Be sure to purchase burglar and smoke alarms for your new home.
Increasing your cooking skill to a level of three or higher will prevent kitchen fires. Barbecue fires can be prevented by keeping the area around a grill clear of objects.
A great way to make friends is by feeding your guests when they come over. Make sure you have comfortable furniture for them to sit on. It's great to talk about interests. Just don't keep your guests standing around the whole time.
Do not kiss or hug your friends without showering first if you want to keep them as friends. If you're in a bad mood, so will your friends be if you push it too much.
Drinking a blue potion that you've made will increase your Bladder, Comfort, and Social values to the max.
Drinking an orange potion will turn you invisible temporarily.
Drinking a yellow potion will invert your personality permanently.
If you can afford it, try to put toilets and bathtubs in seperate rooms to create more privacy for others.
Tired of your guests hogging one bathroom? It may be because that bathroom has the best toilet in the house. Try installing better toilets in other bathrooms to lessen some of the traffic around just one.
Are you having trouble with sleeping in the wrong bedroom instead of the one meant for you? If so, make sure your bedroom has a high Room value. If you keep sleeping in your kid's room, it means either your room is too dull or too far to walk to.
Dancing with others will increase your Social and Fun values as well as your relationships.
Are you watering your plants constantly, yet the Yard value for your home is zero? It's probably because you had a recent fire and the ashes haven't been swept up. So get crackin'!
Does your home have a low Layout value? If so, it may be because you have to walk long distances to get to the kitchen or bathroom. Your home's Layout value will increase slightly as you get used to where everything is located. It will increase a whole lot after more windows are installed and that second floor isn't left half done.
Neighbors and family members prefer to use nice walkways in your yard instead of having to walk on grass or city pavement.
One solution to keep stray animals from entering your home is to keep one or two bowls of food in your yard so they won't come inside to beg for food. Another solution is to pave over your entire yard to make it less appealing to strays. Another is to kill all the neighborhood pets. The solution with the least amount of work or fuss is to install the "Stray-Away" Pet Prevention System (from EA Games) in your yard.
Use www.floorplansearch.com or www.coolhouseplans.com to find that perfect house design for you to build.
Has Sunny the Clown come over for a visit and won't leave? Increasing the Social values of those that live in your house will cause Sunny to leave on his own. To keep him from dropping by ever again, remove the painting of him that's hanging on one of your walls. Or you can resort to calling the Clown Catchers to remove both the painting and the clown for good. Another way to get rid of Sunny is to place his picture above a lit fireplace and then place a carpet in front of the fire to get things cooking. Sunny will light on fire and die after his picture is burned off the wall.
Is someone making enemies with everyone they meet? It's probably because they have no interests to talk about with others. The Newbie and Goth families are known for not having many interests (because they were created before the Hot Date expansion pack). They will eventually fight each other (if left to their own devices) until one of them leaves the house for good. Sending them to Downtown or Old Town will create more interests for them so they'll behave well with others.
Want to increase your Social value without having to entertain much? Install a decent hot tub and simply relax in it during a party. Others will instantly want to socialize with you. Hot tubs will increase your Hygiene, Comfort, and Fun values at the same time.
Drinking espresso will increase your Hunger, Energy, and Fun values. And if you're drinking with someone your Social value will also increase.
Want to build your own restaurant in a Downtown lot? Placing a podium in a lot will get you a waiter, a busboy, and a cook. Placing a bar in a lot will get you a bartender, a barmaid, and a pianist. Waiters and barmaids need tables with at least two chairs to serve customers. Cooks need a stove and a refrigerator. Busboys need a sink or dishwasher. Pianists need a piano. The Gastronomer Podium will get you a pianist for your restaurant as well. It will also get you a minstrel if you have a trash compactor and no piano. NOTE: The Chimeway & Daughters piano will not work for the pianist.
If you end up with a dysfunctional family with all members on the verge of killing each other, it may be a good idea to evict them. Their stats will return to green so they can get a fresh new start in a new home.
Are you living single and want to increase your Social value without having to meet people? Pet the stray animals that come by your house. Or better yet, adopt a pet from Old Town.
Keeping your house lot clean will keep skunks and flies away. That means picking up trash, washing dishes, cleaning toilets, and mopping up urine.
The Butler will bring in the paper for you and place it on the nearest empty table if he's not too busy watering your plants all day.
Install trash compactors where you have room for them. They are much nicer having around than trash cans. NOTE: You'll be using the trash can that is closest to your trashed area.
Your personality is passed on to your future kids. So it is a good idea to ensure you have the "Right Stuff" first before producing offspring.
The crystal ball's predicted future for you will come true (or not) on the next day.
The voodoo doll, while fun for you, causes great discomfort to the person you use it on.
The mime will steal food off your table if you are not careful.
The person you share a bed with must be at least a friend.
If you don't want a barmaid in your bar, block the bartender's area so no one can come around from behind the bar counter to assist customers.
Your family will love their backyard even more if it has a fence around it.
Dogs will get rid of roaches and raccoons. Cats will get rid of mice.
Starving your cats will get them to hunt for mice more.
Dogs can easily live from a toilet if there is no more dog food in the house.
If you take your entire family with you to Old Town, each member will have "free will" there. But if you invite just one person to go with you, no one will have "free will" (guests will still use bathrooms on their own when they can't hold it anymore).
Dirty plates will never be cleaned up until at least a sink is added to your house to wash them in.
Do most of your parties take place in the bathroom instead of in the living room? It may be because there is only one door to the bathroom and your guests get blocked by other guests. Adding another door can help traffic flow and get your parties back in the living room.
Visiting neighbors will not re-enter your house to leave your lot if they are trapped in your backyard. Removing a piece of your fence will allow them to walk off your lot.
Floor tiles that you place in the wrong place sometimes refuse to be deleted. If the CTRL key doesn't do the trick, simply click on the UNDO icon to remove the floor tile.
If a family becomes mute after spending weeks working on their home, it means the IFF file for that house is corrupted. This is why the crying baby isn't heard and none of the family members are heard when they're talking, laughing, screaming, etc. NOTE: Neighbors can be heard just fine when invited over because they're indexed from their own home's IFF file which may not be corrupted. The only fix for the "mute bug" is to clean out the house, which means evicting the family from their home. DO NOT DEMOLISH THE HOME! Re-buying the lot and moving the family back into the now empty home (yes, evicting a family means losing all the furniture) will result in a fresh new index file that you can start filling up with furniture again.
The person that is flickering on and off upstairs in Wrensday's in Downtown is the pianist trying to reach the piano seat. Delete the velvet rope that is blocking her path so she can play her music.
Ever go to a restaurant and order a three-course meal and never get to the last meal because the busboy won't remove your dirty plates? Too many cooks in a Downtown lot can confuse the game's AI. So keep the size of your food services staff to a minimum by having just one podium in your Downtown lot.
Restaurants and bars will seat Downtown customers only at tables with at least two chairs.
Restaurant and bar pianos will function only in rooms containing a Gastronomer Podium or one of the three bars (the DTS Bar System, the TransLight Bar Station, or the Roxy's Beach Bar).
Kitchen rooms that a cook would use do not need to be connected to a restaurant room.
If you have more than one kitchen in a Downtown lot, the cook will use whichever one is the best equipped and has the highest Room value.
If you have more than one piano in a restaurant, the pianist will choose the piano located in an area of the room more comfortable to play in.
Downtown customers can only dine in the room where the lot's podium is located. So make sure you place the podium far enough from the seating area so that customers waiting in line don't block the paths of waiters, busboys, and customers trying to get to their tables. Seating outside the room cannot be used for dining.
Make sure your bar has some tables to sit at so you don't have all your customers crowding around the bartender's station.
Yes, the restroom labels do mean something to your customers. So keep them straight.
Stoves must be positioned against a wall for them to be operational.
Notice a huge drop in your interest levels? It's probably because you installed an expansion pack since installing Hot Date. A visit to Old Town or Downtown will give you back more interests than the default pre-Hot Date ones.
Bonehilda will lockup if you knock on her casket while she's already out working. Use the move_objects on cheat to delete her from the lot if this happens.
If you're suffering from flies you can't get rid of, delete your toilets and buy new ones. The flies will then vanish from your home. It's an annoying bug in the game.
If a floor tile can't be removed from the second floor, it's probably because the walls on the first floor below it have been removed. Re-building those missing walls on the first floor will allow you to then remove those floating floor tiles.
The garden in the Burb's backyard (from Sims Unleashed) will be erased after you install the Makin' Magic expansion pack. Probably because grown food in the game has been upgraded to work with magic spells. So the Burb's will need to replant their garden.
If your game starts playing very slow, it's probably because the butler is waiting for something to become availabe for him to act on or use. Others in the house simply cancel themselves and go on to do other things. But the butler will bring the game to its knees until "that stray dog" either leaves the lot on its own or "that neighbor" steps out of the urine he's been dying to clean up. NOTE: Makin' Magic fixes this bug, I think.
Inviting someone to Old Town, rather than going alone, causes the trolley to take its sweet time leaving the house and returning from Old Town.
Superstar has problems working on PC's with dual monitors. Upgrading to Makin' Magic fixes the problem.
