With constrain floor elevation set to false, you need to play with the leveling tool and the raise terrain tool until you get an acceptable result. It may take some time before you find a technique that works for you (I think I spent a week messing with this before I got it right), and you may need to turn constrain floor elevation on and off as you go along (I haven't done this in some time, so I don't remember the details). Once you've got the foundation they way you want it, you flatten each level above that until your floors are flat and the walls are straight. You may need to flatten areas of the house several times over the course of the project. Also, there will always be some compromises on the ground floor regarding windows and such.

You need to do this using a foundation—you can't do it with just walls on the ground. Because the interior of the basement level will be on the ground inside the foundation, once you're done you can take out some of the foundation tiles in the back part of the basement and replace them with wall tiles, so you can have doors and windows.

It is difficult to explain in words, so you will just need to experiment. In the end you can expect something like in these pics. You can't see it in the pictures, but the sloping ground is contained within the inner and outer walls of the foundation. This is the trick:  To shift the sloped tiles from outside the foundation to within the foundation walls, resulting in exterior ground that is flush with your foundation instead of creating a trench around the house.

Note that this is one of my earliest building efforts; my decorating has improved significantly since then. Note also the trick I used for the attic room. With the roof on, the only windows are in the dormer, but in play mode with the roof not showing, all the windows in the attic work as if there were no roof. Of course, this wouldn't work in real life.   

With testing cheats enabled, you can drag the skill bars down to where they're below what she needs for the semester (or to zero if you like), and make her earn those skill points all over again. She's already gotten the scholarship money and it's too late to for it to be taken away.    

That shouldn't be difficult. Just don't go to class except for the final. Manage the grade bar by getting the needed skills on the first day, doing the term paper the second day, and then fill in with assignments as necessary to reach the desired level. A paper and one assignment should get you to about 1/2 full, which is a C. Only do as much group research as is necessary to fulfill the want, and do it with only one other sim. Complete other sims' assignments to fulfill the assignment want. Don't socialize with professors or discuss school with other sims.

Semester points are assigned on a per-hour basis, so your actual results may vary. Classes score 100 points per hour, assignments 90 points, and the paper 108 points.

An easier way is to not get all the skill points needed to open the entire performance bar for the semester. Your sim won't get a higher grade than the bar can go, no matter how much school work she does. If two skills are needed and she has only one, the best grade she can get is a "C". If she needs three skill points and has only two, she will probably get a "B", but will certainly not get an "A".

If she doesn't do homework or go to class, she won't get an "A". Just watch the Class Performance bar and don't let it go much above half way. If you want her to get aspiration points for doing assignments, have her do other sims' assignments. I don't know if having another playable sim influence her to write his or her term paper will fulfill the write-term-paper want, but it's worth a try, especially if the other sim has the want to influence someone to write his or her paper.

That is the backup. Why would I back up uncompressed files when I have compressed originals? Besides, hard drive space is the least expensive thing in my PC, other than the floppy drive. If I need more room, I can copy the archived files to DVD (because I don't do my tape backups often enough). If I have only one hard drive, I can add a 250GB SATA 3 drive for US$70, and improve my Windows performance by moving my paging file to the new drive (this is just an example—I'm actually running three 36GB SCSI drives and my motherboard doesn't support SATA). Furthermore, the filenames of the actual items are frequently most uninformative, and the ZIP or RAR may include useful readme files or images. Also, the original archive files may contain more than one game item (and if they don't, I often create a single multi-item ZIP to replace a bunch of releated single-file zips).

Finally, stuff isn't available online in perpetuity. By keeping the original archive files, I have a repository of items that are no longer available on the Web.


Preserving digital information is becoming an increasingly urgent challenge   

Organizing an already-full Downloads folder is a painful and thankless task. The easiest way IMO is to rebuild it from scratch from your archived ZIP and RAR files (you do keep the files you download, right?). You can create a Downloads folder at a location outside the game folders, and build it up over time, at your convenience. When it's done, just replace the existing Downloads folder with your new one.

One real advantage of this method is that you're likely to end up culling out a lot of stuff you don't really use or want.

You can also move and delete files from within the Clean Installer. This will show you the type and in-game name of the item, but some things are difficult to identify from the accompanying thumbnail. You can sort by name, category, folder, or MD5 (useful for finding duplicates).

Properly done, the only file in the root Downloads folder will be the CEP.   

Hmmm . . . have you considered seeking professional help?   

Since this is a fairly recent thread, I'm going to jump in here with a question about zero-value dorms. This is with EPs through OFB and no stuff packs. I'm playing with a secondary account in a game that is mostly hack-free (except for some bug fixes and TwoJeff's lazy walk killer), and no custom content except for some clothing and eyes.


I have two playables and six dormies in a dorm I built in the Sims State neighborhood. I noticed the mail carrier would come but there was never a bill, and there were no stuck bills to be nuked with the lot debugger. I tried resetting the mailbox with no results, and then used DBG - Force Bills to try to force a bill delivery. The mail carrier came back, but popped a message that there was nothing billable in the dorm. This is new construction full of fairly expensive stuff:  As a residential lot, it had a value of §161,000. I went into buy mode, clicked the value icon, and the dorm's value is zero.

This dorm uses the "vanishing room" technique described elsewhere on MATY by Grater, by which all the Myne doors are placed on a single "hidden" room with a stereo in it, and the real dorm rooms have regular doors and decent beds. The dormies go into the vanishing room to sleep but then come back out because of the stereo, and behave mostly like normal sims—they use the beds and showers as needed (although they still occasionally pass out or pee themselves). This is with nouniprotect (it's not entirely hack-free).

Shortly after I began playing this lot I had moved the playables out temporarily to do some remodelling; however, I did not change the zoning from dorm to residential, using instead the dorm tools cheat to enable all the build-mode controls. While remodelling I did delete all the Myne doors (which still had dormie portraits on them), but I replaced them before saving the lot. I don't know if that would have any affect.

Out of curiosity I went into an uninhabited Maxis dorm in the same neighborhood, one I have never played, and it too had a value of zero.

Any ideas why the dorms in this neighborhood have no value? The dorm I built myself has a large-screen TV and game console, two expensive telescopes, a couple weight machines, a pool table, piano, hot tub, jukebox, chess tables, pinball machines, quite a bit of comfy furniture, four computers, several bookcases, three easels, and eight teak single beds; also artwork and plants. This is definitely not a low-value lot!

It's not really a problem.   

Then again, neither is the thing they're supposed to prevent.


What constitutes the most convenient route depends on the starting point, which will vary from trip to trip (especially if you have more than one exterior door in your building). If you have more than one car, sims will frequently route across the lawn to get to the one in the driveway, if there's not a fence in the way. This can speed up the whole process,  preventing their being late for work, which, as J.M. points out elsewhere, is worse for job rating than not going at all.

Using a garage as a component of a fence system can work if it suits the overall design of the lot, but when money is an issue, my sims usually get a car before they get a garage (if they get one at all—it doesn't rain in my game).

You can extract the music as MP3 files from the appropriate sound packages in the core game files. You need to go into the Sound folder for each EP you have if you want all the music (each EP adds new channels). In SimPE, you right-click on the file you want to extract in the Resource List, and choose the Extract option.

Of course, your file name will just be a long string of numbers, so you'll need to go into the game and listen to each track in the Audio panel in the game controls to find out the song titles.

Nah. I just turn the refrigerator to the wall before the party starts.

You still end up funneling your sims through the gate(s) to get to the car, and it already takes too long for them to get in the damn car and go to work as it is. I could run a fence across the entire front, using a garage (assuming I have one) as part of the fence, but sims can still come through the garage door. And of course there are those pesky aesthetic issues.

There are no animals in my game so their intrusion isn't a concern.   

What I really want is a proper gate for the driveway instead of having to throw together some Rube Goldberg fence layout just to keep people off the lot if I want to (which I usually don't, so I don't use any hack-like visitor controller things except to ban Mrs. Crumplebottom and to make some restricted-client community lots (teen-only, for example)). Of course, the on-street parking gambit allows you to forego the driveway altogether.     

You can see what it really looks like in the second reply (third post) here.


It didn't really work for what I wanted to do with the interior. Unfortunately, sim scale doesn't mirror real-world scale, and compromises are necessary for game play (I built a Sims version of my actual house, which is rather small, and it looks huge; there was no way to make it playable at a scale of one-tile = three feet, especially when I needed to place stairs that turn 180 degrees at a landing).
 

The front entrance is under the upper deck or balcony (whatever you care to call it). Sticking roof structures under decks is problematic (or I haven't figured out how to do it).

But have at it—you can do to it whatever you like. The first thing Reggikko did was tear out a bunch of the interior walls.


Well, they're concentrated in two places, so it shouldn't be too difficult. No plastic flowers here, but if the gardener can't do it, influence can be brought to bear. Temporarily making the gardener selectable and dragging his or her active points to nine or ten can help considerably with the gardening (this is helpful with maids, too—make them active and neat).

If always-perfect-plants is more than you want (I don't use it myself), Windkeeper at TSR has plastic versions of the Maxis plants, for those situations where you need them, either because you don't feel like gardening or you want to place flowers in a place where the gardener can't to them.


No problem with these fences or any others. I have a Radeon X800 GTO (AGP) that I flashed with a hacked BIOS to unlock the four disabled pixel pipelines (from 12 to 16) and give a slight boost to the GPU and memory clocks.  It's cooled with an Arctic Cooling ATi Silencer 5.   

LIke TaWanda says, you can turn off the snap-to-grid feature with a boolprop command (I have an alias in my userstartup.cheat file to make it easy). You need to turn it back on when you're done, because things like doors and windows can't be placed otherwise. It is good for placing things like lights, tables, and paintings. You can use it for custom rugs but not for the Maxis rugs, which don't display properly when off the grid. Also, I believe you run into problems with chairs if you move a table or desk off the grid.

No invisible objects in this house, although in the original I used Tiggy027's invisible wall cutouts and (visible) cutout frames to create a counter cutout in a full wall where the half-wall is in the contest version. This was more aesthetically pleasing and allowed the refrigerator to be placed in a more optimal position on the opposite side of the kitchen from where it is in the contest house.

A fence is useless for security as long as we can't gate the driveway. You could put the driveway outside the fence, but then you run into unacceptable aesthetic and gameplay issues (having to dick around with going through a gate to get to the car). 

If you had been paying attention, you would have recognized that I began playing this house long before I moved to Louisiana. You would also recognize that this house is not in Reggikko's style.


Hey, thanks L!   

Here are some pics:




























You can see here that there is plenty of room for reward items:

Some of you have seen this house in its full custom-content glory, as most of the action in my now-ancient MATY neighborhood pics took place in it. I've had a lot of gameplay hours in this house, and I can say that it plays quite well, even with seven adult sims, and it looks really good! It is expandable if necessary (I built a lab for Sim Reggikko off the downstairs back bedroom, with an observation deck on its roof), and there is plenty of room for aspiration and career rewards in the side and back yards—there is even room outside the fence in back.

The original looks a lot better, with modern full-wall windows and sliding doors on the upstairs front and side, and BobL's open-plan stairs inside and out. The paint and flooring are much better also, as are many of the furnishings and all the artwork. But this is the best I could do with all-Maxis content.

The lot for download is 100% hack-free. For some unknown reason the Sims2Pack includes one recolor of SimWardrobe's arch column (but not the mesh itself) that I didn't even use in the house, so I don't know why it's there. Installing just the lot file using the Clean Installer will not affect the house in any way.

The house is §165,000 furnished as in the pics below, and §50,000 unfurnished. After everything was done and packaged, I changed the name of the Sims2Pack to HegelianContestHouse, but the house itself is named simply Contest House. Sorry! It should be easy to pick out by its thumbnail, though.   

Hegelian's Rancho Reggikko

*Requires all EPs through OFB.*

What? There's a past??

Same here. Not a clue.   


I use that too. So goodbye to No Meet Self While Working.   

I'm pretty careful with my hacks, but can't seem to identify one that I've been using for some time. What is particularly baffling is that I can't find it anywhere in my hack archive, which contains nearly all the hacks I've ever downloaded, including those I don't currently use, organized by version. I also can't find it on any of the Web sites from which I would be likely to download.

The file is No Meet Self While Working.package. I suspect it is the work of the non-awesome, but I could be mistaken.   

Any ideas? I'm running OFB.

It would appear the term "Hotchkiss gun" was used most often for a 47mm light "mountain" cannon manufactured by the French arms and automobile company Société Anonyme des Anciens Etablissements Hotchkiss et Cie, founded in 1867 by an engineer from Connecticut. Some of these were bought by the U.S. Army and used in the invasions of Cuba and the Philippines in the 1890s, and against the Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Another well-known Hotchkiss gun was a 37mm revolving cannon that could fire 43 shells per minute; this was used against the Ute people in 1879.

Trollope, Lovecraft, and some of the others (I'm not going to use Google!) . . . if you're going to use literary names, there are plenty of good ones. For some reason your list brought immediately to mind Strindberg and Swinburne; also Knut Hamsen, William Gass, Pynchon, Böll, and Grass; Cortázar, Calvino, and Eco; Beattie, Berryman, Borges, Bagehot, Bolingbroke, Bibesco, Bax, Bunyon. And so on.   

Hotchkiss had something to do with cannons. 

Lol! Well don't I feel stupid. But maybe other folks might find what I wrote useful (or not!). 

Anyway, in the regional lists included in the U.S. edition of the game, the Russian, Bulgarian, Cyrillic, and Ukrainian lists use the default American names, but the Czech lists are male and female versions of real Czech or Czech-like names.

Yeah, I like that one too. I already have a Lola sim I've used more than once. She began sim-life as Lola Längerfeld, but in the cc- and hack-free neighborhood I've been playing recently she is Lola Villeneuve as a result of joining with Joanie Villeneuve, another real name from my work. The original Lola was created as a potential mate for a guy named Gordon Zephyr (not a real name).


Can you tell us the correct pronunciation of "Kajsa"?


This common in several Slavic languages, including Czech and Bulgarian. A Czech example would be Martina Navratilova, whose step-father's name was Navrátil. There are plenty of literary examples, such as Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin/Anna Karenina. You can easily see the form in the current crop of female Russian tennis players (Sharapova, Dementieva, Kuznetsova, Myskina, and Dinara Safina, sister of Marat Safin). From the Czech Republic you have former players Hana Mandlíková and Jana Novotná.

Spanish is another interesting case, with children usually given two surnames, the father's followed by the mother's maiden name. It is common to refer to individuals by the father's surname (i.e., Gabriel García Márquez could be Gabriel García, although in formal writing he is generally referred to a García Márquez; in either case, he would not be referred to simply as Márquez). Since this is not the practice in Anglo-American culture, the names we use to refer to many famous Spanish historical figures in the Americas are incorrect. For example, the governor and explorer we know as Francisco Coronado would more correctly be called Francisco Vázquez (Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luxán); in documents of his own time, he is Vázquez or Vázquez de Coronado. It is my understanding that it is up to the individual whether the father's or mother's name is used, or both.

An example is the remarkable Cabeza de Vaca, who in 1528 set out from Tampa Bay as part of an expedition of 300 men, exploring north and west along the Gulf coast, shadowed by their ships offshore. The ships lost contact and after a year of looking, returned to New Spain (Mexico). The expedition made its way from inland down to the coast at Apalachee Bay (south of Tallahassee, Fla.) and built rafts on which to sail back to New Spain, and in the fall of 1528 two of the rafts beached on Galveston Island (about 650 straight-line miles) or possibly an island off the south Louisiana coast. Here they were captured and enslaved by the local people, and over the next few years most of the Spaniards died. In September 1534, Cabeza de Vaca and three others escaped and headed toward Mexico on foot. Using mostly worthless European medical practices, Cabeza de Vaca earned a reputation as healer among the local populations, and instead of being treated as an escapee, he and his companions were greeted warmly, being fed, clothed, sheltered, and given escorts. In July 1536 they encountered a Spanish slaving party in what is now the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa; they had an escort of several hundred Pima-speaking natives.

Anyway, his full name was Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Since his mother's family was of higher status than his father's, he chose to be known as Cabeza de Vaca. My source suggests that Hernando de Soto would have been known to his contemporaries as Soto. From this, it is not clear whether Juan Ponce de Léon would have been known as Ponce, as Léon, or as Ponce de Léon.

Any Spanish person who cares to correct any of this should feel free to do so.   

Is this in just one lot or all lots? Sounds like something is buggered and needs to be deleted (lot or neighborhood). You've tried running with no hacks installed? Also, you've not messed around in the core game files, right?