flowers and bushes does anyone else have problems with gardens? i make a really nice garden with flowers and bushes and trees (not too many trees though cos they get in the way) and a week later its all reduced to compost and weeds i hire a gardener and she waters a few plants and then sods off (cos its too late to stay any longer) so half the plants dont get watered.. is there a cheat that will make her coms every day or do i have to resort to making my sims water the plants (please dont say yes to that!!) thanks for any help
The simple answer is yes, Pescado made a hack that bring the gardener every day. However you need to bear in mind that sims do things differently to real people. If you went out to water your palnts you would start at one end and work your way down the garden. A sim is apt to do some work at one end and then trek all the way to other end to water one plant before going back to the rest. Typically the gardener will walk past shrubs that need trimming on the way to water something. Now wonder she runs out of time. Even the daily gardener is not enough if you put in too many plants. Personally I blame it on the lack of weather if only it would rain occasionally ... If you want it click the link to Pescado's site (MATY) >> dailygardener.zip (it will work whatever expansions you have) and save the file. Unzip it to \My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads If you don't have a folder called Downloads, just make one, but be sure to spell it with the capital D and the s or it won't work. Pescado's hacks are safe which is more than can be said for Pescado himself who can be a trifle robust.
OMG you almost made me spit out my tea. Robust. He sounds like a cup of coffee. He is that, I guess, though I would have gone with warped, myself. If you have OFB you can build a hydrobot. That's my new favorite gardening solution. Other solution: Don't have so **** many plants. Sorry, it's late. I'll watch my asterisks. I had a hedge maze in front of a mansion once and the gardener stayed all night but the thing still had weeds and it looked really terrible all of the time. Since then I've been more modest with my landscaping. Here's a tip: Ponds! They don't need watering or trimming and add a really nice look to a larger yard. Also, trees are nice for the same reason. Or those growing ivy things.
i do try to build nice ponds but the always end up all square-ish, they never look natural and the lily pads are awful and not many other pond plants either to soften it up ~:( i will try the gardener patch, thanks very much caduto
I've never built a hydrobot but I'm wondering if they could make a sprinkler system. Hopefully I can get a sim up to building the hydrobots and maybe that would satisfy me but I would still like a sprinkler. What really irritates me is when you have bushes all around part of a house and you can't trim them. No matter how I turn them the sims complain that they can't get to them. Same with flower beds! I'll turn them so the arrow is in the front but they will still go into the house and complain that there is a wall in the way. Then I turn them so the arrow is toward the house and they still complain. Ruth
I know! So vexing. Low walls seem to confound them too, sometimes. I put them around the flowerbed to look nice and sometimes the gardener stands there and stomps her foot. As long as we're complaining, here's another completely unrelated gripe: When sims feed a baby, could they move away from the **** fridge? Makes it really hard to feed twins, or another hungry family member! I don't want to have to buy two fridges! Although, and I may be the last to discover this, but the OFB bakery case makes a really handy addition to any household! Put your leftovers in there. Now kids can feed themselves, hungry pregnant women don't have to cook, you can eat when someone else is standing in front of the fridge, and you don't waste so much food. Everyone in my little simworld has one.
OH WOW that's a great idea! I'm going to have to try it. Since I always just put things for sale right away and you can't get it back out once it's for sale I never thougt of using it any other way. I didn't even realize kids could get anything out. That's basically what I use their inventories for actually. Ruth
Has he updated it for OFB, Mirelly? I've looked on the site but I haven't seen that he'd updated it yet. It's difficult to have the gardener take care of really big gardens, no matter how daily they come. And if you have used moveobjects or Snapobjecttogrid false to place the items, the gardener may not be able to get to them. (And gardeners waste a lot of time stamping their feet in frustration at not being able to reach things. And, unlike real life, even if you have the money you can't hire more than gardener at a time.) Even without moveobjects or the snapobjecttogrid cheats, if you have your bushes or plants where it's difficult to get to them (such as behind a fence, even the stepover type, or too may bushes in the row or if they are not pointed in the '"right direction") then they won't get watered, weeded or trimmed either. (For example, the flower beds in the Maxis made townhouse has some things which the gardener and Sims can't get to, so some of them always seem to die.) The way around this is to use "plastic" flowers and bushes that are available on some of the Sim fansites. These are very handy if you want the yard to look really nice but don't have the manpower to keep the garden looking the way you'd like it. Right now on TheSimsResource2 they are having a "garden theme week" and are putting out a lot of new things for the garden, including "plastic" things. I don't know if they are in the free section however. (There may be old ones which are in the free section. You'd have to look to know.)
Double-posted with Kat! This is a reply to Ruthie's post, above Kat's. Yes, I used inventory too for a while but that got old because if I have a lot of sims in a household I can't remember whose inventory I put it in! With the bakery case I just have to look. You of course need to go into "rewards" mode to get the food out.
LOL! SBW! I used to "doublepost" all the time on the old TS1 BBS. I'd start well ahead of others, but by the time I finished one of my usual "tomes" they'd long ago done one which got in ahead of mine. Some things don't change, I guess. I hadn't thought of using the bakery thing for leftovers! What a great idea! (It's not like I don't use it for my Sims' businesses.) I really like that idea (although I've found the joys of putting things into the inventory as well.) One of my favorite uses is to have a well prepared meal all ready to go for when the Headmaster is invited. So, instead of feeling pressured to get the meal done in that half hour between when Dinner can be made and the headmaster shows up, they can just pull the meal (which they know won't be burned or take too long) out of their inventory and serve it. Voila! Instant extra points for a well cooked meal. (Shoot, the last time I had a Headmaster visit, they got all their points from just the meal and the dinner conversation. They didn't have to do additional schmoozing or even give a tour. It was marvelous, especially since I'd set up the visit the day before and had forgotten that the headmaster was coming!)
Oooh! That's a good one! I'll have to try that. I usually just make the best cook in the house do the cooking while the one who wants to get into private school gives the tour. That would come in very handy if "good cook" was at work or completely knackered! Plus, as you said, no danger of a burnt meal.
In short it doesn't need updating because it doesn't use "global" variables. To quote Pescado directly: Most NL/UNI safe Pescado hacks were deemed compatible with OFB within a week. For all his faults and impatience with alternative opinons, Pescado does actually adopt a robust approach to modding in that he strictly avoids interfering with Maxis' global variables that are most apt to be modified by successive EP's. Some of the most unmentionable hack-packages are actually quite game destructive. They so terribly interfere with game sequencing and progression that all sorts of malarkey is apt to occur when trying to use them. Forget the non-teen rating issues, that sort of stuff is just a BFBVFS waiting to happen. At least Pescado's hacks guarantee a fireball free gaming experience ...
Thanks, Mirelly. I'll put it back in then. I've actually been having a blast with making gardens this week. It's "garden theme week" at TSR and I've been getting everything I can. I've been having far too much fun. See picture of one of my gardens.
Thanks. I love Sims gardening. I don't get overheated and I don't get my sun hives. (But it doesn't work for taking out aggressions on plants. That's something I *really* miss about doing *real* gardening!) I've got more pictures of other lots if you'd like to see them.
Yes, I'd like to see them. And in the one already posted, do I see a waterfall? Also, it looks as if all the plants are Maxis made. I mean, not downloaded from anywhere. Is that true? Although I think I might see some purple plants I don't recognize.
Actually, most of them are not Maxis made. Maxis made plants grow weeds. Since I like to use moveobjects/snapobjectstogrid so that I can place them wherever *I* want them, they aren't trimmable, so they make loads of weeds. So I tend to use "plastic" ones instead. Some of my plants come from TSR (especially recently as they had a whole week devoted to garden stuff. Kat heaven! Sofal, Windkeeper, SimsAddict99, BitzyBus and CycloneSue especially. Just got some new stuff today!) Others come from AussieTopender http://www.aussietopenders-sims2.com/. (If you get your "RAR file" in uncompressed form, use "save target as..." and choose RAR.) I've also gotten some from MTS2. I had some pretty plants from some other sites (I can't remember the name of the site and I don't see it on my usual list. But the packages say "4esf". But they are all cloned from Maxis weedmakers.) Some of the waterfalls are just art work. But I've found some fountains on TSR and MST2, and I think that I have an actual huge waterfall from TSR (part of a Jurassic Park thing. I only got the plants and the waterfall from the set though.) I have some small running (animated) streams from TSR as well. That particular lot only has the rivulets and a couple of fountains. All the "waterfalls" are done with terrain paint.
