The following information was collected from The SimWatch list-serve. See http://www.egroups.com/group/SimWatch for full details. No credit is given as to the contributor. No attempt is made to validate the accuracy of the information. The following is a collection of bugs submitted to the SimWatch list-serve. These bugs may or may not happen to you depending if you installed the latest patch or not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Game locks up - Save often -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sims can get stuck even though nothing is blocking them. One SIM was reported to go to bed and never wake. Another took a swim and could not exit the pool and died. Neighbors have been known to come over and never leave, until they die. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes SIMs never leave. Neighbors will come over and never leave. One strategy is to wall them off until they die. Sometimes a repairman or maid will never leave. It's probably caused by something blocking a task they must perform, for example, the repair unable to fix something because it's blocked by a piece of furniture. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There were a couple of incidents where my Sim would be ready and waiting for the carpool to arrive but they don't show up. Causing my Sim to get fired from work (it sucks too 'cause he was already high in the corporate ladder when it happened.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unable to pick up chips off floor. If you download the slot machine at www.thesims.com (a fix for the chip bag is included). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If two sims take the same carpool and one misses work, the other may be forced to miss work too. I've had the six "friends" (from the t.v.-series) all living in the same houseAND they all had the same carier track. One day Phoebe didn't make it to the car in time, and poof.....................the others just appeared under the stairs inside the house. I have four adults living in the same family. Two of the men go to work at the same time every morning (carpool arrives at 8:00 AM). Even though they are in different career tracks (politics and law enforcement), only one car (a limo) arrives to take both of them to work. As long as they both go out to the car on time, everything is cool and they both end up at work. But, if one of them goes to the car and the other one decides to skip work that day, then when the car pulls away the one who was in the car suddenly appears back in the house. So, the effect is that if one stays home, they both end up staying home. I've seen it happen, but it doesn't happen when I *tell* someone to stay home. Instead, it happens if one of the Sims is already in the carpool, and the other one is scheduled to go to work but dawdles over something else -- finishing breakfast, showering -- for so long that he doesn't have time to actually make it to the carpool, even if he runs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I designed a house, wallpapered inside and out. Everything was fine. I saved the game, came back, and the wallpaper inside and outside was gone! I re-papered, but it disapeared again. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just created my own house from scratch. I've always download houses from the Sims Exchange at the Sims.com. The telephones in all the other houses work but in the house I created by myself, my telephone doesn't work. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been having this weird problem lately ... for the past couple of days every time I start the game up there are a few places in my house where the wallpaper has been changed. It only happens in certain places (i.e. with certain wallpapers) ... only ones that I have downloaded. This is caused by a corrupt texture and can happen with both wallpapers and floor textures (presumably roofs as well?). Anyway the fix is to load the textures into HomeCrafter and re-export them again. It's tedious but it worked for me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I used custom floors and walls in one of my houses. When I look at the house, some of the custom floors and walls have changed to one of the original Maxis walls or floors. Why? What do I do? A: There is a limit to the number of custom walls and floors that you can have in a neighborhood. The limit for custom walls is 90. The limit for custom floors is 63. All custom walls are stored in \Maxis\TheSims\Gamedata\Walls. All custom floors are stored in \Maxis\TheSims\GameData\Floors. If you have more custom walls or floors than the aforementioned limits, you need to move some of them to a different directory on your hard drive (or delete them). If your custom walls are disappearing, go to \Maxis\TheSims\Gamedata\Walls and move enough wall files to a different folder on your hard drive (outside of the \Walls directory) to get you under the 90 custom wall limit. If your custom floors are disappearing, go to \Maxis\TheSims\Gamedata\Floors and move enough floors to a different folder on your hard drive (outside of the \Floors directory) to get you under the 63 custom floor limit. If you want to move specific custom walls or floors but are having trouble knowing which ones to move, you will have to load them into HomeCrafter in order to preview them. You can download HomeCrafter from www.thesims.com. Once you have downloaded HomeCrafter, start it up, click on the floor or wall button (depending upon which type you want to preview), then click on the Load an Image button and find the file you want to preview. Write down the filename of the wall or floor so you know which file needs to be moved. Now exit Home Crafter and move that file. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- two of my kids have built the 'floating house' and they put pools underneath. Now, the sims won't eat at the dining room table. They sit and get up, they try all the chairs and then eat standing. We have tried all the different chairs and tables and it doesn't make any difference. Anybody got any input? I had the same problem. i had to put colums under the house where the counters where and an island in the middle of my pool where the table and chairs where. it works fine now!:) I have a floating house with a swimming pool under it, and have no problem with the sims eatting at the table, until I used the cheat code: water_tool which puts a lake wherever you want outside. I put a lake under the house, and the sims would not use the table, which was over the lake, but would use the rest of the house which was over the swimming pool. I had to delete the lake, by holding ctrl and using the cheat code : water_tool again. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had an interesting Sim experience this morning. One of my visiting neighbors, in the middle of a pool game froze up. She just stood there with the pool cue in one hand, refusing to move or talk or anything. I started to try and remedy this by having one of my family sims serve dinner (you know how that always gets visiting sims moving toward the food :) Well, still she stood there!! She stood there the entire time the other sim was preparing and cooking the meal .. and didn't drop her cue stick or anything, tho she did seem to be moving slightly as tho she were idling. So thinking perhaps she was stuck behind furniture (tho it didn't appear to me to be the case) I went ahead and used the move-object cheat and moved her out into the middle of the living room with a dead straight shot to the food. Still she stood there, just holding the pool cue!!! Even as the other sims finished eating she hadn't moved from that spot :( I ended up deleting her with the move-object cheat and inviting her back over, then she seemed to be fine. But it was really really odd! Ahh well, another day at the sims :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I built a house on lot 8 based on Roman architecture in which the house is built around a large central, open-air courtyard. The front of the house was flush with the street with a door in the middle of the wall. In order to have the open air effect, I left a small gap in the walls at the rear of the house abutting the river. It worked wonderfully until my guests and the repairman got stuck in the middle of the courtyard! They'd whine and complain about hunger or bladder needs, then pass out from tiredness, even if food or the bathroom were right next to them. I finally realised that as far as they were concerned, they were already outside and on a straight path back home. They couldn't figure out that they had to go to the back of the property to get to the street. Neither could they re-enter the house in order to get back outside. The solution was to simply change the gap in the walls to the street side of the house and my guests had no more problems going home. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------