I finally moved from Sims 2 to Sims 3 a few weeks ago and I'm LOVING it so far. But there is one thing that has been bugging/irritating me since the beginning. When my Sims go out shopping I can't see any way to identify if the item I'm looking at is something they already own or already know.

For example, looking at recipe books in the Bookstore... My sim has already learned multiple recipes, but I forget which ones they still need. I know I can always buy it anyways and one of their family members can read it if they already know it. But I really wish I could see in the tooltip or something if they already know it.

Or when grocery shopping... I pretty much have to look in their fridge at home and figure out what they need, and hand write a shopping list. Which is fine... But it'd be nice to have a tooltip for food items that says what's in their inventory already, or what's in their fridge at home already. (I could have sworn at some point I saw something that indicated what they already have in their inventory, but it didn't seem to be working for me. For example I'd just put all the food from the fridge into their inventory and head to the grocery store. Then while there when buying each item I can see what they have already to know how much I need to get.)

Is there any way to do this in-game that I might be missing? Or does anyone know of any mods that add this feature to the game? I have done dozens of searches online trying to find something to help me with this, and I can't find a single thing. Surely I'm not the only one who has found this annoying! Or is it perhaps a feature that is added in a later expansion? Currently I only have the base game.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

For the recipes, you can click on your sim's skill journal and see the recipes she has learned, so they you know what to buy. I don't know of a way to have that visible whilst you have the shop stock menu up, though.

For the grocery items, you can see what your sim has in inventory by clicking on the 'sell' tab, as that will show all things able to be bought/sold in that shop. So I suppose if you put the fridge contents into the sim's inventory, you could compare it that way.

Thanks for the reply, Simsample. Yeah I know how to see what they already have, as well as the sell tab when at the shop. I just wish they would give us this information in the tooltip. It seems ridiculous that they don't have that option! But maybe that's just me. If I had the slightest clue how to make a game mod, I'd totally try to make one for this.

Edit: Having said that I just remembered seeing a link to a tutorial on making mods. I'm thinking I'll check it out...

This would not be a simple mod... you'd need some programming. If you want help, check out the mod forums under Create (as well as the scripting tutorials, as you mentioned). You'll probably want to look at an existing mod that does something similar to what you're trying to achieve, and see how it works (inventory/shopping related mods would include things like Buzzler's Buy Takeout and Box of Seeds -- http://www.modthesims.info/d/413311 and http://www.modthesims.info/d/415450 ).

Thanks Srikandi. Yeah I grabbed S3PE and succeeded in making a very simple mod. (Always wanted to set my Sims to fish until they caught more then 5, when their skill is maxed out. Got it set to 10 now, but it needs more testing.) But I wasn't sure how to begin tackling the code for what I want. Even though it means it's going to be a challenge for me, it helps to know that it -would- be a challenge. Otherwise I'd be going crazy trying to figure it out and maybe feeling like I'm just missing something! Does that make any sense? lol

If anyone who knows more about programming sees this and is willing to take on this project... I'd love you to bits!!