This one's about the Sims 3 Store: I notice that whenever my points balance goes above 10,000, the counter goes bonkers. It displays some number that is not my actual balance but it stabilizes after I go back below 10,000.
This has happened multiple times, most recently just now (been playing a lot of those ads for points).

Do you know how to make sims do that? I've had Sims roll wants to read their children to sleep but I can't figure out how to do it.

I managed it once, after a lot of determination.

It appears that the child needs to be sleepy, and it needs to be around the child's bedtime. I don't know if it's necessary to have the book in the adult's inventory or not, because by that time it was in there. ( "A lot of determination....")

Then clicking on the child gave a "Read to sleep" option.

I learned, finally, why the game suddenly can lose all its settings seemingly at random. If you have started the game and found yourself in 640x480 resolution and all your own settings just gone, you know what I'm referring to.

The Sims 3 will self-destruct its setting file if you install a new driver for your video card.

This line:
In the options.ini file in your ..\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 folder keeps track of what video card and driver version you are using. If this doesn't match with what is currently installed, it will delete options.ini on startup. So even if you make a backup of that file, it will be deleted by the game. Unless, you change your backed up file so that one line matches the one from the new options.ini the game regenerates.

I'm half tempted to see if I can find where the game looks at lastdevice on startup and tear that part out in a mod. But I'm not sure if that's even possible. Or if it's already been done. Anyone know if it's been done?

That is one tedious bit of the game! I found that it resets the ENTIRE options menu, including aging sliders, memories, and volume - after updating graphic card drivers, the music is suddenly loud on startup. I frequently had to readjust settings on Nvidia inspector for the fps limiter before I figured out how to back up those, but even that requires an extra step before loading the game after an update. So yeah, I feel your pain.

Today I learned that the game apparently considers four connected walls a "room", even though it has no roof.
No more interior garden for my sims' castle, apparently

It would be really nice to create a courtyard or hot house without cheats. You can grow things in the ground without moveobjects on, but then you get the "undecorated room" moodlet. If you want to get rid of that moodlet then you need to put down floor tiles and place your plants with MOO. There's a good brown carpet that looks like tilled earth or there's a flatter looking simple tile that works nicely. I've used both for beds before with stone pathways. I like to have my gardener plant orange trees around the perimeter and place a fountain or a statue in the center of the room with a bench or chess table. It amazes me how often sims will go in there to read or sit among the trees in the winter.

I think it is supernatural that gives you the planter bowls and it is Into the Future that gives you the green carpet that you can plant. You can plant indoors with both.

The other option is to plant first, then build the "greenhouse" around the plants. When you want to plant more you have to kick a wall out which ruins the game play as it seems like a cheat

It occured to me that she might want to make a garden with the build plants and/or fruit trees which you can't plant in pots for some reason. I'm not sure about the ITF carpet.

Edit: With Pets installed, can you make an aviary room and will the birds fly around and sit in the trees and stuff? That would be awesome! I just got the best picture in my head.

I don't think that this could be within the range of a mod. The last section of the lastdevice line contains the version number of your driver and I suspect that this will have to match with the current version number. You're probably better served with keeping a copy of your options.ini on your Desktop and edit it manually every time you update drivers and then copy that file back into your folder(s) to replace the new one that was generated at startup.

^ ^ Yep. And for me, this never used to be a thing until a year or two ago it seems.

@tunafishfish - oddly enough, I can place the trees, shrubs and flowers in Build Mode in the interior garden just fine, but can't plant harvestables. They apparently have to be "outside". But at least I ran into an interesting...contradiction? I built a huge-ass castle and used hidden room markers on at least half of it, and got the annoying "homeowners' association forbids you to screw around ON YOUR OWN FREAKIN' LOT blah blah" if I try to place/modify anything "outside" of what the game considers the living quarters.
Which is apparently the exterior of the castle, but not the interior garden (which has no roof but is surrounded by walls).
Which leads to me being able to place trees, shrubs and flowers in the interior garden, but not the outdoor part (without restrictbuildbuyinbuildings).
And being able to plant harvestables on the outside of the castle, but not in the interior garden.

WHY, EA. WHY.

@Emmett Brown - oh yeah, I know about the planter bowls and ITF carpets (never tried the latter), I'm just peeved that I have to use TCE and MOO, plant the harvestables somewhere else, then go into build/buy and move them. Too much work, goddammit, I'm lazy!

Because I'm not tearing down all of this:



to build a greenhouse for a raspberry bush, lol. Ain't nobody got time for that!

And I'd like to recommend Nona Mena's no "Unfinished Room" moodlet mod, 'cause nobody got time for hunting down that stray missing tile/wallpaper.

This makes me want to experiment with trees in the living room... oh wait. I already have that problem. I need a sim arborist to come in and trim the overhanging branches from the neighboring trees. Luckily, it doesn't seem to impede gameplay beyond driving me up the wall.

Yeah, although the mod would be a simple hunt for where it checks for lastdevice and force it to ignore it. But either that's not possible, or you need to be better at taking the game apart than me to do it. I suspect the latter.

I wonder what happens in options.ini is write protected... I probably shouldn't do that. The Sims 3 can throw a hissy fit even when I don't mess with it.

Some (but not all) trees have one angle you can turn it so that branches don't show through the wall. It's usually a 45-degree rotation.

Unfortunately, the tree in question is not on my sims lot and you can't shift+click trees.

Doing stuff on The Sims Freeplay is a great way to pass the time while your neighbourhood loads up 😄👍🏼

One of my sims asked his girlfriend's (now fiance) father if he could marry her. I had no idea you could ask for a parent's blessing O___O

My sim was getting mighty red because of summer hot sun, and he lives on an empty lot without a house to get into.
I thought to send him to the nearest beach and enjoy soothing water for a few. *I* have feelings!

Then i learned that the action "Get inside" doesn't take the fact that my sim's empty Home lot provide NO above head's roof, into account.

So Cas decided to get out of the soothing water, and ran back home...come on.

Apparently celebrity sims can be shamed for woohooing with occults....even if said occult is their spouse...and they're woohooing on their wedding night

So one of my Sims got a new boyfriend, and when I switched over to his sister's kid I noticed that said boyfriend also showed up as her new "uncle" despite the fact that they weren't married yet. That being said, the guy does seem the type to be all "I'm totally your new uncle now", so. (He's got the Excitable and Family-Oriented traits.)

I still need to test to see if this works with other relationships, like whether the boyfriend/girlfriend of a single parent is considered the kid's stepparent.

I haven't played a chess master lifetime wish since 2009 because the sims who came over couldn't be bothered to stay seated and finish the game half the time.
Now I had a sim who rolled it so I thought, maybe things have improved. Maybe it was some glitch that might have been fixed by some patch in the meantime. Maybe EA surprises me. Maybe.

WHAT was I thinking

The first one who got invited sat down and jumped back up to go pee and never sat back down again and I get: not possible the chess table is full.

No it isn't!

Once you're sim has gone official with their relationship, they show up in the family tree connected by a pink bar. Then you can click them and see their family tree and anyone connected to them and their relations. (I love to check out how Riverview grows and changes by marrying a player character off to a Broke and then kicking them out. It never ceases to amaze me how many sims get married right after high school and begin having babies right away, and end up grand parents mid way through the "adult" life stage.) In the relationship panel, the romantic partner is referred to as whatever they'd be called if they were married. So your girlfriend's sister is your sister-in-law and your future father-in-law is just father-in-law.

The entire house is underground. All that is on the surface are some trees, flowers, and garden plants. So when my witch (who had a very expensive set of wants) decided to practice Fire Blast outside, followed by extinguishing the fire, he received a boatload of insurance money if he used a fire extinguisher instead of ice blast.

So, while I was having one sim take his girlfriend on a date, I was getting notifications every 10 seconds of a fire on my home lot, followed almost immediately by notifications of insurance payouts....

I thought it was very clever of him, but his timing could have been better.

I think I may have discovered that my sim has figured out insurance fraud.

I've found that if you put a science research station on the edge of a lot, with the working side up against the edge, sims get trapped there. They want to move away in the direction perpendicular to the station. They can only get away if they move parallel to the station.