, so I'll look at it again for some of the other ones.

Yeah, I had to rebuild a bunch of fences I had just gotten rid of prior to pets because I was trying to keep poly count down.  Not that I need to watch the poly count with my computer, I just read something awhile back about how fences can slow down performance because of it.  And I have lockable gates, disallowing pets.  Just don't like the idea that I now HAVE to have a fence to keep the pests out.

Oh, I've been needing this.  I'm tired of my toddlers/children going into aspiration failure because a wolf walks onto the lot when they're in bed asleep!

No plans on installing the buggy Pets patch, but I assume this works ok without patching, right?

Now if someone would just make a mod to stop the annoying dogs-rolling-in-flower-beds I'd be ok with strays showing up.  The holes are annoying, but since filling them adds to cleaning skill, I'll live with that!

I thought doing yoga on a coffee table required high body skill points.  Like 8 or better?  I've had sims who hadn't done much yoga but had high body skill do yoga on the coffee table.  And I didn't know it mattered which table -  any time I had them try it, it worked.

I thought logic was for meditation.

I've always had the cutscene play - whether the 1st kid or the 5th!

I have a dorm that I put the teen in to get the cutscene, then move that one out and put him/her in another, already occupied dorm.  If there's another, then I put that teen in the same empty dorm for the cutscene again, move out, etc.  I've been doing this for a long time with no problem.

I don't use the stay shrub because I don't need to.  The stuff stays there anyway.  Even when I thought it would disappear, it never did.

I just sent another set of twins the day before this happened with no problem.  I'm thinking one of this set of twins may have a problem, though.

Both of these guys were in green asp when I sent them to college.  One of the two would show a red hourglass above his head at the end of the cutscene when I put him in the dorm I always use for the drop off.  So I exited without saving, moved him back into the bin (he stays a teen when you do this), and tried putting him into another empty dorm, one of the 4 I use for playing.  He had the red hourglass here, as well.

So I decided to try a new dorm I had just gotten ready (already on campus, I just put some things on the lot to prepare it for use), since these two are the first of the 4th generation heading to college, and I'm trying to keep them separate from the 3rd gen college kids who are still there.  Still didn't get a parent, but he had the regular hourglass, indicating he grew up well.

What's funny about that is the fact that I name the dorms after the founders of the hood - Forrest Green Hall, Stone Blue Dorm, etc.  Without thinking about who would be going into this dorm, I had named it after his (well, their) paternal great-grandfather.  So he has the same last name as the founder the dorm is named after.

The other twin grew up well no matter which empty dorm I put him in, but I didn't get a parent for him, either.  I guess their parents just don't care!

Another thought I had was that these two were "conceived" on campus when their father was alien abducted using the EDS.  I had to suspend the pregnancy with the Insim, and when Dad graduated and went back to the family home he popped out right away.  I have a suspicion that this may be related to that bug from whichever EP it came with - OFB?

And the dad married the girl who was the result of the first abduction via EDS on campus I had.  She was born at Uni and I had to teleport her to the family home when her dad graduated.  (Didn't do it on purpose, they met at college and fell in love.)

Ah, I do love my sims!  They make their own story lines without any help from me!