I just built a dorm with 12 bedrooms, kitchen, computer lab, entertainment and creative things as well as a roof top area for a telescope and some relaxation things.
When I moved the students in, nobody came in to prepare the meals for the students like I have seen in the dorms that came with the game. How do I rectify this so that the students don't have to cook for themselves or go hungry?

You need the ''Shiny-Time Cooktop'' in dorms for the cook to show up.

Like marka said. The ShinyTyme Cooktop ranges look like the ones behind the two cafeteria workers in this pic of my Cuisine/Nature hobby dorm:



I also like to include a refrigerator and an extra non-ShinyTyme range in each of my dorms, just so my students can do their own cooking; otherwise, the needy cafeteria workers will bump into them constantly while they're cooking, because saints forbid that a worker should give up his or her precious cooktop for ten bloody seconds. Also, the ShinyTyme cooktop doesn't have an oven, which prevents college Sims from cooking certain meals (like turkey, holiday roast and stuffed rainbow trout). But if a dietary regimen consisting of 90% Macaroni and Cheese is good enough for your Simmy students, then all you really need is a ShinyTyme range.

What about the benches? I put in the ShinyTyme Cooktop and the cafeteria staff stand there with her arms crossed. When I replaced the cooktop, one student started cooking, 2 others where lining up to stuff their face from the fridge.

You have to have either tables or counters that can hold food with chairs or both for them to make food.

Go look at one of the Maxis built dorms and copy what they have and yours will work.

Maybe this will help you out and please read all of it: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Dormitory

That means you haven't placed the correct kitchen counters (the ones you can use a bar stool at) also they have to face the correct way.

Island counters, yes. Just look for the protruding, overhanging countertops.

And bear in mind that the cafeteria workers will set plates of food on every last island counter in the same room as they're standing in, no matter how big or small that room may be. I made a few mistakes with my first Cuisine hobby dorm, one of which was placing the three workers (and their three ShinyTymes) and their kitchen at one end of a huge, atrium-style cafeteria, and a bar with several island counters and barstools at the other end. The workers would march all the way across that huge cafeteria and smother that bar with food. Then, of course, the food would go bad and kill the Environment score for that huge cafeteria, and the workers would take their sweet time walking all the way back over to the bar and collecting the stinky food.

I was pretty quick to learn that bigger isn't always better when it comes to cafeterias, no matter how many students are living in that dorm.

I also thought .... though really, am not sure .... that there had to be the sprinkler fire alarm in there as well. The better for the cow mascot to play with, I suppose.

I did read this back in 2006-ish or so, so my info might not be correct. At any case, it's always good to have a smoke alarm near a stove in real life, so it's not a bad idea. Just use the Sim Blender to ban the cow mascot if the nuisance plays around with the sprinkler.

(Read the wikia. Relieved that I just didn't write something totally stupid. Semi-stupid, perhaps. But not totally! While I still don't know if it's necessary for the workers to get their butts moving, the ceiling sprinkler should still be there, unless you want to risk cooking a dormie or two.)

@gazania its not a must have but one should be put in.

Put it right above the stove and the cow can't reach it.

Remember to put your sprinklers directly over the stoves, microwave ovens, toaster ovens, fireplaces, Christmas trees (if applicable) and/or directly adjacent countertops to frustrate the Cow Mascots. .

(Of course, in real life, putting a water sprinkler over an area where fires could be electrical in origin is a pretty dumb thing to do; that's why Odin gave us Halon gas. But this is The Sims, so feel free to sprinkle away at those burning Christmas trees.)


Near the stove, perhaps, but not directly over it; otherwise, the heat rising from a range in use will set your smoke detector off every time you cook dinner. And that's the voice of experience, right there.


There's nothing wrong with students cooking their own food, as long as you send them out to buy fresh groceries now and then. They have to work on their Cooking somehow, right?

EDIT: Daggit, Charity, stop posting things before I do! .

This is The Sims, where water (on the floor) is flammable . So whatever's coming out of that sprinkler is probably a different, if equally transparent, fire-retardant substance. This may explain why hygeine does so low when firefighting or being hit by the sprinkler prank.

I took the sprinkler out and have used the ordinary fire alarm for ages - I just got so sick of the cow mascot abusing it. (And, for other reasons, I did not want to get rid of the cow). So the sprinkler is not necessary at all. Just do not try and play without any alarm, because your dorm will burn down (and some of your students as well - as I have learned ages ago).

I wonder if Cow Mascots have some sort of special script which makes them set off the sprinklers and do all the other obnoxious things that they do, but only while they're non-playable. I've probably mentioned how Casey Gearsmith (one of my college graduates) has Tinkering as his One True Hobby, so naturally he's super-Nice, so he put up with all of the Cow Mascots and their pranks, and the Cow Mascot who visited his dorm most often was the girly one named Emma Kimbrell, and Casey and Emma really hit it off (three-bolt Chemistry and everything), so they got engaged while Casey was a Junior, then he graduated, invited Emma to move in with him (which cut her college years short, but it's not like she was going to graduate anyway), which made her playable, and then he married her soonafter.

There are two sprinklers in their house, one in the kitchen and one over the fireplace. And I have yet to see Emma start sneaking towards either one. So I guess she's past that now. Pity. I'd kind of like to see what a pregnant ex-Cow Mascot looks like when she sneaks. .

Even when I'm playing one of my other Simmy households, and they go to a community lot and come across Emma in Non-Playable Mode, she's on her best behavior. Maybe it's just that college induces some kind of temporary insanity in Cow Mascots, and that's why they stop being jerks as soon as the leave the campus.

Some of my Sims also like the cow mascot and has made friends with the thing. She is a very pretty black haired girl called Lisa I think in the game, making these Sims playable (one of mine married a Llama) turn them into regular Sims. Even the Prof one of my Sims married had no skills at all (which is a bit surprising for a former professor, but, yes). And I still play dorms with the normal fire alarm and I do not care who disagrees with it, it works for me

Yeah, I don't know who Disagreed with you either. They're both pretty equal in my book. The sprinkler's faster, but the firefighter doesn't leave a huge mess to mop up afterwards. The firefighter's Cow-Mascotproof, but so is a sprinkler that's been placed directly over another object.

Sometimes, I like to put both a sprinkler and a fire alarm in the same room; maybe I'm just being paranoid, but just because there's an oven, a microwave or a fireplace in that room (and underneath the sprinkler) doesn't mean that there's not something else in the room that can't start a fire. I'm savvy enough to put my Christmas trees as close to a sprinkler as I can, and I always place my fireworks outdoors, but still, there's always that nagging, irrational worry that a meteorite's going to come down in my Simmy living room or something....

I find the firefighters arrive much too fast for my taste, it doesn't provide any sense of danger at all!

Have you tried making your Sims live in a place like this? .

All depending on how much danger you want your students to be in Since I fill up dorms with students who were all born in my game, I like them to get out of Uni in one piece.

I even make sure I have a fire alarm outside by the BBQs. More than a few times, those have caught fire, and the interior alarm failed to work (much like real life, I guess). I've stuck a shed nearby on lots and put an invisible one on the walls of the shed, if I couldn't get one on the wall by the BBQ.

My cave men have no fire alarm and yesterday 3 flipping fires. 'Less tree fires' going in today. I hope that counts for boulders and other plants.

I always put a fire alarm outside. Always. One is enough, it will bring the firefighters, no matter where the fire starts.

Tree fires tend to put themselves out immediately, though, I find, because they normally happen in the rain. Except for the time when a four-tile bush caught fire!

Pizzatron - lol. Nope

It's not so much that I want sims to die, it's just that they literally CAN'T die from a cooking fire if it's immediately extinguished before it even has a chance to jump. Fire was TERRIFYING in sims 1. It's just not in TS2, if you have a fire alarm. Or even if you call the fire brigade - they show up immediately. IMO.

If I could code... I'd make a fire danger mod.

The cheap smoke alarm doesn't call the fire brigade, but instead wakes all sleeping sims and causes them to run outside, unless blocked by fire. There is a more expensive fire alarm which is linked to the fire station.

Fire can spread through windows, and archways. Doors offer more resistance, based on cost. (To simulate heaviness). If stairs catch fire, it also ignites the top/bottom tile (like it used to in TS1!) If there are five tiles on fire in a + shape, and the house is multi-storey, there is a chance that the fire can drop or catch to the level above or below.

Like in TS3, fire leaves behind soot marks on walls which must be cleaned or redecorated.

THEN I'd make damn sure my families had smoke alarms

Rain can stop, it did on my last fire.

Don't know what you mean by cheap or more expensive alarm, the game only has one smoke alarm and it calls the fire brigade immediately.

If you want a worse fire mod, one just went up on Leefish. It would be Andrew's worse nightmare for his sims.

There are more than one fire alarm? (For the brigade always comes when the one in my game goes off).