NewSO Update 536864

You can be a roommate at four lots

• The roommate cap is now four lots per Sim, up from three. Owning a lot still uses one of those slots, and a lot still holds up to eight roommates.

The Diametric Dueling Device works, and it teaches Logic

• Magic duels actually run now. The Diametric Dueling Device was a Makin’ Magic import whose behaviour called routines by number, and several of those numbers mean something else entirely in our engine – one of them was pushing a “sit down” social at the duellists in the middle of the duel instead of checking that both of them were still in the arena. All of them have been repointed, so challenging, defending, casting and watching a duel all work.
• Duelling is now a two-person Logic object. Both duellists gain Logic every time they cast a spell, so a full duel is worth about 0.60 Logic to each of you. The skill meter shows up over your Sim’s head like any other skill object.
• You still need a wand. The Duel option only appears if your Sim is carrying a magic wand – grab one from a cauldron (the Witch Set Cauldron or the Spellbound Wand Charger by MagiCo).

Pet transformations no longer wreck your outfit

• Being turned into a dog or cat can no longer replace your Sim’s clothes for good. The pet carrier that dresses an animal in its breed was writing that fur into your Sim’s permanent wardrobe, so after `/makedog` or `/makecat` your real outfit was gone. Two Sims were affected and both have had their original clothes restored.
• Fixed the invisible-body bug that came with it. Pet fur only ships a light skin tone, so a medium- or dark-skinned Sim wearing it rendered as a head with nothing under it in the Sim picker. Any outfit missing your skin tone now falls back to the light version instead of vanishing.
• Your Sim stays yours while you’re an animal. Player-controlled pets were running the computer’s own free will on top of your clicks – wandering off, and cancelling what you had just told them to do. They now only do what you tell them.

Resident NPCs: fewer fires, and they’ll stop raiding your bar

• Residents no longer cook when they’re bad enough at it to set the kitchen on fire. A resident needs cooking level 5 before they’ll make a group meal. Below that they still feed themselves from the fridge, they just stay away from the stove.
• Residents no longer help themselves to your beer. Kegs, beer tubs, bar drinks and other stocked party items are off limits to residents, who had no way to replace what they drank. Guests and owners are unaffected.
• Residents are less predictable in the evening. A naming quirk meant anything with “tub” or “bar” in its name – including barbecues and barstools – got an evening popularity boost.

Pepsi vending machine removed

• The blue “Vending Machine – Pepsi” has been removed from the game. It charged for a drink and then left your Sim standing there – it has no working drinking animation – so it is gone from Buy Mode, and the two that were already placed on a lot disappear the next time that lot loads. Nothing else in the retro vending machine set is affected. Thanks to squeezannah for the report.

“Oblique” Vending Machine removed from the catalog

• The “Oblique” Vending Machine is no longer sold in Buy Mode. The imported kitchen drinks machine has been pulled from the catalog. Machines already placed on a lot are untouched and keep working – you just can’t buy a new one.

New Plum Bob app icon

• The game has a fresh Plum Bob icon on Windows and Mac. The taskbar, desktop shortcut, Dock and in-game window all now use the new 2026 Plum Bob artwork instead of the older flat pink version. Volcanic, the object editor, picks up the same icon.

Graphics settings now survive a restart

• Changes made in Graphics Options now save to the correct settings file. Some installs could load one `config.ini` at startup but write to a different one after the game finished locating its shared content. The next launch then restored the old settings, which was especially noticeable for options such as texture compression that require a restart. The game now keeps saving to the same file it originally loaded. Thanks to Ashh for the report.

Welcome-lot mentoring no longer doubles established Sims

• The double welcome-lot boost now belongs only to new players, as intended. When a new player is actively skilling, established visitors can still join them on a visitor-restricted welcome lot, but they skill and earn at the normal `1x` rate. They no longer receive `2x` skill and skill-object pay merely because a newcomer is present. New players keep their existing `2x` boost.

Sims can find the sink again after using the toilet

• Your Sim will no longer shrug at a fountain when they mean to wash their hands. Since early August, every object that offers hand-washing – including decorative fountains – was being treated as if it were as good a place to wash as a bathroom sink. A fountain sitting a few tiles away on the other side of a bathroom wall would win over the sinks in the room, and because there was no way to walk to it, your Sim just played the “can’t get to it” animation and gave up. Fountains are back to being the nothing-else-nearby option Maxis intended, so the toilet’s automatic hand-wash goes to the nearest reachable sink again. Lots that already had a fountain are repaired the next time they load – no need to move or replace anything. Thanks to squeezannah for the report from the Welcome Nest.

Egg sales rebalanced

• Selling a tray of eggs now pays farm prices, not art-gallery prices. The chicken coop’s egg trays were selling for §850 to §3,500 each depending on cooking skill, which quietly made a four-chicken backyard the best-paying money object in the game. Tray prices now run §85 to §350, so keeping chickens is still tidy, mostly-passive income – it just no longer out-earns every easel, jam and job on the shard. Eggs kept as Baker’s Oven ingredients are unchanged, and now baking with them is a real alternative to selling. The price shown over your Sim’s head now always matches what you were actually paid.

Jam making no longer celebrates money it never paid

• **On lots with skill gameplay disabled, the canning station no longer flashes a payout over your Sim’s head.** Skill-disabled lots were already blocking the money correctly – your balance never changed – but making preserves still played the full payday celebration with a “+§” over your Sim, which understandably looked like jams were paying out while easels weren’t. Now the celebration and the money display match what you actually earned: nothing, on a lot where skilling is switched off. The same cleanup covers the chemistry table, piñata bench, telemarketing gig and other skill money objects. Thanks to squeezannah and Henrietta for the report.

Easier-to-find UI scaling and chat text size controls

• The UI scale option is now called “Interface Scale”. The button in Graphics Options formerly labelled “DPI” now says what it does, and the scale window has a proper title and a one-click “Reset to 100%” button. The slider also won’t offer sizes that would make the interface too big to fit your window anymore.
• You can now change the chat text size right on the chat window. New A- and A+ buttons in the chat window’s top-left corner make the chat text smaller or larger – no more hunting for the hidden Ctrl+Plus / Ctrl+Minus shortcuts (which still work too). Thanks to squeezannah and Sierra for the accessibility requests.

UI scaling no longer strands windows off-screen

• **Raising the UI scale can no longer push the chat window (or the whole game window) off your screen.** The UI scale slider in Graphics Options (the “DPI” button) could leave the chat window’s saved position outside the visible screen after you scaled up, with no way to drag it back – one player had to reinstall to recover. The game now pulls the chat window back on-screen whenever it loads, and also repairs saved window sizes that the old bug had inflated beyond your monitor. If a window ever got stuck off-screen for you before, it will come back on its own with this update – no reinstall needed. Thanks to squeezannah and Riekoche for the reports.

Maximizing the game window no longer leaves a desktop sliver

• Maximizing the game in windowed mode now fills the screen properly. Hitting the maximize button used to nudge the window slightly off the edge of the screen, leaving a thin sliver of your desktop peeking out behind the game. The window now stays put and fills the whole work area. Thanks to squeezannah for the report.

Launcher 3.0.12 released + fixed manual download links

• Launcher 3.0.12 is out for Windows and Mac. Mac players get the biggest improvements: the game shows the proper NewSO icon and name in the Dock, Play automatically repairs a broken install by downloading the missing Mac files, and the launcher window fits small laptop screens.
• If your launcher’s auto-update fails, download the newest installer directly – Windows: newso.thenewsimsonline.com/launcherwin, Mac: newso.thenewsimsonline.com/launchermac. The old “download manually” link inside the launcher pointed at a dead page; that’s fixed in the next update.

Closing the game on Mac no longer hangs

• Quitting NewSO on Mac (and Linux) now actually quits. Closing the game window used to leave a frozen “Application Not Responding” window behind that you had to force quit. The game now shuts down cleanly within a few seconds of closing the window.

Mac launcher repairs itself instead of failing to launch

• Clicking Play on Mac no longer fails with a “newso.command is missing” error. If the Mac (or Linux) extras are missing from your installation, the launcher now downloads and installs them automatically, then starts the game – no reinstall needed. (Requires the next launcher update.)

Servo and Bonehilda can no longer be electrocuted while repairing

• Fixing a broken lamp or other appliance could occasionally “kill” Servo or Bonehilda, just like it can a resident – they’re now immune, the way a repairman should be.

Servo no longer freezes solid while gardening

• Servo could lock up completely while trying to water a wilted flower bed, forcing a reset of the object – he now waters it and carries on.