Hahaha.  I guess now that I have AL and you can actually contact hobby instructors via the phone (!), Luis Aspir is hearing wedding bells.     See, until very recently, I had never installed a single hack and very rarely used any cheats, so when the game was throwing a brick wall up in my face (while on dates with her, he wasn't ever even allowed to "ask back to my place"), I got frustrated and gave up.

lol  See, this is another reason I just can't get too excited about the Sims 3; I feel I've barely seen a fraction of what the Sims 2 has to offer!

Mine always graduate summa cum laude, and that's pretty much how they pay the dorm bills.  They get gobs of cash just for making the Dean's List every semester.  Easiest way to make money at uni?

Maxis made dorms seem to always have lower bills than any custom ones I make; probably because my custom ones have way nicer stuff.  lol

Totally off-topic, but can you marry hobby intructors without cheats?  When I first installed freetime I had Louis Aspir fall in love with the Cuisine instructor because they had great chemistry, but I was unable to ask her to move in or propose marriage.  I havn't played the Aspir's since installing AL, so was this fixed?  Otherwise, what sort of cheats or combinations of cheats are required?  Make her selectable or add her to family with boolprop and then marry her?  Now that I think about it, until AL we weren't even allowed to invite hobby instructors over to the playable sim's house.

As far as the Sims 3 goes, I thought it was pretty clear in the early promotional stuff that the whole neighbourhood would be growing, aging, and changing around whichever sims you were currently controlling.  I can't seem to find much to back that up, but that's what I remember seeing/hearing.  In fact, I have a pretty clear memory of one trailer saying you sim's neighbours would get jobs, get promoted, get married, and have kids all while you were playing your own sims.  Anyone else remember that?

As far as sims aging before thier parents, I guess in some cases it sort of makes sense.  The sims are supposed to live longer if they stay in platinum, but those that become depressed and never get anything they want will get old before their time.  Real life is kinda like that sometimes too, since there are 50-60yr olds who look and act like 30 yr olds and are extrmemly healthy, while there are depressed, unhealthy 30yr olds who look more like 50yr olds and probly won't live very long because they are so unhealthy.  Just something thought of while reading this thread.

Wow, I have never ever seen sims autonomsyly change clothes at a dresser, especally not guest sims.     I'm thinking you must have some sort of hack like laylei suggests since that does not noramlly happen with AL and dressers.

Wow, I hadn't noticed that.  I've had visitors use the ballet bar since installing AL and they didn't leave in fun frustration...thought they were using it because it was fun.  I never use the excercise bike anyway, and I havn't used the barre with a playable sim since installing AL.  I'll have to try it and pay attention.  It's odd, because both of those itmes have a listed fun rating, and, as you said, I've seen sims gain fun from them before AL.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the personality besides active.  I know most sims have fun with TV, but I've seen serious sims actually loose fun from watching TV (maybe channel matters; I geneally force them to watch Yummy).  I think I'll make a few sims in my testing hood test out those objects and see what happens to thier fun meters.

And just so you know, I'm not a hacker or a modder or even an expert on the Sims2 by any means, I'm just someone who likes to play and help other ppl.  I hope some of the real experts will come by and take a look at your thread.  I also hope my own testing might also help in solving this mystery for everyone.   

Wow.  Invisible TV tray.  Wonder if it would have also had invisible flies/green stench had it sat uneaten...  Then you'd have bottomed out enviro score for that room and no idea why.

But really, if I had a real life buttler who tried to serve TV dinners, I'd laugh in his face and tell him to do the job I was paying him for if he expected to keep getting paid.  I can stick a freaking TV dinner in the microwave myself, thank you very much.

I iz in ur contest, stealin' all ur houzes.   

Seriously, I'm thinking of entering this.  My personal sim building specalty seems to be making the most of tiny, cramped spaces, though, so this isn't really the kind of house that I'm all that good at.  I always seem to end up with horrible boring boxes, too, so being forced to build in and around the existitng shape will help me avoid that.

I absolutely love many of you ppl's renovations, especally the look of leaths's which just blow's me away (well, the pics look awesome anyway; havn't loaded it up in my game).  I'm already using Faizah's in game (moved Armand DeBateau and his daughter into it from their craptasticly unplayable appartment) and I love it!  (Armand is marrying Samantha Cordial and they'll probably have a set of twins (I changed his LTW to Grad 3 kids from college), so the rather large house will be put to good use.   

By the way, Faizah, I love the way you set up the kitchen/dining area in your house.  It works awesome and it's certainly something I hadn't seen before.  I also love the stairwell with the spiral staircases.  And it's all so bright and cheery!

Most of the houses in this thread will be put to good use in my game, since I am currently planning a new neighbourhood based on Victorian-esque ideas of family honour.  This style of house will fit in perfectly.

Yeah, I can make playable and age or kill any I really want to as it is.  I personally HATE the idea of my other playable sims screwing up thier lives because they're still aging while I play another sim.  I just don't see how the whole neighbourhood automatically getting married, taking jobs, decorating thier houses, having kids, growing old, and dieing without any input from me (and without me even seeing it!) could be a good thing?   

Really, the only families I have ever really tried to keep track of are my 3rd and 4th attempts at starting a Legacy Challenge.  I wrote all these notes on scraps of paper and index cards that I kept in a drawer on my compter desk.  My (real life) kids got big enough to open the drawer and so they pulled all the papers and cards out and mangled them and stuffed them under the couch and who knows where.  4th attempt at Legacy is still in Uni, so I can re-recreate any info I need on her, but I need a real score card or something.

But mostly I just try to play whichever family I feel like playing, and make sure that teen loves age up at the same time.  I also use the Elixerof Life a lot, even (especally?) for teens.

I've never actually had a sim's child grow older than his or her parents.  Now, I suppose this could be quite easily possible if you were to play a female sim and have her get impregnented by a male townie who you never made playable or aged up allong with friends (freetime feature).  I personally would never want to do this as it would make for a very odd and confusing nhood.

One of the things I love the best about freetime, actually, is the ability to age up townies, especally child townies who otherwise can never be made playable and thus suffer from the Peter Pan syndrome I guess.  I guess uni is actually more important for allowing teen npcs/townies to be sent to uni allong with their sweethearts.

Is that what we're supposed to do to re-ranomize personalities?  I thought just rolling random adult sims was enough.     I think I need to get this lot debugger thing...

I was wondering that as well.  It's not like you can argue or fight with them, right??

I think the article focused too much on the limited instillations, when as far as I understand it, that's not the main issue with SecureRom.  I've heard it demands the deletion of various legally obtianed programs from the computer before it even lets you play the game.  Also, that it does serious dammage to the computer all on it's own, like a virus.

Also, the comments by the ea person about the DRM preventing you from making 1000 coppies to distrubute on the internet were pretty silly imo.  Aren't coppies allready available online, dispite this DRM that's supposed to "prevent" that?

Overall, the article seemed a bit biased and left me feeling the main point of it was, "A bunch of pirates and hackers are mad that they EA is making it harder for them to illigally copy and distrubute Spore."

Not in my sim's house; he cooked them up in the oven.

I think it's becuause he was so sloppy.  When I made him selectable, I noticed his maxed cooking (and cleaning and mechanical).  But I have observed that messy sims are far more likely to burn food than neat sims with the same cooking skill (even if they're in a good mood).  I keep reading online that cooking and mechanical are unneffected by personality, but in my expirence, both are better suited to neat sims.  I dont' know if they actually learn the skills faster, but they certainly seem to have far less failed attempts when actaully practicing the skills.

I have the no towning respawning hack, but I don't have the one for npcs at present.  By the way, I *hate* those freaking hotel maids.  Is there *any* way short of making them selectable and actually telling them to clean to get them to freaking *clean*?  It sucks bad enough that you can't leave the lot and have to watch them clean, but staying in my hotel all day watching the hotel maid *not* clean is beyond maddening.   

If I did that, I think I'd always be accedentally "fulfilling" wants by clicking on them.     That, and messing up a lot of other stuff.  I often play with one or two real life toddlers climbing all over my lap and bumping into my elbows, so I probalby wouldn't even know what all I'd borked to be able to fix it.

In another household, the butler only serves omlettes for breakfast and lobster for dinner, so they can't all have low cooking skill, but they should all have it maxed by default in my oppinion.  I'd have to have to tip the freaking guy; he's expensive enough as it is.  But when he does his job properly, he can be very useful to active sims with little to no cookins skill so they're not spending all ther time trying to fill up on hot dogs, lucnchmeat sandwiches, and cereal.  lol  Also, he's a pretty handy gardener who comes every day, so he can take care of the seasons fruit and veggies (something the regular gardener can't do without hacks).

I've never do this myself, but supposedly you can do it with boolprop testingcheatsenabled true.  Enther that code in the cheat command box in neighbourhood screen, then enter the lot.  Shift+click on the butler and choose, "make selectable".  Then go to his personality and skills tabs and just click and drag to pull the points up (or down) however you like them.  Can also have him go to a mirror and "change appearance" if you like.  Then, when you're done editing him, shift+click him and choose "make unselectable".  Open cheat command box (cntrl+shift+c) and type in "boolprop testingcheatsenabled false" then save your game and exit the lot (for some reason boolprop testingcheatsenabled doesn't get turned off properly most of the time for me unless I actaully exit the lot and come back in; not sure why lol).

It should work, and then I'll have an ubber-butler.     Ima gonna try it.

(I really hope I'm posting this in the right place, and I'll try not to have an emotional breakdown if this gets moved to Retardo Land  )

Here is a screenshot of the butler serving out the TV dinners (which, he mannaged to burn, by the way):
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a302/Rosawyn/Sims2/ButtlerServeTVDin.jpg

How the heck did he mannaged to *serve* something that can only be made as a single plate anyway?

I think I have to fire the guy, unless there is some way to "fix" him.  I have had good expirences with buttlers in a couple other households, but I'm pretty sure this is a different butler.  He's so freaking sloppy, he complains and looks at me everytime he actually goes to clean something.   

Maybe I can use boolprop to make him selectable and then drag his neatness and cooking skill to the top.  Never done that before (but it would probably be helpful for nannies as well).

I absolutely love that idea as well!  I totally agree it should have been in the game since day one.  As it is, I think the only consideration they make when deciding if "you'll make a wonderful parent" is how much money you have in family funds.  Pretty stupid, if you ask me. 

Haha.  I was wondering that as well.  For one thing, "jump rope" is so much easier for body now, since it's free, child-elder can do it with very little required space, and it's even fun!  Would have made the game so much easier to have that from day one...   

I live in Canada and a church I used to go to usedthe rising thermometer thing for some fundraising.  Actually, I think I've seen it at more than one church, and several schools here.  I think it's pretty universal, reagardless of if it makes any sense or not.   

Thank you so much for putting this list together!  It really has been helpful for me, knowing which hacks to download from this list: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/al/hacks/

I'm new to this site and new to hacks in TS2, so I need all the helpful info I can get!   

Thanks, I was wondering that as well.  Don't need this one then, but awesome that you made it nonetheless.

That's exactly the sort of fixes I'm looking for.      Thanks so much!

Hi there.  I am by no means new to the Sims 2, but in my years of playing it I have never downloaded a single hack.  However, I am considering getting this one, since the bugs it fixes are severely horrible.   

What other basic hacks should I get?  I don't want to make the game weird or ubber-easy; I just want to be able to play it normally.  After reading this thread, I am terrified to even play anymore due to current bugs.     I see there are two other hacks recomended in the first post; guess those would be a good place to start...