Sometimes it’s the little things that occupy my mind more than anything else when it comes to this game. I’ll never get tired of being annoyed at that 1-square gap between lots on grass terrain! 😄

Short of building the lots on the same large lot, this is what we get. But that’s not a good solution, especially if the lots are quite large or you have multiple small lots on one large lot and you lower the walls of one lot - you’ll see the interiors of ALL the lots!  I know I could take the world into CAW and change the area to concrete terrain so it will at least match the pavement and it will look neat and cohesive, but who has time for that? For small areas like this, I just want a quick, simple way to fill the gap. I’ve started using Grandelama’s retaining fences to achieve this, and I have to say, they look pretty good! The set comes in 3 parts, fence with paving, corner fence with paving and paving with an invisible fence. 

The trick is to make sure the paving is on the outer part of the lot and not the inner part so it will cover the gap. Depending on which direction you drag the fence tool (left to to right or vice versa) the fence will appear on the inside or outside edge.  The fence isn't recolourable when being placed on the outer edge of the lot, so place it on the inside edge first, recolour it, save the preset, then delete the fence and then place it where you want it choosing the saved preset. Do the same for all three parts so they have the same colours to match. 

Close up, the paving looks slightly raised, but other than that, it looks much neater than the grass gap, doesn’t it? Especially as they’re recolourable, you could match the colour to the pavement or whatever flooring the lot next to it is as close as possible and it will look miles better than the grass! Sims can’t walk on or through them of course, as they are technically fences, so don’t put them where you want sims to walk. If you have 2 or more high-detailed lots enabled in the game options, you’ll see them clearly between the lots, but if you play with one high-detailed lot at a time, you’ll see the grass again as the ‘fences’ will fade, but that’s to be expected because they are technically not part of the lot when placed outside of it.  

It’s not a perfect solution of course, but it makes the gaps between my lots look better and neater for now. Do you have any other tips or tricks to make our little towns look better? 🙂

I'm trying this plumbbob colour mod out just now, so @hotgirlmiva​, this mini tutorial is for you as promised! 😁

Download the mod from MTS and unzip the file somewhere. In the folder you'll see the 'S3-PlumbBob-Colour-Creator_exe' file. Click it - you might get an error message saying you don't have .NET Desktop Runtime to run it like I did. Click on 'Yes' to download and install it.

Once that’s done, click the PlumbBob Colour Creator program again.  

You can make 4 different colour plumbbobs. Click on the first colour square, the red one and another panel will show up. Here you can choose your colours, either from the System Colours list, enter a hex colour code (e.g number #40E0D0 for teal) or drag the lever up or down on the right hand side.

When you find the colour you want, you can save it as a ‘Favourite’ by clicking the bookmark icon next to the hex code and it will end up as one of the circled colours in the middle.

When you press 'Confirm' your chosen colours will replace one of the default colour squares on the other panel. 

Save 4 colours you want to replace the default squares. I clicked the red square and replaced it with DarkViolet, Aqua replaced the second one, Black is the third square and Fuchsia Pink is the last one.  Now pick the colour plumbbob you want to make as the plumbbob replacement mod and click 'Generate'. I chose the first one, DarkViolet! 💜 (You could make all 4 of them now but of course, you can only use one at a time.)

You’ll get a message saying the package has been created!

Install the package in your mods folder and start your game to have a look! (If you have an invisible plumbbob mod installed, take it out first otherwise you won't see it 😄 I forgot I had Pocci's mod installed lol *whoops*)

Here it is! DarkViolet plumbbob! It looks really nice! 😍

It makes a nice change from the green plumbbob! I’ll probably leave the invisible plumbbob mod out now and use the ‘hideHeadlineEffects [on/off]’ cheat when I need to hide the plumbbob to take screenshots. 😊 

Common problems why S3MO won’t run for you.

Updated post: 16th January 2023 - added ‘Cleanup Files and Folder Names’ (see at bottom of post)

There are some common problems that I’ve seen why S3MO won’t work for some people, not show all their cc/mods or cause crashes. These are problems that I didn’t make clear in my tutorial or even forsee would be a problem (my apologies!).

Nested Folders/Subfolders When adding your cc and mods to MO, you can only add them in single folders (if you want to have categories), NOT nested folders. So for example, you have a folder for ‘Rugs’. You add all your rugs to that folder, but you can’t have rugs in subfolders inside ‘Rugs’ such as Persian, Antique, Modern etc, as they won’t be seen. If you want those, ask Gokur, the creator - he does listen to requests! 

Store Updates

If you have any of the 5 large Store Updates (see screenshot below), do not add them to MO folders, you’re essentially trying to merge already merged files! The sizes of them (over 1GB!) are larger than the default limit size (1000MB=1GB) of MO merged files, so they will cause a crash. Even if you increased the limit size to 2000MB (2GB), you are still trying to merge the files together and they’ll still be larger. Keep them in Mods>Packages for them to work properly.

Resource.cfg Paths and Additional Lines for S3MO and CCMagic

The most common problem I see is regarding the resource.cfg file - if the resource.cfg settings in MO are not correctly typed or not have the additional lines added for your cc to be seen across multiple folders, then they won’t show up!

Make sure the format is consistent across the lines. The quotation marks “ are fine, they have no affect but make sure the ‘/’ and asterisks (*) are in the correct places like so: 

Priority 500 PackedFile "Packages/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*/*/*/*.package"

Priority 1000 PackedFile "Overrides/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*/*/*/*.package" The default resource.cfg file should have these lines already and should be correct. If you don’t have a resource file in the Mods folder, download it from NonaSims or MTS. You must add additional lines to the resource file (via the apps settings) for other cc folders to show up.  If you’re using CCMagic, you must keep in mind MO wasn’t originally meant to be used WITH CCM so you have to configure the resource.cfg file to see cc in BOTH apps.  When using MO and CCM, your cc is now spread out over 4 different folders now under Mods:

When you open the Resource.cfg file in the Mods folder, Packages and Overrides will always be on the resource file. 

To add additional lines to have cc from MO and CCMagic (and any other folders you want), you must add them to MO and CCM settings, NOT the actual resource.cfg file. You add your edits in these spaces in Settings (Top is S3MO Settings and bottom is CCMagic Options):

The line to add to S3MO Resource.cfg settings is: Scan “G:/My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Mods/Cache/Config/” This must be added to S3MO settings  for it load CCMagic cc when the game is launched from S3MO. Make sure the drive letter corresponds to your EA Documents folder. The line(s) to add to CCMagic Resource.cfg options are:

Priority 495 PackedFile “ModBuilds/*.package” PackedFile “ModBuilds/*/*.package” PackedFile “ModBuilds/*/*/*.package” PackedFile “ModBuilds/*/*/*/*.package” PackedFile “ModBuilds/*/*/*/*/*.package” These must be added to CCMagic for it to load S3MO cc when the game is launched from CCMagic. Make sure the Priority number corresponds to the priority you set in S3MO if you changed it. (Really, only the first two lines are needed as S3MO doesn’t see nested folders beyond the first level folders, as I noted earlier, but to make sure CCMagic sees ALL cc in S3MO, I added them all and to keep the lines consistent with the others. CCMagic will pick up the merged files in the folders on first level in ModBuilds and ignore everything else)

Antivirus and Firewalls

Some antivirus and firewalls have been reported to block ‘s3mo.exe’ from running, including:

Make sure you add ‘s3mo.exe’ to the antivirus/firewall exceptions/allow list if you find it won’t run!

Cleanup Files and Folder Names

S3MO has been reported to crash while trying to read fullstops (.) in the folder names (Thanks to @xiasimla​ 👍🏾) Also symbols and spaces in the name are problematic too. You can use any bulk renaming software to rename file and folder names and remove spaces by adding an underscore (_) in the spaces and delete fullstops/periods and symbols such as: .\&\(\)\+\%\[\]\{\}\@\'\#\~\'\!\, Bulk Rename Utility is very good but I also recommend Advanced Renamer. I add these presets: 🔽

1: Remove pattern (symbols, fullstops, quotation marks etc) .\&\(\)\+\%\[\]\{\}\@\'\#\~\'\!\,

2: Replace (space with underscore)

Let me know if you need any more help regarding these points or if there are any other problems that might stop S3MO working for you, I’ll add it here for future reference. Also, let Gokur know too :)

See Original Tutorial here See how to use S3MO with Sims3packs here!

Sims 3 Mod Organizer - Sims3packs? 😲

I did not know that Sims 3 Mod Organizer can extract Sims3packs too! There are still a lot of content in S3Ps, we use apps to extract packages from them so they can be ‘de-bulked’ and be merged. S3MO can do this! 

I was told it’s a good idea to make another post about this rather than adding it to the already large tutorial I made (you’re right, @misspats3​ 😄)

Click Install and browse to the sim3pack file(s):

I added a new folder for the ‘Extracted S3Ps’. I can always move them around later, but for now they’re in one place and I can check their conflicts here too. You can do them individually or in batches!  (They’ll have the long number names, of course. They can be renamed later)

The new folder will appear at the bottom and the file(s) shown in the right panel. You can rename the folder and change its priority order.  To change the file name, you’d need to go into its folder on the hard drive and rename it there. 

(If done in bulk, extract their thumbnails with Thumbnail Extractor (or similar software) so you know what they are!) In the main window, ensure the folder is enabled by checking the box for them to be loaded (if testing them first before moving them). I know that Thumbnail Extractor also extracts sims3packs (and keeps the names!) but it’s always good to have an alternative and this is another way to extract sims3packs and keep the files together in one app. Very cool! Thanks, g0kur :)

See Original Tutorial here Common Problems why S3MO doesn’t work. 

Using the Sims 3 Mod Organizer by g0kur

Well, it’s no secret that I really like using g0kur's Sims 3 Mod Organizer! 😄

When I initially read the description of this I thought 'Is this a replacement of Delphy's Dashboard?' I realised it was more than that when I saw it not only finds conflicts between cc and mods but merges them too. Merge mods?! 😲  I really wanted to try this for myself.

This is my tutorial on to how to use it. This guide is for people who are not familiar or experienced with this tool playing other games. If you are, feel free to correct me where I’m wrong or offer any tips and tricks in the comments!

I also talk about how I use S3MO with CCMagic near the end. (I still have a lot of content in CCM that are in collection files, so I can’t give it up yet 😉)

You can download S3MO from HERE.

Disclaimers:

The zip file contains all the files needed. Extract the files to a folder where it will stay and won't be moved, and on a drive that has plenty of space. You'll be adding most - or all - of your content to it.

Run ‘s3mo.exe’ and enter the paths to the .exe you want S3MO to launch and the Documents>EA folder.  (Since 8th July S3MO has been updated to allow any executable to be selected to run instead of Sims 3 executables if you use other launchers)

In the window, click the gear icon for Settings

In Settings, you can change the executable of the game, location of the documents folder, set the size limit of the merged files of your content, change the priority of the merged files, edit the resource.cfg file from here (more on this later!) and check the boxes of the caches you want cleared when needed.

Close Settings back to the main window to start to add your cc and mods. You could click ‘Install’ to add single packages (browse to the packages you want to install)

If you have a lot of content and mods, then the best way to do it is to file your content in folders in the S3MO folder! Close the S3MO window and open the folder you unzipped. You’ll see 2 new folders, Mods and Profiles. Mods is where you add your packages. 

This is my old setup as an example (it’s been changed since)

Add your mods and cc to your folders.

(I would advise adding them in small batches because when you open S3MO, you might get an error dialog if it is trying to load them all at the same time on first load).

Open S3MO when you’re done, or after the first couple of batches to see your setup.

(Watch the log panel at the bottom as your folders load. Wait a few seconds until its finished. If you try doing anything else with S3MO while its loading you might get an error.)

The top panel will show your list of folders with your content/mods in them. Make sure you tick the boxes next to the folders to enable them. When you do, some flags will show up next to the folders with conflicted mods.  (G0kur and others helped me to understand what they mean)

(Don’t mind my simplified way of explaining this part! 😄)

 Thunder with + means this mod overwrites other mods on your setup.

Thunder - means other mods is overwriting this mod.

Thunder +- means this mod is partially overwritten by other mods and other parts of this mod are overwriting others.

The brown icon (not sure what that is) means there are mods in the same folder conflicting with each other. 

G0kur said ‘Just think bottom (high priority number) overwrites top (low priority number) and it will all make sense’. It does.😄

So, clicking on the folder ‘13′ which also highlights folders 11 and 9 (green folders), shows the mod (or mods) that will override mods in those other folders.  

The right panel shows mods that conflict with each other in the same folder.

When you double-click on a folder with a flag(s) next to it, or a mod on the right with a flag, another window shows which resources conflict with each other.

To resolve the conflicts, you could either:

The more you use it, the easier it will get! If you’re like me, you’ll enjoy clicking on the files and looking at the flags and seeing which XML or ITUN or whatever resource clash with each other. This is so much better than Dashboard in showing more detailed conflicts because it means you no longer have to chuck out a whole mod to use another one. 

When you have added all your cc and mods in your folders and resolved as many conflicts as you can (there may still be some, i.e from the same creator, they can be ignored), then you click Refresh and Build Merge to merge your content! 

(Any additions you make to your folders, you must click Refresh)

The merged files are in the ‘ModBuilds’ folder in the Documents folder 

Press Play to launch Sims 3! If successful, Sims 3 should run with all your cc and mods merged! And no crashes! 

You can set different profiles, e,g for testing, legacy games, whatever you want!

You can enable or disable any folder you want for each profile. 

Some of the icons on the toolbar:

Using S3MO with CCMagic

Until another tool supports collections (hint hint 😉) I’m still going to use CCMagic for some of my content. I use S3MO to merge content that are not tied to CCM or collections and so far, they’re working very well together. I made a request to g0kur to allow editing the resource.cfg file like CCM does. I edited CCM resource to load the collection folder to show my custom icons, but they wouldn’t load with S3MO. None of my CCM content loaded with S3MO either unless I edited the resource file every time I wanted to play. That was a a no-no. I got the annoying ‘Some objects could not be loaded...’ message when my game started 😄. Just, no.  G0kur kindly accepted my request! I edited the resource file to load everything I want in the settings, like so:

Scan "G:/My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Mods/Cache/Config/"

Priority 495 PackedFile "ModBuilds/*.package" PackedFile "ModBuilds/*/*.package" PackedFile "ModBuilds/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "ModBuilds/*/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "ModBuilds/*/*/*/*/*.package"

Priority 500 PackedFile ../Collections/User/*.package

Priority 500 PackedFile "Packages/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Packages/*/*/*/*/*.package"

Priority 1000 PackedFile "Overrides/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Overrides/*/*/*/*/*.package"

As you can see, I added the line from CCM resource at the top to scan its config folder so all my CCMagic content will load. Or you could add these lines instead if you prefer:

Priority 500 PackedFile "Cache/*.package" PackedFile "Cache/*/*.package" PackedFile "Cache/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Cache/*/*/*/*.package" PackedFile "Cache/*/*/*/*/*.package"

Either way works. 

Launch the game with S3MO and hopefully ALL your content will load. 🤞🏾🙏🏾

Added 14th July: To have both apps ‘see’ each others cc, you must make sure any resource edits you make are the same in both settings. Copy and paste your edits in these spaces (not directly in the resource.cfg file):

Added 18th July:

If you have any of the 5 large Store Updates (see screenshot below), do not add them to MO folders, you're essentially trying to merge already merged files! The sizes of them (over 1GB!) are larger than the default limit size (1000MB=1GB) of MO merged files, so they will cause a crash. Even if you increased the limit size to 2000MB (2GB), you are still trying to merge the files together and they'll still be larger. Keep them in Mods>Packages for them to work properly.

I really recommend this tool! Not only does it help to organize your content, especially if you’re not using CCM, it finds conflicts that Dashboard misses. 

It merges large amounts of cc very well. If you’re not too attached to CCM or collections, you could easily move all your content to S3MO!  I can honestly say, since I’ve been been using S3MO, my game has been running so smoothly. It wasn’t particularly laggy in the first place, but there were pauses with Sims autonomy. I sorted out conflicts with the social data and idles XMLs and it has helped a lot with my Sims interactions with each other. I do give credit to S3MO for this, because I didn’t see these conflicts in Dashboard.

Saving the game is quicker and exiting the game is quick too. Some have said their loading times are shorter too. I noticed that with one of my older, larger save games, it was a pleasant surprise!

Extra notes:

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. If anyone has any questions, new ways of using S3MO or if I missed anything, let me know in the comments!  

See how to use S3MO with Sims3packs here! Common problems why S3MO doesn’t work.

CollectionTweaker3 by Inge

(I think I have reblogged this already. Oh well lol). 

As you know by now I love using this little app, its an oldie but a goodie! 

Aside from making your own icons in PS, there are a range of extra icons (well, PNGs) available from various places, especially Mod The Sims so you can have more choice of icons to customize your collection files if you’re into organising your custom content catalogue. Even TS4 has some cute PNGs too :)

In an older post I made (which I can’t find) about making custom collections in game and/or CCMagic, I said in order for the image of the collection file to show up and not a blank folder, you had to install the collection file twice (one copy in the usual Collections>User folder and the duplicated copy in the Mods>Packages folder). I obviously didn’t read the description properly on the Simlogical page. I missed the part that noted I could’ve just added the line ‘PackedFile ../Collections/User/*.package’ in the Resource.cfg file, e.g (last line)

Priority 500 PackedFile Packages/*.package PackedFile Packages/*/*.package PackedFile Packages/*/*/*.package PackedFile Packages/*/*/*/*.package PackedFile Packages/*/*/*/*/*.package PackedFile ../Collections/User/*.package

Better late than never lol. I’ve taken out the duplicate collection files out of CCMagic after making this edit and I’m happy to see the images on my custom collections are still showing up! I’m so glad I won’t have to remember to make duplicate copies every time I make these things 😄.

I liked making my own icons in Photoshop, you can see some of them in the second row, but I’m discovering some lovely PNGs in the TS3 Icons Collection I recently reblogged at Mod The Sims. I’ll search through them for specific images but I’ll make my own if I can’t find the one I want :)

Remember, if making your own icon psd in PS, the size has to be 54x54. Collection Tweaker only imports PNGs, not icons (.ico). As long as they’re not too big, they’ll export correctly on the file. 

Also, if you try to change an icon of a collection made in CCM, the Tweaker will throw up an error. I don’t know why this happens. You can change its icon in the game.

@phoebejaysims good question lol I’ve only set up a testing loan account so far. 😛 If the loan is between sims and I'm playing in rotation, then I might set up auto payments with NRaas SP>Household Options>Money: Transfer Household. You set the destination household and the amount, and the money should transfer at each cycle - whatever the cycle is (is it daily or weekly? 🤔) I need to figure this out. 

If via the bank, then it’s manually done all the way lol. I'd set a loan account as using an object at the bank, a red folder. Set the name and funds (always make sure you name the object to something relevant so you can find it amongst all the other objects that will also be listed. I use the location of the object first so all bank items will be listed together: 

Modify the funds for the loan as a minus number, e.g -20,000 (plus interest of course! 🤑)

If the sim has a PC or bank item at home, she can pay her money to it and then transfer it to the bank item anytime she wants.

If the bank has its own funds on-site you could take money from it and then make the sim pay back the money by going to the bank, but even if it’s done this way, the bank will still get the money. 🙂