Speaking of critical fixes, the townies are spawning at a fast rate every time you open a neighborhood. Any news on that front? I take it that too many random townies are a VBT.

Like:
I like the new everyday clothes, actually. Yay for more gym clothes too!

Dislikes: Not being able to edit the apartment lots.

I don't actually consider the game 'ready' until I get all my old hacks back in business. I'm willing to sacrifice Belladonna to the borkiness gods until then. Once the hacks get sorted, I'll return to my 4th gen main hood and really give it a try. I like what I've seen so far, though.

Using the cheats, I managed to break down a wall inside the apartment and it worked ok.

However, I once tried to add a wedding arc and a telescope to the common ground. The arc married the sims ok, but the telescope (both cheap and expensive ones) caused a jump error. The sims never started the animation to stargaze, BUT a pop-up said I discovered a new planet and gave me 500 bucks. Happened every time, kinda amusing since I really needed the cash, but still.

Eventually, I chickened out and remove both things before saving and exiting. Married sims still married and deleted wall still deleted, so yeah.

I have all but Petz and FT. My stuff packs are Glamour Life, Celebration and K&B.

What? Gunmod camera? That's working perfectly for me. Mind, I don't have FT, if that means anything to you.

Aw, pity about death being automatic. I'd say let us adjust our own death odds, but I don't know if that's possible. Still, throwing it out there...

I also turn my computer off at night. Not only does it eliminate the temptation to surf the net all the time, the computer itself only misbehaves when it's life is in danger, not for shit and giggles as Windoze is prone to do.

Here's a mildly scary thing that happened to me the other day, but I fixed it, so for posterity's sake, here we go:

Gilbert finally had it with his cult and moved back to his mom's, with the baby he conceived with cult leader Gary. Since he was married to Gary and his two wives (I got them married one by one with the arc) he decided break with all of them. The oversoul did him a favor by teleporting each sim one by one and breaking up individually. The dumped sim leaves the lot in tears, as in normal dumps. Save, exit.

Later, I go to SimPE to fix his last name and the names of a few others. His house is ok, but the cult's house is missing one sim, the last one that Gilbert dumped back at his mom's place. After checking in the game, I find that she's in the sim bin, but the house she's supposed to belong to still has her picture. Rather than tempt fate, I don't enter her lot, merely move her from the bin to her proper house, and THEN I enter the lot. I find that she's perfectly ok, still sleeping as I originally left her.

Everything's gravy, so far, just thought you should know. Let that be a lesson to future generations: Everything I did? Don't.

Does anyone ever play Veronaville? I've always stuck around Pleasantville, but most of my time is spent on its Downtown lot and Bluewater subhoods (Bluewater is getting a lot of play lately). I also added its university and all three vacation lots. No need to ever leave Pleasantville, really, but I first started playing on Strangetown, so I occasionally visit as well.

Wow, you guys. I've been playing for 2 or 3 years, and I've never, ever rebooted. I'm on a fourth gen with several family lines, and just looking at the complicated family tree... which is HUGE... brings me inexplicable joy. Everyone is vaguely related somehow, because the nearest thing I had for founder couple had 6 kids. Another founding couple had 2 kids, but the male sim had a mistress by the side that gave birth to twins, and then... well, I'm telling you, the family tree is HUGE. When lacking proper mates, they've been known to marry townie or Maxoid sims. The Goth and Dreamer families live on in my game, but I killed the Pleasant twins because they didn't pass the prettiness test when they grew up. Haven't had much use to other Maxoid sims. I believe I killed the Caliente sisters early on.

I've also had a pair of naturally identical twins. Even the personalities and sign were nearly the same, if not identical, before I randomized them. I went out of my way to give them different haircuts too, and maybe different eyebrows.

Wow, most of the people here seem to love being very hands-on with their sims...

I'm so shallow. In my neighborhood, only the pretties get to breed with other pretties. When it comes to Uni, I generally pool all the sim teens of a generation in a dorm and more or less see what happens. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised when three bolters that met five seconds ago retreat to a bedroom and whoo-hoo, other times I change a sim's personality so that it fits with the spouse I have chosen for them in my infinite wisdom. Sims who annoy me ---dormies most of the time, but sometimes playables too--- have a close encounter with a cow plant. Uni is very useful for me, as it allows me a time to cull the sheep.

Maybe the only special feature is that all my sims are related to each other somehow. I've had aunts marry their nephews because they were of the same age and their families got unlinked back in the beginning of the game 3 years ago. Then there's all the infidelity and bastard children of several sims to mix up the family tree. My favorite sims are a pair of twins conceived during a one-night stand with a townie. I ended up moving the townie in, then I had her picking up a newspaper to start a new life as a full-fledge playable elsewhere, since the male sim was already married.

Another favorite is the elder knowledge sim that lost his whole family in his old age. According to the plot in my head, that's when he went crazy, made himself a plantsim and had a spore child. Spore child turned himself into a human teenager with strange voodoo powers he picked up through the special doll, and he's currently wooing the daughter of one of the twins from before.

Currently, some households are in a fourth, and others in a fifth generation. I try to keep both gens in sych, but I don't worry about it too much.

Fooled around a bit with that the other day:

I believe the options are "keep last name" (keeps that sim's last name, obviously), "Other sim" and "sim in the picture"

If 'sim in the picture' is chosen, then the last name of the couple will be from the one in the picture. However, it's the face of the sim you're NOT controlling. Ex. Mary Sue (the controlled sim at the time) marries Gary Mark. I believe the non-controllable sim's face shows up (in this case, Gary) and if I choose 'sim in picture', the couple will be 'Mary and Gary Mark'.

Again, if Mary is the sim I'm controlling, the other sim's face shows up. If I choose 'other sim', Mary's last name is chosen: Mary and Gary Sue.

I could be wrong, but I think that's the gist of it. The trick is to keep track of the uncontrollable sim's last name, then choose if you want to keep it or lose it.

[Edited because I screwed up a bit. I think the method is a bit counter intuitive as is. I'm still not sure if I got it right.]

For future reference, here's what's up in my game:

Leia and Lainey are married to same dude, Gary. They show no jealousy when he flirts with either wife, in fact, they hardly care. Later on, I married the girls between themselves. Gary didn't care. They are, literally, all married to each other.

(Before I married them, ACR told me the girls weren't attracted to each other, even though they were best friends. Once I married them, the red hearts showed up.)

Now, Gary made out with male lover. Wives threw a huge fit, and both slapped him, one after the other (It was hilarious!). They both show the 'break up' with Gary, but the marriage between themselves is still going strong. Both wish to see the lover dead.

I guess the next step is to have one of them break up with Gary in the name of science, but I don't feel like it right now. It may interest you to know that Gary has a favorite wife, Leia, who has two bolts while Lainey only has one. He always rolls 'be best friends' with the two-bolter Leia, which would save their marriage, while Lainey is sadly neglected.

I'd say it adds to the realism, don't you?

Basically, that's it. Good summary of the whole situation, actually.

Dude, if you're a computer beginner or don't know much about Sims 2, I'd SO stay the hell away from BV and the expansion packs that come after it, at least for now. (BV means the Bon Voyage, in case you're wondering. As for the rest of it, Google is indeed your friend. Wikipedia also knows all. Bow to teh Wikipedia.)

'Buy'? What is this 'buy' you speak of? If you're not terribly interested in getting many EPs, I'd get Seasons and leave it like that. BV has Securom and you might not want to deal with that crap, and Pets have pets, which is....good if you like that sort of thing. (I sure don't.) Seasons, I feel, is a happy medium. It lacks Suckorom, plus you get actual seasons and that's cool.

Pirate Bay: It's a pirate life for meee!

Just driving by to say thank you for the mod! It works great in the game. My romance sim Gary Philippe is well on his way to become a Cult Leader, and his two wives have already given birth to his sons, Nero and Caligula. Unfortunately, the wives are pissed at him for making out with neighbor Jacques Gilbert. Hmm, perhaps a future husband? Time will tell...

I've been reading up on the randomness thing, and I would really like to know if there's something similar that works in-game. In fact, I would be satisfied with some sort of hack that adds randomness without me noticing. Sort of like, me, minding my own business when suddenly WHAM! A sim dies of a heart attack or a fire or a similar grisly fate. Heck, I'd settle with the work chance cards happening more often.

Can anyone suggest to me some sort of in-game random generator, or at least any existing mod that includes randomness. Like, ACR has that whole pregnancy dice going on that's kinda cool. Maybe some mod that makes vampires show up more often? Because I have to actively look for my vampires, which kinda defeats the point.

Wow, just want to thank you all for these amazing things. If I weren't so violently allergic to paying EA money ---tragic, I know--- perhaps just maybe I would've bought them. Ok, not really, since my whole game is arr'ed, but they look nice. Perhaps they unchained the code monkeys from the desks for a bit R&R in the prison yard and the fresh air did them some good.

(Except the long wavy hair. I was ready to give it a pass until I actually saw it. Holy fuck, talk about a DO NOT WANT.)

My custom lot is called Peaceful Apartments, which I grabbed from right here at MATY by someone whose name I can't remember. Nice clean lot, but I did heap abuse on it my adding lots of crap.

Thinking about it some more, though, it very well could be a video card problem. I have a Radeon 9600, which is pretty outdated, but I can't afford a new one and it's good enough for my needs, save that annoying glitch. It's never gotten as bad as you describe it, though, so maybe your card is in a worse state than mine.

Mind you, I am but a sad unawesome one. Better to wait for more advise to come in before doing anything rash.

Just to throw this out there:

My game, up to BV and KB (no FT, no Petz) has been slowing down and freezing up too. (Image freezes, controllers don't respond and I reboot, just like you do.) Eventually, I figured out it happens on a custom lot I downloaded, which I placed on an Uni lot and moved in 8 sims. I graduated them all out of there and hasn't frozen since.

If all else fails, maybe you can take out the custom lots and reduce the numbers of sims in a house. Couldn't hurt.

I think he means to say that Nervous' story is the most plausible of them all. Which is true, considering the bizarre things that happen in Sims 2.

He also seems to believe that Nervous is programmed differently somehow. That said, I recall that the 'fairy' characters in Veronaville used to move really fast. Was that a special code or did my eyes deceive me?

I think you're supposed to patch Petz itself, not the base game.

Seems you have a handle of things, but I'm just going to throw this out there.

I have Uni/NL/OFB/Seasons/Celebration/BV. When I installed the arr'ed version of KBS, with proper crack and all, first it checked for patches. It decided that Seasons needed a patch, which surprised me, because BV never whined when I installed it the first time, and neither when I patched it later. Once in the game, it reset the game and asked me if I wanted game tips... for BV.

Anyway, everything's surprisingly fine *knock on wood* but why on earth would it want to patch Seasons, three EPs later?

Not sure about the incomplete uninstall, but for the registry, the CCcleaner program actually asks you if you would like to backup the registry, so its about clicking yes.

The long way is running regedit in the command thing. The registry editor should open. Under file, click export. Name your back-up, then save.

As for deleting, surf through registry under hkey_local_machine/software/EA Games. There should be Sims files there that shouldn't be there. There could be more such elsewhere, I really don't know, so keep surfing through the registry just in case.

If you had a bad boo-boo, open the registry editor and import the file you saved. That should undo the damage.