1661

Maybe I am dense. Twice when I have tries to save a 3rd Sim file it has asked if I wanted to overwrite. [shrug] Weird. Doesn’t make sense.

EDIT: Both times my daughter had the issue. She did not change the default name, so each time it was saving the game under “Sunset Valley”. Not a fan of the save system as far as that goes.

1662

Inspired by the thread necro to try out Late Night, I bought it but couldn’t install it, and after it forced me to update my base game and Ambitions to 4.5.6.009017, nothing would run and the launcher made/makes nonsensical claims and impossible suggestions (“Your The Sims 3 Base Game is incompatible with the current Sims 3 Expansion Pack. Please update your game via the game launcher”). The most I was willing to do was try reinstalling EADM, and at this point I’m just not motivated to reinstall everything from scratch again.

1663

Oh no… I am stuck on the penultimate page again :(

1664

It sounds like you’ve only run the Ambitions update, and not the base game update. (The game launcher’s update functionality is a bit unreliable when it has to deal with more than 1 component.)

You could check the version number for the base game (version 1.17), by mouse-overing the icon in the launcher’s toolbar. If it has a lower version number, the patch installer can be downloaded from Softpedia, or from http://www.patches-scrolls.de/sims3.php

1665

Yay, applied a base game patch and Late Night installed without a hitch. Thanks for that link and for the mouseover tip. I wasted a good hour on the official forums and other places, and I swear I saw one base game and one Ambitions patch get applied before these errors showed up, but I guess there was one more patch that the confused patching system wasn’t aware of.

I hadn’t even spotted those icons at the bottom of the launcher, and had tried and failed to verify individual version numbers by examining files in the installation folders instead. Base game was 1.15.34.008001 and is now 1.17.60.009001.

Anyway, much appreciated!

1666

The official forums seem to be very little help for most things. There is virtually no participation from members of support staff who might have been expected to help a little.

1667

I had a similar problem and the only way I solved it was to reinstall the entire game from scratch again. Customer support was zero help.

1668

Has The Sims 3 (and the expansions) altered the gameplay in a significant way since The Sims 2? I played the first and second quite a bit, and I do enjoy them, but I’m not willing to play the same game over again.

1669

Considerably. There’s much more achievementy-type progress. A system of crafting and questing, of a sort. Neighborhoods are open world now, so everyone else will age along with you, as opposed going static as soon as they leave your lot.

That last point is probably the best aspect - moreso if you pick up one of the story mode mods, like Awesome or NRaas.

1670

Briefly checked out Late Night over the weekend. I wonder how similar Medieval’s royalty will be to Late Night celebrities (where sims now have restricted conversation options with certain famous folks until interaction choices are unlocked).

1671

Tyjenks, you need to enter a new name if you want more backups (which I strongly suggest.)

If you explore Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves you will see a series of folders with save games corresponding to the name.

e.g.
sunset valley.sims3
alicia goes on trip.sims3
alicia returns home.sims3
b

Discovered a quick fix for a world adventure / late night crash. I tried to visit France (I must have nectar) and it kept hanging. The fix was to go into the save folder and delete the two china files. It forces a reset of that particular mini-world without destroying your main hometown.

The new town has a few bugs. People can get stuck outside the school (reminds me of Ambitions). There seem to be a few locations missing, so the celebrity events with Logan’s Diner or the Corporate tower are deleted as I get them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do the gardening mission eggplants (location didn’t exist).

I like the bars, the plasma, and subway transport. The apartments seem kinda cramped, but I guess that’s realistic! Clothes-washing machine has to sit in the kitchen :)

Buceph, I think the biggest change is the Sims 3 engine runs the entire town simultaneously. It’s easy to run to the supermarket, buy stuff, and run back. In Sims 2 it would have probably taken 5 minutes just in loading screens.

1672

I found my (technically my wife’s) copy based on this thread and have been rather enjoying this lately (base game only).

I’m having a rather mundane (although) busy life right now. Good career, several artsy side options, low-average socialization (only so much time when you’re hacking, painting, writing and playing guitar :P), and have spent way too much time on house-building. That last is a game unto itself!

I’m going to be reading this thread from start now, but anyone know offhand if there’s a page in this monster I can find some noob tips on? And maybe a rundown of the expansions/add ons?

1673

noob tips? Work your career, start a family, share their heart break when your sim dies. Remember that a woohooing sim is a happy sim. And never hesitate to try an option the moment you notice it exists.

Try your hand at the Tom Chick Sims 3 RTS Challenge! to look at the game from a different perspective.

And when roBurky mentions starting his own blog, upthread, be sure to click on it and read the entire thing, for inspiration. Or just google “Alice & Kev”. Hell, just go straight to http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/ and read something beautiful. Now.

The expansions didn’t get that much discussion here, because most people were busy playing other things by then. I liked the coverage of those at cinemablend.com, their writer took her sweet time to describe her impressions, starting at http://www.cinemablend.com/games/The-Sims-3-World-Adventures-First-Impressions-France-21166.html . I agree with her admission that World Adventures brought much more variety to the game than Ambitions.

1674

By the way, you can add the Qt3 Movie Podcast to your city. But I can’t be held responsible for anything the Kellywand sim does to your sims.

 -Tom
1675

Thanks!

Let me say that on my 7 year old rig on medium-ish settings it runs fine. There is a little slow down when you click the “zoom to sim” button, but other than that in runs surprisingly well.

My 4 year old can’t read, but is having some fun with it after seeing Daddy and her 9 year old sister play. She went straight to the Mausoleum job after seeing my first sim all charred from visiting the catacombs with her hair in the frightened state… Her Sim began to run out of money and she figured out how to sell off her stuff for cash. She calls me in to help get her married (not sure I am ready to help her with the baby-makin’). I find that she has sold all her walls and her toilet. Somehow she still had a urinal for her female Sim. She said she had been peeing in the floor, which I did not believe at first. Looks like she has been wandering to neighbors’ houses and urinating for a while. Also, living with no walls has only had minor negative effects.

And yes, all the achievementy things are excellent carrots. I am on my third generation, in the same expanded house and have finally decided to try 2 kids. All the babysitters appear to be simultaneously slobs and kleptos. I befriended them to find that out and no matter how many times I am mean and dismiss them, the same to losers come back. Each are family oriented so there is that.

Still can’t let loose of the micromanaging. Also, I hope the Sims don’t mind that I cannot match things very well while doing interior decorating as I have mild color blindness.

1676

Console commands that may be useful in debugging: Control-shift-C

resetSim firstname lastname - if your sim is stuck
moveObjects (on/off) - remove collision so you can manually move stuff around in F2 build mode. Strongly suggest shutting off after you fix whatever needed fixing.
help

If the town gets all buggy with 500 NPC’s but you can’t bear to lose the home, go to edit mode, save a copy of the entire house. Then you can start a new city and plop the house down. You’ll lose all the friends and current quest progress, but you keep all skills, objects, etc.

There’s wikia’s and other guide sites, but I don’t suggest them because a lot of the joy (for me) is in discovering new mechanics and special properties objects have.

I’ve been playing with MATY (google it), which seems to severely cut down the number of new sims that spawn, and thus delay lag-death. Thought, if this was Dwarf Fortress the ideal solution would be inviting sims down to one’s wine cellar and volunteer them for lag reduction. Don’t know if ghosts would contribute to lag thought. Additional warning, I do not suggest reading anything in MATY other than the framework and download thread. They are mean.

1677

I recommend giving NRaas a spin, too - it adds quite a bit of manipulation on-the-fly, and lets you change parameters for storymode with an in-game menu.

Hell, they’ve institutionalized flaming.

1678

Since installing Late Night my wife can’t play for more than 5-10 minutes before her video goes out and her computer needs to be rebooted. She has a nVidia Geforce GTS 240 with the latest drivers (260.99).

Anyone else running into this?

1679

Is it the digital download version?

1680

Nope, she has the cds for the main game and the 2 expansions (late night and ambitions)