Where can I put the computer so I don't wake up the roommate

Question

I'm going to start a game with computer whiz roommates. I was thinking about putting a computer in each bedroom, but am concerned about the potential for noise to interfere with sleep.

B = Bed
C = Computer Desk
D = Door|---|---|
|B C|B C|
|B C|B C|
|B  |B  |
|-D-|-D-|

I'm worried that the right room's bed is only separated from a loud noise source by one wall and no squares.

Will that noise wake up the roommate? How far (squares, walls, what?) should I put a computer from a bed to ensure there's no sleep interruptions?

Asked by David B

Answer

As long as you don't upgrade your house with speakers, noisesome objects are confined to the room they are in.

This means every wall in the Sims 3 is effectively soundproof.

Answered by Raven Dreamer

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Will I get my rank 10 job back?

Question

Upon making rank 10 in the military, I noticed i only work once a week. i found a part time job that doesnt make me work on that day. I decided i would try juggling both for some extra cash and so i can work on the other sims in the family a bit more. Turns out the game doesnt let me do both jobs and I lost my progress in the Military. Was curious if i rejoined the military would I be at rank 10 again or would I start over?

Asked by Paralytic

Answer

From personal experience, you wouldn't be rank 10, but you wouldn't be rank 1 either. A forum post I found (7th down, by hhhh182) says you start back at 50% of your previous rank, so in your case, that would be rank 5. I tried to find a reliable wiki source, but unfortunately failed. Other posters share their experience of losing a few ranks after quitting, but not having to start all the way over from rank 1. All pay raises you gained will be lost though.

You can check in the newspaper or on the computer what job title the military is looking for without having to take the job. I don't believe they give the ranks, but here they are with their base pay:

1. Latrine Cleaner (§40/hour)
2. Mess Hall Server (§44/hour)
3. Grunt (§49/hour)
4. Squad Leader (§94/hour)
5. Flight Officer (§108/hour)
6. Wingman (§145/hour)
7. Figther Pilot (§167/hour)
8. Squadron Leader (§192/hour)
9. Top Gun (§265/hour)
10. Astronaut (§334/hour)

Answered by Kareen

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What are the difference between The Sims 2 and The Sims 3?

Question

I've been playing The Sims 2 for ages and I'm thinking about taking The Sims 3 (and all the expansions).

What are the differences in terms of gameplay? I know that all families age at the same time now, but what about the rest?

Is the Sims 3 "more casual"? Or does it retains the same complexity behind the scenes?

Asked by happy_emi

Answer

There are many differences in gameplay between the two games. I don't have Generations or the newly-released Superstar expansion packs, nor most of the stuff packs, but the main differences should still be the same between the games.

Open-World

The main difference is the open-world characteristic of The Sims 3. Unlike in the two previous games, your are not restricted to your home lot and there is no load screen when you wish to go to a community lot. You can peruse at your convenience all the details of your neighborhood, visit neighbors' houses or walk by the beach. Your Sims can own bicycles or cars to use to move around town, or they can walk, run or take a cab for free. With the World Adventures expansion, you will be able to visit three foreign countries and open-world applies there too, with only a loading screen where you would technically have a flight.

Professions

The Ambitions expansion pack will give you the possibility of pursuing a Profession track. Unlike with regular jobs, you can follow your Sim while they're working and influence how they perform. For example, you may have to tell your Sim to put out flames on a house as a firefighter and break down doors to save other Sims.

In addition to careers and professions, Sims can be registered as self-employed. Self-employed Sims can be writers, painters, inventor and anglers, among others, and can work on their own schedule and still have things analog to promotions. You do not need the Ambition expansion to have the self-employed option, and you can still make money off writing books or painting even if your Sim is not registered as a writer or painter.

New Skills

There are also new skills to master in The Sims 3 as well as things to collect. There are a lot of never-seen-before skills such as photography, martial arts, sculpting, horseback riding, various instrument playing and others. You can also collect rocks and gems, bugs, seeds and fishes.

Lifetime Rewards

The fears mechanism of the Sims 2 disappears, but the wishes have stayed. Sims can have four regular wishes promised as well as a lifetime wish, which usually is influenced by their personality and can be career or life based, but you can choose from the dozens of available wishes, ranging from Gold Digger to Jack of all Trades. Fulfilling those wishes gives your Sims points which can be used to buy lifetime rewards, which can be objects like in the Sims 2, but are usually characteristics or bonuses that your Sim gains, such as a Steel Bladder or no bills forever. Pets can also have four regular wishes promised and lifetime rewards.

Opportunities

In The Sims 3, your Sims can have opportunities to do various more-or-less random things for boosts. A sim can have up to three opportunities at a given time, one career-based, one skill-based and one miscellaneous. These opportunities may have a time frame for their completion and as a reward, a Sim can gain Simoleons, a career boost, a skill boost, a relationship boost or a celebrity level boost.

Customization

Customization has been taken to a whole new level in the Sims 3. You can customize just about anything you want any way you want. Many aspects of Sims can be customized such as body weight, muscular mass, muscle definition, body hair, tattoos, hair highlights/roots/tips, skin color, voice pitch and personality traits. An adult Sim can have up to five personality traits. Traits can be mental, physical, social or lifestyle. There are also hidden traits which can be acquired by doing different things. Pets can have up to three given traits, but they can also be trained into new traits like Neat or Playful, so they can have more than three traits.

You can also edit your neighborhood, community buildings, parks, houses and apartments. You can also customize clothes and furniture colors, textures and prints. You can build fountains or have a pool on your roof.

As for the casual/complexity question, I would say that The Sims 3 retains the complexity from The Sims 2, and even adds a bit to it since you can retain control of your Sims even when they're at work if they have a profession. So in that sense, you don't just send your Sim to work for hours and have them out of your way.

Those are the big things I can think of for the moment. I'll edit if I think of other things.

Answered by Kareen

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Is there a way to put a lot of things in a fridge in an easy way?

Question

Or in any container for that matter?

After harvesting, I always end up having to drag every item in one by one. Also, is there a way to group the same item? After dragging and dropping, if I miss, it forms different stacks at times.

It seems so trivial but I haven't found a way to do it yet.

Asked by Andy

Answer

I am making a few assumptions here so please bear with me. If you knew this already and it doesn't help, it could help someone else.

While items are in your inventory, you can drag them on top of each other, however the stack are created based on the type of item, and in the case of food, their quality. You cannot always have different types of quality food on top of another. This is dependant on which patch your running, some patches allowed it.

Once you have the stack correct, it will create a square in the top left corner of the stack, which you can grab and then drag onto the fridge. This should add all the items to the fridge.

Sadly, there is no way to stack everything you want into one big pile and then add them to the fridge. Ie. You can't mix fish and tomatoes, or even tomatoes and potatos together. The stacks of the same item and group drag is the closest you will get.

Answered by Diago

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What are the benefits for self-employed writers?

Question

Does being registered as an self-employed writer help me in any way? are the royalty checks bigger?

Are there any other benefits from being registered as self-employed?

Answer

Self-employed writers get the same benefits as all the other self-employment options:

Occasional trophies, accolades and bonus checks.

For an Ambitious sim, it also tends to provide a steady trickle of promotions, which is good.

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How can I enjoy the Beautiful View from my house?

Question

I live on a +25 'Beautiful Vista' lot in the hills in bridgeport, in a half-glass house (approx. 75% of walls are glass). At first I would get the moodlet while in the house, but after I made it slightly bigger (by 10-20%), and added a fence and a celebrity gate, I lost the moodlet inside the house, I still get it once I go out on my lot. Why did I loose it?

Answer

The Beautiful Vista moodlet is Deep Magic; and it's never been entirely clear how it works; but it seems to require whatever the game calls an unobstructed view.

Most likely this means that the moodlet will only be given:

• Outside, or;
• Inside and within one window equivalent of the the edge of the lot, where fences are considered window equivalents.

Note that this is just an educated guess, and code spelunking might be required to figure out the exact parameters.

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Custom music in The Sims 3 for various modes?

Question

A feature I loved about The Sims 2 was how easy it was to customize music for the various modes -- buy, build, neighborhood, etc.

As far as I can tell, The Sims 3 only lets you add music to the custom music folder -- no customization for various modes :-(

Does anyone know if it is possible to somehow include custom music per mode?

Thanks!

Answer

Currently there is not a sure-fire way to do it, no. The only way that it could be done is to use Sims 3 Package Extractor (s3pe) to replace the current build music in the FullBuild1.package file. If this was all you had to do it'd be easy. However in The Sims 3, EA thought it'd be a grand idea to package the music in it's own proprietary format ".snr/.sns". This is also known as the EA Layer 3 audio format. They also used this format in Command and Conquer 3. To get something encoded in this format is the problem. There are no known converters that will encode into it. I myself, have gotten ffmpeg to convert out of this format into mp3 for some files, but not the other way around. I did not put more effort into it after that and moved on to more enticing projects.

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Sims 3 expansion packs?

Question

I just got my hands on a few DVDs, I got Sims 3, World Adventures and Late Night. I never played before sims 3, but I understand the last two are expansion packs.

The question is: if I install all everything, will the content from both expansion packs be available simultaneously?

Answer

Yes. You can have all expansion packs installed and you will have access to all of the content from everything.

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Can you disable automatic memories?

Question

I have recently been playing sims 3 including all expansions so far. Generations has memories, which is great, except that everything seems to be a memory. Every time the game come up with a memory, I just click on the close button. For some reason, it gets added to my scrap book. I like the memories that I add to it, but it takes forever to delete the unwanted memories, because you need to delete them one at a time.

Is there anyway to keep from having this problem, such as a disable button?

Answer

something i forgot: no you can't turn them off.

check this: http://crinrict-help.blogspot.com/2011/06/tutorial-turn-off-memory-notifications.html

in short go to the options screen: pick the wheels symbol (third symbol from left). on the left side is a enable memories checkbox notification(or disable it).

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How do you prevent Sims from aging?

Question

In Sims 2 you could make Elixir of Life to stop Sims from aging. Is there any way to do this in Sims 3?

Answer

Making a Sim "Younger"

Life Fruit

You can reduce a Sim's age by a single day by eating a raw Life Fruit. However, they can only be planted by a level 7 Gardener and the "Unknown Special Seeds" or "Life Seeds" are only available under certain circumstances:

Sims can receive the seed by searching the town, as a science career reward, by exploring the catacombs in a mausoleum, fishing it out of a body of water, or while using the Time Machine.

_{Source: Sims 3 Wikia, Life Fruit page}

Ambrosia

The better option is to cook Ambrosia, which resets the Sims age to a predefined value (adults eating it will reset to have 26 days until aging). It can also bring Ghost Sims back to life.

Ambrosia requires purchasing the recipe (§12000), a level 10 Cooking Skill and then one Life Fruit and one Deathfish as ingredients.

A deathfish can only be caught with level 10 Fishing skill, from the Graveyard between midnight and 5AM and needs angelfish bait. Note that if you catch enough deathfish you can stock a pond and have a supply of these available all day round.

Young Again potion

This potion requires the Generations pack and is created using a chemistry set, it resets a Sim who is older than a young adult back to day 1 of the young adult.

You will need a high Logic skill for this.

Prevent / slow down further aging

Age Freeze Potion

Another potion, so also requires the Generations pack. This is a lifetime reward that requires 65000 lifetime happiness to obtain. Drinking it will completely stop your Sim from aging further. Note that if you eat birthday cake after drinking the potion, your aging will start up again.

Change form

If you have the relevant expansion pack, you could also get the Sim converted to a Vampire or Mummy, as they have longer life spans.

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Can a vampire's human child and another human make vampire babies?

Question

A vampire and human can have both vampire and human offspring. Can their human child have vampire babies?

Answer

Simply put; No.

For occult status, only the parents are checked.

Of course, if the human child were to later become a vampire, their children would be able to inherit it. ;)

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I don't want to die. How can I reverse the aging process?

Question

In Sims 2 you could make Elixir of Life to stop Sims from aging. Is there any way to do this in Sims 3?

Answer

Making a Sim "Younger"

Life Fruit

You can reduce a Sim's age by a single day by eating a raw Life Fruit. However, they can only be planted by a level 7 Gardener and the "Unknown Special Seeds" or "Life Seeds" are only available under certain circumstances:

Sims can receive the seed by searching the town, as a science career reward, by exploring the catacombs in a mausoleum, fishing it out of a body of water, or while using the Time Machine.

_{Source: Sims 3 Wikia, Life Fruit page}

Ambrosia

The better option is to cook Ambrosia, which resets the Sims age to a predefined value (adults eating it will reset to have 26 days until aging). It can also bring Ghost Sims back to life.

Ambrosia requires purchasing the recipe (§12000), a level 10 Cooking Skill and then one Life Fruit and one Deathfish as ingredients.

A deathfish can only be caught with level 10 Fishing skill, from the Graveyard between midnight and 5AM and needs angelfish bait. Note that if you catch enough deathfish you can stock a pond and have a supply of these available all day round.

Young Again potion

This potion requires the Generations pack and is created using a chemistry set, it resets a Sim who is older than a young adult back to day 1 of the young adult.

You will need a high Logic skill for this.

Prevent / slow down further aging

Age Freeze Potion

Another potion, so also requires the Generations pack. This is a lifetime reward that requires 65000 lifetime happiness to obtain. Drinking it will completely stop your Sim from aging further.

Change form

If you have the relevant expansion pack, you could also get the Sim converted to a Vampire or Mummy, as they have longer life spans.

Check more discussion of this question.

Why are my Sims so slow?

Question

I have been playing Sims 3 again and it seems that my Sim's actions are too slow for it's own good. I have Late night(+ several others) installed and so my sim is now living in a high-rise(well a 4 floor building with a pool)

Anyway, to get from his pad to the ground floor, it takes him an hour!(in sim time of course). I mean, is it even realistic to take 3 minutes for 5 steps?! Also there are times when he just pauses for a bit but then continues what he's doing(or what he's supposed to do). It does take an extra couple of sim minutes again and that means he has to wake up an hour earlier just to eat a quick meal, pee and shower before running downstairs and wait for the carpool.

Is this a known bug/limitation? Is there a setting fix for it? I am on my early 2010 macbook, with all the lowest settings on.

Answer

Apart from performance issues, there are a few other things that influence the speed of your Sims.

• Sims move slower when they are tired.
• Less active Sims move slower.
• Old Sims move slower than younger Sims.

You can get Sims to run, although I don't think that works with staircases.

The Sims series has never had all actions take a realistic amount of time. If everything was based on real life timing, then Sims would walk so fast it would look silly, or the current 60:1 Sim/RL time ratio would have to be lowered, and then some other actions would seem terribly slow in comparison.

Although The Sims aims to simulate real life (to a degree), sometimes it deviates from realism in order for a "better" playing experience.

As far as I am aware, there is no way to get Sims to move at a speed that is comparable to the speed at which we move in real life.

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When I visit Shang Simla, the Sims 3 starts stuttering. What could cause this?

Question

It only happens when i go to Shang Simla on a holliday, I've never had it since the start of the holiday and lowering graphics or reloading the game keeps the lag.

When I return home everything runs smooth again. Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution or a reason? I have all stuff and expansion packs installed.

Answer

It happens to me too, and ONLY at Shang Simla, no other place... I read around and the common conclusion is that a sim out there got stuck and can't find a right pathing to get out so it keeps running a check to find a correct pathing to get out of the stuck condition, which is why the game lag every few min (game time)... which makes sense since there are quite a few spots there where a sim can get stuck with the horrible pathing.
I use http://ts3.tscexchange.com/index.php?topic=4685.0 which seems to help, but like any CC it probably has some risks too

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Multiple users and households in Sims 3

Question

Can someone explain the sims 3 households for me?

So my fiancee created a sim and played with it in bridgeport. I then started a new game and created a new sim. We both want to marry eventually but yeah i keep explaining to her that this is a new iteration of sims(she says that in sims 2 you could do that).

SO basically we'll both be in different worlds but with the same characters, right? So if i get married in MY save file, she won't(unlike in sims 2 where you can "take control" of any other sims that are in the same neighborhood as yours)

Am I correct or is there a way? Come to think of it, I dont think thats possible with different save files as we have different states of play and progress and merging them will be a nightmare...right?

Answer

Unlike in the Sims 2, each save file exists in its own, separate universe.

In the Sims 2, time did not pass for sims you weren't playing. However, in the Sims 3, the "Story Progression" means that no matter which household you play, time will pass for all families in the neighborhood.

The one thing that is shared between neighborhoods is the Family bins -- that is to say, both you and your fiancee should have each other's sim in their neighborhood bin. If you then move this sim into the neighborhood (even if you don't change the active household), you will be able to find, meet, seduce, and eventually marry each other's sim.

However, because you have separate save files, marrying in one neighborhood won't simultaneously marry the sims in the second neighborhood.

It is possible to simply play multiple active families in the same neighborhood, but since every household ages at the same rate in The Sims 3, this will probably not be a preferable way to play (not to mention losing wants every time you switch active households).

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Sims 3: Mad scientist looking for a new job

Question

If a mad scientist in Sims 3 gets a new job, can you still perform experiments on random objects?

Answer

After finally becoming a mad scientist I promptly quit, and I was still able to perform experiments on my unsuspecting household items.

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