Thanks so much about the info on MOO. I use that a lot. Most of the time I have no problem because I use it mostly with only decorative items. Once in a while it does if I use it with something else but I can usually figure it out when my sims throws a fit cause they can't do what I'm telling them to.
One thing I've found that may help others. Sometimes I get a horse stuck where it can't move (I think because I've put a jump too close to a fence with MOO or something similiar like that). When that happens I've found that just pausing the game, going to the buy mode, you can use the hand, and pick up the horse and move it out of the situation, and then go back to live mode, unpause the game, and continue. It's saved me a few times AFTER I got stuck with my horses needs down and got them taken by the humane society, before I could figure a way to unstick them and get their needs back up. Was a real bummer to lose my horses that way

Thank you amjoie for that info. I'll gladly add that to my list of possible causes for lags.

I have to agree with WR about MOO. Use with care. To place stuff without being restricted to the grid, use the ALT-key. It's a lot better. Never place stairs or doors with MOO, very bad idea.

I found that with pets, lots of spiral staircases became an issue, you have to turn them to make them usable again and in a world I tested, people used a fancy method of making an entrance with archways. While that does look very neat, it's actually bad. If you do that, you have to place walls so you can put in the arch. This makes the actual front door an 'inside door'. While your own Sims can use that just fine, the visitors are getting confused, especially if use a porch as well. In that world, I had a Sim constantly stamping their foot cause they couldn't ring a door bell since the house had no front door.

If you have a back door, that will become your front door for the visitors. The mail man might get confused too. In Starlight Shores there is actually a house build like that and I daresay that can lead to routing issues as well.

As for deleting Sim, I find Total Anniliating with Twallan's mods no issue at all. Deleting with moo or testingcheats is indeed a bad idea but I'm unsure about sending them clipboard diving. That should not be an issue in my opinion. I've cleaned out SV that way before and did not get any problems.

As for stuck cars after resetsim *: Stuck cars might not get cleaned by Overwatch. You have to manually delete with the testingcheats cheat. So make sure you check your hoods for them. I've also had stuck cars with drivers in that did not get cleaned out by Overwatch (Note to self: Ask Twallan about that).

crinrict wrote:If you have a back door, that will become your front door for the visitors. The mail man might get confused too. In Starlight Shores there is actually a house build like that and I daresay that can lead to routing issues as well

Sorry, crin, I'm confused! Are you saying that any house with a back door can lead to routing issues?

No, I'm saying a house with no front door can lead to routing issues.

Don't know if you ever saw a house like that but it basically has a wall in front of the actaul front door and arches put in that wall. Looks very fancy but it makes the front door an indoor door. IF that house has a back door, that is actually a good thing.

There's one in Starlight Shores. I'll go get the name/address.

Oh, it's ok, I get what you're saying now! Sorry, I'm finding it hard to get my brain in gear today lol.

It's the house where Javed Meir lives initially. 18 Palm Park Ave. The house has no foundation, so it's not as bad.

The house does not have an actual front door. You can set the patio door as front door if you want but the actual front door, is an indoor door.

Writin_Reg wrote:snip

Thank you so much for the advice. Origin is one of the things I have not updated so I'll do it right away even if the launcher is working fine now!

ST.

I was just having a look around AP re the whole closed-in hedge thing. I'm wondering if closed in areas can be a problem on any Lot or only certain ones?

For instance, in the AP public pool, there are areas shut off by mid-height walls. Would this cause a problem? Since it is a pool Lot, it obviously won't spawn any employees, but what about tourists, paparazzi, wild animals etc? Where do they get spawned?

Why do we have to do all these things just to get the game to work the way it should? I think it should work from the time you buy it.

candy8 wrote:Why do we have to do all these things just to get the game to work the way it should? I think it should work from the time you buy it.

Yes it should, but it doesn't. That's why so many people come here, because of problems. I spend more time trying to figure out why my game isn't working, than I do playing the game. It's just the way it is. My computer has double what the requirements are for the Sims.

Thank you for this post, so much great information.

Ever since the base game, I've had to delete a section of hedge in front of the Landgraab house because the babysitter would spawn in it. At the Alto house, on the right side of the front porch, Sims will get stuck because the sidewalk is too steep. This weekend, I had a paparazzi spawn inside the wall in front of the Landgraab house. In short, even original game houses have their routing issues.

Thank you, Michelle, that seems to answer my questions. I guess I gotta go put gates everywhere!

Elanor - just watch any hedged in areas - if you see spawning happening - just open it up - one space for sims and two spaces wide if it is horses and deer spawning there.

Amjoie I spent the afternoon in Starlight Shores Cemetary and I don't see anything new or different at all with the ghost - so what I said before goes.

Writin_Reg wrote:Elanor - just watch any hedged in areas - if you see spawning happening - just open it up - one space for sims and two spaces wide if it is horses and deer spawning there.

Amjoie I spent the afternoon in Starlight Shores Cemetary and I don't see anything new or different at all with the ghost - so what I said before goes.

LOL I've spent all day in a new game with the Lunar Lakes cemetary, and found something totally different. Sigh.

OK, here is what I did: I had the game regenerate an entirely new The Sims 3 folder in Documents. Brand new, with no mods, no CC (not even store CC, except for Lunar Lakes, of course), no cheats. Just a straight vanilla game with all expansions and stuff packs.

I set the game with aging on, at the lowest possible settings for the most rapid turnover. Story progression was off, since my aim was to depopulate the world. I watched the game, turning on fast-forward speed as applicable. I didn't play the game. I just watched it running. As the sims in the household died, I went to another household, until all sims in the world were expired.

I added one live sim, and let the game run until that sim aged and died, so that ghosts would have a chance to go to the Netherworld. Then I checked houses for gravestones. I only found six, so some had gone to the Netherworld and taken their gravestones with them.

I put in one live sim, and had her collect the gravestones and put them in the graveyard. They came out at night, as did the ghost sims I had already sent to the Netherworld, earlier. What?

Not only that, but the game had a marked tendency to stop the clock at 12:59 am. All action continued, and the night changed into day, etc. The sim went about her day, getting hungry, tired, etc. But the clock was stuck. I could reset it by saving, and going to the main menu and then back again to the world. It was fine for a while, and then stuck again.

I want to remind you, that all sims in this world, except for NPCs recently spawned, were dead. There was no lag, just a stuck clock. But that made me really nervous, because this was a vanilla world that played by itself, and the only thing that had happened is the death of all sims. Nothing should be going wrong.

So I had tried to kill off sims, naturally. And something was not quite right. I decided to try it with awesome mod's "destroyallhumans" cheat. I saved a copy of the world I had just depopulated. Then I used awesome mod on it. I got a notification that 135 sims had been killed off. What?? But all sims were dead!

I added one live sim, and let the game run for a couple sim days. I used the kill cheat, again. This time 55 sims were killed. OK, that's weird. I saved and quit.

So, next, I slid the Saves folder to the desktop and started up the game, letting it create a whole new Saves folder. I clicked on Lunar Lakes and let the game create the world.

Before I did anything in the world, I ran the kill cheat. The notice said 87 sims were killed. So, that is baseline. I added one live sim, and ran the game for a couple of sim days. I ran the kill cheat, and the notice said only one sim was killed.

Whoa. The stats in this game were 87 and then 1, while the stats in the game where I naturally killed off all sims was 135 and then 35.

So, I'm trusting the world more, that the kill cheat depopulated. I added one live sim and took aging off, so I could run her until I finished testing the graveyard, without worrying about her aging. I fast-forwarded the daytime, so I could play real time at night. I never got a stuck clock. Not once. The game ran smooth.

Here is what happened in the graveyard:

First night:

Nothing. No ghosts. Hmmmm. Suspicious.

Second night:

Bella Goth--went to the Netherword immediately, when I used the cheat to trigger an age transition

Jeremy Goode--two aging ups and then went on third

Linksa Dot--two aging ups and then went on third

Third night:

Ebenezer Lucas--one aging up and then went on second

Fourth night:

Bella Goth--went to the Netherword immediately, when I used the cheat to trigger an age transition

WHAT?!!

Conclusion: The graveyard in Lunar Lakes is spawning ghosts. (My best guess, since it took a night of no ghosts before they came out.) Or, I suppose it could be that the cheat sending them to the Netherworld isn't really sending them. Sigh.

Furthermore, when Bella was out, in an earlier round of testing, I saved and went to Edit mode. I went back to live mode, still on pause, and she was still there. I went back to Edit mode and used the kill cheat. I went back to live mode. She was still there on pause. She floated around when I took pause off. The kill cheat didn't work on Bella in the graveyard. She isn't being recognized as a regular sim. Once ghosts are in the Lunar Lakes graveyard, they are apparently not normal ghosties, anymore.

So, now I don't know if the trigger age transition cheat is really sending ghosts to the Netherworld, in the normal way, despite the notification and animations of a puff cloud going back into the tombstone. It doesn't work in the graveyard, that much I do know.

Unless I could understand game code, I have no way of knowing for sure if it works on other ghosts in the world at large.

What I do know is that apparently, the safest way to get rid of EA sims that come with worlds is to use the awesome mod "destroyallhumans" cheat, rather than trying to kill them off naturally. Of course, then you have to continue to use the awesome mod in that world ....

I don't have Twallen's mods, so I couldn't test them, to see how his kill cheat works.

The alternative is to keep the EA sims, redoing them as desired, with aging off. But that severely limits the number of sims you can have in the game, of your own making or breeding.

So, I spent all day testing. And I ended up with more questions than I answered. Sigh.

I love this game. And sometimes I hate it.

I have a question about the EA townies that come when you start a new game. This may sound very stupid, but better safe than sorry!

It doesn't hurt to edit those sims in CAS (via Master Controller) does it??