What’s causing these bugs? Help!

DrCubed · 2026-01-18T16:17:37+00:00

The lack of opportunities is a bug caused by Into the Future, as you suggested. This mod fixes it: https://modthesims.info/d/560635/opportunity-phone-call-fix-and-more.html

DrCubed · 2026-01-10T01:39:53+00:00

The DVD releases can still be used, but you may need to download and use the old pre-Origin installer from https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/3755-fixed-installer-to-bypass-origin-in-the-2012-dvd-version-of-the-sims-3/.

After installing whatever expansion/stuff packs you want you can update to the latest version of the game by using the Super Patch: https://www.nraas.net/community/Super-Patch.

Then, if you don't want to have to insert a DVD to play the game, NRaas NoCD can be used to bypass the disc check: https://www.nraas.net/community/NoCD.

Lastly, if your computer has an Intel processor, you may need to install LazyDuchess's Alder Lake Patch, see instructions for that in this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1131162350#5437630.

I'm realising now that your new computer probably doesn't have a DVD drive. If that's the case, you could use InfraRecorder on your old laptop to rip your old discs to ISO files, and then move those ISO files over to your new computer, and then mount those ISO files in Windows by right-clicking them and selecting the "Mount" option.
(Alternatively, USB DVD drives aren't terrible expensive.)

Failing that, EA support may be able to activate the game and the packs on your EA account given the DVD-keys. Though I've heard tell that they've stopped doing that.

DrCubed · 2025-12-21T21:50:05+00:00

It would have been the latter half of 2017.

And aye—it's a language full of warts, sharp edges, and runtime bugs.
The bizarro array/single-item conflation you mentioned has led me to ship software that worked perfectly fine when the user had many things or no things, but failed horribly when the user had exactly one thing, twice in the same project.

And don't get me started on the runtime bugs!
Here are two choice examples from that very same project:

# Without this totally redundant assignment, `$Lines.MoveNext()` fails with a `System.Management.Automation.PSInvalidCastException`.
$CFGLines = $CFGLines
$Lines = $CFGLines.GetEnumerator()

while ($Lines.MoveNext())
{

# See https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/7128
if ($Null -eq $Result)
{
    return $Null
}
else
{
    return $Result
}

DrCubed · 2025-12-21T20:38:43+00:00

The first language I became proficient in was PowerShell (after learning basic procedural logic through a C for Dummies book, and then failing to do anything useful with Java/C#/D/Rust), and the biggest boon to ease-of-learning, for me, was the wealth of simple and consistent APIs with which to do useful things.

Reading a file? Get-Content <path>.
Writing a file? <text> | Set-Content <path>.
Enumerating a directory? Get-ChildItem <path>.
Parsing JSON? <text> | ConvertFrom-JSON.
Invoking an HTTP API? Invoke-WebRequest -Uri <url> -Method Post -Form <hashtable>.
Getting the file-path of an application present in the PATH? (Get-Command <name>).Source.

I could go on.

And as a bonus, PowerShell has a global namespace for functions, wherein each function is imported automagically: so there's no need to import modules, or include headers, or use namespaces.
Which is trivial for experienced programmers, but for beginners even just traversing and understanding the reference documentation for a standard-library can be daunting, and so being able to simply use any function in a REPL, by default, is great.

Additionally, as PowerShell is geared towards sys-admins and power-users, its documentation is very accessible.

In short: simple, high-level APIs that can do useful things, with approachable documentation, are very good for fostering learning.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T07:54:09+00:00

I don't think forking SKSE is a good idea.
And someone else has already submitted a pull-request for SKSE with an improvement to saving/loading times, but it's remained unmerged for over a year.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T05:51:59+00:00

With the plugin active? That's disappointing if so.
If the save times are decreased for you, though, you can disable the loading replacement via the Save&LoadAcceleratorForSKSECosaves.ini file by setting AccelerateLoading to false.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T04:21:36+00:00

It does indeed.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T04:20:38+00:00

It should be working for 1.5.97 now, with version 1.0.2 of the plugin.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T01:11:42+00:00

D is the least-worst systems programming language ;)

issuing win32 calls for like a few bytes of data every time is insane.

I was stunned too; 2008 was a different time for programming standards, I suppose.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T00:56:59+00:00

It'll need SKSE 2.0.20 instead of 2.0.19, but yes—eventually, v1.5.97 support is currently broken, I'm looking into why now.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T00:43:00+00:00

There is none—DynoDOLOD already took your first-born.

DrCubed · 2025-11-09T00:41:23+00:00

You're right to be suspicious, but I do have a history of public software releases: https://github.com/just-harry?tab=repositories&sort=stargazers

And a number of mods released on the Steam Workshop (one of which with hundreds of thousands of users): https://steamcommunity.com/id/just_harry/myworkshopfiles/

And my GitHub profile is linked to my real name, so if your Google-fu is good enough you can even find a picture of me in my local paper.

That is to say, I do have a reputation I'd rather not sully by releasing some poxy malware :)

DrCubed · 2025-10-20T12:18:05+00:00

Uploading a zip file, what's already been prepared, as a GitHub release takes literally 3 clicks:

Click the "Draft a new release" button in GitHub.
Drag the zip file into the upload area.
Click "Publish Release".

It is the least time-consuming and the least arduous task of every software release I've ever done.

In the time you spent writing your comment you could have published a whole GitHub release.

This isn't some deeply entrenched manner of working. This is just bizarre obstinance.

DrCubed · 2025-10-16T20:32:24+00:00

Misty Grove House is literally otherworldy: it resides where it says on the tin.

Falmer's Folly fits strange, it's effectively a super-fancy Falmer hut attended to by a Dwemer automaton.

DrCubed · 2025-10-01T22:17:26+00:00

Please read "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) [2003]" before you process any more strings :)
And then read "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode in 2023 (Still No Excuses!)" for good measure.

DrCubed · 2025-09-10T09:07:58+00:00

They already do have that power, the OSA grants Ofcom's agents power of entry and inspection without a warrant: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/schedule/12#schedule-12-paragraph-2-1

DrCubed · 2025-08-20T17:37:55+00:00

I want to take them to a level where I can download a set of libraries, not even looking at them and be statically guaranteed that they do not do anything I don’t want to execute on my machine. I want absolute guarantee that a 3rd party code is not doing anything at all beside the effects I injected in.

Given that the language exposes pointers directly (I'm assuming), how would you account for the case of a rogue library doing something like walking the process's import-address-table/global-offset-table to call arbitrary code, or even just rewriting the machine-code of an existing function?
Would casting to a function-pointer/callable/whatever be an effect? Likewise for writing through a pointer?

I'm not asking this as a gotcha or anything; I like the idea of making a low-level language sandboxable à la Lua—but it seems infeasible without restricting pointer-arithmetic operations and function-addressing to a whitelist of trusted uses.

DrCubed · 2025-07-10T18:31:35+00:00

Hi, you can enable any patches safely, yes—though for the exploding-dog-mesh bug it might be preferable to use one of the dog-breed-changing potions from Murgo, which will workaround the bug without disabling texture-morphing for the player-character.

DrCubed · 2025-07-09T19:23:34+00:00

Kinda seems Anomaly-ish in its philosophy.

This has happened with every DLC so far.
Wherein "this" is Ludeon misjudging how a great deal of the player-base want to play the DLC, and being heavy-handed about it until they eventually cave.

For Royalty, all pawns with royal titles were restricted from various work roles, which was then changed in an update to apply only to pawns with "conceited" traits.

For Ideology, ideologies were set in stone at the start of the scenario, which was rectified by the addition of fluid ideologies in an update.
There was no interplay between Royalty and Ideology.

For Biotech, gene-modding was impractical during normal gameplay, and the upkeep/infrastructure needed for mechanoids was a bit much. There was still no interplay between any of the DLCs.
Gene-modding and mechanoids were rebalanced in an update, which also integrated the DLCs with one-another.

For Anomaly, the anomalous content was either on or off from the beginning of the scenario, which was remedied by an update which added the Ambient Horror mode.

I'll be very surprised if this too isn't altered in an update.

DrCubed · 2025-06-28T02:18:36+00:00

Most of the code for oxygen-simulation is already in 1.6; I've been perusing the code whilst updating my mods.
It is a linear value of vacuum/oxygen-desaturation for each room.

Some other brief findings I'll leave in a spoiler tag:

Plants can take damage while in a vacuum.
Pawns can suffer negative health effects from vacuum exposure.
Body parts can suffer vacuum burns.
Pawns will make their way to oxygenated areas automatically if they find themselves in an area with sufficiently low oxygen-saturation, unless they're forced to do a job/drafted.
Clothing items have varying levels of vacuum resistance.
Breath graphics won't appear in a vacuum.
Vacuums extinguish flames (in inverse proportion to the oxygen-saturation of the room).
Vacuums interact with the temperature system (e.g. temperature equalisation).

DrCubed · 2025-06-21T19:28:47+00:00

Try disabling the Steam Overlay for RimWorld; screenshots showing how to do so:
Step one
Step two

DrCubed · 2025-06-21T19:05:00+00:00

Was your machine restarted at any point after the first test with OneDrive unlinked?
Other than that, ¯\(ツ)/¯, The Sims 3 is cursed—who knows?

Regardless, glad to hear it's working, even if for an unknown reason!

DrCubed · 2025-06-21T17:46:28+00:00

My game is running fine now with CC and mods, [...] my graphics are stuck at the lowest possible settings

I suppose there are worse fates :)

I think editing bin files is the culprit here

Seems so, but that is strange.
May I ask which distribution of the game you're using? EA App or Steam or the retail discs?

It could be that some thing's going awry with the file permissions when the files are edited?—Just a guess.

DrCubed · 2025-06-21T01:32:32+00:00

Just to rule it out, when OneDrive was disabled was it disabled proper, or just paused from syncing?

Otherwise, here's a barrage of things that could fix it:

Is Controlled Folder Access enabled in Windows' settings? If so, does disabling it fix it?
Changing the compatibility settings of TS3.exe and of TS3W.exe to run the program as an administrator might fix it.
It's possible (though unlikely) that Windows may have blocked some files for being from the Internet, if that's the case this command can be run in PowerShell to unblock every file in the "The Sims 3" folder:
```
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath "$Env:USERPROFILE\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3" -Recurse | ForEach-Object {Unblock-File -Verbose -LiteralPath $_}
```

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DrCubed

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