What's the right way to create custom hobby instructors without corrupting the neighborhood and breaking the game? Can I use NPC and Townie maker from the vanilla game?

This was correct! I forgot that this was the change I had made--I was researching something and saw that I was using an old version of the mod. So I updated my file to version 1.6 and that's when I experienced the issue. Reverting back to version 1.5 of Food Dish Autonomy seems to have fixed the issue and my sims can clean up burnt food/dishes again. To be sure, I'll have to back to the same exact households, but I didn't have any issues while playing today.

It's still not perfect--sims are way too quick about putting leftovers away, to the point that food left out for guests and food made for an apartment's Saturday gathering gets scurried away to the fridge as soon as possible, and I still hate that sims want to save burnt food, but... it's okay.

Currently rotated through 2 families tonight to test, neither have autonomously done any romance interactions which is what I wanted. Will test further tomorrow. Thank you so much Radium & others! :D

So, I like sending sims on vacation in batches, so that they can run into each other and I can do my one-day rotation shtick. I've never had a problem with that - until now.

The Burning Robot Festival vacation hood I put together has four campgrounds, and I occupied all of them. I decided to send them all for four days instead of my usual three. But they have been running through their vacation hours much too fast - so fast, that three out of the four groups had to go home before they'd done much more than gotten their festival makeovers, grabbed some food, and visited the Showers. These are all people who have too much money, so I turned around and sent them back, with varying numbers of days. My impression is that the vacation timer is running for all of them simultaneously; or possibly, that it's tracking when the sims from the inactive households show up, and counting that against the total.

So - is this a common glitch and Just One of Those Things, or am I looking at an especially tedious 50/50 to track down a mod conflict?

Peni, are you actually losing time, or does the vacation just feel shorter? I would A) Check my downloads folder to see if anything affects time passing or vacations and B) send another group/test again and record the time it takes for a vacation to pass, just to see if it's all in my head.

And @bulbash, from my quick research, yes, you should be able to use the NPC and Townie Maker:

Why does Vim's Ventilation Downward Elbow has no connecting counterpart?

Yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine-in the art deco build set, there's one piece missing to the set, and it's hard to make up for it. I think it was a corner connecting piece.

That's an obvious mistake, too.They forgot to match them up.

Because EA made it. Same way all the wood doesn't match.

Okay, I fear I may have destroyed my Uberhood AGAIN. So, I was preparing for a new save BUT I forgot to backup my LotCatalog... I removed a few houses and stuff from that folder that my Uberhood has.. Is my hood doomed once again from my stupid mistake?

No. The LotCatalog is completely separate from your hoods.

Definitely real, Phantomknight. I sent the Nigmos family to a campground, checked them in, went back to the neighborhood, send Gunnar and Lola, checked them in, went back to the neighborhood, etc. When all four households were checked in, I played the Nigmoses for one day, then proceeded to Gunnar and Lola, where the time bar informed me they only had two days left of the four they had booked.

Community lot Time can shorten your holiday. Although I think that only happens if you keep your sims out after midnight. I would suspect that or any other time distorting mod that you might have.

No community lot time for me. It'd screw up my playstyle - I count on having more than 24 hours in a day.
I guess I'd better try vacations in a different hood in the same game configuration, and resign myself to the 50/50.

Here is a new random bit of trouble for you all: I ditched everything in my downloads folder about a week ago, and now I have to track down all the stuff I can't live without. Most of it I've already found, but there are others that I can't seem to locate. Any help on this would be hugely appreciated. I'll list them in point form:

1. A mod that gives better credit to students who sleep with the drama professor. I know it's here at MTS somewhere, but I've ploughed through 71 out of the 80 pages of the Global Mods looking for it, until I realized that I was now looking at stuff that had been created before the beginning of time so I thought I'd better quit. Can't remember what it's called, but the person who posted it had a hilarious description for it, something about a 'gorilla-faced professor'. I've never actually had any of my students resort to this before, but after reading that I wanted to try it out. Now I've gone and deleted it (and everything else) in a flash of rage, and I would like to find it again.

2. A phone mod that allows you to set the ringer to a certain number of rings. I think it might have also changed how long the sim is able to talk to the other party, because I had people on the phone until their bladders gave out, long after their social needs had been filled. This made it a lot easier to make friends! I don't know if this one came from MTS or not.

3. A mod that disallows strays! I don't think it was a sign I had to put in every yard, I think it was just a mod that kept them away. I don't want strays in any of my yards at all, ever. This mod seemed to do it. (In real life, I'm quite fond of stray cats and dogs and I've looked after several. But real animals are nowhere near as aggravating as the Sims 2 strays!) Again, I can't remember if this came from MTS or somewhere else.

NOTE TO MODERATOR: Okay, I just realized that as soon as you read this you're going to say "Moving to WCIF". Sorry! If you move this, I will understand.

Drama prof is here: http://cyjon.net/node/433

That would be the Visitor Controller by TwoJeffs. It has the option to ban/allow all strays, cats, dogs, wolves.
Here: Visitor Controller

You are a brave, brave soul my friend. Haven't done that in YEARS, as I learned the hard way, sim sites can disappear at the drop of a hat, making all your favorites lost forever. And yes, your post belongs in WCIF.

Anyway, #2 is the phonehack at Maty by pescado and #3 could be the visitor controller but it could also be petaway by inge at simlogical. Just saw that in an old backup yesterday, so I that rung a bell.

ETA: http://www.modthesims.info/d/307464...professors.html

(Next time search for professor )

I was horrified when I accidentally deleted my Downloads folder. I can't imagine doing it on purpose. :O

This is why I keep all the original files archived away in a separate folder than my savegame folder.

Thanks for your response! Do you think that creating custom Sims in CAS and then converting them into townies and hobby instructors will also be perfectly fine?

Yes, why shouldn't it be? Corruption arises from deleting sims, not from adding them, and all methods of creating them are equal.

Yes that is fine too. I always use the npc and townie maker to make all my hobby leaders, townies, downtownies and special sims like slobs and mr big and diva with all my new hoods.

About the townie and NPC maker. (It's a tree in my game, but I understand with the later EPs it's a gun.) I often use it to create new random townies but I've never used it for NPCs. I just let the game generate these when needed. But I would like more cashiers, waiters, bartenders, etc., so you don't meet the same Sim in every shop, restaurant and bar. How does the townie and NPC maker work when creating NPCs? Does it let you choose what kind of NPC you want to create?

PT Smith married Jenny Curious - was she his step child?

No, because he and Glarn never married. Though Jenny is related to all of his children, he and Jenny had no familial relationship until they married.