How To Unstick Stuck Sims In The Sims 3
Sims 3 is a great game in many respects, unfortunately, it is also a slow moving behemoth prone to errors and bugs. If you've played it for more than a few hours on anything less than NASA's very own system, then you already know this to be true.
The worst kind of error, in my opinion at least, is one in which sims become stuck. A common place for this to occur is when a kindly parent or elder sits a toddler down to teach him or her to talk, and suddenly they can't get up. Adult and child are stuck in an eternal loop in which the baby babbles on whilst both sims moodlets plummet towards death. If you don't know how to fix this glitch, it can entirely destroy a game.
Fortunately, there is a way to solve it using the cheats / debug console. Pressing ctrl+shift+c brings up a blue bar at the top of the screen. Type into this bar: 'resetsim firstname lastname'. Don't use any punctuation when you do it, and substitute your sims name for the 'firstname lastname' part. This usually works right away, tossing the baby across the room unharmed.
Whilst we're here, we may as well learn about another fun console command 'testingcheatsenabled true'. Type this in, and you'll be able to trigger age transitions in specific sims, change their preferences and even change their traits. And there's more too. Having a sim selected and then clicking on his or her home letterbox brings up a whole range of options, including 'Make Me Happy', 'Make Friends For Me' (useful when you're languishing without mates when trying to complete charisma levels), 'Set Career', and many more. Yes, it is sort of a game breaker, but then again, one could argue that The Sims 3 is already irrevocably broken on some levels. A game that requires debugging simply to be played is probably not a game that should have been released. Perhaps EA will address this issue in upcoming patches, though that seems unlikely given that this issue was first reported back in July of '09 and it is still occurring in April 2010.
Regardless, there's no point sitting here whining, so go forth and enjoy your new cracked wide open Sims game. You can now be anything you want to be without lifting so much as a finger. Yay you! Now all we have to do is find the debug console for RL, and we'll be set.
