My favourite funny background events: It was my first experience of a Sims burglary. Jack Gill woke up in the night to go to the toilet, and found a burglar in the house, so he 'phoned the police. So far, so good! His boyfriend Ravi Bertino got up too. Then, as the policeman and the burglar started fighting in their front room, Ravi, a Virgo, started to clean the shower. Jack? He started playing with Ravi's radio controlled toy car. So as the policeman and the burglar fought, the little car was whizzing about round their feet!

Also remarkable was that both boys were in a state of almost total nudity. Appropriate perhaps for sleeping with your boyfriend, but I know I'd have been very embarrassed indeed to have to talk to a policeman in such a state of undress!

I'd imagine that the Veronaville policemen are already well used to seeing sims in their underwear, considering that I've seen pictures of your sims wearing underwear on community lots lol.

Ancestral Sims of premade neighbourhoods are interesting.
Some have incredibly unique face templates while others, I don't know, EAxis got lazy and got the second face template and just thickened the brows or what.

I wonder if the bandatron was an earlier name that the developers used which is why it appears in some of the code, but they later decided to change the name that the players see. Like some incidences of woohoo are referred to "play-in" in the code.

"-atron" is a common suffix used to denote something automated, without human operation needed. Not sure what "band" could mean in this context. Someone suggested "bandit" which makes me think of one-armed bandits, that casino machine. Maybe the bandatron was originally more bulky and had an arm handle to pull like that casino machine?

Or maybe they were thinking about the wristbands that you sometimes get to show you have paid for entry into a nightclub or event. It could have been an automatic machine to put a wristband onto a sim to show they had paid for entry.

Or indeed it might just refer to bandit, as it takes your money, automatically.

If it did have an arm that sims had to pull, or an animation including sticking their arm in for a wristband to be applied (I am imagining a funny occasional failure for this where a sim gets their hand stuck in it, and the business owner has to come and free them or risk a bad review!) it could have been that these were scrapped in favour of the less cumbersome final version, which TBH I do find annoying watching people stand around trying to decide whether to come in or not. I wonder if there is a mod that makes that quicker.

They go through the browsing process fairly quickly if the price is not set too high even if they are not actively sold to. You make the lot full of luxury stuff and set the price slightly below what corresponds to the average. The person working sales needs something to do. At least they don't need to browse again when approaching barista/bartender/foodstand (lol) which cost about $20 and are part of the overall service because they don't make money on their own.

I wonder if customers not leaving have to do with the business being rank 10.

With similar looking queueing machines you might not pay anything if the service is free (like picking up a post package).

I think Massage isn't working as I would like. It seems to be not motivated at all, and you need to have an employee actively sell it. I have massage motivated for normal commlots, and now two guests come and massage one another, and my nightclub receives $100. An employee doesn't want to return at the massage table after a break. It seems to have a new dedicated work role, but it's not pushy.

Hmm, I don't have a lot of bandatron lots, but I'm pretty sure the ones I have the price set to low and people still hang around for ages wondering whether to buy or not. I don't have anyone sales-ing. Maybe I should.

So the word "bandatron" is used in the code, and was invented by the developers. Until now, I sort of assumed the word had been invented by Simmers! Or perhaps they'd got it from some other context with which I was not familiar. The word also implied to me that it was a way of paying at an entertainment venue, at which one might expect a band could be playing. So thanks for explaining where the word really comes from.

It's not just the policemen! I sometimes talk to Katherine Rauscher, who is a regular papergirl in Veronaville. She's certainly seen some things in her time! Including Sims coming out to greet her in the skimpiest underwear imaginable. And she just has to talk to them as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Sometimes they pay her tips, which can be quite substantial. She thinks they're probably trying to pay for her silence. However she assures me they have no need to worry. As far as revealing their identities is concerned, her lips are absolutely sealed. It's all just part of the job of being a papergirl, or boy, in Veronaville!

I realized this for some time, but it is clear that I built my first neighborhoods with a huge screen, since my houses used to be extremely large. (Adding the fact that before returning to the community I had not built seriously for more than 12 years. xD) Now that I build with my laptop, my houses seem too compact!! I built a building with the idea that it was going to be a flower shop and when I decided to do the interior I realized that the building is too small. XD I want to avoid jams but at the same time avoid the pink soup for the players, plus compact houses look better. XD I guess it's a matter of finding a balance.

I was redressing an NPC who got "fired" from a cook's job, removing makeup, when she lost her face in the process. Got the usual blank on the portrait and no eyebrows. I was gonna quit immediately. But the face came back after I respawned the NPC and accepted the blank one on Appearance. In the past it was worse: the face remained blank on the model. I wonder if there is something suboptimal with my method.

The Business outfit almost always works when done from the manager's interaction. I have to execute an outfit planner on all categories to avoid losing the face. But this is fairly fast now.

Chris Hatch has a mod to fix the business uniform glitch. https://modthesims.info/showthread....306#post5415306

Oh that's interesting. You can restore the face by refreshing the Skin? I've not tried that.

Remember when I said "Today I learned some people rarely play on 3 "

Well, I've been playing without using any speed at all and its been great y'all! I'm always in a rush IRL why the heck am I rushing my sims too?! I know, I know thats a question for my therapist

It's been nice watching and being in the moment VS just getting them to the next destination or working on the next "goal".

I think I've mentioned her before, but it does amuse me that the mail carrier in one of my hoods, coincidentally, one I'm running a "20 woohoo challenge" in - is called "Sienna Acock". She makes me snigger every time she walks past, and I bet she really does see a lot too

So, you're playing on pause? XD

When you've posed a Sim but forgot to turn off free will and to place them in an OMSP, and because it's an overlay you find them on the couch once you stop the pose, that annoys me to no end. You have to redo the whole scene with free will off. I find myself doing this all the freaking time.

Woops! It certainly feels like it sometimes lol. I'm very much a "hurry up" type of person lol. We'll see if I can do at Sim State with how slow they walk

My game basically has two speeds -- Speed 1 or Paused! And usually when playing on Speed 1, I will pause the game every twenty Sim minutes or so to check that everybody is OK. This pause is also my opportunity to take pictures. It also lets me attend to Real Life exigencies. The only time my game goes faster than speed 1 is when it automatically goes to speed 3 because everyone is asleep / at work / at school. If I'm playing a busy dorm, and it goes to speed 3 because my playables are away at classes, I manually put it back to speed 1 so I can better watch what the dormies are doing. It's usually fascinating.

I've basically stuck to this Speed 1 / Pause style of play ever since I started playing eleven plus years ago. It suits me and it suits my Sims. And you know, I think my Sims enjoy the game more because they know I'm looking out for them!

I don't like that the game advances to superspeed when people are asleep or not present in world. I might be observing someone and suddenly everything jumps and disappears when a family member has gone to bed. A double bed brings a double jeopardy because the people wake up to "spoon" and then the speed increases again. I wanted to make speed holder mod, but I couldn't make it to work reliably.

The Community Time Project makes affairs so much fun. Arrange things so that one partner is away for most of the day... then decide whether to time it so they return home to find their spouse in bed with someone else.

Have we found all "lost and found" items from the game files? I just feel like the game has thousands of details it's impossible we've digged all of them up.

I doubt it. I saw some stuff recently that had extra interactions for dogs.

Every time I've sent my sims to P.U.R.E at 1am, there's been 3-4 pregnant middle-aged suburban moms hanging out. I don't want to have to ban them outright, but come on. You have 5 children, go home. You're killing the vibe.

Adapt! Make all the cool teens think, "ew? She's going to the P.U.R.E.? I guess she wants to chill with the suburban moms, lmao" and have a new club open just down the street

So unhelpful to have an 'epiphany' moment with a project or idea, only to realize it's actually not HELPFUL with any of the project... "Oh, the vibe I want for this vacation destination is just like a Studio Ghibli movie!!" ...ok, great, what do I do with that?

Due to mods that change visitors on community lots, I see a lot of kids and teens playing hooky.