Setting up a home business – possible but not perfect

Published on April 4, 2015 by BluebellFlora2 Comments

I’ve been playing around with setting up a home bakery (like pretty much the whole TS4 Simming community by the looks of it). It’s fun, and good, not to have to bother travelling anywhere to work but it’s not without its problems. Firstly I had my Sim purchase a Retail lot then built a little house with the bakery downstairs and the living quarters upstairs on the lot:

My Sim got baking, opened the shop and everything went smoothly. Customers turned up and after a while started buying stuff. Then it started going wrong. I would get the notification that a Sim wanted to pay for something but the Sim in question wouldn’t have the basket icon above their head, like this:

I also wouldn’t get the option to Ring Up Customer when I click on the Sim. So I have a Sim who wants to pay, according to the Notification Wall, and they’re waving their arms around looking cross, yet they have no basket icon and no interaction available. Annoyance no. 1.

As my bakery was so popular I decided to employ someone to help. I chose a Sim who was nearly maxed out in all three areas – Sales, Work Ethic and Maintenance Skill. I put them to work and they did nothing. Absolutely nothing but sit around and chat with customers, and I don’t mean in a positive sales way. Every time I set them to work ringing up customers or restocking or sales they didn’t do any of them. I fired them and employed someone else, same thing. After getting through half a dozen employees I gave up and decided to just do everything myself. Annoyance no. 2.

I quickly sold out of all my baked goods so I set to work restocking. It took all day, almost. And what’s with having to click on all the signs individually and restock them? How about being able to just click on the display unit and have an option to restock all? I’m sure we had this in Open For Business in The Sims 2. Annoyance no. 3.

My upstairs living quarters soon started filling up with nosy neighbours who loved going through my stuff. Being quite a private person, and having lots of nice shiny things, I took exception to this. My only option was to block the door from the shop to the rest of the house by adding an extra counter unit (my house only has one door to the outside world, the shop entrance):

When the shop is closed I move the counter to the wall so my Sim can move freely around the shop. And go outside:

Of course there is a very simple solution to this – lockable doors. You hear that EA? Please bring back lockable doors. Pronto.

I’m going to carry on playing around with this because it is kind of fun being able to run a home business again. I just wish EA would let us do it properly. The Sims community have been crying out for the ability to run a business from home. It’s a shame that EA , in their seemingly never-ending quest to disappoint, still won’t give their customers what they want.

For an up to date list of reported bugs, head over to Crinrict’s bug thread at Answers HQ. It’s always worth checking to see if your problem is there.

Run your own business from home in The Sims 4 (kind of)!

Published on April 2, 2015 by BluebellFlora2 Comments

So you know how everyone’s been screaming about home businesses in The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 since EA gave us these wonderful opportunities in The Sims 2 Open For Business? Well, with a little jiggery pokery and the Get To Work Expansion Pack, you can!

Jonalin, over on the official forums, has written a post explaining how to do it. Your Sim buys a retail lot then you build a living space as well as a retail space. And don’t leave. This does obviously mean that you effectively have a redundant lot, your residential lot, but who cares when you can live amongst your customers all day?

I’m just about to start up my game and give it a go 🙂

Remove Mods before updating your game

Published on March 27, 2015 by BluebellFlora3 Comments

This is still catching so many out but it really is very simple – if you have Mods in your game then you MUST move them out of your Sims 4 folder before updating/patching your game. You must, you have to, it’s the law.

If you don’t move your mods out your game may become unplayable. To make sure you are never caught out by automatic updates, turn them off. Here are the simple steps to ensuring a (hopefully) happy game after updating with Mods:

Make sure automatic updates are turned off for your game. Open Origin then go to Preferences:
Make sure you’re in the General tab and scroll down to Updates. Automatically keep my games up to date and Automatically keep Origin up to date should both be unticked. For good measure, make sure Ignore non-mandatory game updates is ticked:
Make sure Origin is not automatically loading when you start up/login to your Mac. Automatically launch Origin when I log in should be unticked:
To verify that Origin shouldn’t be loading at startup/login you can double check whilst it’s open. Right click on the Origin icon in your Dock, go to Options and make sure Open at Login is unticked:
And finally, to triply make sure Origin shouldn’t be loading at startup/login, check your user account preferences. Open System Preferences then click on Users & Groups:Make sure your user account is selected then click on Login Items in the right hand pane. Origin should not show up there at all: If Origin is showing there simply click on it and then click on the minus (-) symbol under the window. That will remove it.

That’s it. Your game should never update automatically now. You will be prompted to update when you open Origin and when you launch the game. So remember, if you have Mods –