Tag Archive | simfail

Simantics: Gripes and Glitches

Starting with a picture I missed and should have included in a post:

I get all misty seeing Veronica and Charles now.
Also, a pick of Enigma teaching her puppies that I should have used.

In the inappropriate heart-farts department, Leah discovers at her wedding that her new wife’s sister is really hot.

Connor looks after his pouty great-great-great grandson. (I counted that out.)

Here’s the creepy shot of Veronica drowning in the grass beside the fish pond after the game reset her for route fails in the swimming pool. I could have legitimately interceded  because this was clearly a glitch, but as I said, she was 105 and got to be a cool ghost.

The art museum’s basement is glitched. I think this is also a result of Island Paradise. Here, Plum tries to run down the stairs to the bathroom but instead walks out into midair and throws up down two stories.

I wondered what it looked like inside the motive mobile. Now I know. That’s sky and February if you’re curious.

Also, I accidentally ended up with my camera inside the bistro, and here’s what it looks like.

Pretty nifty and detailed for something you’re only supposed to see through the doors when someone enters and exits.

Poor Alice Bookabet’s everyday outfit.

I fixed it.

Sean Flynn stayed out too late in the sun, then staked himself with a tree trunk.

But Sky revived him with a Sing-A-Gram.


Who knew Sing-A-Grams were so powerful for creatures of the night.

Gripe:

Sky DIDN’T GET her lifetime wish. I looked this one up and knew it was finicky, so I was very careful in how I did it. She had:

1. Leah in the sarcophagus on the Utopia steampunk home lot. I then didn’t count any activity on a home lot, even though there were two more houses.

2. Xia in the photo booth at the Sports Bar (which is how The Garden Gnome pub is classified).

3. Amie in the wardrobe at the Local Watering Hole (Honeydukes’)

4. February in the all-in-one shower/toilet in the Coffeeshop (Coffee Under the Sea)

5. Amy in the elevator at the Gym.

That’s five different people in five different woohoo objects on five different lots.

I tried to change some things around with MasterController and gave up. I changed her LTW to Master of the Arts (Guitar and Painting), since it has the same number of happiness points. She maxed her guitar skill out a long time ago, and since she is the portrait artist for Gens 5 and 6, she is about to max her painting as well. I’m giving her credit for Master Romancer because the whole character was built around that LTW goddammit.

Avalon Gossip Column:

Dragonwife Bard Wu gets the crazy cat lady award for this game. She has adopted cats Lisa, Mackie, Minnie, and Misty. She also has a horse Buffy, but that’s my fault. (Nobody was adopting horses, even when I added horse stalls to the lots, so I added a horse to the household of every Animal Lover or Equestrian in town.)

Leah and Plum Marmalade had a baby boy named Stephan, then immediately a girl named Devon. Leah and Plum are madly in love with each other, and since the Marmalades are incredibly rich, they spread their money around. Leah is now sending her parents an allowance.

Lynn Sword and Sebastian Hodgins got married. Sebastian took Lynn’s name. Shortly after, Lynn passed on. Sebastian Sword now lives with his adult son Cliffton Hodgins from his first marriage and his child daughter Adria Sword.

Adam Bookabet took up writing. Arya Crumplebottom is fishing and writing best-selling science fiction novels.

Alberto and Faith Cagley committed fidelity to each other, saving the town from a creepy old man rampage. But not before Alberto left behind a trail of broken hearts.

Alberto grew old and feeble. He found a new home for his elderly cat Jeremiah and even a foster home for son Tomas, who was a day or two away from adulthood. Then he adopted a new puppy named Viola before he died. Not sure what happened to that puppy.

Alice and Asriel Bookabet had a huge falling out. Alice moved in with her best friend, Emma Voss-Lorien, and her husband. Shortly after, Ignatio Butterfield-Callender asked her to marry him, and she said yes.

Amy Winter and February Callender broke up (big surprise). Amy kicked February out of the house and kept custody of their daughter Rosie. Amy started dating Charlotte Stemple (Charles’s immaculately conceived love child from China). I’m not sure who is raising February’s son by Spock Leonard.

There was some kind of nasty shakeup in the Saunders-Pierce household! Beatrice and William never did get married. Suddenly, they had a big fight. William moved in with Ariel and Puzzle Hodgins and started dating Ariel. After a few days of heavy romance, he proposed!

After the death of her beloved David Doctor, Zuzu Weaver is now in a serious relationship with none other than Asriel Bookabet.

The Unthinkable

I think I am missing two weeks of Sample screenshots. Included is Hunter’s taming of the unicorn and possibly his wedding, and some important stuff for Forest too. I’m not sure what might be in there for Sky.

I started keeping backups of just my saves rather than my entire The Sims 3 folder, and it appears that someplace in doing a clean folder to deal with lag, I managed to delete rather than keep the folder that had my screenshots in it. When I went to upload screenshots to the server today, I discovered an entirely fresh folder with a few hundred snaps in it. The last thing uploaded was September 24 and the first thing in the new folder is Oct 8. I’ve been playing like a crazy person. That’s a lot of time.

I am really really unhappy about this, but I think it’s real. I’ve even sorted through my recycle bin.

I guess it serves me right for trying to make backups that take less space. I’m going to go back to my old strategy of making copies of the entire Sims 3 folder.

Simantics: Protest Failfest

This is what happened when Adam followed Ali to the castle.

He stood there for a long time while she protested.

Then she put down her sign. Maybe now the kiss will happen!

Nope. She just changed positions and started protesting again.

Elsewhere, folks were getting really excited about this protest.

There’s Arya with a sign. Rene Yo-Mai is shouting through the wall into a megaphone.

So, moving on….

Here’s Hunter autonomously taking a bath in the bathtub I was moving around the yard, trying to figure out how the heck to make pet baths work.

Here’s the Basement of the Baerwyn house after I installed Island Paradise.


And Forest’s workplace.


Note Leah’s mother swimming.

I did my dangedest to fix the Criminal lot, and I just couldn’t find any way to do it. I replaced the Baerwyn house with a different 20×20 lot. I had to delete the Criminal graveyard. I ended up replacing it with the Smuggler’s Cave from Island Paradise. That’s a great criminal rabbithole for a small world.

Avalon Gossip Column:

Alberto Sample-Royale has started dating Echo Weaver. And Faith Cagley. And Anita Bookabet. He also called up Eliana for a date and wrote a love letter to Veronica. This boy is downright dangerous when he’s single.

For some reason, Ariel Hodgins got into chess and was stomped by Weston Mentary.

Deefa Bookabet passed on. Awww.

Raen Mai and Mitchell Bachelor, still engaged but not married, had a baby boy named Justin.

Muscadine Marmalade and Melia Lorien got engaged. Nemo Hodgins stepped up his stalking of Melia.

Sebastian and Lynn Sword are the sweetest elderly couple in town.

Sky and Leah’s wedding gifts:


Other inappropriate notifications:
(Jeanna Yo-Mai)

(Miyuki Yo-Mai)

Veronica gets bored in retirement:

5.16 Sweet Chariot

“Forest.” Hunter slid into the seat next to his brother, looking troubled.

“I’m here,” Forest said.

“I just got off the phone with Eliana,” Hunter said. “She says her boss called her up right before work and laid her off with no explanation. Her dad is furious, and she’s really upset.”

So at least part of his plan had worked. “That sounds about right,” Forest said.

“You did that, didn’t you?” Hunter asked.

“I might have had something to do with it,” Forest admitted.

Hunter looked earnestly at his brother. “Was she in danger? I hate seeing her so upset, but if it was for her own good….”

“I think it is better for her to get as far away from that job as possible,” Forest said. “I don’t know what was going on, but I’m sure it wasn’t good for her.”

Hunter sighed. “Thanks, big brother.”

“I’d say it was no big deal,” Forest said bleakly, “but the whole thing was actually a pain in the ass.”

Hunter turned and really looked at Forest for the first time and was suddenly worried. “Are you all right? You look like you might be getting sick.”

Forest was suddenly torn. Hunter was such a simple spirit, and he needed to be protected from Forest’s life. But for the first time, Forest wasn’t even sure he could protect himself, much less Hunter. He had never asked anyone for help, not even his family, but now he really needed it.

Forest looked down at his empty plate. He thought of Ali, who might not be gone if he had confided in her even a little bit. He took a deep breath to try to explain.



Only a gurgling sound came out.

What had Flynn done to him?

He couldn’t describe what had happened last night. He couldn’t ask Hunter for help.

“I think I need to lie down,” he finally managed. He slipped off the barstool and fled downstairs to his bedroom.

Later that afternoon, Charles’s beloved cat Ghost said his final goodbye.

And little Dylan had his first birthday.

All that emotion was enough to make Charles restless, and he persuaded Veronica to go with him on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Egypt.

They got some much-needed time together.

And some even more needed peace and quiet.

And the spare time to focus on some important hobbies they hadn’t been getting enough of.

Then Veronica sent Charles off to satisfy his explorer blood.

While he was gone, Veronica discovered that news of her work in spiritism had spread all over the globe. Travelers from their camp were asking for her autograph.

Of of her admirers, a local named Tahiya, ended up becoming a pretty good friend.

They spent a lot of time playing games and talking.

And of course, she had enough pictures of Dylan to show everyone in town.

Charles’s adventures were a lot of work, sometimes grueling work.

And he never told Veronica the just how much danger he found there.

She would only have worried.

He might have felt his age in France, but not here. Here he was ready to take on the world.

Charles reached the end of his vacation feeling that he had at last found what he was looking for. He hadn’t even realized he was looking for something in particular before now. It was hard to put into words, but the best way he could describe it was that he had uncovered secret beauty that had been lost for thousands of years, and he would keep it with him wherever he went next. That granted these lost places another lease on immortality.

He returned from the tombs in high spirits, and for their last night in Egypt, he organized the explorers in the camp for a rousing battle of water balloons.

The laughter and companionship seemed like just the right way to say goodbye.

While Charles and Veronica were gone, Dylan learned his first word, “dumbbell.” Leah didn’t know what he meant by that either.

Forest spent most of his time in his room working tirelessly on some project he wouldn’t talk to his family about.

Eliana took Hunter home to introduce to her family.

The morning after Charles and Veronica returned, Dylan was up howling in the wee hours of the morning.

Sky and Leah held each other tight, longing for just a little bit more sleep.

So Charles slipped downstairs to give his little man some attention.

He felt so delighted with everything, he was floating off the ground the way he used to do when he was a teenager — before he’d gotten better at passing for a normal human.

Before the sun game up was the best time to fish, so he left Dylan with his toys where he could check on him through the window and slipped out to see what he could catch in the icy water.

He’d done this a thousand times before in dozens of different places, but he couldn’t recall ever feeling so content before.

Then he just knew it was time. He packed up his fishing rod.

And wandered into the house. It was suddenly very important that he see Veronica, and he knew he didn’t have much time.

He wasn’t quite fast enough. As he stood at the foot of the stairs on his way to their bedroom, the Netherworld called to him.

And this time he had to go.

Veronica slept on and dreamed sweet dreams.

When she woke up, Charles wasn’t there. It was strange but not unheard of.

So the Samples carried on their routine through the morning before Veronica decided to go looking for her husband.

It didn’t take her long to find him.

The buried Charles’s ashes in the family cemetery with his ancestors.

He may have been one of the most successful members of his family, but he hated fancy monuments. His marker was small and modest, nestled in the earth.

The Samples would never be the same without him.

Goodbye, old friend.

———-

Sob. Well, we knew it had to happen sometime.

Charles got sucked back to the Netherworld at the age of 92 with Lifetime Happiness of 370,000. Yes, my friends, that’s THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THOUSAND.

He almost didn’t finish his lifetime wish. I got tired of going on vacation, and he had one more trip to finish to get the Visa 3 in Egypt. He needed an extra trip there because he didn’t get some Visa points that he should have gotten when he was a teenager traveling with Lance.

This trip was filled with entirely unnecessary drama. I sent him for 8 days, since that should have been more than enough for him to get the points he needed. He spent four of them in one really fun enormous tomb. Then he got to the end of the tomb, and the OPPORTUNITY GLITCHED OUT. He couldn’t return the relic to the townie to collect the enormous pile of Visa points it was worth. Apparently, there is a glitch where if a townie gives you an adventure and then dies before it’s completed, the game doesn’t always assign the opportunity to a new townie. This tomb was the end of a fairly long quest chain that started on Charles’s last trip to Egypt. Apparently EA StoryProgression killed the relevant townie in the interval. I tried everything, and there didn’t seem to be any way to fix it. I still have the stupid relic (Relic of Eternity I think), and you can’t even sell it for money. Argh.

So now he had four days left to get the points he needed, and time was very tight. I sent him on the Adventure chain for the Tomb of Queen Hapshepsut, which is supposed to be pretty cool. But before he even got into the tomb, he was given a task to take a portrait of a townie, and I couldn’t get it to register as a portrait. He had a camera, and he’d ask the girl to pose, but when he took the picture it was listed as being something near her — the fountain, the shopping area, a group of people standing in the background, whatever. I read up on Photography and couldn’t figure THAT out. Maybe he needed to have the skill??

Now we had MORE time lost. I gave up exploring tombs and sent him on the dumb adventures to pick up minerals and deliver messages to people. He can do that very fast because he can teleport. It still looked like he might not get enough Visa points, and while I’d had a fantastic time exploring that tomb for the glitched Adventure, I am really done with World Adventures and REALLY didn’t want to take another trip. Besides that, Charles was 90, and I didn’t want to assume he’d get another chance.

He got to the Visa point total halfway through his last day in Egypt. His Lifetime Wish was complete. I heaved a huge sigh of relief and sent him to base camp for a water balloon fight he’d been wishing for.

And then he really did die before he was eligible to travel again.

92 is the exact age I have my Sim lifetime set to. I had to use Twallan’s SP to set Charles to age again because EA in its infinite wisdom decided that playable ghosts should be immortal. Apparently SP sends ghosts back to the Netherworld the *instant* the lifespan runs out rather than just giving them a chance of death every day like mortal sims.

Whatever the case, he might have died “young,” but I think he doubled his actual life lived with all the travel, so he doesn’t have much complaints. The Seasoned Traveler LTW is one of the highest-point ones in the game — 60k — so I was going to try to see if I could get him to 300k points. Then he spent his last two trips rolling absolutely insanely high-point wishes. He had at least 4 1500-point wishes to defeat mummies who were attacking him anyway. Something like *12k* to reach Visa Level 3, which he had to do anyway. Etc. So he was over 300k before he even reached his lifetime wish.

Charles has been my favorite sim so far. I guess it seems only right that he died the happiest.

However, playable ghosts carry their gravestones with them, so they get the gravestone of someone with 0 happiness points. I think Charles would have appreciated the modesty.

Working younger Sample household

OK, here is a .package version of the younger Gen 4 Samples: http://illation.net/Sims3/Uploads/Samples3-4-5.package

This is Zahra and Fabian as Elders, Charles and Veronica as Adults, Ada as YA, and the triplets as children.

Also, I pulled the package out DragonWife’s simself household. There was a pattern in the Sims3Pack along with the household, and it’s possible that’s causing problems with installing it. I don’t know if anyone else had trouble. At any rate, it’s here: http://illation.net/Sims3/Uploads/DragonWife.package

Both of these are files that you drop directly into the Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Library folder rather than using the launcher.

The Endless Fail of Installing the Samples

OK, so it’s pretty clear that the Sample household I posted to the Exchange is corrupted. I’m a bit perplexed, since it actually had very little custom content. I’m going to take the link down from my Download A Sample page.

I am really sorry about the trouble it’s caused you guys, particularly Simmentary. If my download really contributed to your CAS fail, I am very unhappy. There’s a good chance it didn’t, though, since household Sims3Packs install to the household library that you see at the bottom of the screen in Edit Town. They aren’t available in CAS. If you haven’t tried this yet, try clearing out your SavedSims directory, INCLUDING the downloadedindex (I’m doing this from memory, so names are approximate). The Buffy Summers sim that I downloaded trashed my CAS, and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with my system. (And more annoyingly, I never found any CC on that sim, so this stuff is just a mystery to me.) I was able to reload a dozen times and get her out into a household (because she was an awesome sim), then remove the file from SavedSims, and I never had any more trouble.

I am a naive uploader, and I’m just starting to read up on the pittfalls of uploading Sims3Packs to the Exchange with cc in them. The strange thing is that there’s almost no CC in that Exchange upload. Mostly it’s just the silver skin tone, so I have to assume that’s it. Or it my be that the game/Exchange just randomly corrupts stuff. Sigh.

All hope is not lost. I have an alternate download that SRaina (I think) taught me to do. Here you can download a household in package format http://illation.net/Sims3/Uploads/SamplesGen4-5.package. I believe you can just drop this file into your Library folder, bypassing the launcher install, and it should show up in your household library without all this drama. This is a later household after Zahra, Fabian, and Ada are gone. However, I’m trying to get time to do the same thing with the earlier household that’s on the Exchange.

SRaina, please let me know if I’m getting this wrong because I haven’t actually done it myself yet.

Alternately, I know that Isa uses a utility by the notorious JM Pescado that cleans up these Sims3Packs, and I think that’s how she got my household into her game. I was delighted to discover DragonWife had a simself on the Exchange, and I can’t get THAT to install due to the standard, “We have no idea what’s going on, so please update your game” error message. I intend to try this utility on it.

EDIT: I have had that package file up for download for quite some time, and I know SRaina used it, but Safari is convinced it can be rendered as a page rather than downloaded. I fixed this by right clicking and choosing the option “Download linked file As…” or whatever the equivalent is in your browser. But now I want to do some additional testing because I don’t want to give you guys any fresh corruption.

EDIT2: OK, the package file is tested, and it seems to be fine. Chrome downloads it properly just by clicking the link above. The whole trying to render it as a page seems to be a Safari quirk. So you can install the Gen 4 & 5 Samples, including Enigma and Ghost by dropping that .package file into your Library folder.

I want my drama back

OK, so why haven’t I been posting AGAIN? Here’s the rundown of the last few days:

I spent entirely too much time tweaking Avalon. The problem with a labor of love is that it’s hard to stop laboring over it. Then I settled down to actually play. It was so nice to have everything working and running smoothly. We threw a big party for Shanni for reasons that will be revealed in the story.

Then I saved and shut down to go to bed. When I ran the game the next day, my game refused to load with the error, “The game process could not be started.” Huh?

A Google search indicated that this error was usually caused by file corruption and that my best bet was to reinstall the entire game. That’s almost an hour-long prospect with the base game and (only) five expansions, but I’d been meaning to do it because it’s really a good idea to do a complete reinstall after a certain number of incremental patches.

So I reinstall and the error comes back. I reinstall two more times was various different tweaks on what I did in what order. Then it WORKED. I breathed a sigh of relief and started playing.

Then I got a notification that about two dozen sims had gotten new jobs — including Morand Cagley, who Redhead designed to be the ultimate firefighter, but who now was getting a job as an athlete. Huh? Veronica didn’t have a job either, which is a bit of a problem considering it’s her Lifetime Wish. I checked, and NONE of the Ambitions lots were working. It turns out that somehow I failed to install Ambitions at all. ARGH.

So I decide I don’t need to spend my last half-hour before bed installing more Sims stuff. I quit out and go to bed.

I reinstall in the morning. The error is BACK! Holy crap, it’s Ambitions! How can I play without Ambitions when it’s integral to my story right now?

I BitTorrent a new installer for Ambitions and reinstall the game from scratch again. No dice. I try a bunch more stuff that’s not worth sharing, and it still doesn’t work. I even try to run from my Windows virtual machine, but for some reason, now a graphics somethingorother setting is causing my entire computer to hang when I try to run the sims there. That can probably be troubleshot too, but I am seriously burned out.

So I face the fact that I might not be able to play any more. I am very, very mad.

Then just in case, I do a second Google search on the problem. In the last 36 hours, messageboards have exploded.

It turns out that on September 25, EA did something to its servers that caused Mac clients to get this error. If you had a game installed from disk, the game would still load. If you have (legal) downloaded games, it crashes out entirely. I didn’t even know that my game was touching the EA servers when I loaded if I wasn’t logged in. I’m not currently using any of the social networking features because I don’t like that stupid prompt it puts on top of your screen.

It briefly got fixed for about half a day, during which time I played and discovered I forgotten to install Ambitions. The next day it was broken again. It had NOTHING to do with my installer.

And about two hours after I read the messageboards, my game ran again. EA fixed the problem.

This was a waste of perfectly good drama.

And the moral of the story is: If everything breaks and you really didn’t change anything, the odds are high that there’s nothing wrong with your system.

I need to take a great big breath and do something else for a few days.

Where are the Samples?

You see, I keep thinking to myself, “Hey, I’m working on getting the Samples moved into their new home, and I’m not actually playing, so I should be able to use the time to get the blog caught up to the present.

In reality, setting up Avalon has taken every moment I can spare for anything Sims-related, and it’s not going well.

Let me explain. No, it’s too much. Let me sum up.

Avalon as released does not have any lots, and the creator envisioned adding them with the in-game world editing tools. This turns out to be essentially impossible. The in-game world editor is bizarre and flaky. It’s good for putting down a few lots here or there, but not for designing a town that makes any sense.

So the creator ALSO made the Create-A-World source files available. I decided to stop banging my head against the game world editor and just do the logical thing.

Of course, I’m running a Mac, and Create-A-World only runs on PC. So I get access to a PC. Then I discover that I have to reinstall a copy of all my games on Windows 7 so that Create-A-World can access, I don’t know, stuff. So I get a hold of installers for my game and expansions and do that.

And it is beautiful, and I lay all the lots I need for a lovely game.

And then when I installed the new world into my game in order to add the lots, the Map View and Edit Town were black.

Bwuh?

I’ve now tried a half-dozen ways to resolve this, and I am really getting grumpy. Nobody in the vast realms of Google-searchable Sims forums seems to be having this particular problem with Create-A-World. And the creator himself released the lot-free version that does NOT have this problem, so there shouldn’t be a problem with his source files. Heck, I even did a (simpler than it sounds) little trick I read about on ModtheSims to pull the source files back out of the compiled Sims3Pack version of the world that I know works, and when *I* touched those files with CAW, the problem came back.

So it’s me. I’m cursed.

I’m posting about this to the forums to see if anyone who knows the tool better than me can point to whatever button I’m not clicking. If that fails, I am just going to have to abandon the project. I have a fabulous collection of fantasy and historic-themed buildings at this point. I ought to be able to find another world. But this world was so lovely, and I already spent a bunch of time looking for fantasy-themed worlds and not finding anything useful.

Bah.

To make things worse, the Samples in Sunset Valley have seriously destabilized. I had to give up on throwing the triplets a birthday party because the game crashed 5 times in succession when I tried, and it still crashed once more before all three kids were teens (I was saving after each age-up :-p). I have got to move them someplace, and now. At this point, with Supernatural on its way in another week, it might be logical to just go there after all. I’ll see how things are in another week.

In the meantime, I’ve fallen behind on some of my reading, so don’t worry that I might have gotten bored with your legacy!

Simfail: The Graduation that Wasn’t

It all began when Veronica really needed to pee and couldn’t seem to find the toilet.

 

Then she needed to finish peeing in her wedding gown.

 

Huh?

 

In fact, the whole family was dressing up spontaneously all over the house.

 

At last the reason for the festivities became known. Right in the middle of potty training his sons, Charles graduated! From, um, high school!

 

So the story is that Twallan’s mod somehow tagged Charles as someone who needed to graduate since he aged up before I installed Generations. At this point, he’s a day or two before aging up to Adult. I have no idea why he was hit now, especially since Ada graduated a long time ago.

 

Zahra was so shocked and overcome with pride that she passed out. Or maybe it was because the stunted graduation routine wouldn’t let her go to bed.

 

At least he got a diploma and award, which he hung above the desk in his bedroom.

Charles was voted Most Likely to Save the World. How appropriate.

Simfail: I Am the Amazing Savior of Portraits

I saved the portraits! There are no words for my awesomness.

Transferring between saves would have been a little bit more annoying without MasterController, but it still would have been OK. I found a household with one sim in it who was very old and would be dead by my current game, so I didn’t have to worry about duplicating anyone. I transferred the portraits to her inventory. Then I saved her household to the household bin. Load up the current save. She’s in the bin. Dropped her in town. Transferred the portraits out of her inventory into Zahra’s inventory. Bim! Bam! Boom!

If I didn’t have MasterController, there would only have been trouble if there was an eight-sim household on either end. You’d just move the sim into the source household, pick up the inventory, move her out on her own, save the household, and reverse the process on the other end.

Afterward, I annihilated the sim. Though she’s still sitting in the household bin, where she serves as a sort of in-game backup of the portraits.

The hardest part turned out to be finding a save that had the portraits in them. I keep a truly stupid number of backups of my Sims 3 folder because I’m afraid of installing corrupted Sims3Pack content and not being able to get it back out. I kept ranging back in time, way past the point where I have actual screenshots of these portraits on the wall, and they were nowhere to be found. Eventually I got back to the point where the Samples had just relocated to the English Country Estate house, but I hadn’t moved their stuff out of inventory and into the house yet. And there they were, all sitting happily in Zahra’s inventory.

I have to guess that something in a patch update rendered those portraits on the wall unloadable? I really have no idea. Now I’m afraid that I’ll load up the game next, and they’ll be gone again. At least they’ll be in the household inventory of Sim Not-Occurring-in-this-Picture.

In additional cheery news, Morand and Faith Cagley from the Cagley Legacy are now in town. I aged Morand up to an Adult so that it would be a bit more plausible for him to be Faith’s father, and I made him more buff to reflect the kind of body an older Morand would have :). Both of them immediately joined their expected careers. Morand is a firefighter, and Faith is a scientist. So she’s now Zahra’s coworker/minion.