I can't be the only one who plays this game and wonders if something is a game problem or something I did to mess with it.

I'm not talking about CC crashes or jump bugs, Those are obvious, and I know what to do. I would think most of us know that drill. I mean odd things that make you wonder if you downloaded something weird that caused a strange game behavior or if it's a Maxis limitation. And this is presuming one has patched, of course.

For instance, is something I downloaded preventing people within an apartment from e-mailing each other, or is it a game annoyance? I mean, I can e-mail people in my own house in real life!

Does something in the game prevent people in an apartment from going on a group outing, or did I do something weird, or is it a lot portal glitch? When they get into the cab, it just stands there. Fortunately, my Sims can walk to a lot, or go to a lot and call their group mates from there, so it's not that big a deal.

Is it a game glitch when sometimes, the custom hair on my warlocks will turn semi-transparent? I'm guessing it has to do with the hat they wear. That's fixable, fortunately, but a little alarming when your Sim literally looks like an airhead.

Does anyone else have such questions? Or answers? A big smile if you know the magical words, "There's a mod for that!"

Is it just me, or is there a reason why children can tickle and use certain play interactions on their siblings, but not on other children? Why are only those interactions affected while everything else works fine?

The group outing (and dates) from apartments is a flaw in the code. It can also apply in dorms, when dealing with dormies. The trouble is that when their motives hit a certain point, they'll go into their designated spaces to refresh them, and they won't come out till they're refreshed, which is usually an unacceptably long period. You might be able to cheat around this, but I tend to avoid it by calling the date or outing from a community lot, too.

With code this complex, and a game so frequently modded, and resource-heavy, people are certainly asking themselves these things all the time.

One of my Sims had no options on the Telephone / Groups menu other than Manage Groups. Even though he was in several groups. So he couldn't invite the group round or meet them on a community lot. Other Sims in the neighbourhood had both options.

Is it me or is it the game?

That sounds like a glitch specific to that sim or that lot. Buy him a cell phone. Does he have all the options on community lots? Yes? It's him. No? It's the lot.

I suddenly can't buy vacation lots from the frat. Other campus households can. A sim, or the lot? I don't feel like testing and keep forgetting about it.

It's me...I put some lighting mod (in Downloads?) and the lighting at dusk and dawn are irritating (as is the BLACKNESS of night) but I can't FIND it to remove it. And my candy-machine (it makes saleable/edible candy) doesn't work. On the other hand, the fridge was hanging open (and no one could interact with) so I peeked; did you know there is a huge radish inside? and beer?

Is it me... in a previous installation when I tried to use the phone to ring a sim they would lift the receiver and immediately put it down again. Phones would not work at all. (Though now with Freetime I wish they still wouldn't.)

k6ka .... I just went into the game and experienced the same situation. It's possible we have the same mods that are messing with this interaction, but I would guess it's a game gltich.

Mr_Valentine90 ... that might be a mod conflict. And admittedly, in many households, now that I have AL, the phone is on silent mode, thank you very much.

It probably was, thankfully now my phones work fine. I tend to reduce how many times the phone rings now, but it doesn't stop it from ringing and I do like it when family members ring. I just don't need to know when my sims hobby enthusiasm goes up! I can check it myself!

Stop ringing me and get out of my house!

I had to remove Pescado's apthack because it disabled the ability to invite a fellow apartment resident over. They'd say they were coming then never leave their apartment.

I didn't have that problem with that hack, but there is a very good possibility in your case that it's not playing nicely with another hack or object. I had a similar problem with the Christianlov skintone changer. On my main game ... fine. On the tester game on my other computer, my daughter reported that even though I have several of the hacks from the main game on that one, for some reason, it conflicted terribly with the easel, Sims couldn't paint. I had to take the changer out of the test game. (I eventually took it out of the main game as well, once I reset all the neighborhoods. Sim PE changes skintones perfectly well. Well, almost perfectly.)

Right now, the tour guide is giving me heartburn. For some reason, he has a very low, short-term relationship with the first Sim I take on a vacation who talks to him. The other Sims with the vacationer get no such memory, even if they talk to him next. Just the first one.

Ordinarily, this is not a problem. After all, Sims do form some form of relationships with non-playables, I believe, even if they do so the "Maxis" way. I believe the game would probably at least stick a "have met" token in there. The problem was that this stupid tour guide actually called one of my other Sims previously, and seeing this smiling creepy guy in my panel makes me nervous now. From a previous post, I found out that he's not supposed to get chatty like that.

Now, if I see that he's on there, I put the Sim Blender on another hotel lot, send the affected Sim to the destination, wait for that pesty guide, and remove the "has met" token from the panel, just in case. It doesn't seem to come back if the first Sim talks to the guide again. I THINK the first instance that caused that phone call might have been a social mod gone wonky that I removed for another reason (not wonky enough for the Super Hug Bug, but perhaps wonky enough for this bug), and the guide may never call anyone again, but just to be safe ...

This oddity is strange enough to be either a Maxis OR a mod glitch, since it seems to happen ONLY with the first Sim to talk to a tour guide, and only the first time. If ALL Sims who spoke to the guide had the same experience, this would make sense. Right now, it's kind of bizarre.

I even tested the game vanilla, BTW, and got the same thing. I was getting THAT obsessed over it! But the Sim Blender has helped curb this obsession, thankfully. Thank you, TwoJeffs, wherever you are.

I never noticed this, and I am playing with kids all the time, being my favorite age in this game :0 )
Could it be relationship related?
Siblings normally *should* have a much better relationship between them than between them towards other children..just because they've been interacting together more, living together.
It would just make sense ? Since your choice of options on a sim's pie menu is affected by the relationship score.
But maybe you tested this already and me is talking for nothing here.

I love your thread Gazania. I often wondered this...
When toddlers stopped showing up on community lots, I almost cried..first, realizing it was just a glitch, second..because EA fixed it.

It's been a while ... I never even realized toddlers could be on community lots.

This can make things worse. You remember such and such happened. You don't believe your memory is that awful. Yet one day, an EP or SP later, you realize it no longer occurs. Thankfully, I have found a couple of mods that fixed the problem. They at least reassured me that I wasn't going totally crazy.

Peni, for some reason, my dormies can't buy vacation lots AT ALL. However, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a mod glitch. It doesn't bother me terribly, so I haven't been too concerned about it. But now I'm wondering if that's related to a mod we both have in common. Which one is a DARN good question.

EDITED because I left out a somewhat important word.

I made my own lightning mod because of that. I have dawn all night, until dusk, because blackness is dumb considering how many hours of the day are night-time in the Sims.

Lighting mods usually go in the game installation files. TS Data/Res/Lights -> Lighting.txt, I believe. As I recall it, you replace the original with yours, so you'd need the original to remove yours. You also need to figure out which EP/SP you installed it under.

@Peni: Andrew can't buy a cellphone because he doesn't have University. Good idea for a test, though.

No, it's not relationship related. The kids are friends with all the other kids in the neighborhood, and yet whenever I issue the Tickle interaction, it just drops out of the queue. However, tickling a sibling is no problem. Most likely an EAxian glitch.

Hiya I have hair-related is it me's. The first one was when I downloaded some default replacement hairs, and they kept getting kind of bent! It was really weird, I thought if there was a conflict, that they just wouldn't show up or something (I have only got one replacement for each mesh). I've since put them in a folder of their own, and the problem has stopped (touch wood).

The other thing is, the hair underneath my propeller hat is really weird. I'll try to add a picture later. I don't know what it's supposed to look like, as I never used it until recently, so is it me?

For some reason I don't receive bills at my residential sim homes anymore. I do in apartments though and I didn't download any 'stop-bills' hacks.

Ooh, that sounds like a VBT. I'd troubleshoot that right quick.

Is it me or this baby's skintone much darker than it should be?

Do you have that particular skintone that you see on the baby? I find that even if you geneticize, you get some interesting results when two Sims have a kid. The game has some interesting genetic twists. I find them fascinating.

If you don't have that skintone, or you don't geneticize, it could be a game glitch, I suppose.

Charmful .. that sounds like a hack conflict. My Sims get their bills just fine. But it can also be some sort of modded object. Or my favorite ... two mods/hacked objects/anything else that don't play nicely together. Does the same thing happen in a vanilla game? To me, that's a main point.

Did cellphones come with Nightlife or University? If its Nightlife then AndrewGloria can, if its University then he can't.



Its been awhile since I've had a dormie buy a vacation home, but mine can. Juliette Capp was able to buy one while she was in college and took a vacation while she was still in college. I think Lilith Pleasant also bought one while she was in college.

University, like I said in my post

I think I do have that skintone in my game, in fact I just downloaded some geneticised skintones 2 days ago. I was just a bit shocked like who's the father?!

I can't remove those skintones now though can I? The child will have no skintone otherwise?

You can't just remove it, no. You'd have to fix any Sim that has it in SimPE. It's easy to do, even if you're not a wiz at SimPE. The problem are random townies that may have spawned with the skintone, because you won't know who they are.

hmm yes, perhaps I will leave it. Seems a lot of effort to fix one skintone... it's just very dark - and my town already has a lot of dark skinned sims.

I was trying to have a nice balance, but perhaps that will come further down the generation line. Thanks for the help.