In a game that is remarkably loose in some ways - think about the lifetime goals of romance sims - it's a PIA in others.

The Pleasant twins have switched partners in my game.  So I have badass Lilith with the Broke punk, and goodytwoshoes Angel with Dirk the budding preppy.  After they all graduated, I set their formalwear to wedding attire because that was next.  To amuse myself, I had the cleancut couple woohooing in the car every chance I got, while the punky kids were saving it for marriage.  Well, Angela got pregnant before the wedding, and when I had them get married, she wore a dress that I had never seen before.  A dark purple dress.

I had set her to wedding dress before she got pregnant.  Apparently a pregant sim won't wear a white dress as formalwear.  (It was the silvery spangled one, so it wasn't even a "wedding" dress.  Sheesh.)  WTF?

*sigh*

You can also buy them any dang thing they want, even the stupid ungainly bowling alley, stash it in their inventory, then pause the game, stick it on the lawn or something, and sell it from the buy screen WITHOUT unpausing the game. 

They never miss it - at least they don't in my game.     And you get the money back so that you can buy them the next highly expensive, highly impractical thing they want...

Aaah, thank you, Kala.  I'm anal, too.

I've heard that custom paintings bloat the lot sizes.  Is it advisable to use them?  (My 'puter is slooow while playing, and I just don't want it to go BOOM!  I have only a tiny amount of custom content, the rest are recolors.)

I like µTorrent.  It's compact and easy to use.     I've also tried Azureus and a couple other obscure ones.

I just restarted Pleasantview, and now I'm curious...  What do you do with your Pleasantview?  I'm looking for a few variations/funny stories/things that work out well in your game.

In mine, Nina and Dina get knocked up by Don Lothario and have two baby girls named Tina and Gina.  Don jilts Cassie at the altar, and she immediately calls Darren Dreamer, proposes to him on the front lawn, and walks back to the arch with her new groom with hardly a pause in the wedding party.  Mortimer lures Don toward the cowplant, and then the family uses the resultant zombie as live-in help.

Mary-Sue Pleasant kicks her hubby to the curb, her parents move in, make friends & teach the girls how to do homework, and promptly die of boolprop-induced old age, leaving Mary-Sue with enough dough to start a business.

Malcolm Landgraab (or is it Landgrabb?) snags Dina Caliente and takes over the business world with his two badge-laden permaplat servos, while she stays at home doting on their daughter.  (Until she grows weary of being a trophy wife and strikes out in the business world on her own!)

Brandi Broke is a stay-at-home mom with ten kids and no husband.  Every time she yearns for another baby she visits the sperm bank (another boolprop trick using a likely-looking townie passing by) and has another.  She supports them all in garish style by writing a string of romance novels.  Her house is decorated like a Safari Bordello, but she likes it...

So how does Pleasantview fare in YOUR game?

I was soooo mad at my crazies.  They would all stand around in the cafeteria and stare at the controllable woman cooking.  (oooooh, foooood...)  Then they would be hungry, but would they eat the pork chops that she had prepared?  NO.  Instead they would all bodyslam each other on the way to the fridge, line up with individual pots of mac and cheese, and take turns burning the kitchen down.  Everyone would freak out at the fire, then fall like dominoes for the resulting aspiration failure.

After a visit from Dr. Freud, they would stand around in their underwear with their clouds of stink around them and cry because they wanted to gain skill points.  The unoccupied skill objects in the dayroom remained... well, unoccupied.

Meanwhile, the controllable one was uncontrollably attracted to all the stinky underwear and walk around daydreaming about all the pathetic sobbing creatures, hearts cascading from her thought-bubbles.

(Aaaaand my spouse just reminded me that people do wierd helpless shit like this all the time in real life.  So the Sims are more realistic than I'm comfortable with...)

*snort*  Guess it doesn't work like real life.  I have a finicky dog, and I *will* not coddle him.  If he doesn't eat his food, he doesn't eat.  Eventually he gives in and concedes that dog food, while lacking appeal, is indeed edible.

No matter which bowl I choose, it will not let me call them to eat. (I can invite strays to eat, however...)

I'll try the boolprop, or offering them people food, then scolding them if they eat it.

I moved the Crittur family in with the Broke family when I reinstalled my game.  I went to play them tonight, and the dogs are starving.  I have one of each of the pet dishes with food in it.  I even cleaned the bowls and refilled them with food.  They just won't eat, although they're begging the sims to feed them.  I'm afraid that they'll be taken away before I figure out what's wrong.

I had the "approved" FFS hacks in place, but removed them to see if it made a difference.  Nope.

There is no transformation in this case.  The knowledge teen isn't a werewolf, and the wolf in question is just a wolf (not the Leader of the Pack).  Do the wolves transform, too?  I've never seen it.

But thanks for the info.  I'll keep my new werewolf from howling at his friends and family.  His wife has the want to hear him howl, so I'll try that and see if she freaks.

I'm also having problems with the memories/aspirations of one of my knowledge teens.  He has the wants "play with Balin" (a wolf) and the fear "see a wolf" - and it keeps coming up.  So everytime his wolfie friend comes over, he is promptly terrified and his aspiration bar takes a mighty hit, then he runs out to play with the damn thing and it fills up a bit.  (But never enough to get him back into the gold where I try to keep him.)

*sigh*

Thanks guys.  Guess I wasn't the only one pissed off about it.  At least the bonus items for pets aren't "matching set" items.  It didn't annoy me that there were different ones, just that they were matching items.

What were we supposed to do?  Buy 3 of the Glamour Life packs to get all the items.  Yeah... riiiiight.

Wait. *thinks back to Sims Special Edition, Deluxe Edition, SuperDuper Edition, blah, blah, blah...*  Yeah, I guess that they were thinking that.  After all, I did buy four or five different releases of the sims 1 just to get the super-special wallpaper or whatever.  Silly me.

Y'know, it really annoys me that the "bonus" item for buying GLS at "Blah-Mart" (I forget which store)  is actually an item that should have been part of a set!  (The TV to match the stereo and the furniture...)  It's not like I'd have a chance to buy it at the store, since the only thing we have in town is a Wal-Mart.  And when I went to snatch the pop art pic at their site, the link wasn't working.  So I felt doubly screwed.

That doesn't bother me any more, but it still irks that I couldn't get my hands on that tv to match the set.

And yes, I am anal.  Why do you ask? 

I'm running the Asylum Challenge right now.  When it's over, I'll move the permaplat sim and the crazy of her choice into a new house.  (I made all the crazies men and the psuedo-sane one a woman with stink and underwear turn-ons.  So there's perpetually romance in the air...)  Then I'll create a bachelorette, spiff up the asylum with a hot tub and some nicer furniture, and run the Bachelorette Challenge.  We'll see how it goes.

Desperately.  *nods*

Eh.  Suboptimal playing.  I just don't like the way they're turning out.  Guess I'll just nuke the neighborhood and start over.  Unfortunately, they had started a business, and I don't want to nuke all the memories of all the townies they encountered.

Thanks for confirming that it would be more trouble than it was worth to do this. 

Ummm... I knew a grown man who had blonde pubes.  All of his body hair was golden; the effect was very attractive.  Kinda strange though... he was a light brunette with reddish facial hair.  So I guess it happens.

I just restarted playing Pleasantview, and already I've screwed up the Broke family.  I've played each simfamily for ten days, and all the rest of them are on track.  Can I start the Broke family over without displacing the rest or causing a BFBVFS?

Conversely, could I save individual families to plop into Pleasantview after I uninstall all/reinstall with Pets?  I'm asking you guys because I've grown weary of advice I've gotten on the BBS because they are totally heedless of any damage that could be caused by bits of SWAF and memory floating about...

That solved the problem with the chair completely.  All the thumbnails even show up correctly.  Custom recolors of the sofa still don't work correctly, but I will redownload them and that should fix the problem.

I hadn't thought about the fact that the two stuff packs were not true expansions, so the fixes wouldn't necessarily be included in the patches for them.

Thanks everyone!

*smacks self in head*  Yup.  I do mean the FFS patch.  I will reapply the OFB one and see what happens.

When I re-installed, I only applied the latest patch for Glamour.  I was under the impression that all the previous patches did not have to be re-applied, as they are included in the next stuff pack/expansion pack.  D'you think I should try applying the patches as I install the expansions?

I have had a problem with the Mission living room set since I installed it...

The catalog preview is often just black, or the upholstery or frame is black instead of the color I have chosen.  When I place the sofa/loveseat/chair in my sim's house, it looks "dull" - the color is very dark and greyish, almost as if it was placed in a sealed room, no matter the lighting conditions.  It can be in front of a wall of glass in broad daylight, with every light in the house turned on, yet the color does not brighten.  I do not have the problem with the dining or bedroom sets, just the sofa/loveseat/chair.

I did not have any custom content installed when I first noticed the problem.  I ADDED Hairfish's recolors at a later point.  It neither seemed to improve nor worsen the condition.

I did a complete re-install.  I cleared out the old folders with anything sim-related.  Didn't help.

I thought I may have had a corrupt objects file.  I extracted the one off the disc and replaced the one I had in my program files.  Didn't help.

I have run out of ideas on how to fix this.