The most efficient way to do laundry

My sim wanted to do her laundry before returning from her term at Sims University.  She gathered up all the dirty clothes from around the house and then went down to the basement to start the load.  But she decided it would be most efficient if she cleaned her own clothes as well…

I can’t wait to see the spin cycle on this one.

Sim pile!

What happens when 20 or more sims try to get through the same set of doors at the same time? They pile up and make things take way too long.

My sim is stuck in the middle of the crowd there, and she's very hungry right now (thus the red plumbbob above her). She's been stuck in this crowd for about three sim hours so far and it will probably take her another sim hour or two to get past everyone. There's not a whole lot that I can do other than reset my sim to get her out of there.

When sims bunch up like this, they try to take turns, but the algorithm they use is pretty bad and they all end up trying to step in front of each other all the time, which makes them stop and think about their position for a few minutes, which puts them in front of other sims that are trying to get by... Unfortunately, when the sim is at University, the Tuesday morning class is always at the student union building (which is seen here) and there are too many students that try to get in at once, so this pileup happens every sim week.

Don’t be too quick to age up your sim kids

With the exception of the baby (the “pupa” stage) of sims lifetimes, each life stage has objects and interactions that will help them build skills for later life.  Toddlers can play with the xylophone and peg box to learn creativity and logic skills.  Children can play with the building blocks table and the toy stove to learn handiness and cooking skills; children can also read books to increase any skill that has a book available for it.

All of the object interactions will get your toddler and child sims up to skill level three, while reading books will get your child sims up to as high as you’ve got books in your bookshelf, potentially to level ten.

So, after teaching your toddler sims how to walk, talk and use the potty, have them play with the xylophone and peg box to max out those skills before aging them up.  Likewise, have your child sims play with the blocks and read to maximize the skills that you want them to have before aging them up.  Unfortunately, even though the blocks table looks exactly like the same item that is available in The Sims 2, here in The Sims 3, toddler sims cannot play with blocks, and the draw interaction to make artworks (which also helped with the painting skill in The Sims 2) was removed for both age groups.

Once your sims become teens, they can ask adults to help them learn how to drive (if you’ve got the Generations expansion pack installed), but teens can cook on the stove and play musical instruments, so have them work on those skills while they have time.  Teens, of course, can also read to improve their skills.

All of this skill building while your sims are growing will help them once they become young adults because they’ll be farther along at all the skills you had them develop.  With the University Life expansion pack, the scholarships that are available to sims are based on their skill levels, so there is a bonus there too.

Spinning the guitar jams

Edith Upchurch got engaged this week and decided to throw a bachelorette party.  With musically-inclined friends coming to the party, she started a jam on the guitar, but chose a rather unusual fingering technique.

The guitar is spinning around her right hand, which as you can see is all akimbo.  I wonder if Partaeus Maximus over there in the corner has anything to do with it.

Arrggghhh!!!!!1! I can’t move in a sim!

I’ve been having this issue for a while now but it’s been awfully frustrating, especially now when I actually have some time to sit down and play again.  I created a new sim to try a few things that I hadn’t done yet and got her a house in her base neighborhood.  Her lifetime desire is to be a super spy, so since I have University Life installed, one of the first tasks I have her do is to enroll in university in the Technology major.  I get her to the university town and select the sorority house for her residence and hit the checkmark to begin, and wait…  and wait…  and wait…  and wait…

For some unknown reason, the game never proceeds from this point.  I’ve tried it with mods removed, with custom content disabled, with the movein mods installed, nothing seems to work.  The only time I can get a sim to university is if I send a sim who was born in the town I was playing.  I don’t have time for that!

I’ve found also that I can’t use the “Move in family” option from the game setup either as I get the same freeze.  Something is wrong in Denmark, Louie.

Preventing bonks; update today

On Thursday, EA published an update to our favorite game.  With every update, I always make sure to go read the changelog to see what gems were added.  This week’s update is no exception, already taking sims Into The Future.  Yup, the Into The Future expansion pack will be available on October 22, and this update was released on October 17.

There aren’t a lot of fixes listed there, but a few that stand out in the official announcement are:

• Sim heads no longer appear on the bodies of Plumbots on display.
• Pregnant Sims keep their belly when wearing clothing purchased from the clothing pedestal.
• The projection paneling in the Bot Emporium is now interactive.

Even better is that this update includes a few fixes for problems that I’ve run into with sims going to university:

• Fixed Sims not always loading correctly when travelling to University.
• Fixed Sims sometimes losing family data when travelling.

I want my sims to get to university properly, so I’ve applied the update, but I invite anyone who gets Into The Future, doesn’t apply this update and sees the bonk with sim heads on plumbots to send me a screenshot.  Please!  B-)

Magic gnomes are social creatures

If you have a garden gnome on your lot, you know that you can have your sims kick it over.  But sometimes a magic gnome will appear in a location that you can access and you can add him to your family by putting him in your sim’s inventory and giving him a name.  A magic gnome will often teleport at night to a location in front of a radio or television and turn it on (which will likely wake your sims if they are sleeping in the same room).  But did you also know that magic gnomes like to hang out together?

In this case, we see three of the base game’s Mysterious Mr. Gnomes, two Master Manchu gnomes from China, a Sultan Sam gnome from Egypt and a Graduation Gnome from University.  It looks like Sultan Sam is either dancing or wrestling with one of the Mysterious Mr. Gnomes while the other gnomes watch; since they freeze during the day, it can be a little hard to tell.

There are many more magic gnomes than these.  I’ve also read that the Generations expansion pack allows magic gnomes to create their own families, producing baby magic gnomes that progress through the age states and eventually die to leave a special gnome tombstone.  I haven’t seen this yet (maybe I need to have my sim find one of the female gnomes like the Vampire or Cracklin Nackerbell gnome), but the way that my sims collect these guys, it’s only a matter of time before I do see them.

A zombie acrobat in the rain at university

It’s always interesting to see the ways that the many Sims 3 expansion packs combine to create unexpected situations.  In this case, there are elements of four different packs visible.

Earlier this summer I sent one of my sims to university.  Every full moon, the zombies spawn from underground all around my sim’s home.  Sometimes it’s raining on the evening of the full moon, and who spawns as a zombie for the night is a random selection of other NPC sims in the town.  In this case, the zombified sim was a fairly accomplished acrobat (judging by the higher-level career uniform).

Only two questions though… Why do zombies need to keep out of the rain?  and What happened to her right hand to get her fingers all bent backward like that?