Well good for you. I am also quite satisfied with the quasi-intelligent behaviour my sims show without me having to herd them. That is probably because I run Awesome along with most of the NRAAS suite, excluding NRAAS Story Progression. I am the God. Don't want any SP. I rotate between all my residents instead of SP creating lag and bloat. And the non-active residents seem to do all right by themselves while I am doing some god-business with their neighbours.

So, I just happened to be looking at something related to UL, and found out that every expansion that added something annoying when starting a new neighborhood, such as the University mascot, Time Portal, Weather Stone, etc were all done by the Salt Lake team at Maxis. Gah, seriously. Who thought it would be a good idea to spam you with all of that crap every single time? They're all like the Rod Humble of TS3. Couldn't stand that in TS2.

Discovered that the fire pole that came with Ambitions cannot be stacked from floor to floor. It would be so awesome to have one continuous pole leading from the very top floor to the lowest level of basement, but no, we have to place them haphazardly and wait for the dozy sims to journey from one to another. At least Into the Future allows the tube elevators to be stacked--absolutely wonderful for houseboats!

It probably wouldn't be so bad if the sims in TS3 didn't do that weird sidestepping thing after every movement. One of my very, very, very, very few complaints with TS3. Imagine if they're at the top of the fire station. Walk over to the pole, readjust for routing, slide down the pole, head over to the second pole, readjust, slide down. One sim hour later, they're finally on the ground floor of the fire station. Head over to the fire engine, readjust, and finally they're in, and we can only hope the poor sim family they're trying to rescue hasn't been cooked alive at this point.

I have no need to imagine it. I have lived it. Honestly, the routing is the worst thing about TS3. Move, you idiots! MOVE!


Another than that, I love TS3 to bits.

I have wondered how the Sims 3 game engine kept sims in the future with future clothes and the Sims in the three "foreign" countries in World Adventures keep them in each country's outfits.
I've been playing WA and spending a lot of time in China... short answer, they don't. As they age up their outfits change and they wear inexplicably random clothes and hair just like the home town.

Really? I don't think I've ever seen that happen. Then again, I've had aging turned off continously since.....2011, I think. I can only speak for randomly generated Sims (damn them) and they usually stick to the dresscode. In the future, I don't mind that so much, but the idea that everyone in China only wears traditional clothing and that the French have a long-lasting love affair with berets and beige capri pants doesn't sit entirely right with me.

It's the same deal with the romanticization of historical clothing you see all the time. In reality, they were quite superflous in size and ugly by today's standards. But it happens all the time. I'm sure there are still people today that think Japanese fashion and culture is exactly as it was during the feudal era.

The game plays to American stereotypes, and has a large cringe factor. But, it's just a game... or is it really my entire life?

And yet I can't for the life of me get it to look like actual real world America. I mean we all know Will Wright intended the original game to be in the style of an idealized 50s suburban America, and TS3 continues that, but these roads are WAY too nice for it to be real life America and there's no homeless drug addicts anywhere, either.

Hell even the odd abandoned warehouse in a forested area area looks too clean.

The closest I've ever seen in terms of atmosphere was coasterboi's Los Aniegos world. He really captured that L.A. feel well. I wish there were more like it that were already released, but at least his has been.

I was testing a dog park I built. It was the middle of the day, several neighbors were there, enjoying a lovely afternoon. I look over to the bone shaped doggie swimming pool and see this:


Then this guy appears and


Since Nature abhors a vacuum...


And really, I should have seen this coming

What I've always suspected I have now finally paid more attention to and confirmed.
There are a couple of seemingly identical objects in both Buy Mode and under Community Objects in Build Mode, the searchlights, the picnic tables and the fire pits, among others. But these are not identical and function differently in game:

- The searchlights in Build Mode are non-interactable and light up automatically on Late Night venues during the times they are open, and in front of theaters or stadiums they indicate a concert or game. The searchlights in Buy Mode, on the other hand, have to be switched on manually and do not respond automatically to events.
- The picnic table in Buy Mode is just that, a table with benches, while the picnic table in Build Mode allows inactive Sims to autonomously start a picnic on community lots.
- The firepit in Buy Mode allows Sims to roast ingredients they have in their inventories or if they haven't any it gives at least the option to roast marshmallows; the firepit in Build Mode allows neither but instead gives a random amount of ingredients to roast (these are already on the stick).
(Roasting a seahorse, btw, will look like roasting a slice of salmon )

The barbecue grills I haven't tested yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they act in different ways, too.

I have also discovered that my Sim's NPC neighbour in his apartment must be neat; she tends to clean the front yard of old newspapers.

Roast is an ingredient for Stuffed Turkey as well, but I don't think there are any other recipes - aside from the Duck Pet Food - that use it, curiously enough.

Why didn't I think of this before? Go to the future, level up... but that usually means all the future sims age and it messes up interacting with them...
But bring a future plumbot back with you and use the plumbot to reset the time line! Doh!

*Random*
The yellow arch that comes with Island paradise is inspired by the Arco de Santa Catalina in Antigua

You can discover black holes when searching the galaxy and they're worth a heck lot (jackpot for my impoverished challenge family)

You can turn off vampires and celebrities in the options menu! I had no idea, and now I can end that plague. :D

It's been... whatever number of years since LN came out and I have yet top play a vampire. I don't think I've ever even seen what they do, lol. First thing when I start a save is to turn them off altogether.


Love the name :D

Good find, bravo! This gives me the idea, if there ever existed a topic about the real life equivalent of all the rabbitholes in the game. Like, "mapping Sims 3" or something like that.

Messing around just now in-game after getting the last bit of footage I needed for my episode. Laura's been hanging out with her coworker Anouk (your girl @gittevdv) and suddenly the game asks me if the two of them want to move in together. Apparently that's something the game can do when two Sims max out their relationship bar and get assigned the "best friend" status.

Unfortunately I had to reject seeing as Laura is already, first, living with a good friend and second, in a relationship. That's relevant because the Sim I cloned Laura from was pretty bisexual and apparently sexual preference carries over.

Yeah, it can happen, but it's not very often. The reason being there's only a 2% chance or so that they'll actually get asked. There's a few mods floating around that ups the chance, and they only ask once every 3 days, like opportunities. Not sure how up to date they are though.

Just figured out myself that opps can be cancelled just like wishes. Right click on them in the opportunity panel and it goes away. I suppose it's somewhat obvious, but unless I'm just completely oblivious it doesn't tell you can do so like it does for wishes.

I discovered this mascot costume and that it can be inherited (the young man is the teenage son of the university mascot). Had a good laugh when I saw this in-game, I only knew the llama mascot