It's all called "rolling the pacifier" and it's all doing the same thing - generating random sims. And it all works as well as the others, except that the batbox randomizer is also imperfect.

Mootilda was working on that when she died (in collaboration with Pescado, I believe). I've never had a problem with it, but Mootilda found that when she loaded the game and used the rerandomizer function on the batbox immediately, it always created and threw away 13 random sims. Which was a real kick in the head; but since so few people have reported a problem with it, something that most people do most of the time before using that function kicks the rerandomizer into functioning properly. Somebody else may know more about this than my faulty memory.

So if your randomizer seems stuck, your playstyle probably doesn't tend to offset that problem, and you'd probably be best off going into CAS and rolling the dice a few times. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I wish there was a way to integrate the financial advising perk into OFB businesses - like being able to hire a team of advisers who can help neighborhood Sims manage their money.

@RoxEllen1965
Here is the discussion with Mootilda about the in-game randomizers, where she discusses the firstborn effect and the bug in the batbox:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...842#post2251842
The conclusions:

• The batbox is not randomly seeded (so the rolls are non random)
• The BHAV randomizer is not randomly seeded
• The personality random number generator and the genetics random number generator are not random
• Almost all of the random number generators in the game are broken
• The seeding is done inside of the executable so the only way to fix is to patch the exe
• Best solution for now is to roll the batbox or pacifier a random number of times
• It is not possible to use a mod to do this as the Make New Character primitive actually creates new sims so would fill up your neighbourhood

Yes, I remember seeing Pescado make frequent disparaging remarks at MATY about the game's "sado-random" number generator. It's annoying, but as you said, there are ways to get around it. If I'm in a hurry, I use the Batbox two or three times. Otherwise I use the calendar date. For example - if today is the 23rd of the month, I go into CAS and roll the randomizer dice 23 times.

Edit to add: I have Dickhurt's "Random Chance Fix" in my game, which fixes some of the other broken randomizers. The effects don't seem to be noticeable, but I like to have bugs fixed wherever possible, even if the effects of the fix aren't obvious.

Edited again to add: I think this fixes the percent chance of various events happening and not the actual random number generation.

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=330007

I wouldn't mind seeing a new category of clothing (such as everyday, formal, outerwear) for Costumes. Throwing costume parties and a use for all those weird outfits like the gorilla or knight.

A functional stove+grill. Like some hacked stove which also has grill function in TS1 era(of course, should not start fire indoor with 100% chance...).

Something that when you hover over the left-overs selection popup that tells you a) what the meal is (no more burgers for breakfast and pancakes for lunch!) and b) how many servings are left (or % of single meal remaining)

I'd like to see that too. In the Jacquets' bakery, I use so many custom foods that its impossible to tell what anything is or what needs restocking.

Another hack I'd like to see: Ask > What family are you from? Would be good to determine whether a Sim is a townie or an AL social group or simply from one of the dozen or so subhoods I added.

Or the impossible to tell apart cereal, mac and cheese and chili. If you have all three of them next to each other it's clear, but if there's only one of them in there... Maybe you guys can tell them apart, but I sure can't. I just decided that my Sims don't mind much having chili or mac and cheese for breakfast, and who hasn't had cereal for lunch or dinner

On the note ihate brought up, I wish the game would sort plates separately in inventory based on dish, and not group everything with the same plate type together. Sure, it'd clutter up the menu more, but it'd be so much easier to see which meals to cook for someone running a take out restaurant. Either that, or a custom object that lists which meals they have and how many of each. Speaking of, does anyone know a custom object that lists content in inventory in some way? If I can see how someone else set it up, perhaps I can one day find a way to adapt it to plates.

I can tell Chili apart because it's red rather than yellow, but Mac and Cheese and Cereal are pains.

Having a family rent multiple apartments in the same building - like the hotels. You could give Dora Ottomas a small apartment and move the rest into a larger apartment and play them both without switching families. Might be lagtastic on a lot of machines though.

Doubt you could bring over the Bon Voyage hotel coding to the apartments though seeing as the hotels are static and apartments have multiple sublots.

You could fake it if you built the apartment to look like two and separated Dora's part with a dorm door.

I bet you could default the textures. How would you want Macaroni Cheese to be distinguishable from cereal - maybe a tomato in the centre?

I'd like to see a mod that adds the simple handshake to the gestures submenu. The tough handshake doesn't quite cut it when I want something straight-forward between two sims in a group that haven't met yet.

We used to mix bacon in with ours. Now I'm craving it. XD

Perhaps little sprigs of....whatever that green stuff is supposed to be in the photo that comes on the packaging.

Pity EA doesn't like randomness. Oh well. I updated http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...ebugger_options with the new information.

Thank you, @k6ka !

Green stuff on macaroni, probably parsley.

It's not that EA doesn't like randomness, it's that programmers don't. True randomness is hard to test with. So most game random generators try to simulate true randomness in a way that will be random enough for players, but operate by rules that will let the programmers find bugs.

I've wanted an adult version of the "child animation box" for a while now. Sure, they can use it, but at the cost of no sound (I'm very OCD about this part) and twisted legs. I want sound and normal legs, thank you very much! I know the kids have different animations, but some are very similar if not identical to the Teen+ anims (like my favorite over the top BG illness animations, which are just too funny!)
The game has been out for a little over a decade and I'm yet to see certain animations made into box form for Teen and up.

Like the signs from Simbology to "only formal" would be nice for a winter vacation one "only outwear" mod!

I don't know if this is even possible, but I would really like to have temperature variation on community lots that works like temperature on home lots. We have weather (rain, snow, etc.) on community lots, so why not heat waves and cold spells? Community lots always reset the temperature to 0 not long after being loaded, so it gets annoying to send my sims to public beaches and the weather never really warms up or the home lot is in deep snow and freezing temperatures, but the public park never gets cold. I've seen some mods that would, for example, prohibit sims from autonomously sunbathing or using the beach if the temperature isn't warm enough, but since these currently are only good for home lots I haven't bothered getting them.

I sometimes use the batbox for this, but it only allows for 3 settings: maximum heat, maximum cold, and neutral. This can result in townies turning blue with cold or red with heat stroke and sometimes staying that way for quite awhile (maybe that's why Maxis disabled it), but that's easily fixed with the Blender.

@RoxEllen1965, good thing I saw your post. Thanks for posting this accidentally in the right moment for me
Never knew that temperature would reset to 0 on community lots, as I saw my sims autonomously swimming on community lot while testing one of those mods you mentioned. Maybe I didn't hang around long enough to notice the change... I'm gonna investigate this.

I've tested a little bit with it and the temperature setting does carry over from the residential lot my sims just came from, but just for a few seconds and then resets to 0. Thanks for looking into this. Your "Autonomous Ocean Swimming" was one of the mods I was interested in.

I'd like to see a hack that made some interactions (backrub, classic dance, throw food) friendly rather than romantic.